I stopped caring about the roadmaps a long time ago. It’s hard to get exited about the same old ass ETs that have been re-re-re-re-re-running in the exact same order for years and a bunch of re-skins that are barely visible in game.
The only standouts are The Herbalist, the SpecAsses, and the cosmetic DLC that at least tries to add some novelty items and cool looking suits.
Hey, if they find a way, great, I’ll take it. But where things are now, I don’t see them reworking them enough to allow an ET to work, while we’ve got 3 maps remaining that are ready to go for ETs and have never gotten any, so I’m more concerned about them getting them. If they can make the other two work, so much the better.
I guess looking forward, what do people think the next returning celebrET will be? I haven’t really kept up with what we’ve had this year, so I guess which do y’all want to become a SA next?
If I’m not mistaken, there aren’t any left that haven’t run this year. So unless they run The Harbinger and/or The Wizard, which have only been run once each so far, the only option is to bring it back around to The Splitter again for the second time this year, or have no CelebrET rerun at all. Of course, there’s always the remote-to-the-point-of-virtual-non-existence that the rerun will be the long-awaited return of The Wild Card, although with whoever the new one will be.
I’ve suggested this before. I think an actual apricot farm with a family of farmers would be a fun mission and would be a new refresher to a map that’s constantly hostile
They could make some sort of farmers market event to make the map more public.
I hope it’s patient zero requiem again cause I really like that one especially with the laser part where 47 doing flips
Daytime Hawke’s Bay with David Hasselhoff ET
There’s this story (urban legend? joke? rumour?) that Hasselhoff was very popular in Germany because of a song about freedom and that he helped bring down the Berlin Wall, so any ET with him should be in Berlin! 
That one could feature an Easter egg like Hitman Absolution but instead of an ice cream truck , KITT comes hauling ass across the beach to run down Hasselhoff, followed by KARR once he hits the ground.
Could you imagine killing Hasselhoff by pushing him into the ocean and drowning him? That would be insulting. 
As a German I have to deny this rumour. It is a fact. Even if it is not true about it bringing down the wall, I like to believe it. 
Overall I really enjoyed most of this roadmap, particularly the Getaway pack, though I felt the World Champions pack had more unique guns that filled a niche while these were just cool reskins. The balloon item was a highlight for me as well.
The Herbalist target I did enjoy, but hope to see the cannabis joint and hemp suit as unlocks sometime maybe through new challenges in the special assignment. The pistol reminds me that I wish IOI would consider adding perks to these full auto guns. Like holding shift doing some sort of stabilizing, burst-fire, or semi-auto fire mode. I feel these guns would be way more fun.
One critique I do have is that freelancer seems to only ever get cosmetic upgrades for the safehouse and nothing really new otherwise for a long time now.
Not going to spread rumors here but I’ve heard a few things about what may be to come next and I am eagerly optimistic!
What’s the rumours?? Do tell
Not great to be honest. It was yet another roadmap with challenges that were either too easy or not fitting for the game they were in, unlocks and DLC items that ranged from “straight-up powercreep and OP”, to “we already have this, but it’s prettier”, and a small detour into “worse than coins”.
The repeat of ET’s is just something I entirely ignored because there is no reason to care about them. I havew played them many times over, both officially, via peacock, and offline elusives. Just make them permament, IO.
And finally, the special assignments! I’m glad they are doing these, but the general apathy I had with the roadmap was not removed by me playing them. I’m glad they exist now, but it took far too long for it to happen. And The Herbalist isn’t that complex on top of that, it still feels a bit torn between two designs for missions.
Even the patchnotes were quite short, and we had undocumented changes that broke keys!
Not the worst roadmap we’ve had, there have been definite highlights, but it has left the game with problems the devs need to sort out, and sooner rather than later.
I’m just gonna do a mass-reply post for anything I found interesting over the past two days of reading all this:
If you qualify the Getaway DLC pack having an OP item as “nothing special” overall, then I don’t know what to tell you. Yes, the other two items are reskins, but the SPF 47 is debatably better than the banana, and the Red Water Balloon was so OP and people wanted it unchanged so much that that the the mere mentioning of re-balancing it in recent weeks caused players to either dismiss it, pretend it’s not a problem, pretend it didn’t exist, or throw various forms of harassment my way, because I had the gall to talk about game balance of an item in a video game in dedicated places on the internet where it would logically be discussed.
So that’s at least half and half.
The Herbalist DLC pack fits more into this, it has the Morsizzle cookies which were perhaps the most useless item in this roadmap, possibly even this year! (which is not exactly a great threshold to pass is it?), and the Smoke, which is just an (admittedly nice looking) silenced F/A pistol, one of which already exists in 2016. And that’s the highlight of the items in that pack!
And the Spider Lily (which is silenced and at least is useful if you really wanna use it) is tied to a challenge that isn’t worth doing because of how un-Hitman-like the gameplay is to unlock it.
There are unlocks for Featured Contracts, though if I recall they are tiered up and a bit location-specific. So yeah, the hassle isn’t worth it imo.
Yeah, that’s about where I stand too. I mentioned this years ago in my Hitman 2 review, but if you have to rely on larger content to cover the rest of it being very bland, or otherwise uninteresting (red waterballoon aside), then it isn’t a good deal. Two very good bit sof content do not cancel out all the other stuff, it just feels like dead weight being carried.
I don’t like the plan that seems to be implied, that they’ll be adding them chronologically to their release, which kinda irks me, considering The Infiltrator and The Harbinger are some of the more complex and irritiating elusive targets in Hitman, and would worki very well as Special Assignments. The Harbinger is the reason why the special assigments are now a thing.
I don’t remember the timestamp, but someone on Twitch asked Arti if the regular Elusives could be made into Special Assignments or made more permanent, which, because this is Arti, and they actually listen, they said they’ll bring it up as a possibility in the next meeting.
New York is quite specific, and I can’t imagine how IOI could redo the map. Development-wise, they sorta worte themselves into a bit of a corner. Like with the tutorial and finale missions, the mission serves a very specific story purpose, and is too small and enclosed to really change.
Unless we have to kill a banker or something, I can’t see what else they could do.
This was also asked on Twitch, and i’m fairly sure the devs are aware of the staleness of Freelancer, but Arti did say nothing is happening for Freelancer for a while.
But that’s the problem isn’t it? If we have the same roadmap and content expectations, then it becomes extremely boring and repetitive on the player end. If you look at any other live service games’ updates this past year, there are similar expectations of some consistency, but they tend to shake things up, usually offering less, but bigger content drops, in a shorter time to keep interest up. This schedule for Hitman of almost three months is just…tiring by comparison.
When I did my previous two video reviews, I did them near the end of the roadmap’s life, partly to gather my thoughts, and partly because I couldn’t be bothered following the roadmap anymore. The Elusives that are re-run have been done to death, and will be re-run at the end of the year anyway, so why play those now? Particuarly ones, suich as The Warlord, The Fixer, and The Bookkeeper, which are also not very good.
They’d have to hire someone else who is known for being crazy in shows that they star in. Maybe Jason Mantzoukas?
Ditto to be honest. Burst fire modes, extended mags on reskins. Just something to differentiate them!
That’d be a rocky prospect to do on this thread.
Consider that Harbinger, Bruce Lee, and now Snoop have all taken trespassing areas and turned them into public ones. One feature of ETs since 2016 has been to take underused areas of the map and add a target to them - I think they said this was something they used the ‘always online’ player data harvesting to do.
So to turn that on its head, the celebrity ET for New York would involve entering the mission through a skylight in Athena’s office. You would then infiltrate your way down to the ground floor (hostile area), and the target would hang around the foyer area where the bankers normally are. I guess they’d have hostages or something and you’d be stopping a bank heist (or participating in one?)
Who’s the most famous heist movie celebrity?
Still just slightly reworked versions of items we already have and their usage in Freelancer is actually somewhat of a hinderance than a boon, so I maintain my position.
That’s fine. Go with it.
Not any of the ones that were just released, or those that have been released in years. I unlocked those a long time ago and once I did, the FCs became useless to me.
Dude… let’s not, alright. We all remember how that went down. Was squeezing this particular bit of commentary into your post strictly necessary?
Tell the rumors in the leaks subforum pls
If they want to go small, like a normal ET, they could easily have the target be having a meeting or business deal in the conference room on the top floor.
If they want to go big, like a celebrity ET + assignment, say the bank sold the building and it got bought by some rising religion. The main hall, cleared of the teller “ship”, would make a good public worship area. The waiting lounge and VIP client area could be a more exclusive space for the “advanced” marks initiates. The stock market area and adjacent balcony is where they spy on the crowds. The upper floor and back rooms are where the leaders make their plots, and the deposit boxes, vault, and garage store the stuff they bilked out of people or are where they’re working on whatever their other nefarious goal is.
Or, instead of a religion, make it the new headquarters for a cult-of-personality politician of some sort, the kind who’d have huge banners of his face all over. Same basic uses for the areas, just less overt religious messaging (e.g. “rally” rather than “worship”). Basement is where they’re stockpiling weapons for the insurrection, if the lies and pandering don’t win the election first.
Nice ideas, these. Hope something gets used on that map.