The culture of releasing unfinished products must come to an end

Come back in a few years, let this one cook.

This is painful to say, but Payday 3 is a huge disappointment. In many ways, it is a step back from both Payday: The Heist and Payday 2. I won't discuss the always online nature, the disconnects, or the crashes further, as these have already been well documented.

If you want a TL;DR: just play Payday 2 instead. For further detail, Pros and Cons are listed below:

PROS:
- Some of the Stealth Mechanics have been improved - cutting windows and picking locks, and the ability to combo these Mechanics together is pretty cool. And there is now increased capabilities without masking up.
- The ability to take and use Human Shields
- The fact that you no longer need to RNG roll for particular mask options is a massive upside (note that these are now locked behind a terrible account levelling system - more on this later)
- Graphics and Game Engine are an improvement from the older Payday games
- The game can finally be Borderless Fullscreen
- The fact that it's Payday - Dallas, Chains, Hoxton, and Wolf are back!

CONS:
- The Tutorials are poor - it was easier to figure out the basics of gameplay in both Payday: The Heist AND Payday 2 without a Tutorial, compared to completing the Tutorials in Payday 3 and still being confused
- The music is not terrible, but is still a downgrade - I have both the Payday: The Heist and Payday 2 soundtracks looped on my Spotify, not the Payday 3 soundtrack
- The menu UI and UX is horrible - navigation, filters, and changing Loadouts are particularly problematic
- The inability to customise and name things such as Loadouts and Weapons
- The number of Heists and their simplicity - at launch, Payday: The Heist had 6 interesting and lengthy Heists; Payday 2 had 12 Heists, some of which were short (and Harvest and Trustee was far too common), but there were a variety of approaches and objectives; Payday 3 had 8 Heists, almost all of which are watered down versions of heists from the earlier games (Under the Surphaze feels like the exception). [Added: Two Legacy Heists were added post-Launch, but I would have preferred other Legacy Heists ported over first instead of Murky Station and Cook Off such as First World Bank, Heat Street, Hoxton Breakout, etc.]
- Some of the Stealth Mechanics - stand in some arbitrarily spawned circles to hack Wi-Fi???
- The account levelling system being Challenge based is atrocious. It's now been improved in that you can get some experience for completing a heist, but it still feels terrible and unrewarding
- A weapon levelling system so bad that Call of Duty abandoned it - each weapon needs to be levelled up individually. Not only do you need to unlock modifications for each weapon individually, you then need to individually purchase each modification for each weapon... even if multiple weapons share the same modification
- The reduced number of weapons - at launch, Payday: The Heist had 10 weapons, Payday 2 had about 25, Payday 3 had 13
- Melee has been removed as a combat or cc option, it's now the same as shouting down civilians
- The fact that the weapon stats are now on a sliding scale with no indication of what they do and what they mean
- The massive reduction in the number of weapon mods which are available (both categories of modifications as well as the modifications within each category)
- The downgrade in cosmetic weapon customisation options - you can change the colour of the weapon, but that's it - the available "skins" allow no modification to the weapons whatsoever, whereas you could still add or remove modifications from skins in Payday 2
- The reduction in the number of mask customisation options - base masks, colour options, and pattern options are all greatly reduced
- The Loadout itself - some of the Loadout categories are only useful for loud or stealth, but there is no option to leave them behind or swap these for something useful depending on what Heist you are doing, and how you want to approach the Heist
- The Skills and Perks have been massively simplified, and it feels like there is less diversity and flexibility in build options
- The in-game currency system - you have to heist for in-game currency... to buy in-game currency? Overly complex, unnecessary, and seems grindy for no good reason
- Loud is not fun - the enemies are very bullet spongey - even straight headshots will not kill enemies on the lowest difficulty, and you're no longer Helmet Popping. This is exacerbated by the change to the Armour/Health system with non-renewing Armour/Health and a lack of dodge, which essentially reduces Loud to a cover shooter
- Heister AI is much worse in Loud compared to both previous Payday games - the Bots now stand around and do nothing. They do not appear to kill anything, control any civilians, go down, and do not pick anybody up (although they do now drop deployables such as ammo bags and medic bags)
- The really annoying opening cinematic that begins at the start of every Heist... and is no longer skippable (at least the opening dialogue in Payday 2 was skippable)
- The difficulty in matchmaking for heists - each heist and each difficulty is an individual queue, meaning if you queue up for a particular Heist on Hard, and your friend queues up for the same Heist on Very Hard, you'll never see each other - a straight downgrade from Payday 2's server browser system
- Restarting instantly queues you back in - you will need to rejoin and re-queue if you want to change up your Loadout before attempting a Heist again. Payday 2's system, where a restart put you back into the pre-game lobby, is much better.
- The difficulty in getting friend lobbies up and running - my and my friends will be in-game and visible, but still unable to invite to a lobby via the game, we have to invite via Steam
- The lack of lobby chat - so even if you somehow get into a pub lobby, you won't know if the lobby is loud or stealth until you've loaded in, and probably unintentionally ruined the run loading in
- Even if you do the manage to get into a pub match, everybody gets kicked out of the lobby and back to the main menu at the end of each heist, so you can't even make new friends... sad as I made a lot of Friends playing the first two Payday games.
- The removal of in-game events (such as Halloween and Christmas)
- The addition of a Story Mode - Payday: The Heist and Payday 2 were more fun because you could do anything you want in any order (there was some timeline-related Heists, such as Hoxton Breakout taking place before Hoxton Revenge). However, "Career Mode" didn't really add much to Payday 2, and it doesn't add anything in Payday 3 either.

We are now 3 Updates in, but QoL still hasn't really been addressed from the launch. BUT they DID manage release the first DLC of (1 heist and 3 weapons)... which costs 50% of the base game. There were a lot of Payday 2 DLCs, but the price and amount of quantity for this first DLC is excessive to me.

I can't get my $40 back, but what I can get back is my 55 GB.

Really made me feel like I was in a heist!

(I was the one getting robbed)

The only heist here is on everyone's wallets

Pro: Heist Game

Con: You're the loot

That's karma for pre-ordering the Gold Edition like the genius I am

Never pre-order games kids

I remember buying the Silk Road DLC in Payday2 thinking "this sucks but I want Payday3 to be good".
I remember playing the beta and pre-ordering the gold-edition thinking "this sucks but I want Payday3 to be good".

Little did I know, even the devs did not share my vision. Compromises were made for no fathomable reason. No care was put into Payday3's health or success. Payday2 was supported for YEARS past the game's finale, propping up Overkill as all their other projects failed. And what did they do with this support? What promises have they delivered on?

Not a single one. "Ultimate heisting simulator"? What a joke.
I've been drafting this review for over half an hour now, and trying to find a concise way to list all my issues with the game has been f!cking exhausting. There's too many stupid design choices to be concise; I can't even count the game as a successor to Payday2. It doesn't feel like an accurate title. There are so many successful elements of Payday2 that Payday3 ignored for seemingly brainless reasons.

The staff have waved away all of these complaints citing stupid bullsh!t like "Payday2 wasn't built in a day" even though its first year did about.. 10x better than Payday3's first year is shaping out to be.
"We need always-online for cross-progression" ...For the mythical gamer that bought Payday3 on two different platforms... Don't think so.
"We need always-online to combat against the many cheaters who abused Payday2" ...Abused a co-op game? Get real.
"Payday2 didn't launch with voice-chat either" ...That was ten years ago. You really didn't learn that voice-chat is useful in that time?

No server-browser.
Servers being split by heist, and again by difficulty, fragmenting the already-small community into shards.
No playstyle variance.
Unbalanced weapons and perks.
Buggy movement protocols.
Server instability. (Go ahead. say "it happens" when we broke the servers on Day 1 of the beta and Days 1 through 5 of the launch despite multiple "we fixed it :brofist: :sunglasses:" messages)

Hell, the "exclusive" pre-order bonus even became a DLC on the store-page. Does that sound honest to you, like a fulfilled promise?

Overkill has promised up and down that Payday3 would eventually be improved until everyone's expectations are met, but at this rate, I think they're going to run out of funding first. Considering how much time and money went into Payday3's development, all I can really say is: what a massive disappointment and a real f!cking shame.

If you want to play a heisting game, just go play Payday2. They still haven't gotten rid of the EOS bullsh!t, but it's still leagues above Payday3.

The audacity to release paid DLCs at this point. Just finish your game first you greedy pigs.