Will preface this by once again saying that I don’t speedrun, don’t use particle boosting, and probably never will other than once or twice out of curiosity (assuming they don’t patch it out, that is).
Pretty weird to gatekeep people’s fun, don’t you think?
I can kinda understand the sentiment if you’re a purist, though personally imo, if it’s in the game and you’re not using 3rd-party cheats, it’s fair game. Speaking of cheats, leaderboards have lost all meaning because of very obviously cheated scores, so at this point it’s basically a non-factor.
Just because the developers have the right to do something, doesn’t mean they should. And as consumers, we have the right to be angry if we’re unsatisfied with the product. This is such a strange and almost bootlicking argument, that I fail to understand why you brought it up in the first place. In any other context, I think most people would agree that this mindset towards any entity is detrimental.
Haven’s view cones for npcs used to be twice as big compared to any other map in the game, alongside the fact that the way the view cones interacted with seeing through doors, nps in the mansion could somehow see through walls and floors and spot you. This wasn’t even a speedrun only issue (where funnily enough, speedrunners did adapt to it) this was a very common issue for the majority of the playerbase, making getting SA a genuine nightmare, so I’m suprised you aren’t aware of it. Not bad on professional, but good luck dealing with that in master lol. They’ve said they fixed it in the last patch or two, but from what I understand, it’s still a little inconsistent. Idk, haven’t touched Haven for a hot minute.
Villa Vision (Consoles)
We’ve resolved several issues that could cause NPCs and (especially!) targets in Haven Island to see through several walls and floors. This was a complicated and tricky issue to address but it seems to have been caused by an AI vision blocker in the door template for this level.
Essentially, whenever NPCs opened a particular door type, they were able to see everywhere within the mansion, regardless of how many floors or walls were in the way. This was especially troublesome if Tyson Williams was involved, because his character animation has him looking down frequently, which meant he could spot 47 several floors down. Note: This issue was resolved on PC in our [July Patch].
The NPCs on Haven still have those annoyingly large vision cones. Which, for the most part, ruins that level. At least for me.
Well that’s just great lmao, hopefully they fix it with the launch of freelancer, I can already see it being the worst map for the mode if that’s still the case (Yes, worse than Colorado even).
While I generally agree with what you’re saying, this specific example would not work. That would be tied to gameplay ownership, and is not really what their EULA is talking about.
Also, EULA and Terms of Service and two seperate things (the EULA is what you sign when purchasing a game; the implicit agreement when purchasing; hence End User Licensing Agreement), while TOS usually refers to the servers and game modifications and other stuff too deep to go into here. The confusion is understandable as companies deliberately don’t tell people that there’s a difference to get away with stuff.
It does not ruin the level for me at all. I know, unpopular opinion, but the ruining of a level goes beyond “the sightcones are different”. There has to be actual, proper level design flaws like a confusing level layout or too many guards in one area, or just plain uninteresting targets; The sightcones is not one of them in my view. Their reasoning for doing it (because guards could see each other from one side of a beach to the other looks a bit silly), which if you look for yourself, it really does come off as that.
You should’ve seen the argument I had with them earlier in the thread; they literally tried to justify a compromise of particles being removed by not actually compromising.
While it’s still annoying, there’s less of a focus on SA in Freelancer so you can get around being spotted and killing a guard or two - and unlike Colorado, killing a couple of guards on Haven will not result in the whole map getting trigger happy :x
That’s fair, though I’m still of the mind that Colorado is overhated (It’s pretty unique, just introduced way too early in the trilogy), though it’s definitely no where near the top of my favorites maps. I’d take Colorado’s consitency over gettting spotted by some random f*ckoff guard from across the map any day of the year.
The biggest issue would be with showdowns on Haven, as being caught in one part of the map can get the target in the other side of the map to start fleeing the map
Sniping showdown targets will probably be a consistent way to complete Haven and solve this issue though, as the radio tower effectively has a full view of the entire map.
I mean most hitman maps from the first two games suffer from this issue, I know Santa fortunate will probably be the worst when it comes to this though, as there will be a mile between targets in different locations.
I mean my only hope is that they changed lookouts to be a little less punishing and more consistent to account for this stuff though, additionally also putting less showdown targets in later missions to make it take less time for those that want to play is more traditionally (so it doesn’t take 30 minutes to complete one showdown mission).
I find it quite odd how so many people in this thread overtly oppose speedrunning as if it isn’t a legitimate playstyle, like it is part and parcel to adjust to rulesets, as if speedrunners are supposed to be condemned.
Not going to fault anyone who are not too familiar with speedruns; they all have fair reasons to justify not having an interest, but this wishful high hopes that fixing bugs to spite speedrunners is petty, LOL.
That’s what confuses me as well, I’m a pretty typical player I imagine, but I have nothing but respect for speedrunners. None of this will affect me one bit, but it’s very disturbing witnessing people ostracizing a part of the community in a COMMUNITY forum.
I think this is the whole problem with this conversation and argument about fixing particle exploits / glitches everyone’s assuming that IO is doing this because of speed runners, when it might not even be really related to the topic at all.
Maybe particle physics were causing problems somewhere else in terms of bugs, performance issues, gameplay standards, accessibility or something we don’t know about. We have no peak behind the curtain for the reasoning behind this decision or fix. Maybe IO was just trying to make a less buggy or glitchy game and increase polish, and that’s totally fine: it’s THEIR decision and THEIR product they have every right to refine it how they want, and it will benefit normal players to an extent too.
Does it suck that this speedrunning tech / certain items will now be obsolete or now longer meta, yes to some extent, but it will also allow speed runs to evolve in other ways using other mechanics
