What we know so far:
Weapons
AR-15
Reinfield 880 shotgun
Ak74
M4
Aug
Possibly siaga 12
Fal variation
G36C
Possible hunting shotgun or rifle type

New weapons, including sniper rifles, assault rifles, compact PDWs, and SMGs.

Secondary weapons: all pistols are expected to come back and other pistols such as the 44 magnum and the 50c deagle are also expected to make an appearance

UPDATE: most if not all payday 1 weapons will be returning
SMG's are now Secondary weapons such as a small ak, a tiny m4a1 etc.
Only sniper will be the M308

Classes
Enforcer: carries heavier weapons, can run with bags, throw bags further, heavier armour, can hold up to two bags (ammo or health) not confirmed but may be able to hold to primary weapons with a pistol
Mastermind: persuade the enemy into a friendly, if downed can call a civilian or enemy to pick them up, negotiate with police, medium armour
Ghost: Place emp scatter devices, light to medium armour, master of stealth, hides bodies, lockpick without drill, open windows, can hack into certain technological using equipment e.g. steel roller doors, disable cameras quietly
Technician: deployable sentry gun, faster drills, great expertise with explosives

UPDATE:
"In the beginning you mention that ghost has medium to light armor. In the game you unlock armor by leveling up, and you can unlock everything without going into any skill tree exept for the heaviest armor, witch requires the man of steel perk and is only unlockable by the enforcer"

Enemies
Bulldozer (tank): Heaviest armour fitted with a rein back shotgun. One whole second before follow up shot.
Weakness: face, explosives
Tactic: use teamwork to focus fire on the face, explosives, plenty of cover between you and him. Engage always a medium to long range if possible
Taser: medium armour fitted with a likely m4 or m16 with the ability to tase and render people useless.
Weakness: bullet to the head, explosives.
Tactic: use cover to pop up and down to show yourself for a small time period to get your shoots in. engage at a medium or long distance for less chance of being tased
Shield: the shield is kitted out with weak armour and takes less than about two rounds to kill to the head. However they come with a shield 7/8 the length of their body that is bullet proof.
Weakness: explosives, KOBBYYY(run up the sheild) (maybe not in payday 2 anymore) feet, arm
Tactic: shields when still lower their shield to cover their feet, try to move around making them move and go for the feet shot however in payday two is looks like you are now able to shoot their arm in certain situations. You can usually only engage up close (shotgun rain)
Cloaker: a cloaker has somewhere between medium and light armour they are by far the fastest unit with a deadly kick that will down a player in one hit. Also to note there goggles are thermal and will be able to see you through smoke
Weakness : light armour
Tactic: just stay away from that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ right foot hydoken

All new crew: In payday 2 Bain and wolf will be the only returning characters with the same voice actors and chains, hoxton and dallas all have new ingame characters but contain the same alliases but are voice acted by different people. The developer said there reason is hard to explain but just look at as if they got caught or retired from their criminal career.

Maps: there will now be 30 different maps throughout the game and several more to come most likely due to payday 2 going to receive around 5 different dlcs. Each level is generated randomly in the sense that one time you go in your favourite camping spot behind the dumpster will be gone because it’s simply not there anymore(sorry cod fans) anyway as well as random items even geometry of banks can change, number of camera’s, doors that are open, how many people. Instead of now holding bags of ammo and health they can now be purchased as assests and will be placed within the map somewhere pointed out on the blueprints

Customisation: this time around payday lets you create the dream gun you have always wanted to do for that perfect heist. There is now practical changes you can make to you weapon such as new barrels, stocks, magazines, optics, muzzle, grips, handles, these all change how the weapon performs and acts along with these stat changers there is also cosmetics that do not add to anything such as paints,patterns etc.


Masks are now customisable and interchange able now there is random loot drops withing the game that allow you to gather random patterns and colours to put on your mask Fancccyyyy! (tf2 anyone?)

UPDATE:
you cannot buy all the weapon attachments and parts
they are gained through picking one of three cards at the end of a successful match

guns and parts are purchased with money now, a fraction of your money you earn in the game you can spend on parts or weapons while the other part levels up your character just like in the original. Just like the original you pick a tree to go down however now you can only have a certain amount of points to put into trees but you can respec your character whenever you like to change it but it will cost you a pretty penny.

Levels and skill tree:
As far as we know there are only 4 trees to go down at the moment and you will only be able to invest so many points before you can’t progress anymore meaning you can specialise in something and have a little bit extra elsewhere, by ranking up to gain new perks and skill there is tiers now that allow you to have greater effects depending on how good it is.(not confirmed)

UPDATE:
"there are tiers. You have 5 tiers, or 6 if you include the first perk you need to purchace to gain acces to the skill tree. You unlock each tier by spending X amount of skillpoints in that tree. You also have tier bonusses, what you get if you own and aced 1 skill in the corresponding tree. EG for ghost you get a stealth bonus at tier 3."

Pre order:
For those who pre order the major thing they will receive for the 20$ version is a skull mask, some money, optical sight and really that’s about it. The 50$ all the 20 dollar goodies and beta access and bains discounts on crime net as well as blueprints you can print out and most importantly a strategy guide. For those of you who like to improvise should look over the 50$ version however if you want to know the multiple strategies straight of the bat from the people who made the game you may want to invest in some knowledge.

well thats all i got dudes but if you have anymore solid information with evidence of things in the game or can clarify areas within the game leave me a comment and i will see to it that i fix up my mistakes remember i am not from the company i am not saying any of this is be in the full realease game its all just speculation and information from e3, pax and interviews so expect change!

This interview is with a closed beta tester. if you have any questions leave them in the comments below and i will ask him and update this. these were the question i always wanted to ask so if i missed any let me know. also my english and spelling in this is terrible cause it was late at night.
spaces indiciate when there answer.

XBit BanannAX: okay so from the beginning when you open up the game application what is the biggest difference good or bad?
XBit BanannAX: like menus wise

The main menu is quite similar to payday 1
the theme is a big improvment
the only mayor change is that there are more options.
You have options for turning on or off your HUD
but besides that there are realy no changes
its basicly an improved menu screen from payday 1

XBit BanannAX: awesome sounds great, okay so how has the gameplay changed mechanics wise or feel or movement and weapons

well first thing you will notice on a heist is that 1 person can put their mask on while the others dont have to.
So 1 person can start stealthing a heist, while the other watch over him and tell him when the guards come.
Als oyou will notice that going rambo is more difficult at first.
The cops are a lot stronger and there is no more difficult scaling, eg cops deal at all difficulties same damage, and you dont deal extra damage and lower difficulties

XBit BanannAX: so does that mean there is one set difficulty this time around like easy compared to overkill?

there are multiple difficulties
but that doesnt effect damage dealth or taken
dificulty only effects the amount of XP you get, the amount of cash you get, and what types of cops there are.
on lower difficulties, heists of 1 stars, the police mostly use regular swats and cops. On 3 or 4 stars there are much more heavier armored FBI troops who can kill you in 2 or 3 shots/

XBit BanannAX: wow so would you say trying to make the harder ones more life like in a way for a
greater challenge for veterans

it is defiatly more realistic
you can still go rambo, but stealthing missions even though it takes longer is much more rewarding and has much less risk, since you do so quickly

XBit BanannAX: i see now are all missions able to have a stealth compentent in them?
not all

we had acces to 2 heists, watchdogs and the trust bank. On the watchdog mission, you escorted a drug transport, and you knew the police where going to hit it.
so there was no stealth option in that one

XBit BanannAX: do stealth missions have a greater reward then the loud and proud missions?

in theory no
you can get the same reward if you go loud, but it will be much more difficult. On the trust bank you had in the vault around the 50 or more deposit boxes. They where almost imposible to get if you shot all the cops, but if you stealthed it you could
lockpick all the boxes

XBit BanannAX: ah i see now about shotting the police how does shotting now feel compared to the first one?

headshots are much more important. some units can only die if you shoot them in the head. The weapons you pick make also a huge diffrent. If you are up against a group of enemies its more important to take a weapon with higher suprresion,
instead of a gun focused on damage dealing.

XBit BanannAX: okay thats very interesting so in payday 2 they brought an ex battlefield developer on to make the guns feel more weighty and real for a lack of a better term have you felt that so far?

the weapons all had a very authentic feel to it. but they dint realy felt over the top.

XBit BanannAX: from what i have seen recoil seems to be more involved with weapons now do you believe that there is much more recoil in this game?

recoil is much more a pain than in payday 1. You are forced to use bursts, unless you want to supress your enemies. If you dont shoot in burst you miss almost all of your shots and than you are waisting a lot of your ammo

XBit BanannAX: do you find this a step forward for the game?

it adds more realism. Some people will not like it, but I thought it was pretty well done. It also makes attachments for your weapons more important. If you take something to reduce recoil, it actually makes a diffrence.

XBit BanannAX: awesome, so how is the custamization in this game what are the different things you can attach to guns or change on your character

for your character you can custmoize your masks. After each heist you complete, you get a drop card. The items you get from that card are restricted by 2 things, the difficult level you completed the heist on and the level you are.
If you play harder heists, you can gain better attachments and masks than on lower ones.

For your masks you can gain a mask itself, a patten, material and a color option. Colors where quite rare to get, but they added realy a lot to your mask.
For weapon attachments, you can add basicly all attachments to every weapon, as long as it fits on it. You can add a scope to a shotgun, as long as you dont have a sight replacment on it. But you cant add a barrel that belongs on a shotgun on a pistol.

XBit BanannAX: what was your favorite loudout you would use

I used the crosskill pistol a lot with a supressor, and as primary the car rifle with a red dot sight. It worked in quite a lot of circumstances
we had acces to only 1 third or less of the weapons.

XBit BanannAX: so maybe 10?

around the 10 primary weapons and than 6 secondary I think

XBit BanannAX: alrighty so another thing do you happen to know the public date when the beta goes live for payday 2 fans

nobody knows that so far
all I can say is that overkill plans on pulling off something awesome and that right now the game is not yet ready for that

XBit BanannAX: what would you say is missng just at the moment

its quite buggy. floating civilians, you could get stuck under the drill, and you could get spotted in stealth when there was no one near you. Also the item drop rates needs to be more balanced

XBit BanannAX: what is wrong with item balance like to much good loot?

not enough. you get a small cash bonus almost every time, some of the testers played the game for 50 hours but dint got a single color and others couldnt find a single mask
XBit BanannAX: ah i see that would suck, so what was the cooliest thing you got loot wise

I was one of the few lucky ones. I got a cry baby mask model, with a bronze oxide material and tribal flames pattern with a yellow green color
it looked realy amazing

XBit BanannAX: sounds amazing! so did overkill tell you how many possible patterns and colours there will be or masks?

all they said is that there are a lot of custmization options.

XBit BanannAX: thats good news indeed, well is there anything else you would like to add to the classes information we currently know

everything is know about the classes right now. I know that some people has made extremly accurate pictures on what you can get
but there is 1 thing that stood out for me. If you decide to stealth, a ghost class charactar only is not enough. It is realy usefull if you also have a technician, for a silenced drill, and a mastermind to intimdate the cops.

XBit BanannAX: good old fashion team work hey

yea
they realy bring the coop aspect back

XBit BanannAX: do you believe it will be better that way?

It has its pro and cons, but I think it will make it better

XBit BanannAX: and last thing do you have anything else to say about the game in general

its realy awesome
and its only going to get better

XBit BanannAX: awesome!

that was the interview guys leave your questions below :)