If I got the “get disguises/time trial/SA no firearms” combo once instead of constantly it would be a funny screenshot & a chaotic 8 minute speedrun & then I’d be on to the next thing. It’s the lack of randomness that kills the mood
I’m quite sure it’s random. What you actually want is for it not to be random and enforce a cool-off on recently-seen objectives.
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I want the RNG to be as neutral as possible but with a big enough pool of objectives to stay somewhat varied
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I think this is key. There’s too small of an objective pool that getting three annoying ones together is way more likely than it should be.
Because it’s execuded very poorly. Hardcore mode looks like added in last minute without any Design Thinking how should be designed, they just removed some aspect or forced to do other things and “here we go”. I don’t have any problem with higher difficulty, but in Hardcore mode there is too much RNG involved to figure out how to play to get it done.
Idea of forced Prestigue Objective is cool, but give us a larger pool to chose from, not being forced to choose between randomy generated objectives, where 2 of 3 are timed obiectives and 1 of 3 silent assassin/suit only. Sometimes because of RNG aspect of this mechanism - contracts are impossible to finish, and it’s not players fault. It’s very unfair.
PS: Why curiers and loot boxes are hidden on minimap? I need to search them by hear. it’s riddiclous stupid idea.
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if Hardcore shipped without mandatory prestige objectives, nobody would question whether or not it’s still worthy of being called Hardcore - the combination of all levels being alerted combined with the resurrected Master Mode mechanics give you plenty of opportunity to get absolutely destroyed.
Now, with that said, I do believe there is a place for some sort of objective-related failure condition - however, prestige objectives vary wildly in their difficulty and this results in you feeling less like you’re beating levels because of consistent skill and more like simple RNG luck.
In regular mode, since the objectives aren’t mandatory, this loss of agency doesn’t frustrate the player much. In hardcore, it obviously does. To some extent, the same could be argued of bad map selection luck but maps are consistent - play Colorado enough and you will find consistent strategies that you can reuse every time you end up there.
RNG elements absolutely have their place, but they should never end up being the predicate for success or failure. Just imagine, in Hardcore, would you rather have Whittleton Creek + 1 target + SASO or Colorado + 4 targets + SASO
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That’s what I said in the same post! They could figure it out and get that balance right, but so far, I don’t think they’ve managed it.
If they wanted to enforce objectives, they should have said that you have to successfully complete at least one objective in every map. Tying success to random prestige objectives that you have little control over was a bad idea. Tying success to any single objective, which you can see when you decide which map to do would have been a better choice, I think.
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I prefer not to push alternatives, the mandatory prestige objective isn’t great but your alternative has problems on the opposite end of the spectrum:
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Most regular objective are nowhere near as challenging as prestige.
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You can simply cheese through it by selecting a dossier like Assassination in order to get the best objectives to select from.
I feel like I’ve been beating this drum a lot & I know no one likes to hear it but if you don’t want to get stuck with Colorado SASO… don’t make planning decisions that lead to Colorado SASO! The point of the RNG isn’t just to screw you over for no reason; learning to influence & mitigate it is part of the game
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That’s obviously impossible, you can’t predict what prestige objectives you’ll get, nor can you necessarily get a dossier without at least 1 punishing map (since Colorado is obviously not the only one)
The absolute best you can try for is to sacrifice having your showdown on a preferred map for a punishing one and hope that the prestige objective isn’t also shite when you do it. Though of course, I think it’s obvious that trading a harsh objective on a harsh map for a showdown on a harsh map that hopefully doesn’t also give you a shitty objective anyway doesn’t make for some magical “oh shit, I solved Hardcore” moment.
If you disagree, I heartily invite you to video a run for us all demonstrating this genius strategy.
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I think there should be a unique reward for completing all Freelancer challenges.
Right now you do have incentive to get 100 Mastery in Freelancer because the reward for doing so it a pretty cool looking suit. However, the only reason to get all the challenges is for extra reward in reaching Freelancer Mastery, and for getting small cool trophies in your trophy case.
I think getting every single one of the trophies should be one final challenge, that gives you a unique reward. That way people have slightly more incentive to play Hardcore mode, and having both this reward and the last Freelancer suit would be proof that you completed Freelancer 100%.
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Blocking people from advancing past a certain Mastery level unless Hardcore is beaten would certainly be incentive.
It would certainly be a shitty incentive.
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With 8 choices of 6 maps I can reasonably predict that my last syndicate will have 0 or 1 map I consider scary (maybe 2 if I’m very unlucky, but I mean you can quit the game to reroll them if you’re that desperate lol), and I will have 5x3 chances to get ONE doable objective for it, before having to decide if I want to make it the showdown, which is another set of 3 rolls from a different pool.
The odds of actually being cornered into a bad map AND a bad objective are TINY, as long as you prioritise syndicates with the fewest Colorados & knock out whatever Colorados you’re stuck with at the earliest opportunity. I call this genius strategy… “The Obvious Thing I’m Pretty Sure Everyone Does & That’s Why No One Has Actually Gotten Forced Into Colorado SASO”
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Do you use some random prompt generator for your constant suggestions on how to make Freelancer/Hardcore Mode worse?
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As bad as it is it can always be worse. There’s really no limit.
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It’s like reading a masterclass entitled “How to make Freelancer more annoying than Dark Souls”
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While the mandatory prestige objective is probably the worst issue of HC, the full merces loss on death is also an awful design choice since you basically have no money to buy back the stuff you lost, and since the easiest solution to that problem is to switch back to normal for a while to earn that money and buy that stuff back, that’s another thing that completely desincentivizes from playing HC -_-
Same reason why tell icons are disabled in HC - some designer thinking removing QoL options makes for harder gameplay (spoiler: it doesn’t, it just makes everything more tedious).
That’s basically what everyone wanting safehouse invasions has been asking for 
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PAYDAY 2 got this right: you can take it or leave it, it’s completely optional.