Season of The Drop Roadmap - Fall 2024

Just catching up on some of the unlock challenges released this year that I haven’t got to yet.

Good to know the Super Fan is treated as a suit and not a disguise.

While I’m here, I finished the Forged in Fire challenge, and remembered that lighting all 4 brasiers lets you grab the Pirate Saber from a dig spot.
There is also a Pirate Disguise just laying around in a chest on the level.

I feel like it’s a missed opportunity not to have some sort of “Ghost/Pirate Ship” secret exit if you acquire all the pirate items.
Yes, it’d be way too convoluted just for an alternate exit, but still… :pleading_face:
I searched the whole level perimiter, but couldn’t find any, aww man

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I… do not. This reeks of laziness on IO’s part, and no amount of self justification in the face of an obviously bad idea is gonna change that. This should’ve been altered like similar ideas before it; the Blue Flamingo, the Cashmerian. Disguises and unlocks should not cross paths unless they are properly differentiated from each other, like IO have done in the past with the above examples. It’s not like they couldn’t do it, they just didn’t want to, and presumed it would be fine as-is to release, which it isn’t. It is bad design on their part, pure and simple. That’s complacency on their end and they should not be getting as much praise as they are for it.

That, my friend, is the unpopular opinion. A…vocal subsection of people on here do not like it when I talk smack about IO, and certainly not when I’m not having fun in a way that ignores problems like this, which is a very selfish mindset for players to have to justify bad developer behaviours… and all for a cool suit that totally won’t cause issues down the line.

To paraphrase Eleven:
“Developer complacency and fandom stupidity; trust me, you can’t beat it”.

I don’t think that’s good enough of a difference. The issue is not in how it’s presented in menu’s, but how the suit looks in-game. It’s very easy to A: completely miss this as it’s initially hidden to the player (who constantly checks contract details like this?), and B: confuse it for the disguise/ suit as they look identical otherwise, so players might not even associate the connection between the two images.

The names being identical obviously does not help matters here.

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Yea, an all black recolor wouldve been the way to go but i also have at times disagreed with IO’s never include disguises as unlocks policy as well:

See the Kashmirian suit was heavily requested, and then when it was made an unlokc in the form of the Cashmirian the reskin was just too different imo from the original: lower quality texture, no hat, the blue just looked more dapper than greyish

I would have preferred a more traditional unlock, and this can open that idea up, but i still think there should be SOME differation. maybe if there were different shoes or some kind of pin of 47’s insignia that shows it as different from the original?

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The texture quality hasn’t changed, and the blue looks noticeably greyed, going off of the inventory image; in fact i’m struggling to call it blue at all:

The idea of it was to make a suit inspired by the disguise, not one that makes it look identical, and that’s a good call on their end. Adding a hat, while, yes, would look cooler, would also make it look even more like the disguise, same for adding sunglasses.

You’d be very surprised what adding major parts does to players’ psyche.

Two things that are very easy to miss. I wouldn’t be against a large pin saying “BIG FAN, READ ALL YOUR BOOKS”, but I don’t think that’s a large enough difference compared to the original, not like a colour swap is, which is more obviously and identifiably different when compared to the disguise. And changing shoes won’t show up in contracts mode thumbnails.

I’m aware you’re spitballing, but minor changes are not gonna cut it. They have to make some large change to the suit to make it noticeably different.

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I think a very simple fix would be to rename it to The Super Fan Suit, and there are several suits already with that The ___ ___ Suit naming style. A more involved fix would be to change its white coat to black. In this case, I don’t think anyone would really complain since that would make it look closer to Ghostface anyway.

However, with reskins there needs to be a good amount of consideration put into them. The Blue Flamingo Suit looks good even as a reskin. However, The Sandman Suit is awful compared to the Jack O Lantern Suit or the Scarecrow disguise. The Cashmerian isn’t a bad suit by any means, but the actual disguise in Mumbai looks a lot better imo.

And a big part of the motivation behind people making these challenge ideas and requesting them as unlocks is because of how they look in the game itself. People want things like the Plague Doctor and the Vampire Magician outfits as suit unlocks because they look that way in game. Is it possible to make good reskin suits that maintain what people love about the original disguise? Yes, but it takes some effort. For instance, they could simply change the colors of the Motorcyclist outfit to make it a suit, but then it would lose the Kill Bill reference that made it special.

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The Super Fan Suit with Driving Gloves.

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That only really solves the problem in contracts mode, and even then, it doesn’t stop the suit and disguise looking identical and still having that ambiguity I was talking about.

The Sandman suit looks a bit out there, but not in an immersion-breaking way like The Jack ‘O Lantern suit does. That’s just ripped from the escalation with no regards for the base game’s stylings (as 47’s head is replaced with a pumpkin). The Sandman suit is like how it is to preserve the base games’ reality-based aesthetic. The J-O-L suit is from an escalation based in a recurring nightmare – and this is the important part you shouldn’t be skipping over dear reader – not real. It was never designed to be an unlockable suit, it was meant to be a take on the Headless Horseman, not an outfit 47 wears around Halloween. The Sandman suit is only “bad” because it isn’t what players of the J-O-L suit wanted, it’s otherwise perfectly fine, if a bit odd looking.

I would even accept dark purple or dark blue; something that isn’t white!

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I’m gonna support the opinion that the Super Fan suit shouldn’t have been identical to the namesake disguise neither visually nor name-wise. Hitman is a game with a big emphasis on outfits. Having two virtually indistuinguishable outfits with vastly different properties is not the most reasonable decision and it goes against established and consistent game-design.

This is especially apparent if you look at all outfits released by IOI in the past that served as stand-ins for flamingo, Kashmirian, ninja and scarecrow outfits. All of them were deliberately made distinctive to their on-map alternatives.

It’s not like a reskin would have lost its appeal; if anything, it might have been even better – had the same idea with black robe reskin as lukefsje here :slightly_smiling_face:

And yeah, sure, “it’s not that big of a deal”, but it’s not really the direction we should be heading in – sets a bad precedent.

Removing blood and replacing the damaged helmet for an intact one (drivers in Miami) would have been perfect! The reference is still here and it’d be distinct enough from the on-map disguise; besides, it would make sense that it’s not hostile unlike the bloodied variant.

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Counterpoint: The Jack O Lantern suit is really fun to wear!

I really don’t think it’s as important to preserve the sacred reality based aesthetic as you do, but then again there are some things I think is important that you don’t. The beauty of the internet is passionately trying to change people’s minds when they’re already dug in, so let’s agree to stay dug in for this instance.

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That’s less a counterpoint and more appealing to novelty. I can argue that for any suit; the corky the clown outfit looks silly, but doesn’t break from Hitman’s style (if anything 47’s frown just makes that look funnier).

The JOL suit just looks weird out of its original context, and I really do not see the appeal.