Elusive Target Arcade

Which is why in my post you first replied to it says that if they are able to make the complications optional, they should restore the removed ones so its the best of both worlds regardless of which “version” of the Arcade a player preferred. If you liked the complications, you can stay within them and if you didn’t like them you can just ignore them.

As one of the players that actually enjoyed the Arcade for what it was originally, all the fun and challenge has been completely stripped out of it now and we’re left with a barebones pile of bland. It doesn’t have to be one or the other like you seem to think is the better option - provided the optional objectives doesn’t break anything, there’s zero harm in them putting a foot in both camps.

Only played ETA for the first time just now (probably a good thing I waited for the changes), chucked on some mods to keep it interesting. I’m sure it’s okay, though of course an inferior service to Peacock

Also wat

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The reason I mention the Six is that exclusivity agreements expire (just look at platform exclusive games that go multiplatform after a year or two) and also they are still in the files (there are videos on YT where hackers have got them running in H3 on PC).

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Legitimate question to everyone : is there a combinaison of an ET and a complication you would actually find interesting/challenging/a good twist ?

I mean in the new batch, the Vitae with its only one pacification complication made my usual method for the Ascensionist way too hard (taking the place of the chief, poison target’s mark, elimination in the pantry while she waits him outside the bathroom), forcing me to rethink the mission.

I can already think of a few :

  • The Fugitive : Target Only (so no way to test your luck by just emetic and drown/push the first suspect you come accross, before restarting if it was not the target)
  • The Deceivers : One Disguise Only (they are in two different areas with slightly different restrictions)

I also wonder if now that the Arcade will be restricted to one complication by contract if we will see more specific, precise complications. To really hammer the specificity/flavour of the contract.

Because if we look at some of the complications tailored made for escalations, some could be interesting :

  • Rowdy Guns from Miami’s the Unpalatable Termination (non-silenced firearms elimination)
  • Civilized from multiple Hitman 2 escalations (no civilian pacification or elimination, because let’s be honest the one pacification complication can easily become “headshot are no pacification you know”, and it will force to only interact with guards)
  • No Non-Target Kill Penality from the Proloff Parable (becuse come on, it’s mindless fun)
  • No Agility from Paris’s The Kotti Paradigm (no climbing, no vaulting)

And then we have what were the fully curated ones that might require some more work, but be interesting :

  • No Stairs from the Quimby Quandry (depending on how its programmed and repurposable, is it by marking the area or flaging 47’animation as the trigger ?)
  • No Guarding from Bangkok’s The Arthin Occultation (no guard disguise allowed, but might need to individually select the disguises)

And honestly, personnally, I would be very excited to see a contract with No Guarding. I always love to restrict the kind of disguise I take, the social hierarchy I will interact with and seeing it acknowledge by the game would be a great feeling.

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No.

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IMO it’d have to be really well-designed and with luck on IOI’s side.

Most of the generic complications are just “abide by 1/5th of Silent Assassin” which as the old Contract Creation Guide will tell you is just generally a waste of a Complication.

I think the more bespoke ones like what you mentioned have far greater potential, but even then THREE ETs not originally designed around this have to line up well with a complication (it doesn’t help that No Agility, No Stairs, etc are really easy instafail Complications to mess up) in a manner that is interesting.

For example, I think The Ascensionist with a condition like “if you spend longer than 1 minute on a different floor than the target, you fail the mission, this complication is removed once the target is dead” would be creative and potentially fun… BUT you can’t adapt that to Arcade because that same Complication has to accommodate 2 other Targets

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Good points.I also have a hard time finding something that will stay narratively relevant for all ETs of a contract.
And it’s not for nothing that I didn’t even entertained the idea to use most of the base line complications (I mean the current Hitman 2 ET Arcade contract with the No Evidence compliction is a bit of a joke)

The thing is, the mode won’t change much more. Complications will, maybe, be optional; but they will never be fully removed. Some ETs are already here twice, so it wouldn’t make sense. So I genuinely wonder how the Arcade can move forward and be relevant. Also IOI has intents in the design and I feel like we should respect that.

I just went through all the escalations to look at what can be made and was made before to look for anything interesting.
No Guarding is currently the one complication I genuinely could see used and be interesting. Maybe an equivalent for the other kind of social hierarchy (Civilized forcing to only interact with guards, maybe a new No Civieing forbidding the use of civilian disguises)


Because right now I have the feeling that the arcade will fall into irrelevance as soon as Freelancer is out.
And maybe it always was the way it was suposed to go, just a distraction before the larger content drop.

But there is so much potential. Maybe if elimination methods complication were applied (ingested poison only, sniper only…).
I don’t know.

I think ultimately what we’ll get is a very wide variety of Elusive Target missions with a lot of different complications and we’ll just see through trial and error what complications work for those maps and which ones don’t. Some complications may make the missions very easy. Some may suggest ways to do it that we didn’t think about. Some may make things a lot harder. Over time (and I have to think it’s actually pretty easy to add a complication to an existing mission once it’s created if you have access to the code behind the scenes), we’ll just see.

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In The Surgeons, Pavel Frydel’s name is misspelled as “Pawel” in his picture and in the target objective.

HITMAN 3_20220304105722

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It seems that that you added that part afterwards and I didn’t noticed, sorry.
I agree, the original complications like all boddies hidden wouldn’t be so intrusive if they were optional and didn’t instafail. It seems that they’re still working oh the arcade so we’ll have to wait what they do with it after the feedback of this new batches and the new changes. Optional complications and/or some difficulty settings seem to be really good options to appease people both defenders and detractors of complications.

I lost the same mission again this time for changing disguises more then once. So its yet another 12 hours and yes I decided reset then lost all five others on purpose again. Were it another mission it would’ve been okay but it wasn’t. Oh and this time I reset my Xbox One to factory that way I have to take a break since it takes several hours to set everything up again.

I think it would be cool if the ETA contract that’s supposed to have one target from each of the three games was one that featured the serial killers from each game. From H1 would be the Angel of Death, of course, and from H2 would be the Serial Killer (the Censor), but which one to pick from H3?

The Procurers don’t count because they’re not even killing their victims, they’re just gross, and the one death attributed to one of them was a confirmed accident. The Iconoclast and Liability don’t count because one is an assassin and the other is just negligent.

That leaves us to pick between the Collector, the Heartbreaker, the Ascensionist, and the Rage (the Crusher), serial killers all. Well, maybe. The Rage was more about the fighting than the killing; that was more of an unfortunate consequence of the fights. We don’t know exactly how many people the Collector and the Ascensionist have killed before we encounter them, and since they might kill as the first or second part of their objective, their murders are more part of the means to the end, rather than the end. That leaves the Heartbreaker as one who’s definitely killed the right number of people to meet the definition of serial killer, and since his entire ritual inevitably leads to murder as the last action to achieve the end he wants, he’s the worst of the lot, I think.

If they go this route for that cross-game contract, I think the best lineup will be Angel of Death, Serial Killer, Heartbreaker. Since it would be 47 acting as a killer of serial killers, maybe they could jokingly call them the Dark Passengers in honor of Dexter or something (not likely, but fun).

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Still maintaining that we aren’t getting a single cross-game contract. It’ll be three contracts, one from each game, same as they’ve done twice now.

I know what they said, literally, but I think it’s being misinterpreted.

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There would be no reason for them to make a special mention of it if that was the case, because that’s already what has been happening: 3 contracts from all 3 games with ETs from only that game. There is no reason for them to bring it up as this particular thing if it wasn’t any different from that. They are emphasizing that it will be 1 from each of the 3 in 1 contract.

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I see it differently. The reason to bring it up is that after the initial batch of contracts they didn’t release anything nor did they really say anything about it. This is nothing more than a reassurance the mode is not dead, it isn’t abandoned, and content will be coming quicker this time than the last.

It’s hard to know :smile: i’m seeing it like this now “This batch will also include an Arcade Contract (consisting of Elusive Targets) from each game in the trilogy” it kind of makes sense

It’s just open to interpretation I think. We’ll see in 20 days what they actually release and I’ll be happy to post right here that I was incorrect if that turns out to be the case.

"This batch will also include an Arcade Contract consisting of Elusive Targets from each game in the trilogy. "

Honestly it doesn’t look open to interpretation. The subject is clearly an Arcade Contract.

Now if I may jump right into speculative and over interpretating territory, this is much more open for it :

"changes that will also be arriving on March 3rd that will impact on the Arcade Contracts we have already released, including those arriving today. "

It might mean that the released batch, the six current contracts, are all from the backlog of the already made contract from before the change of direction was acted. This would explain some of the weaker complication/contract (I mean, “No Evidence” for The Genera…)

The hope (irrational hope, but hey we are on a fan forum, so I will be there from time to time), would be that a new direction in the curation of the contract will arrive, maybe first with just this one contract. With a more carefuly chosen complication, with the best ETs for it. Maybe as a try, for the metrics.

Nonetheless, I get your point @schatenjager, hope were high for the release of the mode, and we’ve seen how it went.

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I will always try to err on the side of the least expectation possible.

Remember when they were discussing the release of Hitman 3 and the “6 maps with 20 mastery each”? How many posts on this very forum were there about how IOI outright lied to the fans because Carpathian Mountains turned out to be just 5 mastery levels. There are still players who will bring that up and attempt to remind IOI that they “owe” us a 20 mastery level map.

Now that wasn’t a misunderstanding. IOI actually said it and they didn’t deliver it when the final game came out. This may well be a slightly different situation where their statement isn’t as clear cut (to me anyway), but I still see a situation where misinterpretation could lead to disappointment. Instead of being glad that new content was released, it’ll be griping that promised content wasn’t delivered.

On the 24th, when this next batch of contracts is released, if they do release a single set that includes Elusive Targets across all 3 games, I promise to own up to my own wrong prediction. But, on the other hand, if the same type of contracts we’ve already seen gets released and instead they release 3 sets of 3, each compartmentalized to their own game, I expect that we’ll get a bunch of “they lied again” posts…

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I get you.

I’m also erring around. Just on the other side :slight_smile: . And I’m frequently off.

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