Official: H3 Freelancer Closed Technical Test feedback Thread (CTT)

Thats neat i like that

So wait you can take any disguise from any mission back to your safehouse and keep it? That’s cool, if so.

Wouldn’t this mean you could only ever have one suit in your collection?

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No, but it would be cool if they implemented it, hence my remark here.

You would lose your suit, but as an addition to my suggestion I would like to propose the idea that the classic-suits can be bought for Mercers, preventing you from being locked out of them forever.

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Right, that’s what I had assumed previously. It confused me when you said “You do gain the clothes you returned with” as that sounds like it’s an existing feature.

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Seems like something that would be easy to implement and give a reason to have extra merces to pay for new suits youve lost instead of importing all of them from the main game

I am somewhat concerned with the fact that if you take out the targets but don’t do the optional objectives, the payout is zero.

As others have also noted, if you do things like complete the mission with at Silent Assassin rank, it seems like you could get a bonus Merces or something.

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Right, Day 1 of playing Freelancer was…something.

I’ll start with the good.

The customisable safehouse is something I feel like will be worth unlocking, but I do feel like the levels to unlock the safehouse needs to be toned down in general (Level 4 to unlock a Bathroom, really IOI?)

The optional modifiers for targets is something I rather like, allowing you to get more mercers to encourage riskier and varied play-styles. But there’s a bit of an issue with them that i’ll talk about in a moment. Not a bad idea, and most of them are generic enough to work.

The re-use of ghost crates within the level as stashes is a cool idea. I dislike the random nature of them, but that’s a “me” thing, more than anything.

The ability to look at guns is something I’ve wanted in the main game for years; I love it. Very Tomb Raider =)

Okay. The bad/ need improving:

The game feels…self aware, in a rather strange way. I’m reminded of a Jimquisition video from years ago called “Damn Fine Coffee”, in which they talk about focus groups and what they say versus what they actually want. I think you can see where this going.

Players have always requested more freedom in approach, so you’re not always tied down by a Silent Assassin rank. The issue, is that, as @Khakiasp has said, this mode has NO Silent Assassin functionality, meaning, much like the early rounds of Ghost Mode, there’s basically no punishment for dicking about and getting into trouble. So long as the trouble is contained to a specific section of the map, then you can get away scot free. There’s no downside, and very little to work toward level to level.

The syndicate encounters simply have FAR too many mechanics going on. Assassins, lookouts, the amount of “tells”, really it’s a strange hodge-podge of ideas. Each mechanic is good on its own, but each one obscures the other and makes it very tricky to stay focused.

I’m not a fan of the lootbox rewards crate system in the safehouse, I’d rather Diana just give me something over a chest of many possibilities; I’m reminded of Hitman Sniper (and The Shadows) and it feels like a mobile game, and that is already a bit of a red flag. I’ll be fair, everything I’ve gotten so far has been useful (which, at this point in time, is hardly good enough for critique), but it still puts me in the same mindset, especially in the early-game.

I suspect it’s trying to copy Hades’ Boon system, where, if you defeat a dungeon with such boon inside, you are given a powerset from one of the Gods that’s helping you escape. That works because, although it’s still random, there’s only so many variations of powers you can get. With Hitman, weapons to choose are literally in the hundreds.

The picking of NPC’s to be targets in contracts is really weird. Like, in one of the contracts, one of Yuki’s Guards is a target. Unfortunately, because he doesn’t react to any kind of distraction, you cannot isolate him, meaning you have to wait for ages to pull the classic dwindling party scenario on the other people around him, or go loud and deal with those consequences. Those complications I mentioned earlier? Yeah, one of them was to push the target over a ledge; which is just impossible. The complications oftentimes don’t correlate to the targets.

Another target I had was just some random ETHER scientist, which isn’t bad by itself, but her routine was tiny, and collateral damage potential was quite high. This highlights quite well the problem with using background NPC’s as targets, as, by design, they’re not meant to be treated like main mission targets, and so don’t have the same AI opportunities, and are deliberately rather one-note.

Doors. They need to be unlocked. Any door that requires a key or lockpick needs to be unlocked. I felt too boxed in a lot of the time, and routes that i’d be able to take in the main mission are simply not open to me. Hell, in the ETHER Lab, you have to Pacify people in the labs to get in/ out, so it may be wise to put keycards for the doors in there too.

I’ll likely make this a thing for each day I play, so watch this space. I’m gonna stick to 1pm - 4pm (UK Time), and i’ll be streaming this on Twitch just so I can look back on things. Alright, that’s it for today; seeya tomorrow!

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Just for clarity, what is the benefit to getting Silent Assassin in the normal levels?

From my experience, the benefits are:

  • Score - if you’re not concerned with scores, this is a minimal benefit
  • Points - when you’re working towards mastery, fine, but once you get to Mastery 20, what’s the benefit there?
  • Bragging rights? - If everyone has done it, who is anyone bragging to?
  • Challenges and Unlocks - again, fine, but once you do it once, is there a reason to keep doing it?

I guess my point is that I’ve seen a few comments about the lack of a reward for getting Silent Assassin but what is the actual reward in the rest of the game (assuming that you don’t care about leader boards and have gotten past the mastery and challenge stuff)? Is this a critique of the Freelancer mode or a critique of the overall game?

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It’s something to work toward per-level; it’s the highest score for a reason. Plus it feels like an actual achievement to do. Removing it, or even downplaying it too much, means the puzzle per level feels pointless.

That’s how I see it, at least.

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Are you saying that even if you complete the mission in a way that should earn Silent Assassin the game doesn’t include it as a rank at the end? It’s actually Impossible to earn Silent Assassin?

The S/A indicator literally isn’t a thing in Freelancer. It rewards you for being quiet, but most of the points goes to the objectives you completed, not the rank you get at the end.

I could be wildly misreading the end screen, to be fair.

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I know the indicator isn’t there, but what about the rank at the end of the level? I assumed the indicator was just a bug and should be fixed in the real version. If Silent Assassin cannot be achieved regardless, that’s a bigger problem I think.

The game freezes up randomly on Linux when playing through Proton and ProtonGE, making any mission impossible to complete.

Performance seems to be worse than HITMAN 3. Here’s the difference with the same settings:
HITMAN 3 Whittleton Creek - 90-100 FPS ~ Medium + Intel XeSS/FSR2 1080P
HITMAN 3 CTT Whittleton Creek - 30-61 FPS ~ Medium + Intel XeSS/FSR2 1080P

My computer is running an Intel Core i7-2600, 8GBs of RAM, GTX 1650 4GB, and I’m running the game on a HDD.

When recording through OBS, I can only record through Screen Capture if I want a better video, but even then, performance drops down to 20-40 FPS in the Safehouse and 30-50 FPS in Whittleton Creek. Recording through Window Capture, even at lower resolutions result in a stuttery 5-10 FPS.

EDIT: The game seems to be fine now, without any performance drops. It might have been caching the shaders. I’ll test tomorrow if OBS still has issues.

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Cannot say i’ve have the same experience; I ran it through Proton Hotfix just fine. I have a whole stream to prove it =P

Didn’t notice any immediately obvious performance issues; there’s stuttering, but that just may be due to the shader caching and not the game.

Could be shader caching, but I’m not yet sure. I have to play it more and see if the performance improves.

I think Silent Assassin rating should matter. Because without any penalty, why should I bother identifying the target in Showdown? Right now the intel we gathered is pointless. I can kill every suspect without ever using the camera feature. That is what I did, actually :grin:

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Theres optional prestige objectives that require silent assassin for the payout

Maybe itd work better if some of these mechanics were moved to the buildup missions?

Well, that was true in the main game too. Killing every one in the level still completes the level. Silent Assassin is just a rank at the end of the day. I agree that there should be some reward for it though.

That speaks directly to the economy of the game. Merces are difficult enough to earn that bonuses for completing the mission with the Silent Assassin rank at the end should probably be given. Whether it’s a multiplier or just a flat amount of Merces, it seems justified to me.

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The Suspects… One of their ‘Tells’ was ‘Tattoos’. There was one I thought wasn’t it… Then later I noticed a very small tat on her left wrist. Turns out that at some point she reads. So that excluded her. But Wow! This makes you have to pay very close attention! :+1:

There was only one other suspect that fit all the other descriptions. I just had to wait and follow him around to see if he ever smoked. Once he did - that was it.

I killed the target in an explosion :white_check_mark: , but not with a shotgun :x: . But there was only 1 target. So I’m not sure what the idea here is. I guess maybe it’s a choice of the 2 - and if either is completed - you’ll get the Mercers for that challenge. So, maybe an :x: isn’t so much a bad thing…? :man_shrugging:

Also, the lighting seems bugged sometimes in the basement.

There were also a couple of instances of very slight frame drops.


Re: Controls. I’m not sure if there’s a way to swap shoulder camera angles (without aiming). Also the placement toggle… I could probably explore the options more. I don’t know if those are there. :confused:


I hope I’m posting the appropriate thing here.

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I love Freelancer so far and I think it’s a great addition to the game. Here are some thoughts after a bit of playing.

The good

  • I love the idea of the safehouse and I’m very much looking forward to unlocking more areas and customizing the individual rooms.
  • Taking money from couriers or from safes is a nice alternative to completing contracts and optional objectives.
  • When you collect additional weapons on a map, you can bring them back home, so you don’t need to buy everything. That’s great.
  • I generally like the mechanics of the syndicate leader missions and I think the suspect camera is a great tool.
  • When you drop items from your inventory while in the safehouse, they are automatically put back on the wall, without the player having to go there. That’s nice (:
  • The videos in loading screens are cool.

The not so great

  • While I generally like the syndicate leader missions, I don’t particularly like the high amounts of suspects. For example, in a Dartmoor finale I had six and it was pretty annoying to watch them all in order to find the real target. I think less is more in this case.
  • I find it pretty annoying that 47 doesn’t start with coins on a map. Sure, on some maps it’s easy to find them or to pick up other throwables, but I think having coins from the beginning would be a big improvement.
  • When you fail a mission, not only the progress within the current syndicate is lost, but the progress of all previously completed syndicates is reset. That’s a pretty harsh penalty. I haven’t made it through a whole campaign yet and can’t speak to the reward at the end. But losing everything is a bit too drastic in my opinion.

Also, the servers have been great for me so far. No issues. :slight_smile:

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