I was thinking about this one. Looking through the windows, I could see another wardrobe connected to the currently unaccessible bedroom. It might be a good idea to introduce new suits once this room is unlocked for both wardrobes?
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I’m half agreeing that it would make logical sense, but also half concerned that creating Alerted Missions that way might make things much harder than they are already – Freelancer can be very hard to maintain SA at the moment (for me)
Although, it does lend itself well to the idea of killing witnesses. Finally, you can get a “silent assassin” run by using the "no one will notice if there’s no one TO notice!" technique…
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Got a ridulous Time Trial for one of my showdowns early in a campaign.
There were four suspects in Dartmoor and I got 2 minutes to kill the right one and get out. It literally took me 1 minute 40 secs just to check and exclude the first two. 
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I had another few thoughts about somethings small that could be added to the safehouse to create more utility:
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That chemistry machine from Dartmoor that you use to make poison could be placed in the garage or something, along with emetic/poison flowers or frogs around the safehouse so that you could make your own poison. But have the plants/frogs respawn rarely so that you can’t always rely on that. And by placing the machine in the garage, the upstairs, the garage and the outside would have to be unlocked to even be able to access it to make said poison. So it’s not too easy.
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A television would be nice. Even it it just plays the news reports that already exist in the game. I think it would be neat to have.
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Give the fishing spot outside the possibility to randomly catch a fish if you stand there long enough, like in Ambrose Island.
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Having the Prestige Objectives spawn after you select the Syndicate/campaign/map, so that there is less likelihood of a Prestige Objective conflicting with a campaign objective.
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And as much as it hurts me to point this out: Either leave all random spawning useful objects in the map and only have crates and vendors have weapons or Merces. Or…ugh…remove all random spawning useful objects in the maps completely and have that stuff fully tied to crates/vendors. I have found myself not bothering with the crates or vendors, because if I just look around long enough I might find a coin, brick, rat poison, wrench, screwdriver, hammer, etc in the map and I don’t have to bring something from home or buy it from a vendor.
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Hitcord suggested I leave feedback here.
I was having an issue where opening doors with keys violated the “Doors Stay Locked” objective but that appears to have been fixed. I’m getting achievement recount at the beginning of each mission which takes a while to go through. I’ve thrown or dropped items during missions to have them disappear where I nor another NPC can pick them up (e.g. audio distraction device).
Thanks IOI.
Challenges that make you lose are always a bad idea.
Yeah time trial has to be fixed… also the timed - takedown suspect should be made more doable, cause having to take them down every 2:30 hurts founding out who the real target is
Not very likely since you can always change destination after choosing.
That is the think, it takes more time without having the stuff at home… and having more game options (vendor/no vendor for example) makes the game more customizable to fit your own wanted playstyle
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OK so here is my feedback on the gamemode.
For purpose before sharing what I thought I reached mastery 18, completed 1 full campaign, while failing around 4 or 5 of them. I’m quite a fan of rogue-like / rogue-lite games so I will make some comparisons between Freelancer and other games in the genre.
TLDR
Very interesting mode in itself, but rewards are not on par with the challenges. Some little rogue-lite mechanics to implement. Most of the challenges are way too long to be completed (even by the most hardcore players). Using the “Alt-F4” strategy is way too useful (not only to avoid failing a mission / campaign).
Merces / Economy / Economical Balance:
- At first I did not understand that the objectives were the only Merces rewards for completing a mission (outside safes, courriers and potential Merces in boxes). This could be better explained. Also I find some objectives hard to do at first (with close to 0 tools / weapons). Completing a mission should at least give 5M to the player.
- Suppliers in the map should offer items according to the amount of Merces I have (no need to show me a 137M silenced pistol on my first run when you show me a 37M one one the last chapter of a campaign)
- Once the most usefool tools / weapons have been unlocked (being via supplier / end mission crate / found in mission), Merces loses a lot of interest and need to be sinked (I’ll come back to this point later).
- Sieker and Kalmer are pretty cheap compared to their usefulness (40M for a Sieker I have in my inventory every game, pretty good value compared to a silenced Sieger Sniper for 68M that I never used).
Rogue-Lite Mechanics
Some of the propositions below are in direct relation with the fact that it is possible to get the same mechanics by using alt-F4 instead of playing the game by the rules.
- Unlocking weapons is pretty good for subsequent runs (including post fail), loosing all tools is pretty harsh and some items should be taken out of the tools. For example I think explosives should not be part of the tools as they are single use.
- Poison should not be single use but rather have a number of charges and be unlocked by types (emetic / sedative / lethal) instead of type + form
- Map specific disguise, starting with some item is quite a gamble as holding them makes us a target (canisters for example) or some can be unusable as we will have to leave them on the spot (already had to leave a briefcase with sniper at the start because only had ladders around). This unique disguise could be unlocked by completing a showdown (or even a campaign), making the option to start disguised (without choosing the disguise itself) available on the same map. (i.e. completing a showdown in Dartmoor gives me access to this option only in Dartmoor).
- Merces sink (I told you I’ll come back to this point): later in the game I find myself not using that much Merces thus making me not caring about objectives. Here is how I would make Merces more interesting in mid-late game:
- Lower the number of suspects using around 10-20M (per suspect) so that I won’t have to bother identify the whole map would be pretty useful (and speed up the showdown missions) and will make us feel a bit more about the last mission during the campaign (but not being able to lower the number of suspect under 50% for example)
- Allow us to order some wall weapons for an extra price (+25M - 100M depending on the rarity) this would allow us to complete our collection later (or help acquiring / replace our favourite weapons)
- Pay the supplier to refresh his inventory (maybe add a timer for it to be refresh, “come back in 5 I’ll see what I have in stock”).
- Allow us to reroll 1 or all objectives (but still in the pool of the syndicate) so that I won’t have to do a mission just before the last showdown that asks me to kill guards with unsilenced weapons; or asking me to trap oil / trap water ennemies if I don’t have cannisters.
- “Pacifying an alerted mission”, allow us to spend Merces to make a mission unalerted (maybe this won’t make that much sense with all the maps, but at the moment with a lighter pool it makes some of them pretty hard to do). Also make this more expensive on showdown map (and only usable at the moment of launching the mission)
Balancing
- Sieker and Kalmer are very useful and as they are “guns” their ammo will refill in between missions whatever I do. These weapons are very strong and they could be balanced by having 1 mission cooldown if I used them (not just equip one, actually firing it)
- On the other hands, poisons are 1 use only and could be based on a number of charges (at the moment I prefer using Sieker even in a crowded room instead of my emetic syringe or vial with the adequat disguise because of that)
- Instead of presenting Prestige Objectives at random every time here’s how I will present them: 3 categories: Silent Assassin / Timed / Weapon Rarity. Making us choosing between one of them every mission. Also Timed should give way more as they require the most effort compared to SA while weapon rarity can (emphasis on the “can”) be pretty easy to achieve once one legendary / epic weapon has been found so I would make the income go this way Weapon Rarity < Silent Assassin < Timed
- If Merces sinks spoken earlier are implemented, some objectives could receive a bump in Merces reward (especially if they require loud / dangerous gameplay)
- Some items have disappeared from the maps (for example, not all but most of the poisons are not findable anymore in maps).
- The Mission Control decoration could be used to give a little information about targets (their portraits would be the bare minimum) so we could have a little more agenda on our inventory instead of going everytime with “sieker / silenced gun / crowbar”.
Unlocking Challenges
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Many challenges will not be grinded by the community (completing 100 campaigns, killing 1000 leaders…).
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Challenges only offer XP at the moment, making some of them unlocking items would be a better incentive (even some tools being always available behind some very hard challenges, and I mean hard not jsut long and painful).
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At the start of every mission there is a lot of ongoing challenges that are appearing in the upper right corner, the more I have begun the longer it takes to ends (and it makes some sounds also), any way to make this not a thing (or an option I have to activate to stop that) ?
Hideout
- Some items found in the hideout can not be dropped and use spaces in the inventory (rusted nail for examples).
- The coin found in front of the hideout should take space (coin = 0 space while a banana takes 2)
- The ability to redecorate the kitchen is actually bugged and makes 47 not able to interact with it’s inventory
- Items found outside are not always there (coin, rusty nail…) while the inside items are there 100% of the time
- Unlocking different ways to leave the hideout, could be tied to different points of entry on the mission. This is not a proposition to chose a starting point but more of a “type of starting point” (for example: random for the one in the basement, crowd / regular entries for the car, sneaky for the boat and loud (very exposed) for the helicopter).
- Also I really like this idea (it could also be “being able to cultivate mushroom / plants in the garden” once unlocked):
Alt-F4
Closing the game allows for way too many cheesing behaviours and lowers the challenges while giving more options than playing “by the rules”. Using alt-F4 is encouraged at the moment as it has these impacts:
- Target is not randomized in a showdown, if I loudly identify them I can alt-f4 come back and plan the mission knowing who is the target (this is specially useful in the last showdown).
- It refreshes the supplier inventory. Early game, once I have 40M I can spam a map with an easy to access supplier to “force” him to sell me a Sieker / Kalmer.
- If a starting point is not to my taste I can alt-f4 do a mission on an other map, come back and have a different starting point.
- If my cover has been blown and things are going south I can simply alt-F4 before being shot to death and keep my campaign and all its progression. (I’m pretty aware that this is probably the single thing that cannot be addressed as it is here since Elusive Targets in Hitman 2016).
I know this is a long one I hope this is useful feedback for the team. I want to emphasise that I had a very good time with the CTT and will really enjoy the mode when released in January. I just hope that some of the Merces Sinks I presented will be there as they will be a direct reason for me to engage with the mode after completing 1 or 2 campaigns.
Edit: rewording / typos
2 Likes
I brought an assault rifle on a mission because I had an objective to kill guards with it. I made sure it was actually an assault rifle & not just a big SMG because I can’t tell them apart. When I eventually unpacked it & started shooting I noticed the counter wasn’t going up. Looked in the inventory & it was an SMG?? It said “SMG” in the name & everything.
I thought, is this some kind of gun-switching bug, like the game can’t tell what’s an assault rifle either? Or have I finally become so stupid that I double-checked & still got it wrong?
What actually happened was, I went to the supplier & (anticipating losing all my money on showdown 3 again, like I always do) I bought whatever I could afford, including this SMG. It silently replaced the briefcase in my hand with the new one & I left it behind.
lol.
I didn’t do an Alt+F4 game closure at any point during the CTT, but I think you’ve got way too much of a bee in your bonnet about that one. If you consider it ‘cheesing’ then you can very easily never intentionally do that, and if someone else chooses to do it in their single player game then why would you care?
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I care because most of the ALT-F4 usage can be baked into the game for everyone with only some UI options.
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Ah, okay, I see your point: an argument FOR a native in-game functionality that achieves the same thing as force-quitting the game currently does ‘unofficially’. I can get on board with that. 
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There definitely should be an “exit save” mechanic, where yo cyan quit-save the game to come back to where exactly where you left off (especially considering how long some of these missions can take)
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I failed a campaign (forced a kill and got caught with multiple guards around who shot me, my fault completely for not being patient). While I lost half my Mercs and the gear I had on me (as previously stated), when I respawned in the safe house I noticed my briefcases for tools and explosives (ie. ducks, poisons, etc.) were closed. When they reopened, everything that I had previously collected was gone. All melee and firearms that were previously connected and not brought on the mission were still there.
Anyone else have this issue where safe house items were lost in addition to equipment brought on the mission?
Yeah currently failing a campaign empties all your tool briefcases. A few people have reported already that 1/ it seems too harsh a penalty as they’re not particularly easy to gather and a lot of them are single use 2/ it makes no sense because you didn’t bring those tools with you in the mission.
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This is intended, you loses half your merces + all your tools + equipped items when losing a campaign (tools are not lost if you die on a non alerted / non showdown map)
The actual reason (I mean, imo) for losing your tools is because starting with limited options & doing whatever you can while you build up your inventory is the fun part of the game. The in-fiction reason is because 47 uses all the tools to fix himself up. He’s more crowbar than man at this point.
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Experienced another bug a couple of times, I don’t know what specifically triggered it but I equipped some items to bring on a mission, and then when I arrived at the mission itself my inventory was empty (other than the camera) and the items weren’t in my safehouse anymore
Just thinking about the maths of the GOAT challenge, when you give it some more thought it’s even more stupid than it originally seemed… and at first glance it originally seemed very stupid indeed.
If you’re an adult who lives with some form of family/other loved ones and/or you’re someone who has a full time job (which I imagine covers the large majority of the playerbase), if you play one Freelancer mission per day every single day (ignoring any time spent in the main game, or any other of the many other things we all do with our lives) then at a generous assumption of 3 targets per mission you’re going to have to play Freelancer for the better part of a DECADE to pop the Challenge.
Really hope IOI re-thinks this requirement - even 1000 targets is a massive commitment that only hardcore HITMAN players are likely to achieve. By making it 10 times that number they’re restricting the challenge completion to the realms of the ridiculous and the idea of it crushes my motivation rather than increasing it.
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While I agree with you, we could argue that explosives (which are in the tool box) are less useful than a silenced pistol (which are on the wall). Losing my explosives if I die don’t bother me, losing my silenced weapons is more of hastle.
By stating this, I would like to showcase that some tools could be taken from the box to the wall (especially if they are single use).