Before I get started, let me say that Payday 2 was once a GREAT game. I pre-ordered the collector's edition of the game, and played it enthusiastically throughout the closed beta and for several months afterwards. The game had a lot going for it: it was polished, with crisp combat and stealth mechanics, and expanded nicely on the novel heist-game genre that the original Payday: The Heist had pioneered. Gameplay was fun, with a nice balance to it, and plenty of options available depending on the play-style you prefer. When Payday 2 came out of beta, I was very pleased with how it had turned out.

That said, the game has gone nowhere but downhill since then, and it's gone there with a vengeance. The game has declined to the point that I have refused to play it for over a year now, which is saying a lot considering how great the game was at release. I am appalled by the sequence of progressively worsening game design and balance decisions made by the game's developers. Very early on (within 2-3 months of the game's release from beta, if I recall correctly,) they began making sweeping "balance" changes to gameplay that fundamentally changed the focus of the game. This included severely nerfing the stealth aspects of the game, effectively making it impossible to play the game in the way many players enjoyed it best. From there, the game began to suffer from feature bloat, with unnecessary elements being added, such as new difficulty levels which do nothing but give enemies absurd amounts of armor and health; a prestige or "infamy" system which allows players to throw away their max-level status in exchange for small, permanent perks; and of course, over $100 in paid DLC, very little of which was ever worth the price tag. The game is plagued by hackers, which Overkill have shown themselves to be completely disinterested in preventing in any way, and ironically, the addition of the "infamy" system has done just as much for the hackers, who frequently just edit their level to the maximum, as it did for the dedicated, loyal players Overkill has managed to hold onto for this long.

In more recent news, Overkill has continued its long-standing tradition of not caring about its player base or its game's reputation by adding a micro-transaction "crate" system a la TF2, Dota2, CS:GO, etc. which for all intents and purposes cements Payday 2's status as a terribly mishandled, free-to-play garbage game that, on top of it all, isn't free to play. I am appalled by Overkill's consistent lack of tact in their updates to this game (I can't recall a single update to the game that I felt actually improved it in any way) and I will most certainly be adding Overkill to the list of developers I will never purchase from again. Payday 2 was originally a 9.5/10 game in my book. I now rate it 3/10, for what little enjoyable gameplay still remains. Would not recommend.

Before I get started, let me say that Payday 2 was once a GREAT game. I pre-ordered the collector's edition of the game, and played it enthusiastically throughout the closed beta and for several months afterwards. The game had a lot going for it: it was polished, with crisp combat and stealth mechanics, and expanded nicely on the novel heist-game genre that the original Payday: The Heist had pioneered. Gameplay was fun, with a nice balance to it, and plenty of options available depending on the play-style you prefer. When Payday 2 came out of beta, I was very pleased with how it had turned out. That said, the game has gone nowhere but downhill since then, and it's gone there with a vengeance. The game has declined to the point that I have refused to play it for over a year now, which is saying a lot considering how great the game was at release. I am appalled by the sequence of progressively worsening game design and balance decisions made by the game's developers. Very early on (within 2-3 months of the game's release from beta, if I recall correctly,) they began making sweeping "balance" changes to gameplay that fundamentally changed the focus of the game. This included severely nerfing the stealth aspects of the game, effectively making it impossible to play the game in the way many players enjoyed it best. From there, the game began to suffer from feature bloat, with unnecessary elements being added, such as new difficulty levels which do nothing but give enemies absurd amounts of armor and health; a prestige or "infamy" system which allows players to throw away their max-level status in exchange for small, permanent perks; and of course, over $100 in paid DLC, very little of which was ever worth the price tag. The game is plagued by hackers, which Overkill have shown themselves to be completely disinterested in preventing in any way, and ironically, the addition of the "infamy" system has done just as much for the hackers, who frequently just edit their level to the maximum, as it did for the dedicated, loyal players Overkill has managed to hold onto for this long. In more recent news, Overkill has continued its long-standing tradition of not caring about its player base or its game's reputation by adding a micro-transaction "crate" system a la TF2, Dota2, CS:GO, etc. which for all intents and purposes cements Payday 2's status as a terribly mishandled, free-to-play garbage game that, on top of it all, isn't free to play. I am appalled by Overkill's consistent lack of tact in their updates to this game (I can't recall a single update to the game that I felt actually improved it in any way) and I will most certainly be adding Overkill to the list of developers I will never purchase from again. Payday 2 was originally a 9.5/10 game in my book. I now rate it 3/10, for what little enjoyable gameplay still remains. Would not recommend.