Can’t wait for IOI to remove objectives from Freelancer as a way to deal with this then :x
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There’s a whole lot of assault rifles and melee items that won’t be seeing any mileage; they can toss those out.
Nah I meant “remove all objectives” (since it’s the easiest way to deal with the problem). Besides I don’t see how removing specific weapon objectives will achieve anything apart from allowing for less creativity, as players would just use handguns or snipers all the time instead.
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In that case, you’d better check if it means Lethal Poison or Any Poison.
I think I recall all objectives of that type are specifically related to kills, not miscellaneous actions. (They really should change the wording on those from ‘Poison Target/Guards’ to ‘Poison Kill - Target/Guards’
I remember missing quite a bit that I hadn’t completed those poison objectives since I assumed it meant any poison…
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I distinctly remember poisoning someone with emetic poison and it counting for that. The only objectives that will be a problem (in the way that @Heisenberg is referring to) are the ones that are specifically for killing like “Shotgun Kill” paired with “Sniper Rifle Kill” or something like that. It’s not all the time, and not every mission, but his view is that even one example is unacceptable.
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Then you are not understanding the problem. Having two objectives on the same mission with a single target, and each objective specifies killing the target with a different weapon is not encouraging “creativity”; it’s putting players in a position where no matter what they do, they will officially fail an objective during that mission. Period.
Now, for those who don’t care about the objectives either way, and will kill the target however they want and not fulfill either objective, they aren’t affected either way, because they don’t care in the first place. But for players who like to actually achieve full success when playing a game that has specifications, these scenarios are impossible, and therefore unfair. There’s no creativity involved at all in following an objective that specifies a certain kill anyway, so how would it limit creativity in simply making sure there aren’t two at the same time during a play?
Yes, those two scenarios would count. Unless the objective specifies the type of poison, then any poison will work and count as a completed objective, and then you can kill the target in the manner stated in the other objective. And for the shotgun method, so long as there is not an objective that says not to subdue anyone, that would also work.
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Ah. Maybe it was an emetic poison-specific challenge?
I remember coming across a Poison objective, then either sedating or emeticing someone, then killing them, but only found out after in the menu that the full description said “poison kill” or something to that effect.
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One of the more common complaints was the poor wording of the objectives. It was very unclear in several cases just what the objective actually was without looking at the more detailed “Y button” text.
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That’s the whole point - that they’re impossible. It is entirely possible in Freelancer to get two objectives for the same mission that cannot both be accomplished. It’s not every time, and it’s known (and advertised) by IOI. It’s a thing that exists.
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I actually understand it pretty well, you don’t want conflicting objectives, but weapon specific objectives are completely unrelated. Removing the weapon specific objectives won’t solve the problem of conflicting objectives, at best it will lessen it by making the objectives pool smaller but that’s about it. The root of the problem will still be there, you could still get stuff like “accident kill” and “poison kill” in a single target mission.
I’m sure all the weapon collecting and loud guns contract creators will be glad to know their contracts aren’t creative lol. If there are less different objectives some will repeat more often, players will just use the weapons they prefer to use all the time, and Freelancer will become stale pretty quick.
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I find that “limiting creativity” is the worst reasoning of all. I am probably as rigid in the way that I play as Heisenberg is in his, but in a completely different way.
Tell me I can’t change outfits? You better believe I’m doing it at least once out of principle.
Tell me I MUST use a specific weapon? I’m going to use every weapon but that one.
Tell me I have to kill the target wearing a specific outfit? That will be the only outfit on the map I never put on.
People get what they want out of this, and every, game. Some players will use creative ways of getting to and killing the target and some won’t, regardless of objectives, complications, or ranks. Forcing a player to be creative is exactly as bad as just telling them how to do something.
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Personally it’s more or less that I like to figure out a puzzle or a weird situation, like “ok how am I supposed to kill that guy with a loud shotgun as a chef without KOing anyone” or “wow I didn’t know you could kill that target this way”. Anyway, objectives are optional in Freelancer, which means it should accomodate most playstyles even if you don’t want to follow them 
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Clearly not, because I have not been talking about weapon-specific objectives in-and-of themselves, only those that overlap.
And this is what I’ve been talking about. I only used ones with weapons as the chief example; I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I do not want two objectives that require killing the target a certain way at the same time. Any way: weapon, poison, accident, it doesn’t matter. There should never be two on a one-target mission.
This is disingenuous. The creativity of a created contract involves far more than whether or not a specific weapon is made to be used, and you know that. Maybe not creative in terms of kill method, but there’s more than that. Here’s the thing though; those contracts don’t force you to fail an objective by specifying two weapons to use on one target. And even if they did, nobody makes you play an individual contract. Once you start a Freelancer campaign and the objectives are randomly assigned to the maps, you’re now committed to doing them, unless you wish to risk losing some of your progress by aborting. Not at all like creating a contract and requiring a specific weapon.
This is a very short-sighted view. Freelancer is designed to “stay fresh” by never making the same experience twice. Long after players have unlocked full mastery in the safehouse and have all items in the collection and all weapons and tools on the wall, Freelancer will still be a new experience each time, because as I told @Austin_47 yesterday, Ben if you pick the same contract again, you can increase the number of missions in it by selecting it at a different point during the campaign; but Ben if you pick it in the same spot as last time, it’s not gonna always give you the same maps as last time; and even if it does, you don’t have to play them in the same order as lasts time; and even if you choose to do that, it’s not gonna generate the same targets or appearance for the Leader, so your experience with just one contract will be unpredictable each time. Now add in the sheer number of contracts and their accompanying tasks. Freelancer will be fresh off that alone for a long time, IOI is banking on. Making it so two different kill objectives on a single-target map don’t appear at the same time will not affect that.
Isn’t it true that this problem only exists if you feel like you have to complete all the objectives?
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The payouts are per-objective basis. So while you cannot get all 3 side objectives and have to make compromises, fulfilling one of the kill conditions is still going to give Merces. And then there are also payouts from couriers, safes and prestige objectives.
You can steal shotguns from guards like in normal missions. And I’m pretty sure you can even take one home and bring it on next assignments as long as you don’t lose it.
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You can take any weapon with a rarity assigned back to the safe house and add it to your collection. If a weapon does not have a rarity, you cannot take it back. I don’t recall which weapons were rare and which weren’t, but at least some were not transferable back to the safe house.
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Speaking of it, I really wish there was a way of sending weapons back to the safehouse, perhaps by paying a Merces fee. Many times there’s people selling cool items but I can’t bring them back with me because they’re large items that cannot be put away in your inventory and i dont want to ditch the sniper I came to the level with, for example.
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My “solution” for this was “exit as guard, with the weapon you bought on your back and the sniper in the briefcase that came with the bought weapon”. Although obviously you can only do that with one weapon at a time.
Or, if you simply don’t like failing an objective. If the objectives were purely optional in a manner that had absolutely no negative effect (didn’t prevent you from collecting M, didn’t officially show the objective as “Failed” when not performed), then there’d be no issue and we’d proceed as we wish. Hell, I would have been fine if there were no objectives at all except to kill the target, with no specifications. I thought that’s what we were going to be getting. Freelancer’s endless randomization would keep it fun enough that we’d never need to spice it up with complications like ETA. But as long as we’re gonna have them, let’s make it so that you’re not given a notice of failure that’s beyond your control.
Like in Blood Money. You could put a weapon in a stash box and never touch it again during that mission, and you’d have it in your inventory at the hideout after you left. That would be nice.
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I don’t look at it as failing an objective at all. I look at the same way I look at stock market investing.
If I invest 10 dollars in the market and my stocks do great and my initial 10 dollar investment balloons to 20, do I have 20 dollars now? I’d argue no, I don’t. If I sell those stocks I will have 20 dollars but until I do, that money is not “mine”.
If that 20 dollars worth of stocks now drops to 5 dollars, did I “lose” 5 (from my initial 10 dollar investment) or did I lose 15? I look at it as losing 5.
These objectives in Freelancer are the same thing to me. The mission doesn’t start (for me) with me having 60 and then detracting for every “failed” objective. It starts with zero and I earn Merces for completing objectives. If I complete 1, 2, 3 or 4 I get whatever the associated value is, but I never lose Merces since I didn’t have it to begin with.
I didn’t “Fail” an objective… I simply didn’t complete it because i never even attempted it. That may be a negligible difference, but it’s enough of one to make this whole thing not a big deal (or really any deal at all) to me.
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