Freelancer - Pre-Release Discussion

Hitman: World of Assassination Freelancer
2895

Ok, I know I spent the last weak complaining about the conflicting kill objectives that Freelancer is going to throw our way under the current setup, but after watching another CTT playthrough, something occurred to me that can help mitigate this issue a little bit. It doesn’t solve the problem entirely, but it can help keep it from becoming too much of a problem until, hopefully, IOI has the sense to fix the issue completely.

When a contract is selected and you’ve been given access to the maps contained in that contract, highlighting one shows you the setup of that map: how many targets, couriers, safes, and what the objectives are going to be. Since the game does not know which map you’re going to choose last for the showdown, not all of these setups will stick. If, for example, you select Mumbai when you first select the contract, it may show that there are two targets. And as has been explained to me elsewhere, once you pick the contract and the setups are generated, they won’t change unless you abort the campaign. So if Mumbai says it has two targets when you first select the contract, but don’t play that map first, it should still show two targets when you finish your first map and start choosing the next one again.

Here’s where the means of getting around the conflicting kill objectives can come into play. If you choose Mumbai last in this example, it won’t have the two targets anymore; it’ll now have only the Leader as the target and the number of suspects is shown. Now, if the objectives originally listed don’t change just because the target count now has, then we will have some measure of control over conflicting kill objectives appearing where we don’t want it to. If Mumbai initially shows two targets and shows two different kill objectives, then the best thing to do would be to not select Mumbai last. You would want to play Mumbai before the showdown so that you have two targets to complete both kill objectives on, assuming you have the means to do so.

This method is dependent on several things being part of the mode on its release: 1) that like in the CTT the objectives for the maps are randomly generated once you pick a contract and do not change unless you abort; 2) that the objectives also do not change when that last map becomes a showdown map; and 3) it will only work if conflicting kill objectives appear on a map with more than one target. The chances of having multi-target maps increases the further you go in the campaign, making this method easier to implement so long as conflicting kill objectives aren’t popping up as often in the earlier contracts that have more single-target maps.

A lot of maybes and ifs in there, but if true, this can help mitigate the conflicting objectives issue for kill conditions so that they become a problem less often; when available to do so, we simply avoid selecting the maps they appear on as showdown maps whenever they appear on multi-target maps. It’s still down to luck when those objectives are generated, but this does give us a little bit more control over them, if items 1 and 2 are still present in the final release.

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2896

That’s exactly what I wanted to ask and you perfectly answered it for me. Thanks!

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2897

The way I see it is, the client will only pay if THEIR objectives are met. Diana isn’t paying 47 any type of salary here, It’s all contract made money, so if the client doesn’t get what they want (having their objectives met), they don’t pay at all. And that makes total sense to me why there isn’t and shouldn’t be a base pay.

It’s like hiring a contractor to renovate your house. You tell them to install something specific but they don’t listen and install something you never wanted, would you pay them for not listening to your request even though they still installed something?

That’s the logic I get from ioi from not having a base pay.

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2898

Wouldn’t it make sense that the client pays an amount for the target being killed at all, and bonus amounts being paid when done a particular way, like contracts past?

And the clients are paying Diana, and she’s wiring the funds to 47.

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2900

Your meme isn’t funny. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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2901

The analogy is false. In this case, installing the thing is doing the hit, but the complication would be installing it while wearing a specific hat or installing it without using a plumber’s wrench or something like that. The thing still gets installed regardless.

I’m not arguing the point of whether the base pay should or shouldn’t be a thing, just the specific analogy you chose.

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2902

Wrong. The hit is the act of doing the job regardless. So on that, let’s say it’s a stainless steel sink you want but the contractor installs a brass sink. You gonna pay him? I doubt it, regardless if a sink was still installed. It wasn’t what you requested.

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2903

Nah, I gotta agree with @schatenjager on this. Even in that example, of the wrong kind of sink being installed, the Hitman equivalent would be if the client said to kill the lady in the red shoes and you kill the lady in the black shoes. The objectives in Freelancer not being completed, and therefore not resulting in pay, is like if 47 killed the right target with a kitchen knife when the client asked for a butterfly knife. The target is still dead, the effort was still made, the specification of the tool just wasn’t able to be done, like if they install the correct sink with a monkey wrench instead of a crescent wrench. Maybe don’t get paid as much, but are you really gonna stiff the bill on the person who just killed someone and at your request?

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2904

It doesn’t matter, tho. It comes down to “I’m the client and I want this guy dead with a slit throat otherwise I’m not paying you a cent”. If Diana/47 agree, which they do cuz they are taking the contract, they don’t get paid if it isn’t fulfilled exactly how the client requested.

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2905

Hitman: Enter a World of Entitled Jerks.

I also agree that the hit itself should still be rewarded, even with a minor 2-3M.

Otherwise, why the heck can we leave the level without completing objectives? I think the penalty of turning all territories Alerted, giving you a strike 1, and not getting any money is good enough.

Completing a hit yet failing all of the special objectives, just to come back with no money and less items (consumables) is just mean

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2906

Special kill conditions are arranged as bonuses, not the requirement for pay in the first place. Otherwise they would not be “optional” objectives.

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2907

lol money talks, apparently. That’s what the objectives do. It makes clients… entitled. But that’s not technically entitlement when they are the paying customer. And again, those objectives are there BEFORE 47 accepts them. So “a contract is a contract.”

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2908

Honestly I didn’t pay much attention to lore cohesion of optional objectives since I assumed those are just there for gameplay’s sake. Especially with ones like the prestige objectives requiring a X action every Y seconds. IOI just wanted another layer of randomisation to the mode.

Though I still had a headcanon of main contract payouts being regular cash that gets silently spent off-screen on mundane things like travel costs, house bills and 47’s suit collection that needs regular restocking as he constantly leaves them behind. Meanwhile Merces are this untraceable spooky currency of criminal underworld that for some reason is used as a tip and can be used for more illegal stuff like guns and other tools in-game.

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2909

Presumably in case when the target turns out be very risky and the player wanted to preserve Merces or any rare weapon they were carrying instead of possibly losing it in a failed hit. Or if the situation gets real bad with guards all over the place getting alerted.

The only time I recall it being used in CTT gameplays I watched was in Showdowns after mission was failed due to target escaping.

2910

In a sense, if we are to assume that any complications/objectives that are present in any mission are there because some client demands them, then a lot of 47’s clients are just really petty and entitled seems like a pretty good word for them.

Look at some of the complications we’ve gotten:

  • Wear a particular outfit or don’t change outfits - as if a dead target is going to care the they were shot by a clown or a plumber - matters only to client.
  • Use a particular weapon or type of kill - again, the target isn’t even going to know how they were killed, most likely. It’s obviously better for 47 to kill via an accidental method but drowning versus electrocution matters solely to the client.
  • Timers - who but the client would ever care about how long it took? While there may be some reasons like a target only being in a specific place for a limited time, it should be up to 47 to deal with that, not some arbitrary clock - this matters only to the client.

Only complications like no bodies, no illegal actions spotted, targets only, or no pacification are non-client because they are just solid fundamentals for a hit man.

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2911

Also, just looking at the fact that these are optional objectives. Are clients just telling potential hitmen out there who see the open contract that they want them to kill the targets and there’s no money in that, just do it, but if you can do it this particular way, then I’ll pay you money for it?

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2912

Yeah, it just doesn’t make sense that the actual target hit would be done for free and that we get paid only by jumping through hoops. Hits aren’t free.

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2913

And I get that IOI is doing that as a gameplay mechanic, but really, they couldn’t have done it in a way that made sense? You know what? Remove the optional objectives altogether! My enthusiasm for Freelancer has gone way down since I learned they were there. Or better yet: make them a feature of the Freelancer hard mode, whatever its actual name is. In regular mode, kill the targets in whatever way you want, no restrictions, you earn the payout for success; in the hard mode, in additional to everything else that increases in difficulty, you now have the optional objectives if you want to be paid. That would be more sensible.

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2914

I think I only tried it once, but I didn’t pay attention to the money. Does it really not take away any money if you exit the level manually?

I was getting a bug the entire test whenever I signed off the game and logged on, taking away half my cash, I could barely keep track of how much I should have at any normal moment…

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2915

So, Freelancer being about a week away, I’m just gonna preemptively state something that is perhaps unpopular. It is reasonable if IO wants to make money off of this. If there is an option to paying for extra, that is fine with me. They are a company, and they need to make money off their work. But let’s see what happens. I just could imagine Freelancer launching with a blogpost about about a DLC option (extra items, a hardcore mode, etc., like from prompts people noticed in the CCT).

We’ll see if next week is all backlash mode or flowers and love. DLC like that should be taken in the light of: 1: We’re getting the mode for free 2: H1 and H2 to all H3 owners for free. Entitlement… pisses me off.

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Freelancer - General Discussion