What bothers me right now is the lack of communication about the recent bugs. I just expect a small message from the Dev Team, mentioning they are aware of that and they work on it. I don’t need a expected date for a patch. I only need few words about they work on a fix patch.
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It’s that kind of logic that leads to companies doing whatever the hell they want to their playerbase. Please do complain when shit goes sideways. It’s how you enact change. You should not feel entitled because you’re complaining about a game-breaking patch.
Games have flaws, never be embarrassed in pointing them out.
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Eeeh, reading into my post much? I don’t know who you’re responding to, but it’s not me. You’re taking my post entirely out of context. But good, it let you say what you wanted to say.
It was specifically about our access to communication with IO (which is the topic of this thread).
I obviously didn’t mean you can never complain about a game breaking bug - straw man? That’s just absurd. I personally have had exactly zero gamebreaking bugs with WOA, but if that happened on someone’s platform, of course they get to complain. Embarrassed? I never used that word.
My not-burning-IO-at-the-stake for their communication is not out of embarrassment, it’s out of having a broader perspective on things. Some of this reeks of self-importance. This forum and even Reddit can be great sources of feedback for IO of course, but we’re like 0.01 % of the player base.
I have years and years of criticising Hitman and IO on this very platform, exactly in hopes of making the game better. My post was merely trying to put things into perspective, in this specific thread, when people say they’ll never support them again because of bad communication. Paying 60$ for a game almost five years ago and expecting an endless direct communication line to the company is actually insane to me. Of course it’s ok to be upset over broken promises… but still, I’m just saying, compared to what you got over the years, maybe we can calm down a bit? This was just not what you paid for. It’s a fucking bonus. How many shitty products, food, movies, services do you pay 60$ for every month, to never complain again. Why are we crucifying IO specifically?
It is perfectly within context. You said that complaining would feel like entitlement because of how much content the base game contains. I’m sure you meant this in a more poetic manner, but another way of saying that is “trying to make the company look good in a flowery way”, probably to derail the conversation and remind people of how lucky we are to have IO still around, which is barely relevant to the conversation.
That is extremely unlikely.
If a game is still in active service, then it benefits the company to keep players in the loop with reasonable communication and updates. That is standard behaviour, that’s not a controversial position to take.
I mentioned to CombatGlue, on more than one occasion, that updates or server maintenance should be told a few days ahead of time to as many people as possible. That is an entirely reasonable request, and the company has not done that. The last update was announced 12 hours ahead of time…when I was sleeping. A notice 24 hours ahead of maintenance for fans would avoid the problem of a sudden game update and downtime.
Plenty, but that’s not really the point here. If something is taking up a good chunk of my time for entertainment, and the avenue for communication is open, then i’ll make my thoughts on what i’ve bought known, especially if it’s getting recurring updates. I paid for the game sure, but IO are the ones who want PR managers and want an open line to the community, and for good reason. It makes sense to do so both financially, and for keeping up morale in the userbase.
Communication is key in leading to a healthy and informed userbase. Going silent, or treating communication as a bonus, doesn’t benefit anyone.
Because this is HitmanForum, not UbisoftR6SForum. If you mean this in a broader gaming industry scale, then I don’t know what to tell you. Because people like this game and want it to be better? IOI have been pretty crappy to us this past year, in terms of communication, deliberately ignoring user plea’s about the Sapienza edition, and are now doing episodic nonsense on iOS. They deserve criticism for all of that.
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I wrote specifically: “I could never really complain”.
With that “really”, I meant: I could never get myself to really come for IO at a fundamental level. I have complained about stuff, sure, but some people are really wanting to burn down IO here, and that is the context in which I wrote it. Perhaps I could have spelled it out more.
My attempt was not to derail the conversation, merely that I think my perspective (what I consider a broader perspective) was missing from the discussion.
Alright, give me some examples of gamebreaking bugs that I might have experienced? Like, I’ve had maybe 10 crashes over a decade. That’s next to nothing. No game has not ever crashed for me sometimes. I’ve been seen through a wall a handful of times, but really, I think the NPC’s are very consistent to me. That type of critique is way blown out of proportion in general, and mostly it’s just people reaching for some hail-mary when getting caught by an NPC doing something that was their own fault in the first place. But give me examples, I am actually interested? I don’t think I’ve experienced much on in terms of “gamebreaking” stuff on my PC.
I guess I take the live service stuff less serious overall. I just always felt I saw it for what it was. A standard, single player game, where I enjoy playing the story and Freelancer. Everything “live-service” really doesn’t affect my experience, other than giving a new skin or some redundant “content” to play. I don’t really care, other than occasionally enjoying a new ET. Just happy I got way more hours of gameplay than I ever expected tbh.
The always online stuff doesn’t affect me where I live, as my connection was never a problem. But I can see how it could be for a lot of people internationally, and I hope for a full offline option down the line.
Well, I agree that they should keep their promises of communications if they make any. I guess I just feel more apathetic about communication with companies, so I don’t really expect much, which also means it doesn’t really affect me emotionally. I can play the game just fine, and I really have no big burning frustrations or complaints.
Neither have most of the genereal player base or gaming press, who talk the game up all over the internet. Whatever perceived sleight the hardcore HMF people are feeling IO have done to them, for most people it never even registered.
I was pointing out how it was inconsistent to be so riled up over this one product and letting so many other’s slip. It’s especially ironic since this one 60$ product gave you more entertainment through the years, than 90% of all the stuff you just paid for an forgot about. That is the broader perspective I am asking people to just hold in their heads, along with their criticisms.
I agree with the bad communication (though as stated, I don’t expect anything here so I don’t care). I have a controversial stance about episodic stuff where I just don’t see the problem (an extra buying option does not affect me and is just not evil in any way - it’s a company selling what they made), but I remember, we’ve been down that road before and I don’t wanna open that can of worms.
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Felt more like dismissing genuine concerns to me, but okay.
We have two introduced into the game this past patch, right now; Instinct not working properly in Freelancer, and the problem of the Steam Version refusing to launch for some players until they launch it again. The New York bathroom on the bottom floor still has issues with NPC’s seeing through the wall. And probably other stuff i’m missing.
I admit, the game doesn’t crash very often (as a person who has made an entire map overhaul, I can attest to that), but there are certainly game-breaking bugs. Which, again, you even admit to experiencing a few times. Of course, you were using hyperbole earlier in place of just saying “I rarely encounter bugs”.
This is giving me “Consume product, never complain, be happy with what you bought, and don’t bring the mood down for others” vibes.
That’s not an inconsistency, that’s just a fact of life and being invested in something over other things you do with your time. I can’t complain about every single thing I eat, watch or do. Partly because it’d be quite tiring to do that, and partly because it’s not very good for your mental state to do that all the time! If I spend my time enough on something every day, I’m probably invested enough to talk about it. That is hardly unusual behaviour.
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My actual intention was just to balance the scales of something I find one sided. Maybe got a little too heated for it to come through like that.
I’m on Epic, so I have not experienced this. Haven’t played Freelancer in a while, but if Instinct really does not work, that does sound gamebreaking. They should fix these things, yes.
But I also think that some passionate fans get very bogged down on specific small bugs and details and let it ruin their experience. Fine, self inflicted. But when the anger goes toward IO and gets toxic it’s a little different.
Hm. I am in fact very critical of entertainment/art in general, going from my family and friends word. So no. But I suggest to everyone being aware of the passion you have for something, how much value it’s actually bringing to your life (yes, you paid for it, but it could just as well not be existing in the world, and your experience would probably be that much poorer for it), and then building your criticism from there. Like having a tough talk with a loved one
Which means maybe not going for the most extreme vocabulary every time you’re criticizing, legit or not.
That’s the broader perspective I’m talking about, but I’m talking in circles by now.
I said “gamebreaking bugs” specifically. There are bugs, yes. An IO game and all… I honestly do not experience stuff in Hitman that I would describe as “gamebreaking”. At least I can’t recall it. The closest thing would be unfair NPCs from time to time, but not anything out of videogame standard.
You will think I’m excusing it, but I see it as living in reality where this game has and still does bring me tons and tons of value, which I am in a sense grateful for. Doesn’t mean I can’t criticize, and I will, but I am aware of the foundation I’m doing it from. Or I wouldn’t be on this forum.
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Seems to me that this conversation has basically been narrowed down to:
- Viewpoint 1: Gaming companies have a duty to communicate with players and updates are expected through all viable channels
- Viewpoint 2: Gaming companies have no duty to keep players updated through any channel (save the game itself, maybe)
I don’t know that there’s much common ground between these two points of view. I suspect part of it may be age-related, but maybe not. In any case, topic may have run its course here.
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Its not the anyone feels devs have a duty to communicate - its that combatglue (who knows exactly what his role/availability etc is) makes promises of communication and availability and then does nothing to deliver on those promises.
If he hadn’t have made the promises to begin with, no one would be holding him to that standard. Otherwise, the expectation would only be what we had for Travis and Clemens - an occasional pop in now and again with replies to tagged posts with critical questions/issues.
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Believe it or not, I was trying to get back on topic.
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This is what annoys me the most. Had they not made promises to do better, I would still ask for more communication, but I wouldn’t be nearly as annoyed than the alternative, current path, of them promising to do better, and aren’t really doing that.
The most they’ve done is to do Twitch/ Youtube livestreams, but those are more focused on making CombatGlue better at the game, not conversations about the issues the game has, it’s very specific and focused on the former, not the latter.
Even Travis and Clemens, who selectively ignored questions and answers that really needed answering (modding policy, offline mode etc.), they at least were more active on here than four posts every month or so. It’s quite a big difference in player → developer engagement when you look back. The current climate of communication is hurting the game and its userbase, I’d argue.
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I mean, those sorts of things would be things other people would be telling them what they could/couldn’t say on the topic (which was usually “say nothing”) - but game issues like, say, the disappearing Year 1 ETs if they had occurred during their era would be the sort of thing that they would acknowledge and escalate.
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On the other hand when someone from the company plays the game and streams it, it’s a high chance that they would encounter at least some bugs during gameplay and would be able to bugreport straight to the dev team.
Seems like they don’t have the QA team or they do nothing, because it’s their job to hunt bugs, and bugs growing like mushrooms these days
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With all due respect to the opinions of fans of Hitman, it is a pretty miserable job to be a community manager now of a longstanding franchise that no longer investing in adding much new content other than content curated from community submissions.
So cheers to Combat Glue for sticking with it.
The greater the success of James Bond / 007 and First Light for IO interactive, the greater likelihood that IO interactive will have surplus income to devote to introducing a new improved Hitman series, not connected to the series which began in 2016.
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We don’t need (some don’t even want) new content. We just need a game that doesn’t have new bugs every patch with no feedback or “We’ll fix it!”. We don’t need constant communication, we just want to know when we will have maintance update. We don’t need a CM that makes promises. Yet we have one. But we don’t have results.
If IOI was a normal game company, I would rather that than “We will be there for you! vanishes for months”.
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I get it. It is good that there are Hitman fans who care. But the game is absolutely HUGE, with over twenty missions / locations in the World of Assassination alone, first introduced in 2016, with Paris being prepared in 2014, more than a decade ago. While no video game is perfect, it is extremely complicated to bug fix a game worked on by hundreds of different IO employees over more than a decade, with millions of lines of accumulated code. Sometimes we have to stand back and appreciate what we have, instead of what we haven’t got.
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I don’t know when the cm function is due to resume. I hope they’re or will be aware of the missing artwork on the FC batch. 
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IOI have already said that Hitman III marked the end of the WOA trilogy, so when 47 returns in a brand new game, I think we’ll get a time jump set a few years after WOA.
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Well, the entity that performs the CM function acknowledged the FC missing artwork issue and was looking into whether it could be fixed. Anybody want to take bets that it doesn’t?
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I think I’ll bet… 8 million.
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