Please excuse my mini-rant here but I wanted to get something off my chest. I don’t get the whole “Pay to play/win” argument. Everyone Pays to play/win.
The most recent Lust DLC announcement for Hitman 3 includes a crossbow. It’s already been suggested that this may be a unique kill method that will be unfair for contracts because people without the DLC won’t be able to complete the contract correctly.
My argument is that for normal contracts, that’s perfectly fine! It may not be for a featured contract, but for a normal, run of the mill contract, what is the big deal?
Everyone pays to play or win in a lot of things. Someone who pays to get a better/faster PC has an advantage. Someone with a better internet connection has an advantage. Sports teams constantly play with better equipment. Office workers get better equipment. It happens all the time.
Yes, if someone doesn’t want to pay for the DLC they will be hampered in completing a contract but that shouldn’t mean we can’t create those contracts in the first place! To say that is to also say that we can’t use the stuff we paid for outside of either the specific DLC missions or the main story missions. Since both contracts and story have leaderboards, you could say that the DLC stuff shouldn’t ever be used since it might impact some other player’s position.
You pay for better equipment so you can get an advantage. That’s just life.
Well, if the contract creator lacks the foresight to consider whether people may or may not have X item required to do Z, then that’s a reflection on them. Not the people that don’t have a disposable income, or feel they’re not getting their money’s worth given the price of what’s being sold.
It doesn’t feel to me like it’s about foresight. It feels like it’s about whether or not a contract creator (which I am absolutely not) should be effectively told not to use certain items because it might be unfair. If a person wants to create a contract using an item from a DLC, that should be fine. Yes those players without the DLC either can’t play that contract or have to play it without achieving all of the requirements. When my wife downloads a new house in The Sims, I never hear her complaining about how the one she wants needs the newest Expansion but I’m sure that happens there too. Contract creators should feel free to use whatever tools they want even if it’s locked behind a pay-for DLC.
They should probably label the contract as requiring DLC content but there’s no reason they shouldn’t use it in the first place.
And if I get 4 stars on an otherwise perfect run (but didn’t because I don’t want or care to buy whatever) then that’s something to be even more proud of.
Or maybe said contract creator/s should be obligated to purchase the required DLC for those that don’t have it. /jk
I guess the way I look at, the only person who does or should care how many stars I get on a particular contract is me. Sometimes I do get 5 stars, sometimes I get 1. If I had fun playing it, that’s the only part that really matters.
I hope the crossbow isnt like a poison, it’s just a bolt thru the head. But yeah like I think theres two sides to this that raise good points. For one the game shouldnt be worried about adding OP items or putting them behind paywalls because it’s a singleplayer game not multiplayer, but at the same time you need some balancing to keep the game feeling fresh and fun and locking everything cool behind paying and giving new players only reskins is dumb. Like instead of mark 2 and 3 items these couldve been part of the mastery tracks. I honestly think a good compromise would be to take advantage of IO’s love for reskins and just add a new item thats cool to the DLC, and then a few months later add a new version of it thats available via an escalation. The ideal thing would be to lock these unlocks behind bonus missions which people wouldnt be compelled to buy but i dont want to sound smug pointing out what everybody wants. It’s like saying grass is green
A nice balance to keep things not extremely OP as a kill method is just to put those items in their own categories, like you said.
If the crossbow is some lethal poison weapon, then put it as a Crossbow category, not poison.
The other items that aren’t really OP, just have an exclusive category like the Proud Swashbuckler or other lethal bonus DLC items, aren’t really anything to care about. They don’t offer any unique capabilities – and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter, since you’d need the DLC in the first place to even attempt to SA it.
I couldn’t agree with anybody saying that Hitman is a pay to win game
Simply because there is no online multiplayer. Even the ghost mode of Hitman 2 wouldn’t be pay to win as there was no way of choosing items.
And Hitman isn’t the simplest game. Yes- an unlock may make things a tad easier, but there’s always ways around not having certain unlocks.
And in contracts mode if kills have the optional objective of a DLC item they arent likely to be featured, and its not like there’s a shortage of normal contracts out there.
Yeah IOI dont change weapons much after releasing them is the only problem I can see with that. I’d prefer changing them over removing them, but ever since the lancer they havent done that. I cant imagine it’s hardcoded
/jk