The opposite would make more sense… next time no supplier I guess (cause getting a weapon after killing them wouldn’t make any sense, since it would basically force everyone to always kill them… those poor npc just wanna help you and their families 
)
1 Like
maybe have some sort of mechanic that lets you pick up disguises to bring back, as well as buy new suits if needed, and maybe also have a suit damage thing kinda like when you play the master difficulty so that suits can be destroyed if you get hit and you need a new one.
The achievement are gonna make it last long enough 
2 Likes
I didnt play
I just checked if it still working and enter the game 30 mins ago and play 
I will try when i finish to exit and back
Maybe it hasn’t ended in your region then 
I thought the gamemode was incredible, I have a few notes and they shouldn’t be major difficulty to change. It wasn’t always clear what each prestige objective meant, finding this in the f1 menu is not intuitive and not in line with how other elements in the gamemode work that let you inspect before choosing. I would highly recommend adding some sort of inspect option on prestige objectives.
Mercer payout didn’t always show after finishing a mission.
There were a few typos like “your desguise” in the alerted territories text. There was also a visual bug with the binoculars at the lake of the safehouse. Doors stay locked is not clear. It explains that you shouldn’t force any doors open and gives the examples of lockpicks breaking down doors and blowing them up. Arguably very clear that these force a door open. What wasn’t clear is whether using the correct keycard or key counts as forcing a door open. it did appear that using the correct keycard did count as forcing a door open. So make it clear whether the objective is about forcing doors open or just opening locked doors at all.
There was a typo in the Collateral kill prestige objective text. “look out for Explosiives”
I had 2 crashed to desktop during play, both times when loading the safehouse.
attempting to redecorate the kitchen lead to UI being unresponsive forcing me to exit to menu and return.
In terms of the economy/xp balancing I thought it was near perfect. I do think it might make sense to have a base payout for missions of 5 mercers, though I understand that this could lead to people foregoing every other objective. So if that’s not an option, it would at least make some sense for the showdowns.
Attached are images related to the notes I have.(had to put them together like this bc of new member limitations.
1 Like
Only issue I found was this typo
and also idk if this is intentional or not but in some of the loading screens 47’s hitman 2 model is used
and in the how to play video i saw it once
Whew, what a ride. Freelancer has all the makings of a gaming masterpiece. I could quite happily play this endlessly - in fact, I essentially did, managing to squeeze out 63.3 hours of playtime before 16:00 rolled around.
I’ve got a bunch of feedback so I’ll separate it by classification.
Balance/Difficulty
Penalties for Death/Premature Exit:
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It’s a bit infuriating and illogical to lose all equipment when you die, as many have said.
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Consider allowing the player to exit a level with no penalty/failure if they haven’t pacified/killed anyone or acquired/spent Merces. This would enable scouting out locations to discern a suitable loadout.
Utility of Equipment
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The Lockpick, Sieker and Kalmer are basically a trifecta of tools you bring on every mission. The lockpick makes sense but the Sieker and Kalmer really shine. Whilst many have called for nerfing them, I completely disagree; the poisons should be improved so that they can be as useful as the dart guns. A dramatically reduced detection radius on the syringes would make them a much more attractive proposition; as would allowing us to stash a few more than just 2 of each.
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Assault/SMG/Shotgun class weapons are, by their very nature, designed for combat. However, this conflicts with the objective of the game since combat is the very thing that leads to death. Penalties for dying could perhaps be applied on a sliding scale of risk/reward rather than the flat 50% loss model that exists right now. This would provide for a more palatable combat option and rewards should scale accordingly.
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There are a lot of items you can’t have in your rack and many of them dotted around the safehouse. It would be wonderful if we also had a “Bric-a-Brac” drawer with a limited number of slots for everything that’s currently “un-racked” - you could also potentially allow expanding the number of slots as you level up mastery.
Economy & Earning Merces
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A base payout per target would be a good idea - optional objectives could then act as a multiplier rather than a set amount.
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On the note of objectives; building a dependency/exclusion graph to prevent conflicting objectives would be ideal.
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I was not a big fan of the timed objectives, maybe if you had more time I’d change my mind. The Hide & Seek one was a bit irritating with the constant animations of getting in and out of containers. Consider allowing an instant button interaction on a container when the player isn’t being chased/shot at.
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Merchants can frequently have cruft you’re not interested in; allowing you to pay Merces to re-roll might be a simple solution.
Showdowns
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The suspect camera feels a bit comical; something more like binoculars would be ideal - I frequently found myself getting up in the face of suspects to discern their attributes. Perhaps a tie-in with a sniper rifle would also be helpful.
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At the very least, the camera should allow me to take a picture whenever I want.
Quality of Life
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You should receive a warning before exiting a level if intact items that you brought with you or purchased are going to be left behind.
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Prestige objectives should not become locked-in the moment you select them; highlight it but let me change my mind if I want, just like I can with my loadout.
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Markers above couriers/suspects should be visible through a sniper scope when using instinct.
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Allowing select-fire mode switching on relevant weapons would make them more useful. I largely stayed away from full-auto pistols since there’s no way to make them operate in semi-auto.
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Bring forward the release date One huff of the Freelancer crack pipe and you’re hooked.
Bugs (That I haven’t seen already reported)
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The “No Missed Shots” objective doesn’t just fail from shooting a camera/surveillance drive - shooting an NPC through a window will also fail you.
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The “No Combat” objective is either buggy or not-as-described. Getting spotted by mere civilians will fail it.
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Bringing more than one briefcase-size item will result in one of them being worn, and, in many cases, your immediate demise as soon as the level starts since you were around NPCs.
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The Silent Assassin HUD item doesn’t display; having it is useful as an animated reminder to deal with surveillance if you’re caught on camera. The objectives are a bit passive. Additionally, a few of the SA prestige objectives don’t change to notify you.
And that’s about it from me. Loved the Allan easter egg. Makes me nostalgic for FCK and Aggemam in C47.
9 Likes
I think it’s pretty sad that you feel you have to apologize for giving honest critique. You are not “screaming”, and you do not sound angry. I agree with most of your points.
1 Like
Overall I enjoyed myself with the CTT. I like the spin it gives on the base game. However I do feel that there’s too many items stripped from the maps. I spent huge amount of time on Paris trying to find some rat poison. Never found it.
I also failed a showdown in the 3rd syndicate where I couldn’t do anything. It was on Hokkaido, I spawned in the restaurant cubicle and and enforcer came in straight away, busting me and causing all the suspects to flee immediately. I was not amused.
I had a sound bug on Paris where you go onto the balcony on the chopper side and the chopper went silent. Went back in and the sound was back.
In the safehouse I had 1 silenced pistol, it was in the display but it didn’t show up in the focus mode. It’s right there above the 1st pistol.
Looking forward to January 
3 Likes
I simply love it!
I found the missing SA rating a bit odd since i was so used to it but once i dived in i realized it gives me more freedom. There are plenty of SA objectives to compensate.
I like that there is a stake for losing.
It feels like a step up from saving/loading in the story mode and restart only in contracts to complete or fail.
The reward is awkward. When you read the rewards you expect the mission reward to be a base reward and not the sum of the objectives below. You would expect to get paid for completing the job. I think a base payment of maybe 10 M would make sense.
You could finish a campaign without completing a single objective. The mission is done but you don’t get paid.
I love the decorating.
I found a motivational painting that didn’t want to stay on the wall:
I can hang it and the next time i return from a mission or restart the game the painting it’s missing.
The prompt for the briefcases with gear went away at some point. I realized i can access it if i am far away from it and when i could hold the “G” 47 would slide awkwardly towards them.
The prompt was accessible only about a meter away from the actual prompt spot.
This was fixed by going to the main menu. I couldn’t recreate it.
When i tried to customize the dressing room the camera froze in place but i could move 47 around the room and in and out of view. I could only exit to main menu to get out of it.
Another prompt was a bit sticky and it wanted to come with me around the house:
A target in Whittleton Creek near the park with the tractor was stuck in stretching animation and stay that way when panicked. He would talk but continue stretching and other NPCs would look at him with a question mark on their heads getting stuck as well.
The Challenge “You Urned This” seems broken.
Progress is zero but i completed the campaign several times:
One challenge would not pop up when i shot the guards with the correct shotgun:
I would like the prompt for abandoning campaign to be somewhere far away from the selection prompt or have a different prompt. I had a hard time with this abandoning by mistake and i saw other people doing the same.
Another fast menu for the items in the house would be nice so we don’t have to take the house tour before every single mission. This was probably by design but it’s annoying.
The objectives are not very easy to find or figure out. There is a lot of fumbling with menus to see them. Maybe the premium objectives could be completely visible in instinct when the player is facing them.
I played a lot - as much as i could in the given time - around 30-40 hours.
I managed to gather almost all the items and achieved level 25 mastery.
I reached level 60+.
I found that my playstyle fits very well with this game mode.
I like to plan and do things only once. Get it done or go home.
I don’t like the timed objectives. I’m not a speedrunner and the timer gives me anxiety. I avoided these objectives as much as i could though i admit i saw people having fun with them.
I completed the campaign a few times and eventually started risking things so i can see what works. As a result i failed gloriously a bunch of times but it was fabulous so i didn’t mind.
The gear walls and the objectives start to make sense when you gather a few items and you can connect what works for what mission.
The inventory management could have been explained more but once you figure it out it’s clear you have to do some math and check your gear walls if you want to be armed to the teeth.
The final showdown with 12 suspects was awesome!
Yes it was hard but it was a lot of fun.
It took me a while but that is how i do things.
I hope the test gave enough feedback to make Freelancer the jewel of the Hitman 3 game.
4 Likes
I played through the Technical Test this weekend and came across a couple of things, which I shall list thusly:
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Spelling mistakes in Go Freelance info card > “loose” instead of “lose”.
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First actions are clear and unlockable areas give you a sense of aspiration and a goal to work towards.
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First Message cutscene cuts off a little too early, making it feel a little choppy.
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Prestige objectives should get a zoom in sequence like everything else in the safehouse. The buttons give too little information about what you are agreeing to, which can be frustrating once you have already agreed to a prestige objective. It makes them feel impossible at times.
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individual NPC’s tend to glitch and ‘vibrate’ when walking around.
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The new sound design was super epic and immersive, hats off.
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Sometimes, the dialog of a potentially important character is really close by, while the character is still quite far off.
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Losing Freelancer tools can be incredibly frustrating, especially after you spent so much time gathering them. I genuinely cried so much the first time I lost a campaign and I rage quit the second time because losing so much can feel very demotivating. I understand why you lose them, but it would make the game mode a little more accessible if that feature could be switched off for more inexperienced players.
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Merces felt a little sparse in the first run. Maybe giving no more than 5 Merces as a standard payout for missions would soften that sparcity and make missions feel more worth it, even if you mess up the objectives. 5 Merces “for your troubles” as my partner said.
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Missions and available items at sellers and from chests feel incredibly random and often quite useless. There seems to be no real system for finding anything useful in crates around missions, which makes completing objectives (especially in the first and second run) very difficult, if not impossible.
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The game also spawns 47 in some incredibly random and sometimes inconvenient places. I get the fun and challenging nature of this concept, but spawning behind the ruins in Sapienza while all your targets are near the church doesn’t make much sense.
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Last but not least: why is your camera recognized as a gun by NPC’s? It takes you out of the game a little bit.
All-in-all, my experience with this new game mode was really good. The balancing of the XP is already 100% spot on and where it should be and so many things just worked so well for this new play style. It allows for different types of assassins to shine in their expertise (i.e. bomb-enthusiasts, sniper assassins, silent killers, etc.)
Everyone at IOI did such a great job at making this game mode happen and I feel truly honored to have participated in this test! Thank you so much!
4 Likes
I had a similar issue on Dartmoor, when climbing out of the window of the small room between the downstairs staff room and Fernsby’s office. All sound cut off immediately and went back on when I climbed back inside.
1 Like
I played the Freelance CTT for a few hours, completing a couple campaigns and falling a few others. I generally love the concept, I really enjoy having a sense of progression in the game. I look forward to playing more in January and decorating the safe house. Some thoughts:
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It seems like going into a store menu at a selling NPC in a level doesn’t pause the level. The first time I found one, when I left the menu I was immediately surprised by a NPC who noticed I was trespassing. I understand it might not be feasible to pause the sim, but a warning might be nice.
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It might be valuable to offer tutorials that explain some more subtle interactions that could be helpful to completing very random challenges. Like drowning an NPC only requires them to get near a toilet, stuff like that. I’m sure there’s loads of interesting interactions I’m not aware of. Stuff like this could be crucial when you find yourself with a target that offers very little opportunity.
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I was confused about what items I can take back to the safe house. Its understandable that you won’t have 7 muffins when you get home, but sometimes it seemed like I had a load of usefully things and succeeded, but nothing appeared in my inventory at home.
Thanks for the opportunity to play the CTT, and for all your hard work making this game.
2 Likes
Here’s my final-ish progress report for Days 4 and 5. These are merged because they have the same issues and, frankly, I was far too salty to remain calm last night to do a write up after what Day 4 threw my way.
As usual, the streams can be watched here., and Day 5’s stream will be added to the Youtube Playlist sometime tomorrow.. With that out of the way, let’s begin.
Day 4 reminded me quite just how flawed making a rogue-lite game mode for something like Hitman is. I don’t want to poo poo the developers’ efforts, there is a good base to work off of here, but it has several issues:
One – As I’ve said before, the levels tend to take far too long to complete, and syndicate meets take even longer, simply because you’re expected to play hunter and hunted with all the assassins and potential syndicate leaders….leaders which may not even fucking have the looks or the tells described . All but two of my leaders were like this, meaning this system was not thought out too well. To say there are some “kinks” to work out would be putting it mildly. When you have a progressing harder-and-harder track such as the campaigns shown here, the levels need to be shorter, be it by using targets that have a decently complex routine, or by extraditing things like lookouts and assassins, the former just…don’t do much but be super-enforcers. The more time a player invests in a game, the less risks they’ll take later on to maintain that streak, as they don’t want to ruin the campaign with needless risks. The game even seems to be aware of its own “cheese” method (using phones to call people who meet for a specific reason), which itself is a tad troubling.
Guess who lost four hours of gameplay by the game killing them because the game decided that “my rules are not your rules”, and killed me for shooting a chandelier. No, really.. Being careful is just as punishing as being loud, it’s really strange. Even I acknowledge that the kill was bugged, but the salt that built up because I lost hours and hours of careful work and playtime really bummed me out.
And then it happened again. An hour and a half later In Miami, my target “”“got into”“” an ambulance and couldn’t be killed.. More time wasted because the game actively cheated me. I’m still angry about it now, so imagine if I had written this yesterday. Yes, these are bugs, but imagine if I had done that in a less-bugged way; I’d still be pretty damn frustrated for losing so much progress.
Two – The combat in Freelancer, I swear, has been modified to not last as long, so as to encourage more playstyles. Which is a nice change, However, what this also does is really highlight just how dumb the combat AI is. If you know your way around the map (which, if you’re playing this mode, you really should), then losing the AI by hightailing it out of the place you were just in is a very viable strategy. The times I died were due to me being outgunned in a 5v1 where I really couldn’t flee anywhere.
Three – The mindset of “there’s no consequences for my actions” is far too incentivised in the mode. Silent Assassin is not a thing here, which has its perks (you can trespass pretty much anywhere, and just get told to go away/ be escorted out), but it can also turn into a Kill everyone challenge, and the game won’t punish you for it unless there’s a specific complication for that. I know I mentioned this in Day 1 and 2, but if there’s no penalty for civilian kills or murder spree’s, then this just turns into Hades.
To fix this, might I suggests what Payday 2 does; there’s a cash deduction for each civilian you kill, and while this but a drop in the ocean for a XXXII player like myself, it still puts players into a “last resort” mentality – players only tend to kill civilians either by accident (them running in front of gunfire/ caught in explosives) or to maintain stealth when the whole crew runs out of cable ties (which doesn’t really happen all that much). A Mercer deduction for each civilian killed with the same handwave Payday uses (“cleaner costs” to unperson them/ deal with them essentially) would set the game in a better path I think. You can still encourage loud kills, but it’ll still leaving pacifying civilians open to you. Right now, I can just dome every head that’d be any trouble to me as I go, with basically no downside.
Four – There needs to be a base pay-out of Mercers. A contract is a contract; the player should not get mercers solely from (relatively random) crates, couriers, safes and completing the complications. That’s simultaneously too many avenues and too few. Couriers tend to not have that many Mercers when you KO them, and safes are not on all levels so the 30+ mercer reward simply isn’t available all the time.
Five – Silenced Sniper Kill complications are too situational. Hell, the Loud sniper kill complication is too situational. These kinds of complications simply cannot be done early-game as mercers are hard to find/ get, and snipers are quite expensive and hard to find. Either make sniper rifles cheaper, or just merge the two complications into one so it’s much easier to complete at more tiers in the campaign.
Five.Five – As people have already mentioned on here, having conflicting complications tends to lead to a skewed playstyle; instead of going in with some kind of plan, you rely on boxes and RNG to make it son at least one of the complications can be completed for some coinage.
Six – The safehouse mastery is very grindy, and simply goes too slowly. I found the room unlocking to be tedious; when the upstairs unlocks, I expect ALL the upstairs to unlock (and all the routes to get upstairs too). Make people grind for redecorating, sure, that makes sense, but it feels quite arbitrary to lock off rooms 47 cannot access for maybe even 100 hours into the game.
Again, Payday 2 does precisely this; it has all the rooms unlocked; you pay Continental Coins (yes, THOSE coins) to upgrade the rooms, which adds more and/or fancier decor. It feels stupid to literally look behind a sheet of glass to a room you can’t unlock yet because you…haven’t gotten enough mastery? Despite there already being boxes in there?
Seven – The safehouse interactions are quite heartwarming. Like, I just loved doing random stuff to pass the time. The wood chopping is a particular favourite of mine.
To reiterate, IO Interactive, I like the game modes’ concept, but there’s a lot of flaws surrounding it’s execution at present (flaws to appear to being downplayed from what i’ve read too, which…yeah…I won’t open that kettle of fish). Had this released as-is, and not in this closed tech test, I don’t think I would’ve given it as much chance as I have done.
Right, this seems to be what’s in my mind the most. I’m sure i’ll think of more when rewatching older footage. Final Playtime: 17.9 Hours.
For convenience, i’ll link to the forum posts I’ve posted before to give a nice timeline of reactions, otherwise I may repeat myself:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4/5 (You’re here)
I will likely re-read these posts out in a scripted video format soon enough, if nothing else but to spread these concerns of mine around.
9 Likes
Doesn’t look like that was bugged. At 1:59:01 you can see their icon has almost completely filled up with red (they disappear when it fills up which you can see happen in the video too). You just ran out of time when they reached the exit. Diana’s dialogue played late though after they had already escaped and took its time to say that you failed.
1 Like
I actually died in exactly the same circumstance in my first campaign. In this particular case, it’s not Freelancer doing you dirty. The chandelier is apparently electrical and you are standing in water.
7 Likes
Played the CTT for 15 hours in total, and I definitely liked what I saw, the gameplay loop itself is overall enjoyable, and the unlocks were mostly what kept me going. Here’s a couple random thoughts/observations that I recorded throughout, there are definitely going to be a lot of repeats with what was said in this thread, but heck:
- On the subject of unlocks, I feel like some of the challenges are ridiculously grindy, especially the 10k kills one. Admittedly, we only got 25 out of 100 levels of mastery in this test, but those unlocks better be worth it for the time investment.
- Would be really nice if there were hotkeys for switching between weapon panels in the safehouse. Using the default PC binds for reference, press X to move to the other page of assault rifles, press X again to move to pistols, etc.
- The weight and rarity system is a mixed bag, heavily in player’s favour in some cases and heavily against in others. One example that stood out to me is Sieger 300 Advanced, a modded-out sniper rifle of Epic rarity. It weighs only 2 units, which is less than or equal to some of the available tools like the crowbar, while being a way less committal and less risky option. It’s supposed to be rewarding because of the rarity of the item, but I feel like that is achieved just with its properties: it’s a silenced gun, with a 3x scope and quick packing/unpacking, that’s already extremely good. Allowing the player to bring along even more than that feels… busted, somewhat? Can’t think of anything that weighs too much, though.
- The “No Combat” objective is a bit finnicky, I got spotted by a civilian (non-guard) NPC when firing a shot, but that NPC didn’t get alerted, no combat ensued, I could walk right past that NPC for all I cared
Would be nice to have a “cannot be holstered/hidden” icon, such as for SMGs that are too big - The “Silent Assassin” prestige objective doesn’t account for cases where SA can be gained back, such as when the witness is the target (i.e. we can kill the witness, thus being qualified for SA again). I feel like that objective check should be left until the end of the mission, if SA hasn’t been regained - then the objective is failed.
- On Silent Assassin itself not being a thing, or rather the lack of consequence for sloppy play - it definitely feels liberating compared to the base game, and allows for more expressive playstyles, but perhaps it’s too liberating? It might be interesting to have some kind of penalty to introduce more player choice.
- The “decorate” interaction in the kitchen next to the wine/table cleaning is bugged, disabling most of the keys and all of the other interactions in the safehouse.
- Assassin’s HWK21 Covert doesn’t get highlighted in instinct.
- Ornamental Assault Rifle isn’t silenced.
- There is a particular sequence of lines that can be generated by Diana on mission start: “…but you know what to do. You know what to do, 47.”
- Loading FMVs are probably not that good of an idea due to looking choppy while… well, loading. This is relevant for low to mid-tier systems, at any rate.
2 Likes