Payday 3 continues to be in a rough spot, with many players opting for its predecessor instead, though the heist shooter has recently received a hefty patch.
Ever since it launched, Payday 3 has struggled to find its feet. It has received regular updates, at the very least, the latest of which dropped last week, bringing in 300 bug fixes and improvements. There include things like a number of UI improvements, some Nvidia settings like its Image Scaling Upscaler, DLAA, and DLSS Super Resolution, as well as there being more consistency with things like the game now remembering “if you’ve chosen to show or hide the story videos in the heist selection even after restarting the game.” The full patch notes go into all of the balance and technical changes made, too, which are a few too many to list here.
Unfortunately for Payday 3, though, its biggest problem is more due to the fact that all its players are elsewhere – playing Payday 2. At the time of writing, there are only 193 players in Payday 3 right now, according to SteamDB. For comparison, there’s 30,364 in Payday 2, a ridiculously large number of players compared to what should, in theory, be the more popular title. It’s certainly not a bad thing people are still playing Payday 2, after all, it’s always frustrating when an online title gets a sequel and its predecessor gets left to rot.
It’s not like developer Starbreeze isn’t trying to bring players back. Just the other day it outlined Operation Medic Baghttps://www.paydaythegame.com/news/payday3/2024/03/medicbag-update2/, its plans for upcoming content in the game. “Armour has been a popular topic among the community, and a fairly polarising one,” the developer explains. “What we initially envisioned was a resource that eventually runs out during the course of combat, same as health.” The post goes on to outline some of the issues players currently have with how armour works, like the fact that ways to restore armour are currently very limited.
To make up for this, it’s introducing adaptive armour lining that can regenerate, essentially. “Adaptive Armor Lining does not take permanent ‘trauma’ damage, but can also take less damage before a chunk breaks. If a chunk breaks, you still need to restore it with an Armor Bag, but, in theory, you can make it last forever if you take cover in time.” Hopefully this is enough to start drawing some players back in, though it will likely take a lot more to do so.
