Hey, you are above me.
Thatās my issue with contracts in general, people seem to design them more around ājust try and get this guy isolated, sucker!ā than making a fun assassination. Though if you donāt do that, people will say itās too easy, so I dunnoā¦ I think IOI does a great job with most escalations and thatās enough for me, especially once the post-release hype dies down and Iām playing other things.
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I really like the Escalations, especially the ones attached to the Deluxe Edition with the nostalgia suits behind them. I donāt think Iāve not enjoyed any of the Escalations that have come so far.
I do really like Contracts mode but like I said originally, itās just I find that some of the Featured Contracts from popular guys like āEuroGamerā for a random example a bit over complicated. I do get what youāre saying though about some might complain that theyāre a bit easy, but I find with the WOA you can do a really good Contracts challenge with the environment but not overly complicate things either.
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The biggest issue that most people have with the escalations is that they are usually āone and doneā without a lot of replayability. Even the best escalation feels like a lesser value when you canāt really replay it.
Contracts can be great, but too many of them go after either boring targets or are overly complicated. I just did one called Last Duck in Miami. The only way to complete it seems to be to a very specific route, a quick disguise change, and an unmarked exit. It was very frustrating and I didnāt enjoy it due to the complicated nature of it.
There is an art of creating a good one (that I certainly donāt have) and itās too easy to make a bad one.
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Escalations are really nice, itās awesome watch their improvement from S1 to H3, all i want from this game are new elusive targets and some bonus missions like S1. I really donāt feel the need of more locations, just a fully debugged and polished Hitman WOA.
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Not guessing, but I wonder how much of an issue this is for the average player. People here want to replay missions 100 times (or more!) and yet I doubt the average Joe does anything like that. Maybe they prefer having a more directed escalation experience, and arenāt looking for 100s of hours of value from a pack like this.
Iāve said before that IOI have tons of info about how people play their game. Obviously development cost savings are a factor, but I donāt think theyād focus the DLC on escalations unless that player info told them the general audience would be receptive.
As vocal as the community here is about how they feel about this game, escalations, bonus missions, replay-ability, etc, we are absolutely in the minority. There are less than 4000 registered users on this forum and Iām betting that a small percentage of those are the ones who are regularly (or even irregularly) posting. IOI must know that the āaverageā player not only plays escalations, but actually enjoys them and that most players either donāt care about replay-ability or actively enjoy replaying that sort of content.
I myself have replayed A Bitter Pill probably a hundred times. It isnāt hard, it isnāt particularly involved, and it doesnāt really have that much of a story line but it is a level that I just enjoy playing over and over again. There must be a whole lot of players out there that like playing exactly what IOI produces. I consider myself one of them by and large.
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Hakan Abrak, the CEO has stated that IOI has taken over all the analytics from Square Enix and others now that they are independent. IOI have analyzed choice of which content to provide based on player choice.
The extra content that the average player prefers based on what IOI are now providing are escalations, Seasonal content, then elusive contracts and feature contracts, sniper maps and probably the least preferred content, multiplayer Hitman.
IOI also wants to please their core fans as much as possible too (even though this number is small) because the committed, passionate and vocal fan base is what they read on forums like this and watch on youtube immediately in response to new content that is launched.
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Actual stats donāt really support this, as you can check by just selecting the leaderboards for said escalations vs bonus missions
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I wouldnāt look at leaderboards, personally.
Guys if 7DS was just escalations, it was wroted escalations not contracts. Them canāt focus only on escalations expecially after March roadmap Wich was only escalations.
If you want to see what people actually play, itās exactly what you should be looking at.
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If IOI wants to use that data to figure out what content to put out, they are free to do so then. I personally donāt care what you or anyone else wants to see in the game and I have no interest in scrolling through pages upon pages of stats to find out. Thatās IOIās job.
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If you check the leaderboards via the menus it will show only your position. But when you finish a mission, it will tell you your position along with the total number of players who completed it. It was also patched to not be capped at 500, so now for A Bitter Pill for example it just showed me that 5153 players are in the leaderboard on Professional.
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I mean Iām saying all this in direct reply to you claiming that IOI has some sort of secret data showing that people play more escalations than they do bonus missions. But leaderboards already track how many people have played through a level, and escalations are vastly less popular than bonus missions . The facts donāt support your assumption that people prefering bonus levels is somehow something exclusive to this forum.
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Today i have the feeling like the next act of the deadly sins dlc is going to be a special assignment. Dunno why. I just had a look at the roadmap again and there is not really much to do for the devs this month besides fixes. And they got a little more time as well. Plus Travisā talk of bringing the livestreams back, there just gotta be little more next season. Maybe its just wishful thinking but i would fancy a special assignment at the moment.
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Think people will be happy with that to be honest. At least that way itās an actual proper mission instead of an Escalation. Donāt mind Escalations whatsoever, but I would like to see something like special assignments part of this DLC.
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Not me. I prefer Escalations over Special Assignments. Thank you very much. 
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Iāve commented more than I care to about this but youāre deluding yourself if you think that people will be happy with a special assignment. Look at the the level of contentment that special assignments tend to get around here. Some people, myself included, genuinely like them, but most seem to think that anything outside of a Bonus Mission or new map is a waste of time and money. If IOI releases a special assignment a la Bitter Pill you will see nothing but complaints from those that ādidnāt want a cancelled ETā and āpaid for actual new content, not some one-and-done five minute non-missionā.
IOI has done such a great job with their new maps (New York and Haven) and their bonus missions (Landslide, House Built on Sand) that any content they release short of that amazing content is considered ālessā by a lot of people.
Even the Egg Hunt, which was a great piece of content, was put down because it might have originally been something more (based on decorations within the building that canāt be accessed) and we got ālessā.
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New batch of contracts today. Do we get three contracts (or more) like last time?
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