Ex-Payday 2 devs think they’ve solved the problem of player in-fighting for their next co-op heist game: ‘The bar is low’

Payday 2’s co-op heists always seem to trigger an argument. Which bank entrance do we use? Do we go stealth or go loud? Why did you just go into that room and trip an alarm when I told you to go into that other room and be quiet!? But thankfully, the ex-Payday devs working on upcoming sci-fi heist game Den of Wolves reckon they’ve figured out a way to avoid all that bickering, or at the very least, it won’t be so tough for players to get along with one another.

“Den of Wolves is supposed to encourage people to collaborate and cooperate,” said 10 Chambers co-founder Simon Viklund in an interview with PC Gamer. “It’s supposed to be super easy to get along with other people—the bar is low.”

“It’s another one of those super important redesigns that we made looking at Payday 2. There are so many ways to go about completing the objective. You say, ‘Let’s go through the back door, ‘ and then someone else is like, ‘No, I want to go through the front door. ‘ And as you’re discussing how to do it, meanwhile, a third person is already climbing up the fire escape, and they’re on the roof.”

So instead of having these in-the-moment discussions about how best to go about completing the objective, 10 Chambers “came up with a way to have our cake and eat it.” Den of Wolves will still offer multiple routes and options, but the host will have complete control over which of them the team chooses.

Before the mission begins, the host can decide how to go about the objective. During my time with Den of Wolves, I completed a short prep mission to obtain a killer drone and then went on to break into a corporation to steal information by betraying the gang leader who thought we were working for him.

We all walked right through his base of operations, and just when he thought we were handing over prized intel, we used the stolen killer drone to kill his henchmen and break into his facility.

But I was told that there were loads of different ways to go about this particular heist. You could break into the facility via a hidden entrance or fight your way to the front door after failing to trick the gang leader. As more gadgets and prep missions get added to Den of Wolves, there’ll be more ways to initiate a mission.

Regardless of all the options, the final say will always go to the host. “You make the decision before you start the map,” Vilklund says. “It’s your say because you’re the owner, you initiated the storyline.” There may be a voting system added later on, “but in the end, you make the call.”

This will also apply to random players who join as guns for hire, meaning you won’t have to try to explain your master plan over voice chat or to those who join a game halfway through. Actually, players who take up jobs as guns for hire are even further removed from exercising freedom over the main objective, as they won’t be able to influence the heist objectives at all.

“In order for those players (if they’re more skilled than you), not to rob you of the sense of reward or accomplishment of completing the objectives and making progress, they are not even allowed to complete your objectives,” Viklund explains. “So while your mission would be to complete the heist or the objectives, their objective as guns for hire would be to protect you.

“So you can sort of section off what the people joining are allowed to do by saying they’re guns for hire, they’re not there to complete the heist. They’re essentially your bodyguards.” Guns for hire will still be rewarded for keeping the host safe and helping them complete their objectives, despite not having any say in how the host goes about doing so.

It may seem quite restrictive, but this actually sounds pretty good to me both as a host and as a gun for hire. It’s nice to have control over how you want your game to progress while also being able to hand over the reins and responsibilities just to enjoy using the weapons and gadgets to take out enemy guards.

“We’d like to think this makes fostering a community that just gets along and plays together nicely even easier,” Viklund says. “Because GTFO is not that game.” He’s right, GTFO really isn’t that kind of game, as it’s probably 10 Chambers’ hardest co-op shooters with no objectives or quest markers and has the added joy of friendly fire.

While there’s no guarantee that randoms playing together online will ever get along, I think this feature has a shot at achieving some kind of co-op FPS harmony.

Den of Wolves was announced at The Game Awards back in 2023, and while there’s no release date now, you can check out some of our thoughts on how the game’s looking in our preview.