Wait you don’t lose SA if you kill the courier?
I’ve always seen him enter the school through the gate near the headmaster’s house at around the 10 minutes mark. If you follow him and he notices you he’ll take a lot longer to get there. It’s actually a lot quicker - and less stressful - to just dress as a soldier / waiter and wait for him there (unless you’re a masochist and want to do that ET suit only).
No, you lose SA because the courier isn’t listed as a target
That was the fun of it all back when it was really only once and never again. Now that they circle back around I guess that’s even less reason not to have them be harder.
You lose SA. I wasn’t worried about that. Didn’t wanna get caught dragging his body into the locker and so I just killed him.
I would generally agree, but you can play this one once a year for exactly one time and if there would be an insta-fail, because the courier just leaves the map, without players knowing that he does, it would just be bad design. You don’t do anything wrong and learn nothing from that, and have to wait one year to try again, without knowing why you failed before. Doesn’t make sense to me.
Making them harder is okay. Especially the Celebrity ETs, since they come around every few months and have the Arcades. But this one is the execption, at least for me. But as I wrote before, I don’t like this one anyway, since it just takes forever in the beginning.
The couriers plans to leave the map would have to be in the briefing. Any timed target should be that way. “Target will eat at X restaurant, stop at Y bar afterwards, and plans to depart…” something like that.
I guess, we weren’t on the same page or I just misunderstood something. This could work, yes. But it would have to be pretty clear. That is kind of the problem with the ET concept. They can experiment with it, as they do now, but there always is a thin line between hard and frustrating, when you only have one try. Fail conditions have to be clear and understandable, if they experiment with those.
I mean, everybody knows that dying locks you out. But when there are other aspects that do so, you have to know. I think, that is why this one has its bad reputation in the first place. I don’t think it is harder than other missions in any way or form, but the fail conditions are kind of unique in the beginning.
They really went overboard with the fail conditions though. This one at some point have five (three are cut).
"DiamondsSecured": {
"Transition": "Failure"
},
"MeetingNeverHappened": {
"Transition": "Failure"
},
"DiamondsNeverPickedup": {
"Transition": "Failure"
},
"CourierExitedWithDiamonds": {
"Transition": "Failure"
},
"CourierExitedNoDiamonds": {
"Transition": "Failure"
}
There’s also some cut Diana dialogue.
The Fixer mission has something interesting which is the tailing part of the mission. It’s a mechanic that is not found in other missions (if I’m correct), and tailing mechanic fits pretty well with the general idea of “social stealth”, the central theme of Hitman from 2016.
Of course, the numerous failure conditions downgrade a lot the mission itself. Actually it is not the failure conditions themselves, but the fact that the mission is locked into an ET, a one-chance only mission. Therefore, there is no place for any mistake.
I think making this mission like any regular mission (any restart, save and load ability) could possibly change the mind of several players about this mission.
I’d say, for a normal mission, where I can goof around and trial and error me through, I would be up for it. And even then, it doesn’t sound like a lot of Hitman-fun to me. But as an ET … just no.
Yes and no. That part is an interesting mechanic, but it is not necessary, because the courier will eventually end up at the school anyway. So you can just got there and wait for him to arrive. It would be more interesting, if he would keep wandering around the city, because than you really would have to tail him and find a way to get the diamonds. But of course, that would get the failure-rate up even more.
I wouldn’t be the biggest fan of the mission, but I would like it more, because I could do what I always do: Try things out and see, if they work or not. But under the ET conditions, that is not an option with this one, because it only gets around once a year. There is no Arcade or some other way to play around in it and just check out the possibilities, without risking to fail after seconds and be locked out for a whole year.
The ET debate is all around here in the forums, and I am not usually totally against it (but I am not the biggest defender of it either), but this mission is not a good fit for the concept of ET as it is.
I played this today and I can’t believe I have to announce I totally fucked it up!! 
I eliminated the Fixer, no issues there, but totally fucked up with the courier. I accidentally used the tranquilliser on him before he did the briefing about the diamonds to the civilian! Really frustrated with myself when I have done this before, but didn’t help I was still a little rough from having a few drinks last night with my mate 
Oh well, onto the next one! 
Don’t feel bad, I completely botched the Broker despite doing the same kill method many times on many targets including the Broker himself, place an oil canister on the back of the toilet or at least near by, make the target sick then follow and shoot the oil can with the Stryker, it’s loud but if no one sees you shoot it has been a very reliable SASO for me, this was literally the only I ever failed with that method including the practice sessions but this one time I was just one step to close and blew myself up along with him, afterwards I just fired up Absolution and proceeded to have a bar fight knocking everyone out, outside of the bar tender himself of course.
SA/SO 1KO/NE/NL(No Loadout)/Supreme Ghost, borrowed the coins from the shoe shop to both lure the ET (bathroom outside the café) and the courier (spot with the printing schedule).
It would’ve been easier to direct him into the staff room, this was a more convoluted route.
I do wonder if there’s a way to catch him in the consulate entrance semi-reliably, since there are a lot of patrolling guards to guarantee an easy way to take him into one of the two crates nearby.
I don’t think I’ve ever had the thought before - after the meeting in the cafe, since Xander’s route is following Claus around: what happens if Claus is pacified and hidden?
Turns out he has a small loop that opens up where he alternates between being in the office area on the second floor where he fiddles with a laptop, to going down to break/eating area on the first floor. Conveniently, there is two crates that you can store the bodies of the four other people that come into this room - and then you’re free to do whatever you want to Xander.
Tailing is not a good gameplay mechanic because it’s slow, hard to judge if you’re doing stuff correctly, and forces the player to constantly hide or go through crowds, which is cumbersome and annoying. Even in a stealth game, it just doesn’t mesh well, and there’s a reason so many games avoid having it. Same reason why escorting mechanics have also largely died out since Hitman 2. They’re frustrating to deal with, no matter the context.
I think making this mission like any regular mission (any restart, save and load ability) could possibly change the mind of several players about this mission.
It would not. Saving and loading just hides the flaws of the Fixer even more, and would not solve anything. It has structural gameplay problems that are confusing for the player and have not aged well. And restarting is blocked when the diamonds are taken by the player, but most players never reach that point, so that’s not gonna help either.
Even if this were a permanent mission in vanilla, I don’t think its reputation would improve all that much, outside of “saves make it easier”, but that applies to any mission really, so it’s hardly specific to The Fixer. Anything’s easier when you have a million tries at it.
For the first time ever, I knocked out the courier too early and insta-failed.
All the problems with this mission would instantly be solved if there were proper mission objectives that told you what to do (or, perhaps, what not to do) - literally all you would need is a sequential transition of these objectives in the top left:
A more ambitious solution (which would make the map representative of Hitman’s sandbox ethos) is allowing you to just do these things and punish you by triggering a more time-consuming fetch quest if either Xander never meets the courier or you take out the courier too soon - though IMO, KOing either shouldn’t fail anything since they can be woken back up.
Maybe my point is view is skewed as I really liked playing LA Noire, where tailing was part of some missions. I agree that repeating this mechanic again and again in multiple missions would be boring, but in Hitman, it occurs only in one specific mission.
The Fixer tried to introduced new mechanics (tailing, additional objectives). Even though it was done in a bad way, I don’t blame IOI to try something different from other ET. It turned out afterwards that it was not a good idea.
Hoepfully, IOI learnt and didn’t repeat that in the next ET.
I do understand your argument. I do agree that saving feature wouldn’t change the mission’s flaws, but I personally think it would decrease the frustration generated by insta-fail conditions.
A possible compromise could be the removal of insta-fail conditions, and having something like the collector: killing the target allows the mission exit, and retrieving the diamonds is a “bonus” objective.
This mission is particularly polarizing, and finding a solution that pleases everybody is a vain wish.
My goal is not to change your point of view. Everybody has their own opinion about this mission, and I do understand that people disagree with me.
This isn’t the only Elusive Target mission where they introduced new mechanics or additional objectives. The Pharmacist was meant to be on a timer, and the game still suggests you are (you’re not, it got dummied out), The Bookkeeper’s entourage which is insanely annoying to deal with, The Twin, with the chalice that can catch people off-guard, the Ex-Dictator with switching trespassing areas and guards that barely leave the targets alone. A lot of 2016 ET’s were like this, the Fixer was just the worst of all of them.
And I can hear people on here saying “do you not want them to experiment with gameplay mechanics?” Yeah I do! Just not in a limited time mode!
IO seems compelled to add irritating mechanics like these to a mode that forbids saving and the learning of the mission. Even with the addition of ETA (which The Fixer is not a part of), it’s basically used as a crutch to justify the changes to gameplay. It also goes to show how much better they could be if they spent more time on these as proper missions instead of elusives.
I’m not even against the concept of limited time missions, but do not make them needlessly complex, irritating, or outright try to trick the player! It feels bad when you do that, and angers players to no end.
A possible compromise could be the removal of insta-fail conditions, and having something like the collector: killing the target allows the mission exit, and retrieving the diamonds is a “bonus” objective.
This mission is particularly polarizing, and finding a solution that pleases everybody is a vain wish.
Everybody has their own opinion about this mission
It’s polarising because it’s badly made, not because of differing opinions on how to fix it or what the flaws are. The solution and the flaws are pretty obvious and agreed upon by detractors, and are what you described; removing the forced objectives would make it less punishing. I’m not sure why you’d think it wouldn’t please everyone, I’d argue it’d do the precise opposite.
That’s pretty much what specific mods do to make it bearable.
Agreed. IOI has experimented with a lot in the WoA era, both in and out of gameplay. The things they’ve tried that add arbitrary, unnecessary difficulty in either area has almost universally not been met well, but they don’t seem to have learned to toe the fine line.
SA/SO, 1KO, no loadout. Glad not every my run goes south these days, non-celebs are still fine.
Could repeat the strat from the fiber wire run, but that wouldn’t be fun. So I gathered both targets at school and set up an accident.
The idea here is that after Strandberg’s relocated to the school, Xander always stands right there, near Reza’s death trap.
So instead I did some tests in the main story and figured out a way to ignite the canister with a remote bomb - found a spot where it wouldn’t kill anyone directly, but would break the gas lamp on the desk and gaslight Xander literally. Sneaking into the office was pain in the ass tho, but winged my way to it during panic, took me quite a few restarts. The key is to wait for Reza to come there, so the nearby guards will escort him.
P.S.: I think it’s really stupid how a full-size AR is less accurate than a .45 in this game. It neither makes sense realistically, nor for the gameplay. I love that the Baller is meta, but it’s way too much of an all-rounder. Would be cooler if the rifles could be switched to semi-auto and used for more precise shots.
