tru, but patches cost money whereas ports make money is the problem here. tell the team to port their flagship title, with some bugfixes thrown in? sure, easy to justify. telling them to patch a four year old singleplayer game? not as easy to justify - and i’m talking in a business sense. i completely agree with you philosophically, ethically and morally but i’m playing devil’s advocate for likely why communication has been so shitty these past six months
5 Likes
It would be hilarious if the switch 2 port also has the infinite saving icon bug.
7 Likes
Even from a purely business-focused perspective these kind of choices can be risky though. Sure IOI might make more money now by concentrating on porting the WOA to a new platform than they would by concentrating on fixing the game on existing platforms, but at what cost amongst your existing fanbase?
As a long-time Hitman, IOI and James Bond fan, if you’d asked me about my plans for purchasing the Project 007 game a couple of years ago, I’d have definitely been in the “I’m pre-ordering regardless” camp. But given IOI’s increasing disregard for long time HITMAN players as shown by their actions in the last 2 years or so, I’m now definitely in a “wait for sale, if I even bother at all” mood for Project 007.
I’m not sure whether the business brains at IOI genuinely don’t understand this sentiment amongst the fanbase, or whether they simply don’t care and are looking for a new audience with lower standards of expectation.
12 Likes
So, that’s the cost of a live service game.
6 Likes
Exactly. The thing is, they are starting to crater in the eyes of the fanbase that has followed the series for 25 years. They can try launching on new platforms and introducing new ways of bringing in new players all they want, but if those of us who have been here this whole time are around to tell them no, don’t bother, this company was good once but now they’ve turned out like all the other game developers, on top of new people coming in and saying hey, isn’t this game like nine years old now, why does it still have these issues, and that’s gonna cause some real reputational damage.
5 Likes
Communication may be lacking and bug fixing subpar, but I’m not entirely convinced IOI is a singular entity that chooses to skimp on fixes to port to new platforms. Maybe they have specific teams for specific tasks?
3 Likes
Its been pretty clear for awhile now that their focus is being put into pulling new players into the game and making money, rather than pouring love into the game.
With the amount of fixes we’ve been getting - I can only assume that they have put most/all of the small Hitman team on monetisation projects and fixes have been given “only if you can find time for it” priority.
10 Likes
Exactly. I’ve known deadbeat dads who give more love to their estranged kids than IOI is giving to the game right now.
8 Likes
The discussion also came up around them having a publishing branch. Do we also think they should drop Project 007 because there’s still bugs?
1 Like
Considering there’s no Project 007 in sight, and we were all hyped for it because it was being produced by our beloved IOI, but now our image of it is quickly rolling downhill with malfunctioning brakes, and Project 007 has pretty much lost its luster. Right now, we’d prefer fixes to the game over even new content, because it’s truly getting to the point that we can’t properly enjoy what we get when what we already have is acting like Windows Vista.
6 Likes
I didn’t realise you we’re an official representative of the entire community.
2 Likes
Uh, yeah. I’ve made that clear repeatedly, where have you been?
In seriousness, I’m specifically referring to @thrison and myself, and those of us here who have already voiced such sentiment.
2 Likes
That’s where this corporate PR stuff hits the reality of what IOI have sold to its playerbase. In a vacuum I can play devil’s advocate but this is a live service game they are actively charging new purchases for an costs, what? 100 dollars still to get all the content + just charged for a new content drop this very week, the last one being charged in december. so this game clearly makes the revenue to justify these patches, so putting some production value into that would do good in making sure the only game they’ve got that they make money from still has a playerbase still willing to pay for things
4 Likes
unfortunately IOI benefits from mainstream obscurity, unless they do something really bad they can lose like a dozen hardcore HMFers so long as they make 100 new TikTok zoomer fans
2 Likes
We’re just at a point where Samir being the face of PR and them doing a lot of the work relaying information to the teams there isn’t enough.
The most recent patch has done irreparable damage to the community at large and it’s just disheartening seeing us go from high highs to very low lows.
The responses have just felt textbook and automated and even some of the industry titans have stepped back from this type of PR to be more transparent, forthcoming, and accountable with the state these games are in when they reach live builds for general consumers.
I hate to say it, but we’re past the days of HITMAN 2 where IO’s future was uncertain. We’re past the days of Epic Games Publishing Deals and they found new found success in HITMAN 3. We’re past the IP Announcements and Project 007 announcements. I’m now in this headspace where IO isn’t the underdog anymore, but IO is just a faceless publisher and Samir is taking the heat when QA fails to make sure their builds are up to snuff.
14 Likes
No…no we are not being harsh on that front. The switch 2 port and them having crappy PR management are two non-mutually exclusive events. It is very possible, hell, part of the job description, to focus on two things at once.
i just found on discord a screen of this tweet that Glue and the team have been discussing stuff as niche as New York mastery levels and because this is internal stuff we dont think it’s happening but it is.
But this isn’t on the official IOI Bluesky account, nor is this highlighted anywhere else, and so not as public as it should be. In fact, this was responded to with Combatglue’s own profile, so the only people who knew about this are those who follow Kotti, so can you blame anyone from outside that sphere for missing this conversation?
The issue is not communication by itself, it’s public PR communication where they’re failing.
(I agree with Kotti btw, New York needs more challenges to compensate for the mastery increase).
5 Likes
- I think current communication is fine.
- I think the PSVR patch and Switch port were a good idea. And understand them being priorities this quarter.
- I don’t feel acknowledge by IOI present content, and it frustrates me how they manage to grab defeat in the jaw of victory when IOI does release a content aimed at my direction (coin, rfid…)
- I think current content is still fine.
- I think some on the forum went off the deep end, and made the forum toxic and unproductive.
I would like to not approach the rest of year completely blind, with in essence a repeat of the Year 3 “the road ahead”. And think it would be beneficial to help course correct the expectations and mood.
5 Likes
Communication in terms of roadmaps/live streams/patches etc is fine (though we only got there through previous instances of complaints - remember when we were only getting five minutes of maintenance?).
Communicating by interacting with the community and answering questions on-the-fly is undeniably at an all-time low. The fact that we’ve had more communication from combatglue in recent weeks via @BlossomFox collating questions from across the forum, DMing them to combatglue and then sharing screenshots with the answers is insane. Or that it took nearly a week to get a response regarding the current Freelancer softlock.
The Community Manager should be seeing these posts themselves and replying directly. I don’t even understand how these questions aren’t seen - given more often than not combatglue is directly tagged in the post with the question. At least during the Travis/Clemens-era, sometimes you had to wait a few days - but at least you’d get acknowledged and get the answer you were seeking.
Current frustrations are a combination of various things that have been building for awhile - and its not unwarranted. There has been some sort of shift within IO Interactive and its focus (squeezing every last possible dollar out of the game and making Hitman more “mainstream”), and players that have been around for a long time aren’t happy with that shift because things IO used to excel at have been thrown to the side (caring about their community and delivering a quality product) and players are wanting to make it clear that there is a desire to have them course correct and find some sort of happy medium.
If players didn’t care, they’d just walk away from the forum and the game without saying anything and never return. They’re fortunate enough that some players are giving them a chance and pleading for them to turn things around before they eventually make that decision to walk away. I hope IO doesn’t waste this opportunity some are giving them.
14 Likes
Gotta disagree on this. The quality of maintenance, content, and communication have all dropped sharply since the start of Year 4, and has had signs of that coming, quite frankly, as far back as Freelancer’s release. How IOI is operating now wouldn’t be such a problem for so many here if A) it didn’t come at the cost of the game’s current state, and B) they were at least honest about why they are doing what they are doing and why things are as they are.
For example, the whole Sapienza scandal, which would at least be palatable if they didn’t try to hide the fact that they’re trying to squeeze money out of that by acting like it’s some exciting new way to get new players involved, like we’re a bunch of pre-schoolers being told that the booster shots will make us big and strong like our daddies, as if we couldn’t tell what this was really about. Or that things that we’ve been asking for, or have pointed out need to be fixed, haven’t had any movement because they aren’t listening or don’t care to attend to them for the foreseeable future.
We know the Hitman team is very small now, and very busy, but when they release patch notes that reveal they’ve spent all the months since the last patch fixing an NPC’s pants and correcting a spelling error rather than having spent that time working on things that have been broken for years, it tends to piss people off. It feels like the same kind of condescending behavior employees get when their company rewards the previous year’s work with a coupon for a free McDonald’s milkshake: insulting.
7 Likes
What was the scandal with Sapienza?