PLEASE revert the "Collateral" change to Freelancer

Also, you can still use loud or large melee weapons on main targets and still get SA. Why would anyone think that just because they’re not silent or can’t be hidden when carrying them that you have to do it out in the open or when/where it can be heard by guards? And if anything is heard by guards - why didn’t you kill them near a crate/dumpster or ledge where you can hide the body?

Loud firearms and large melee weapons do not impede gameplay - lack of skill does.

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Playing a game completely designed around being easy when using disguises and stealth using only disguises and health is not really what I’d call skill. I can do that no sweat, but using illegal firearms in hitman is a much bigger challenge and I don’t think people who want to do that NEEDS to be punished.

Punishing player decisions for literally no good reason will do nothing but limit their freedom of approach.

The game is LITERALLY punishing you for thinking outside the box. It’s an arbitrary game rule in a gamemode that was supposed to not be about telling you which approach you should choose. This limits player freedom and creativity and forces them down a boring path of playing the game exactly like they did in the main gamemode.

Also think about whose fun this rule limits. This rule doesn’t affect you in any way since you are going to play stealthily and cautiously all the time because that is apparently the way you find the most easy to complete challenges, but for someone that would like to choose a different approach for a fun challenge will literally have the game tell them to stop playing that way because it is incorrect.

I think Collateral damage should be an objective on missions where caution and professionalism makes sense, not an arbitrary rule that limits player choice on every single mission in Freelancer.

I’ve seen that here are missions where you have to kill people with loud weapons and explosions and shit in Freelancer. Why the FUCK would a contractor that specifies violent means of killing multiple targets be the kind of person that would find collateral damage morally objectionable? That rule makes no sense on missions of carnage, but it does make perfect sense on the missions that require stealthy kills and not being spotted.

i’m sorry but i don’t see it like that.

you can kill civilians in the main game. you can literally kill every single person in a level. it only affects an actually arbitrary score at the end of the mission. impacts nothing. equally, you can kill civilians in freelancer, albeit you are financially penalised.

we are given plenty of freedom in the main game, so i don’t quite understand. like, how can you on one hand say the essence of “hitman is variety” and at the same time suggest that there is only one way to play the main game mode…? if that is your position, where is that variety you’re talking about? it makes no sense to me.

also, i don’t see killing civilians as a lateral solution to anything. they are very much in the box.

i don’t recall telling you anything about how i play.

this is just a lot of unfounded supposition. who is to say it is a moral objection rather than a logistical one? who is to say the client is taking merces from you rather than you simply ring-fencing merces for clean-up like earlier games…? we can all make shit up. :smile:

i’m sorry but i do think you’re being hyperbolic. why don’t you try the mode out. see if it is as limiting as you think.

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As expected, it’s an extremely negligible amount, 50 Merces where the typical objective is 1,000 to 1,500 and the base payout starts out at 200, with showdowns having more, and guards aren’t penalized, making this is basically a non issue. The penalty for suspects though is a bit much, but makes even more sense as they want you to engage with the mechanics and not just kill everyone and call it a day, just like with civilians. I encourage you to try the mode out, it’s very freeing to not have to worry about SA, exactly how you wanted it to be!

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I’m totally fine with the token amount for non-target kills (call it the cost of covering up a murder) but the huge penalty for killing suspects - who are still syndicate lieutenants even if they’re not the leader! - combined with the change where you’re not allowed to box them unless they’re dead, makes grabbing someone’s phone to lure the others out feel like much less of a viable strategy

Edit: also the “pacify 3 suspects” objective becomes much harder when you have to leave them lying around all over the map

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I am trying the mode out and while you are correct that it is negligible, it also doesn’t change my mind that it’s absolutely stupid especially with the base payout being so terrible.

The first two levels were fairly easy but now that I am on the latter part of the third syndicate with multiple alerted areas (I have not failed any mission yet, they started out alerted) some of the levels are just absurdly hard to do undetected. Yeah maybe you guys thought the reason I made this thread was because I can’t play stealth, in actuality SASO is usually my preferred playstyle but that’s absolutely not reasonable for most Alerted missions.

I still fully believe that penalizing killing civilians in thsi gamemode is DUMB and should be an optional objective to reward players instead of punishing them. I also think the base payout is terrible. Remember that if the base payout is 200 and you lose 50 merces per civilian then all it takes to not get any payout at all is 4 civilians.

So yeah.

  • Penalizing killing civilians is a DUMB and BAD mechanic and should be removed.completely
  • Base payouts are TERRIBLE and should at least be in the range of 500 like the lowest Objective challenge rewards.
  • No collateral damage should be an OBJECTIVE to REWARD GOOD BEHAVIOR instead of a mechanic that penalizes players. You could even have this on every single mission if you want and it would have the same effect of rewarding professional players while NOT PUNISHING PLAYERS
  • Alerted missions are absurdly hard and does not need to punish the players even more for fighting their way out if they get spotted. Having to survive being HUNTED and also ASSASSINS chasing you is punishment enough for failing stealth. Players should not be punished for successfully completing a mission
  • It is much better to not punish players who are quick on their feet when they get detected by someone and quickly finds a way to neutralize the threat. This encourages completing the mission at all costs, instead of just pressing alt+F4 when you get detected

Yeah, losing 50 merces is nothing. Guards are still fair game. I like the change. :+1:

It’s just a little push to not kill needlessly.

EDIT:

Wait… how much does it cost to kill a suspect?

Killing non-target suspects costs you 1,000 merces.

Ah, that explains why I couldn’t figure out why I was broke all of a sudden.

Ok, that part is exaggerated!

that is absolute and complete bullshit
why is that a thing

I guess because of this:

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I mean that thing was CLEARLY only possible because of an unintended bug where all targets spawned in the same place. Balancing the entire game around that instead of fixing the bug is beyond stupid.

It’s an exaggerated example, but it’s still true, if there wasn’t a penalty, there would be no reason to engage with the look and tell system at all. It would be much more simpler to just kill every suspect you come across until the game says you got the target 100% of the time.

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I’ve had that happen countless times mate, plus it adds to the difficulty, most of us on the forum are basically much pros and this stuff.

I suppose a positive way to look at it would be that killing all the suspects is still an option if you really need it, just a pricey one. So it’s better than the box change at least.

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I have played Freelancer to know that this is a lie. Pinpointing the correct target is super easy since the tells and looks are obvious as hell, only thing that can occasionally confuse things is if they don’t have the right agenda and even then you just need to observe them a bit longer when every other trait matches.

Pinpointing the correct target is MUCH easier and less risky than killing every single target without alerting a bunch of lookouts and assassins. Honestly I’m glad IOI rewards you with a challenge for doing it since I’m pretty sure it would be quite a challenge (I haven’t done it yet since I just find it much easier to just find the right target and poison/sieker/rubber duck them)

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As with almost all things, the actual truth is somewhere in between.

It’s not always “super easy” to identify the right target, but it’s not always the case that simply killing every one of the suspects would be the optimal strategy without the penalty.

Quite often (especially in the later syndicates with 6+ suspects), there will be multiple suspects with all the same physical characteristics. The existence of the lookouts, assassins, and general guards all over makes it non-trivial to identify the suspect with 100% accuracy. They roam in and out of trespassing zones. They are frequently in areas where it’s not trivial to just kill them and see what happens. Their routes may take them fairly far where you can’t just follow them without drawing suspicion to see if they stop for a smoke somewhere along the way.

This mode relies very heavily on luck of the draw. There are going to be missions that are really easy and there are going to be missions that are difficult. It’s not going to be a universal fact that Freelancer is easy or hard - it will depend on a lot of factors that are randomized. Anyone that sits here and just declares that it’s super easy and there’s no challenge is just wrong (or cheating). Similarly, anyone that says it’s impossible is also wrong. The truth is in between and it almost always is between two extreme views.

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