Helping somewhat

With a thought to all the recent youtube videos I've watched recently that were about build ideas for PAYDAY 2, here is some of my own advice:

First of all, be sure you want to play it.

Second, if like me you encounter the random crashes and have followed all the forum listed advice for preventing it and find that they still occur, try this: lower your graphics settings. This seems to have helped me (at least so far) and it was much the same issue with Marvel Heroes, for some reason most, if not all of the crashes for PAYDAY 2 are C++ errors, and lowering the graphics settings made a difference. Other than making the textures look all blurry and ugly.

Third, unlike most of the videos I've watched, I've only played it after they altered the in-game descriptions of skills and weapons. Which means as far as build concerns go, you can get a much better idea of what a skill will do for well before you are even able to purchase it. While I wouldn't discourage experimentation such as I did, if you don't plan to play this obsessively for a few weeks you won't really have enough money to experiment with how different skills work together. So checking beforehand means you can plan around your play style in advance.

Third part 2: weapons are a little more difficult to plan around because while you can see the base weapon stats in the shop, you don't get any idea of what kind or how many mods can be applied to it, meaning that you can't really pick the most appropriate weapon ahead of time and save up for it. The most obvious clues you get are the stats such as "concealment" and "damage" as they will give you some idea of which build style they will fit with most. High concealment suggests they're good for a stealth/Ghost build (and the Ghost skill tree has skills affecting SMG so they're an immediate association). High damage weapons will most likely have a very poor concealment rating, meaning they are for going LOUD!

Third part 3: the above information about guns doesn't quite cover secondary weapons so much as primaries. All SMG are secondaries, and pistols can be quite powerful with a fairly good concealment rating. Though as above you can't get a great idea of what kind of mods can be applied. There are several basic types of mods though. There's a bunch of suppressors that have varying degrees of damage reduction mitigated by improved concealment or stability. Barrel extensions that improve damage at the cost of concealment. Extended magazines that reduce concealment. Generally a mod will either increase combat effectiveness or increase concealment, usually at the expense of the other.

Fourth and probably final: don't go nuts. Sure, there's no real consequence for failure, it is after all, a game. But you will avoid the ire of fellow players if you don't act like a retard. When you start out, don't go assuming that you can undertake a job on overkill difficulty and not die repeatedly and irritate your fellow gamers to no end. You'll find yourself kicked out of many lobbies if you try to reach beyond your grasp. Unless of course you already know someone who has played the game a while and is willing to help you level up faster by carrying you through harder missions. But stay away from "Pro" jobs while you're still a noob.

That is probably it for now. I'll likely only be playing PAYDAY 2 for a little while longer, then I guess I'm back to Marvel Heroes unless I find something else to play. I'm tempted to add an "advice" label but I'm not sure how many times I'd be using it. Maybe a future advice thingy for Marvel Heroes might be in order, they've apparently got a fair amount of marketing geared up for the release of the new Thor movie.