Difficulty Symbol on Classics Challenges

I noticed last night that the classics challenges have the single skull icon for casual difficulty on them, even though I did them on professional (and a few on master at least). Does anyone know what this represents? I’m wondering if the game is supposed to mark what difficulty you obtained them in, but the function is broken. Or maybe it’s a sign they will add that function later. Either way it would discourage my dream for a new pro mode.

Nobody knows whether this intentional or bug, but now all the Classics challenges do not require neither Professional nor Master difficulty.
But nobody forbids you to do all those challenges on Master anyway :slight_smile:

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I did them all on Master, felt right :+1: yeah don’t like the change from from how it was done in H2 tbh

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I think it’s an oversight. They wanted you to be able do The Classics on any difficulty, so they probably removed all Pro and Master Challenges. Since completing a challenge on a higher level gets you the lower ones, it all works out. They just forgot to remove the icon.

Either that or they wanted you to know you could do it on Casual.

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Did Hitman 2 have the icon despite master challenges being a separate thing? I thought this was a new icon to Hitman 3, hence my thought process. If it was there before then you’re probably right, they just left the casual one there by accident.

It was more fun when you had to the classics in different difficulty levels, and at least once on master. It’s a shame that finishing them on casual and master is equalized.

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It always had a little icon next to them yeah. I don’t mind making it so you don’t need to do master challenges to unlock everything but they need to give us casual and master challenges because it’d make it easier to level up locations.

I just remember loving pro mode in Hitman 1 because it gave me a reason to go back to the maps and form new strategies for the main mode, which is by far my favorite. Hitman 2’s master challenges also gave me a reason to play them more. Would be nice to see that for Hitman 3.

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My theory is the devs transferred the legacy classic challenges from Hitman 2’s casual difficulty, so all Hitman 2 players who transferred their progress would have it completed (even if they did it on Master or Professional since they stack).

IOI probably just forgot to update the challenge icon for these and remove the casual symbol. If you look closely, the classic challenges on the Hitman 3 maps don’t have the difficulty icon. Only the legacy ones that would have been imported from Hitman 2.

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Nice observation!

Good news really, if there’s no intention to rank the classic challenges again it makes a pro mode more likely, even if it’s still not very likely lol.

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Well a pro-er mode. Just an update to Master would do. In fact wouldn’t it be cool if the rating system gave you more leeway depending on difficulty?

Well it was pro mode having its own challenges that brought me back to the main game for a good while. That’s what I’d love to see again. I’d take just the classics though, rather than nothing (which is what we’ll probably get!).

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I got my SASO in New York bank mission today with master difficulty, and I didn’t have any SASO record in the previous Hitman 2 period. However this New York SASO challenge is still labeled casual difficulty with one skull. So I think even if there’s no SASO transfer from Hitman 2, this challenge symbol is still bugged in WOA.

I remember mentioning it ages ago in another years old thread but I do think with a good degree of certainty that IOI silently removed the additional Classics challenges for Professional and Master Mode because the exp bonuses you could get from doing one single SA/SO/Sniper run on Master would get you to mastery level 12 or even more! A lot of exp in those H2 days!

Personally I always saw it as part of their pulling back on forcing people to play on the higher difficulty to 100% the game. H1 had a whole separate mastery track for the brutally more difficult mode, H2 had a few challenges (with unlocks) for the toned-down Master difficulty, and H3 removed all in-game rewards and dialed difficulty even further back by making no changes to the levels at all.

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For the latter in H3, I do think that was due to lack of development time/investment in creating real meaningful and unique unlocks.

I really do wonder what the WOA trilogy would’ve been like if we had the budget that Square Enix gave IOI in Season 1… That being said, the fact that they managed to bring H2 and release it in a time of near-bankruptcy for the company was very impressive.