What Would Make The Perfect Bank Robbing Game?

Anyone who has played Payday 2 would probably agree that it was okay, but could of been amazing. The setting is has so much potential, Robbing Banks With Friends. However, there hasn't been many games to do with this premise. A Top Down game called Masterplan (i haven't played it yet) and GTA 5 Heists are the only recent games (to my knowledge) to be based around heisting (and giving the player some freedom in how its done) So I want to hear from you, What would make the perfect Heist game? And why are there not more?
Personally i think total freedom would be the king here, no missions, no objectives, it just chucked up into the world and said "Find your own way" So you would have to search for a crew, drills, guns, plan out the heist, have a backup plan, or just descide to wing it and grab a drill and walk in the bank with no plan at all.

 

Firstly I'd break it into 2 types for those that like the actual going in, shooting etc & those that prefer the planning, sneaking option because the rest of the design, gameplay & mechanics should flow from that.

Personally I suck at shooters (no reflexes, issues with aiming, AI seems to play a generic role instead of adapting to my play style etc) so I'd favour the planning & then the execution as possibly turn based so I could give instructions to the crew instead of relying on AI that may have them doing things I didn't want instead of doing what I would have preferred them to do. I guess a mid way point would be allowing commands to be queued with the option to pause & alter the commands as the situation changes (as if they all had mics & earbuds so could update each other & co ordinate).

Missions would likely need to be partially set otherwise you'd let the players wander around & find a target bank to rob. That would be fine if it was a run & gun job as the inside could be generic but unless you wanted to build up detailed insides of all the banks in the game & have variable AI to provide variety yet strict enough to allow each bank to have it's own routine (customer x always banks a big days take at 1pm every Friday, bank y is empty Thursday's as local businesses withdraw cash to pay their employees etc) so that each bank requires a different player strategy a non mission approach may not work. Of course, that isn't factoring in increasing difficulty as the player gets more experience with the game or as the banks get robbed & upgrade security while maintaining the architectural restrictions each building would place on them. Again, as a mid way option, you may be able to provide the illusion of open world with the missions so that the player just finds a bank they want to rob & then what happens inside appears to be random but is actually a scripted 'mission'.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. Thanks for putting the question up as I hadn't even given thought to these ideas before.

 

GTA 5 heists seem pretty full featured fun...

 

Seems to me the two "big" bank robbing games of late are Monaco, Payday... and I guess a third nod to the reboot of Thief.

All three of those are radically different games. None "better" than the other, but certainly some more complex... though don't let Monaco fool you, the lead man over there has a CRAZY attention to detail.

 

What I would like is a bit of realistic stuff. I dislike 200 police charging in without a care for there own life, or that of the bi standards, sacrificing themselves to protect £120,000.

 

Let's look at Thief. Personally, I really liked how Thief approached the heists with multiple approaches to an estate. But I feel that if this was expanded into a full open world with more ways to approach a situation, more realistic/responsive AI like mentioned above it would do really well. I feel the fun would come out of staking and planning the heist, then execution and success/difficulty coming out of how well you actually paid attention to what happened on a daily and timely basis and your understanding of the layout.

So in short: My perfect heist game would be one where the heists aren't just run in, shoot everything, open the vault and walk out. Planning would be a necessity for me

 

I think it would be payday 2 with the added feature of being able to pick up the guns dropped by the police. Also add psychological statuses to the police, so when 1 person mows down 100 cops, some of them reconsider their chances. There shouldn't be an unending horde of policemen. There aren't a lot of people when I look around the game world instances. A town with a population of 500 shouldn't have 500,000 cops lol.

Achievement : Slaughterhouse

"Unlocked by killing all of the pigs"

 

And right there you have two completely different views of how a bank robbery game should be played COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

Technical and budget constraints aside, I sure would love to see an open world robbery game that isn't GTA, but rather focuses more on the Thief aspects mixed with a true RPG skill system and the online multiplayer of Monaco.

Get out your millions of dollars to make it happen and I'll be right in line ready to buy it (as soon as its on sale).

 

Oh you ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)