Someone else asked the same thing in this thread earlier. I think the resulting discussion found it still works in the stand alone version of the Iconoclast ET but not in any of the ETA levels she’s featured in. If I remember correctly.
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Well now that´s disappointing… It´s a fun kill method and would be a shame to keep it confined to the main mission and that one escalation that´s built around it. Wish they´d patch it in.
Unfortunately I don’t think any of these are good for et arcades simply because they’re challenging contracts and it kinda goes back on what everyone was angry about the first time round this literally ruined to concept or being able to go in and doing it the way you can and have that freedom
My thing is that without having only one complication, I think it should be a bit more substantial than “delete the evidence” or “one pacification/disguise change”. If they go through with making the compications optional than I think they should try to do some harder ones for future contracts
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Maybe the earpiece inclusion in the ET version was a mistake. Just be thankful they don’t apply it retroactively and switch success to failure for that ET for everyone who used the sniper team.
imo if they do make the complications optional, they should restore the removed complications for those that did like them. Most of them from the second and third batches have had absolutely no impact on how I have ever wanted to play the contracts.
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Let’s solve it here: put all the complications in and let us turn each individual one of them on and off at will before beginning. Those who want all the complications can have them; those who don’t want them can turn them all off; those who want some but not others can make their choices; and once you choose, you have to go through the whole contract before you can change them.
Entire problem solved.
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There wouldn’t have been a problem to begin with if ioi would’ve just released all individual ET’s like everyone asked for (minus the ones they can’t, contractually).
Would’ve required less work and the replay value would’ve been higher/lasted longer.
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Definitely would have required less work, but I doubt the replay value per Elusive Target level would have been any higher. Adding complications, whether mandatory or not, theoretically does create replayability because it forces the player to do things they may not do on their own.
As PC players would probably already be aware, there are mods that allow unlimited replay of all of the Elusive Target levels, even the ones that cannot be re-released. Most of those Elusive Target levels grow very boring very quickly and there are a few that I wouldn’t bother to replay more than once or twice. Are there a few that are genuinely entertaining and took a lot of work to put together? Yes, but then there are others that feel like they just stuck a random NPC into a map and hit Go.
I actually like @Heisenberg 's suggestion of just providing the laundry list of potential complications and letting the player check off which ones they want. Complications have their place and shouldn’t just be flatly eliminated, in my opinion.
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Do those mods include access to the official leaderboard?
That"s the replayability I was referring to: Speedrunning to get #1.
Minus that, 99% of this game actually has no replay value. 
I think you’ve got that flipped. This game wasn’t created for speedrunning to be its main purpose, or even a top one, and if part of it doesn’t allow it, then that’s not what that part was meant for. The sheer number of times I alone have replayed this game prove its replay ability, to say nothing of everyone else.
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Keep in mind, my perspective is admittedly skewed because it’s based on platform (on Xbox no one is playing it based on leaderboard movement/change AND the number of overall players listed) and this site. Which I know is not 100% accurate to what’s going on as a whole with all platforms.
Only ioi would know that, and they seem(!?) happy with it the way it is (after cutting down the complications) so my view is probably wrong.
Since it’s offline only, no, the mods don’t allow that.
I never even considered trying to speed run an Elusive Target, to be honest. (actually, I never considered trying to speed run any of it but that just isn’t my thing). Come to think of it, do the Elusive Targets even have leader boards? I actually don’t know.
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They do have leaderboards.
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Since you can’t (theoretically) practice an elusive target, do you find that the leader boards for them are more “authentic” than normal maps? I mean if a player can’t practice and hone their play-through of the level, isn’t it harder to get a higher score?
In practice, no. Because you CAN practice ET’s. Like you mentioned, PC players can infinitely replay them before “officially” playing them and console players can do the same with the disconnect trick.
Even minus those tactics, as long as you don’t eliminate the target/complete an applicable objective you can restart and experiment/practice the contract as many times as you want.
No one consistently in the top 5 or even top 10 for any platform is a single run, playing blind player. Unless its a contract that no one is playing.
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In a perfect world yeah, but I doubt IO are going to want to throw to much money at a game mode that can’t directly be monetized. Restoring all the removed complications when they become optional is far more likely given the almost non-existent cost to implement it as a way to be able to offer both “versions” of the Arcade so people can play the one they preferred.
Ya cuz leaderboards were meant to see who can do it the slowest. 
This doesn’t mean he’s wrong tho?
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Yeah, IO meticulously created highly detailed maps, full of interwoven narratives and half a million voice lines just for everyone to speedrun them in 28 seconds because… A leaderboard at the end?
Speedrunning is fun, but it is clearly not the play-style IO imagined for most of their players.
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