Pros

• Very addictive leveling system, 25 'infamy levels' acting as prestiges, 100 levels within those prestiges. Working as basic prestiges, losing your money, skill points and not being able to use your weapons; due to weapons having certain levels to be obtained before you can use them. Such as the Kunai not being equipable until level 55.
  
  
• Many ways of playing and builds to try. There is a catch to this that I will get on to in the 'Cons'. Being seperate weapon types, a vast skill tree with unique game mechanics. Inspire aced being a very helpful and interesting perk, along side the skill tree system there is a perk deck system; unlike the skill trees these are not taken away when going infamous. Instead seperate points are given to players for completing heists to complete perk decks. Most perk decks focus on a main purpose, either dodge, armour and health - some focus of weird regen mechanics, some work better than others.
  
  
• Heists, lotta of them and different ways to play them. Variety and replayability is what keeps this game alive, with constant updates and now with all future DLC (bar the H3H3 character pack) being free UPDATE: Ultimate Edition has now been released coming to the game until somewhen towards the end of 2018. Even without owning the DLC you can still play the heists if someone is hosting it on crime.net or even easier if your friend owns the dlc; if you're planning to get a group of friends to play this game I highly recommend that at least one of you already has or buys the UE - or a decent amount of DLC. This can really improve your experience adding many more available heists to you and your friends.
  
  
• It's co-op. Being very different (competitivity wise) it's one of the games I still play, since I don't play League of Legends, Overwatch or Black Ops 3 anymore. If you're needing a break from more intense games yet still want to be invested in a game with friends this isn't a bad shout at all - especially with it being free and all, steam were flocking off copies like mad before anyway, I think I paid around £4 ($5ish).
  
  
• Banging sountrack even thought I don't have it on much.
  
  
• Good variety of free and paid heisters with interesting voices and some great actors such as Togo Igawa and Ron Perlman. Even though Rust's (Ron Perlman) voice lines in game can get pretty boring the connections that Overkill have are great for in game appearances.

Cons

• Broken piece of ♥♥♥♥ drill. The amount of bugs I've witnessed within my 200 hours and counting. Holy ♥♥♥♥. I'm not gonna sit here and list the bugs I've had but there is one bug which really needs to be sorted which just makes the game crash between certain players when they're in the same lobby. I have no idea why this happens and has happened once with someone it hadn't happened with when playing before. However, I doubt this will ever happen to the majority of player.
  
  
• Annoying learning curve. Within your first 10 hours of Payday 2 watching some sort of video to learn some extra knowledge is really beneficial to you and your teams - please for the sake of everyone, when you're a new player make effort to play on lower difficulties, the game starts to get really difficult. I still primarily Over Kill difficulty, when at level 100 with a full build and friends I can make do and have fun with Death Wishm (just about). Also please learn the difference between 'Doctor Bags' and 'First Aid Kits' people will get very annoyed if you waste their charges.
  
  
• Now what I was on about in the beginning of this, a lot of content - I mean a lot - of contect is locked behind a pay wall. There is more than enough free content, you can't complain with the game being free now, you have all you need to play the game with many builds. Yet, if you want to try everything or something very specific buying DLC is really the only option. Adding insult to injury, you can't just buy the specific packs you want, you now have to buy the whole UE; this isn't bad for older players that owned DLC before, or bought a lot when the sale was taking place. For new players, well, it's a different matter.
  
  
• Can become boring playing with randoms since there is a huge player base, making easier to run into very hostile and salty players.

Overall, a great game to play with friends can be a blast when it's working if you haven't already picked this up, it's free dude c'mon.

UPDATE: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Overkill actually care about the Payday lore and story, so for all you lore lovers there's actually something more with more substance here now.

re: R.I.P Payday 2 - with the complete flops RAID and The Walking Dead game took, I don't see PD3 ever coming out. GTFO is the only next thing we have to look forwards to, lets pray lads.