Were you seriously expecting anything less from Overkill given their track record following Payday 2?
Unbeknownst to many consumers, Payday 3 has finally released and players aren’t happy. Starbreeze may have removed DENUVO’s downright cancerous DRM solution before launch but they needn’t have bothered as there is genuinely no reason why anyone would want to pirate the game in the first place.
After spending $40 dollars or more in purchasing the game you’re greeted with a EULA agreement inside of Payday 3 before being forced to fess up your email address by registering an account with Starbreeze in order to actually play Payday 3, because of course, it’s an always online game.
No internet? Tough luck, because there’s no single player option here, matchmaking only and the servers? Well they hardly fucking work at this moment in time, just about everyone dumb enough to had purchased this garbage is currently voicing their plight to Starbreeze into actually turning their servers on.
And of course many years from now when the servers go offline…. what happens then? No answers as you’d expect.
You can somehow formulate a solo session by starting up an invite only lobby or by using this handy dandy game mod which may or may not get your Starbreeze account banned.
Graphically wise Payday 3 is obviously higher detailed than its predecessor which isn’t much of a surprise given how Payday 2 launched ten years ago however I wouldn’t go out of my way to actually say that Payday 3 looks “good” by any means, with the game obviously going in the COD Modern Warfare style for art direction that’s somehow both detailed and yet strangely not detailed at the same time.
And just like with Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Payday 3 is entirely focused on pushing you towards microtransactional content, the in-game customization has taken a dramatic step back, there’s dramatically less content and overall features in this supposed sequel than Payday 2, with skill trees being cut back to the mere roots.
There are far fewer masks featured in game, majority of which seemingly are just multiple renditions of the same design, however in exchange for offering a mere fraction of the mask choices in Payday 3, each mask you can customize to a far greater extent, choosing from an abundance of color choices and patterns to add to your mask.
The overall amount of weapons in the game have also been dialed back, however in their place you can now purchase and unlock weapon charms, just like Call of Duty, and special vendor specific weapon “preset” variants, again just like Call of Duty.
R900S “Thunder Scythe”
A shotgun equipped with a CQC Barrel, Lightweight Stock, and a Viewpoint Sight. Can cause multiple kills in one shot.
Preset weapon variants come with exclusive debuffs, weapon skins, attachments or whatever other garbage Starbreeze wants to force down your throat, these preset weapons can potentially make it easier for Overkill to restrict highly effective guns behind a paywall or as a high level season unlockable.
Once again, players may feel compelled to purchase in-game tokens to unlock desired customization items or preset weapon variants in Payday 3. While the game currently does not include traditional microtransactions, it does provide the option to use earned in-game currency from completing heists, known as “reward money,” to purchase “C-Stacks.” However, accumulating significant amounts of cash in-game and spending it on these items is time-consuming and requires a considerable amount of grind.
What the fuck are C-Stacks exactly? Since Overkill are so well in tune with their audience C-Stacks are considered as a cryptocurrency inside of the Payday universe and are used to buy in-game items from vendors that otherwise wouldn’t be purchasable with simple reward money.
Such as these lovely gloves which cost 50 C-Stacks, which if you’re buying them in bulk at 1.35M per ten units, you’ll need 6.75 Million dollars of in-game reward money to buy just one of these gloves.
If you were somewhat competent at the game and completed the most rewarding heists on Overkill, the highest difficulty, it would take you at least three hours give or take you manage to successfully complete each and every heist back to back to earn enough reward money to pay for a glove.
Or soon enough you can perhaps circumvent the grind to buy even more elaborate and expensive cosmetic items that require more and more C-Stacks through monetary in-game purchases, but this will come at a later date I guarantee you.
So overall the game is garbage, it’s a bastardized “reboot” of Payday that continues onwards with absolutely fuck all from Payday 2 in terms of features, playable content and equipable cosmetics, the game doesn’t look all that much better than Payday 2 and requires a considerably higher grade PC system to run by comparison, the game is online only and demands that you signup to Starbreeze’s own DRM authorization and as of time of writing the servers barely fucking work anyway.
Why pay $40 for this goddamn piece of shit when you could simply just continue on playing Payday 2 which is an easy pickup and play style of game that Payday 3 wishes it was even half as good as, this isn’t a sequel so much as a rushed last ditch effort to cash in on the name and make some easy sales because “it’s more Payday bro”.
And if for whatever reason you don’t already own Payday 2 I implore that you buy that instead of this trash heap, connection is dodgy at the best of times given how Payday 2 is peer-to-peer, Overkill and Starbreeze have tried everything they possibly could to kill it barring from simply delisting the game outright, and with over 40 million copies sold with the game regularly going for as much as a cup of coffee Starbreeze would bankrupt itself in doing so.
And of course you’d have pieces of shit like The Act Man shilling for this game as well.
Starbreeze may well be buying and bribing Payday fanatics and hype beasts but actual consumers aren’t fooled by YouTube personalities shilling the praises of Payday 3, out of over 16,000 reviews on Steam the game is Mostly Negative and it’s quite an obvious guess as to why that may be the case.
