Starbreeze will rework Payday 3's progression and XP system after player backlash

rockpapershotgun.com:

If Starbreeze themselves were actually a Payday 3 heisting team I suspect they'd be verging on putting money back into the vault at this stage - retracing their steps with bulging duffel bags, while apologising to security guards not so much for the whole bank robbery thing as for smashing so many utilities on their way out. Shortly after announcing plans to make the four-player PvE shooter less online-dependent, the developers have announced that they're also reworking Payday 3's much-reviled progression system.

In our own Payday 3 review, Alice Bee singled out the process of acquiring abilities and gadgets as one of the first-person burglar's weak points. And as MP1st adds, players are none-too-pleased with the game's tethering of experience to challenges, some of them weapon-specific, rather than simply finishing a heist. Inevitably, this has led to multiplayer participants ignoring the heist completely, spaffing challenges and turning what is supposed to be a game of infiltration and extraction into open warfare with the fuzz.

"We have heard you, and we are working on a bunch of changes to the progression system," lead producer Andreas Penninger declared in a Twitch stream yesterday. "I can't say exactly what yet. We're working on it, then we're going to test it and verify it to make sure it's in line with how we want it to work and also based on your guys' feedback.

"So, as soon as we have more clarity in 'this is what we want to push live,' we're going to communicate that to you guys."

According to Starbreeze, Payday 3 has had a solid launch despite the connection issues and lingering misgivings about XP grinding, announcing that it had attracted three million players a couple of days ago. Mind you, it appears the