I wonder if Freelancer will be releasing in April…
So back in January, a number of ET Arcade contracts were found in the game ready to be activated. When the next batch are activated next week, there will be none left in the game awaiting activation. So if they’re going to be releasing new Arcade Contracts in April, they’re going to have to release a patch to add them in (otherwise the April Roadmap would just be ETs and FCs). IO have been spacing out the patches recently so it stands to reason that we likely wouldn’t see a patch for both April and May if they stick to the current patch cycle that seems to be establishing.
So it seems that we’re either going to get a somewhat boring roadmap for April, or its going to have Freelancer on it since I doubt they’d do a patch just to add in content for the April Roadmap. Nor would they add Freelancer and sit on it for a long time since the dataminers would have a field day
What little they have shown of Freelancer seems promising. It appears to be the best of the 7 Deadly Sins stuff wrapped into free-form missions. The best of the 7 Deadly Sins was the Lust, Wrath, and Envy content and this seems to be taking from that in a good way.
If you’ve only played Sloth, I recommend either Lust or Envy as a better option.
7DS was really only disappointing in any capacity because they were escalations dressed up as something more rather than actual new content, either as a new mode or new storyline entries. IO tried to make it a bit more interesting by making them essentially canon and by making them visually impressive, and in that I’d say they succeeded. But had they each been actual missions that took place in 47’s head, just as the regular missions, and possibly on new maps, they’d have been more successful.
I consider 7DS worth paying for, albeit barely, because they were at least a genuine attempt at something new. While Arcade mode falls a bit short, and 7DS kinda heaves itself by, Freelancer looks more like a genuine delivery of new content, and I would not be surprised if all other new content up to this point was merely to hold us over. If so, then they’ve put a lot of effort into this, and requiring payment for it would be acceptable to me.
I especially like that this gives us another campaign area of the game altogether. You have the three main games, then Bonus Missions/Special Assignments, then Patient Zero, then the Sniper missions, then 7DS, and now we’ll have Freelancer. Escalations, Contracts and Elusive Targets/Arcade Mode as bonuses.
So…it’s new content but not really? We’re making a distinction without much of a difference here. They changed the maps, they added new assets to the game, created new weapons, and even created new mechanics. They’re escalations that do have new content.
I mean, yeah, but that isn’t really the focus here. Them being in his head is more of a framing device.
You have no way of knowing that. Hell, from past experience, I’d argue that then they would’ve suffered the same issue as Special Assignments, which were basically big-budget Elusive Targets that had very little replayablilty due to how confined they were. The entire point of these escalations is to get increasingly harder with more complications and the like. They were designed around the format, not the reverse. They didn’t do well because of the perception that Escalations are bad and the very bad reception Greed got, it wasn’t because of the gameplay overall.
Once the later 7DS’s released, more people warmed up to them and realised that these were no ordinary Escalations, and started to realise “oh wait, these are actually different!”.
That seems unlikely. I don’t think Freelancer was in development since the start of H3, and certainly not during most of Year 1. IOI, and most other companies, take a “let’s see how this works out and adjust accordingly” approach to game development. That’s why the later 7DS’s were very different the earlier ones.
As was ETA and 7DS? Just because it has more new stuff doesn’t mean it’s any more or less genuine. New content by remixing the old stuff is still new content. Hell, Freelancer seems to be doing that too, but with newer mechanics and a customisable safehouse stolen from Payday 2.
I think that some players will always take a position that escalations are simply not good content, no matter what. The basis of escalation is repetition, on existing platforms and that isn’t what some players want to do. The early escalations were frustrating at time, boring at times, and ridiculous at times. Did they make players do things they might not have normally done? Sure, but that wasn’t what some players wanted.
The fact that IOI doubled down on the escalations as being the de facto game play mode made things even worse I think. If 7 Deadly Sins was free, people would still complain that they were “just escalations”, even with the new content that they provided.
Yup. It’s new stuff, in mostly the same packaging, so to speak. Full-fledged new content, from my point of view, would be a new mode (Freelancer) or new maps (“Rocky”)
Still canon. If someone wants to play the entire WoA story, they’ll have to include these if they want it to be technically complete.
Sure I do. If they had been actual missions, like brand new targets in brand new maps, or even just on fully reworked maps like the Bonus Missions (not the barely altered Special Assignments), I guarantee you they’d have had more positive feedback.
How complex Freelancer seems like it’s gonna be, and the fact that they’re still working on it at the time it was announced months ago, and hinted at at least a month prior to that, I’d say they’ve been at work on it for quite some time. Probably not since the beginning of H3, although I’d bet cash money they were already drawing up plans at that point, but I’d bet they started working on Freelancer once they knew they’d be able to coast on 7DS, at the very least.
Agree to disagree on this one. I’m not in a frame of mind to properly articulate what I mean on this part of the subject, so I’ll save that for a later time if it comes up again.
Um…no? They don’t really provide much story benefit and they are largely disconnected from the main narrative. Again, it’s just a framing device to bring back NPC’s and such. Sure, you’d need to have knowledge of the WOA story, but they’re not exactly crucial or necessary for the campaign to be “complete”.
That’s a different discussion entirely, and it’s clear they didn’t have the time, nor the resources, to do that. These escalations were a middle ground; clearly more production values than other escalations, and play like mini game modes that get increasingly harder.
That’s a very complex way of saying “I disagree but I don’t know why I disagree”.
I did say “technically.” They are clearly canonically taking place in 47’s mind between Mendoza and Romania; framing device or not, they take place during the course of that storyline. So if someone wants to include everything that occurs during the WoA storyline, this fits in there.
That’s the discussion I was making in the first place. They’re not genuine new content, just reworked versions of stuff we’ve already done and presented as new, which is not a bad thing, but certainly played a roll in at least the initial poor response.
It’s not that I don’t know why, it’s that I don’t know how to properly explain it in a way that doesn’t extend this discussion out farther than I care to take it right now. I’m better at verbal debates than typed.
Anyone else hoping there is a perma-death toggle in Freelancer? Personally it would really enhance the emersion and role playing elements of the mode for me. Force me to take my time, and possibly even abandon an assassination if it gets too hot (perhaps at the expense of a heavy monetary penalty or the like).
I’d go for it as long as you could start over at zero once you die. New game! So not totally perma-death like the Japanese tomagatchis… more of a hard start over like the coin based arcade games when you run out of coins.
oof this