Why can’t we just have ETs as individual unlocks - to play the mission however we like without complications or escalations - after we successfully dispatch that target as a regular ET, or meet a benchmark in the arcade? For example you could unlock all ETs from the trilogy as (essentially) bonus missions, but they MUST be unlocked by player agency, same as the suits and guns.
I would just like to be able to open a screen and pick a location, then pick from every ET released there across the trilogy.
I also think the Sarajevo Six should be released as part of these “bonus targets”.
Completely agree with you. Something like that may still be down the road, as I think Arcade mode is what will be used as a means of releasing all ETs at some point, or so I hope. Gary Busey and Sean Bean’s are not going to be re-released. Hate to be negative, but you can forget about the Sarajevo Six right here and now; they’re caught up in an exclusivity agreement that I know IO isn’t even thinking about them, if they’re not bothering to bring back those other two ETs.
It was announced in the March roadmap, and is obviously being discussed in the related topic, but I feel it should also be brought in here :
After all the feedback, the Elusive Target Arcade formula has now be changed. The contracts will now only have one and only one complication that will remain active for all of its targets. No additiinal complications are added.
This change is retroactive :
The deceits now only have the “one pacification” complication
The Codices only retains “no civilian casuality”
The Ellipses retains “all bodies hidden”
The all bodies hidden complications is recognised as disliked and will be avoided, but on this one instance is grandfathered.
As a consequence, the contract now have one strong gameplay narrative.
For the sake of ease of feedback for the hitman team, I think a poll is in order :
Do you approve of the change made to the Elusive Target Arcade formula ?
I’m voting Yes conditionally. They said they are going to try to make the complications optional and once that happens, I’ll be happy with the mode. Until then, I continue to maintain that all non-optional complications are inappropriate.
Honestly with those changes I could see the ETA go from “let’s do it once for the challenges unlock and never after” to “it’s now part of my normal loop of play of the game, maybe even a reason to launch the game all for themselves”.
Which I guess was the ibjective of the mode since the begining. And was the foundation to the issues I had with the mode before.
I really think that was IOI’s intention from the beginning with this mode. They just fudged it and are working to fix that.
It was entirely reasonable to think that the entire appeal of the Elusive Targets was their limited and risk-based nature. If you fail the target, you don’t get to play it again - possibly ever. How do you take that and make it something that is available at will?
It’s a hard thing to deliver and I can see what they were going for. Adding in complications that make the missions difficult, adding the time limit to make them more high stakes, and getting rid of the easy accident kills were all potentially ways to keep the concept behind the Elusive Targets there while making them more available.
It was just a mis-step is all. The community didn’t receive those missions the way they were intended. I think at this point everyone is aware that there are mods that allow offline replay of all ETs (including the ones that will never be rereleased) and if you actually have the freedom to just play them totally at will, they are nothing more than the special assignments from H2 - fairly boring once you’ve played them a few times. The risk and the ability to fail make them worth playing more than just open-ended playability.
Complications, in and of themselves, are a good thing and always will be. They provide the player with the ability to challenge themselves. They reduce the ability of a player to hit those leaderboards and make the SA rating harder to get. Those are good things. You can still fail the level the same way you could always fail the level.
Don’t forget too that IOI never intended to make the arcade mode just the same complication for every single mission. The Hide All Bodies may have resurfaced here and there but it wasn’t going to be the only complication they used.
For me, it’s good enough. If the All Bodies Hidden will not be returning, then as long as those three ETs show up in a future contract, I can make do with this version.
I’m happy with the change, 1 complication isn’t too bad, even if it is hide all bodies, because the ET might show up in another batch where we can use a different method
Still want no complications can’t change my opinion just make it optional after one run through because hiding bodies even if there accidents is still boring and a pain in the arse and even if it won’t get used again it’s still there for three of the targets so
Also is there a new patch released because the heartbreaker is on YouTube in one but can’t find where
1 complication per Arcade and a pledge to avoid ones that overly limit creativity is a good way to handle them from now on. I don’t think it’s THE best solution IOI could’ve come up with but it’s one that fixes the issues with the mode and for that I’m satisfied.
It’s also worth noting this line:
Investigate making all ET Arcade complications optional. If we don’t encounter any unexpected issues, we expect to implement this additional change with our next patch.
So in regards to no complications at all, we’re essentially having our cake and eating it here, which is nice.
The only major sticking point that was not elaborated upon was earning Elusive Target unlocks through Arcade. IMO if IOI want to keep the FOMO factor on ET suits for Hitman 3’s current lifecycle, they should promise the game’s final major patch will make the ET Suits earnable through the Arcade.
The whole thing with the complications being optional is still a point of contention for me, depending on what that means. Do they mean optional like in Contracts mode where the mission doesn’t immediately fail but you don’t get the best score, or do they mean optional as in they can be turned on or off before beginning play, depending on what kind of challenge the player wants. If it’s the former, it doesn’t even matter to me then if it’s optional or not, it’s still a complication that can’t be defied; if it’s the latter, awesome, answer to my prayers, it’ll be the closest to having unregulated ET access that we can get.
Yes. The first complication that appears in the first mission is the only one that stays. For the Hide Bodies one, it’s the only one that will have that complication going forward.
I would prefer that they be optional in the sense that they appear in-mission and you can choose to adhere to them or not. If the complication is “no bodies found” I can choose to hide the bodies or not. If I hide them, SA is available to me. If I don’t bother, I lose the possibility of getting SA.
I’m fine with losing SA as long as it isn’t an instant-fail situation. I get that some people may just quit if they lose SA status, but that certainly isn’t a problem I share.
If they work like the optional complications in contract mode or the optional objectives of some of the ETs, it wouldn’t even break SA (at least not by themselves, if the complication is no civilian collateral then SA is done for and on the player).
It would just restrain the final score to up to four stars out of five, and so impact the chance to be at the top of the leaderboard.
Which is fair enough. Honestly I don’t even think it would be reasonable to the designed intent of the mode to have them be an all out toggle. I guess for roleplay purposes it could be a fair demand, but the ETA obligaton is to the gameplay and the gameplay narrative, not to RP runs.
I still think I see your point @Heisenberg, knowing how you can be with your runs and headcanons, but I think the mode just won’t be for that.
