Hello everyone!
As you can see i am a new member here, but i would like to share my opinion about the freelancer mode.
My opinion until now is that the mode is FANTASTIC. The planning, random targets that they might be in the middle of a crowd literally and making every hostile act a disaster, makes it very unique. However, this mode doesnt come without drawbacks.
First of all, i will start with a personal experience on my very first mission of the first campaign, exactly after launching the game. I had the classicballer pistol on me, power went off due to a storm, classicballer was lost. You will tell me “its not a big deal, its not as practical as a sieker, or as a silenced pistol”. Of course i agree with that. But imagine having a silenced pistol or sieker with you and then a power outage happens. You lose EVERYTHING, besides failing the mission. What is even worse, is that there is not even ONE auto save at least on the very start of the mission, so things like that can be prevented. I am sure more people will have the same concerns like me and trust me, i would not like to rely on weather forecast to play freelancer. My opinion is that developers should implement at least one autosave on the beginning of the mission (spawn point that is) in case something goes wrong. I understand that they want to make it a more challenging experience, where alt f4 isnt an option, but still a power outage due to a storm is still equal to an alt f4. I am not asking for a manual save in the middle of the mission after cracking a safe. Only for ONE autosave on the spawn point. Feel free to share your thoughts fellow agents, thats all from me and thanks for reading!
The thing is, you’d want it to still act like a roguelike with the appropriate penalties. But you hate to have any progress be for nothing for any (hopefully) unforeseen event/s.
“Hopefully” as in you’re not doing it to cheat. But you wouldn’t really be cheating like you’re forcing the game to start the campaign/mission over again. Because you would’ve (again, hopefully) used a checkpoint, or status save. And you’d continue where you left off.
Starting over would be the closest thing to “cheating”… Like if you were seconds from being gunned down. But I suppose even that could save you if you had a checkpoint to reload. 
Yeah. It would seem handy, but I can also see the conundrum.
Unfortunately I have to say that after the good first impression during the CTT, I am now already done with Freelancer. Being roguelike is incredibly annoying and due to not really having any goal, the risk/reward concept is 100% risk 0% reward. You just play until you lose and then things get taken away from you. No saving completely destorys Hitman in general and the very high difficulty having to play basically without a single (*two) failure for so many levels with an omnipresent “don’t you dare to fail or EVERYTHING is gone!” has already convinced me to drop Freelancer.
My suggestion: Instead of only giving “normal” and “hardcore”, add “casual” which is only the randomized contracts of Freelancer but without penalty for losing. Ideally even with the ability to save. THAT would be a game mode I’d play for months!
Yes, absolution had a couple of checkpoints and it made it easier. Still what i suggest is that upon spawning, there should be one and only autosave, just for the sake of something irl happens, like the power outage because of the storm in my situation. I dont think its something that destroys or alters the gameplay or its character at all. Yes, things can (and will happen), but at least you will play the mission from the start again and not lose the equipment that you have ALREADY dedicated time to obtain. I dont know if hitman developers read these forums, but if they do, i kindly suggest ONE autosave upon spawning. Nothing else. Thanks a lot in advance!
I don’t understand the issue? I had the game crash during missions, and I didn’t lose anything. After restarting the game, I could just travel to the destination again and with the exact same loadout I selected when I travelled to the destination the first time.
Your items shouldn’t have disappeared.
YES. With a few post launch tweaks this mode really could be the fucking GOAT of all Agent 47 experiences but you just summed up my beef with it perfectly. Starting over due to some tiny mistake is frustrating, boring and incredibly arcade-like. Hard to feel the immersion when you’re bound by so many videogamey rules
…and with my proposal of an additional casual mode, nothing would be taken away from your preferred way of playing. It does not have to be one way or the other!
So that would imply if you die once in the whole Hitman franchise, the game should delete itself and ban your account?
Don’t get me wrong, I perfectly understand what you mean. There are different kinds of people, though. Some might like the hardest possible challenge, others might only want to enjoy the atmosphere, while other others might prefer something in between.
It is never wrong to have options. Just as you want one thing, I want another. And I do not blame you at all for wanting to play your way, totally fine with me. But the same should work the other way around.
@Austin_47 I’m fine with the whole premise of being punished for making mistakes and needing to plan and prepare, but you’re so focused on the realism yet the total arcade mechanics of the punishment system doesn’t bother you? Why would 47 lose all his gear and exactly half of his money for failing a mission? Where is the realism in that?
I’m fine with having to restart a campaign if I fail at any point, I quite like that risk factor. But as far as gear/merces go you should lose one OR the other. Losing your equipment and having to buy it back is fair, or keeping the equipment and losing half your money. Both are setbacks but would make me keep playing
Losing both is a far bigger setback than anything the game gives you as far as rewards go and it turns me off the idea of grinding just to get it back
And your implication that losing due to a power outage is the fault of the player for not having a battery pack is just stupid
It meant to be hard. Wtf is with today’s gamers, they need to tune and customize every game for private purposes. Maybe just take the game how it is and learn to play instead of moaning how is hard. Gesh.
Back in old days such a problem didn’t exist, people just play, fail, learn and play again. Nowadays if something is little to hard people drop game or/and hate the game. There is plenty of games, if you don’t like them just stop play and take another one instead to " you should change that because I think is bad". It’s very egocentric and put developers in very uncomfortable situation where they need meet requimemt plenty of human beings because of they individual preferences, and still there will be plenty of people who dislike it.
Games should be a challenge. Too hard? Learn how to play. Simple as that. Still to hard? Try harder.
What a inpatient society.
This. And some more illumination. Earrings, tattoos, even hair colour in a dark area.
I really can’t say I agree with you.
You’re correct about something you did say but you’re taking out of this way of thinking too many things that can affect people.
I like if a game is hard in the right way but nowadays I think that everyone has to be able to enjoy a game, both If one guy is a good gamer or a bad gamer, we’re not anymore in the 90’s so the “git gud” statement makes no sense anymore, before they did the game that way because were way shorter and with no great graphics, so the only thing developers did was make games super hard so people keep playing, but nowadays is not like this anymore.
Adding a “casual” way to play is not taking away from you and your way to have fun with the game. I personally don’t want to play in casual mode, I never do that in the main game too, but having more options and possibilities to customize a game is always a good thing and not a bad one.
Many gamers nowadays have work days too hard and simply when they want to relax in the evening you don’t want to be stressed out for a game too.
Developers know this and I think that if they can make a game that can reach more people it’s only a good thing for them.
And don’t even let me start about people with disabilities or other problems like this that have the right to enjoy the game too.
You want to play the game in super hard mode? Fine you’ll have your achievement, trophies and reward for doing that and showing it out, you want to just chill out a evening in casual mode? Fine too, just get less rewards but at least you can go on playing and not getting stuck.
More options are always the best solution, in any game, and I’m convinced about this.
See, what you then get is choice paralysis; give the user too many options as they won’t know what to pick. Options in moderation is good, not “more options is better”.
Accessibility is important but not everything is an accessibility issue. There’s no content being gated behind filling your tool collection or completing a campaign.
Exactly. This brings me back to the whole dificulty controversy in fromsoftware games, specifically Elden Ring. I’m on the side that the intention of the developers is more important than making it for a wide range of people. Accessibility does not mean making the game easier or gutting the experience for someone who either doesn’t want to engage with the content the intended way, or is simply asking for what is essentially a different experience. It’s the equivalent of a puzzle game not only just giving you hints, but straight up telling you where certain pieces should go. I think we would all agree that’s ridiculous, or at least I hope so.
In my opinion, this is a problem that IOI/Square Enix/Warner brought on themselves. The core Hitman game has difficulty options. This is the standard against which we tend to judge the rest of the various modes in the game.
If I play the main storyline, I have the option in almost every single map (except the tutorial ICA facility missions) to choose the difficulty I want to play on. If I prefer a (relatively) challenging experience I can choose to play with more cameras, more enforcers, only one save, etc. If I choose to play without all of that I have that option too.
When the developers introduce modes that don’t have those options, we, as players, have to ask “why?”.
Why give the player the options of choosing how difficult they want their experience to be in some places and not others? It’s confusing to the player why there are only difficulty options sometimes and it can turn off players that don’t want the same “hardcore” experience that others do.
It wasn’t the players who introduced the option of various difficulty modes into the game(s). It’s not the players’ fault for asking for that same option in this mode as well.
A very simple and elegant option imo would be having a Save and Exit option. This means a save is only created when you’re exiting the mode/game, and it will be automatically “destroyed” when you load into the match again, making it impossible to use it to retry after dying or failing the mission. This is already how it works in many rogue like games.
I know that I, in just a week since release, have found more than a couple occasions where I had to interrupt my game in the middle of a mission due to some other commitment - be it work, home, or something else. I have had to leave the game running on pause for up to 8 hours before I could get back to it. Being able to save and exit and pick up where I left off would have been very useful.
I’m not necessarily againt an easier mode (there’s already a harder mode, so why not), I just think people are asking for the wrong things in that regard. Asking not to lose items on you on death, or having progress be reset on failure, or remove certain elements of randomization, is antithetical to what a roguelike is, and is essentially asking for a completely new game mode. I recommend to those people that they accept that this style of game just isn’t for them, as much as that may suck.
I think in an easier difficultly, a good idea would be for the first failure of a showdown/alerted territory (or second failure after failing a non-alerted mission), instead of failing the entire campaign, it just resets the syndicate, allowing you to pick a new one, with the caveat being that the next campaign failure resets the campaign. It still leaves all the risk, but you still get that chance to make a comeback.
I’ve also seen great ideas like having the supplier be able to save an item you brought that you don’t need (like a sniper) beforehand in case of failure, under certain circumstances to prevent cheesing. The game mode isn’t perfect (still really damn good all things considered), but I want it to be fleshed out, not dumbed down.
Makes sense to me. There are various ways of creating an easier play experience but changing the nature of the mode isn’t appropriate.
This mode is built on certain mechanics that I think are required - like loss of Merces or tools. An easier mode (which should affect the entire mode, not on a map by map basis - more later on that) could do things like provide less enforcers, less cameras, eliminate certain objectives, maybe make certain items less expensive, etc. I do not think that an easier mode should remove the tool loss or Merces loss for failure (although maybe the penalties for killing civilians or non-target suspects…).
I think when you launch Freelancer, you should select whether your experience is Casual, Professional, or Master, just like the core game. The entire mode would then be set to that difficulty level and if you want to go to a harder version, you are free to do that, but your progress wouldn’t carry over to the other options.
Logisitically difficult, perhaps, with challenges and such, but that’s how I’d do it, anyway.