I have to admit, in it's current Payday 3 feels like it is still in beta.
I was planning to delete Payday 2 to have space for the Payday 3 but I have to say Payday 3 wasn't what I was expecting. I even completed most of the achievements in Payday 2 before Payday 3 released. But here it is... Another disappointment.
Let me tell you about it's current state (it is not pretty);


- The game feels amazing, the combat, weapons, new enemy AI, movement all of it.
- Stealth has improved quite a lot. Instead of just avoiding guards now you build your own way of stealing. Needing to check civilians as well as guards is a good challenge.
- Guards act more realistic so you don't reset in every mistake. No more owl head guards!
- Lock picking finally doesn't have to be stare-down with the door handle.
- Since concealment is not a problem you can prepare a hybrid build with (or without) your friends to be ready for loud.
- It feels more alive with all the civilians and workers around maps.
- Police negotiation and swat attacking in groups such a nice touch.

- Weapon level system is a good change. It induce players to try new weapons.
- Customizing weapons, being able to paint each part of weapon was a huge thing for me.
- Special enemies makes me jumpy again! That sounds dirtier than I thought...
- Being able to buy full customized weapons with C-Stacks (rework Continental Coins) is a nice touch.

Story
- "The story is there" yeah it is! The new contract explanations and in-game cut scenes between heists tell all you need to know.


Oh boy, it is a diamond, not even a rough one, if I have to say, it still needs to be dug out of a mine.


- Not even able to play it without connection is the biggest mistake they could have done. You have to search, find and not lag in a server even in "single player".
- Payday 2 lived to this day because the community was there supporting the game. The mods, custom maps and content but Payday 3 feels like a generic "you have to go with whatever our marketing team decides" type of game. Feels out of touch.
And I am scared that Payday 3 will chose the "company shareholders are hungry, lets do impractical choices to earn money" path.


- The menu buttons, invite prompts, switching between menu too fast causing glitches, invites not working etc. The menu feels more like controller friendly rather than keyboard/mouse.
-Changing from heist to heist you can see it says overkill on the difficulty but when you try to start the heist it starts on normal difficulty because menu still shows you your previous chosen heist's difficulty.
- Payday 3 has rewards for Payday 2 achievements (Infamous Rewards) and one of the rewards is "OG AMERICAN DREAM" mask. They made a WHOLE PAGE for this in the paydaythegame site. But in-game when you receive the mask, the icon, it was supposed to be added by the developers right? They didn't add it! There is no icon for the mask in the inventory, there is just a place holder white box with white mask in middle (which is not even fitting the inventory box).
- In the Rock The Cradle heist (which I restarted multiple times to confirm) there is a bug where you need to get "certain item" to enter a "certain area" but when you need to exchange item with it's upgraded version, the game doesn't add the item to your inventory so you have to choose route 2 to go for stealth (at least they decided to do multiple routes in stealth).
- Randomize is not a thing unless you join a new lobby.

- Skills feel overpowered and weak at the same time. Stealth skills can be abused easily, you can even do heists without putting on masks. But at the same time some of them makes you think why do they exist. Unlike Payday 2 (which had some broken builds that failed to save you in hardest difficulty [DSOD]) skill trees in the Payday 3 feels out of balance.

- The leveling is another matter to be honest, I can understand skills to a certain point but for leveling I wonder what caused them decide to do it like as it is. You have to level by completing challenges. Yes you read that right, you can't earn exp from heist. You have to complete heists in different difficulties (playing overkill gives all other difficulty challenges based on stealth or loud), killing enemies, doing certain tasks etc. You can't unlock weapons or gadgets unless you complete those challenges. For me until level 20 it was easy to level up (it is enough for core gameplay but still if you want to go loud overkill it is still not enough), after that I was out of heists and difficulty tasks in stealth and they become more demanding, nearly forcing me to go loud (kill bulldozers, snipers etc.). And it became a grinding game (not a fun one).

Overall I think Payday 3 has a huge potential. The gameplay is fun, new mechanics are fun, map designs, story, graphics are good but game itself feels rushed. I still believe they can correct what they had done wrong and we still have a long time to see updates to expand (mostly fix I hope) in Payday 3 universe. So I will wait patiently until next major update and see whether I will support or fly the helmets of Starbreeze team.