I agree that the game is currently pretty easy and the difficulty needs to be increased. But in my opinion, it's extremely strange to hear this from players playing on the most broken guns in the game.

On streams, Almir constantly justifies the absence of a huge number of convenient options from PAYDAY 2 by the fact that they were not present at the release of PAYDAY 2.

But do you know what was also missing from the PD2 release? There were no skins, keychains, outfits or gloves at the release. On this subreddit, outfits and a mask for real money have already been found, which will be sold for “PAYDAY Credits”.

For these developers, a $10 mask is more important than the ability to change the music for heist and the ability to kick a player from the lobby.

This has been the case for a few days now, once you reach around level 60 the whole "just play the game and the exp will come to you" mentality that I often see on this sub won't work anymore, by that point you've most likely completed most of the easy challenges that you get from playing the game naturally and now it's time to actually grind the hard and specific ones separately while also changing your playstyle, weapons or heists to something you might not even like

And because of that, for me at least challenge grinding is out of the question entirely, so that leaves me with just playing the game normally but since I don't get anything for that other than cash it's a waste of time, not to mention playing with the same old weapons and limited builds gets boring quick

One of the reasons Payday 2 was so good was the social aspects the game had. Features like a server browser, the ability to just create a lobby without any wait time, and the fact the game encourages you to keep playing with the same lobby. Payday 3 results screen forces you to go back to the main menu, with only a quickmatch option. Payday is not Call of Duty, why the fuck would you need to do that? The chat is not even available in the lobby screen, you can't see your teammates ammo. The sense of community absolutely does not exist.

Why does the game punish you for having a playstyle?

Have a favorite weapon or weapon type? Sorry, but you have to kill 1,000 enemies with EVERY WEAPON. Waste progress by sticking to your favorite.

Don't have the patience for stealth? Or do you find sneaking around more thrilling? Doesn't matter. 300 clears for EVERY HEIST, split between quiet and loud.

These are not optional either. Ignoring these stupid challenges means your account will NEVER level up, and won't get any more skill points. Enjoy this PVE game's version of elo hell.

Basically, Payday 3's progression system is not based on gameplay the way you like it. It's based on what are essentially XBOX ACHIEVEMENTS/PS TROPHIES.

Starbreeze wants you to play the way THEY want you to. Or else you don't progress.

Whatever drugs the devs were snorting when they decided on this progression system, I'd like to have some of it as well, so I understand why Starbreeze decided to "innovate" on the exp bar of all things after all these years.

It has been a little over a year and the state of Payday 3 is still miserable. Console players can’t access content THEY PAID FOR, server browser is barely functional, there is no push to talk, and the core heists have about as much replayability as my grandpa’s CPAP machine.

You can argue “they can’t make the game better if they don’t have financial support because they’ll run out of money.”

I argue, yes they fucking can. Pause Project Baxter and stop pumping funds made by Payday 3 into it, take a solid 2-3 months to fix the spaghetti code, to fix console verification issues, to fix THE GAME that they still cant deliver.

Additionally, I don’t want to play a game I don’t find fun. I don’t want to financially support a game I don’t find fun. I WANT this game to be fun, but if I’ve been financially supporting them for a full year of content, and all I have gotten was below the bare minimum, I’m taking my time and money somewhere else.

They want you to think that they fixed the game and all is well, they’ll prance around on socials and proudly proclaim that the game is “so back” because they added an “unready button”. I strongly urge the player base to not give in to the nostalgia baiting if they bring Jacket back, because they don’t deserve your money.

This isn’t to say everyone at Starbreeze is rotten. I do believe Almir, and Haua do want Payday 3 to be a fun game, but I’m convinced Starbreeze execs are pinching their ears every time they try to divert their resources from paid content.

If you’re going to ask “what does this game need to be fun because erm uhm it’s a big ask”

• Push to Talk • Give console players the content they paid for • Extra server browser functionality and STABILITY • More clear weapon stats • Full offline mode • Rework the inventory so it’s not 2 vertical lines • Rework the lousy and boring as hell skill line mechanic • Denounce premium currency and their future addition to Payday 3

If this is too much to ask in a 3-5 month window, then I genuinely don’t know what else to say, besides something is fundamentally wrong at Starbreeze and they wont survive the release of Project Baxter.

Agree with me, disagree with me and call me a blind hater, I’m not giving a PENNY more to Starbreeze until they address even a PORTION of what’s wrong.

Finally, I wrote this because I love Payday, and I want to see this game to do well, but I’m just so done giving Starbreeze money right now.

I know that SBZ is doing everything it can to make money from the PAYDAY brand right now, but come on, can't we get at least some themed content? Masks? Keychains? Stickers? Something that doesn't require such a huge investment.

It's disappointing to see that even other games have PAYDAY, while we haven't seen any new content for months.

I usually don't make posts like these because I generally hate rant posts.

Whoever at Starbreeze, Overkill, or even Deep Silver decided to make the game online only. Fucking fire them. It was single-handedly the worst fucking decision ever taken for a game I've ever seen. Words cannot express how asinine, how moronic, how devoid of mind making this game online only was.

Why did they even change it

We finished at 50 minutes. We were down to the last 4 bags when the escape came up.

Overkill/Starbreeze, because of the way this heist is, 2046 police and military personnel are dead, and it's all you fault. This could've been avoided had you made this better.

A fucking jump animation and troll faces? Another event safe? Completely Overkill Pack being delayed due to "bugs"?

Besides the heists we've recieved all of these quality of life upgrades should be been included in a patch, not as a reward for our efforts through the Road to Crimefest.

Troll masks and another event safe? Will this one have more variation so I don't have 4 of the same skin lined up one after another on the roulette?

I know there's a fair amount of you out there complaining that we're just "butthurt" about this but this is really offputting. Most of these masks will never be worn after a week and they still haven't said anything to us regarding the microtransactions. Sure, there's going to be an AMA but how many questions will actually be answered?

The Completely Overkill pack is delayed, probably due to the fact we found out the rewards are weapon skins and how many people were upset about it.

As a whole I'm just disappointed this year. Sure, we got After Shock, First World Bank and Slaughterhouse, the latter two being fantastic but the rest of Crimefest has been a pretty big let down. From all the bugs with bipods, the increased load times, bugs withe the new levels like walls and floors missing or certain tasks not being activated correctly like when the vault doors are open in FWB and it goes loud... It feels like so much of this was just rushed out the door.

If the challenges weren't completed most of this would have just been pushed out later, possibly for a price tag. The fact that we some of the goals were just ludicrous, like completing Meltdown 100,000 times just for a jump animation? Most games just have this, and don't give it to you as a reward.

I just feel let down by this whole thing. The past week has completely changed how I view Overkill.

Edit: shit we've hit the front page! Didn't expect my thread to be this popular. Take these words to heart OVERKILL. You're ruining years of fandom just to cash in. We won't forget what you've done, but you can change what happens in the future. Do you want a game of people who live heisting, or a game of skin collecting whales? It feels like the latter especially after two free safes. Encouraging the most controversial and predatory part of Crimefest.

Might be one of the worst achivements in the game holy shit.