Technical backend is a mess, servers dying repeatedly but hopefully this is temporary.

The current state of Payday 3 as a sequel is one step forward and one step back even if you look past the current technical problems.

Payday 3 feels like this very weird side grade of an experience because of the weird or outright bad decisions. Everything Payday 2 did good, Payday 3 does bad but the opposite is true too. No more weird weapon customization where attachments are tied to either very specific challenges (like 4 different players wearing a sequence of different masks with no gun attachments, etc), lootboxes (end of heist cards) or buyable with a specific currency (Continental Coins). Incredible gameplay (compared to PD2), good AI, good netcode and sync in-game. This game feels like the result of a wish from a monkey's paw.


Few things I think should definitely be looked at.

1) The lobby system
Payday 2 had a browser that showed public games within your region, while it was bad I believe it to be better than PD3s system. PD2s system showed you multiple pieces of information. The heist, difficulty, how many players are in the heist, if the heist was in game or in lobby and lastly the host could even note what tactic was being used (stealth or loud). Meanwhile in Payday 3 you pick a mission and difficulty and it puts you into matchmaking. That's it. You are given 0 information and customizability. Can't search by tactic. Can't search/queue for multiple heists. You can't even see what heist and difficulty has active players. Currently you just search and end up in a bunch of empty lobbies, eventually you either requeue and find people or wait for the lobby to fill up with people. And then they proceed to leave because they were looking for the other tactic, putting you back to square one.

2) Leveling/Progression
Payday 3 uses challenges that award you XP to level up. These consist of just about everything you could imagine. XP for sliding a certain distance, kills with a specific weapon, heists at specific difficulties or tactics. To grind for levels you have to actively check what challenges you haven't completed and can do. The idea of this from a developer standpoint is good, encourage players to try everything. But I think most players gravitate to specific weapons, tactics and playstyles are effectively punished for doing so. It took 8 or 9 years to make the infamy and leveling system in Payday 2 to be at it's absolute best, why were the lessons learnt from PD2 never taken into consideration for Payday 3?

3) UX in the menus
The different menus are a complete mess of various bad decisions that lead to them being very annoying to use and navigate. Settings and the quit button is under the More section so you can't access either at a quick glance. The social/friends menu is very bad, you have to open it up to see if you're in a party for example (ontop of matchmaking with friends barely working as it is). Going from loadout to buy a new weapon puts you in a different menu that you can't back out of, so you have to click back to loadout, the category of gun (primary or secondary) and then you're back to where you were. Same thing with masks and other cosmetics.

Technical backend is a mess, servers dying repeatedly but hopefully this is temporary. The current state of Payday 3 as a sequel is one step forward and one step back even if you look past the current technical problems. Payday 3 feels like this very weird side grade of an experience because of the weird or outright bad decisions. Everything Payday 2 did good, Payday 3 does bad but the opposite is true too. No more weird weapon customization where attachments are tied to either very specific challenges (like 4 different players wearing a sequence of different masks with no gun attachments, etc), lootboxes (end of heist cards) or buyable with a specific currency (Continental Coins). Incredible gameplay (compared to PD2), good AI, good netcode and sync in-game. This game feels like the result of a wish from a monkey's paw. Few things I think should definitely be looked at. 1) The lobby system Payday 2 had a browser that showed public games within your region, while it was bad I believe it to be better than PD3s system. PD2s system showed you multiple pieces of information. The heist, difficulty, how many players are in the heist, if the heist was in game or in lobby and lastly the host could even note what tactic was being used (stealth or loud). Meanwhile in Payday 3 you pick a mission and difficulty and it puts you into matchmaking. That's it. You are given 0 information and customizability. Can't search by tactic. Can't search/queue for multiple heists. You can't even see what heist and difficulty has active players. Currently you just search and end up in a bunch of empty lobbies, eventually you either requeue and find people or wait for the lobby to fill up with people. And then they proceed to leave because they were looking for the other tactic, putting you back to square one. 2) Leveling/Progression Payday 3 uses challenges that award you XP to level up. These consist of just about everything you could imagine. XP for sliding a certain distance, kills with a specific weapon, heists at specific difficulties or tactics. To grind for levels you have to actively check what challenges you haven't completed and can do. The idea of this from a developer standpoint is good, encourage players to try everything. But I think most players gravitate to specific weapons, tactics and playstyles are effectively punished for doing so. It took 8 or 9 years to make the infamy and leveling system in Payday 2 to be at it's absolute best, why were the lessons learnt from PD2 never taken into consideration for Payday 3? 3) UX in the menus The different menus are a complete mess of various bad decisions that lead to them being very annoying to use and navigate. Settings and the quit button is under the More section so you can't access either at a quick glance. The social/friends menu is very bad, you have to open it up to see if you're in a party for example (ontop of matchmaking with friends barely working as it is). Going from loadout to buy a new weapon puts you in a different menu that you can't back out of, so you have to click back to loadout, the category of gun (primary or secondary) and then you're back to where you were. Same thing with masks and other cosmetics.