Payday 3 Beta review

I just got access to the beta.

For the record, Payday 2 is probably my all time favorite game.

First off, Payday 3 has zero local play. 100% DRM. This means that if their matchmaking system goes down, you don't get to play the game. Now, this isn't a complete deal-breaker for me, provided the matchmaker doesn't go down. After an hour of play, the matchmaker went down for the rest of the night.

Second off, one of my favorite things about Payday 2 is the thrill of power if you are accurate with your shots. Learn how to head-shot properly and (at least for the easier levels) you get to watch the mayhem of popping helmets and falling cops. It seems like in Payday 3, they have made the cops more bullet spongy. Easiest level, after wave 1, it takes 2 to 5 head-shots to down a cop. If I were playing on the harder difficulties, I can understand it, but I am playing the easiest difficulty and it just makes the gun-play less manic and chaotic and fun, and more tedious.

Third, I am still working it out, but the stealth mechanics feel glitchy, and I don't think it is because they are unfinished, I think it is because they are over-tweaked. When you set off a red exclamation point, sometimes if you run away, it will just go away. Other times, it will go away, and then the npc will run back into a room of people and suddenly they will all be alerted. Then it will go away. Or not. Idk... it feels like they added some rng so they could tweak it to make stealthing easier/harder, and it just ends up being confusing and sloppy feeling.

I mean, cool, we have this human shield mechanic now. So after disabling security and disabling the mag-lock guarding the vault area, I need to get the bank manager and slowly human shield him to the vault to open the vault. Along the way, I alert the conference room, but then they just... un-alert. So we get to the vault, and guy is gonna open the vault, right? No. Apparently guy has a black light on his lapel? So you can see what buttons have finger prints on them? So you can trial and error a 4 digit code until the vault opens?

I hate to be that guy, but I gotta say it. It doesn't make sense. It ruins immersion. Either task to open the vault makes sense. I need to get the black light so I can enter the code or I need the manager to do an eye-scan to get in. If I am standing there with the the manager holding him at gunpoint, wouldn't I just have him enter the code? Why am I trial and erroring a 4 digit code?

Oh ya, and now you an crouch in casing mode, but you cant crouch when carrying a body.

The sound effects are definitely improved. The gun operation feels a bit crisper, downsights may feel more realistic (never fired a gun IRL) but they certainly don't feel better gameplay wise.

After playing the beta, if I end up buying the game, it will just be because I want to support the people who gave me Payday 2, and it will be hope money that they get a lot better very fast.

I really don't like the DRM, there are definitely still technical issues (Like matchmaking already going down, or the time I stood in front of the getaway van as it was arriving, and it clipped into me, I got stuck in it for a bit, and then the van was glitched and wasnt registering loot we were throwing in).

I was super hyped for what it could be, and I guess the DLCs could bring it there, but I really don't see enough of a difference to justify leaving behind my 300$+ investment to go into a new even more aggressive DLC framework AND lose my VR support.