Also, a lot of the “feeling of annoyance” is that the mode just takes too long. The more time you invest in something, the more you want to get out of it, and if you’re put back to square one under circumstances the player deems unfair, or even if they accept they were the issue, after 10 - 15 hours, it’s gonna demotivate people from trying again as they don’t want to waste the time in trying. Hell, i’ve felt like that a few times now.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating; Rogue Likes tend not to be very long for this very reason. I said this during my CTT Video and on the forums; the less time spent in a level, the better, not the reverse. You risk alienating and demotivating your userbase otherwise to the point only die-hard masochists play it, and we’re definitely seeing this effect.
I failed a Showdown in Whittleton Creek because of a Lookout but in place of trying to do anything too risky and since target was at the exit anyway, better to just retreat through one of the sewers. That way didn’t lose any of my weapons so wasn’t too bad to just buy again all the tools!
I’ve weirdly just noticed that the pre-order weapons (Black Trinity etc) don’t have a silhouette on the weapon wall I was that fixated on trying to unlock the outside area to the Safehouse when I first started playing Freelancer I didn’t have a full look into everything.
I wonder if those who have the pre-order weapons will ever be able to use them in Freelancer?
Just food for thought, any additional weapon or tool unlocks for Freelancer would need additional space on the walls or toolboxes added. The way they are now, there’s just not really any room for extra stuff. They would have to provide a different version of the safe house map I’d think.
Failing a campaign on its own isnt a big deal to me but the idiotic consequences are a thorn in my side. The campaign concept is nonsensical. The player must complete a total of 18 missions of which are 4 showdowns. Must one fail a showdown you have to start from scratch and all your hours of gameplay are thrown down the gutter. Why not make a campaign 6 missions long (5 missions, 1 showdown) and lower the reward to 10k merces? In this case I’ve spent days getting to a point only for it all to mean nothing, and start over at a way too easy beginning. Its unmotivating.
Second, why on earth remove all the gear from the safehouse?! It was said before release that all weapons and items brought into the field will be lost once forgotten or in case of death. So when I die, does Diana drive to the safehouse to take my “toys” away as punishment for my failure? Like a little kid? Three cases full of gathered items gone because of one setback. Absolute madness.
I grew up playing Nintendo games that were harder than they had any right to be. When I’m not playing Hitman, I’m usually playing fighting games, which as a genre are far and away more difficult than any other genre of video game. I know about failure. Even still, I’ve very nearly broken furniture over some losses in Freelancer (and yes, I’ve beaten a campaign on Hardcore and completed 5 campaigns overall).
There’s a problem inherent with the design of freelancer that makes it much more frustrating than any video game should be: it combines dozens of hours of extremely careful high-tension gameplay with instantaneous failure that voids all progress. It’s like building a house of cards, and not just one with a single pack but a card house that takes literal days or weeks of your time. It’s not particularly hard per se. It’s tedious and when it flops on itself it can be extremely frustrating, and not in a healthy and fun way but in the “people with high blood pressure should not play this game” kind of way.
In alerted territories and final showdowns, if you fail you lose half your mercers (OK), the weapons and gear you bring on the missions (understood), and your entire toolkit. The last one baffles me because it is in the safe house with all your weapons, but somehow it’s gone. I don’t get it. Did someone break in and only steal your toolkit? If so, the safehouse isn’t so safe after all. I feel anything in the safehouse should stay there since it’s supposed to be impenetrable.
That’s true, there are, like a section that’s perfect for two more cases on the right side of the firearms, however the way the Firearms wall is set up is so that you can access them from both sides, for the Shooting Range.
Adding even more would make this layout tricky if they want to stick to its convenience.
I read that already, but it makes no sense. If you can keep what is on the wall, why not the tool kit as well? It is also in the safe house. Look, I know that it will probably not be changed, but it’s been a head-scratcher for me since the CTT.
It’s all for balance and to make you experiement with tools you’ll re-acquire rather than rely on ones that you normally use.
It makes it so that you don’t always start with an edge on your campaign by having multiple tasers for water kills or poisons for easy public kills.
If you had your Sieker from the very start of the campaign, and you use it a lot, you’d only ever use that weapon, and never bring it to campaign-failing missions, if it would stay even after a failure.
The only explanation I could think of was that in the fiction of the game, 47 takes his suitcase full of tools with him but only uses the ones that you select before hand. If he gets injured on a mission he loses the toolboxes because they are portable and he has them in the trunk of his car or something like that.
That may not be the literal reason, but at least it could make some degree of sense.
I was that fixated on trying to unlock the outside area to the Safehouse when I first started playing Freelancer I didn’t have a full look into everything.