I think that Sloth (and to an extent Envy) were experiments that they decided didn’t work as well as they’d hoped. The energy component of Sloth is nowhere in Freelancer that I saw during the Closed Technical Test. The couriers may be the only analog as others have said.
Envy I initially thought was going to the assassins and lookouts but I don’t see the direct connection there. Maybe they tried to have a rival assassin gunning for your targets but couldn’t make it work with the randomized targets.
That’s an interestomg connection. I connected couriers with either Gluttony that had the optional objective of eliminating more targets than necessary. Or Greed, which was literally 3 stages of 47 mugging random people for cash.
More like it was testing if people would go to extreme lengths to fulfill the objectives being given to them in order to get the highest possible payment… like what we’ll be getting. I only played it through once, but I know I wanted to get all the coins, so I went to horrendous, painful lengths to avoid getting weapons from the frog by using my coins.
The Suspect exploit is a welcome change. That’s if they don’t bring this fix to Elusive Targets anyway - I need to tell The Politician and The Twin apart in some way
I avoided playing the closed test due to spoilers so I’m not familiar with some of the changes here but it looks great. They’re really good at building hype
You can’t use it on The Twin anyway. You instantly fail if you KO the wrong brother, so you wouldn’t even be able to get close to getting the body to a container to check.
If there is some kind of special mission at the Safehouse - which I am sure there will be, perhaps on reaching a Mastery milestone etc - then I don’t mind if it’s a Wrath-y (which I famously hated) Defend Yourself kinda deal as long as there is no Wrath-like de facto time limit where you have to prevent enemies doing something (other than simply killing you). Let me go at my own pace and I’m happy.
My ideal Safehouse mission would be a Redemption At Gontranno-ish affair though where we returned back to the Safehouse to find it already occupied by enemies who don’t know you’re there yet and then you could sneak down to the basement, retrieve your weapons and go all Danny De Vito blasting on them. Fingers crossed.
Eh, that sounds too generic. Rather than an invasion, I’d prefer an intruder; a single enemy, ready to gun you down if you make the wrong move, and you must outsmart and outmaneuver. A true showdown, where you never know for sure if you’re the hunter or the prey.
Someone made a suggestion a while ago about using a wrath-like mission to avoid losing everything if you fail a showdown.
Fail a showdown and be given an option to defend your safe house or not. If you choose not, then play continues as normal - lose half your Merces, all your tools, and start over.
If you choose to defend though, you get a shot. If you can kill off the intruders, then you don’t lose your money or tools and you can continue with the next campaign.
I liked the idea but (as of this week at least) no sign of anything like that being implemented. There are multiple ways to get around the safe house (ladder and stairs out of the basement, stairs and outside ramp to get from 1st to 2nd floors, etc.) so it could work as a home defense type of thing. Optional would be great, if they decided to implement it.
Obviously it would probably need to be available only once you achieve a certain mastery so all the various rooms and levels are unlocked though.
We added a small Merces punishment for killing innocent civilian NPCs. A big fun factor in Freelancer is that it loosens up the stances on preferred gameplay styles that the main game has cultivated and lets players try more aggressive play styles, for example, without punishing or pointing fingers at alternative approaches. We didn’t want to change this, but still wanted to have the game mechanics encourage killing targets over civilians.
I wonder if this means that there may be an objective when doing a mission because in my opinion, it would sound fair if there were a “No Civilian Casualties” objective when doing one but I’m gonna have to get my Merces from a civilian Courier at some point but I will also have to kill any civilian in my way so if there was a “No Civilian Casualties” objective, then it won’t be a big deal imo
There are far too many messages about a possible “Safehouse Raid” mechanic in Freelancer to reply to just one message, so here’s my two pence on the whole thing.
The idea is cool, I’ll admit it, but I don’t like the idea of a Safehouse location being compromised and even if all attackers are eliminated someone somewhere will still know the location so he (47) would have to move location.
There is a navmesh for the map, which is quite cool. Although it does not extend to the basement, in the March version it does but that’s because the wine cooler that drops down has no collisions in that build due to a bug. So the entire map isn’t covered (in it’s current state), so they could only invade the outside and main house.
While this is a big enough area, you can just run into the basement and stay there for an indefinite amount of time regenerating health, gathering more weapons, etc. Even if there is a time limit (how would this be implemented? i.e. in Wrath you had to stop them from getting to 47’s body), you could still be clear from NPCs.
The only reason the map has a navmesh is because at one point it had NPCs for testing.
The security cameras down there aren’t real they’re just static images made to look like it’s a moving camera.
Not necessarily. If the one(s) invading the safehouse are literally the entire outfit who found out about it and are eliminated, then there’s no one else.
Besides, in the real world, such an isolated yet upscale location would never be practical for a safehouse; eventually someone would be noticing plane arrivals to the area where targets were killed originating from a particular region, would scope out the airports in that region for any recurring travelers or vehicles being parked there regularly, do some background searches/follow them, and realize that a few days before every confirmed kill, this black car in wherever the safehouse is; lets say Romania for now to go with my theory, this car that goes to one of the country’s airports near the time of the killing always ends up traveling down this one particular road back into the deep woods. Hmmm, let’s see what’s back there. Or, let’s see what images that spy satellite I know how to hack into can tell me.
The point of a safehouse is that you’re only supposed to stay there temporarily, then get on the move again, which was what ICA encouraged its agents to do, and to not make said safehouse a big ostentatious mansion, but someplace small and not noticeable. That apartment that we automatically have a key to in Sapienza during World of Tomorrow; that is a practical safehouse. What 47 is living in in Freelancer isn’t a “safehouse”; it’s just his house. He’s bound to get found out sooner or later by staying there indefinitely.
Well that’s going to be unlikely. If we go off the “fail a showdown and get raided” premise, the syndicate leader (you failed to eliminate) would know who you are, it’s unlikely they’d go on a raid after surviving an attempted assassination.
And about your entire travel paragraph, I think it’s quite well established 47 knows how to move around without being detected, like at all. Hell, there’s even multiple cars, helicopters, and even boats at the Safehouse.
All of which can be traced, particularly considering Diana’s Freelancer strategy of tracking movements and profiles of suspected syndicate members online and through various security surveillance systems. Stands to reason, if she could do that, other tech-savy groups, even government agencies, could learn the pattern of what to look for as to who was traveling when and where before and after a syndicate death. 47 had the luxury of the ICA behind him to help when he did single, high-profile hits, considering they helped find the main targets for him, keeping the operations small, and being able to bribe witnesses, dispose of evidence, scrap escape vehicles, etc… Now that 47 has to kill off numerous gang members just to get close to the leader every time, and must arrange his own travel and procure his own equipment for each one, that’s gonna increase his overall activity and travel footprint, much more so than he’s used to, and ina world that’s even more tech-reliant for such things than when he first started twenty years ago.
Not saying any of this will come into play, obviously; Hitman has gotten away with far more ridiculous things. But if IOI chose to have a safehouse defense event, that both involved finding out where 47 stays and making sure everyone who knows is involved to be wiped out, the justification for both is present to draw upon to make it happen.
Like I said, I’d prefer a single, well armed, well trained opponent in a seek and destroy type of showdown, instead of a Wrath-esque shootout.
Eh… Just keep it negative. I thought about the “trick” there used to be(?) for the Sniper Missions where people would kill all the innocents/non-targets, get their score so far into negative that it went back to positive… Or however that worked.
But really… The whole “going into negative Merces” thing was just an extra heavy penalty for going on shooting rampages… in order to just FF to the showdown. If one got to 0:M: - what incentive to NOT kill more would there be?
Edit: Maybe start removing gear? Once you get to an amount you’ll need to select an item (or more) of gear to sell to get back to 0. You won’t be able to continue until you sell off the item/s.
Edit2: 47 so much in debt - he’s in the wardrobe looking in the mirror wearing a suit made from a potato sack.
The more I think of it, the more I like the permanent tool addition. Especially if it means that there will be, like, two lockpicks. One in the crate, one on the wall.
Because here is how I think it will be the most useful : not as a permanent part of the loadout (as other said, you still lose it if you have it on you as you die), but as a safety net, for emergency only.
You would use it after loosing a campaign, until you find the crate one back. It will then go back to safety, and the crate one will be the main one.
I’m also still curious about the Coin slot in the crates.
The less like Wrath the better IMO.
I thought about the “trick” there used to be(?) for the Sniper Missions where people would kill all the innocents/non-targets, get their score so far into negative that it went back to positive… Or however that worked. 
