I posted this on Gen's recent video on Payday 3, and I've decided it's a good review so I'm reposting it here:

I think this is an Anthem situation. (There's a great article about the development, tl;dr there was less than a year of active development on Anthem when it launched.) I don't think there's a lot of development time on this. The copy pasted UIs and so much outsourcing and AI generated content seems to point to this too. I think this was slapped together at the last minute to meet a release deadline.

Everyone be honest. The core playerbase is on Steam. Gamepass players tried it once and uninstalled, since that's what gamepass is there for. Console numbers are definitely low, there's no way people trust Starbreeze are gonna keep this updated and not pull a repeat of Payday 2. The sheer number of empty lobbies points to this.

"But Payday 2 had 10 years" yeah and Starbreeze should have learned things in those ten years. They should have improved. Why are people judging a 2023 release on 2013's standards? It wasn't a good release in 2013 either. It's an absolutely brainless take imo. And yeah I know it's an entirely different crew, almost nobody from PD2 is working on PD3.

Additionally I think they're straight up lying. They're not considering offline mode, and I don't think they're working on much of a change to progression either. I think they're going to try to polish the ♥♥♥♥ out of this turd whenever the patch eventually lands and it's gonna be mostly bug fixes and crap like "fixed collision on a locker on x level" 35 times and not adding in core features that are desperately needed.

Skills are really out of whack too. They're so badly balanced it's like they just came up with ideas over the course of a weekend and went with it. It's such a haphazard system. Playing around the three buffs feels like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off and not like a calculated killing machine with reliable skills from the tree or decks.

All of the character models are super bad. The contractor portraits are AI tier bad. The cutscenes are terrible and all the voice lines are robotic as hell. My man Gustavo killed it with the soundtrack in my opinion but that's gonna be subjective of course. Civilian models look bad. Car models are fine but they just stop like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mobile ad when they come into contact. There's a prevailing sense throughout the entire game that it's just very cheaply made. The game is a knockoff of CoD and Battlefield with usually boring objectives like stand in a bunch of wi-fi circles. They're fundamentally the same as drills, but worse in practice.

Customization is just as bad as you've read. Guns look like fake Nerf toys. Masks are poorly made and fit on the character models poorly. Customization for the masks might as well be nonexistant.

For real I don't think there's much hope here. I think it could be done, but probably not by Starbreeze, and probably not with Starbreeze's budget. There's too much missing, and their communication is way too poor. They haven't said a word since apologizing for their awful communication.

I posted this on Gen's recent video on Payday 3, and I've decided it's a good review so I'm reposting it here: I think this is an Anthem situation. (There's a great article about the development, tl;dr there was less than a year of active development on Anthem when it launched.) I don't think there's a lot of development time on this. The copy pasted UIs and so much outsourcing and AI generated content seems to point to this too. I think this was slapped together at the last minute to meet a release deadline. Everyone be honest. The core playerbase is on Steam. Gamepass players tried it once and uninstalled, since that's what gamepass is there for. Console numbers are definitely low, there's no way people trust Starbreeze are gonna keep this updated and not pull a repeat of Payday 2. The sheer number of empty lobbies points to this. "But Payday 2 had 10 years" yeah and Starbreeze should have learned things in those ten years. They should have improved. Why are people judging a 2023 release on 2013's standards? It wasn't a good release in 2013 either. It's an absolutely brainless take imo. And yeah I know it's an entirely different crew, almost nobody from PD2 is working on PD3. Additionally I think they're straight up lying. They're not considering offline mode, and I don't think they're working on much of a change to progression either. I think they're going to try to polish the shit out of this turd whenever the patch eventually lands and it's gonna be mostly bug fixes and crap like "fixed collision on a locker on x level" 35 times and not adding in core features that are desperately needed. Skills are really out of whack too. They're so badly balanced it's like they just came up with ideas over the course of a weekend and went with it. It's such a haphazard system. Playing around the three buffs feels like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off and not like a calculated killing machine with reliable skills from the tree or decks. All of the character models are super bad. The contractor portraits are AI tier bad. The cutscenes are terrible and all the voice lines are robotic as hell. My man Gustavo killed it with the soundtrack in my opinion but that's gonna be subjective of course. Civilian models look bad. Car models are fine but they just stop like a shitty mobile ad when they come into contact. There's a prevailing sense throughout the entire game that it's just very cheaply made. The game is a knockoff of CoD and Battlefield with usually boring objectives like stand in a bunch of wi-fi circles. They're fundamentally the same as drills, but worse in practice. Customization is just as bad as you've read. Guns look like fake Nerf toys. Masks are poorly made and fit on the character models poorly. Customization for the masks might as well be nonexistant. For real I don't think there's much hope here. I think it could be done, but probably not by Starbreeze, and probably not with Starbreeze's budget. There's too much missing, and their communication is way too poor. They haven't said a word since apologizing for their awful communication.