Yep, I agree, I don’t think massively grindy Challenges like this motivate anyone, completionists or not. Completionists grit their teeth and grimly work through them, and non-completionists either basically ignore them altogether, or in some cases like @47Agent they demotivate them.
Be interested to hear from anyone who IS actively happy with these kind of Challenges being introduced into the game because as I far as I can see people either simply don’t care one way or the other, or they actively dislike them.
I like the challenges. I am a completionist, but am in no rush to complete everything. I don’t see the challenges as grindy, but rather as long-term challenges that I will unlock over time. I have really enjoyed working towards completing everything in Hitman, and will be sad once I do “complete” everything and no longer have a specific goal to work towards. I like that these challenges provide goals that can keep me motivated to play longer term.
@scat1620 I will give you, these challenges could have definitely been more thought out. I do tend to give IO a pass on the finer details of Freelancer though, just because I’m grateful for it being released at all.
I gave up on completing every challenge in WOA very early when noticed I wasn’t enjoying doing them. My playstyle is really more roleplay-oriented and I don’t enjoy overly gamey/goofy gameplay.
I can respect this! Should get back to it myself soon enough. The heart of the game, really.
Fair enough, can’t argue if that’s the way you see it. I don’t feel the same though (my own completionist tic gives me an itch to have everything completed now, and then I can enjoy the rest of the game), so while I’m happy that these Challenges are catering to you, I’m sad that they’re making the game less fun for me.
Honestly, sometimes I just want to be able to pop in for a couple of hours, and not get frustrated to the point where I have to turn the game of because of god damn Colorado, or the fact that a dude that is through a wall happens to get alerted that I’ve done something to draw attention to myself, or that my identity can instantly be transmitted across the map, or that iOi decides that robbing the vault earns to much Merces, when nothing else in the game gives you the opportunity to not jump through ridiculous hoops to get fractions of the cost to buy new weapons… It would be nice if they would allow you to keep all purchased weapons, regardless of mission outcome, because it takes so damn long to grind enough to get them in the first place.
Sometimes, it would be nice to have an opportunity to simply enjoy the game for what it is, and just go play to blow off steam…
I don’t care about prestige or completion… I just enjoy playing the games. It would be nice to be able to do that, in Freelancer, without always having to worry about upgrading the house or whatever…
Also, there’s a giant effing bathtub in the master bedroom that just sits in a box… Are you telling me that, with all the other ridiculously expensive stuff 47 has, including a gun vault, a helicopter, a boat, like 9 cars, a hospital ward, and a bank style vault, he can’t get someone to open the damn box for his bathroom tub???
I finally activated the 1st (instance?) of Prestige. I had just reached over 1 Million . I did notice that it didn’t remove the lockpick and coin, but I couldn’t take them anyway. I suppose I could also go for those ‘quit early’ achievements.
There is a way to pick them up for use on the first mission after Prestiging. Exit to the main menu and then reload Freelancer. You’ll then be able to use the prompt to pick them up as they’ll be remarked as owned. At least until IO presumably patches it so they’re also taken away.
I finally did Haven Island on a showdown and experienced the stormy weather firsthand. It was cool that it was different from the usual sunny environment, but all it did was make me wish Kevin Rudd’s Freelancer Variations were officially implemented into the game.
Why the heck are the assassins in Freelancer even called assassins? They’re not after any targets; they don’t even know who 47 is, they just know some unknown person or persons is coming after the Leader and they’re there to protect them. They’re bodyguards, call them what they are.
But let’s go with it for the moment: if these bodyguards are so-called assassins, and the assassination syndicate members and leaders are also representative of assassins and/or murder-for-hire organizations, does this canonically confirm that the quality of available hitmen dropped like a stone when 47 took out the ICA? If so, a lot of their agents had to have been captured or killed after the media leak. Would also explain why there’s so many open contracts that Diana keeps pulling from the dark web (which is where I’m assuming she gets these): there’s no one out there capable of getting these jobs done because all the good contract killers are dead or arrested, leaving 47 with every slice of the pie.
I don’t know how you’d come to this conclusion considering that those guys can beeline to your location from half a map away and two-shot you, while the ICA agents we see in Berlin are basically complete idiots?
That’s a gameplay mechanic, and it only goes into effect once you’ve already been outed, same as every other type of guard, with only the deadliness of their shots being elite in quality. So they’re sharp-shooters; hardly the only prerequisite to being an effective contract killer. The ICA agents knew who they were looking for and could spot you in any disguise, while these guys half the time could bump into you and not know you’re a threat. Plus, all they ever have is a single pistol, while the ICA agents were packing weapons of all kinds. A gameplay mechanic, sure, but if we’re gonna take two-shotting you from across the map into consideration, well…
The ICA agents were probably given a very thorough description of 47, while the Freelancer assassins’ knowledge about him is likely extremely lacking, like “someone’s after the leader and we’re prepared to act in case things take a turn for the worse”.
It doesn’t really matter if the ICA agents are experts with a variety of weapons, we never see them use their equipment to its full extent because despite knowing exactly who they’re against, their coordination and planning is absolutely terrible. It takes a few of them dying for them to realize they’re spied on, and when their operation is called off they just run away like headless chickens instead of trying to get away without drawing attention to themselves.
Again, that’s gameplay mechanics. I’m speaking about this in terms of lore. If we look at how the two are presented - ICA agents knowing who they’re after, how dangerous he is, packed with weapons and ordered to retreat by their handler/Freelancer assassins just walking around doing nothing but following their boss until 47 is exposed and seemingly having no knowledge of how to assassinate someone beyond pointing and shooting - then it’s made more clear that the ICA agents failing is more a matter of 47 being better than them and they being smart enough to call it a day before they all die after actively hunting him, while the ones from Freelancer are just bored bodyguards walking around waiting for something to happen. Lore-wise, they barely qualify as hired killers and are only effective as a threat because their bullets are fine-tuned in-game to cause more damage than those fired from regular guns.
Out of curiosity, if IOI had simply called them “bodyguards” instead of “assassins”, would you have any issue at all with their behavior?
I considered that the assassins the ICA employed were actual professionals while the assassins the freelancer targets employ are more “for-hire” amateurs akin to club bouncers than anything. They can both have the title “assassin” without breaking anything, but the player understands that Freelancer assassins are more like “Pink Panther Strikes Again” assassins rather than “John Wick” assassins.
if you haven’t seen Pink Panther Strikes Again I highly recommend it.
. I did notice that it didn’t remove the lockpick and coin, but I couldn’t take them anyway. I suppose I could also go for those ‘quit early’ achievements.