Payday 3’s lead producer announced in a livestream on Oct. 3 that player feedback has been heard, and the game’s progression system is going to be reworked.
Andreas Häll Penninger, or @PAYDAD_ on X (formerly Twitter), went live on Twitch alongside Almir Listo to answer questions from players and talk about plans for the game. If you’ve been following Payday 3, you probably know that the game’s release was rocky at best and a downright disaster at worst. Server issues made the game unplayable for a majority of it’s release week, and naturally fans were not pleased.
To Starbreeze’s credit, they have been very on top of communication and feedback—this is the fifth time the two developers have gone live to answer questions and offer explanations since Payday 3 released on Sept. 21. While there is still a large amount of catch-up that needs to be played by the studio, it seems clear that they’re taking the task seriously, and that is a promising sign.
In the Twitch Livestream on Oct 3, Penninger and Listo spent just over an hour responding to questions about the game from viewers in the chat. Towards the end of the video, Penninger responded to a question about the progression system by stating that while details are still being ironed out, tons of changes to the progression system in Payday 3 are on the way, and player feedback is being considered and implemented in those changes.
Screenshot by Dot Esports via Twitch TV
Complaints with the current progression system are, in our opinion, totally justified. Payday 3 is a very fun game to play with friends, but some of the ways XP is earned are downright absurd. Progression occurs primarily by completing challenges. Sounds fair enough, right? It would be if challenges weren’t fixed—there are no daily or weekly challenges, but a set and finite amount.
While some of these challenges are simple and reasonable, others require things like completing the same heist 300 times. After you’ve completed all the normal challenges, it becomes a downright grind-fest to level up.
It remains to be seen exactly how the progression system is going to be changed, but we’re putting our money on daily and weekly rotating challenges. Having that massive grind challenge looming in the background is fine when there’s a constant supply of newer, smaller challenges to complete.
This is the second time this week Payday 3 devs have implemented a change to the game based on player feedback. There’s still work to be done, but if they continue down this path of redemption, it might not be too long before players forget all about the September Server-gate (we’re still workshopping the name).
