The wording could be clearer, for sure, but the sentence “This batch will also include an arcade contract consisting of Elusive Targets from each game in the trilogy” could mean:
This batch will include a (single) contract which contains targets from each game, OR
This batch will include a contract for each game (multiple contracts).
Given that today is the day they referenced, and there are three separate contracts, one per game, the meaning is clear now. It was bad wording that could have been clearer, but they meant that each contract would include a single game’s content - and there are three of those contracts.
Kinda getting of having to kill Amanda Jamison. There were 2 other different chances. One with your choice of starting location and disguise, the other with 3 restricted (suit only) starting points.
And the Politician? One is enough and I have no interest in trying anything other than shooting the heater on the back deck. The Revolutionary, I don’t even care if I get SA. That’s easy enough.
I appreciate IO’s efforts, but they could at least streamline the targets without any doubles or three-peats.
Edit: I know it will never happen, but IO could put up a poll of which ETs from the previous seasons we’d like to see return. Maybe the top 2 or 3 could be put into ‘batches’ or whatever where there are 3 targets. Or something like that.
From H2: The Serial Killer from Whittleton Creek
H1: The Fixer? (the Marakesh guy so many people messed up on)
H1: That one with 2 in 1 in Sapienza.
…
Is this a pre April fool’s joke or something? Excluding The Undying, there’s still a H2 elusive target that hasn’t shown his face but instead they decide to use the same targets of the previous batch but backwards. This is the third time in a row they use The Appraiser and The Revolutionary, and there’s only three H2 contracts. Hell, they could even include The Deceivers on the H2 elusive targets for more variety
I’m sure I read somewhere that something ended up breaking with some of the old ETs, which could be why Serial Killer isn’t part of the Hitman 2 batches.
Once again: the duplicates are purely the result of the complaints and the eventual removal of most of the complications. The complications were intended to be the stars of the show that would make each Arcade Contract different, even if the targets were the same because you would’ve needed different strategies each time.
These are the final set of Arcade Contracts that were added back with the January patch, which is why the targets weren’t changed at all. There will likely be more variety going forward because the contracts will be designed with the “one complication only” thing in mind.
The repetitive nature of the initial sets is purely the fault of those that complained about the complications in the first place.
The complications are not, nor were they ever, the stars of the show; the ETs were. We have not spent the last five years asking for infinitely replayable ETs to include complications. We had escalations for that. All we were asking for were infinitely replayable ETs. If that had simply been all it was from the beginning, we wouldn’t need these repeats, we would just need new ETs.
The complications were the core of the ET Arcade. They may have not been what people had been asking for since 2016, but the compromise IO made to give some sort of permanent access to the ET content did put the complications front and centre.
Just because people hadn’t been asking for them, doesn’t mean that they weren’t front and centre for the mode. Also, if they weren’t the stars of the show, there is no reason IO would’ve planned to use the same targets over and over in the initial three sets.
You have a point there: however, I’m not sure that different set of complication would be enough for keeping fresh the experience of eliminating the usual trio Murillo-Jamison-Keating. I guess it still feels repetitive.
Perhaps, this is the replay value as intended by IOI. Oh well…
I didn’t even touched it again after the release, until today, just for unlocking the Striker Mkiii. Just saying.
But I don’t really care anymore, when booting H3, I just playing random contracts for few hours and nothing else. I’m not even interested in future contents anymore.
In the 3 runs we’ve had of the same 2 targets and the times I’ve replayed them I have already tried every possible run you can think of, so I don’t think the order or the amount of complications matter. I don’t really mind repeating targets either but the fact that it’s the same ones over and over. If they’re going to reuse them at least combine them with different targets each time. Putting the stowaway instead of the appraiser would have made this contract a little better
No, the complications are what bogged it down and ruined the experience for the majority of players, who found it tedious and limiting. It wasn’t the prime sell; it was a hinderance, and it continues to be.
Ugh. This isn’t a conversation about whether the complications or good. If you’re going to insist on trying to push the conversation in that direction, I’m going to start ignoring you because that has already been discussed to death and isn’t worth getting into anymore.
Whether people liked or disliked the complications doesn’t change the fact that they were how IO intended to introduce variety into these Arcade Contracts, which would’ve have made the repeated targets less annoying because of the different approaches that would have been required each time.
Those approaches could have been taken at the discretion of the player at any time with them being there to force a player to follow them. The complications were only how IO “intended” Arcade mode to work as a means to be able to drakes the same content again multiple times with new or reshuffled complications. Even if they hadn’t married them down as they had, they were still going to be releasing them again in different orders so that some ETs that were not affected by one type of complication due to being further along in the contract for the chance to be affected by it another time in another contract. It was only introduced as a means to pad it out and keep the releases going as a fill in for content. The complications were not designed as the main focus of Arcade mode, they were a quirk thrown in to allow repetition that wouldn’t seem so repetitive, but it was so unwanted to begin with that that plan backfired.
One of the biggest problems I’ve seen is that the elusive targets were never designed in the first place to really allow for a lot of variation. The normal mission stories had a bunch of available mission stories and side-ways to kill the targets. Those levels had a lot of moving pieces that interacted with each other. The Elusive Targets don’t have that. Mostly there’s one or two reasonable ways to approach the level and the rest of it is either utilizing glitches and cheats to lure NPCs around or just straight-up shoot-fests. The truly stealthy and accident-based stuff doesn’t apply as readily to the Elusive Targets because they weren’t designed that way from their inception. Adding complications doesn’t change the base Elusive Target design.
I agree. In fact, I feel the same just after trying the Arcade mode. Some ET are even decent, but nothing more, while I find the most of them boring or uninspiring.
Also, I felt during the first days of this mode, those bunch of insta-fail complication made some ET a bit more challenging unlike theyr vanilla release (most notably example: The Liability), while now that ET are less restrictive, some of them feels bland again (hello again, Murillo!).
However, I still fell this mode is not the best way to replaying ETs as much as we like, and the complications, despite few cases, still doesn’t add anything worth to the weakest of them.
of having to kill Amanda Jamison. There were 2 other different chances. One with your choice of starting location and disguise, the other with 3 restricted (suit only) starting points.
