One thing I fear about Hitman WOA, what would IOI do when they are done with it. Many gaming companies have axed their games by shutting down the servers.
So this is what I am hoping for an End of Life Plan for Hitman WOA:
1)Bringing Progression system, Challenges, Unlocks and Mastery to Offline Mode.
2)Bringing Escalations, ET Arcade, Freelancer and Sniper Assassin (Single-player) to offline mode.
3)Also making FCs playable in Offline mode(maybe)
4)Making all ETs playable permanently. All ET contracts will have the failure cooldown (just like Arcade) with the EXCEPTION of some (CelebrETs and some other "best"ETs) which can be replayable without the cooldown.
I atleast hoping for the first 2 on the list.
It would be a huge letdown for the players if the server got gutted with no plan.
They’ve expressed many times that they’re not planning on shutting down the servers, but of course a proper offline mode with almost everything available would be perfect even with servers still running
I hope for permanent and always playable ET and for the possibility to play cut contents like The Brothers and Methlab. For the ET I’m almost sure they will do it
Firstly, things don’t always go according to plan. Secondly, they are still a company, and even the most benevolent of companies will have a reason to lie to their customers if it suited their purposes. And thirdly, they may not be planning it now, but I’m sure Ubisoft and Co. hadn’t actually been planning to shut down their servers for their games when they first launched them.
The fact is, someday, before any of our actual consoles give out, the servers for this game will stop, either through voluntary shut down or some other occurrence. Those of us () who plan on playing this game for decades to come are going to be severely hindered if this game is not made fully available in offline mode at some point between now and that inevitable day.
Yeah, because it was the only part that needed a server connection, you know, being a singleplayer game. WoA on the other hand has this shit baked into its progression system. To give us the best experience possible, of course.
And for extremely shitty server connections at that. As I’ve stated previously, my connection to the Hitman servers is regularly getting cut off. And I know it is the Hitman servers specifically, because this is not something I experience with any other game I’ve played on the last two Xbox generations.
Eventually they’ll have to, unless they have an infinite amount of money and resources that’ll never run dry.
I know it might sound silly to say “what about in 40 years” but seriously what about in 40 years? Will this game still function when I’m much older? Could kids not even born yet that really care about these ancient games on the level we do even be able to play HITMAN properly?
I trust that for now IOI won’t gut the servers, and I’d be willing to go on a whim and say that even 5 or 10 years from now this game will still be up. But one day it’ll have to shut down and that’ll be a big loss.
Please prove me wrong IOI and keep this game running long after we all die. Find a way. Or better yet put everything about this game that can be offline offline.
Besides future proofing the game for whenever the servers shut down, a more robust offline mode would be a great addition right now for Steam Deck and Switch 2 players. Yes the games are technically portable, but the lion’s share of content is unavailable offline. And there will soon be even more “on the go” Hitman players when the iPhone/iPad version releases. How many people are going to burn through their mobile data for this game?
It makes you wonder if they’d bother having a plan for H1 and H2 as well. Yeah they’re delisted now, but people still paid money for those games prior to the delist - so there is still some sort of obligation to not completely kill those products at some point too.
There is bound to be some people that own those that never moved to H3/WoA.
My worry isn’t on “server shutdown” end of life.
It is one, but I don’t think it’s the closest worry.
Hitman is IOI brand ambassador. their flagship is WoA. And it’s expanding. So technical maintenance is all but guaranteed, outside of catastrophic circumstances.
The closest “end of life” is the live service end of life.
When no new content and roadmap will be made, and at best technical patches we be created. When WoA will be where hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 went when their sequels released.
Those games could get away with making unlocks impossible, and leaving content inaccessible. Because all were meant to go into the sequel, or made available differently (Phantom Suit from ghost mode transferred to featured contract unlock and the like) (it sanitized them too organisation wise)
WoA won’t be able to. It will have to be able to stand by itself in the long run.
Unless IOI does a new “mulligan, standing by itself no life service, no FOMO from now out” release/version/patch/Hitman WoA 4.0 to sanitize it one last time for the long run.
I’m talking:
suit unlocks from ETs
ETs themselves (even though I’m of the opinion Arcade is fine to access the content and preserve their spirit)
(Also the ET career tab is frustrating. Steam players automatically have Year 1 missed, Switch players have most of them too. It’s not the best foot forward to have.)
maybe the legacy unlocks? (would go against their spirit, but would give WoA complete standing without giving impression of missing things unjustifiably)
(even more: we are approaching the time where new players were never able to gain the season 1 ET coin and suit because they were far too young, and in a few years not even born yet.)
Twitch drops (other games usually patch them in freely for all once their time in the limelight as passed)
That, plus the DLC outfits and weapons. Which I’m pretty sure cannot be used in the game anymor since they were always exclusive to Contracts Mode for whatever insane design reason (can’t use them in single player mode).
I’m a big fan of the Stop Killing Games movement - which now reached its million signature threshold - and I have to say that while I love IOI and don’t think the Always Online functions were evil or done with ill will, I won’t mince words in saying that the only reason these games are Always Online is because no regulation has come for it. If this becomes EU law IOI would work on a patch the very next day, not because the law would retroactively come for Hitman but instead because IOI have always operated on what they can get away with and the Always Online just never got to the boiling point of controversy to force them to change. I call it the concerned parent paradox, where something is unthinkable until it becomes normalized and then it’s second nature - like how a concerned parent will be iffy about something their kid is doing like a new hobby or career until they’re doing it regularly and then they suddenly approved of it all along
I would hope that IOI start working on offline functionality sometime this year given the game is now out on Switch 2, because I think that the older the game gets the less robust this offline mode will be. For example, I think we’re at the point where this will be patched in for the legacy Hitman 1&2 titles. However, if they wait until the literal end of life to patch in this offline functionality we won’t get escalation support, featured contract support (which apparently are in the files of some disc copies) or even Freelancer support because it wouldn’t be feasible. I’d like as much of this game and trilogy archived as possible - which is why I also approve adding legacy escalations, HUD/menu themes and even legacy featured contracts into the third game to make it as robust an archive as possible