Hitman 3 "post launch content" debate

That’s true like what @scat1620 said, it came out in January and there really hasn’t been anything major that came out since then to push the game back into the public eye.

…what? Life support would be keeping the servers up and nothing else (Like, say Hitman 2 or Hitman 2016). You can’t just dismiss actual content drops and claim the game is on life support to fit your narrative, that’s not how it works. The game has had plenty of free updates (some betters than others admittedly), as well as roadmaps they mostly stick to. And it’s still being updated.

7DS got a better reputation later on down the line (about four sins in is where the concensus warmed up to the DLC’s). I didn’t buy the DLC’s as they never really went on sale, with the sole exception of the Wrath DLC, and i’m actually rather pleased I got it, as that’s an actually unique puzzle involving traps and such that make it well worth the price I paid. People dismiss this DLC as nothing more than “premium escalations”, which is only half the story, and honestly, is just dismissive in its own right. There’s clearly much more effort to give players a completely unique experience from normal escalations, and are treated more like mini game modes in escalation format, rather than custom contracts with modifiers.

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To add to the live service : looking at the roadmaps, we had one free content release every week since February 4th. Paid content (deluxe escalation and seven deadly sins) were always released as a bonus to the weekly releases (mostly next to Elusive Targets).

There had been one exception to that, the week from the 19th to 25th July And it was because the season of lust was delayed, for which IO was legitimately sorry. (and we presumed afterwards was because of some last minute issue with the Dartmoor Garden Show or the lust escalation).

Talking of live service, I for one will over-analyse, over-read and over-hype this selection of five words from Travis tweet that were certainly just mundanely typed.
Screenshot 2021-11-18 18.41.49
More seriously they are putting in the work, is it as ambitious as the Hitman 2 DLCs, no. But on what is their current mandate, they are working it. And I think working it with passion, so let us not dismiss that.


To go back to the topic, a bit disappointed that Hitman III was not nominated more.
I get that Hitman III is not the shiniest game to think about, but as a representation of the World of Assassination trilogy it really should have been highlighted. In a “nominated for his whole career” way.

And honestly the last three hitman have two qualities that I appreciate them for this kind of situation :

  • they are truly games, fun to play with not just experience
  • they are truly from their generation of console/game technology and are a great representation of what this generation of game could bring in term of number of npcs, number of systems, simulations, tracking…

While I’m at it does anyone knows if the game industry possess more technical/specific awards decided by their peers ? Like best level design, best programmed gameplay system, best loop…
That would be interesting to look at.

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Right, to say that it’s on life support is pretty reductive to the work the Devs have put in this year. Its quite a bit, but maybe not in the right areas you were expecting @Spods.

7DS content has gotten more ambitious and unique after Sloth came out.

And agreed @LandirtHome. We did get content like every week this year, which is pretty dang impressive.
I think much of that though was followed by people playing the game rather than people outside of it, so it didn’t get that much coverage. Something bigger like a level expansion or edition or otherwise would make some bigger buzz, and the early January release didn’t help that along.
I’m sure some other news publications will recognise H3 for some stuff this year.


As for what Travis mentioned…
There’s some… leaks… (join the group to see more!)
Don’t take his words with a grain of salt. It’s exciting.

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i think it’s unfortunate that they keep offering less and less and nobody cares, lol. remember when they literally just stopped releasing free escalations a few months ago with nothing to replace them? were it any other game i probably wouldn’t mind but the only other worthwhile free content in the roadmaps has been the 7 elusive targets (with recycled unlocks from hitman 2), the berlin egg hunt (temporary for some reason) and the dartmoor garden show and for this trilogy that’s dire

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Nobody cares (and I can tell you now, people on here do care about this) because it isn’t much of an issue. If I were to guess, they probably stopped doing them because of players’ complaints that all the content that was being released was escalations; which is a fair observation.

They were replaced with something else; scaled-down challenge packs that unlock items or suits. They’re admittedly five minute affairs, but they’re much more consistent and more fun to do than most of the H2 challenge packs, I’ll tell you that for free. Those who dislike escalations can get a free item for basically doing a sidequest challenge, and those who wanted challenge packs to return get to be satisfied too.

Okay, that is complete nonsense, see above. As for the reused unlocks, This is unavoidable. The unlocks are there because of new players who cannot do transfers, which is entirely fair. I do the ET’s because I want to, not because I have anything to unlock.

It’s temporary because it was seasonal. They’ll do the same thing they did with the Mills Reverie and Holiday Hoarders and make it temporary once, and reactivate it permanently later. That’s their pattern of behaviour.

No it is not. Stop overexaggerating, it’s fecking annoying now. This game, despite it’s competition from other live services, gives out consistent, free updates, as well as paid DLC, whereas other games fail to do so by over-promising on content, or not delivering. The devs were very clever in avoiding the trap of promising too much each month. Complex content takes time to make. That is all i’m going to say on the matter, because otherwise I’ll go into leak territory.

The game is already completely fine without extra content. Unlike your Marvel Avengers or your Paladins or your Overwatches or the other live service games, the game feels complete. The base game is very much worth it’s price IMO, and any content post-launch is just a bonus.

Also, listing things that defeat your argument of “nothing free was good except X, Y and Z” does not make your argument stronger, it makes your argument self-defeating.

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not to be that guy, but most of hitman 2s content was reused 2016 escalations, challenge packs, unlocks and elusive targets.

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thats facts my guy i agree with you

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and i didnt like it then either, but at least we had the really well done paid dlc to make up for it

they could have simply not taken them away to be made available later surely?

sorry but challenges like “complete that train mission” to unlock an item that was already available in hitman 2 is not content nor is it a substitute for free escalations lol

not an excuse

this is silly lol, i can admit that some free content was good while also saying that its not enough

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Special. Assignments. That is all.

If you’re referring to the Snowy suit from Crime and Punishment, then my counter to that was that not only was that part of paid content originally, but was given away for free to use in any level, so long as you had Hokkaido (which is why it went free for 10 days). Even the Dopey Rave On suit can now be used between levels by doing a DJ-ing sidequest. And I have to ask… what’s wrong with that exactly? I wasn’t exactly asking for these suits, but i’m happy they added them to the main game because I know there are people who were happy to see them.

If you replace X with Y, then that is a substitute.

I wasn’t trying to claim it was an excuse? It was me listing their pattern of behaviour. It shouldn’t be temporary, but it is, and their behaviour pattern is what I described.

Then just say that, instead of claiming all free content so far has been bad, with X,Y, and Z exceptions.

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for the time being, you might want to turn off reply notifications for this thread Spods, since you’re now the new owner of it.

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That is not out of question for H3 as well in the future.

A lession IO had to learn at H2 was that long-term promises for a whole truckload of content is hard to fulfill and disapoints people who eagerly await them.

Ghost Mode was meant to extend much more, even to previous maps.
Mumbai did not have an ET while they clearly planned to have one.
Special Assignments are rumored to be repurposed ETs. These were also advertised quite ambigiously as many players previously hoped them to be bonus missions like Landslide or AHBOS.

Instead, H3 was relatively honest with what you get for paid content. The Deluxe Pack is very transparent what it was and what will come, and the 7DS kinda was. In the end it turned out to be a bit more diverse than less with the latter half even improving instead of being just a longer collection of basic escalations like the deluxe content is.

I think the best time to review the post launch content as a whole is when it ended. And as Travis noted, the team behind live content got larger compared to release time.

I am also a bit surprised how this all reads like we have a right for more content. In the end this is a big huge game that is maintained since 2016, through many many legal, economic and pandemic obstacles for IO and others being involved.

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Exactly! Let’s check, what were we going to get with 60 (or 80) dollars?

Did we get Hitman 3? Yes.
Deluxe Escalations? Yes.
Deluxe suits and items? Yes.
The rest listed above? Surely yes!

IOI gave what it promised, and we were never entitled for more. It’s a company choice to whether do more for free or not, and they’re doing it nonetheless.

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I agree with the point that we as players don’t have a fundamental right to free post-launch content given that IOI have delivered what was promised from the sales pitch for HITMAN 3, as they have across the entire WoA trilogy*. Anyone who says that we’re legally/contractually entitled to free post-launch content is factually, objectively wrong, and although it’s not quite as cut-and-dried I personally think that anyone who says that we’re morally/ethically entitled to free post-launch content is wrong too.

However, I also think that it can’t and shouldn’t be ignored that HITMAN and HITMAN 2 set some expectations for HITMAN 3 - expectations that IOI aren’t obliged to live up to, but expectations that exist nonetheless. People are entitled to be disappointed if they feel that the H3 post-launch content hasn’t lived up to the standards set by H1 and H2, even if they aren’t entitled to anything more than their feeling of disappointment. IOI have no responsibility to deliver more than they inititally promised, but - as long as it’s not expressed as a demand or insult - players have no responsibility not to be disappointed with H3’s post-launch content if they enjoyed it less than H1/H2. (Although personally I’m in the camp of waiting to see what the next 14 months bring before I feel I’ll be in a position to say how the H3 post-launch content eventually compares to H1/H2.)

*I think the closest they’ve come to dropping that ball was the Special Assignments from HITMAN 2, with IOI not doing nearly enough to clarify what that content would actually be before it launched, given that they were selling it and taking money ahead of time. A piece of really poor marketing which I hope they’ll never repeat as it was beneath their standards, but just about keeping its head above water on the “was this deliberately deceptive?” question.

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I think nobody has an issue with people being disappointed. I too am disappointed contract mode got no update since H2016 GOTY. To the point I made a mod that exposes pretty much anything that is possible to do with it today. While knowing IO might not like that.

But there is more to the situation than just comparing the content of the three games. We also live in a pandemic, IO got independent and works on two other IPs. Hitman 3 is about to end content wise for a while now. I hope for something new next year because the game deserves it, not because I think it is a realistic expectation or even because it is a natural fact a game of the trilogy has X post launch contents.

Yes you can ignore the suroundings of real life and just compare the games. In the end you can’t change the situation anyway. But I suspect you are less disappointed if you are aware of limitations because you are not as much tempted to explain it with corporate greed.

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fully prepared to change my tune if that happens. i don’t feel entitled to anything outside of what they promised directly but that doesnt mean i don’t feel disappointed with what came as part of the free content in comparison to the previous 2 games

utter dogshit but the sniper missions and 2 new maps more than made up for it

i’m not, i’m referring to items from hitman 2 that were for some reason made unobtainable in hitman 3 and then rereleased to pad out roadmaps, like the challenge pack rewards. i don’t think thats substantial content at all, maybe for new players but for people who have been playing since 2016 its depressing to see unlocks you already have appear in the roadmaps month after month (same goes for the location rotation)

so why bring it up? i’m well aware that that’s their pattern of behaviour, it’s not a good thing. the elusive targets being temporary is bad enough but i can’t support time gating full missions, its pure fomo

they’re equivalent statements

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I see this argument come up again and again. I have asked the same question a couple of times now, but it has yet to be answered. However I will ask it again. What have IO promised us regarding H3 post launch content that they have not delivered on?

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I on the other hand have a valid reason to complain. Lost access to Dartmoor since the Envy update and the H2 expansion pass since Wrath. I know for a fact those are covered. I filed a report and am now waiting to hear back from them. I will be most displeased if I miss the next Dartmoor ET over this.

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we’re getting the 7 righteous virtues

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Of course, let me do some prediction for the Seven Heavenly Virtues DLC escalations :

  • Charity : you need to be selflessly generous. Every time you take an item you need to give it to someone in the following 15 seconds. By throwing them at their face.
  • Chastity : The Cabin ™, but contrary to what some in this forum (and ao3) would let us believe nothing really happens. Diana is here. The only objective in the escalation is to dance with her. It’s rather sweet.
  • Diligence : multiple targets, but challenges are asking you to find a way to eliminate them all in one go, a lot needs to be done.
  • Humility : in this escalation, 47 leaves the torch to another. Victoria returns, this escalation is actually a normal map, but because you play a Victoria, the disguises opportunities are shifted to the women NPCs.
  • Kindness : for once 47 is the bodyguard. You need to guide and protect a target that just keeps walking in hazards and hostile guards, they would normally die every minute.
  • Patience : the target arrives 10 minutes in the escalation and is only there for 30 seconds, in exchange you can prepare impossibly complex opportunities and accidents.
  • Temperance : this escalation has no non-target elimination, no pacification, no crouching, no vaulting, no shooting complications. All you can do is talk to npcs to uncover a mystery. You will have to stroll your way into locker rooms to put on some placed disguises. You can leave at any time, it’s just about having a calm evening for 47 maybe hear some lore.
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