Positives:
* It's not Payday2. If you're like me and try to play it at lower levels like you're used to playing PD2 after 10 years, this will confuse you and you will probably die. It's a different game. This is not bad.
* Performance is generally pretty good! I have a sort of "was good 4 years ago" kind of gaming PC and it works fine on medium or high settings.

Minuses:
* We all know about needs to be online at all times. My biggest irritation with this is I can't be playing solo and go pee or help my partner with stuff, then come back and keep playing. Yes yes yes we also know about server downtime. I cannot imagine that this will last forever.
* But speaking of the above: long-term, we're at the mercy of pubs/devs. If they get to Year 5 or whatever, and decide it's no longer worth running servers for, they need to release a host it yourself server. It would be super-great if they'd do that sooner than later anyway.
* Solo balancing isn't great. And some things just aren't doable in solo, e.g. "you need to do X in Y time." But "stand in the circles while a hack advances" isn't fun either. The game is clearly biased towards multi-player.

Middlin:
* Relative dearth of content. It's not a AAA game, but the new system means you need to level up quite a bit before you can get any of the cool toys. Not a lot of maps to grind on, but there's a mix of "better quiet" vs "better loud."
* Lack of concealment mechanics as seen in PD2 means for a different game here too. I'm not a fan of stealth, but I appreciate some of the aspects of building loadouts you might have seen in PD2, where low concealment didn't necessarily mean stealth-only loadout. I feel like some of those strategic decisions are going to be lost, for better or worse. We'll see how the game progresses.

Overall, mixed, but trending positive. While I'm not a fan of "release the game, then DLC" - this is still base pricewise an A or AA game, add on the first chunk of DLC and we'll see.

Positives: * It's not Payday2. If you're like me and try to play it at lower levels like you're used to playing PD2 after 10 years, this will confuse you and you will probably die. It's a different game. This is not bad. * Performance is generally pretty good! I have a sort of "was good 4 years ago" kind of gaming PC and it works fine on medium or high settings. Minuses: * We all know about needs to be online at all times. My biggest irritation with this is I can't be playing solo and go pee or help my partner with stuff, then come back and keep playing. Yes yes yes we also know about server downtime. I cannot imagine that this will last forever. * But speaking of the above: long-term, we're at the mercy of pubs/devs. If they get to Year 5 or whatever, and decide it's no longer worth running servers for, they need to release a host it yourself server. It would be super-great if they'd do that sooner than later anyway. * Solo balancing isn't great. And some things just aren't doable in solo, e.g. "you need to do X in Y time." But "stand in the circles while a hack advances" isn't fun either. The game is clearly biased towards multi-player. Middlin: * Relative dearth of content. It's not a AAA game, but the new system means you need to level up quite a bit before you can get any of the cool toys. Not a lot of maps to grind on, but there's a mix of "better quiet" vs "better loud." * Lack of concealment mechanics as seen in PD2 means for a different game here too. I'm not a fan of stealth, but I appreciate some of the aspects of building loadouts you might have seen in PD2, where low concealment didn't necessarily mean stealth-only loadout. I feel like some of those strategic decisions are going to be lost, for better or worse. We'll see how the game progresses. Overall, mixed, but trending positive. While I'm not a fan of "release the game, then DLC" - this is still base pricewise an A or AA game, add on the first chunk of DLC and we'll see.