We also really don’t need to pit Freelancer cosmetics and new mechanics against each other. Those of us who say they’d like some more cosmetics for the safehouse don’t come barging in every time someone asks for map variations or more objectives to say that cosmetics should have a higher priority.
I spend a lot of time hanging out in my safehouse, because it’s a nice place. Of course someone who completely ignores this part of Freelancer wouldn’t care, and that’s okay. I basically ignore Featured Contracts at this point, but I’m not insisting that they should be discontinued in favour of something I’d rather see receiving some love.
(I want all of those things, actually. The bonus missions map variations, more objectives and POs, re-rollable POs so I can finally return to playing Hardcore Mode without having to choose between two time-based POs and one that’s impossible on all available maps, safehouse cosmetics and weather, Hawkes Bay as a fun-sized map, …)
I will agree with @Dribbleondo on how much of a terrible idea it would be to add Hawkes Bay.
Freelancer did an excellent job to have a curated list of 60-80 targets to choose randomly per map, with each having usually one accident/sabotage opportunity and one isolation opportunity.
Hawkes Bay would be terrible at this.
If we are talking about far-fetched features:
What I really want is to have a special dossier in the Office that allows to play a special campaign of every 19 freelancer map with the main story mission targets.
But with Freelancer mechanics (sick game-like random secondary objectives, and rogue tools).
Bonus if the item to launch it has a memorial photo of Grey next to it.
A reminiscence campaign.
But it’s not going to happen, as fun as it would be. To me at least.
But realistically, refining the end game economy would be the best thing to do. And I think reasonable enough to ask.
Prestiges did a bit of that by making the player redo the weapon wall, but it does not feel that good and integrated.
buy a way to start undercover, if still random
buy a way to calm down an alerted territory
have a way to buy / find phones in preparation of the showdown
standard perishable bonuses for inside a single campaign in a rogue like stuff
They were experimenting with this, it’s not something I invented independently.
It is indeed small, which is precisely why I qualified my statement by saying it probably makes sense to gate it behind some amount of challenge progression. When you’ve done all the other maps to death, it really isn’t a bad thing to have even a dimunitive map to mess around with.
I love it, but it could do with a little bit more variation to keep it fresh, beyond just the random targets.
Or maybe Hawkes Bay could come with the restriction that it only appears in the first syndicate of a campaign? We don’t have that many targets (or suspects) in those missions. That could work without making a too small place feel overcrowded.
Or they could just do a Landslideation of Hawke’s Bay that expands it across the beach with crowds and such, and then use that version in Freelancer. While we’re talking about such wild things, I’m eyeing the Carpathian Mountains as well.
What a post! Couldn’t have said it better myself @Diana47
The way I see it, everyone’s has their own view on things, such as some would like to see more cosmetics and items for the Safehouse, like myself, while others wish to see new game mechanics added for Freelancer, but no matter what the view is, everyone should be respectful of each others opinions. Like you, I also love spending time in the Safehouse and think it’s one of the coolest part of Freelancer
Looking forward to see what we get for the Safehouse in The Drop DLC and what’s further down the road in future roadmaps!
One thing I think we’re all united in is that we want to see the bugs and glitches fixed, regardless of where you place it on the totem pole of priorities.
Also, it’s worth mentioning, each time you prestige, you increase your Merces gain, so the system actually makes the problem worse in the long run (I.E once you can no longer prestige).
There needs to be a more permanent money sink, so something like buying locations to start in or wearing a disguise to cost merces would be a decent way of solving this.
Having a small map to mess around in as a reward for challenge progression does not sound that rewarding to me. I dunno, it’d seem like an odd reward to give players
And besides, the whole point of the mode, hell Hitman in general, is to play the maps endlessly because they are so detailed and replayable. Hawkes Bay, quite deliberately, isn’t structured like that, so it wouldn’t make any sense to include it in Freelancer in any capacity officially unless they edited it to expand it past the main house.
I do like the idea of restricting the map to the first part of a campaign, but I sense that’d be unsatisfying as a solution internally.
Yeah that’s a definite. There’s a couple in Freelancer I’d like to see patched up. For one, the soundless Dubai Helicopter taking off from the Safehouse? That has been one on my list for a while. The floating banana on the Kitchen table is another annoying one for me as well. I know there’s the fuse issue in the garage for some players as well, but from what I’m hearing, like yourself, this is mainly impacting Xbox one players.
I play it, albeit infrequently and it’s enjoyable enough; I’m not personally espousing gating it behind challenge progression, but if the general feeling is that it could impact balance, doing so serves a purpose. The map is outnumbered by the others, but, in addition to/instead of making it only appear in the first leg of a campaign, the odds of the game selecting it can also be weighted against it such that you don’t see it too frequently.
This would be the best of all worlds - reuse some entities to give the map a bit more life and it becomes a much more compelling case. I suspect Mr. Rudd is toying around with this concept himself.
That would be really cool, or like what @Diana47 said, Hawkes Bay could maybe be included in Freelancer if it only appeared in the first stage of the campaign, where you usually only have one syndicate member to kill?
Unlocked GOAT and Prestige Level IV (Prestige 07)!
First freelancer challenges in a year.
Hadn’t played the mode since march, went back a bit into it.
I will miss the habitual ping of the GOAT tracker.
