TL;DR

New Game with huge matchmaking issues vs Older Game with no matchmaking issues

As someone who dipped their toe into Payday 2 and is beginning to swim in Payday 3, I’m not shocked. Payday 3 is missing a lot of quality of life features that Payday 2 has, and has a lot less content. Plus, Payday 2 has been around forever and Payday 3 is fundamentally different enough that a fair fraction of folks probably just won’t ever feel any need to switch.

That said, I think Payday 3 has a better skeleton that Payday 2, especially for new players like me, and I’m excited to see it grow (and become something more than the minimum shippable product) over time.

Payday 2 has been around forever at this point, so it makes sense. I think it’s probably been around longer than GTA V and has been getting updates and DLC the entire time.

Game with actual content vs game with no content.

Sounds about right

We (Payday 2 Players) also racked up hours upon hours (I think I am around 1000 total) and they didn't really give us anything for all that work. We got a underwhelming skin. A bare bones weapon, and some weapon charms ...do they realize how hard it was to beat every heist on Deathwish without a hacker in the lobby? A Charm? For Real? Give me my deathwish mask back and I will play your new game

Is this like a math problem?

More power to you if you like it but man I cannot imagine wanting to play a game like this with strangers

Did they fix the game already?