people need to stop playing on normal and hard, that's the most likely reason people are quiting because is not a challenge. another reason is the players are casual that can't handle more then point and click games, i have a friend that play any thing higher then hard or its too intense, lol.

i don't hear no one complaining about PAYDAY The Heist :/

Yeah, there are a lot of little things. You can say that for any game with levels, though, that the “grind” pushes people away. However, having no grind also pushes people away, as they get bored of an overly-easy game or a game that’s been completed. People are going to leave either way.

I also don’t see many people complaining about the progression, though, so if you bring it up in the discussions, maybe they will. That’s probably a better place to be heard than here.

All of my points were saying that the system discourages players in that the game is hard, as games are sometimes. I remember looking at PAYDAY: The Heist stats and seeing that First World Bank, the first heist and probably the easiest one, had <50% success rate on normal difficulty. PD2 is a hard game, and that's why people don't advance far.

If you're going to consider achievements, you should also consider that almost half of the people who "play" aren't even level 5, which you can easily get by playing whatever approach you want. That probably means half of the people who "have" the game haven't even touched it or played it very much at all, meaning the achievements as they are are skewed and need to be adjusted. You also need to consider the achievements only mark milestones. How many players are level 74? How many are 49? Achievements are not an accurate way to gauge player interest.

Discussion has really gotten away from the point though.
The current system discourages players to stay.
its evidenced by the achievements. Its even more obvious when you try and find a pug.
Sure you may, once and a while find a good group. But mostly the tone is paranoid fear of "hackers" and Aggression as the game offers two types of approaches and not everyone likes to "wing it".
Its a lot of little things addding to the bigger ones. Just would rather not have the game just up and die. But Overkill seems to believe that extending the grind will keep people longer.

Most people won't try to get to 100 or play DW. Sure. That's fine. Most people won't try to beat the CoD campaigns on Veteran or max their multiplayer levels either. That's just how it is.

KF has a stupid-ass leveling system though. I need to kill ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 20,000 stalkers for commando? ♥♥♥♥ that noise. I don't think it's fair to compare it to PD2 though. They're different.

I disagree about the raid analogy, agree about lack of progression. When I started out, I got pulled onto OK games with my friends as <20 because a) they knew how to play well enough that as long as I kept my head down they could carry the game and b) I could get mad levels at <20. In a WoW raid, everybody would have to be a similar level to win, but in PD2 you don't have to be. Sure there's RNG, guard pathing can be a nightmare and maybe you'll get thrown 5 shields and a dozer but RNG is part of every game. PD2 just uses it differently because it's a "completely different monster". They use RNG to throw different waves of cops at you because every gun can kill cops. The different weapons and tools are just to change the playstyle, like in CoD. I've been making references to WoW but PD2 is not an RPG, it's an FPS with RPG elements.

I'd honestly prefer if getting to 100 was expected, was made possible within a reasonable ammount of time, and that the various teirs of difficulty meant something. As is, Overkill is simply telling their player base to "Min max and cannibalize your team, aggressively police pugs and kill the community, and finally do not deviate from the meta ever"

By the time your raid analogy counts, you are already at the peak of your class (aka 100 in payday 2), everything else is just fluff for challenging you as a player. This is a completely different monster.
Payday 2 has no gear progression tied to difficulty. Its all RNG layered upon RNG.

Most people won't bother to get to 100, or try deathwish difficulty in this game simply because Overkill is very shortsighted. They are behaving exactly like tripwire did with their class leveling. Catering to those who already obtained it when it was "easier' (pre exp nerf in pd2 sense). And then making it progressively more difficult to obtain later so its a perceptive carrot on a stick.

Only... it serves no function to be a carrot on a stick. As often it just serves to remind you that you are either going to dance to the set tune of specific map rotation to progress, or you simply won't progress at all.

You misunderstand me:
-You don't have to play a private game. I was saying that playing with other people who know how to play helps with beating heists, and the best way to do that is play in a party, even if that's a party of two.
-Every game has repetitive actions. CoD you shoot at people and don't die. WoW you run the same raid over and over, hit the same skills in the same order. So yes, being level 90 does mean you're good at doing the same thing over and over again.