Here’s a more in-depth explanation on how I ranked the heists. Firstly, I’ve decided to use 7 tiers from S to F. S being the best of the best and F being not very good. In general, all tiers up to and including D I still consider somewhat decent and worth playing. Anything I’ve put in tier E and below I think is poor to terrible. For the ranking criteria I used these main factors to judge each mission:
• Design - does the heist make sense, are the objectives intuitive or do they clash with each other? Does the mission flow well, does it waste the players time with unnecessary timers?
• Visuals - does it reuse assets, is the setting unique and does it look good (as good as PAYDAY 2 can look these days)? Does the map make sense and does it look like it could exist in reality? Is it another warehouse?
• Replayability - how linear is it? Does the map layout change in any significant way each playthrough, do the objective locations? Are the objectives fun to do multiple times?
I also took into account some secondary characteristics that are less important but are still meaningful to the heist experience in some way:
• Story - does it tie in with the narrative of PAYDAY 2? Are there stakes or is this a silly goat heist that in the end means nothing?
• Soundtrack - how good is the track and does it fit with the setting? Is it meaningfully distinct and different from the others?
• Gimmicks - how innovative is the heist, does it introduce any new gameplay opportunities, if it does are they any good? Does it try to change the formula in any significant way?
• Stealth - can it even be stealthed? How fun is it to stealth and is the heist even built with it in mind?
With the help of these criteria and personal taste I rated the heists accordingly. Some missions however were exceptions, while they may have had scored well in many areas, they might have scored very low in a specific one, which knocked them down lower than they should have been and vice versa. For example, Breakfast in Tijuana scored decently in all areas except design. I though it was designed so poorly that I, in good conscience, could not give it anything more than a D. On the other hand, Black Cat had such incredible style, visuals and soundtrack that I boosted it up to S tier.
That’s it for the long-winded explanation, cheers if you actually read all of that.
0:00 Intro
0:35 Tier List
24:37 Outro