Undocumented change to Plague Doctor starting suit

Hitman: World of Assassination
41

“So I’m not completely alone in this” The second part of my comment indicates that I’m already aware of this split in reasons people would like my post, and was made because I was accused of being selfish, and that nobody wanted what I wanted, which even with other reasons to like my post, is still untrue.

I even acknowledged that there are people agreeing with the person telling me I’m selfish, so it wasn’t a popularity contest, more of a reminder that it’s not only me who wants visually identical suits/disguises.

Not sure why you’re responding now, as you can see in another comment of mine that the debate is over. Everyone presented their arguments, nobody changed each other’s mind, so it’s pointless to discus further.

42

You’re clearly using the indication of how many likes you got on the thread to try and push the fallacious logic that people are agreeing with you. You are retroactively finding meanings to your past behaviour to get yourself out of deep water.

I didn’t call you selfish. Not sure why you’re repeatedly saying that. I think my words were:

…and that was about the logic you used, not you personally. In fact, here’s what I wrote immediately afterwards:

You decided to take it personally.

Do you know what I dislike the most about discussions online? People using logical fallacies in arguments to try and validate their own writing, and people who know they’re in a losing argument trying to end a conversation early in the hopes of stopping deeper discussion points that might further disprove their arguments. Oh, and people who try to armchair-psychoanalysis someone based on past comments, and then calling their past takes bizarre in the hopes that it makes them less believable in the current discussion, as well as potentially future ones. It was completely irrelevant to the discussion.

And all this is all because of a suit getting recoloured and being annoyed at not being the same as the disguise. Jesus Christ on a bicycle…

And I thought I was bad for being in pointless arguments.

4 Likes
43

I still stand by my opinion, and find your position and subsequent arguments lacking. I guess you could write another long winded reply acting like all my arguments are personal attacks, logical fallacies, etc… while yours are not, but I honestly don’t understand what’s the point. I’m willing to accept we can’t change each other’s minds on this, why can’t you? (This is a rhetorical question, please do not actually answer this)

45

I feel called out.

Drawing back to the original topic of this thread, have you (HitmanDoctor) noticed any other changes to the suit? Because I seem to remember some other coloration being changed at one point without any announcement about it. It was something pretty minor though (if there even was a change), so I didn’t feel the need to mention it anywhere. I think it may have been something with the pouches on the belt? Or maybe the belt itself?

(Or anyone really, I’m just asking them because they already posted about one change.)

46

Don’t feed the trolls.:trade_mark:

47

Not sure if you’re specifically referring to the plague doctor, but when The Dartmoor Garden Show was released, upon completing the escalation you were rewarded with the Summer Sightseeing Suit. The 3.70 patch added the Summer Sightseeing Suit with Gloves which replaced the previous reward, this was not acknowledged in the patch notes (or at any other point as far as I know).

5 Likes
48

Personally, I can’t confirm if there were any other changes, though it is possible. Tbh,while initially I liked the black boots slightly more, when I see the brown gloves that don’t match with the boots, it kinda ruins the suit for me. Legitimately changed my default starting suit on Sapienza because of it.

Hopefully someone from ioi sees this and reverts it next patch, because nobody had any problems with the suit for over 4 months, despite some people expressing their concerns about it.

And transparency about any changes to suits is a must from now on. We get spelling mistakes being fixed as part of the patch notes, suit alterations definitely seem like a more important thing than that, so we should be made aware of them.

49

idk why dribbleondo gets a timeout for disagreeing with a completely insane premise but you didnt get anything despite being less known in the community and less beloved and also just being wrong

because this is a self contradiction and also a very stupid suggestion. asking them to revert a change because the boots contradict the color of the gloves, to have less QoL for the purpose of some weird OCD is loser behavior and very typical of this forum. it’s just got less and less sane the more IOI ignores it

i hope whoever gave drib a ban really felt like they earned their 0$/hr, as if there’s any response to “I got 13 likes therefore I should be listened to” other than “you’re fucking nuts”

4 Likes
50

Silly Anthony.

I’m pretty sure it was not an intentional change, much like what happened with the Mascot disguise and Blue Flamingo suit, along with the changes to the Gunther Miller and Race Marshal disguises, oh and the Snorkel Instructor disguise. Also, also, let’s not forget the whole sunglasses thing during the Season of the Disruptor.

You get the idea, IOI messes up a suit/disguise or two every so often. I do wonder how they caused this change though, I don’t think those boots are used in any other outfits. If anyone knows of another suit/disguise/NPC’s outfit that uses them, feel free to prove me wrong though.

1 Like
51

it clearly is intentional because i brought it up in my DMs with combatglue

52

Ah, I see, I haven’t begun wasting the community manager’s time in DMs yet, I’ll have to get around to that at some point.

(Not saying that anyone else is doing that, just that I would be doing that.)

4 Likes
53

Wow I hope we mods get actually called out if we ever go after people just because of any of these three things. You can’t actually want that, can you?

While I too disagree on some statements and the accompanied tone of OP, if people keep on stirring this and keep it personal instead of discussing the topic, it ends up being locked.

Personally I did not like this suit being an unlock in the first place without having a distinct name and visual appearance. And I don’t count the boots as the latter, you don’t even see them in the suit menu image.
It being as it is now is confusing in contract mode, I agree with Dribbleondo on that. But the boots being recolored has pretty much no positive effect for any position someone would side with in here. :thinking:

4 Likes
54

I actually read his reply through my email (It was already hidden when I went to the forums) and honestly, while I don’t think it was really necessary to hide it, I can kind of understand why.

Basically, the gist of the message, and I’ll be paraphrasing here was “Me and grim are right, and you’re wrong. Instead of denying this, you should agree, otherwise you will not grow as a person.”

So yeah, a comment mostly unrelated to the original argument, where driblendo said you two are right, because he thinks you’re right. I already said I’m willing to stop the discussion, and agree to disagree, because anything else is pointless, but he obviously wasn’t willing to do the same.

Also, pretty funny that after you “call me out” on my 13 likes comment (For which I already clarified my actual position in a previous comment) you say that I should suffer consequences because I’m less known and beloved in the community.

It would be nice for Combatglue to reply to this post to actually confirm this isn’t a bug, since I think it’s reasonable to say that I won’t just take your word for it.

55

I actually checked out contracts mode, so I can see how the creation process looks like, and I noticed a couple of things:

1 - Complications (Only headshots, do not get spotted, do not get recorded, etc…) allow you to either turn them off fully, make them optional, or make them required.

2 - However, whether you kill someone in your starting suit/a certain disguise, and what weapon you do it with, can only be an optional complication to use the same outfit/weapon or made to allow you to use any outfit/weapon to kill the target.

3 - Also, regardless of what suit you choose, the game will say “Suit” in the kill conditions, while if you use a disguise it will use the specific name of that disguise.

The reason I mention this is because even if someone wanted to make a troll contract, where somebody would use Plague Doctor suit for one kill and Plague Doctor disguise for another, it wouldn’t fool anyone, as the game always says “Suit” for any kills done in your starting suit, clearly differentiating it from it’s disguise counterpart.

Now, I do have some suggestions that would help make it even less likely for someone to get confused about visually identical suits/disguises.

1 - Any suit variant that has a visually identical disguise counterpart would have suit at the end of it’s name. Apparently, this is already a thing on some versions of the game, but it should be like this on all platforms.

2 - When in the suit selection menu, below the suits description, this message should appear:

“NOTE: While this suit has a visually identical disguise counterpart, it does not have any of it’s beneficial/detrimental effects. It provides the same level of access as other suits.”

Obviously, the description can be further refined, but I think it’s a good base template.

I do think the White Shadow would benefit from having a similar note as well, so people are not caught by surprise when everyone is hostile on Hokkaido.

56

I am thinking more of the disguise being confused with the suit, not vice versa. It is true that anyone who played with contract mode for a bit will notice that the disguise not being “Suit” means this cannot be something you start with.

For people not so well into contract mode, this could still misleading and there is no good feedback from the game if you fall for it, just a red cross on the disguise requirement. And when you then click on it, you see the image of what you started with, further confusing you.

By the way with modding you can indeed make the suit variant show up by the name as a disguise requirement, making it indistinguishable from the disguise. Such a contract can then be found by people without modding. But I think it is unfair to make that an argument here.

5 Likes
57

What about the changes to the suit description I mentioned near the end of my message? I kinda feel that would solve the problem, as it’s pretty explicit about differences that a suit and the disguise variant have.

I’m all for games being flexible in difficulty, and trying to be as accessible and easy to understand for the player, but I do think there’s a certain limit of what you can do, before you have to realize a player is not equipped to understand something.

Again, I haven’t seen a single time someone was genuinely confused about this matter, so I still don’t understand why it’s being treated as a problem that could ever have any noticeable impact on the enjoyment one can get out of this game.

58

As someone who puts effort in contract briefings I can tell that words that are not forcefully put onto the display are not guaranteed to be read. Neither before the player might encounter a problem nor after.

If you stumble on a failing complication, would your first idea to look into the description of your suit where there is just a sentence or two that usually is totally unrelated to gameplay mechanics?

My impression of IO (at least back when they did meaningful changes into the user experience) is that they prefer to do more handholding than less. Like on Arrival where 47 stands on the helipad and a Diana line was added to tell the player to go inside. Or where you cannot enter frisks anymore with illegal items on you.

I think these examples are too much. But in this matter here I think that the user interface of the menu elements should be at least not misleading. Which I think is the case with this suit we discuss here.

Remember we talk about people who likely just picked up the game or play it casually. It is not a given this type of players show up on social media or this forum to find out what the issue is.

IO collects a truckload of telemetry while you play. That is the best metric there is to find out if something is confusing for the player. But we here have not access to that.

There are confusing contracts however, and when they make it into the featured tab you do occasionally find people asking for help like on Discord or Reddit.

An example is my featured contract “Bird Boarding Barred”. It is kinda a troll contract that fails if you get close to the helicopter in Miami while wearing the flamingo outfit. The briefing gives a hint what the issue is here but either people don’t get it (it is still just a hint) or don’t read it. I guess it is often the latter because when I see people playing contracts and get stuck, they almost never (re)read the briefing. I bet it is even less likely for them to check out a suit description.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/comments/1ccw28e/i_keep_failing_the_new_bird_boarding_barred/

3 Likes
59

When you unlock a suit for the first time, it’s description will appear in the rewards section post-mission. It’s true that after that, the players themselves would have to press the details button to see it’s flavour text and the corresponding note that would be added.

That said, they could have a red text appear on the ui, for select suits with the following message “See details for important suit info.” So visually identical suits, suits like White Shadow, that make everyone on Hokkaido hostile, could guide the player to read the description.

While you did provide an example of players being confused about something in contracts mode, it’s still not confusion about suits/disguises, but a disguise/exit.

This is also only possible because ioi made an oversight with allowing the Flamingo outfit to change the exit from a helicopter to a bird nest, like it does in the main mode, despite there being a restricted exit complication.

So I do think there are now multiple arguments in my favour:

1 - The suit was initially visually identical.

2 - This sudden change was made without being mentioned in the patch notes. I definitely think visually altering a suit is more important to mention, than a random spelling mistake ioi fixed.

3 - The change itself doesn’t really achieve it’s supposed goal. You can’t see the boots in the suit selection menu, and even in gameplay the robes will obscure the boots most of the time.

It took me, someone who actually cares enough to make a topic about this, around 30 minutes of playing in the suit to be like “Wait a minute.”

I imagine that a casual player, who people are the most concerned about being confused, will basically never notice any difference.

4 - I offered a solution that would naturally guide the player to read the description of a select few suits.

5 - I actually played your contract, and yes, this is something ioi never bothered to fix, something that would actually be easily fixable, without bothering anyone really, yet they were fine with leaving it as it is.

So why do a change to a suit, that doesn’t achieve it’s goal, while also actively kinda ruining it’s look for some?

60

I think that would be no good idea. It would come off as an obvious afterthought and as a notice like “We missed this could be an issue, now it is there, please live with it”. Sure it solves it, but not in a good way that aligns with how things work.

It does not make your mistake of mixing them up impossible but adds another thing to remember from the loadout menu when you load into the map.

A proper fix I think would just disabling picking that suit in World of Tomorrow. What would even be nice is if you could unlock special disguises on each map, have your own tab in the suits menu for it and that tab makes clear when one is disabled. Like greyed out with some overlay on the tile, like a missed ET.

Then you never can confuse them. It also gets around the lore question of “why does the client want me to kill the dude as a pest doctor, but only if the boots are not black?”. If that kind of idea troubles you.

People also keep being confused that a kill requirement of “Screwdriver” is not fulfilled with the “Professional Screwdriver”. Despite them looking different and having a different name. But if you take it literally, the first is a general name that could fit the latter too. Like an “Accident Explosion” is also fulfilling a generic “Accident” requirement.

Okay, next up the Chameleon Challenge in Berlin, I think the “T-47” challenge is also tricky in that regard, I don’t remember.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/comments/11oplwe/berlin_chameleon_challenge/

ICA Agent Biker disguises do not count as regular biker disguises, making challenges and contracts with the biker disguise tricky.

I don’t know, like I said I think recoloring the boots is not beneficial for any position here. I prefer a different name + complete color scheme. Or being disabled in World Of Tomorrow.

I am not trying to make you change your opinion and leave here with “okay everything is good”. I don’t think everything is good. Some things are confusing. And I would like people to have fun without things being confusing.

1 Like