To say that Payday 3 didn’t have the smoothest launch is underplaying it; many players found themselves unable to forgive the game’s always-online requirement combined with matchmaking, stability and other critical issues.
These issues resulted in the game having a Mixed review on Steam, which is particularly sad because, issues aside, the game is great. In our review of it, which you can read here, we summed it up as:
“Despite its limited launch content, Payday 3 is a solid and exciting step forward for one of the best heist simulator franchises.
It has everything that makes the franchise special, from music that gets your heart pumping to adrenaline-filled killing sprees to silent and precise heists – it’s all there, but with a level of polish and finesse, I never realized the franchise was missing until now.”
However, the launch issues did a lot more damage to the game than just leaving it with a Mixed review; the most significant blow comes in when you look at the player count. Currently, roughly 30,000 people are playing Payday 2, while 605 are playing Payday 3.
Thankfully, all is not doom and gloom. Starbreeze doesn’t intend just to let their baby die, and recently released this statement on where the game currently stands:
“We’re well aware that many of you aren’t satisfied with the game the way it is in its current state. Since the launch, we’ve been reading your valuable feedback, which helps us massively and is crucial to the continued development of Payday 3.
We’ve put together a strike team of veteran developers from the design, community, communication and production teams with the focus on bringing Payday 3 up to where it will meet your expectations.
This team is currently creating a plan, deciding what will shape the game into the heisting experience you expect from a PAYDAY sequel in both the short and long term.
We are currently looking at two different categories of feedback: our feature upvote page and the input from our community in our social media channels and forums.
We will be able to talk more in detail about what specific improvements we are looking to do when we communicate our roadmap in February. But in general, it comes down to server and matchmaking experience, user experience and our players’ requests for features and improvements.
We will not be able to do everything at once, and it is essential to conduct a realism check on some of the feature requests. But with this initiative we want to make sure we properly investigate what we can do, how, and when.
During the fall and winter we conducted a post-mortem with an external party that, together with the sentiment of our community, have led us to a clear understanding of what we need to do.
The staff included in the strike team is put together based on those findings and are a mix of Payday 3/2 veterans as well as staff members from other projects that provide their expertise from working on games in similar situations at other studios.”
According to this statement, players should expect more concrete details sometime in February. While it’s sad to see a game that’s actually really fun struggle like this, it’s refreshing that the developers are putting in the time and effort needed to get the game to where the community wants it to be instead of just abandoning the mission.
But now I want to hear from you; what are your thoughts on Payday 3 in its current state? Let me know in the comments.