I’m fine with that, I’ll just play as if they weren’t optional. Anything less than Silent Assassin with 5 stars is unacceptable to me under the best of circumstances, but for ETs and contracts mode? Hell no. Perfection or putz; no in-between for me.
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Without getting into a big discussion, how do you handle stuff where the mission takes a long time (like the Lust deadly sin DLC) if something goes wrong? Like if you’ve spent 30 to 45 minutes creeping around, collecting clues, getting all of the intel, and finally figure out who the admirer is and then get seen or something, do you just restart as soon as soon as you know SA is hopeless or do you finish sub-perfectly and then do it again? How do you do “practice” missions?
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Depends on my mood. I guess the most accurate answer would be… yes.
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Well… rip ET Arcade. These changes have basically turned them all into Special Assignments since literally none of the complications in the three new ones forced me to approach them any differently than what I would’ve done from the start.
In a few months it wouldn’t surprise me if most of the people that were crying about the complications won’t even be touching these anymore, just like the Special Assignments, because they ones from H1/H2 are now just perma ETs in their original bland, boring and hollow state that there isn’t really that much you can do in them. Everyone always trashed the Special Assignments because they were very hollow (because they are just perma ETs) and now we’ve just got a whole bunch more of stuff on that exact same level. “Yay”.
As I said on Discord, if they are able to make the complications optional, then they should restore all the removed complications - that way its the best of both worlds and the mode will at least still have something that makes it unique and interesting for those that want it. As it stands right now, yawn.
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Well, ETA before the changes didn’t have replayability either and most people didn’t touch them after completing them the first time, so I don’t get your point. With the new changes, people are at least encuraged (not forced, which in a game that’s all about freedom of approach is actually a bad thing) to try different strategies. If you are tired of doing the same thing over and over then do something different, add some self imposed challenges like SO or NoKO, that’s the core of hitman. With the previeous complications people couldn’t try different strategies even if they wanted to.
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The point is the older ETs have very little to them - no amount of freedom is going to add to that because in the case of the H1/H2 ETs, there isn’t even that much you can really do with them. The remaining complications are barely a blip on the radar anymore so the content is just as bland as it was originally.
Once the novelty of being able to replay ETs whenever you want has worn off and people have exhausted the options you can do with them, the Arcade is just going to end up as the Special Assignments have - mostly forgotten and untouched.
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Again, the arcade before the changes would have had the same destiny. It’s better to have the option for replayability (even if no one uses it), rather than just straight up killing it.
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I almost competed all three new arcades however I failed when I took out the targeted Twin and make a beeline for the speedboat behind the mansion but failed to take into account the extra security. I was promptly gunned down and will now have to wait 12 hours. My reason for my failure was that I was in such a hurry to just get them over. Was so mad at myself I reset all five other arcades and failed all of them on purpose so now I have no arcades completed and I can’t even start til after noontime tomorrow. Normally I wouldn’t do this but my screwup was exceptional and caused by a lack of patience which is why I did what I did.
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Just to add clarifications: Other changes seem to be planned for a future patch. They are not going to be implemented but the team is investigating them:
Upcoming changes to Arcade Contracts (Soon)
*All ET Arcade Contracts will feature 3 targets per Arcade Contract.
*We will avoid complications that are considered to be creatively restrictive or can result in instant failure, this includes the ‘Hide All Bodies’ complication.
*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.
Indeed, the current ET Arcade version doesn’t seem to be the final retail of it. Let’s see what could be the final one.
Which is why in my post you first replied to it says that if they are able to make the complications optional, they should restore the removed ones so its the best of both worlds regardless of which “version” of the Arcade a player preferred. If you liked the complications, you can stay within them and if you didn’t like them you can just ignore them.
As one of the players that actually enjoyed the Arcade for what it was originally, all the fun and challenge has been completely stripped out of it now and we’re left with a barebones pile of bland. It doesn’t have to be one or the other like you seem to think is the better option - provided the optional objectives doesn’t break anything, there’s zero harm in them putting a foot in both camps.
Only played ETA for the first time just now (probably a good thing I waited for the changes), chucked on some mods to keep it interesting. I’m sure it’s okay, though of course an inferior service to Peacock
Also wat
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The reason I mention the Six is that exclusivity agreements expire (just look at platform exclusive games that go multiplatform after a year or two) and also they are still in the files (there are videos on YT where hackers have got them running in H3 on PC).
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Legitimate question to everyone : is there a combinaison of an ET and a complication you would actually find interesting/challenging/a good twist ?
I mean in the new batch, the Vitae with its only one pacification complication made my usual method for the Ascensionist way too hard (taking the place of the chief, poison target’s mark, elimination in the pantry while she waits him outside the bathroom), forcing me to rethink the mission.
I can already think of a few :
- The Fugitive : Target Only (so no way to test your luck by just emetic and drown/push the first suspect you come accross, before restarting if it was not the target)
- The Deceivers : One Disguise Only (they are in two different areas with slightly different restrictions)
I also wonder if now that the Arcade will be restricted to one complication by contract if we will see more specific, precise complications. To really hammer the specificity/flavour of the contract.
Because if we look at some of the complications tailored made for escalations, some could be interesting :
- Rowdy Guns from Miami’s the Unpalatable Termination (non-silenced firearms elimination)
- Civilized from multiple Hitman 2 escalations (no civilian pacification or elimination, because let’s be honest the one pacification complication can easily become “headshot are no pacification you know”, and it will force to only interact with guards)
- No Non-Target Kill Penality from the Proloff Parable (becuse come on, it’s mindless fun)
- No Agility from Paris’s The Kotti Paradigm (no climbing, no vaulting)
And then we have what were the fully curated ones that might require some more work, but be interesting :
- No Stairs from the Quimby Quandry (depending on how its programmed and repurposable, is it by marking the area or flaging 47’animation as the trigger ?)
- No Guarding from Bangkok’s The Arthin Occultation (no guard disguise allowed, but might need to individually select the disguises)
And honestly, personnally, I would be very excited to see a contract with No Guarding. I always love to restrict the kind of disguise I take, the social hierarchy I will interact with and seeing it acknowledge by the game would be a great feeling.
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No.
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IMO it’d have to be really well-designed and with luck on IOI’s side.
Most of the generic complications are just “abide by 1/5th of Silent Assassin” which as the old Contract Creation Guide will tell you is just generally a waste of a Complication.
I think the more bespoke ones like what you mentioned have far greater potential, but even then THREE ETs not originally designed around this have to line up well with a complication (it doesn’t help that No Agility, No Stairs, etc are really easy instafail Complications to mess up) in a manner that is interesting.
For example, I think The Ascensionist with a condition like “if you spend longer than 1 minute on a different floor than the target, you fail the mission, this complication is removed once the target is dead” would be creative and potentially fun… BUT you can’t adapt that to Arcade because that same Complication has to accommodate 2 other Targets
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Good points.I also have a hard time finding something that will stay narratively relevant for all ETs of a contract.
And it’s not for nothing that I didn’t even entertained the idea to use most of the base line complications (I mean the current Hitman 2 ET Arcade contract with the No Evidence compliction is a bit of a joke)
The thing is, the mode won’t change much more. Complications will, maybe, be optional; but they will never be fully removed. Some ETs are already here twice, so it wouldn’t make sense. So I genuinely wonder how the Arcade can move forward and be relevant. Also IOI has intents in the design and I feel like we should respect that.
I just went through all the escalations to look at what can be made and was made before to look for anything interesting.
No Guarding is currently the one complication I genuinely could see used and be interesting. Maybe an equivalent for the other kind of social hierarchy (Civilized forcing to only interact with guards, maybe a new No Civieing forbidding the use of civilian disguises)
Because right now I have the feeling that the arcade will fall into irrelevance as soon as Freelancer is out.
And maybe it always was the way it was suposed to go, just a distraction before the larger content drop.
But there is so much potential. Maybe if elimination methods complication were applied (ingested poison only, sniper only…).
I don’t know.
I think ultimately what we’ll get is a very wide variety of Elusive Target missions with a lot of different complications and we’ll just see through trial and error what complications work for those maps and which ones don’t. Some complications may make the missions very easy. Some may suggest ways to do it that we didn’t think about. Some may make things a lot harder. Over time (and I have to think it’s actually pretty easy to add a complication to an existing mission once it’s created if you have access to the code behind the scenes), we’ll just see.
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In The Surgeons, Pavel Frydel’s name is misspelled as “Pawel” in his picture and in the target objective.
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It seems that that you added that part afterwards and I didn’t noticed, sorry.
I agree, the original complications like all boddies hidden wouldn’t be so intrusive if they were optional and didn’t instafail. It seems that they’re still working oh the arcade so we’ll have to wait what they do with it after the feedback of this new batches and the new changes. Optional complications and/or some difficulty settings seem to be really good options to appease people both defenders and detractors of complications.
I lost the same mission again this time for changing disguises more then once. So its yet another 12 hours and yes I decided reset then lost all five others on purpose again. Were it another mission it would’ve been okay but it wasn’t. Oh and this time I reset my Xbox One to factory that way I have to take a break since it takes several hours to set everything up again.