I’m reaching out as a long-time Hitman fan and active player of Hitman Freelancer to share some thoughts on the current state of Hard Mode and Prestige Mode.
Right now, both modes feel underwhelming. Across the community, it’s clear that very few players are actually enjoying them. They don’t add much depth or replay value, instead, they mostly feel like extra grind or punishment rather than new challenges.
A few ideas that could make them more engaging:
Hard Mode: Instead of just tougher enemies and fewer resources, give our mistakes real consequences. For example, if we’re compromised in a mission, our safehouse could come under attack later, forcing us to defend it or move to a new one. That would turn risk into gameplay rather than simple failure.
Prestige Mode: Right now, it just resets everything, which discourages players from using it. Instead of wiping all progress, you could make it a mastery phase: add more targets, stricter limitations, or unique contracts. Keep the challenge, but reward players with rare weapons, tools, or cosmetic upgrades for completing it. Make it feel like a reward for commitment, not a reset.
You’ve built something genuinely special with Freelancer, it’s one of the smartest additions to the series. But these two modes could use that same creative spark that defines the rest of your work.
Thanks for continuing to support the Hitman world with care and imagination.
Considering that many players only did 1 run of hardcore freelancer, in order to get the suit, I can hardly see how adding additional complications is going to make it more appealing to play.
That doesn’t really…solve any of the problems of hardcore mode though. That’s just adding extra busywork to make the game harder, and not actually tackling the problem players have. The safehouse is meant to be a safe zone. A PVE safehouse raid is something Hardcore mode does not need, at least not right now.
Right now, it just resets everything, which discourages players from using it. Instead of wiping all progress, you could make it a mastery phase: add more targets, stricter limitations, or unique contracts. Keep the challenge, but reward players with rare weapons, tools, or cosmetic upgrades for completing it. Make it feel like a reward for commitment, not a reset.
The problem players have had with the prestige system is that the grind to do it is not seen as worth it. And you do get incentives for resetting (more merces per contract and more XP), so that suggests both the gameplay and rewards are not what players want.
Freelancer already has a lot of statistically-identical weapons, and it’s going to get more soon, so putting those in a mastery-esque system isn’t helping anyone.
And this is a moot point anyway, because there’s already a mastery system in Freelancer, it’s just incredibly grindey and unrewarding because the XP gained is never satisfying past a certain point. The algorithm for the XP thresholds to obtain each level are logarithmic to an ridiculous degree. Really easy to start, punishingly hard near the end. It’s not enough to beat one level when you succeed in a campaign at level 80 or so.
I talked about this years ago, and practically nothing I’ve suggested in the video, or anyone else suggested here, has been altered in the game:
To give a TL;DW:
Merces economy does not scale well with good players. Either you have too few Merces to buy equipment needed to get more Merces, or you have so many Merces that you don’t know what to do with them (Hence the prestige system, though I do note that feels more like a band-aid fix, not a rebalance of the economy).
Failure is too punishing, which perverts the incentive to play Freelancer more. Removing Freelancer tools on campaign failure in particular is quite annoying, as those are necessary to beat prestige objectives, and they are situated in the safehouse, not in the field. And the Collectors Edition tools basically exist to try and soften the blow of failing, but those are expensive for newbies, and are also lost if you die in the field, so those go unpurchased or unused, unless you need extra kalmer/ sieker darts. And this caused enough backlash for IOI to explain their reasoning on their site, which on the surface seems helpful to us, but was the equivalent of the developers plugging their ears and ignoring the problem.
Mastery Levels increase dramatically (see what I wrote above). It doesn’t feel good feeling like you’re going nowhere when you’re meant to be “progressing” in a mastery track. The example I gave is Fall Guys (which is logarithmic as well, but still feels beatable).
There’s just a lot going on in a map. Sure, with time, you can learn about safes and couriers and how best to get at them. There’s also the problem of a lack of variation in the targets. At some point, you will memorise each target’s routine per level, negating the “randomness” of Freelancer.
And this isn’t even touching on the Emetic Meta, which Freelancer is also affected by, which makes the games’ puzzles quite a bit easier than they would be if emetic weaponry was downplayed or rebalanced. Sure there’s no Durian, but the Sieker 1 exists, as well as the emetic gas grenade (both with downsides in fairness, but they are universal in their application – there’s never a reason to not take them).
As I said, I would’ve hoped that IOI would’ve taken on this feedback, or at least responded to the video on here as to why these are - or are not - good ideas. But neither has happened, and we’re left in limbo. Save for some weapons from CelebrET’s that are largely reskins.
Honestly the dart guns are pretty useless in Freelancer outside of “poison target / guard” objectives. Why bother with them when you can just drop a duck near the targets for an easy and safe kill?
Yeah but those are a personal challenge, not a meta thing at all (unlike in main missions and contracts). The meta for Freelancer revolves around snipers and explosives.
Just because it’s Freelancer is no excuse to start being sloppy. The irritating thing about sniping and bombing is that it still busts you, and lowers your score if bodies are found. Ergo, the best way to do so is to use the emetic tools to get the targets into private areas, then use rifles and explosives, and hide the bodies before they’re found.
Those are easily the most common side-objectives (poison guard, poison X with emetics, poison X with sedative), so calling them useless is a bit of a self-defying argument, no?
Why bother with them when you can just drop a duck near the targets for an easy and safe kill?
To avoid collateral damage perhaps? If you’re in the early-game, you need all the Merces you can get, and accidental civilian kills aren’t good for your wallet.
There are three variations of S/A prestige objectives (S/A No Firearms, S/A S/O and I believe just S/A by itself). So, no…not a personal challenge.
Sure, those are optional to take (outside of hardcore), in a sense, you can just avoid prestige objectives altogether or pick something else. But these are still often easier (and ironically, less punishing if I get caught even if I fail the objective) to do over a mandatory collateral kill, Arrange Meeting, or an unsilenced pistol kill. The more esoteric the prestige objective, the more likely you’ll fail the campaign.
It’s more than just a personal challenge, it’s absolutely a viable way of playing Freelancer.
The score has no bearing on merces gain or progression, so it’s nowhere near the “best” way to proceed (which should be finding a balance between completing objectives for merces and finishing the missions fast so as not to spend 20 hours on each campaign).
The method you’re using works well in main missions, but in Freelancer it’s extremely slow and inefficient since bodies only matter if you go for the SA prestige objectives. It’s also fairly dangerous to use in HC (where trying to go for SA is most often a death sentence).
Cilivian kills cost 50 merces, which is peanuts compared to what you gain from objectives and completing missions. I often kick half the pier NPCs into the water in Sapienza and still drown in merces when the mission ends.
Dart guns count as firearms for “SA no firearms” so they won’t help you in this case. Besides there are always 3 POs to choose from, so going for SA is always a personal choice (not to mention it favors a slow and methodical approach, which is not meta in any way in Freelancer).
I considered doing it for the XP gain and additional Showdown challenge, but the ruined disguises and constant state of heightened alertness of the AI was irritating so back I went to normal mode. I know there’s still an unreleased challenge in the files for completing 10 HC campaigns but for the sake of the sanity of the community, it’s probably best shelved or until they rework HC to make it less punishing (and/or make it properly incentivised like others have mentioned before).
For example, one of the things I really disagreed with what they did with Freelancer was remove all of the useful items that you’d usually find playing the level in the campaign. I understand much of the emetic rat poisons available around the map would make some of the Freelancer tools trivial but punishing the player base for actually knowing the map well is the wrong thing to do in my opinion, especially when Freelancer has been marketed as a mode to play after you’ve experienced the campaign loads of times.
Once you’ve unlocked the suit, the hardcore specific challenges, and full mastery level, there’s no reason to subject yourself to hardcore mode any longer.
Honestly just stopping at the suit is enough (since it’s unlocked by the only HC challenge anyway). The “better XP” isn’t worth the risk, you’ll likely progress faster in normal just because your campaigns played / campaigns finished ratio will be higher.
Most people who play HC have already maxed everything and just do it for the extra challenge.
Whenever there is a Silent Assassin prestige objective, I take it because that’s my preferred play-style. I also always take the emetic dart guns, without fail as it always lures the targets away with a better chance of getting SA.
Because there are some of it mechanics I would appreciate to play with. others only in isolation or unimpeded by some of their fellows.
Having all of them at once is just too much.
But it’s part of its charm.
I don’t really play it.
But in the end I have good memories of when I completed the few Hardcore campaigns I did.
It was a good time, a good dialogue with the mode gameplay, and I respect the game for it.
Hardcore has:
Mandatory Prestige Payout.
Always alerted locations.
Full merces voidout at failure
Ruinable disguises.
Master Mode noise and detection.
Higher number of suspects, assassin, and lookouts.
No Leader tell tooltip.
I’m wholly against change to the prestige.
Even more for potentially negative ones like more targets.
The point of a prestige mechanic is to be a self-contained and self-consequential re-roll bonus.
Unrelated, but I actually find emetic use to be the sloppy gameplay, and sniping to be respectable to the design.
Freelancer makes use of some combination of NPCs, lines of sights and nests you don’t usually see or use in the other modes.
