Try a different play style

Stealth main? Loud main? Why not try the other? You'll have to learn and discover new things previously not present in your preferred way to play.

Play with friends

Only playing with bots or randoms? Get a few friends into a voice chat and have fun. Everything's better with friends! Even if PAYDAY 2 is just there to distract yourself while having a meaningful conversation, your playtime will still go up unexpectedly fast. Are your friends veterans themselves? Get somebody to play who never started the game before and teach them. Laughing about rookie mistakes and explaining mechanics can be a surprising amount of fun.

Try different builds

Throw that Stoic build out of the window and try something new. PAYDAY 2 has a huge arsenal of weapons to try and skills to use. Who cares if your build isn't meta or the best it can be? Why not give Unseen Strike with the CTV a go? Let's see how that Falcon rifle sounds and feels. The Piglet isn't getting to much love, why not use it? Always modding your guns to have the best stats? Let's mod them to look pretty or cursed, who cares about stats anyway? Dodge? I've only seen the memes, let's try it.

Increase the difficulty

Feeling like the game is too easy and you aren't maining Death Sentence One Down yet? Why not step it up a notch and try to overcome a hurdle? Even just activating One Down without stepping up might bring a few challenges with it.

Play solo

Soloing a heist is a different can of worms than playing with others. You cannot go down even once but you got all these ammo boxes and deployables for you and only you. Cops are less numerous as well, perfect for a bit of target ptractice!

Play different heists

Only sticking to the same few heists? Why not give one a go you never did before? Hell, why not exclusively play heists you never completed? You may find a few new favorites.

Play the storyline

The act of going through a linear set of heists feels different to the "scene selecting" nature of PAYDAY. It feels like you are working towards a bigger goal instead of just the end of a heist.

Play Crime Spree or Holdout

These game modes exist. Why not show them some appreciation and collect some goodies in the process?

Use Mutators

If you just want to mess around Mutators are a great way to insert some whack into PAYDAY. Increasing enemy damage may also be an alternative to stepping up in difficulty. Deathwish is too easy but Death Sentence too hard? Maybe increase the damage a notch to get eased into it.

Go infamous

Starting from 0 can feel like a breath of fresh air.

Back up your save an start from absolute 0

No infamy, no money, no guns, no unlocks. You are now a newb again, albeit with a big, powerful save file stored on your computer. Maybe you can play public and everyone will assume you got no skill? Time to see which member of the community welcomes new players and who despise them...

Bother with side jobs

The rewards aren't too special but it may help giving your playthrough an extra spin.

Go achievement hunting

Why not try and aim for that sweet, sweet 100% completion rate? Why not get every trophy in the safe house? Why not get a nice skull mask?

Modworkshop[modworkshop.net] (also known as: Cheatworkshop) offers a ton of modifications to change up your game, from body pillow loot bags to full game overhauls. Just on their own, or when combined, mods can offer you a totally different game to explore.

Restoration Mod[modworkshop.net]

ResMod is a total game overhaul to the point of being PAYDAY 2.5. It changes everything and even uses a separate save file to keep track of your progress. New heists, guns, enemies, AI changes, skills and so on and so forth.

Crackdown[modworkshop.net]

Crackdown too is a full-game overhaul, aiming to rebalance Death Sentence and overhaul the AI. Its effects are similar to another mod but includes a graphics overhaul,new enemies and map specific changes (so called Crackdown variants of heists).

Full Speed Swarm[pd2mods.z77.fr]

This is the aforementioned mod, cops react faster and overall the AI is just much better.

Disable Grace Period[modworkshop.net] and Disable Armor Gating Effect[modworkshop.net]

Armor gating is incredibly abusable, getting rid of it shouldn't hurt then, right? And who needs invincibility frames anyway?

Change Crime Spree Diffculty[modworkshop.net]

Crime Spree by default starts you on Overkill which may be too easy and require you to play for a good while on a too easy skill level for it to become interesting. With this mod you can start on any difficulty for that extra bit of challenge.

Less Cops[modworkshop.net]

Too many enemies on the screen? Did you not sign up for a horde shooter? Less Cops is a simple way to get rid of unwanted bodies on your screen. However, the balance is not adjusted automatically so you may want to install some mods to compensate.

Mayhem/Deathwish Assault Tweaks[modworkshop.net]

MADAT re-introduces cut enemy types like light shotgunners, SMG GenSec units and HRT's. Assault breaks last longer, hostages delay the assault by a good amount and the number of cops is drastically reduced, though cops have it much easier now to forego your invincibility frames.

Mildy Alarming Spawngroups[modworkshop.net]

Basically MADAT but without changing the number of cops or length of assault breaks.

IREnFIST[modworkshop.net]

IREnFIST is a massive gunplay overhaul which also includes advanced movement like sliding and wall running. If you wanted PAYDAY 2 to be more fast-paced and action packed this is the mod for you.

Custom Heists[modworkshop.net]

Need I say more?

https://modworkshop.net/category/3

As mentioned previously, using new guns adds a feeling of freshness to PAYDAY. So why not mod in some more to expand your arsenal of murder tools?

Custom Music[modworkshop.net]

PAYDAY's music is great but listening to the same tracks over and over again gets repetitive. Luckily some talented people made PAYDAY style custom tracks for you to enjoy or ported over already existing music. No longer will you have to mute in-game music and start a music player in the background!

Classic Heisting Reborn[modworkshop.net]

Too lazy to just downgrade your PAYDAY 2 installation? Or just wanting to play modern heists with old gameplay? Classic Heisting tries to recreate the gameplay and feel of U24.2 as closely as possible.

New Enemy Skins[modworkshop.net]

Just wearing a different uniform can give you the feeling of being a new person, so this should also go for seeing someone else in different clothes. Stop shooting at the same few cop skins over and over again and get them a new suit to be buried in.