Welcome to part two of "Meet the Crew"! The focus of the second instalment is Oliver Zielinski, Technical Designer working (among other things!) on how to make weapons go even more "brrr" and "pew pew" in PAYDAY™ 3!
When did you join Starbreeze and what do you work with?
I joined Starbreeze as a ‘Technical Designer’ in August of 2023, just before the fun started. So far I’ve worked on implementing and balancing weapons, as well as designing new systems around the heisters’ arsenal.
Technical designer bridges the gap between coding and design
How did you end up as a weapon designer?
I’m actually trained as a programmer, but wanted to be more involved in the creative side of things, so I slowly transitioned into the tech design role instead. It kind of bridges the gap between coding and design. To be completely honest, a role that I didn’t really consider initially, but it called to me as soon as I learned what its responsibilities are. It’s a lot of fun!
What do you work on?
I’m basically involved with all things “weapons” – from inception and implementation to bug fixing and balancing. With the time left over, I’m looking into all sorts of new heisting gadgets and mechanics as well as making a fool of myself in our Dev Update-videos.
What do you need to think about when designing a new weapon?
We try our best to identify and fill niches in the gameplay that we haven’t explored before. If possible, we also try to find some sort of theme to base a weapon pack around (i.e. ”police station”, “burst fire”, etc.). Resources and technical limitations must be considered, so not all ideas have come to fruition (yet…👀) Besides that though, we have all the creative freedom we need to bring you the newest, coolest, most badass additions to your arsenal, that we can!
…until players inevitably find numerous ways of making it overpowered that we didn’t think to test. And the cycle of rebalance and bugfixing continues, just like Mother Nature intended
Oliver on releasing a weapon into the wild
What hoops do you need to get through to get it into the game?
Through internal playtests and our in-house Quality Assurance team, we take new guns for a spin on the latest heists and do our best to break them and find exploits. Once all the major bugs are fixed, values are adjusted, and everything works as intended – we’re ready to release it.
…until players inevitably find numerous new ways of making it OP that we didn’t think to test. And the cycle of rebalance and bug fixing continues, just like Mother Nature intended.
What else are you working on right now?
A plethora of cool new things for PAYDAY 3! Besides the obvious (new weapons!) I’m also looking into reworking and/or expanding some base game systems. There’s also unhinged – I mean totally serious – new Dev Update videos and everything in between to elevate players’ PAYDAY-experience even further!
