I’ve done it five times and have decided that collecting all my weapons over and over isn’t a mechanic I enjoy. I don’t care much about the increase in Merces or the experience since I’ve already maxed out my mastery level and there’s no other safehouse perks to get other than the little ticker on the prestige trophy. There aren’t even any unlocks for prestige and the only reward is experience, faster leveling, and knowing that the game is complete. I like the mode and I like the gameplay, but prestige, for me, is pointless.
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I’ve done it five times, as well. Planing on doing it till level 10. But with no rush at all. I am already at Mastery 100 in Freelancer. Eventually I will catch up with everything. Still missing a few challenges in Freelancer and a lot ot the featured contracts. So there’s plenty of stuff to do in Hitman. I do like the fresh starts after a new prestige-level. But it’s kind of annoying to buy all those dlc-weapons. Maybe I will turn this off in the future.
I’ve only prestiged once and I’ve currently got no plans to do it again at the moment. I like playing Freelancer knowing I’ve got all my weapons available when I need them. Very much like you, I’m mastery 100/100 and I’ve unlocked everything available in 47’s Safehouse, so there’s currently no benefit for me to prestige again at the moment, unless you consider the maxed out prestige challenge, but I’m not too bothered about that at the moment. The only way I’d look at aiming for this as if IOI released a challenge and the end result was unlocking a cool suit for 47, very much like the Black Bruiser suit.
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Maybe they could make playing the game fully offline an unlock if you reach maximum Prestige (Level 100) to make people care more about Prestige. 
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Psh, that’s a grind I’m not sure even I’m up for.
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Whoa! Hold it PatrickMcColloch…
Wait… it’s just thrison? AHH the infection is spreading!
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Have you ever heard of a “Harbinger Customer” ?
Patrick is the game design and gameplay mechanics edition.
I initially didn’t like the concept of prestige much, but I think I’ll probably keep resetting prestige after I reach 10. It turns out I don’t need much to play Freelancer efficiently - a silenced pistol, SMG and sniper are usually enough, and they’re not particularly hard to come by - and needing to collect weapons again makes merces more relevant than simply having millions of useless currency available.
Aside from that, my latest runs made me appreciate Espionage syndicates a lot. I used to dismiss them as high risk, low reward but if you take SA out of the equation, they’re actually a very different and interesting way to approach Hitman objective-based puzzles - like “you can kill half the level, as long as you do that SONKO without opening any doors”. That wouldn’t really work in contracts mode, but Freelancer allows for that kind of gameplay.
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I’ll use it to complete a lot of the challenges that would ruin perfect runs and entire campaigns, since I’ll already have all my stuff and my Mercers gone anyway. Then, once all challenges are complete except the few prestige levels I need, and the kill x-amount of targets ones, that’ll take care of itself in time, I’ll use prestige and roll back all my safehouse decorations to the default setting as if I’m starting it over again, but now without the burden of having to grind to unlock. After that, anytime I imagine I’m starting Freelancer for the first time, I’ll just roll back the decoration but keep all my stuff, so I can go into the campaigns fully prepared from the get-go. Because while not impossible, completing all objectives in, say, an Arms Trafficking contract when you don’t have any silenced weapons, is bitching difficult.
Actually I find that targeting isolated guards is the best way to go for these objectives, whether your weapons are silenced or not. The guards in the outposts in NY / Miami, or the 3 enforcers near the hippo in Santa Fortuna, are perfect targets for this, you can just grab an unsilenced shotgun / assault rifle, whack them, shoot them and gtfo before anyone can understand what’s going on.
That’s all fine and dandy in locations like that, sure. I’m on my second mission in my first contract after prestige where all I have are u silenced weapons and I have three objectives that all require me to kill guards with different guns… in Bangkok. Not only hard to do that far enough away that nobody hears, it’s hard to do it nine times and have a place nearby to hide the body before investigators arrive to the scene. I’ll figure it out, but last night, it had me quite frustrated.
You don’t have to hide the bodies. In Bangkok I’d go for the groups of two guards in the basement, the balcony, or Morgan’s suite, you can leave or hide from there quite easily. The only hard part would be to bring the weapons, as I don’t remember any shotguns, assault rifles or SMGs in Bangkok unless the weapons in the guard outpost are still there in Freelancer (in which case you’d only need to wait for someone to go in there and follow them with a guard disguise to grab those weapons).
I do if I want to maximize my XP by avoiding bodies being found and dropping my rating even further. It’s already taking a beating by killing non-targets and alerting people with the sounds of gunshots, even if there’s no Mercers deduction as a penalty. I have to find the right balance between maximizing my Mercers and maximizing my XP. Whole reason why I tried prestige at this point in the first place.
I’ve not seen that to be a thing in Freelancer.
Max XP gain seems to come from getting a full clear on all your objectives as it will the pay out an XP bonus.
Only way I can see bodies being found making a difference is if you literally have an objective that requires no bodies found, in which case, failing it would prevent you obtaining the bonus.
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I’ve noticed drop in ranking when it happens.
Mission Ranking has no effect on XP though.
Are you sure, because I swear I’ve seen on multiple occasions a lower total XP score that coincided with a lower ranking, and when I avoided the XP loss in a repeat situation, I got the higher ranking with it.
Yip. Only things that grant XP in Freelancer are:
- Syndicate Member/Leader Eliminated
- Assassin/Lookout Down
- Courier Intercepted
- Safe Cracked
- Crate Searched
- Objective Completed
- Prestige Objective Completed
- Perfect Run Bonus
- Prestige Bonus
I think that’s almost all of them. Might be missing one or two.
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There’s the Hardcore Showdown Bonus of 3000(?) XP too
There’s also the 1000-4000 XP that comes from beating each of the challenges
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If you want to maximize both my advice would be to get to prestige 5 ASAP, since each of the first 5 prestige levels will give a bonus to both XP and Merces which will trigger all the time from then.
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