honestly, this doesn’t make any sense whatsoever as the very nature of freelancer already makes it far less likely that any particle OOB is useful at all or even possible to begin with.
Also in Freelancer there’s literally no time scores neither is it particularly speedrunnable to begin with due to its randomized nature so i’m very confused on what the supposed “advantage” you’re getting by using particle OOBs even is to begin with.
It’s called sarcasm. And it was a minor gripe about how long the Showdowns take to finish if you’re wanting to be careful because you have a limited or restricted loadout you can bring in, and the number of potential targets that have to be identified by both their appearance and actions/habits.
The part of your reply I didn’t think was appropriate was saying that “nobody” cared about my opinion regarding how long Showdowns can take.
Soooo, tell me if I’m getting this right:
If IOI removes the particle glitch (or particles in general), which means one can’t “fall” off stairs, roofs, etc. anymore, then every single speedrunner’s life will be ruined? Because you can’t have - actually - impossible mission times on a leaderboard - which doesn’t do anything - anymore?
Aren’t there any bigger problems?
If there was a way to beat “World of Tomorrow” by just shooting the escape car and therefore activating the “Exit”, people would lose their shit over an unacceptable bug.
If there was a wall you could shoot right through with any kind of gun, killing your target at the other end of the map and hiding the body, the game would be “completely unplayable”.
But this “just fall off these stairs or this ledge with no consequences and save time”-thingamajig, which is a bug (not that game-breaking but still a bug), is “totally okay”?
If we still had that VS mode from Hitman II, and people would use that bug, everyone would want IOI hanging from a tree for not bothering to fix it, because it’d “ruin the game for people who don’t know about it”.
I don’t care about the leaderboards, at least not that much, sometimes I go “Woo, top 1000” or even “Oh yeah, top 100” in a sarcastic tone, since I know the “best scores” are actually illegitimate for using bugs, exploits or even trainers. IOI not marking or removing them doesn’t make them legit.
My opinion, feel free to tell me how stupid I am, doesn’t change the fact that removing that bug only ruins the game for speedrunners who could just adapt and find other ways instead.
removing the bug doesn’t improve the game for a single person, while making the game more boring and derivative to speedrun. “Adapt and find other ways” is also a pretty silly way of putting it because something that the devs didn’t 100% intend will always happen, and if you’re going to patch the game every time it happens then the devs will be stuck developing this game until 2058, with zero benefits to the actual game while making it worse to speedrun each time.
Also, I find it the “aren’t there any bigger problems” line hilarious, considering they’re choosing to “fix” this instead of fixing Haven being a broken mess for three entire years. There are so many critical glitches that actually affect a significant portion of the players that just haven’t been touched.
No need. You’re right.
You thinking runs that are using bugs/exploits are illegitimate, doesn’t make them illegitimate.
What @BernardoOne said in response to that.
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about the in-game leaderboards, which, on PC, have clearly fallen victim to cheating to get the lowest time. I don’t believe anyone here is questioning actual speedruns where people post a video of their session.
There’s a glitch in Dartmoor and Mumbai with the RFID coin that teleports you to the exit when all targets are eliminated and I haven’t seen anyone complain about it (but I haven’t seen that glitch used much in speedruns either).
Personally I’m not a speedrunner by any means and I don’t like using the muffin / violin glitch, but since it can’t really be triggered accidentally by regular players and doesn’t break gameplay, I see no reason to fix it if it can lead to more efficient speedrun strats. And as for speedrunners adapting to play without it, well there are already glitchless categories in speedrunning so they haven’t waited for the glitch to be fixed to adapt.
That’s because it was patched out within a couple months of it being discovered 
(Mind you, this bug has existed since Hitman 2, and afaik is still possible there). This was one of the more egregious examples of IOI patching out something so niche and inoffensive, and is why people are legitimately worried that they’re gonna patch out particle boosting. The RFID is one of the most useless equipment in the game, and even with this bug, it still wouldn’t have been enough to see widespread use, but instead of fixing actual issues that were affecting a large swathe of players, they felt the need to put there resources into fixing that.
This is all theoretics by myself and the community for why patching particle glitches have occurred, this may entirely be wrong but the theory behind why this is change is coming is as follows from what I understand:
It’s been theorized that the reason that particle glitching is being fixed is not for player experience and bug avoidance, but rather because of certain elements of freelancer that make it an exploit that will undermine profits. More particularly, because of certain safehouse unlocks.
In the CTT there were certain unlocks with a [premium] tag on them, it’s believed that these unlocks will be provided for players that either:
a. Have the deluxe edition / upgrade or some other measure
Or
B. Purchase some separate yet to be announced future DLC for freelancer
Now some of these unlocks aren’t for selectable items that are chosen in the menu, but rather for unique areas that are subsequently changed or unlocked to provide new items, one such example being the broken down church, where behind a barrier lies a broadsword.
With particle glitches, it will likely be possible (or at least has been assumed to be possible by IO) to be able go past these barriers WITHOUT purchasing that premium upgrade and get the items that act as incentive for this upgrade, thus there will be people who choose not to buy the upgrade because they can get some of the items without having to pay for it and simply by exploiting the game.
Sure, on PC this could be considered irrelevant because players could also just simply use console commands or cheats to get what they want anyways (or even piracy I’m guessing, which I will state is immoral, illegal, risky, and you shouldn’t do), but on consoles particle glitches would be the ONLY currently known way to get this content without paying.
I don’t think IO is trying to harm speedrunning with this patch, they clearly acknowledge and enjoy speedrunning as a notable part of their community and the franchise, and have even somewhat endorsed and encouraged speedrunning methods with the trilogy’s rating system, leaderboards, and certain complications for contracts and escalations. But rather it may be that this particular speedrunning tech has problematic implications for other sections of the game that might impact the studio financially (even if in a relatively small or convoluted way).
And sure this may make certain leaderboard times now impossible to beat, however maybe with the changes to how the trilogy will be sold as one singular unit as the “World of Assassination”, maybe there might be a leaderboard wipe or something similar to compensate for these changes in some way
Ehhh… I really hope that’s not the case, and I hope IOI knows that it would be extremely annoying for players to simply not have access at all to their entire safehouse that they’d have grinded for, and need Premium DLC to access.
And that just seems like way too convoluted a reason to justify a particle fix or Freelancer-specific particle fix.
If they’d be so concerned people could use it to get access to areas they shouldn’t… just use higher walls.
As much as I liked the RFID trick i at least understand patching that one out since it had a direct effect on proximity triggers of which there is a lot in the game. The item is barely used by anyone but at least I can see it possibly causing issues for a casual player.
This explanation makes no sense because you literally cannot throw or drop items in the safehouse , making it impossible to do anything related with particle OoBs regardless of the particle physics being enabled in the engine or not
If you can only enjoy a game by getting good scores with the help of bugs, then - in all honesty - you are the problem. Bugs can make things easier, no discussion needed for that, everyone’s used the infinite stair bug in Mario 64, some for speedrunning, some for checking out if they can pull it off, and so on, but when it comes to having advantages, no matter if active (e.g. playing with/against other people) or passive (e.g. this game’s leaderboards), as long as other players are involved, it’s “not okay”. Just because I choose not to make use of that bug I have to be happy with 803rd place, because 392 people use it? I know the leaderboard does nothing, like I mentioned before, it’s still not right.
That doesn’t mean that it has to stay like that. If you’d bother reading the EULA, Terms of Service or whatever it’s called these days, you “agree to any changes made by the developers” right when you click on “Purchase”. They could remove everything except for the ICA Facility, you wouldn’t have a say.
Okay, that’s exaggeration. I’m almost tempted to ask you about your age, but I won’t, my imagination will have to suffice.
I can’t add anything to that, since I’ve never run into any issues in that level. I don’t even know what’s wrong with it. Don’t bother, I’ll search the forum or check some Google results. And no, I’m not saying “It doesn’t happen to me, so you’re lying”, don’t even think about assuming that.
I guess I didn’t mention the leaderboards enough, and it also says “best scores” in the sentence you quoted.
Speedrunning itself if okay, it gets an Amen from me, even though I left the Church years ago, it’s the fake “best scores” made with bugs like this that are not okay.
No they couldn’t. That you would even think they could gut the product for a set of explicitly purchased content that forms the basis for buying and just get away with it by chucking a few paragraphs in their EULA is absurd.
It didn’t work for Sony when they nuked Linux from the Playstation and a commercially suicidal move like this certainly wouldn’t either.
They are able to fix bugs, you are correct about that, but don’t get ahead of yourself.
The reason anyone would do this is, if they could, which they can’t, would be because they could, which they can’t
The in-game leaderboards stopped mattering the second IOI never cared about people literally hacking the game to put whatever time they want. Speedrunners are playing the game properly, like it or not. Your entire point about Mario 64 is also completely nonsensical. You realize the game is a extremely popular speedrun game for a reason, right? If Nintendo patched every single bug Mario 64 has it wouldn’t be a good speedrun game and it wouldn’t have even one tenth of the speedrun popularity it has today.
I don’t get why anyone is bothering with the ridiculous “they have the right to do it” argument. It’s a nothing, meaningless argument to begin with. Yes, they have the right to “fix” this “bug”. They also have the right to completely break the game , introduce a million new bugs and leave the game broken forever. What they have the right to do is completely and utterly irrelevant, there’s not been a single person in this thread arguing they don’t have “the right” to do this. “Having the right” doesn’t mean you’re free from customer feedback and criticisms.
Ooohh, now I get it. You’re one of those peeps who only care about their own opinion and tell everyone with a different one that they’re wrong. I should’ve noticed right at the start. I got rusty.
Opinion? What would be the opinion part here? It’s a factual statement, Mario 64 would not be a popular speedrunning game if Nintendo patched all the bugs out. That’s quite literally not subjective at all.
