My expectations have been close to zero, since I personally need to know what the exact changes to the levels will or will not be in order to decide whether I’m hyped or not, so the delay doesn’t bother me (not to mention I have a bunch of real-life issues to deal with in the next four months, so at least it won’t distract me).
And like others have said, better if it’s polished upon launch (though I’m sure there will be issues regardless), otherwise people would yap again about a (yet another) botched up release.
Also, we’re getting Freelancer much later than expected, but we also got Ambrose much earlier than expected, so they basically just switched places
Amen to that, brother. There are bugs and there will be bugs even after FL releases, testing notwithstanding. I hope we get quite a few bug fixes before FL comes out, and other afterwards, whether we have a Y3 or not.
Also, as a 20-year veteran of the series on PC and a HMF Herald, I will be utterly devastated and heartbroken if I don’t get “selectively invited” for the beta testing (I know I said I have real-life stuff to deal with, but it’d be for the greater good )
People will yap about literally anything that they think is some sort of moral injustice to them. I’m still baffled at the Steam launch at how some poeple were expecting it to be discounted although in reality, that makes no sense. You waited a year because “epic bad lul”, why do you expect it to be discounted? (You here isn’t directed at you, just the people who complained).
Anyway, I digress.
Travis or Clemens did say that the next patch will be one that includes bug fixes. But they’ll likely never get every single bug for obvious reasons.
I mean, were you chosen in March? I’ll just bring in a quote from the blog post:
You’ll hear from us again on 27th October, when we will share all the details about the HITMAN 3: Freelancer Closed Technical Test, including when it starts, how to get access, what’s available and how long you can play. Stay tuned for more details.
Now that how to get access is what intrigues me the most. To me, it indicates that there would be some sort of application process or something. If it is that, I’d apply, but with my history… not sure I’d be allowed to. Travis, please, lets make up, I’d love to open some sort of official dialogue, I have many questions.
It is a bit strange to say as a statement, since judging by Travis’ comment, it sounds like the official announcment is going to be “Freelancer will be entering into a Closed Technical Test next month for “select individuals”. Keep an eye on your inboxes for more details if you’re chosen!”
When “how to get access” sounds a lot more like “there will be a sign-up form for random access that we will detail later”
But it’s not a last minute change if there was never a release date in the first place. I could understand that if they would have said “the game comes out in november” and suddenly they delay it to january.
I just can’t understand this huge disappointment so many people have now because of something we never got promised in the first place
I have plenty of other games to play while waiting for Freelancer, especially seeing as it is free.
Glad the mode is getting proper attention with scope increases and third party testing.
I feel like even IOI didn’t know Freelancer was going to balloon into this type of project when they announced Year 2. Hopefully the extra time reinforces a smooth launch in January.
I agree that it doesn’t make sense to expect/get a discount “just because you waited for the Epic exclusivity to end”, but I did personally expect the game to have a tiny discount (10% or so) strictly because it was a year old by then and there had been precedents in similar cases (e.g. Metro: Exodus if I’m not mistaken).
Oh, definitely. I mean there are always some kind of bug fixes in the major patches. I was mainly referring to fixes of issues that have been in the game since launch, or even since H2. Some are really way overdue.
From what we’ve been told it, it’s just ballooned in regards to what we get at launch - it was clearly planned to launch with a smaller number of locations at first and grow slowly from there across the roadmaps for the rest of 2022. At least that’s my takeaway from the below quote:
We’ve decided to push beyond our original scope for launch and include almost all locations from the World of Assassination from day one.
One thing you guys haven’t mentioned is that Travis said they’re going to release it with (almost) every map available.
It’s probably ready and polished right now on a handful of maps but they elected to wait until it’s ready for all of them rather than rolling them out a few at a time
Anyone seriously upset about the Freelancer release date needs to take a serious look at their life and whether they might better spend their energies in other areas, IMO. I’ve not been at all surprised at the selection of posters with a negative response to what I think is a good news story today.
Well, what was I saying? It’s FREElancer, of course it’s gonna be FREE, duh!
Anyway, great to hear we have concrete date. Looks like IO will push all game-changing updates to begining of year. I hope there will be more than Year 3, this game has potential.
I hope that for the Steam peeps (I’m one) who get chosen to participate in the Closed Testing phase (who knows?), there ends up being a nicely varied selection of the player-base: speedrunners and roleplayers, skilled players and scrubs.
As a mediocre player myself, I don’t want to see Freelancer’s economy and gameplay being tuned only to challenge the best and brightest - hopefully the mode will offer a similar level of challenge to the main game which I think is a great balance between being reasonably accessible to n00bs, but with the tools to provide extra meat for skilled players via Settings in the options menu, Challenges, or self-imposed restrictions like SASONKO runs etc.
I don’t entirely agree with the assertion that H3 content has been mediocre (I was very much not a fan of the 7DS, but I think Ambrose Island has been a splendid addition), but I do agree that [respectfully] voicing what we as fans want to see IOI do with the game is the best way to make that likely to happen, so given the Like to this post overall.
The first time they announced it, they said it was expected to be released in Spring. Now, that’s not definitive, and I even said at the time that I’d they didn’t deliver it then, that it wouldn’t be a lie, because it was not a promised or confirmed date. However, it wasn’t until Spring was almost over, with no word from them, before they told us it was delayed. If they had told us in March, the beginning of Spring, it wouldn’t have been so bad.
The second time, they said it would be released later in the year. Again, no committed date, and no actual promise, but still, again, setting our expectations that we would in fact get it this year, and that it had simply switched places with when Ambrose was going to be released, since they swapped it with Ambrose. But now, here we are getting into “later in the year,” not quite near the end of course, but still three months removed almost since Ambrose, and now being told it’s going to be even longer. They could have told us that at the end of July, or the beginning of august, to at least prepare for it to not release before the end of the year after all. Even if they weren’t sure, it would have been better to let us live with that then than to go almost three more months thinking that there was a chance it was right around the corner.
(I know I said I have real-life stuff to deal with, but it’d be for the greater good 
