Will do, thank you. Any other place I should post too?
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Just there should be fine.
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The fact that it hasnât been fixed in 2 months since release doesnât give me much hope. Although, I will post this in the thread @TheChicken suggested.
Posted. Hoping he sees it and does something about it.
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Well, I am in your category Urben who has completed every Hitman feature contract, and then went back to Hitman2016 to try and get into the top ten in every one, and then did the same for Hitman 2. So the value is great out of the feature contracts.
Escalations are a one off and less repeatable, but what the Seven Deadly Sins appear to be an opportunity for IOI to be creative in running a story narrative completely separate from the trilogy.
Most of Hitmanâs story narrative of the trilogy has been is over the top super-spy schtick which is hard to follow.
Now IOI are able hear to escape from the story arc of their trilogy and be playful and creative.
I am also expecting that IOI are going to emphasize creative puzzle solving.
I am not expecting a lot of changes to the location environment, and introduction of a lot of new NPCs because IOI donât have a lot of time to build much that will be new. Some refreshing and adapting of scenery yes, but not a lot that is brand new.
I assume that many gamers will criticize the premium DLC for being a cash grab anyways, and wonât be paying for it because it wonât have new maps (which can take a track team one year to make each).
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I suspect weâll see more game-y elements like the Sinbad Stringent. If you combine traditional hits and the more abstract targets of the Sinbad Stringent, it opens up the creative possibilities of an escalation quite a bit. The surreal dreamy vibe of the Seven Deadly Sins means theyâll have maximum opportunity to use those new features. The Easter Egg hunt will probably use similar mechanics as they develop the feature further.
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Most of us havenât said anything about the DLC must have new maps, few of us complaining about pricing of these packs would complain if we would have bonus missions in existing Hitman 3 maps, just like the summer bonus missions in Hitman 1 or like Patient Zero in Hitman 2, they are more replayable than 7 Escalations and at least for me worth the money, to me 7 Escalations is not worth 300,- NOK thatâs all.
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This is how I am, if I enjoy the game enough Iâm gonna invest money into it. Black Ops 3 is a good example for me. I was totally okay with spending $40 for eight Zombie map remakes, but thatâs because Iâm a fan of the mode.
I live by a firm belief. If itâs $60 then Iâm gonna invest 60 hours into it. Itâs a rule of thumb of mine and a more proper way to get value out of the product I buy.
I spent $100 on the RDR2 Ultimate Edition and got roughly 20 Days worth of playtime so far.
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Well IOI have already said each of them will contain a âvisually distinct contract, sin-themed unlockable suit and at least one sin-themed itemâ.
By the sounds of it, a lot of the content contained in the DLC will be the same bulk. I donât think thereâs going to be a disadvantage in any of the packs compared to another.
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Iâve always considered escalations, along with elusives and contracts mode, a way of adding value to a map. Like how the Halloween escalation finally added some value to the crappy Hawkeâs Bay map. Paying for escalations separately just doesnât have much appeal to me. Paying for a map that has the potential for escalations and contracts mode is what will get me to shell out the money.
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Donât forget Elusive targets as well, so yeah a bonus mission in a bit altered location we have now in Hitman 3 could bring us more than just the bonus mission down the line, so I would not have any hesitation to spend money on that.
Edit.
Sorry, you didnât forget, didnât see it before now. 
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Do we know if the âcheaperâ bundle is available all the way or just now? Itâs one better option for the consumer to be able to wait and see the total product and still choose to buy the bundle. If itâs a timed FOMO deal then urghâŚ
On a similar note, CoD recently unveiled its âmid-seasonâ content update which basically:
- Adds a zombie map to online
- Adds online maps to zombies
- Adds features from zombies into another zombies mode
- Ignores the core 6v6 gameplay that CoD is known for.
What does this mean in terms of development?
You lock off content, then unlock it later, and market it as ânewâ content despite it being in the game ages, just in another mode. Itâs gotten so blatant that they have the guile to actually do this in in front of the audience. And what do they do? Praise them for keeping the game âfreshâ mid season.
Why am I telling you this?
Because this is what this system encourages. The ability to keep back content and resell it at a premium despite its true value, hide it behind closed doors (or in plain sight in CoDâs case). As long as the masses lap it up, who cares right? We can argue CoD has been a copy paste job for ages but it has typically delivered in terms of a decent campaign, full lively online and an awesome zombies experience. Now they are watering down the content under the guise off âitâs freeâ because theyâre too busy focused on making bundles for revenue. Everybody knows CoD is a core for 6v6 gameplay. So far theyâve made 1 new map for it and actually are removing one too.
They donât care about the game anymore because thatâs the freebie part - so minimal effort while all the bundles are the focus. This system - the game isnât the product, you are. And will destory everything around it.
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The bundle option should be available until the end of time. IOIâs done a lot of things, but entice customers to buy a certain piece of limited-time DLC is not one of them. Especially if itâs a discounted bundle of some sort.
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SBMM is the very undoing of the Multiplayer element since itâs very easily exploited and the fact that Treyarch has been focusing on Dirty Bomb Maps because of the new Warzone Map.
Multiplayer will be like BO4 Zombies. Nothing but remakes.
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Holding back content just so you can release it later for a ânew updateâ really is the worst. I never played much CoD but I played the MW2019 one. It was blatantly obvious (and annoying) that they kept removing and readding different objective variants for maps every week or month, just to keep the impression of âsomething newâ or missing out.
âYou wanted to play 2on2 with mirrored weapons? Too bad, the mode is replaced. Maybe we will release it next week again, so stay tuned!â Horrible
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I said my piece several days ago both on here and on Reddit, but I think it bears repeating that this is literally just an expansion pass by a different name. Like, thatâs all it is. We got this stuff as part of the more expensive Gold Edition back in 2018, and even some of the free stuff had free unlocks (admittedly not nearly as customised, iâll be fair).
Generally if I pay upwards of ÂŁ80 for a game, I expect all the content to be in there. IOI is in a stronger financial position than last year so itâs clearly not a case of needing to do it to recoup debts, this was done to capitalise on the audience, and frankly, I expected better of IOI than for them to pull this. Not only is this DLC sectioned up and releasing throughout the year, the naming scheme is juuuust ambiguous enough to generate hype and keep the attention of the people who will pay for it.
I strongly urge people to vote with your wallet and not let this succeed. Iâm pretty sure it will do regardless, but the less money they get from this particular scheme, the better, and thereâs more chance theyâll merge it with the Deluxe Edition.
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This is going to shock you but, episodic releases of tv series⌠they frequently film large parts of later episodes well in advance then lock it off away from people because they want them to keep watching the show.
Script writers and novelists do this too, itâs called planning.
What is this âtrue valueâ nonsense? No such thing exists in entertainment, never has - value of experiences is purely speculative and subjective.
Theyâre not selling housing, pharmaceuticals, food or water - theyâre selling a game.
Add to that an ongoing issue with this discussion is the tendency for people to vastly underestimate the development process and assume because they discover fragments of something the final product is complete and present.
We saw this a lot in the early days of HITMAN (2016) when people would make announcements like âI looked into the assets and the bricks system canât alter much at allâ right up until the Holiday Hoarders mission was released. We had people claiming they had managed to uncover entire maps or the final inventory because they found a few stray assets.
Nothing in gaming is ever âfinishedâ it is merely released and then finalized. There is always more work to be done and that can be done, sometimes you have the complete 3D assets but the AI is glitching on certain routines and objectives, sometimes you have an archive with a half dozen unused assets because there are still people on the team who believe in them and are pitching their idea, and itâs too much work to take them out if they might go back in.
That the masses enjoy it is a pretty strong argument that the experience has âtrue valueâ, just not to you or you are unwilling to classify it as such.
Part of the headache of the months after Absolution was released was the people who were writing novellas on why the Hitman games were no longer âgoodâ and generally citing things with:
- Were of no real interest to anyone, but were present in one game and not the other
- Were imagined to have been present in the previous games and not in Absolution
- Were actually disliked by the main audiences throughout most of the older games active life, and so were discontinued
All of these people were quite convinced that Absolution objectively did not have value and would bounce from statement to statement whenever called out, because they werenât actually interested in value - they were just interested in getting their way.
Thereâs several very strong value related reasons for that:
- Designing quality multiplayer maps is immensely difficult since you have to deal with the infinite possible decisions of real humans, factor in skill levels, abilities, possible exploits etc Every map represents a huge amount of resources and quality checking.
- In games where people play round after round after round after round, too many maps leads to people picking favourites since the skill comes not from exposure to many maps but mastery of a few. An unpopular map represents a massive failure in missed potential since resources could have been spent elsewhere.
- Once players get invested in a map, they want that map to stay because they have invested hundreds of hours in mastering it and have hundreds of hours of happy memories there. Being in the map is a thrilling experience in it self.
This is why Dust, a map that is old enough to drink in the USA, is in every Counter-Strike game. And you may now put an F in chat for all the maps from the same era that never made it.
Now maps were relatively cheap to make back then, all it took was time and creative use of the existing assets in the Half-Life game. The genre was also in its infancy so maps were a lot more raw and experimental back then.
These days there is a huge body of information, public and private, about what makes for a good map and the costs have gone up astronomically. No longer will standard blocky assets with some world building graffiti made in MS paint do, now it has to be photo realistic assets, contain unique assets, make good use of lighting effects, etc. It also has evenly integrate the various styles and techniques that evolved from earlier maps and appeal to players who are already heavily invested in their old maps feel welcome but also, like theyâre having a fresh experience.
Itâs like trying to make a new Mass Effect game or invent a new Coke.
These are the unfortunate realities that drive a lot of these decisions and the industry has noted that it is almost impossible to sustain a property that goes against this reasoning now unless you are a loss leader or you can count on selling epic amounts of merchandise. Hitman is neither.
The obvious reality is that if these supposed obvious business decisions were viable and lucrative, then competing studios would be all over them. Theyâre not - because it turns out the realities of the industry are harsh and cruel.
This is gibberish. You canât know what IO Interactiveâs financial commitments are unless youâre an executive at IO Interactive because money doesnât work like it does in GTA or cartoons. IO Interactive has financial commitments to deliver products, pay salaries, pay licenses on software, pay royalties, pay rent on offices, etc In order to keep the lights on, they need to keep money coming in.
To say they are in a stronger financial position so they donât need to recoup debts is to completely ignore that it is a standard in major businesses to take loans to capitalize ventures and to sign into contracts and guarantees that essentially amount to a promise to deliver x amount of value by y date.
This level of armchair analysis isnât based in anything but nostalgia back when there wasnât so many alternative revenue streams that game studios relied upon - because frankly it was just easier to make a living selling video games. There was less competition, your games stayed topical for longer and the absolute peak of spending for development was forty-five million dollars if you were a loss leader for the biggest new console coming out (the PS1!)
However since then itâs been noted that the way to generate money reliably is to produce reliable, familiar products that people buy a new version of annually.
- Madden Football
- Formula One
- PGA Golf Tour
- World of Warcraft expansion
- Call of Duty/Battlefield shooter
- Counterstrike Dust Map
Thatâs why Blizzard-Activision is a multi billion dollar company that almost never releases a new property, and when they do its one that is shamelessly derivative of existing products.
Because thatâs what people want.
With all that in mind.
IO interactive are putting a lot of creativity into this and, from a business perspective, it helps pay for their staff and assets that they canât use during pre-production of future products thus offsets their costs and commitments.
Wouldnât you prefer studios did that rather than re-release the same product with a few tweaks every year?
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i think that the deluxe pack should include 6 escalations and some unlocks
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Lucky you, it does!
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Yeah and âpeopleâ want to see nothing but remakes and the nth Iteration of a Marvel spinoff in the cinemas. Thatâs why cinemas were doing so great even precovid and innovative series in TV and now streaming did not steal their core audience at all.
It is not that âpeopleâ want it, it is just the corporations being shy of taking risks. Now itâs natural to avoid risks to an extent, but they cornered themselves into âplaying it safeâ so much that they do not only avoid risks, but avoid innovation.
There is a reason PUBG was created by a small developer or modder. So was dota. And Counterstrike from your example.
People were looking forward to something new when e.g. Anthem was announced. The reason it failed was that it was half-assed and they decided to force it into the safe and known territory last minute.
Of course average products will find consuners, they do not harm anyone and are slight entertainment. But to conclude that therefore, this is what people want is way too simplistic.
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