Starbreeze confirmed a lot of updates and changes to Payday 3, but it is still not enough to draw people into the new installment of Payday.
It has been a month since Payday 3’s release and numbers showcase there is still a lack of player numbers for the game, at least that is what we see on the Steam platform. Although this might not be the case for the console versions, Steam is the platform most players tend to use and happens to have the highest player numbers. Considering that factor of being easy to reach, Payday 3’s two thousand or so players on Steam prove how Starbreeze could not catch the interest they were aiming at.
As we all know, Payday 3 had a rough start with most of the veteran players trying out the game and finding some mechanics to be altered and butchered from Payday 2. One of these factors happens to be the progression system, which was criticized for being very dumbed down and wholly different from the previous game. Instead of your output during the heist, the progression system cares about the challenges the player accomplishes. Rather than being free of choice while leveling up, Payday 3 brought strict gameplay with no freedom.
Of course, the change did mirror itself to player counts, and along with server issues during the first week, Payday 3 was not just ready to be played by many. Luckily, Starbreeze is a studio of open-words. They consistently and frequently stream on the Twitch platform to showcase their upcoming plans for Payday, let it be a new update or new changes they are working on. In one of the previous streams, they confirmed to be working on a progression system change so that player freedom is more important than the objectives.
Compared to the previous game, Payday 3 still hasn’t got the popularity it needed though it is likely that Starbreeze has only one small spark to get things moving. Payday 2 currently has thirty thousand players actively playing, funnily enough, people usually complain Payday 2 is about only DLC content with repetitive gameplay. Seems like Starbreeze has a lot of ground to cover before getting Payday 3 on the mainstream.
