I will agree with what @47Agent states in terms of player involvement on Xbox. At first, there was a good amount of people playing on Miami, but players moved on to other games shortly after Xmas.
There was a brief resurgence when Santa Fortuna was released, but it was because of the suit unlock with 100 GM kills. The population soon died afterwards.
After that, most matches I would get would either be people new to the game, or people killing all NPCs first to get the target kills afterwards (fortunately it didnāt affect me much as I knew how to play and eliminate targets efficiently).
I would still get requests to play the mode through the Xbox Hitman club, but they were usually new players trying the mode out.
Does this mean that the same thing was happening on other platforms? Maybe, but I donāt know. But the perception was there. Hitman is a niche game and doesnāt have a player count a game like Fortnite or CoD has. IOI would have had the data before making the decision to a) not continue development of GM on other maps or take the mode out of beta, and b) shut down the mode.
It was great that the community kept the mode going with events, but it wasnāt enough to warrant IOI perusing the mode more. Look at FC submissions, how many forum members submit vs the amount of registered users?
Ghost mode didnāt have the fanbase to keep it viable.
However, it was useful for IOI to invest in VR and multiplayer Hitman to get practice in creating a VR and multiplayer game with minimal risk, since it was introduced as a free add-on to an existing game. Now with the experience, IOI are more likely to introduce VR and multiplayer in a new IP down the road.
Disagree. It made all the matches take longer. Unnecessarily. I understand the reasoning behind it (it was supposed prompt players to gear up BEFORE heading for the target) but that didnāt happen. It just turned into both players having to run all the way across the map BEFORE starting. It was simply a delay. In reality.
I donāt think you understand what Iām saying. Every single crate on the level had blunt melee weapons 99% of the time. Guns, rare. Syringes, rare. That was all changed.
Keep in mind, I still played after all these changes. I just adapted. And still enjoyed it. But Iām saying I definitely saw a drop in the available player base and the amount of available matches you could get after those initial changes (minus matches with the āregularsā who supported that shit until it died on Xbox). And I was one of those.
That map was terrible for GM. If you disagree, cool, but youāre in the minority with that.
Not really, it simply made it so the first target wasnt completely auto-pilot. And if the first target spawned far away from you, you always had the choice of running there, or kill yourself straight away and spawning near the target (but lose your equipment). This was always an interesting choice, with good players knowing exactly when to do what.
Not really, every crate was pre-determined, with two possible scenarios that alligned. So say there was a propane in a certain crate, you immediately knew what every crate on the map would have.
SF was far more interesting than Miami.
In Miami you just need one of the two god disguises (both guards) and you are golden. And no points on the map where you could succesfully block the other player off.
Meanwhile SF didnt have god disguises, with lots of different potential blocking points (the gate to Jorge, the door under the mansion to the caves etc). Trickier targets too.
It was more difficult, hence why the majority didnt like it + navigating the map (especially the tunnels) was a big task for some.
The fact that Miami very often ended in a 5-4, where in SF we would see all kinds of different scores also tells something
After Hitman2016 and sale from Square Enix, Hakan Abrak said that they had considered turning Hitman into free-to-play, but was not the kind of model that was appropriate for the Hitman franchise, said Hakan.
I donāt think that IOI will invest in creating a viable offline mode for the Hitman Trilogy in the future, even if updates of new content are less frequent. The Hitman Trilogy is deeply integrated in the Microsoft Azure cloud gaming platform. There will always be a greater cost / benefit for IOI for Hitman to always require an online connection. It was much more controversial for Hitman to always be online during the release of Hitman2016. Now there are many games as a service offerings which require an always online connection.
Always requiring an online connection means that IOI knows who are their customers, and all aspects of player engagement of their paying customers of their content.
Once Hitman Trilogy is available online, IOI loses their direct and ongoing connection with their existing Hitman community. IOI will never give this up, even if updates on their servers are less frequent.
Having the always online connection means that IOI can continue to directly advertise updates to all Hitman players of all new IP releases from IOI.
Interesting ideas guys
Iām glad that youāre taking your time to polish this new mode, allowing more levels to be played in at the same time.
Looking forward to this in January, cheers!
Theyāve teased Year 3 content, but who knows what weāre getting after Freelancer? Nothing can be ruled out.
Iām led to believe thereās two separate teams working on Project 007 and Hitman. I donāt think itās all hands to the pump for just one game.
Thatās one thing that does really annoy me, when the game keeps disconnecting due to server issues and the game is more or less unplayable.
I get the reasons for IOI moving towards an online model since HITMAN (2016), but I do miss the times with Silent Assassin - Absolution when you could just play the game without worrying about online drop outs etc
Well, to comment on the topic at hand, Freelancer better be fucking balls to the wall amazing, what with this rather drastic delay. No real excuse for game-crippling nonsense of any kind at this rate.
Obviously, this would suggest target practice. Maybe to get a feel for how whichever gun handles. Like some of the SMGs might veer in whichever direction while firing. Anyway. To get to my actual pointā¦
Hehā¦ āPointā? More like Point Shooting.
Those privy to the āLeaksā might know if this will be a thing or not. If it is, Iād wonder if itād be a (new) ability? Or a perk pertaining to one or more firearms?
Yeah. I could imagine a small icon in the details of a weapon. Maybe a [ ] for lethal shots/tags.
Freelancer News in 6 days 
] for lethal shots/tags.
I can dream in the meantime.