One cold, rainy day in February at 8AM in the Morning, seven hours before the “Season of Undying” was revealed, I decided to record a somewhat impassioned, very frustrated rant at the only piece of Temporary content left in the game; Elusive Targets.
TL;DW: Make them permanent. These contracts have been on a cycle of temporary playability since May 2016 in some cases, and while ETA is a solution I’m rather fond of, Elusive Target Galore made it obvious to everyone what we could have all year long. It is madness that The Sarajevo Six is permanent, but not these. They have run their course and are no longer exciting, especially since we know you re-activate them at the end of the year, perverting incentives to play them as they arrive.
If its ever going to happen (which I personally doubt (that discussion has already been done to death so I won’t be engaging in any replies to this small part of my post)), I really don’t see it happening until they decide to wind down the roadmaps for good. ETs make up a decent amount of the content on the roadmaps these days and they probably wouldn’t want to make them even more empty than they are already.
Remember that the return of the Sarajevo Six and the Undying were also doubted, for legit reasons, but just as with this proposition, not reasons that were truly holding IOI back from acting on it.
That is to say “when the support of the game is ended” and this after-support period is always considered while discussing the matter. At least it should be considered.
It would’ve been stupid making temporary content permanent while the game is still alive and supported.
I don’t consider all those temporary events and bonus missions because Elusive Targets is a different category or temporary events
And Offline Elusives; that took a lot of work from myself, UnfunnyGoober, and AnthonyFuller to make and maintain y’know! People always forget about offline elusives…
I mean, legal issues with Sony and image rights with Sean Bean seem like pretty good “true” reasons to not act on something to me. I get what you’re saying and I agree, but we don’t need to downplay how impressive those deals were to make. It ruins my overall point, if anything.
Those were legitimate reasons to not release something and I see no reason to dismiss or downplay these reasons.
Yes with enough time many things can be solved. But faith and time is not really a guaranteed solution. Action, especially noted actions, is a solution.
Badger IO on twitter, start a campaign, let your voices be heard. Faith is not enough and time is endless, and they have proven they will wait until the last minute to satiate player complaints when they could absolutely be doing things now, not later.
And I’m doing neither. I’m saying they weren’t really impeding IOI from releasing the content again, just taking longer than the rest of it because of those reasons. It suggests IOI always had the intention, or at least the desire, to make that content available to all players again, but had to take a long time navigating the legal and monetary issues involved, but they did in fact have the means to get it done. They weren’t preventative; they were time-consuming.
So, you’re saying that even the credit that I’m giving them is too much and that they could have given us these things sooner, rather than wait so many years?
I’m legit not trying to be a smartass about it, this comment is very confusing when weighed with what you wrote before. It seems to suggest that even with the reasons they had for taking so long to bring back this content (which, again, I’m only suggesting simply held them up, not held them back), they could have done it even sooner considering how much we kept pestering them about it, which not only aligns with my own stance on the matter, but in an even more aggressive way.
That’s not how it came across to me. I may have misreading your words. Text is fickle medium.
I’m not saying you can’t have hope that the developers will eventually do the right thing, I’m usually a glass-half-full kind of guy. I could’ve been clearer on that, that’s my fault. What I am saying is that hope alone does nothing but let them get away with doing nothing. The more you pressure them consistently, the more you get them to do what you want. The whole DLC tomfoolery in Year 1 happened because IO thought they could get away with re-releasing DLC’s again and damn the consequences of implying transfers. Of course, the whole news cycle happened, and they changed their minds, but that was not entirely out of goodness of heart. They wanted the storm to go away, so they made a system to satiate the complaints. They got told off – rightly so – by everyone for being greedy. But unfortunately, such a shitstorm hasn’t brewed for ET’s, not in the same way.
I’m being more aggressive because I’m sick and tired of being nice and cordial when it comes to this topic. I am very much open for reasonable discussion, don’t misunderstand, as that generally tends to be better for everyone. But if we, the audience, just continue do nothing but hope on forum posts, then they’ll keep getting away with it. I’m not saying they don’t see those posts, I’m sure they do, but it’s not exactly pro-active discussion either.
i just find it bizarre that this is still a discussion we have to have. people have been saying this for 8 years now. there is an entire game’s worth of content being kept time limited for no reason. i suspect the developers think that they’re a nice way to pad out the roadmaps, but nobody is gagging at the broker being back for the 30th time. most of the missions themselves are quite good, but they’re done a disservice by being treated as filler content
I stand by my opinion that Freelancer showdowns emulate the feeling of elusive targets better than actual Elusive Targets themselves, despite running into some repetition in the long term.
It has the one attempt ever at a target that’ll never appear again, high stakes for failure and randomised behaviours to add unpredictability. At the same time they don’t hard-limit a monthly pace at which they can be played or add FOMO like scheduled ETs do. And there’s no career tab silently tracking every single time you’ve missed, failed, or lost SA on one of them, making failures less bitter in the long term Imo.
This is church.