Payday 3 has had a rocky beginning, that much can be said. Lots of things coming out as 'new features' that should have been in at the start, etc. and perhaps its destined to never make quite the same impact that the previous 2 games did.

But! There are a lot of things that I like about Payday 3 that it beats out the previous entries at and I'd like to express my appreciation.

1: Animation variety and character. I'm really happy with how much more work the animation team has been given and there's just a lot of fun that goes on with the animations here. So many of them are contextual too. Like when you bolt down the thermal lance, you use an actual wrench to do so. These also make it much more pleasing to do things that previously felt tedious in payday 2, like bagging up loot.

2: Hostage mechanics. Just across the board, hostages as a system is very well realised here. Being able to grab and move people by hand is something I was desperate for in a lot of stealth sequences in payday 2. The depth of it is pretty cool too. Hostage skills were just a waste of points mostly in payday 2, (mainly because it just gave you more accidental cleaning costs in the long run) but now there's a lot of value in taking hostages and having skills that boost that. Human shields, assault delaying and resource trades. Taking law enforcement hostages can be a bit annoying as they're much faster to cancel out of surrendering now if you look away but otherwise I like the fact that law enforcement hostages just act like regular hostages so you can move them around and such too.

3: Interaction mechanics. Along with the animations I mentioned, I like objective interactions a lot more in this installment. Interactions don't feel arbitrarily long and it feels more directly engaged. There's emphasis on breaking down larger interactions into multiple short ones, like setting up the thermal drill, for instance. You assemble each piece, bolt 3 legs down individually and then start it up. Feels more authentic. The little minigames for lockpicking, glasscutting and safecracking are also pretty cool. Definitely glad I don't have to wait for drills on safes anymore.

4: Grifter style gameplay. I really love completing as much of a heist as I can with mask off, get that Ocean's 11 feel, and appreciate the systems that have been put in to accommodate this kind of gameplay. Stealth in general is better (mostly) than payday 2, although the team still seems to feel the need to put in some annoying insta-fails, some of which aren't well telegraphed (looking at you, Under the Surphaze and Diamond District). Though in general stealth feels less like an exercise in wandering around aimlessly while occasionally waiting for guards to move and more like a puzzle to solve. There's usually multiple options to accomplish what you need in any given map, some of which are more risky than others, which I find neat. (e.g. Houston breakout you can attempt to turn the metal detectors off to remain mask off, or mask on and sneak through the vents)

5: The voice wheel. Feels like it adds just a little bit more interaction between players where previously you would barely register that randos were there most of the time in payday 2. I appreciate being able to say 'thank you' quickly to another player who helps up my dumb ass when I accidentally fall down 2 stories.

6: Change in cloaker mechanics. I think they're much better than in payday 2. Apart from when they get spammed sometimes in certain maps? They take more awareness to spot coming than before but they're meant to encourage team play again. Mainly the fact that you get up right after being kicked down if someone kills or stuns the cloaker. That method makes much more sense rather than it just being a 'downed' state.

The fact that the nader, cloaker and zapper all do health damage with their abilities is also a neat mechanic, as it means managing your armour and health are slightly different systems which I think improves gameplay variety.

7: Overkill weapon system (mostly). Back in payday 2 we had a real problem between the two desires of cooler weapons that felt powerful, and all weapons (or as many weapons as possible) being useful to some degree. The overkill weapon system sidesteps this neatly by having higher power weapons be a limited resource that you use in conjunction with your regular weapons. It leaves a lot of room to allow things like the minigun to be very destructive in a pleasing way.

Big problem with them is the fact that they have to be air dropped means they often end up in inconvenient locations. (Plus that mechanic puts a limitation on map design. You couldn't have a map like Under The Mountain with this)

Would like to see some skills on the tree that focus on overkill weapons (e.g. Overkill weapon meter builds up quicker, more ammo for overkill weapons, killstreaks with overkill weapons give/refresh grit / double the effectiveness of grit)