Freelancer - General Discussion

I have no idea, could be but its very rng/luck heavy ofcourse.

Im just running both normal and hardcore for fun, and having an absolute blast with it

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I will NEVER play Colorado again. Not in the main story. Not in freelancer. Never. To hell with this map. What was IOI thinking? Btw, my last run here ended up with me getting cornered in the kids room upstairs in the house. I had to kill half the map to get out because they would never ever stand down, no matter how long I hid in a closet, and the more of them I killed the more they pushed in to replace them.

Everything I hate about this map:

  • There is no cover anywhere. Period. At all. Everything is visible to the entire map at all times.
  • There is not one pixel of standing area that is out of earshot of a guard somewhere. Nothing is silent.
  • There is no de-escalation. You can only choose to kill everyone on the map.
  • No one is ever alone. There are always witnesses.
  • There are almost no containers to store bodies in. The map is gigantic and thereā€™s probably likeā€¦ six or seven.
  • Despite being wide open, sniping is impossible because there is always some stupid piece of farm equipment obstructing ONLY your targetā€™s head. Or other people, whatever. The map is flatter than a calm sea and the water tower is a death trap.
  • No one ever calms down. Guards continue to stay alerted forever, even from one random guy dying in a toilet.
  • No one has pistols. Thereā€™s no pistol ammunition on the map. If you run out of pistol ammo you can cry harder. Everyone on the map is a guard with body armor and an automatic weapon.
  • Half the freelancer targets are people who sit in one place and pick their nose with five people staring right at them.
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Bring as many explosives as targets. Boom, easy Colorado (or pretty much any non-showdown level really).

The water tower is the worst sniping spot ever unless youā€™re aiming for the Wicker Man bells. Snipe from the tall grass near the default starting area. Make your shot, then sneak away towards the little shed or the gate, then use the path surrounding the area to get away from guards coming your way.

Donā€™t try to hide bodies, leave them in the open (unless youā€™re in HC and have to do a SA prestige objective, but if thatā€™s the case have fun being a masochist I guess). The likelihood of getting spotted while doing so is extremely high and it does more harm than good.

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The ā€œkill Syndicate Leaders by pushing them over a ledgeā€ challenge counts all instances of fall accident, just like the push kill objective. This means both can also be completed on Haven and Ambrose by luring a target into an area with water and then either knocking them out or shooting them in the leg so they trip, since death by falling into water is also classified as fall accident.

EDIT: Some canals in Mumbai near the laundry (and possibly other map areas) also have shallow water that can be used for killing if I recall correctly.

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The explosive kill collateral is very bugged. But itā€™s consistent for me: it NEVER works.

Has anyone ever wondered if thereā€™s any meaning behind the syndicate type logos?
Could be just random shapes that looked cool and were arbitrarily assigned to syndicate types, but I thought it might be fun to theorise.

Anyways, hereā€™s some of my speculation on the topic.

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Yeah that was always my problem with Colorado, everyone has line of sight on everyone, and checkpoints are setup at odd angles and in weird ways that make getting caught way too easy.

I think there needs to be an option to move the Picture in Picture, or at least shift the objectives under it rather than behind it. Often Iā€™m looking to see when something like Guard KOs are ā€˜countedā€™, but a target body I didnā€™t need to hide gets seen, covering the objectives.

I guess Iā€™ll end up disabling PIP for now instead, cause in my current care free challenge grinding state, I donā€™t really need it.

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Did you miss my reply regarding the rating system? Thereā€™s still a consequence in that respect. I donā€™t think score and leaderboard matter, because once you get an SA run thatā€™s as fast as youā€™re ever going to get it, itā€™s not as if itā€™s going to incentivise your play any more than that. Do you never do runs like SA/SO and fiber wire only in the main game because that is not incentivised by the score system? If you do do challenge runs like that, then clearly youā€™re able to look past that and towards other self-imposed challenges. And you can do exactly the same in Freelancer.

Thereā€™s no score system, but thereā€™s still a rating system, and itā€™s actually arguably more interesting and flexible than the binary ā€˜SAā€™ vs. ā€˜Not SAā€™ one in the main game. There are now multiple ratings that you can get that reward stealthy play, which is pretty cool in my opinion.

Also try to be nicer. I mean no hostility to you btw, Iā€™m just trying to help you see a way to still enjoy this game mode. Itā€™s fine if you canā€™t see it, to each their own, but I was able to get over my initial dislike of the lack of ā€˜Silent Assassinā€™ rating system in this mode, so I believe you have the potential to also.

1 Like

Heh, I literally just failed in Clorado before reading this first thing. I had killed all the targets, opened the safe, All objectives done EXCEPT I needed ONE more shotgun kill on a guard. I knocked him out and drug him right next to a crate completely out of visual range of any other guards, shotgunned him and climbed in out of sight. 3 guards ran over and started shooting me.
I wonā€™t play for a few days in protest. Bitter.

But it does matter. Itā€™s the very thing that separates you from other players. Score/time/rank. So if youā€™re slow, consequence is a lower score. Even if youā€™re a player that doesnā€™t care for ā€œscoreā€, the game doesnā€™t care. It still rates you. You are on the scoreboard showing yourself. If you REALLY donā€™t care for score, then you would play offline (but then thereā€™s the unlocks). But despite that, the game punishes you for being slow and/or sloppy whether you like it or not.

In freelancer, nothing matters. Itā€™s a mess. Thatā€™s terrible game design. Like I said, even assassins creed punishes the player for killing civilians.

Yes I do and agree. Freelancer can be played like that, but again, there should be some sort of consequence. Making freelancer play like any% really is sloppy and lazy game design.

Those ratings are in both sides of the game. Not sure what youā€™re talking about. Can you elaborate?

And the rating system is all self-glorified in freelancer, itā€™s still meaningless.

Iā€™m always nice. Have I ever been mean or insulting to anyone here? I do enjoy the mode, and I mean a lot. I just wish there was more to it. It had so much potential. Thanks for your help tho.

Aww cā€™mom. Colorado isnā€™t that bad. You just have to learn it. I love it and is one of my favourite maps, especially in freelancer. I always aim to get Colorado in every syndicate and always use choose one of the SA prestige objectives if available. As I said, just need time with it

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Iā€™m pretty sure what separates you from other players in a game like Hitman is your location.

But even taking what you mean, again, what separates you from other players is your actual success, whether the game records that or not.

I hate this sentence on sheer principle, in regards to game playing, no matter who is saying it. But no, there shouldnā€™t be. Perhaps you want there to be, but that doesnā€™t mean there should be.

To hell with scores and leaderboards.

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I have no idea what this means. Sorry.

And that is on your TIME of success with the objectives. Sloppy and slow play IS penalized whether you like it or not.

What Iā€™m saying has nothing to do with scores and leaderboards. Iā€™m talking about gameplay. The exact thing youā€™re talking about earlier about not seeing the pattern. That is a perfect example of consequences Iā€™m talking about. How your play is not penalized for the next map. So you put all that time and effort to complete showdowns that certain way but then it actually means nothing because the next map isnā€™t affected by your gameplay, hence no consequence.

:man_facepalming: Really? I got to explain this joke? Ok, take the two of us as an example: what separates you from me is the fact that Iā€™m here, and youā€™re there. Get it now? What separates Hitman players is their location. Ha ha, little joke, thatā€™s all that separates us, to a ā€œtā€ (Thatā€™s another little joke, because Iā€™m here, youā€™re there, and the only difference between here and there is ā€œtā€).

Yeah, but Iā€™m fine with that, though. My issue was that I didnā€™t know that thatā€™s what was happening, because IOI failed to explain that there were other ways of having alerted territories regardless of your actions. That itself doesnā€™t bother me, itā€™s that I felt misled in taking precautions I didnā€™t need to take.

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Iā€™m pretty sure a player who doesnā€™t care for the score would just play the game normally and simply ignore the score at the end of a level. They wouldnā€™t play offline as that would mean they actually cared in some way about not appearing on the leaderboards.

Objectives matter. More objectives failed = less money at the end = slower progression. Itā€™s pretty much the same as a contract where achieving SA while ignoring objectives such as ā€œno pacificationsā€ or ā€œperfect shooterā€ would get you a lower score than a player who broke SA but fulfilled all objectives.

Also there is a penalty for killing civilians in Freelancer, albeit a small one - but itā€™s significant enough to ensure you would get close to no money if you went for a killing spree (itā€™s particularly noticeable when you get the ā€œno witnessesā€ objective and witnesses start to pile up, to a point where killing them would actually earn you less money than simply failing the objective).

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Can confirm. I have never cared about scores, ranks, leaderboards, or stars. I just play the way I like to play, regardless of what the game wants me to do. Iā€™ll actually bother with things like Silent Assassin or Suit Only if there is a challenge involved for completeness sake, but not because the game insists that I must always play ā€œSASOā€ (a play style I absolutely hate anyway).

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Well, Iā€™m finally approaching my ā€œsingularityā€ with Freelancer. Which is to say, Iā€™m almost at the point where I will have gained every weapon and tool that can be obtained and added to the arsenal. This is a big deal, because my whole mindset since launch has been to make as much money per mission as possible to get everything bought, and any deaths or failed campaigns have set me back enormously each time.

Now, once Iā€™m done using my earnings to buy things, Iā€™ll be able to save more and more and more, so that when I inevitably do fail again, Iā€™ll only have the few items that were on me and my tools to repurchase, and if I have a huge stockpile of cash, even cutting it in two, Iā€™ll be able to buy back those few items and those relatively cheap tools in no time, allowing me to focus on just completing the contracts and gaining XP to reach top mastery.

Once thatā€™s done, Iā€™ll either just be playing for pleasure, and in accordance with my parameters of perfection - in as much as this mode allows that - or to complete the challenges and unlock the trophies. Itā€™s a good feeling, being this close, with only a handful of things left to find or buy; like getting over the hump.

Sigh. I just said the game doesnā€™t care if you take it seriously or not. You still get rated. The consequence is a lower spot in the leaderboards. All Iā€™m saying is itā€™s there and thatā€™s the consequence. Irrelevant if someone cares about it or not. It still does that. The person above you who never met you can say they are better than you whether you care or not.

Only once. As I said, after youā€™ve gotten your best possible score on the leaderboard, you cannot change it. You cannot place on the leaderboard twice. It literally doesnā€™t matter after that.

And the rating system, and progression.

Freelancer does too. It gives you a poorer rating.

First off, nothing mattering is not terrible game design. Ultimately nothing matters in the vast majority of games. In most games the failure state just sends you back to an earlier point to retry. Freelancer does this too.

And again, if you kill civilians, you get a worse rating. It feels like youā€™re ignoring this point I keep making. You may not get a ā€˜scoreā€™ for the leader-board, but you didnā€™t get that in Blood Money, Contracts, H2:SA or HC47 either. All you got in the majority of Hitman games was a rating.

And in SA/SO FW only runs, youā€™re never going to beat the leaderboard score you would get with just a faster SA run. So why do it if all that matters is score?

There is no ā€˜realā€™ consequence to playing any% in the main game either. You can still complete any mission and get a lower time doing it. You get a worse ā€˜leaderboard scoreā€™ but if youā€™re still in the belief that it matters after what Iā€™ve said so far, Iā€™m not sure what else to say. The main reason 99% of people (of the people who play SA at all) donā€™t do main missions any% style is that it doesnā€™t give you the ā€˜Silent Assassinā€™ rating that way. Freelancer still has a rating system, so you can still play for a rating. The same motivation is there if you want to see it.

Sort of true, not that it makes a difference, but also not really, because ā€˜Silent Assassinā€™ overrides all the ratings we get to see in Freelancer nowā€¦ we could rarely ever get or see ā€˜Traceless ICA Assassinā€™ before because you would almost always get ā€˜Silent Assassinā€™ overriding it, except for some edge-cases of contracts and escalations.

So is the rating system in the main game with that attitude.

1 Like