This guide explains the target priority system in loud heists: how do enemies decide which heister to target?

The guide will be divided into three parts:

• How people think targeting works
  
• How targeting actually works
  
• Why priority multipliers rarely matter in practice

A common misconception is that enemy targets in this game are randomly determined. Some might assume that given two heisters, an enemy might go for one heister 50% of the time, and his teammate 50% of the time. Perhaps if one heister was nearer to that enemy, he might be targeted 60% of the time, and his teammate 40% instead, or something to that effect, after applying some unknown formula.

This misconception is fueled in no small part by the in-game descriptions of perk decks like Muscle or Rogue, which state that the player is "15% (more/less) likely to be targeted when you are close to your crew members." "Likely" means chance, so targeting must have an element of chance! Or does it?

If you think about it carefully, this doesn't make sense. Suppose, for a moment, we have two heisters for the enemy to choose from as targets, and each is 50% to be targeted without any modifiers. What happens if one of them is a Rogue? Let's say he loses 15% targeting chance and goes down to 35% (assuming the percentage chances are additive, like dodge chances). Where does that 15% chance go then? Does it go to the other heister, bringing him up to 65%? (And hence, the difference in chance to be targeted is 30%, not 15%?) Does the enemy target each heister with 35% and 50% chance, and simply idle the remaining 15% of the time? Would a team of four Rogues then cause enemies to idle 60% of the time?

What if there were three heisters and one of them was a Rogue? How is the 15% split among the remaining two heisters? You can't add 15% to both heisters since it would cause the total targeting chance to be raised to 115%. Does the game instead add 7.5% to the other two heisters? (Again, making the difference not 15%, but 22.5%?) Does the game add 15% to both heisters anyway, then figure out it needs to divide by 1.15 to normalize everything back to 100%?

The answer is no. Because that's not how targeting works at all.

Targeting is deterministic, not probabilistic. There is nothing random about it. It may feel random because it is outside your control, as though nothing you do can influence it. But as we'll see, there actually are actions that can influence it (beyond obvious things like using a Kingpin injector).

So, how does targeting actually work? Well, the Long Guide explains it all, under the "Priority Target" section. I'll go through the relevant paragraphs here.

Every enemy assigns a priority to every object (in particular, criminals) in his list of detected objects. The object with the lowest priority becomes the focus of his attention, his priority target.

...

If the priority value is less than 1, set it to 1. Pick the object with the lowest priority as the target. If several objects have the same priority, choose the one with the smallest distance.

The floor on the priority value is 1: if it would be less than 1, it is set to 1. This means you can't have 0 or negative priority. If you're already at 1 priority, nothing you do will make it go lower.

The object with the lowest priority value will be targeted. I will avoid using the phrase "low/high priority" due to its ambiguity (does "low priority" mean "not important" = "not targeted", or does it actually mean "low priority value" and hence "targeted"?), and stick to "priority value" instead.

In case of tied priority values, the tiebreaker is distance: the closer object will be targeted. (The Long Guide is silent on what would happen should distance also be tied, but let's not worry about that.)

If an object is either reviving or not visible to the enemy, assign a priority value of 7 and skip the following steps until the priority addition due to reactions. Otherwise, start with a base priority depending on distance between enemy and object:

• If distance < 5 m: Base priority 2
  
• If 5 m <= distance < 15 m: Base priority 4
  
• If distance >= 15 m : Base priority 6

Observe that the closer you are to the enemy, the lower your priority value, hence you'll end up being targeted if the other possible targets are further away. If you're 4m from the enemy and a teammate is 16 m from the enemy, your priority value is 2 and his is 6. Since your priority value is lower, you will be targeted.

If you and your teammate are within the same distance bracket, then the distance tiebreaker is used and results in the nearer heister being targeted anyway. For example, you're at 10m, he's at 11m, so both of you have 4 priority. But since you are closer, you will be targeted.

If you are not visible to the enemy but your teammate is, you will not be targeted. It doesn't matter how far away he is*: his priority value will be at most 6, while yours is 7. Since his priority value is lower, he will be targeted.

*Actually, I lied a bit there. In loud, players have a detection range of 80+m depending on their detection risk. Visibility range is 1.2*detection range. If your teammate is further than that from the enemy, neither of you are visible to it and the distance tiebreaker would be used. Even 80m is a very long distance though.

From this base priority, subtract the following:

• If the enemy was personally damaged by the object in the last 5 seconds, subtract 2.
  
• If the enemy was not personally damaged by the object , but has heard an alert of the object in the last 3.5 seconds, subtract 1 instead. Bot weapons do not cause alerts.
  
• If the enemy had focused on the object already, but for less than 4 seconds, subtract 3 (thus enemies tend to stick to one target for 4 seconds at least).

These rules (which I'll call damage, alert and focus penalties) may cause farther objects to be targeted instead. These objects must still be visible, as non-visible objects skip this step.

Suppose you are in full view of a Bulldozer, 16m away from it. You begin shooting at it, damaging it. The Bulldozer focuses on you. Your priority is 6-2-3=1.

Suppose your teammate also begins attacking the Bulldozer, 10m away from it. His priority is 4-2=2. Thus the Bulldozer will not change targets and attack your teammate immediately, even though he is closer.

Now suppose the focus penalty has expired. Your priority is 6-2=4. Since your teammate has 2 priority, he will then be targeted by the Bulldozer. Note that this switching of targets occurred because your focus penalty expired, not because your teammate did enough damage to the Bulldozer as some might expect.

Finally, note that the damage and alert penalties are mutually exclusive. The damage penalty can only apply if the enemy was damaged, and the alert penalty can only apply if the enemy was not damaged.

Objects additionally add to the priority depending on the reaction that they cause. The relevant reactions and their effects on the priority are:

• Scared, add 16.
  
• Aim-at, add 15.
  
• Arrest, add 14.
  
• Shoot, add 12.
  
• Combat, add nothing.

Objects other than criminals can only cause the scared or aim-at reaction. During loud, the enemy reaction towards players is virtually always "combat".

Emphasis mine. Since we're talking about loud, everyone just gets "add nothing".

The game takes the product of all priority-altering skills (e.g. *0.85 for the Rogue perk, *1.15 for the Muscle perk, *1000 for the Kingpin injector) and multiplies the damage-time and alert-time by this product, and divides distance by it. This modified distance is used both to calculate your priority and when you are tied with other players. For example, take a player with Optical Illusions and the Rogue perk, so the multiplier is 0.65*0.85 = 0.5525. The damage-time becomes 5*0.5525 = 2.7625 seconds, the alert-time becomes 1.93375 seconds and the effective distance becomes 1/0.5525 = 1.81 times as much. E.g. if the player is farther than 8.2875 m away, he is already assigned the base priority 6 (whereas players without any skills have priority 4 up to 15 m).

Finally, we have the explanation for what Rogue's or Muscle's "likelihood to be targeted" really means. A multiplier of less than unity (e.g. Rogue's *0.85) means that the enemies forget about you damaging or alerting them quicker, and treat you as though you are further from them than you actually are. A multiplier of greater than unity has the opposite effects.

Do note that the multipliers affect the cutoffs, not the priority values themselves. For example, Optical Illusions + Rogue changes the rule

• "If distance >= 15 m : Base priority 6"

to:

• "If distance >= 8.2875 m : Base priority 6", or equivalently
  
• "If distance/0.5525 >= 15 m : Base priority 6"

and not:

• "If distance >= 15 m : Base priority 3.315".

Also note that unlike the damage-time and alert-time, the focus-time is not multiplied.

Kingpin's injector multiplier is *1000. The 5m cutoff for 2 base priority becomes 5000m. Practically, this means that if the Kingpin's injector is active and the Kingpin is visible to the enemy, he has a base priority value of 2. If a teammate also has a priority value of 2, the Kingpin still ends up getting targeted due to the distance tiebreaker rule, as he is treated 1000 times closer than he actually is. So, for example, at a generous 50m distance, the multiplier causes the enemy to treat the Kingpin as though he is only 5cm away.

If, however, both the Kingpin and his teammate have 2 base priority, but the teammate has any of the damage/alert/focus penalties and the Kingpin has none, then the teammate will drop to 1 priority and be targeted instead.

The alert penalty can easily push the Kingpin down to the minimum 1 priority, since the alert time becomes a whopping 58 minutes 20 seconds. Keep in mind if the enemy spawned after the Kingpin's last alert, the penalty would not apply since the enemy never heard it.

Here is an example, with real footage, of this occurrence. Note the sequence of events:

• The player fires his rocket launcher once, and does not fire any of his weapons for the remainder of the duration of interest.
  
• An enemy group spawns, rappelling in through the broken window.
  
• Off-screen, a ZEAL heavy from this group engages a bot.
  
• The player uses his injector, then interacts with the objective.
  
• The ZEAL heavy, now barely in view, does not switch targets to the player, despite having nearly 2 seconds to do so.

(Humorously, the player did not take any damage while the injector was active. Better safe than sorry!)

If the Kingpin is not visible to the enemy, or is reviving someone, he simply has 7 priority. The enemy would prefer going for any other teammate in sight (<=6 priority) instead.

Bots and converts have a *0.5 priority multiplier. That is even lower than Rogue with Optical Illusions at 0.85*0.65 = 0.5525.

The SWAT turret has its own priority system and ignores all priority skills, but not the *0.5 for bots and converts.

Some extra information. The effect of priority multipliers has already been discussed.

(Yes, now, after explaining all of that, I'm going to tell you why it doesn't matter.)

A common refrain (pun intended) against usage of the Rogue perk deck (besides its reliance on luck) is that it "hurts the team" due to its Elusive card causing teammates to be targeted more. Strangely enough, if being "targeted more" was a disadvantage, using the same logic, Muscle players would be "hurting themselves" with their Meat Shield card, yet that argument is rarely made in favor of not using Muscle.

One might also wonder, if this were true, whether it would be possible to exploit for the team's benefit. For example, one to three players could use Muscle to lure all the enemies away from the objective, while the rest of the team could use Rogue and do the objective uncontested. This does not work, of course. Priority multipliers rarely matter in actual games. Why?

All other things being equal, enemies will target heisters that they can see over heisters that they can't see. Visible heisters have at most 6 priority, and non-visible heisters have 7 priority.

Consider a newly spawned enemy. Even if the enemy has not detected any of the heisters yet, it still knows to path towards them:

Assault groups path towards criminals or sentry guns (in contrast to recon groups that path towards civilians or loot bags). Upon spawning, they set a waypoint on the location of one of the criminals or sentry and then keep moving towards this location until arriving there.

As the enemy moves, upon spotting one heister (which doesn't have to be its initial target), it updates that heister's priority to at most 6. Even if it has detected, but not seen a different heister, whose priority would be set to 7, it would prefer to target the visible heister. Thus the first target to be attacked by an enemy tends to be the first player who's been spotted by it. By extension, this often happens to be the player who's closest to wherever the enemy spawned. Physical, non-modified distance from the enemy's spawn has much greater importance in deciding whether a player ends up being targeted than priority multipliers.

If we change one factor, by making certain players Rogues or certain players Muscles, how does the result change? The answer is not at all, as, if you recall, multipliers affect the cutoffs, not the priority values. A visible Rogue has <=6 priority, and in non-visible Muscle has 7, so the Rogue will still end up being targeted. We can even change yet another factor, distance, and end up with the same result: a visible Rogue 25m away will be targeted over a Muscle hiding behind an opaque object 4m away.

Here is another example involving a situation from a real game. Consider a loud First World Bank heist, after the players have poured the thermite and are waiting for it to finish. Player A chooses to camp near the gate leading into the vault area. Player B chooses to camp in the vault area itself, near the elevators.

Suppose an enemy spawns outside the bank and makes its way towards the players. It doesn't really matter who its initial target was; its route will take it into player A's view first, and when it sees player A, it will target him. If player A is a Rogue and player B is a Muscle, nothing changes. The enemy will not ignore player A as it crosses paths with him and go for player B instead.

Conversely, suppose another enemy spawns by the elevator. Clearly that enemy would target player B over player A. Again, this will not change even if player A was a Muscle and player B was a Rogue.

Additionally, as the Guide states, the focus penalty causes enemies to tend to stick to one target for 4s at least. Suppose the first player an enemy sees is a Rogue at 13m range, and the enemy targets and focuses on him. Due to the *0.85 multiplier, his effective distance is 13/0.85=15.29m, putting him at 6 base priority. The Rogue engages in combat with the enemy, incurring the damage penalty as well. At this point the Rogue would have 6-2-3=1 priority.

Now suppose a Muscle were to wander into the enemy's view at 11m range, even closer than the Rogue. After the *1.15 multiplier, his effective distance is 11/1.15=9.57m, putting him in the 4 base priority bracket. Even if we were to assume the Muscle has incurred the -2 damage or -1 alert penalties, his priority value would be 2 or 3, and he would still not be targeted.

The Rogue would have to lose his focus penalty, bringing him to 4 priority, for the enemy to switch targets. The final nail in the coffin is that focus-time is not affected by multipliers. Enemies "maintain focus" on Rogues as much as they do Muscles: 4 seconds.

So, in short: whoever gets spotted by the enemy first, gets shot at by the enemy first. Having someone else enter the enemy's view at a comparable distance right after the first player has been spotted doesn't cause the enemy to switch targets immediately. Priority multipliers change none of this, hence they don't matter.

That's the explanation of how targeting works, in more detail than the Long Guide, and why perk deck/Optical Illusions multipliers rarely matter in actual games. Hope you learned something new.

Thanks for reading and please stop blaming Rogues for "getting you targeted more".