This just occured to me while looking at the new roadmap for March as we don’t have any escalations in it. I guess the team is too busy with stuff like Bond, new map, preparing PZ for contract mode, …
Why not let some respected members/teams give inputs for escalations. I’d love to see what @Frote7 's speedrun community, @Urben, @Kevin_Rudd, @linux_penguin, @Crewdy or @Quartz_tan would come up with. New complications not present at the moment in contracts, like the one where you aren’t allowed to climb or take a weapon up/down stairs.
I’ve got the feeling I’ve played almost every possible contract, every new somewhat exciting contract uses some gimmick or glitch. This would open up a whole new world for roadmaps and there sure is a lot of creativity in the community!
What are your thoughts? What kind of complications (not present at the moment) would you like to see?
Well, that would be one of my wildest dreams coming true there. I’d also love to see some stuff from each of those people! Especially Rudd, having played his modded contracts (I’m thinking about DGS Sniper in particular)
As for complications, that’s an amazing question. It just so happens I don’t have the time to think about this for a long amount of time right now but to name some ideas off the top of my head:
- All unlocked doors become locked after closing them
- “Do not harm” restrictions on specific npcs, like the personal bodyguards of targets
- Which also links to the idea of npcs who aren’t targets in the main mission having bodyguards
I think there’s probably an audience for it. Devil’s advocate though; you’d have a lot of complaining about it too. One of the most common (misplaced I think) complaints over the last year has been the abundance of escalation-based content.
Deluxe edition? Escalations.
Berlin Egg Hunt? Escalation.
7 Deady Sins? Escalations.
Elusive Target Arcade? Escalation-like.
Practically every bit of content IOI has put out over the last year has been an escalation one way or another.
As for complications, as long as they’re optional, I’m for any complication you can think of.
I like the suggestion of not harming specific NPCs (while others are fair game).
Others? What about:
- No trespassing - 47 cannot trespass anywhere (give it like 3 seconds just in case since the areas aren’t marked that well.
- Not allowed to hide bodies (or move them from where they end up maybe?)
- No shots of any kind (including tranqs, sieker, etc.)
- You MUST be seen killing the target
- Accidents forbidden
- You MUST use a disguise (but any one is fine).
Maybe the idea of a sniper escalation, but with one of the complications being “You cannot drop the sniper rifle under any circumstances.” since it is an illegal item in most (if not all) locations which would force the player to rethink their route.
Others may include:
- All loud and alarming actions (explosions, gunshots, even opening doors with crowbars, etc.) can be heard across the whole map by everyone
- Somebody is hunting for you for as long as you’re in the mission. (not like the follower in one of the Colorado escalations, but like a guard who is in panic mode, a.k.a his enforcer icon is gone and will shoot you on sight. He knows your approximate location, but not the exact one. If he spots you, he will start shooting you and kill you with just a few bullets.)
- You may not drop any items you have picked up so far.
- Location-specific: There’s a much higher number of hanging lamps in the streets of Chongqing+Some of them may drop on you if you’re not careful
- All NPCs have guns
For anyone on EGS who hasn’t played it 
A puzzle-focused escalation (Modded)
idk if you know, but the peacock emulation server thingamajig by @rdil has a lot of community escalations on it
I’ve seen this, but couldn’t install peacock because I wasn’t patient enough to stick around the discord server for long enough. Might give it another try…