I won't dickride Starbreeze/Payday 3 like many other people since I've waited for the sequel for years. The game just feels like a beta product in many many many ways:

-UI is trash, minimalist design that doesn't display important details/equipment of teammates
-Matchmaking is a joke, I'm infamy 61(33 hours) and 99% of the games were single-player experience
-No lobbies/crime-net for matchmaking and there are 32(8 heist x 4 difficulties) separate queues to MM from
-Awful skill/perk system(combined both from payday 2 but feels 1/4th as impactful)
-Buggy AI, clipping through floors/walls and doing nothing a lot of times(just watched me get pounded by a Cloaker)
-Ridiculously Grindy, skills/weapon mods are all locked behind XP
-Weapons/gear/armor are locked behind infamy/challenges(which again requires ridiculous grinding, beating X level for X amount of times, killing x amount of enemies with x weapon, etc.)
-Lackluster weapons(17 in total) at launch, 2 types overkill weapons(launcher and 50 cal), 4 types of primary weapons(rifle, marksman, SMG and shotgun) and 2 types of secondary weapons(pistol and revolver)
-Limited replayability(tied mostly to unlocking things with challenges/infamy), with only 8 heist(7 being doable in both loud and stealth) at launch

Despite Payday 2 being released for years, many of the Charm/QOL never made it to Payday 3. While it certainly is a joke to call it a Payday 3 sequel, improvements should still be addressed despite its many flaws. The graphics of the game have been significantly improved and the stealth system has been drastically improved and reworked so that it feels satisfying to do. But that's pretty much the only thing they've improved upon Payday 2. Personally, I wouldn't recommend buying the game at its current state($40 mediocre single-player game), but if it's anything like Payday 2 then you can expect the much-needed updates and improvements to polish the game to an acceptable if not great state(Starbreeze kinda of needs Payday 3 to work anyways).

I won't dickride Starbreeze/Payday 3 like many other people since I've waited for the sequel for years. The game just feels like a beta product in many many many ways: -UI is trash, minimalist design that doesn't display important details/equipment of teammates -Matchmaking is a joke, I'm infamy 61(33 hours) and 99% of the games were single-player experience -No lobbies/crime-net for matchmaking and there are 32(8 heist x 4 difficulties) separate queues to MM from -Awful skill/perk system(combined both from payday 2 but feels 1/4th as impactful) -Buggy AI, clipping through floors/walls and doing nothing a lot of times(just watched me get pounded by a Cloaker) -Ridiculously Grindy, skills/weapon mods are all locked behind XP -Weapons/gear/armor are locked behind infamy/challenges(which again requires ridiculous grinding, beating X level for X amount of times, killing x amount of enemies with x weapon, etc.) -Lackluster weapons(17 in total) at launch, 2 types overkill weapons(launcher and 50 cal), 4 types of primary weapons(rifle, marksman, SMG and shotgun) and 2 types of secondary weapons(pistol and revolver) -Limited replayability(tied mostly to unlocking things with challenges/infamy), with only 8 heist(7 being doable in both loud and stealth) at launch Despite Payday 2 being released for years, many of the Charm/QOL never made it to Payday 3. While it certainly is a joke to call it a Payday 3 sequel, improvements should still be addressed despite its many flaws. The graphics of the game have been significantly improved and the stealth system has been drastically improved and reworked so that it feels satisfying to do. But that's pretty much the only thing they've improved upon Payday 2. Personally, I wouldn't recommend buying the game at its current state($40 mediocre single-player game), but if it's anything like Payday 2 then you can expect the much-needed updates and improvements to polish the game to an acceptable if not great state(Starbreeze kinda of needs Payday 3 to work anyways).