I’d settle for at least an acknowledgement of the issue and a “it will definitely be fixed next patch” tbh. But we haven’t even got that.
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“Made himself” as in to have a (somewhat) monopoly on the free items? Or made himself as a service for said items after their initial window to obtain them has passed?
As for the ads that’s just twitch. I watched Frote47’s livestream to get the briefcase (and duck before this) and had 3 instances where the stream was interrupted by ads. I am following him, but that’s the only time I’ve ever went to that website -was to get drops. So I wouldn’t worry about Combatglue getting more subs just for that… And that’s completely up to the user. Nobody is forcing anyone to sub to them… I don’t even know why that would make any difference.
So then we complain about whichever other channel/s is/are offering them just because they’re being opportunistic? I mean, why can’t a community manager make these drops available? I just don’t see where any moral conflict comes into play. If you or whoever doesn’t like the idea of obtaining anything from combatglue directly then nobody is forcing you/them to. And if there aren’t any other channels offereing them - then refuse to obtain them out of principle.
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I can’t say I know. Does one have to watch a livestream for drops? Or can one view prerecorded content? 
You can only watch livestreams. So youre beholden to the schedule of him and the others streaming
I’m completely fine with @Combatglue using Hitman to plug his streams, im perfectly fine with him making money off of them, im even perfectly fine with him marrying the two. Hell if he shows himself as a GREAT community manager like I hope him to be I and many others will be happy to become fans of and support him on Twitch. The only problem I have is that the lack of communication, which is his job, coupled with the plugging of his twitch, which makes it seem like he’s not interested in job as a community manager except to boost his channel. His job isnt to play Twitch, his job is to listen to Hitman fans and listen to IO and tell eachother what’s going on. Travis did that, Clems did that, Sahir hasnt as of now
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Only livestreams count (and only livestreams in the Hitman category), VODs don’t.
If a waiter is meant to bring food out from the kitchen when the food is ready or close to being ready… But then doesn’t come out - the waiter isn’t withholding it. It could be that the chef (or IOI) isn’t done cooking or is out of ingredients/supplies to even make any food. Thus, no food to serve. “Food” being info/communication.
I guess he needs to pop in every couple of weeks just to say; “Sorry agents. No new news again. 
” Because he MUST communicate. No exceptions! 
Right?
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Hmm. Well, hopefully he has a steady/consistent schedule where he plays. I did catch him playing the same day we had this previous drop, and I recall him making the remark “I need to play Hitman.” Like he was told he needed to do this - but I can’t read his mind, that was just the sense I got from it.
Insert that meme of the nervous guy needing to make a decision.
Get mad at combatglue for daring to make drops available during his livestreams
Thank combatglue for making drops available for anyone that missed them
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if my waiter took five weeks to bring out my food i’d be really suspicious lol. nah but seriously i actually have a real example i can give as to why it specifically frustrates me: there’s this pizza place I love eating from. it’s great. great pizza, great toppings, great price, great milkshakes. it’s all great! what do i hate about it? the wait times. now these arent your typical wait times, these are omega-level terrible. you order something and it tells you it’s arriving in 45 minutes, but here’s the thing: I can put up with that so long as everything else is excellent. that’s IO rn, but here’s the extra point: when that pizza place delivers it doesnt arrive 45 minutes after you order, instead it arrives 20 minutes or maybe even 45 extra minutes after the time they’ve told you. so that’s an hour and a half of wait time
that’s IO’s problem, theyre not just having long wait times because that’s passable. theyre doing the equivelant of telling you there will be a 45 minute wait time and then having you wait an hour and a half. there’s no excuse at that point, that’s just really bad service and for me when it comes to that pizza place i try to order an hour before im even hungry it’s that bad but i still order because to some extent it’s still in my control and still turns up hot. that’s brand loyalty, but what can break brand loyalty? a couple of cold pizzas, which they havent done yet. IO’s in an even worse position because i cant order from them an hour early, so if these patches turn up cold again i cant be loyal anymore
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I think you’re mixing communicating and giving new information together. Communication doesn’t have to be giving us new info.
ie Travis used to pop up on reddit in bug report threads with comments like “This is definitely not intended, I’ve passed this onto the team” or “It looks like the team are already aware of this”. Its acknowledging what people are putting out (doesn’t have to be every single comment people make either). Samir has been the CM for almost six months now, I honestly couldn’t tell you if he even has an account on reddit.
During the 5+ week period he didn’t even load this forum in March/April, he was on Twitter almost daily on the Hitman account replying to extremely random tweets. While we were here asking for clarification on things and waiting for answers, he was too busy tweeting to a random streamer that the Hitman account liked their new hair colour. I’m not even kidding - this is a real tweet.
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What annoys me is the feeling that the actual community is currently being ignored. At least that’s how it feels to me 
Instead, I have the feeling that Hitman has become a safe source of money to finance projects like 007 or the fantasy RPG. You kind of noticed that with McGregor. A more than questionable collaboration that loyal fans certainly didn’t ask for. Instead, you read comments on X or Reddit from people who just install the game for this ET, have two hours of fun with it and that’s it.
When did it become so important to be so mainstream? Of course, money has always been important, but I always had the feeling that there was still heart in it. You could still feel that with Ambrose Island, which was somehow still a real Hitman moment. Freelancer had potential, but was dropped halfway through. Instead we now get some flashy ETs and ugly costumes that don’t fit into the rest of the Hitman setting and what’s left is a bland aftertaste.
I have no problem paying for DLCs, I would pay IOI my entire salary if they brought Grey back 
or if they added more storyline options in the safehouse. But I’m not paying for misogynistic dodgy celebrities and content that feels lovelessly slapped on while all the other problems with the game and the fans’ wishes are ignored…
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No twitch drops at all and just keep stuff unlockable within the game itself without any time and connection constraints, ideally? 
Actually, yes. If I go by the waiter analogy, then even if your food is not yet ready or available at all, the waiter absolutely should come and tell you that. And they should respond to your calls when you wish to ask/order something. Otherwise you will complain about the service, quite justifiably. 
But jokes aside, like thrison says, it´s not necessarily about new info. Samir is the community manager, and we are the community. The game gets less frequent updates, which is perfectly understandable, but at the same time we expect that with the decreased frequency, the updates will be substantial in terms of patching up whatever is bugged/broken. Coming back to the restaurant analogy, we´ve been ordering “food” (info/communication, bug fixes, unlocks, etc.) on this forum for years. And the fact is that a lot of those “orders” have been left unanswered (some for waaaay too long), with this latest patch almost making it look like the cooks were either too focused on that one meal to attract new customers for the past months that they ignored everything else, or there aren´t even any left in the kitchen. And if that´s the case, then let us know so as to avoid people´s frustration. Sure, we´re very demanding customers (if not annoying, but that´s because we care), but I´d also like to think we´re patient and have no problem waiting for our food, as long as we know it´s actually cooking and the chef gets those orders. We just want to be in the loop.
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I have a video coming up that puts more of a spotlight on this issue of IOI not communicating and the patch feeling very half-baked. For right now though, I’m gonna copy-paste what I wrote in the disruptor ET thread (Gifs included!) for anyone who hasn’t see it yet, and also because it’s relevant to the conversation.
Before I hand you over to my past self’s ramblings, I, like many others, are sick and tired of being taken for a ride. We are your customers, listen to us when we have grievances and respond accordingly. Silence is not an answer, it’s just…silence. We don’t expect 100% transparency on projects and Hitman, but some information is better than none at all, and leaving us hanging does nothing but turn people off from your game. Do better, IOI, I know you are capable of change.
Original Post:
Welp, that was a…tepid roadmap and patchnotes (Oh yeah, there are patchnotes).
I am not happy, and the wait for this roadmap did not make me feel “hyped!” either. It frustrated me and others to no end, and my mood and initial feelings have not improved post-reveal. To say that I’m more excited for the challenges than I am for anything else (and half of those aren’t for another month) should give you some idea of how much I dislike this roadmap.
The Disrupter ET is…weirdly in Sgail…why? We’ve already got ET’s on Sgail, and Ambrose doesn’t even have one yet! I can understand passing on Haven and New York (DLC locations which would be a hard sell), but this is such a wasted opportunity. I can’t speak for the quality of the mission just yet, but It’s getting quite annoying seeing no extra content for Ambrose.
The Disrupter-themed DLC was something I saw coming a mile away (you did it for the undying, so this was an easy guess to make), same with the purple briefcase unlock for Twitch (again, both a suit and duck were made for it, so a briefcase to complete the set was a very easy hit). Even the suit, which I thought I’d like from what little I saw from teasers, looks very awkward on 47, at least imo.
Finally, to cap off this event, we have nine new bug fix notes…Nine. For the three and a bit months we had to wait for a new patch, I’d be a little more…proactive on the state of the game. Maybe there’s some internal changes to the game that are too boring to list, but there has to be more changes than to localisation to items and server-related weapon mis-categorisation that you could mention?. It feels like minimum effort on that front, as if to say “Yeah, we fixed the game up a bit!”, when this is basically a nothing burger as updates go.
Some improvements for the future, and stop me if you’ve heard this before…
Talk. To. Us.
You do not benefit from staying silent; it breeds frustration, annoyance and apathy among your fans. Being so unnecessarily secretive and trying to build hype around something that was known for around a month is a huge misfire PR-wise.
The roadmap is limp in general, but making things worse is the content seems to be released in batches on specific dates, which I really don’t think is a good idea; separate them out throughout July or something, giving people a reason to keep coming back to your Live Service game. Getting people to wait for a month for two challenges is not the way to go about pleasing people. At least breadcrumbs of content throughout the month keep the game in my mind more than an upcoming event.
I’m going to play some Yakuza: Like a Dragon for a bit. At least there I feel a sense of accomplishment and justification for sticking around and grinding the tunnels under Yokohama, even if the games’ content slate is finished.
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he also didnt even start playing the series until two months ago, which no judgement we all gotta start somewhere but i can imagine when reporting bugs to him directly it’s a bit difficult to convey our problems using our usual language which is a bit esoteric to outsiders since we all have thousands of hours and are describing mechanics which no normal person encounters or will understand
stuff like this confirms to me that @cake941 wouldve made the perfect community or deputy community manager while Samir gets his feet wet
i actually dont mind the choice of location i just find it weird that Combatglue asked us what location we’d like new ETs in and then we got one in Sgail which no one asked for: it was all H3 locations or H2 locations with little ET prescence like Miami, Colombia, Whittleton or Mumbai
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I don’t really mind the lack of info regarding upcoming content or the whole Twitch plugging thing but the bugs are another matter entirely, some have been regularly reported for months or even a couple of years at this point but have yet to be addressed. I wish there was some kind of back-and-forth with the community about them, like “the team’s working on those and they’ll be fixed next patch”. IOI was pretty quick in fixing the issue with Steam users being unable to use the Disruptor DLC so obviously they’re aware of some of the community’s feedback. I wish they were as reactive about Freelancer bugs 
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There’s no denying that communication from IOI has changed over the years. We used to get video introductions to the roadmaps with question and answer sessions. IOI had spokespeople who somewhat regularly visited this forum and it felt like they had actual dialog with the community.
We’ve seen a complete end to the video introductions, question and answer sessions have stopped, and the involvement in the forum feels like little more than a “Soon” post every 4-6 weeks.
When the community reports bug after bug and instead of fixing those well reported things we get trivial stuff that few cared about it feels like we’re being ignored.
It does feel very much like IOI is winding the game down but they keep trying to hype up the game with new Elusive Targets and Twitch drops. They can’t have it both ways. Either the game is winding down so communication should drop off or the game is still actively going so communication should still be maintained. Feels to me like they want to keep the game active but do as little interaction with the community as possible.
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Regarding the Twitch Drops, I feel it’s worth mentioning that you can now go to any channel streaming HITMAN WoA with drops enabled to get any of The Purple Streak set of items.
Don’t forget the IOI Monthly and Insider streams!
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And they should focus exclusively on fixes and releasing anything left to release. They’d be done in four months, tops.
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I’m so glad I’m not the only one. My Twitter feed is stained with bullshit retweets from the Hitman account. Sometimes reposting consistently from the same few streamers that it’s borderline dickriding, to the point where I cringe from follow them.
I would appreciate it if the social media team and CombatGlue himself would spend his time communicating with the community. Like you said before; give us some insight in whats going on inside the Hitman development team. What we can expect soon before hand. And if the content road is ending, inform us about it. I wouldn’t be mad if Hitman support reached it’s end and the game receives an always offline patch. Just don’t promise things, rile up the community, and then don’t deliver.
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And don’t make things worse while at it.
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Agree on what’s here.
i will just add: i don’t like how the theory of “ego of leadership is what guides the current drive made with the game” is more and more probable.
And yes, I say “with the game”, instead of “for the game” for a reason.
I’m also more and more inclined to believe that the push for the kind of celebrity/partnership/retweet is an indication of who they are and wish to be next to.
And not just a demographic audience analysis driven decision.
But in all fairness to CombatGlue, as much as he is not appearing as connected on the forum, I wouldn’t be surprised if he still had a look and read around, if offline his account.
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