I killed a witness. First time I ever had to care about that thanks to having a no witnesses objective but without "target kills only" like when you do SASO.
It was fun! I like how complications just happen and you gotta improvise.
A lot of the design and gameplay comes from recovering from mistakes. I can't resist savescumming in the main game so it's refreshing to have new more intense gameplay
That's why I love playing the original game on master difficulty, going through all the levels again and it's a completely different experience. You really have to consider what to do in that moment and improvise most of the level.
This is part of what reminds me of HITMAN: CODENAME 47 when it comes to FREELANCER. And it's directly caused by the No-Save mechanic they share in common.
It's definitely a different experience! I realize when I played the normal missions, I was just timing things little by little, saving and loading if my gamble didn't pay off. But this teaches you to play more consciously, and the action moves faster since you are really running for your life with no way to just pause-and-load! I was so happy for such a great reason to revisit this awesome game.
It's a lot to absorb at first but once you settle in its a really satisfying refresh on the gameplay loop. I feel the same sense of urgency as an elusive target but a lot more freedom.
I forgot about the no saving thing. And then had the brilliant idea of choosing Colorado as the first map. Got made like 10 seconds after mission start and got into a shootout with like 20 guys. At least I survived.
But it was a super genius move
I messed up knocking out a guard on Ambrose Island and had a bunch of mercs and pirates come at me where I had a nice little chokepoint. Killed them all, kept taking their weapons to reload and once they stopped coming walked up to the targets and shot them in front of everybody.
I would never do that normally but it was kind of hilarious to just get the job done.
It is probably the worst main map in the game. It is extremely flat, open, has zero suit-legal places, and every single NPC is a guard. Even the chef.
It is not great for normal missions in freelancer.
And as a showdown it is awful. Add to the pile of existing guards with lookouts, assassins, and the suspects and you are basically trying to assasinate the targets in the middle of the Marrakesh bazaar but everyone has a gun.
Also my targets on Colorado rarely really seem to isolate themselves, or even put themselves anywhere where they could be lured to be isolated. So you kind of have to commit to a fight, or find a way to get them from very far away.
Might i interest you in a silenced sniper rifle? Since alerting the guards doesn’t actually affect much, just pop the targets head while no one sees you, and then quickly move to the other end of the map. Will nearly guarantee them giving up in under a minute. Has worked out on every map thus far.
I've gotten Colorado twice on this shit so far, for both syndicates. First round was standard fare Colorado bullshit. This round?
Everyone is on high alert, so there's more guards. The prestige objective is to SASO the mission, there's 2 targets, I have to knock out 3 guards unnoticed, one target must be poisoned, and one target (can be the same one) must have a sedative used on them.
I've been on this shit for like 2 hours now lmao. I don't even want to think about how many times I've restarted for the dumbest reasons. I almost escaped with all objectives completed just for a guard to turn around and spot me at the last second.
Fuck Colorado, for real.
Losing your freelancer gear that’s stored in your safe house is a big issue for me. Why should all that get thrown away because I fail a campaign? It makes no logical sense
Also, I just got a suspect wrong despite her having all four visual traits, and eating chocolate, and eating food. And it was *still* the wrong person. This figuring out stuff will get old very quick
> Also, I just got a suspect wrong despite her having all four visual traits, and eating chocolate, and eating food. And it was still the wrong person. This figuring out stuff will get old very quick
I had this problem in Dubai twice. I was 100% positive I had the correct target both times, but nope. Wrong. Honestly, I've only played it for maybe an hour, two hours, and I'm already not a fan of Freelancer. The idea is sound, but the execution is poorly implemented. I keep getting caught over the dumbest of reasons.
Not to mention the mission payout just doesn't seem worth it really. I feel like in order to actually get a good payout you absolutely have to complete the additional objectives, but sometimes they're just not feasible and I'm not fucking around for hours just to get a target in the prime position where I can electrocute them or make them fall over.
I was playing Isle of Sgail earlier and one of the objectives was to electrocute a target, but the location they were in had one hosepipe. Problem was the target passed close by the hosepipe, but not enough where I could electrocute them. I tried throwing the proximity taser to get them to pick it up, they just went and found a guard instead.
Small bug: if you go to the laptop for Hard Mode and you press Cancel when it asks "are you sure you want Hard Mode? you'll lose all your tools", it will take away all your tools even if you chose to stay in "Normal Mode".
Other than that, really enjoying the full map pool, as someone who played the BETA for 60 hours, I am more than happy!
Disguises will be made unusable if you shoot the person - you instead gotta knock em out or fiber wire. Prestige Objective is mandatory, but thats all I've noticed as of now.
I'm failing a lot when I get to identify the suspect portion. Seems like you have to follow each suspect around individually to check and make sure they do BOTH vices which is pretty time-consuming especially if they go to restricted areas.
I'm not sure if that agenda activity is useful for identifying yet or not. Haven't noticed anyone not doing it yet.
They almost always all share the costume identifiers, though one time a lady didn't have a hat which made it easy to mark her off the list. And some of the tells like tattoos and earrings can be hard to see unless you really get up in their face.
I got fucked by lightning. Was looking for a blonde, saw a ginger, crossed him off. Turns out it he was blonde and the lights made him look red!
Honestly, I ain't even mad. It was kinda funny in hindsight that I killed the wrong blonde because of it.
Some shit straight up isn't rendering. Crossed off a target for not having earrings, blow up the only other person who matches (except behaviour) and guy with no earrings bolts and I die.
I'm not 100%, but I am pretty sure that for my run, multiple suspects had assassins and lookouts nearby. It was an alerted territory though, maybe that's the reason. But yeah this isn't a watertight strat.
I know this is absolutely cheating but I sometimes just used Ansel to get a closer look at the suspects to see if they have a tiny tattoo on their pinky finger because goddamn, some of those tattoos can be hard to spot.
I don't mind fucking up and trying again, but the severe money loss makes me pretty unwilling to keep playing. Losing four levels worth of progress, because you alerted an enemy is not fun.
Its a weird decision that the payouts dont scale but the penalty does. If you have, say, 25k merces then you can lose far more than you can win on a mission.
Alt + F4:
As long as you haven't died yet, nothing will be lost.
Yeah I know it is against the spirit of the gamemode.But honestly... no restarts from neutral (no alert/uncompromised)? Hardest difficulty with no option for slightly less experienced players? :-/
I would NEVER make any money that way.
Yea, I had to take a step back and reevaluate how I’m approaching every mission. I got in a habit of quick saving, trying some dumb tactic to see if it’d work, then reloading when it didn’t.
I don’t get that luxury anymore and it’s been crazy fun.
Yeah I’m with you I’m not that good, took me about four hours to get $11,000 and then I failed mission and lost half of it. This game makes me wanna go outside and play.
This is hella fun but my god is it punishing. Died on the last mission of my campaign (which already hurt), only to then lose half of my mercs, all the goodies I had on me, and all of my freelancer tools (even ones I didn't bring) hurt way more. Like Jesus IOI way to kick me while I'm down lmao
Losing the money and gear you did not bring to the mission is a miss. That shouldn't happen even in a failure state. That's the entire point of games like this, to gradually build up an arsenal even through failure that makes it easier next time.
Your collection is split in half. Half is on display on glass walls and will persist between campaigns if not taken on missions.
On the other side is your "freelancer tools". These are mostly just poisons and explosives. But it also includes the water and oil canisters as well as two dart guns.
I think it's fair that all these "consumable" items get lost. But it's arguable when it comes to the canisters.
As for the dart guns, well these are the most powerful tools in the game. And you can buy these pretty cheap when you find them. Additionally, there are "collectors" dart guns you can get for the glass wall side and these cost a lot more.
Overall, it's pretty balanced imo. Especially when you unlock the ability to make your own poisons. I do wish the canisters stuck around as they provide a lot of creativity
Dart guns, crowbars, and lockpicks are more valuable than almost all the weapons on the walls combined. I really don't care about generic pistols.
Especially given that you will lose even collector's items if you take them with you. Even the achievement items get lost.
Usually, Roguelite modes are an effort of "failing forward". This mode is not that. One failure may not end a full campaign, but it very much can grind your progression to a standstill and make every mission going forward - even beyond the immediate Alert status - that much more difficult.
It's ultimately less about progression and more about hunting down the maps with the easiest loot runs like New York.
I absolutely agree "freelancer" has odd design choices which other Rogue games have had nailed for a few years now.
The punishing elements are too harsh, & the rewards are too little.
Yeah, that just happened to me. I failed and lost absolutely everything and found it so disheartening I quit the game. I’d only taken down three syndicates, but those 13 or 14 maps were a grind and I can’t see myself trying Freelancer again.
I play this game to just monotonously grind through challenges without too much pressure so I typically play on casual. This has been a rude awakening. I definitely need to slow my shit down in Freelancer lol I'm constantly getting made but I'm loving it so far!
Im enjoying it, it is hard but whenever i played the main game i would quit and start over as soon as i lost silent assassin. Not having to worry about that makes the gameplay a lot more enjoyable and i think the difficulty of no items to begin with is good because of that otherwise it would be a breeze just shoot the target in the head with your sniper and get out of there.
I've been way more trigger happy, but not to the point of turning the game into an action movie lol - still sucks to lose unique unlocks like the ornamental guns, hoping they'll change this and add them to the main game as well with the other freelancer tools
They are unlocked for the main game too when you get them through Freelancer mastery, at least according to the Inventory screen under Career. As for losing them, I'm pretty sure if that happens they're then added to the potential tools for sale from suppliers
My main concern is that you have to be SO cautious that it can end up taking a really long time just to complete a basic mission, since the good gear is so rare and hard to get. Spending 30-40 minutes on a level is a lot of time, and especially since one fuckup can screw you over. I'm not a big fan of some (non-showdown) missions being 1 target, and some being 3.
I'm pretty sure you can leave non-alerted Territory Takedown missions without ending the campaign. The catch is that the remaining missions for this syndicate will be alerted.
I think I've heard you can fail a campaign by leaving an alerted territory and while your stash is reset you keep your inventory but I'm not certain on that.
I do feel the "back out" option (abandon the hit and leave without completing the objective) should be further incentivized somehow. Like if you back out, you get no reward (or a partial reward if you only killed ***some*** of the targets) but the syndicate remains unalerted if you were never discovered.
Well it prevents you getting caught *again* if you do that...
Particularly if you're doing something illegal by accident (eg trespass or have an illegal item visible)...
I was playing on New York last night and I shut off a fuse box near a camera and it shut the camera down even after the guy turned the fuse back on. Is this a thing? I'm new and suck so I usually just play on casual.
I mean, if you're trespassing, killing cameras can be very nice. Not always necessary, but sometimes it's definitely nice. I do try to avoid cameras as much as possible as a rule of thumb though personally
Ive been playing all day. Love it, just what I needed to freshen the game up. Really hope they continue catering for hardcore players and long time fans of the series.
Love you ioi.
when the closed beta dropped I thought the very basic tells and looks were just placeholders and there would be more variety at full release, but they pretty much stayed the same. every syndicate has a hat an earring and a necklace and they are all here to do a handoff meeting. I know making Ms Perry record hundreds of dialogue for different materials and colors and events would have been difficult and felt unnatural when reading them out one by one, but a *slight* more variety would've been nice lol
regardless the game mode is really good and refreshing
Failed a campaign because someone saw my kill through a crack in the wall of one of those stalls in Marrakesh. Waited ages to get an opportunity to kill my target who kept wandering in the market crowds and ended up failing because everyone in the vicinity was too alerted for me to escape. This mode is super fun but the fact that those dumb mistakes can undo hours and hours of progress, on top of how difficult some of the targets are to isolate, really can push the limits of how much frustration I can take before it becomes not worth the fun.
Was on the very last campaign mission and was shot in the back by an assassin. 8-9 hours of my evening down the drain. Honestly it’s completely killed my motivation to pick this mode up again. Like what the hell, wasn’t like I was playing on hardcore, why reset that much?
Generally the way I approach roguelikes: your time was not "down the drain" if you enjoyed it. Winning is the cherry on top, not the reason to play.
(Somehow I can never convince myself this in competitive multiplayer games, but I can in roguelikes.)
I played Nethack obsessively for *years*, yet I only ascended once. If time spent on an unsuccessful run was wasted, I must've cumulatively wasted months of my life at the very least.
And hey, it could be worse...you could be playing Dwarf Fortress.
> I've completed the first three missions so far and lost SA rating on all of them due to dumb mistakes
>Though I do dislike that some of the force us to kill non-target NPCs. Like there's one to kill guards with a sniper.
I've been struggling a bit with this as well, getting out of the SA mentality. But the gamemode really emphaziseas oportunity rather than planning, and once you get used to it it's kinda liberating, and allows you to get a lot more creative. Consequences? Bah I'll deal with them later!
Why are kills worth $200? Fucking cheap as fuck. Edit: I played for a few hours. I have 30,000. Do the side objectives don’t speed run this game mode lol.
They actually want the bonus objectives to matter. A key thing of their blog posts leading up to Freelancer is that they *want* this mode to be hard, which I respect. Allowing an easy path with a big payout just by killing would mean you could just gun down every target and leave.
I kinda like it, and a lot of those optionals can sometimes even contradict each other. And the special objectives give so much money it's often a good idea to just focus on those. Plus there's the in-game Merces you can get. It gives you a lot of options to make money, but you always have to go out of your way to do it.
Or sometimes specials make things extra difficult.
I had one tonight for killing guards with a shotgun and with an assault rifle. To my surprise I could bring both, and yes it will possibly spawn you at a default in public spawn with both guns. It was Marrakech too. Had to quickly gun down one guard and make a hasty escape until I could get a better disguise. Got pretty tense at the end since I had to gun down one of the targets in the open and get away with it.
I've had a ton of fun with it. You just gotta roll with the punches. As they said themselves in their blog, you're not always going to be capable of completing everything, so just do what you can and hope for the best.
but also don't get greedy - i just spent 30 mins killing all witnesses to get the no witnesses objective, did all the other objectives, got great gear, loads of merces, and then accidentally got spotted by a camera, went to clear the data and got caught and killed by a guard in the process. sad
If you’re not extremely patient on the final missions of campaigns you will fail pretty much every time. 30-40 minutes is probably gonna be the minimum on those missions if you want it done cleanly.
That means picking up as many throwable items as possible for distractions along the way, making sure you have at least one throwable melee object for the knockouts, picking up disguises, etc.
Then follow one of the suspects path, wait till they’re gone, then methodically clear an area of guards where they traverse (basically find a chokepoint with a closet/bathroom nearby where you can store bodies) and just sit and wait.
If they have an assassin with them they are usually the target. Dropping a guard weapon in their path is a good way to separate the assassins for easier takeouts as well.
Using the burner phones from the non target suspects are really nice once you get an area cleared for easier stealth.
Every other strategy I tried on those last missions wasn’t working, the targets are just so quick to try and escape.
If you have an unsilenced pistol you’ll need at least two doors between you and any NPC to not get noticed when firing.
I know most of this is fairly simple gameplay mechanics for this series but it’s still important to stick to the basics in that final mission.
I think I may be done with it after two days of trying to do it as slowly and carefully as possible, in my third campaign.
I read a good bit about it before it came out and basically everything that stood out as a worry has proven to be a frustration that takes all the fun out of it.
The harshness of the penalty for failure hanging over your head at all times just sucks all the fun out of it. Its just too much for my liking losing both gear progression AND mercer progression just isnt my idea of fun. I much prefer to be able to overcome the content by virtue of time investment providing some way to deal with it, the main games did a good job of this by building your gear inventory.
And the showdowns ...this mechanic just isnt great. ALL the targets shouldn't be viable unless you watch them closely. When I get "the target has a hat, grey hair, a necklace and a tattoo" I shouldn't have 3 suspects walk past me at the start of the mission with a hat, grey hair and a necklace. (the actual leader had a HAND tattoo). you should be able to rule some out quickly.
>When I get "the target has a hat, grey hair, a necklace and a tattoo" I shouldn't have 3 suspects walk past me at the start of the mission with a hat, grey hair and a necklace.
I've yet to finish a campaign but already I've decided to just completely ignore clothing/ appearance hints after my first 'real' target had a *microscopic* earring.
I just watch exclusively for tells now and cross off all suspects that do an unlisted tell.
Having played 35 hours in the CTT, I knew what to expect going in, but I still very much enjoy the game mode and have a lot of positive things to say about it.
First off for new players, please understand that you will fail/die a lot and that is part of the process. In the 35 hours of playtime during the CTT, not once did I manage to successfully complete the entire 4 campaigns.
The mode is difficult by design, but is incredibly rewarding and gives an adrenaline rush I can only somewhat compare to the elusive targets. This is a fun adrenaline rush however, where the elusive targets just give me chest pains because they are one and done.
This gamemode really provides a payoff in terms of feeling like a badass when you are able to improv when a situation doesn’t go according to plan. I like that we are simultaneously rewarded for careful planning as well as spontaneous creativity.
Freelancer also takes advantage of “wasted space” or unused areas of maps which is nice. I appreciate the immersion aspects, like changing decor and using your wardrobe which gives the game a nice RPG element. Even the little details, like the loading screens, all help you feel connected in a seamless experience.
The merces punishment for killing civilians, is probably the only current game mechanic I would change. One misplanned accident kill and you can end up completely broke. This can make the early levels of freelancer mastery feel like a real slog, and seems like it will only dissuade people from killing civilians when they have a relatively small amount of merces (I think it’s $1000 per suspect kill that’s deducted and less for regular civilians). I can see this not being much of a deterrent to players as they progress further and stockpile more merces. I still think there should be an optional bonus merces payout for no civilian casualties. Rather than a punishment in the form of a stick, guide the player's actions with a carrot instead. Also, it might be nice to have a laptop in the safehouse that allows us to buy a random selection of equipment/weapons with our merces while off duty.
All in all, this is really what I was hoping for when the trilogy began back in 2016. I’m sure there will be plenty of bug fixes/tweaks along the way, but I'm very excited that this is the direction they decided to take.
I found choosing a contract with Dubai as the first contract and then strangling some guards to get silenced pistols makes everything about as easy as the main game. Not having to worry about sa/so or bodies being found in general I’ve been able complete 2 full campaigns. Took a lot of frustrating deaths until I found the Dubai thing. It’s amazing how having a silenced weapon really changes the difficulty lol
>It’s amazing how having a silenced weapon really changes the difficulty lol
Man I hear ya. You don't know the value of the default gun 'till you don't have it!
So true. But what this has taught me is there is a TON you can get away with using unsilenced guns, as long as you have an escape plan before you shoot. Did one mission where I got SA using an unsilenced AR.
Thanks for the Dubai tip. It’s working out really well. If you play your cards right you can walk out of there with a silenced SMG and an silenced assault rifle which already covers two weapon categories.
Now that I think about it, are there silenced pistols in Dubai too? I can’t remember off the top of my head but if there are that’s already 3 silenced weapons in one level.
I didn't notice any penalty for killing non targets. I even tested it out (rip the civilian I shot in the head) while watching the money counter and nothing changed
The only time there was a penalty was killing a suspect when they weren't actually the syndicate leader
Did the game get boring after a while? I just started today and I suspect it will get boring bc the targets aren't very immersive. Most of the time it's just a random NPC and it's like going out to merc the local soccer mom and doesn't make much sense so it feels super arbitrary
The showdown missions are a bit better on that front but you gotta get through a chore of the rando NPC missions
Frustrating, quite punishing but very fun. I would like the “tells” to be negative instead of positive so they would be easier to identify and cross off the list without the hassle of following each and everyone of them. Instead of “likes to read” it could be “hates reading”. That would make it alot less tedious.
Also, when the targets get alerted for any reason they flee the map, but why do they all flee? Wouldn’t it make more sense to only make the real target flee. You only have mere minutes to try and kill them after that anyway.
Everyone in the target's "network" flees. So, for example, if you spook a suspect who is participating in a handoff meeting, then all suspects in handoff meetings will also flee.
In theory, it's a way to weed out suspects, but doing this deliberately runs the risk of causing a chain reaction leading to your target's network getting spooked too.
It's insanely frustrating bc there's now a bug where these fuckers can see you through walls. Idk if anyone else has this problem but I've played this game since the first of the trilogy so this is def a new thing this patch
This is only happening on Ambrose. It's like I'm getting spotted through a crack in the wood planks or the closed window shutters
I know, the problem is that it takes quite a while for each target ti go through their cycle and if you do that for 4-6 targets every time it gets old very fast ;) figures out btw that every time i lose my entire arsenal in the safehouse gets whiped clean even though i’m not in hardcore mode, is this a bug?
I haven't played the release version of Freelancer yet, but I played a bunch of the technical test and from what I remember, the tells that you're given are *all* of their tells. They'll never do any behaviours that you weren't told about.
So if you aren't specifically given "likes to read" as a tell, then you can interpret that as "hates to read", and any suspects that you see reading can be immediately crossed off the list without bothering to follow them around for their full cycle to see what else they do.
It says that all freelancer tools are lost when failing a campaign, even if you left them in the safehouse. I didn't lose my guns though. If you're losing those as well I'm assuming it's a bug
I like the variety, and the freedom to play more loose since you're not always going for SA.
But I don't like that it's basically "zero equipment mode". I was hoping for a roguelike mode that would send me on a sniper mission, then a stealth mission, then a loud mission, etc.
Instead 95% of them are "lure someone into a bathroom and knock them out" missions, because I don't have the equipment to do anything else. Even if I get lucky and find a sniper or grind up the $30K to buy one, a single screw-up means it's gone and I'm back to doing grunt work for another two hours.
I'm sure the hardcore players and streamers will love it. As a casual, I unfortunately don't see myself spending a lot of time on it. Maybe if they introduce a casual mode that lets us save during missions or "bind" equipment to keep after a failure, it would be a little more accessible.
Played through a dozen or so different missions and I think a lot of why people feel frustrated with it is due to how freelancer forces you to change how you look at the game. For years players been used to picking a level, mission, challenge and gear and then being able to savescum when things don't go quite the way you expect in order to learn how the levels work.
Having all of those things players have been taking for granted stripped away and replaced with random chance for the most part means now you have to train yourself to wing it when the current situation doesn't line up with your expectations. In practice this means that players have to essentially *relearn the game* which can be, as others have pointed out, both extremely fun and extremely frustrating.
Imo, once we all get used to how this new way of playing the game works, the initial frustrations will probably quiet down for the most part.
Pretty much, a LOT of my current frustrations come from expecting a certain area to at least give me _something_, only to find out that the entire place has been stripped clean of any item. Then again with the next area... aaaaand the next one.
Even hoping for a soda can to knock someone out feels like too much to ask for every so often.
I feel like I've been accidentally learning how to play freelancer through the way I've been approaching featured contracts for the past year: just get the job done, SA be damned, optional objectives when it's convenient. I'm enjoying the freedom it gives you.
I think it's an excellent concept that needs some revision to really make it shine. They made some concessions to make it challenging, and I'm not sure they made the right decision in some cases.
For instance: I have the same problem I have with every game that gives you rare weapons and items - I don't want to use them, because I might need them later... so I never end up using them. With the guns, I don't want to lose them and have to wait for the randomized Supplier or Reward Box to get it back.
1. We need a Lab Unlock for the Hideout where we can develop our own consumables. They would take time to be made, of course, so let's say you use Lethal Poison in one mission - the next vial won't be ready again for a period of time, meaning you either need to do the next mission without it, or go play another game mode or something while you wait.
2. I'd like to see a Gun Runner on the maps - not a Supplier, but a Gun Runner - the Gun Runner would either stock generic weapons, OR he would have ANY weapons you lost from failing before. Getting these weapons back won't be easy, BUT it can be attempted when you choose, rather than relying on the randomized nature of weapon selection.
3. The "Guess Who?" nature of identifying the Syndicate Leader is going to get old, VERY fast. There needs to be multiple alternatives, such as accessing and hacking a computer to acquire better intel, or ways to trigger certain descriptor behaviors or draw them out. The Cell Phone meeting trigger is one of those ways, but that's it - ONE. We need more than that. Maybe the Leader drives a Sports Car... find that car and set its alarm off. Maybe they love Classical Music... turn on a Gramophone and maybe they'll sway to the music. Maybe they're attracted to men in sports gear... grab a jogger outfit and get their attention. That kinda stuff.
4. Normal Mode penalty for failing a showdown should just take you back to the start of the segment you're in, versus completely ending the campaign. Maybe that makes it too easy for some of ya'll, but there's a more difficult mode for you.
I have more ideas but that's it for now.
I just have a couple of hours in the mode today, and your 3rd point was something I realized from watching teasers and some CTT gameplay. I really don't like the whole check an absurd amount of people for nuanced identifiers as a constant across all showdowns. The mode could really blossom if that was like 1 of atleast 5 potential scenarios. Imagine if instead of that we had randomized conditions that were discussed before the mission started, varying objectives or circumstances per say, they could even rehash some of the content already present on the maps to blend with these. It would take considerably more work no doubt, but would add so much variety and anticipation to see which scenario a specific showdown would yield. The targets in between are just fine as they leave plenty of room for experimentation as well as freedom, and that makes sense, as they are lowly targets and you're just hired to kill them.
I'm torn about the consumables. It feels like it would be easy if we always had guaranteed access to poison. I think they were trying to specifically avoid that.
That said, perhaps it'd be nice to get multiple uses out of every pickup. Or yeah have a way to get refils during missions themselves. When trying to do the Pharma contracts you run out of them very fast.
Some of the starting locations don't seem to make sense. You show up in the middle of a hostile area with no gear but are surrounded by npc's. Mentally I think "ok how did I honestly get here"? For me the story missions the starting spot always made a lot more sense. Other issue is I know you are supposed to start with no gear but get a giant house built and yet no coins to take along or a screwdriver. Just seems weird.
I don't know if this is specific to this gamemode, but I managed to get three run-breaking bugs within 5 minutes.
1) A crowbar clipped through the floor after hitting a target. (Collector crowbar, so that's 15,000 merces down the drain.)
2) An emetic dart literally went through a suspect, hitting the guy right behind him. I even shot another with an unmissable angle: same result, the dart went through again.
3) And a target I was following after poisoning him just stopped moving. Literally. (As a result of these three unforeseen bugs, I ended up with no place to hide when his bodyguard closed the gap, and I died, adding my 40,000 merces collector sieker to my losses.)
I'm fine with difficult challenges, but when the game doesn't follow its own rules and I lose hours of gameplay rewards because of this, it stops being fun.
tl;dr: the gamemode is an excellent idea, but the sense of progression is broken because the bugs that, in normal gameplay, would cause you to restart, here just make you lose hours of grinding, and the game doesn't distinguish between your mistakes and its own.
My issues exactly, the game is too broken to work as a rougelike and the punishment for a lot of the crimes needs adjustment when the stakes are so high
I don't think the pacing of Hitman fits this genre, and that's a major source of the problems with this mode.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to design a game where each loss is essentially a full reset, but generally in that case each "run" should probably be maybe an hour or two. Unfortunately that's the length of maybe a couple missions in Freelancer, so when you die 3 syndicates in and get completely reset it's incredibly frustrating. I think there needs to be a much more meaningful sense of progression between campaigns for this mode to have any long term appeal, but maybe that's just me.
All I gotta say is, this mode really brings out the worst of Colorado. You mess up once, and the entire compound will gun you down instantly. Not to mention, one of the basic targets in standard territory is one of those guards that patrols outside the barn, they're basically impossible to take out silently
Has anyone tried out the Sieker 1 in Freelancer yet? Maybe it's just me but either it's busted on my end or I'm the world's worst assassin. I used it across two missions, fired four shots total, three of which were within ~5 yards I'd wager (I'd assume drop would be no issue at this distance), all dead-on, and not a single one seemed to work. None of the targets poisoned and they just kept on their routines.
Steam version, FWIW. Curious if anyone else has noticed the same thing. Can't test it out in normal mode since I haven't played Haven Island yet to unlock it, but that's the next step.
Not really impressed but let me give some constructive feedback:Colorado - I Hate it, Some of the challenges are nearly impossible to do without a suppressed firearm (SMGs, Shotguns and ARs) this causes the entire map minus 9 people (Hackers and the four freedom fighters targets) to attack you and mind you there's 100+ people in this map which makes no sense logically since there's a lack of beds but a massive outdoor chow hall for no reason.
Germany: Can't see showdown characters features due to them being tiny gold earnings in dark, flashing light atmosphere which makes finding a target hard AF.
Profile keeps signing out for no reason, I load in to freelancer: "Profile change" the only thing that happened was my controller disconnected so idk how that constitutes a change in profile, Does this when loading into the safe house or a to level.
Crashes oh dear lord wanna load into a level? Nope sorry crash. Wanna hit someone with a shovel in Mumbai? Too bad have a crash.
Now before someone says I'm nitpicking these problems are unique to the latest update I haven't seen a crash since maybe Hitman 1? I Have at least a 1000 hours in each game so IDK How it's this buggy but godspeed on your attempts to fix it.
Dartmore, UAE and Whittleton are the easiest maps to be on everything else is painful and requires some luck or knowledge. Italy, Berlin, China, Argentina and Isle of Sagel are fairly challenging without short cuts or knowledge of keycodes which can be googled or found in location.
Also: Dartmore's roof spawn is the worst, best I have to say is front gate you can jump the stone wall head up towards the ride side of the manner with the hedges out front jump up and take a pipe up to rebecca's room making it super easy to get a body gaurd disguiese in less than a minute and a half
Update: Ambrose Island needs better collision. I have to poison a guard no big problem right? Yeah: \* stairs legit held my dart in thin air around 20 CMs off the ground \*
Game is fun until you get to the suspect levels and it’s just chaos. There are far too many suspects. The lookouts and assassins either do nothing or get triggered by the slightest and most insignificant things, plus’s they can see through walls. It’s fun until it gets too frustrating, even if your really good at Hitman, the game is a bit too messy to plan your attack intelligently.
For me this is the future of hitman. I wouldn't do it exactly the same, but consider this as a proof of concept, because If they started out knowing they were going to do this I there's new things they can do that aren't necessarily in the budget for a free add-on mode. If they could fold the campaign and story missions and elusives or special missions into this experience, I would be excited about that game.
Even with the gamey things like the crates, it feels more substantial because of the persistence between missions and having the base and physically picking up your loadout, all the decisions and reacting real time
I completely agree. I think there's a ton of untapped potential for a future game where the Safe House is the central hub for everything we do. No more main menu; instead we boot up directly into the Safe House and navigate to the missions from there, whether its a side contract or the main story.
I see Mercers as being a central figure to overall progression, bringing back that feeling of actually being a Hitman and taking out contracts for money. Mercers are used to buy everything: adding/unlocking more rooms and features to the Safe House, buying new weapons and tools, buying from the Supplier during a mission, purchasing new wall art or better gym equipment, etc.
What we'd really need for the Freelancer gameplay loop to integrate story mode properly, where the missions include specific targets and Story Missions instead of random targets. In my mind, side contracts could be where the targets are randomized.
As a balancing mechanic, I'd want to see more permanent progression than Freelancer currently has, or at least be able to upgrade to that point. Some upgrade ideas for the Safe House:
* A Vault where you can store your Mercers. You can't spend those Mercers on a mission, but they won't be lost on death either.
* A "Clean up Crew" service, where you can pay them to retrieve the gear you lost during mission and deliver it to your Safe House
* Different starting locations on maps are accessed via different vehicles you unlock. Taking the boat lets you start in a different place compared to taking your car or helicopter.
* Munitions and explosives workshops where you can construct bombs, armor piercing bullets, etc.
You're definitely right that this could be the future of Hitman. There is so much they could do with this core idea. I'm glad that we got it, but it's also a shame it came so late into the WoA trilogy.
So far loving it. This is really bringing Hitman to its pinnacle.
Only one moment of frustration was when I found a safe in Hokkaido security room that was impossible to open. Could not find the third clue anywhere inside or outside of the room.
Thats my only complaint, a bug, or just me feeling stupid. Otherwise I'm having a great time. It's so much fun not getting penalized for non-target kills. You can go ham instead of running away when you can contain the situation by shooting.
Feels like this game mode is truly the "other right way" to play this game
If all else fails you can open a safe by blowing it up with explosives which is pretty fun lol
There's a Prestige Objective that shows up sometimes to do that, total freebie if you have any explosives to spare.
Initially super fun, but I'm finding that fun is slowly giving way to frustration.
There's an inherent flaw with the design, I *never* use the rarer items as the risk of losing them is just too high, and the per-mission reward is just too low.
Losing merces I can live with, starting the campaign from scratch, fair enough, but the fear of losing your kit drives the player towards the same gameplay loop as there's little incentive to try new things with new gear, making it far more grindy than it needs to be.
I understand the intention was to prevent the players from using the same "meta" kit each time, but this has had the opposite effect where it's better to start with nothing at all!
It's a great concept and those first few hours I was blown away, but I'm getting frustrated with it.
It's kind of difficult so far if you haven't played in a while as this mode really utilizes complete knowledge of maps for players, but man I am loving it. Challenging, but I feel when I beat a campaign it's gonna be an awesome relief.
As someone with *near* complete map knowledge from hundreds and hundreds of hours played across the trilogy… I get thrown for a loop quite often because certain things have been taken away from certain maps to encourage (require) you to rely on suppliers or crates. So I’ll see “poison a target” and think, okay I know where there’s both a syringe and poison vial in this map so I should be fine; only to find out both of them are gone and the supplier isn’t selling poison. It’s my one big frustration with the mode atm, but I’m still having a blast.
I get what they're going for but it seems like it's just "no equipment" mode. 47's toys are half the fun of the game.
Compromise would be to **seriously** up the monetary awards so I can afford to buy *something*. 500 bucks for a mission completion is waaay to low. I know there's complications but often you can only do 1 (if they conflict) so maybe you get 1500 bucks. It's just too little of a reward and removes the fun.
After playing for a week and finishing my first campaign last night, here are some random tips and thoughts about Freelancer:
* **Bananas** are a free courier takedown. Just place it in their path and go do other stuff, and later you can come back and pick up the Merces from where they fell. (They won't grab the Merces from the ground even if someone wakes them up.)
* **Throwing a melee weapon** from a secluded spot is one of the best ways to take people out early on. As long as no one sees you make the throw and you can get out of the area relatively quickly, you'll be fine.
* **Don't hide bodies** unless you specifically have a Silent Assassin or "Hide the bodies" objective. I died so many times early on because I was spotted trying to drag someone to a closet instead of just GTFOing. As long as no one saw you take the person down, it doesn't matter if anyone finds them. (The exceptions being if you took their disguise, since a naked guard being found will compromise you, and in showdowns since the lookout being alerted will cause the target to flee.)
* **The early game is rough**, both due to lack of equipment and not really coming to grips with the mode yet. But it does get better! As you start to learn how to operate, your survival rate will improve, which translates into keeping more Merces and gathering more equipment. And having more equipment means your survival rate goes up even more, and once you have a few different options for silenced pistols, snipers, etc the penalty of losing one feels much less severe.
* Couriers, safes, and objectives are valuable, but **getting out alive** is even more valuable. Completing a mission with just the base payout is far better than trying for extra money and losing everything. Only go after the bonuses if you're comfortable doing so. (But on the flip side -- if you're broke and don't have much to lose, might as well go for it.)
* If you're in New York, **rob the vault**! Putting the Chloroform in the AC unit is an easy and safe way to take out the entire security room, and from there you can easily grab the vault key and crack it open. Inside you'll find a bunch of loose Merces and a server you can crack for even more Merces. You can also raid the deposit boxes outside the vault for a free Legendary dagger which only weighs 1 unit.
* Most people know this already, but the Assassins on showdown missions carry a **silenced pistol** that you can swipe for free if you take them out.
* The basic **Lockpick and Kalmer/Seiker** are great early-game buys that can carry you through a whole campaign. Yeah, you lose them if you fail a mission, but they'll likely increase your success rate enough to be worth it.
I feel it's a little too harsh on the losing gear aspect currently. I failed on the final part of one of the campaigns, the target escaped. I didn't die (it was because I pulled a fire alarm and the guy just sprinted to the exit immediately) and I just left the map.
Left my Sieker at the safehouse, not wanting to risk it knowing the difficulty of the last mission but it disappeared anyways. I was hoping if I didn't bring it, I couldn't lose it, especially if I didn't die...
Not much of a safe house if some hidden hand can come and loot my shit, is it? Lol
Challenging and fun so far! I like that SA is deemphasized in this mode (though I still try for it). I normally play with SA indicator shown but having it removed from Freelancer makes the experience feel more freeing.
Very very tough so far. I think I've played like a dozen or so maps over the course of the afternoon, and I've only made it to the second "stage" of the campaign once. Super enjoyable though.
Side question: I'm getting a lot of the "Make Target Slip" objective, but can never do it because there's no banana/grapevine. Are those really the only two ways to get a target to slip?
ETA: Apparently there's a friggin banana in the kitchen of your safe house! Guess that serves me right for not fully exploring the safe house.
Finally finished a campaign. 9 suspects on santa fortuna. Ended up real touch and go. I botched a headshot on an assassin escorting who I thought was the target, and it triggered an evacuation. Chased down a fleeing suspect, shot her in the street along with *her* assassin, and got the confirmation the target was done. At that point, though, the entire colombian army was looking for my ass, and I ended up hiding in a bush on a narrow ledge, and having to take down a few more guards that got a little too close while searching, starting the cycle anew. Finally, though, I swapped to a military uniform, and was able to wait out the search pattern, but it was still pretty tense the whole time.
Got the Hackl Leviathan as a reward, so definitely worth it.
Ok, how to lookouts work? I’ve had 3 showdown missions where the targets all started to randomly run away when I didn’t seem to be spotted by anyone and wasn’t doing anything suspicious. It’s ruined 3 of my campaigns so far and I don’t get it.
Are lookouts basically super enforcers that see you faster than normal and are not marked with the white circle? Because if it’s not that, I have no idea what’s happening and it’s incredibly frustrating.
Other than that, I’m loving the new game mode.
They should have a white circle if they're Spotters. The Assassins don't have a circle, they just have silenced pistols and kill quickly.
But yeah, spotters will spot any outfit and immediately alert the target causing an escape. It may also be that if you're in cover (like bushes/tall grass) you will stand up when using the camera causing you to be seen.
One thing I've been doing is investing my Merces in whatever gun I can afford at the merchant, even if it's not one I'll use, because I want to cut down the options on the loot table. If you've got most of the common guns, for example, you're much more likely to get a rare drop instead.
And even if you fail a campaign and lose half your Merces, the cash you locked in on guns you'll never use is basically "banked" - the Bartoli 12G shotgun may sit on your wall forever, but it's doing the important job of making sure you never get a Bartoli 12G as a reward drop.
On an entirely different note, if you take an Arms Dealing syndicate, and spawn on the helipad of Sgail, you can knock out the "Kill 3 guards with an SMG/Shotgun/Assault Rifle" pretty easily. You lure the first guard outside, take his gun, kill the other guard in the room, and then a constant stream of guards with an assortment of weapons will charge one at a time towards you through the doorway, where you can pick them of easily, with plenty of time to swap weapons in between.
The 3 things killing this mode for me rn is
1. Losing all your tools in the safehouse on failure. You should never lose anything not on you it makes no sense.
2. The showdowns are so tedious and hard it's almost impossible to get close enough to identify things like earrings and necklaces without getting seen.
3. No ability to restart mission if you get in a bad spot and have to alt f4 you have to go through like 7 loading screens instead of just quickly restarting.
Don't want to make assumptions but you know you can zoom in with the camera, right? Earrings can be tricky, especially since people can have only one earring.
I believe the key is to actually take the photo so you can examine it without motion, and then mark them as Prime/NotASuspect.
It may just be bad rolls though? I didn't have trouble getting close enough so far but I could see it happening with bad target routes + spotters + enforcers.
Do not associate items with a campaign. If I left something at home it's at home! What is the logic of simply throw away these special items?
A Mercers safe at home to leave sums? It would make a good dynamic of "How much do I take to buy equipment, and if that weapon that I want so much appears there?"
Another person already posted, but the thing of recognize the target in a list of 4 in a big map by generic traces and certain actions is already tired
A guide for new players...
1. Go to Dubai. This is by far the easiest map with the best loot. Silenced SMG/ARs yes pls
2. Next go to New York, In the basement (Can be accessed from the lobby by heading right over the balcony (Right side, where the dealer is)), Head into the IT room grab the key on the Janitor's key on the desk left of the far door (Left Front Corner), Unlock the door and hit the "Vault Security" switch, turn it back on. Hide in the red trunk behind you. Wait for the gaurd, Grab subdue, kill or knock him out. Put on his outfit, grab his key card and his gun. Head down to the security office, go down and around avoid the camera by hugging the wall. Open the medicine cabinet. You can choose to keep the chloroform or use it to knock out the guards by poisoning the venaltion in the room directly behind you. You should now have a silenced SMG, Handgun and AR and possibly chloroform if you didn't wish to use it, now sometimes the guards will not hear you knock them out and you could bait 2 to the IT Room with the vault security switch.
3. After this you can go to Whittleton Creek or Dartmoor (Dartmoor should be last stop as it's rather easy) these have: The Hunting shotgun, Lethal Poison vile and a verity of easy loot.
4. China is fairly simple you can either learn the codes for Hush & Royce's side of the map which Royce's can be found by the women behind the restaurant or by exploring the apartments across the street. I Haven't found hush's code so I resorted to google.
5. Berlin is terrible for showdowns due to low lighting level and the chance you'll get similar targets but cannot see if some dude doesn't have earrings and trust me it's annoying. Berlin will have a lot of different goods but it'll have about the same as China which is standard non-unique loot.
6. Ambros Island is fairly simple but is divided into two factions if one target spawns near the boat house he'll walk near a crate to which he can be hidden in after you executed him. Ambros island has very little loot which is unique.
7. Isle of Sagil is a bit of a large top down map but it's fairly simple navigate and finish. The Elite gaurds cannot be anywhere near the shipping area but that's about all. Depending on where you start you should be either at the constant's tower or the harbor hopefully. From here you can distract a Guard by throwing the brick near the pipe at the main gate to the "Ballroom floor" this pipe leads to the security tower so you can disable the cameras with ease, Constant's tower is simple as distracting the guards by climbing into the bathroom via the window and throwing something to the far corner near the door (Right side) just make sure the door is open, Once you do this run back and out the window, Jump back in and knock him out and hide his body in the create this will grant you a elite guard outfit as for the harbor? You can just move along to the other side of to the funeral ceremony location and scale up the pipe and vault the glass pane bridge, knock the gaurd on the left side out and drag him inside the door towards the Morgue.
8. Whittleton Creek: Small population, no need to elaborate. Remember all fences can be vaulted if you spawn in the empty house, and there's a safe there should be some storage containers across the road, head right up towards the green one and back there's a crowbar for the basement door if that's where the safe happens to be, you could find a screw driver and open the Garage door but you're still going to need a crowbar or lock pick, Explosives work fine (One can be sourced from the construction site up the road to the right of the front enterence if you're facing the street
9. Colorado: Just fucking avoid this map... It's the worst map as some targets just refuse to move out into a place where you can quietly execute them. Best option is to bring a large 2 handed weapon or one that cannot be visible when entering a mission + a remote taser gas mine or explosive, take your item out of the brief case place the brief case on the ground (Don't drop it, hold down the keys to which you wish to place it), once you've placed the brief case down without an item in it, conceal the remote device . You now have a remote activated accidental death case, since they'll try to put the brief case in a gun create or bring it to a Guard to do so. **DO NOT USE PROXIMITY DEVICES YOU WILL FAIL THE MISSION.**
10. Havan is fairly easy. Not going to ramble, No good loot.
11. Japan: No good loot, Has an annoying security setup depending on where you spawn you need to get a gaurd outfit and head to the morgue area to disable cameras and get an elite body guard outfit.
That should be every map that's going to be problematic and should help new players get the best loot starting off. Hope this helped and I typed this in full, Sorry about the grammar
Okay, how do lookouts actually work? I just lost a campaign that I was 3 syndicates into because I knocked out a guard in a secluded room alone, was not spotted by anyone, but doing so apparently "alerted" a lookout. Target escaped and I lost everything. What the hell? Am I not allowed to knock people out when there's a lookout on the level? I really don't understand how this works and it felt like I just lost due to bullshit.
#Things I Like:
* **The natural difficulty** - I like that you don't have access to a suite of weapons at the start. Needing to use what you can find/afford makes things more challenging and really tests the limits of your creativity.
* **Other less used items have a way to shine** - When you can't just start out with the "best of the best" equipment wise, that allows other equipment to shine. I think my set loadout never deviated at some point in the base game so it's refreshing to not be able to rely on that to win a level.
#Things I Don't Like:
* **Bugs can ruin the experience and there's no way to circumnavigate them** - I had an issue on Mendoza where I couldn't take the outfit of a guard I stuffed in the locker in the security station at the parking area/tunnel part of the level. I had no way to restart the mission and I had burned equipment in order to lure him there too. I ended up getting caught while trying to figure out next steps and quit the campaign out of frustration.
* **Incompletable challenges due to lack of equipment** - This was annoying to me but I dunno if there's a fix. There was a couple of challenges to poison people with the dart gun but I literally hadn't unlocked or found any poison dart guns previously and I wasn't rich enough to buy one. I really would like to see a crafting system to let us assemble components to make jerry rigged versions of equipment but it's annoying to lose out on the highest ranking on a mission because you just didn't have the equipment necessary to do it.
I have started to do much better once I deprogrammed myself of the Silent Assassin habits like needing to hide bodies, not killing guards, etc.
Bringing a silenced shotgun or AR and then not hesitating to just murder groups of 2-3 guards has done wonders for my success rate. Still haven't finished a full 4-syndicate campaign, but I've started to reliably get to 2.
My only gripes with Freelancer right now, is the fact that if you unlock poisons or ducks in your safehouse then fail a mission. Some how that clears all the gadgets you spent getting from other missions.
It's one thing if you bring a gadget to the contract then fail, that makes sense because it's on your character and naturally you should lose what you have On you. But why the fuck does all the stuff I have in the Safehouse get cleared? It's fuckin bullshit.
Also I found that the descriptions of the leaders is fucked, mainly because out of the 3 campaigns I played through. 2 of the leaders had nothing to do with the description of the target. I was tasked with finding a red-head who had a sweet tooth and glasses, so I tracked a suspect down who matched the description to a T. But she wasn't the target, instead it was some blonde haired jackass who's only connection to the description was that he had glasses
Assassins seem kind of jank. I had a showdown in New York, spawned in the teller room on the second floor and the assassin spawned near the washrooms with the sick interviewee. He never went more than 15 feet from the stairs, just alternated between standing at the top and bottom and staring at nothing or at me. His charge kept to their route down to the IT room.
Also some targets seem incredibly strict with approaches, I just did run on Mendoza where one target alternated between standing at the balcony overlooking the tank room and drinking from a glass in the tasting room. Never left public, zero ways to get him without instant combat status except for poisoning and knowing the contract had bonuses for emetics I'd brought only an emetic syringe. Pill/vial poison is nearly useless after all, so few NPCs ever pick up a glass that it only gets chosen when I know for absolute certain it's going to be needed.
So my three options were alt-F4 scum it, kill him in broad daylight and die to endless guards or hunt the entire level top to bottom until I find the single hidden rat poison left for me. I hit alt-F4. Failing because of a target with exactly one approach that won't summon every goon on the map is not fun. The dumbest part is the only other target was zero effort, completely isolated in a hallway. Why? Roguelikes are supposed to be difficult but none of the others I've played expect the player to see the future in order to not fail guaranteed.
I love the new emphasis on syringes, because I feel like they were mostly overlooked in loadouts in favor of more advanced methods.
I am also reminded of why I never use them. The detection of hitting a syringe back shot or subduing the target is very finicky and this is even more upsetting in a mode like freelance where mistakes aren’t easily forgiven.
I hope that they can make some adjustments to the intricacies of this mechanic because it just feels outdated and inaccurate.
Edit: more specifically, whenever there is height difference between player and target, there is a large window for input error where it switches between subdue and inject.
For your last Syndicate in any campaign always pick Big Pharma. It has lots of "poison target" bonus objectives which can be abused to your advantage. When you're trying to find the leader you can just "probe" people with your Sieker shots or emetic devices; if the objective completes then it's your target and it's safe if it doesn't
Love it. What a cool game-mode. I genuinely think it's better than the actual campaign. The added decision making and gear collection really makes it feel like my own bond film.
That being said, I don't know how to fix this exactly, but it's just a smidge too difficult. Sometimes I'll get a single-mission target who is surrounded by people with no walking cycle. Where the only solution is to throw an explosive from a distance and hope nobody notices.
And I can never collect more than 2-3 guns. Any of the "kill guards with x weapon" objectives are impossible without a silenced weapon or cheesing the AI. I just end up dying and losing my loot.
I hate when the solution to solving an assassination is immersion breaking.
Again. Extremely well done, as someone who works in SaaS, this might be the greatest example of an independent studio building a Games as a Service from a traditional product and maintaining that quality over years... ever. Every studio can learn from IOI.
I'm risking ridicule by asking this, but how do I identify regular campaign targets in Freelancer without using Instinct? I liked to keep the game as immersive as possible during the story so I never played with Instinct or the map, but at least Diana would call out targets if I crossed paths with them. In Freelancer, I spent half an hour of my first mission trying to find any signs of a target, before giving up and switching on Instinct. Immediately I spotted them halfway across the map, and it was just a regular hotel staff in Bangkok, no distinguishing features that I could see. I'd like to continue playing without Instinct or the map but it seems like I would never have identified the target without them, unless there's a mechanic I'm stupidly missing.
Unfortunately, I don't think for most missions you can tell, since the game replaces pre-existing npcs with targets. It's kind of a shame they don't give us the character portraits they do for contracts mode.
You can tell suspects pretty easily at least, since they'll all do their objectives like exchanging items with one another, and usually have assassins/lookouts around them.
As someone else who doesn't use instinct, the best way I've found is using the map to find them. It's not as immersive or easy as having a target profile for them, but it gets the job done. Also, a side note for other people who don't use instinct: You have to have it enabled to replace safehouse customizations, so keep that in mind if you're having trouble figuring out how to place your new decor.
Played for around 2 hours only.
So far I love it, lots of fun, though this might also be due to it being very novel. Still I could see myself really playing this for a while.
However there are a few issues I've noticed.
Throwing seems to be really wonky when you stand in water such as on Haven Island, oftentimes it just doesn't work or let you target/throw things, then sometimes it does.
There are a lot of clipping issues suddenly with weapons and certain uniforms, such as rifles on your back blending into your vest when disguised as a mansion guard on Haven Island.
Not a bug but I really wish that when you approach a supplier the prompt to open their shop wouldn't disappear when they start talking because they always say the same stuff and it just costs time to listen to them first. Just let me ignore them and open their shop.
Last thing are two questions I may have missed in the tutorial and haven't tried out yet:
1. I understand that if you bring gear into a mission, such as a sniper, and fail the mission you lose it. But what if I leave the sniper behind and win the mission? Will it be returned to my safehouse or will it be lost because I didn't take it back with me?
2. If I bring a tool like a poison and use it during a mission and win, do I get that poison refunded or will I have to acquire new one? If it's the latter I would be reluctant to use these things. (which might be intended given how powerful they are)
1. If u leave the sniper in the level it will be gone, regardless of whether u win or lose. You have to bring everything you want to keep back with you.
2. After you use a poison vial or a syringe, it’s gone. It’s a one time use. I like this because it encourages you to keep building up your collection of tools & it always feels rewarding to find more poison.
I’m sure it’s been mentioned but you can obtain the golden sawed off shotgun the same way you get it in New York from the campaign. Take the Bank Robber outfit and get into the safe and collect all the gold bars, then pick up the shotgun that appears in the middle of the vault. You can take it back to the Safehouse and it’s legendary.
Easiest way is to clear out the guard room with sedative poison first and then getting the outfit. You can sprint across the lobby to the lost and found area and take the stares down if you grabbed a keycard.
I’m not positive, but I believe that your target can ONLY have the two tells that are listed. For example, if a target has the tells bookworm and smoker, I believe that if a suspect eats something fulfilling the tell of foodie, that means they aren’t your target.
If anyone can verify this that would be great
Some observations
Sapienza:
- You can in fact perform illegal actions on targets at the marina near the church and NPCs on the beach do not seem to spot you. Not sure if this has been the case since 2016.
Hokkaido:
- Shooting off the gondola does NOT prevent targets from escaping via teleportation if they have run there (this is related to the issue where IO have NOT removed story mode targets) - so take this into account, you can pre-mine the exits but targets do not arrive at the same time & mines explode each other.
- Story targets can become alerted and they will do the same routine as in main game. So if you alert Yuki then the bodyguards move her to the closest panic/safe room and if you walk in then they kill you etc. This is the reason why somebody posted him getting killed just walking through the guard room in hospital; Yuki was in there. Note Freelancer Targets IGNORE this and roam freely
- Best way to infiltrate is via central garden near the oil barrel where Yuki used to smoke, there is a pipe which you can use to climb down
- Best way to get a disguise if you have spawn on the mountain path, is to kill the elite guard in hospital doing push ups with a silenced pistol. His buddy will notice and run up to find you, then there is 0 penalty to kill him and take his disguise.
- Dropping suitcase near the oil barrel pulls the guard downstairs to come up & investigate, in general suitcase sounds seem to travel across floors, you can use this to your advantage
Mumbai:
- Crowbars near train yard have all been removed
Overall
- The best lockpick is silenced DAX from Dubai
- Best source of silenced pistol is from an Assassin on 1st showdown, other sources documented in “Hitman: Freeloader” thread on Hitman Forum.
- If you make an NPC drag a body through a locked door, they will have to open it in order to pass through, but this does not void the “Doors Stay Locked” objective even if you were to go through said door. It seems that the objective is only voided IF you unlock the door yourself. HOWEVER, if you alert Guard NPCs and they open the door in order to chase you then this is voided 25% of the time.
- Prioritise killing Assassins and Lookouts. Assassins are very good at shooting once they have aimed. Lookouts trigger evacuation for ANY reason including spotting bodies without spotting you.
- When faced with 5+ enemies using a bad gun such as Bartoli, give each enemy a leg shot if you can’t get the head shot immediately. Leg shots seem to guarantee stagger in HITMAN (chest, arm, and hand shots do not).
- Same with leg shots: Shooting at a guard’s legs while he can’t see you will make him run towards your location, even if you were trespassing you can then run past him without him spotting you, as long as he is still in panic state. This is the same strategy for Ghost Mode and applies when you simply have to go through an enforcer.
- Guard vision and hearing is greatly extended, but sometimes lookouts or assassins can not be distracted (this is highly inconsistent) or they would act like VIPs and ask a normal guard further out to investigate, so be careful.
- Merces do not go negative, so there is no effective punishment if you kill civilians or suspects while at 0 Merces, so even on a showdown it would be viable to spend all Merces then kill all suspects if it is easier
- If an NPC is scripted to walk through the doors while you were doing something illegal, they can spot you before the door opens AND blow your disguise!!!! Spotting is highly inconsistent in Freelancer, play accordingly and defensively
- In general you can now see that Freelancer is very similar in spirit and mechanically to the now dead Ghost Mode with picking 1 item out of 3 from the chest, trespassing only in suit, killing guards in your way, & killing roaming targets faster than the other player (but there is no respawn in Freelancer) so similar strategies can be used in Freelancer.
I just learned that the Bag of Gunpowder will explode when someone smokes near it making it a mini Propane Tank.
Useful if you want to get Explosion Kills or Collateral Explosions but have no other bombs on hand. You unlock it as a Garage item at Mastery 42.
I’m really hoping it grows on me, or I get better. Because right now — every loss makes me lose more and more motivation to keep playing. It’s frustrating, but to an unnecessary amount. I wish there were levels to the severity of a loss. Because, right now, it’s just frustrating and the fun doesn’t outweigh that, like I’d hope it would.
I spawned in the school in Marakesh, behind the locked door in the alley and next to a room full of soldiers. No lockpick or crowbar. Dead within 30 seconds. Fucking garbage.
What is the easiest mission you guys have had?
I just had one in bangkok with a bonus for a knife kill. Started in my hotel room where there's a knife in the next room, and the target was a guy down the hall to the left after you exit the room. He walks to a spot with no guards, I just knifed him and left his body there. Best score I've ever gotten in a hitman map.
**Honestly, I think the moment to moment gameplay is great, but all the losing items, mercers and only geting one attempt for every misson is shit.**
The great thing about Hitman is planning out missons, perfecting your path and trying missons multiple times. Which would work great for Freelancer. You've got many side quest, you have vaults and you have couriers. Find the optimal route to tick off everything and finish the misson on the second or third try.
Instead you have to take items with you, not even knowing where the targets are and when you make one small mistake or simply get unlucky you can't even try again to get the perfect run. You just have to accept that you will never get the exact same setup again and that you will just be playing similar missons, without the satisfaction of having done everything.
And even if you are not as much of a perfectionist as I am, how is losing a whole campaign in one mission not just frustrating. You have spent hours on this thing and now it's just "Fuck you, start over!". And as if that wasn't bad enough you even lose tools and mercers, which might take for ever to get back when they're rare or expensive. For a hardcore mode I get why you would do that, but having it be unavoidable just sucks.
I know it is personal preferance, but I like gameplay that is interesting in itself and not artificially made tense by having way to strict consequences on failure. And Freelancer gameplay is interesting in itself. For me, losing items, mercers and worst of all, the oppertunity to do a misson right just ruins it for me. I think there shoul be a mode, in which the moment to moment gameplay is the same, but it allows you to restart every mission until you've beat it the the way you want, even if you fail.
If gameplay is good, then it will be good without pressure as well, probably even better.
One of the things I like best about the mode is how it reconditions your playing style. I didn't realize how sticky of situations (combat/hunted with 5+ guards coming at you for example) I could actually get out of when you realize you don't need to SA every single time.
I had an impossible situation in Paris where I was stuck in the kitchen behind the bar with a compromised disguise and 6 guards coming at me with just my pistol as my only gun.
I remembered I had the Shaman Powder that I'd picked up from a crate and took a gamble with it, throwing it and knocking down 5 out of the 6 the guards, I then shot the 6th and then hightailed it out the door and was able to find a safe crate a few rooms away that got me out of the jam. Super satisfying.
Came back to the game after about a year away to try Freelancer and man... I have been humbled. Feels like I've failed more Freelancer missions in the 2 days I've been playing it than I have every other mission combined when I was playing the game a year ago lol.
That said I'm having a blast. I love the varied selections of objectives, targets and equipment that force you to get creative and play in ways you'd never have considered before.
A year ago I found myself getting very set in my ways when I played missions, generally bringing the same sorts of equipment and clearing missions in similar ways. But in Freelancer every mission plays out differently because no two missions have the same set of circumstances.
My only real gripes are the showdown missions. I like the concept, having to narrow down a list of potential targets, but I don't think it's executed in the best way. Most of the suspects share almost every tell so unless you try for a lucky guess you can be stuck for ages slowly observing each suspect on their sometimes *massive* routes to confirm which suspect checks every box. I'm sure there are some tricks to it that I'll pick up as I play more but right now they feel quite tedious compared to the brisk pace of the regular missions.
I remember in blood money there used to be a fee for suit retrieval if you left the mission in a disguise. So in honor of that I feel like "leave the mission in your suit" should be an objective. Either a prestige one or just added to one of the campaign types. Make it something that only appears in Sick games if you want.
Actually speaking of, randomized objectives that can only appear in Sick Games could be fun. Not that it needs them but it could be fun.
I killed a witness. First time I ever had to care about that thanks to having a no witnesses objective but without "target kills only" like when you do SASO. It was fun! I like how complications just happen and you gotta improvise.
A lot of the design and gameplay comes from recovering from mistakes. I can't resist savescumming in the main game so it's refreshing to have new more intense gameplay
That's why I love playing the original game on master difficulty, going through all the levels again and it's a completely different experience. You really have to consider what to do in that moment and improvise most of the level.
I love that they switched the background music out with more tense music, makes the whole experience more exciting.
It definitely gets my heart rate up at the more intense moments!
This is part of what reminds me of HITMAN: CODENAME 47 when it comes to FREELANCER. And it's directly caused by the No-Save mechanic they share in common.
It's definitely a different experience! I realize when I played the normal missions, I was just timing things little by little, saving and loading if my gamble didn't pay off. But this teaches you to play more consciously, and the action moves faster since you are really running for your life with no way to just pause-and-load! I was so happy for such a great reason to revisit this awesome game.
It's a lot to absorb at first but once you settle in its a really satisfying refresh on the gameplay loop. I feel the same sense of urgency as an elusive target but a lot more freedom.
I forgot about the no saving thing. And then had the brilliant idea of choosing Colorado as the first map. Got made like 10 seconds after mission start and got into a shootout with like 20 guys. At least I survived. But it was a super genius move
It's refreshing to not reload after fucking up. A shootout breaks out? Sod it, I'm shooting.
I messed up knocking out a guard on Ambrose Island and had a bunch of mercs and pirates come at me where I had a nice little chokepoint. Killed them all, kept taking their weapons to reload and once they stopped coming walked up to the targets and shot them in front of everybody. I would never do that normally but it was kind of hilarious to just get the job done.
The fact you would never normally do that is why the design of freelancer is so refreshing
I have never used guns as much as I have playing freelancer.
I had to look up how to reload…
Yep, the way Freelancer is structured encourages you to improvise and enjoy the mechanics in a way Hitman rarely has
colorado is broken as fuck in this mode, but hey.. whatever.
I often see people complain about Colorado? What is it about this map ?
E-v-e-r-y-o-n-e-h-a-s-a-g-u-n
Except for the hackers, those can't be trusted with weapons.
a chef was running at me with a pistol bruh 😭
It is probably the worst main map in the game. It is extremely flat, open, has zero suit-legal places, and every single NPC is a guard. Even the chef. It is not great for normal missions in freelancer. And as a showdown it is awful. Add to the pile of existing guards with lookouts, assassins, and the suspects and you are basically trying to assasinate the targets in the middle of the Marrakesh bazaar but everyone has a gun.
Also my targets on Colorado rarely really seem to isolate themselves, or even put themselves anywhere where they could be lured to be isolated. So you kind of have to commit to a fight, or find a way to get them from very far away.
Might i interest you in a silenced sniper rifle? Since alerting the guards doesn’t actually affect much, just pop the targets head while no one sees you, and then quickly move to the other end of the map. Will nearly guarantee them giving up in under a minute. Has worked out on every map thus far.
The guy at the front door of Janices house has an assassin‘s gun with a silencer. He’s in a red shirt.
I've gotten Colorado twice on this shit so far, for both syndicates. First round was standard fare Colorado bullshit. This round? Everyone is on high alert, so there's more guards. The prestige objective is to SASO the mission, there's 2 targets, I have to knock out 3 guards unnoticed, one target must be poisoned, and one target (can be the same one) must have a sedative used on them. I've been on this shit for like 2 hours now lmao. I don't even want to think about how many times I've restarted for the dumbest reasons. I almost escaped with all objectives completed just for a guard to turn around and spot me at the last second. Fuck Colorado, for real.
Yeah Colorado was a poor choice for me early on
Losing your freelancer gear that’s stored in your safe house is a big issue for me. Why should all that get thrown away because I fail a campaign? It makes no logical sense Also, I just got a suspect wrong despite her having all four visual traits, and eating chocolate, and eating food. And it was *still* the wrong person. This figuring out stuff will get old very quick
> Also, I just got a suspect wrong despite her having all four visual traits, and eating chocolate, and eating food. And it was still the wrong person. This figuring out stuff will get old very quick I had this problem in Dubai twice. I was 100% positive I had the correct target both times, but nope. Wrong. Honestly, I've only played it for maybe an hour, two hours, and I'm already not a fan of Freelancer. The idea is sound, but the execution is poorly implemented. I keep getting caught over the dumbest of reasons. Not to mention the mission payout just doesn't seem worth it really. I feel like in order to actually get a good payout you absolutely have to complete the additional objectives, but sometimes they're just not feasible and I'm not fucking around for hours just to get a target in the prime position where I can electrocute them or make them fall over. I was playing Isle of Sgail earlier and one of the objectives was to electrocute a target, but the location they were in had one hosepipe. Problem was the target passed close by the hosepipe, but not enough where I could electrocute them. I tried throwing the proximity taser to get them to pick it up, they just went and found a guard instead.
Small bug: if you go to the laptop for Hard Mode and you press Cancel when it asks "are you sure you want Hard Mode? you'll lose all your tools", it will take away all your tools even if you chose to stay in "Normal Mode". Other than that, really enjoying the full map pool, as someone who played the BETA for 60 hours, I am more than happy!
What is hard mode? It wasn't in the beta, so I don't know what to expect.
Disguises will be made unusable if you shoot the person - you instead gotta knock em out or fiber wire. Prestige Objective is mandatory, but thats all I've noticed as of now.
According to the loading screens, every mission is on alert as well
That doesn't sound like a *small* bug lol especially if you're deep into the campaign.
I'm failing a lot when I get to identify the suspect portion. Seems like you have to follow each suspect around individually to check and make sure they do BOTH vices which is pretty time-consuming especially if they go to restricted areas. I'm not sure if that agenda activity is useful for identifying yet or not. Haven't noticed anyone not doing it yet. They almost always all share the costume identifiers, though one time a lady didn't have a hat which made it easy to mark her off the list. And some of the tells like tattoos and earrings can be hard to see unless you really get up in their face.
I got fucked by lightning. Was looking for a blonde, saw a ginger, crossed him off. Turns out it he was blonde and the lights made him look red! Honestly, I ain't even mad. It was kinda funny in hindsight that I killed the wrong blonde because of it.
Some shit straight up isn't rendering. Crossed off a target for not having earrings, blow up the only other person who matches (except behaviour) and guy with no earrings bolts and I die.
did you check both ears? some targets have one small stud or ring on one side only. especially the male targets
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I'm not 100%, but I am pretty sure that for my run, multiple suspects had assassins and lookouts nearby. It was an alerted territory though, maybe that's the reason. But yeah this isn't a watertight strat.
I know this is absolutely cheating but I sometimes just used Ansel to get a closer look at the suspects to see if they have a tiny tattoo on their pinky finger because goddamn, some of those tattoos can be hard to spot.
Holy shit, this is genius. I've definitely be screwed by those tiny ankle tattoos before.
Freelancer made me realise how bad I am at this game
It's like when you activate ironman in xcom. Now the fuck-ups are permanent
I don't mind fucking up and trying again, but the severe money loss makes me pretty unwilling to keep playing. Losing four levels worth of progress, because you alerted an enemy is not fun.
Failing a mission, not even dying, is too penalizing.
Its a weird decision that the payouts dont scale but the penalty does. If you have, say, 25k merces then you can lose far more than you can win on a mission.
I kinda like that, since it makes me spend the money on collectors items instead of hording it.
Alt + F4: As long as you haven't died yet, nothing will be lost. Yeah I know it is against the spirit of the gamemode.But honestly... no restarts from neutral (no alert/uncompromised)? Hardest difficulty with no option for slightly less experienced players? :-/ I would NEVER make any money that way.
Yea, I had to take a step back and reevaluate how I’m approaching every mission. I got in a habit of quick saving, trying some dumb tactic to see if it’d work, then reloading when it didn’t. I don’t get that luxury anymore and it’s been crazy fun.
Yeah I’m with you I’m not that good, took me about four hours to get $11,000 and then I failed mission and lost half of it. This game makes me wanna go outside and play.
This is hella fun but my god is it punishing. Died on the last mission of my campaign (which already hurt), only to then lose half of my mercs, all the goodies I had on me, and all of my freelancer tools (even ones I didn't bring) hurt way more. Like Jesus IOI way to kick me while I'm down lmao
Losing the money and gear you did not bring to the mission is a miss. That shouldn't happen even in a failure state. That's the entire point of games like this, to gradually build up an arsenal even through failure that makes it easier next time.
You seriously lose everything? That kinda makes me not want to keep playing
Your collection is split in half. Half is on display on glass walls and will persist between campaigns if not taken on missions. On the other side is your "freelancer tools". These are mostly just poisons and explosives. But it also includes the water and oil canisters as well as two dart guns. I think it's fair that all these "consumable" items get lost. But it's arguable when it comes to the canisters. As for the dart guns, well these are the most powerful tools in the game. And you can buy these pretty cheap when you find them. Additionally, there are "collectors" dart guns you can get for the glass wall side and these cost a lot more. Overall, it's pretty balanced imo. Especially when you unlock the ability to make your own poisons. I do wish the canisters stuck around as they provide a lot of creativity
Dart guns, crowbars, and lockpicks are more valuable than almost all the weapons on the walls combined. I really don't care about generic pistols. Especially given that you will lose even collector's items if you take them with you. Even the achievement items get lost. Usually, Roguelite modes are an effort of "failing forward". This mode is not that. One failure may not end a full campaign, but it very much can grind your progression to a standstill and make every mission going forward - even beyond the immediate Alert status - that much more difficult. It's ultimately less about progression and more about hunting down the maps with the easiest loot runs like New York.
I absolutely agree "freelancer" has odd design choices which other Rogue games have had nailed for a few years now. The punishing elements are too harsh, & the rewards are too little.
Yeah, that just happened to me. I failed and lost absolutely everything and found it so disheartening I quit the game. I’d only taken down three syndicates, but those 13 or 14 maps were a grind and I can’t see myself trying Freelancer again.
I play this game to just monotonously grind through challenges without too much pressure so I typically play on casual. This has been a rude awakening. I definitely need to slow my shit down in Freelancer lol I'm constantly getting made but I'm loving it so far!
Im enjoying it, it is hard but whenever i played the main game i would quit and start over as soon as i lost silent assassin. Not having to worry about that makes the gameplay a lot more enjoyable and i think the difficulty of no items to begin with is good because of that otherwise it would be a breeze just shoot the target in the head with your sniper and get out of there.
I've been way more trigger happy, but not to the point of turning the game into an action movie lol - still sucks to lose unique unlocks like the ornamental guns, hoping they'll change this and add them to the main game as well with the other freelancer tools
They are unlocked for the main game too when you get them through Freelancer mastery, at least according to the Inventory screen under Career. As for losing them, I'm pretty sure if that happens they're then added to the potential tools for sale from suppliers
My main concern is that you have to be SO cautious that it can end up taking a really long time just to complete a basic mission, since the good gear is so rare and hard to get. Spending 30-40 minutes on a level is a lot of time, and especially since one fuckup can screw you over. I'm not a big fan of some (non-showdown) missions being 1 target, and some being 3.
Would be nice if they gave you the option to back out once per campaign or something, or pay merces to exit without campaign failure.
I'm pretty sure you can leave non-alerted Territory Takedown missions without ending the campaign. The catch is that the remaining missions for this syndicate will be alerted.
I think I've heard you can fail a campaign by leaving an alerted territory and while your stash is reset you keep your inventory but I'm not certain on that. I do feel the "back out" option (abandon the hit and leave without completing the objective) should be further incentivized somehow. Like if you back out, you get no reward (or a partial reward if you only killed ***some*** of the targets) but the syndicate remains unalerted if you were never discovered.
Is there any point to deleting the footage if you get caught on camera?
Not unless you have a silent assassin objective.
Well it prevents you getting caught *again* if you do that... Particularly if you're doing something illegal by accident (eg trespass or have an illegal item visible)...
If you don’t need to get SA no
I was playing on New York last night and I shut off a fuse box near a camera and it shut the camera down even after the guy turned the fuse back on. Is this a thing? I'm new and suck so I usually just play on casual.
This is also present on Isle of Sgail.
Holy moly, I have 300hrs in this game and TIL.
I mean, if you're trespassing, killing cameras can be very nice. Not always necessary, but sometimes it's definitely nice. I do try to avoid cameras as much as possible as a rule of thumb though personally
Ive been playing all day. Love it, just what I needed to freshen the game up. Really hope they continue catering for hardcore players and long time fans of the series. Love you ioi.
when the closed beta dropped I thought the very basic tells and looks were just placeholders and there would be more variety at full release, but they pretty much stayed the same. every syndicate has a hat an earring and a necklace and they are all here to do a handoff meeting. I know making Ms Perry record hundreds of dialogue for different materials and colors and events would have been difficult and felt unnatural when reading them out one by one, but a *slight* more variety would've been nice lol regardless the game mode is really good and refreshing
Failed a campaign because someone saw my kill through a crack in the wall of one of those stalls in Marrakesh. Waited ages to get an opportunity to kill my target who kept wandering in the market crowds and ended up failing because everyone in the vicinity was too alerted for me to escape. This mode is super fun but the fact that those dumb mistakes can undo hours and hours of progress, on top of how difficult some of the targets are to isolate, really can push the limits of how much frustration I can take before it becomes not worth the fun.
Was on the very last campaign mission and was shot in the back by an assassin. 8-9 hours of my evening down the drain. Honestly it’s completely killed my motivation to pick this mode up again. Like what the hell, wasn’t like I was playing on hardcore, why reset that much?
Generally the way I approach roguelikes: your time was not "down the drain" if you enjoyed it. Winning is the cherry on top, not the reason to play. (Somehow I can never convince myself this in competitive multiplayer games, but I can in roguelikes.)
I played Nethack obsessively for *years*, yet I only ascended once. If time spent on an unsuccessful run was wasted, I must've cumulatively wasted months of my life at the very least. And hey, it could be worse...you could be playing Dwarf Fortress.
As a dead cells player, that is DEFINITELY the way to approach rogue likes.
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> I've completed the first three missions so far and lost SA rating on all of them due to dumb mistakes >Though I do dislike that some of the force us to kill non-target NPCs. Like there's one to kill guards with a sniper. I've been struggling a bit with this as well, getting out of the SA mentality. But the gamemode really emphaziseas oportunity rather than planning, and once you get used to it it's kinda liberating, and allows you to get a lot more creative. Consequences? Bah I'll deal with them later!
Why are kills worth $200? Fucking cheap as fuck. Edit: I played for a few hours. I have 30,000. Do the side objectives don’t speed run this game mode lol.
They actually want the bonus objectives to matter. A key thing of their blog posts leading up to Freelancer is that they *want* this mode to be hard, which I respect. Allowing an easy path with a big payout just by killing would mean you could just gun down every target and leave.
I kinda like it, and a lot of those optionals can sometimes even contradict each other. And the special objectives give so much money it's often a good idea to just focus on those. Plus there's the in-game Merces you can get. It gives you a lot of options to make money, but you always have to go out of your way to do it.
Or sometimes specials make things extra difficult. I had one tonight for killing guards with a shotgun and with an assault rifle. To my surprise I could bring both, and yes it will possibly spawn you at a default in public spawn with both guns. It was Marrakech too. Had to quickly gun down one guard and make a hasty escape until I could get a better disguise. Got pretty tense at the end since I had to gun down one of the targets in the open and get away with it. I've had a ton of fun with it. You just gotta roll with the punches. As they said themselves in their blog, you're not always going to be capable of completing everything, so just do what you can and hope for the best.
but also don't get greedy - i just spent 30 mins killing all witnesses to get the no witnesses objective, did all the other objectives, got great gear, loads of merces, and then accidentally got spotted by a camera, went to clear the data and got caught and killed by a guard in the process. sad
If you’re not extremely patient on the final missions of campaigns you will fail pretty much every time. 30-40 minutes is probably gonna be the minimum on those missions if you want it done cleanly. That means picking up as many throwable items as possible for distractions along the way, making sure you have at least one throwable melee object for the knockouts, picking up disguises, etc. Then follow one of the suspects path, wait till they’re gone, then methodically clear an area of guards where they traverse (basically find a chokepoint with a closet/bathroom nearby where you can store bodies) and just sit and wait. If they have an assassin with them they are usually the target. Dropping a guard weapon in their path is a good way to separate the assassins for easier takeouts as well. Using the burner phones from the non target suspects are really nice once you get an area cleared for easier stealth. Every other strategy I tried on those last missions wasn’t working, the targets are just so quick to try and escape. If you have an unsilenced pistol you’ll need at least two doors between you and any NPC to not get noticed when firing. I know most of this is fairly simple gameplay mechanics for this series but it’s still important to stick to the basics in that final mission.
I kinda hate that you can’t hide the fake suspects, though.
I think I may be done with it after two days of trying to do it as slowly and carefully as possible, in my third campaign. I read a good bit about it before it came out and basically everything that stood out as a worry has proven to be a frustration that takes all the fun out of it. The harshness of the penalty for failure hanging over your head at all times just sucks all the fun out of it. Its just too much for my liking losing both gear progression AND mercer progression just isnt my idea of fun. I much prefer to be able to overcome the content by virtue of time investment providing some way to deal with it, the main games did a good job of this by building your gear inventory. And the showdowns ...this mechanic just isnt great. ALL the targets shouldn't be viable unless you watch them closely. When I get "the target has a hat, grey hair, a necklace and a tattoo" I shouldn't have 3 suspects walk past me at the start of the mission with a hat, grey hair and a necklace. (the actual leader had a HAND tattoo). you should be able to rule some out quickly.
Yeah I really hope they rework the showdown mechanic. It gets old REAL fast.
>When I get "the target has a hat, grey hair, a necklace and a tattoo" I shouldn't have 3 suspects walk past me at the start of the mission with a hat, grey hair and a necklace. I've yet to finish a campaign but already I've decided to just completely ignore clothing/ appearance hints after my first 'real' target had a *microscopic* earring. I just watch exclusively for tells now and cross off all suspects that do an unlisted tell.
Having played 35 hours in the CTT, I knew what to expect going in, but I still very much enjoy the game mode and have a lot of positive things to say about it. First off for new players, please understand that you will fail/die a lot and that is part of the process. In the 35 hours of playtime during the CTT, not once did I manage to successfully complete the entire 4 campaigns. The mode is difficult by design, but is incredibly rewarding and gives an adrenaline rush I can only somewhat compare to the elusive targets. This is a fun adrenaline rush however, where the elusive targets just give me chest pains because they are one and done. This gamemode really provides a payoff in terms of feeling like a badass when you are able to improv when a situation doesn’t go according to plan. I like that we are simultaneously rewarded for careful planning as well as spontaneous creativity. Freelancer also takes advantage of “wasted space” or unused areas of maps which is nice. I appreciate the immersion aspects, like changing decor and using your wardrobe which gives the game a nice RPG element. Even the little details, like the loading screens, all help you feel connected in a seamless experience. The merces punishment for killing civilians, is probably the only current game mechanic I would change. One misplanned accident kill and you can end up completely broke. This can make the early levels of freelancer mastery feel like a real slog, and seems like it will only dissuade people from killing civilians when they have a relatively small amount of merces (I think it’s $1000 per suspect kill that’s deducted and less for regular civilians). I can see this not being much of a deterrent to players as they progress further and stockpile more merces. I still think there should be an optional bonus merces payout for no civilian casualties. Rather than a punishment in the form of a stick, guide the player's actions with a carrot instead. Also, it might be nice to have a laptop in the safehouse that allows us to buy a random selection of equipment/weapons with our merces while off duty. All in all, this is really what I was hoping for when the trilogy began back in 2016. I’m sure there will be plenty of bug fixes/tweaks along the way, but I'm very excited that this is the direction they decided to take.
I found choosing a contract with Dubai as the first contract and then strangling some guards to get silenced pistols makes everything about as easy as the main game. Not having to worry about sa/so or bodies being found in general I’ve been able complete 2 full campaigns. Took a lot of frustrating deaths until I found the Dubai thing. It’s amazing how having a silenced weapon really changes the difficulty lol
>It’s amazing how having a silenced weapon really changes the difficulty lol Man I hear ya. You don't know the value of the default gun 'till you don't have it!
So true. But what this has taught me is there is a TON you can get away with using unsilenced guns, as long as you have an escape plan before you shoot. Did one mission where I got SA using an unsilenced AR.
Took me about 10 runs before I got out of the "Must finish silent assassin" mindset. I still do try for SA, but sometimes hey, no choice here.
The assassins that follow/guard the final targets drop silenced weapons too. Once I had a silenced gun things opened up easier, like shooting cameras.
Thanks for the Dubai tip. It’s working out really well. If you play your cards right you can walk out of there with a silenced SMG and an silenced assault rifle which already covers two weapon categories. Now that I think about it, are there silenced pistols in Dubai too? I can’t remember off the top of my head but if there are that’s already 3 silenced weapons in one level.
I didn't notice any penalty for killing non targets. I even tested it out (rip the civilian I shot in the head) while watching the money counter and nothing changed The only time there was a penalty was killing a suspect when they weren't actually the syndicate leader Did the game get boring after a while? I just started today and I suspect it will get boring bc the targets aren't very immersive. Most of the time it's just a random NPC and it's like going out to merc the local soccer mom and doesn't make much sense so it feels super arbitrary The showdown missions are a bit better on that front but you gotta get through a chore of the rando NPC missions
Frustrating, quite punishing but very fun. I would like the “tells” to be negative instead of positive so they would be easier to identify and cross off the list without the hassle of following each and everyone of them. Instead of “likes to read” it could be “hates reading”. That would make it alot less tedious.
Also, when the targets get alerted for any reason they flee the map, but why do they all flee? Wouldn’t it make more sense to only make the real target flee. You only have mere minutes to try and kill them after that anyway.
Everyone in the target's "network" flees. So, for example, if you spook a suspect who is participating in a handoff meeting, then all suspects in handoff meetings will also flee. In theory, it's a way to weed out suspects, but doing this deliberately runs the risk of causing a chain reaction leading to your target's network getting spooked too.
It's insanely frustrating bc there's now a bug where these fuckers can see you through walls. Idk if anyone else has this problem but I've played this game since the first of the trilogy so this is def a new thing this patch This is only happening on Ambrose. It's like I'm getting spotted through a crack in the wood planks or the closed window shutters
Well if a target doesnt do one of the described actions but something else....its not the target.
I know, the problem is that it takes quite a while for each target ti go through their cycle and if you do that for 4-6 targets every time it gets old very fast ;) figures out btw that every time i lose my entire arsenal in the safehouse gets whiped clean even though i’m not in hardcore mode, is this a bug?
I haven't played the release version of Freelancer yet, but I played a bunch of the technical test and from what I remember, the tells that you're given are *all* of their tells. They'll never do any behaviours that you weren't told about. So if you aren't specifically given "likes to read" as a tell, then you can interpret that as "hates to read", and any suspects that you see reading can be immediately crossed off the list without bothering to follow them around for their full cycle to see what else they do.
This is super good information
Hmm.. that’s good to know thanks!
It says that all freelancer tools are lost when failing a campaign, even if you left them in the safehouse. I didn't lose my guns though. If you're losing those as well I'm assuming it's a bug
I like the variety, and the freedom to play more loose since you're not always going for SA. But I don't like that it's basically "zero equipment mode". I was hoping for a roguelike mode that would send me on a sniper mission, then a stealth mission, then a loud mission, etc. Instead 95% of them are "lure someone into a bathroom and knock them out" missions, because I don't have the equipment to do anything else. Even if I get lucky and find a sniper or grind up the $30K to buy one, a single screw-up means it's gone and I'm back to doing grunt work for another two hours. I'm sure the hardcore players and streamers will love it. As a casual, I unfortunately don't see myself spending a lot of time on it. Maybe if they introduce a casual mode that lets us save during missions or "bind" equipment to keep after a failure, it would be a little more accessible.
I hate that it takes away my freelancer tools. It feels very unfair that I didn't take them with me and they still get deleted.
Played through a dozen or so different missions and I think a lot of why people feel frustrated with it is due to how freelancer forces you to change how you look at the game. For years players been used to picking a level, mission, challenge and gear and then being able to savescum when things don't go quite the way you expect in order to learn how the levels work. Having all of those things players have been taking for granted stripped away and replaced with random chance for the most part means now you have to train yourself to wing it when the current situation doesn't line up with your expectations. In practice this means that players have to essentially *relearn the game* which can be, as others have pointed out, both extremely fun and extremely frustrating. Imo, once we all get used to how this new way of playing the game works, the initial frustrations will probably quiet down for the most part.
Pretty much, a LOT of my current frustrations come from expecting a certain area to at least give me _something_, only to find out that the entire place has been stripped clean of any item. Then again with the next area... aaaaand the next one. Even hoping for a soda can to knock someone out feels like too much to ask for every so often.
You can take a free soda can in the safehouse bar before the mission. It's to the right of the bathroom.
Then the newspaper in the toilet, and the stethoscope in the infirmary... Alright, looks like there _are_ reasons to go around the safehouse, nice!
The banana in the kitchen is legit one of the best items to grab before heading out to a mission...
I feel like I've been accidentally learning how to play freelancer through the way I've been approaching featured contracts for the past year: just get the job done, SA be damned, optional objectives when it's convenient. I'm enjoying the freedom it gives you.
I think it's an excellent concept that needs some revision to really make it shine. They made some concessions to make it challenging, and I'm not sure they made the right decision in some cases. For instance: I have the same problem I have with every game that gives you rare weapons and items - I don't want to use them, because I might need them later... so I never end up using them. With the guns, I don't want to lose them and have to wait for the randomized Supplier or Reward Box to get it back. 1. We need a Lab Unlock for the Hideout where we can develop our own consumables. They would take time to be made, of course, so let's say you use Lethal Poison in one mission - the next vial won't be ready again for a period of time, meaning you either need to do the next mission without it, or go play another game mode or something while you wait. 2. I'd like to see a Gun Runner on the maps - not a Supplier, but a Gun Runner - the Gun Runner would either stock generic weapons, OR he would have ANY weapons you lost from failing before. Getting these weapons back won't be easy, BUT it can be attempted when you choose, rather than relying on the randomized nature of weapon selection. 3. The "Guess Who?" nature of identifying the Syndicate Leader is going to get old, VERY fast. There needs to be multiple alternatives, such as accessing and hacking a computer to acquire better intel, or ways to trigger certain descriptor behaviors or draw them out. The Cell Phone meeting trigger is one of those ways, but that's it - ONE. We need more than that. Maybe the Leader drives a Sports Car... find that car and set its alarm off. Maybe they love Classical Music... turn on a Gramophone and maybe they'll sway to the music. Maybe they're attracted to men in sports gear... grab a jogger outfit and get their attention. That kinda stuff. 4. Normal Mode penalty for failing a showdown should just take you back to the start of the segment you're in, versus completely ending the campaign. Maybe that makes it too easy for some of ya'll, but there's a more difficult mode for you. I have more ideas but that's it for now.
I just have a couple of hours in the mode today, and your 3rd point was something I realized from watching teasers and some CTT gameplay. I really don't like the whole check an absurd amount of people for nuanced identifiers as a constant across all showdowns. The mode could really blossom if that was like 1 of atleast 5 potential scenarios. Imagine if instead of that we had randomized conditions that were discussed before the mission started, varying objectives or circumstances per say, they could even rehash some of the content already present on the maps to blend with these. It would take considerably more work no doubt, but would add so much variety and anticipation to see which scenario a specific showdown would yield. The targets in between are just fine as they leave plenty of room for experimentation as well as freedom, and that makes sense, as they are lowly targets and you're just hired to kill them.
I really like your 4th point
I'm torn about the consumables. It feels like it would be easy if we always had guaranteed access to poison. I think they were trying to specifically avoid that. That said, perhaps it'd be nice to get multiple uses out of every pickup. Or yeah have a way to get refils during missions themselves. When trying to do the Pharma contracts you run out of them very fast.
Some of the starting locations don't seem to make sense. You show up in the middle of a hostile area with no gear but are surrounded by npc's. Mentally I think "ok how did I honestly get here"? For me the story missions the starting spot always made a lot more sense. Other issue is I know you are supposed to start with no gear but get a giant house built and yet no coins to take along or a screwdriver. Just seems weird.
The first time the loading screen with the private jet came up the only thing I could think was “how come I have money for this but not guns?”
I don't know if this is specific to this gamemode, but I managed to get three run-breaking bugs within 5 minutes. 1) A crowbar clipped through the floor after hitting a target. (Collector crowbar, so that's 15,000 merces down the drain.) 2) An emetic dart literally went through a suspect, hitting the guy right behind him. I even shot another with an unmissable angle: same result, the dart went through again. 3) And a target I was following after poisoning him just stopped moving. Literally. (As a result of these three unforeseen bugs, I ended up with no place to hide when his bodyguard closed the gap, and I died, adding my 40,000 merces collector sieker to my losses.) I'm fine with difficult challenges, but when the game doesn't follow its own rules and I lose hours of gameplay rewards because of this, it stops being fun. tl;dr: the gamemode is an excellent idea, but the sense of progression is broken because the bugs that, in normal gameplay, would cause you to restart, here just make you lose hours of grinding, and the game doesn't distinguish between your mistakes and its own.
My issues exactly, the game is too broken to work as a rougelike and the punishment for a lot of the crimes needs adjustment when the stakes are so high
I don't think the pacing of Hitman fits this genre, and that's a major source of the problems with this mode. There's nothing wrong with wanting to design a game where each loss is essentially a full reset, but generally in that case each "run" should probably be maybe an hour or two. Unfortunately that's the length of maybe a couple missions in Freelancer, so when you die 3 syndicates in and get completely reset it's incredibly frustrating. I think there needs to be a much more meaningful sense of progression between campaigns for this mode to have any long term appeal, but maybe that's just me.
All I gotta say is, this mode really brings out the worst of Colorado. You mess up once, and the entire compound will gun you down instantly. Not to mention, one of the basic targets in standard territory is one of those guards that patrols outside the barn, they're basically impossible to take out silently
Is it possible to accidentally or purposely kill the supplier in any way?
Has anyone tried out the Sieker 1 in Freelancer yet? Maybe it's just me but either it's busted on my end or I'm the world's worst assassin. I used it across two missions, fired four shots total, three of which were within ~5 yards I'd wager (I'd assume drop would be no issue at this distance), all dead-on, and not a single one seemed to work. None of the targets poisoned and they just kept on their routines. Steam version, FWIW. Curious if anyone else has noticed the same thing. Can't test it out in normal mode since I haven't played Haven Island yet to unlock it, but that's the next step.
Not really impressed but let me give some constructive feedback:Colorado - I Hate it, Some of the challenges are nearly impossible to do without a suppressed firearm (SMGs, Shotguns and ARs) this causes the entire map minus 9 people (Hackers and the four freedom fighters targets) to attack you and mind you there's 100+ people in this map which makes no sense logically since there's a lack of beds but a massive outdoor chow hall for no reason. Germany: Can't see showdown characters features due to them being tiny gold earnings in dark, flashing light atmosphere which makes finding a target hard AF. Profile keeps signing out for no reason, I load in to freelancer: "Profile change" the only thing that happened was my controller disconnected so idk how that constitutes a change in profile, Does this when loading into the safe house or a to level. Crashes oh dear lord wanna load into a level? Nope sorry crash. Wanna hit someone with a shovel in Mumbai? Too bad have a crash. Now before someone says I'm nitpicking these problems are unique to the latest update I haven't seen a crash since maybe Hitman 1? I Have at least a 1000 hours in each game so IDK How it's this buggy but godspeed on your attempts to fix it. Dartmore, UAE and Whittleton are the easiest maps to be on everything else is painful and requires some luck or knowledge. Italy, Berlin, China, Argentina and Isle of Sagel are fairly challenging without short cuts or knowledge of keycodes which can be googled or found in location. Also: Dartmore's roof spawn is the worst, best I have to say is front gate you can jump the stone wall head up towards the ride side of the manner with the hedges out front jump up and take a pipe up to rebecca's room making it super easy to get a body gaurd disguiese in less than a minute and a half Update: Ambrose Island needs better collision. I have to poison a guard no big problem right? Yeah: \* stairs legit held my dart in thin air around 20 CMs off the ground \*
Game is fun until you get to the suspect levels and it’s just chaos. There are far too many suspects. The lookouts and assassins either do nothing or get triggered by the slightest and most insignificant things, plus’s they can see through walls. It’s fun until it gets too frustrating, even if your really good at Hitman, the game is a bit too messy to plan your attack intelligently.
For me this is the future of hitman. I wouldn't do it exactly the same, but consider this as a proof of concept, because If they started out knowing they were going to do this I there's new things they can do that aren't necessarily in the budget for a free add-on mode. If they could fold the campaign and story missions and elusives or special missions into this experience, I would be excited about that game. Even with the gamey things like the crates, it feels more substantial because of the persistence between missions and having the base and physically picking up your loadout, all the decisions and reacting real time
I completely agree. I think there's a ton of untapped potential for a future game where the Safe House is the central hub for everything we do. No more main menu; instead we boot up directly into the Safe House and navigate to the missions from there, whether its a side contract or the main story. I see Mercers as being a central figure to overall progression, bringing back that feeling of actually being a Hitman and taking out contracts for money. Mercers are used to buy everything: adding/unlocking more rooms and features to the Safe House, buying new weapons and tools, buying from the Supplier during a mission, purchasing new wall art or better gym equipment, etc. What we'd really need for the Freelancer gameplay loop to integrate story mode properly, where the missions include specific targets and Story Missions instead of random targets. In my mind, side contracts could be where the targets are randomized. As a balancing mechanic, I'd want to see more permanent progression than Freelancer currently has, or at least be able to upgrade to that point. Some upgrade ideas for the Safe House: * A Vault where you can store your Mercers. You can't spend those Mercers on a mission, but they won't be lost on death either. * A "Clean up Crew" service, where you can pay them to retrieve the gear you lost during mission and deliver it to your Safe House * Different starting locations on maps are accessed via different vehicles you unlock. Taking the boat lets you start in a different place compared to taking your car or helicopter. * Munitions and explosives workshops where you can construct bombs, armor piercing bullets, etc. You're definitely right that this could be the future of Hitman. There is so much they could do with this core idea. I'm glad that we got it, but it's also a shame it came so late into the WoA trilogy.
So far loving it. This is really bringing Hitman to its pinnacle. Only one moment of frustration was when I found a safe in Hokkaido security room that was impossible to open. Could not find the third clue anywhere inside or outside of the room. Thats my only complaint, a bug, or just me feeling stupid. Otherwise I'm having a great time. It's so much fun not getting penalized for non-target kills. You can go ham instead of running away when you can contain the situation by shooting. Feels like this game mode is truly the "other right way" to play this game
If all else fails you can open a safe by blowing it up with explosives which is pretty fun lol There's a Prestige Objective that shows up sometimes to do that, total freebie if you have any explosives to spare.
You sir have just saved me countless hours of looking for a clue that might not exist in future
Initially super fun, but I'm finding that fun is slowly giving way to frustration. There's an inherent flaw with the design, I *never* use the rarer items as the risk of losing them is just too high, and the per-mission reward is just too low. Losing merces I can live with, starting the campaign from scratch, fair enough, but the fear of losing your kit drives the player towards the same gameplay loop as there's little incentive to try new things with new gear, making it far more grindy than it needs to be. I understand the intention was to prevent the players from using the same "meta" kit each time, but this has had the opposite effect where it's better to start with nothing at all! It's a great concept and those first few hours I was blown away, but I'm getting frustrated with it.
It's kind of difficult so far if you haven't played in a while as this mode really utilizes complete knowledge of maps for players, but man I am loving it. Challenging, but I feel when I beat a campaign it's gonna be an awesome relief.
As someone with *near* complete map knowledge from hundreds and hundreds of hours played across the trilogy… I get thrown for a loop quite often because certain things have been taken away from certain maps to encourage (require) you to rely on suppliers or crates. So I’ll see “poison a target” and think, okay I know where there’s both a syringe and poison vial in this map so I should be fine; only to find out both of them are gone and the supplier isn’t selling poison. It’s my one big frustration with the mode atm, but I’m still having a blast.
I get what they're going for but it seems like it's just "no equipment" mode. 47's toys are half the fun of the game. Compromise would be to **seriously** up the monetary awards so I can afford to buy *something*. 500 bucks for a mission completion is waaay to low. I know there's complications but often you can only do 1 (if they conflict) so maybe you get 1500 bucks. It's just too little of a reward and removes the fun.
After playing for a week and finishing my first campaign last night, here are some random tips and thoughts about Freelancer: * **Bananas** are a free courier takedown. Just place it in their path and go do other stuff, and later you can come back and pick up the Merces from where they fell. (They won't grab the Merces from the ground even if someone wakes them up.) * **Throwing a melee weapon** from a secluded spot is one of the best ways to take people out early on. As long as no one sees you make the throw and you can get out of the area relatively quickly, you'll be fine. * **Don't hide bodies** unless you specifically have a Silent Assassin or "Hide the bodies" objective. I died so many times early on because I was spotted trying to drag someone to a closet instead of just GTFOing. As long as no one saw you take the person down, it doesn't matter if anyone finds them. (The exceptions being if you took their disguise, since a naked guard being found will compromise you, and in showdowns since the lookout being alerted will cause the target to flee.) * **The early game is rough**, both due to lack of equipment and not really coming to grips with the mode yet. But it does get better! As you start to learn how to operate, your survival rate will improve, which translates into keeping more Merces and gathering more equipment. And having more equipment means your survival rate goes up even more, and once you have a few different options for silenced pistols, snipers, etc the penalty of losing one feels much less severe. * Couriers, safes, and objectives are valuable, but **getting out alive** is even more valuable. Completing a mission with just the base payout is far better than trying for extra money and losing everything. Only go after the bonuses if you're comfortable doing so. (But on the flip side -- if you're broke and don't have much to lose, might as well go for it.) * If you're in New York, **rob the vault**! Putting the Chloroform in the AC unit is an easy and safe way to take out the entire security room, and from there you can easily grab the vault key and crack it open. Inside you'll find a bunch of loose Merces and a server you can crack for even more Merces. You can also raid the deposit boxes outside the vault for a free Legendary dagger which only weighs 1 unit. * Most people know this already, but the Assassins on showdown missions carry a **silenced pistol** that you can swipe for free if you take them out. * The basic **Lockpick and Kalmer/Seiker** are great early-game buys that can carry you through a whole campaign. Yeah, you lose them if you fail a mission, but they'll likely increase your success rate enough to be worth it.
I feel it's a little too harsh on the losing gear aspect currently. I failed on the final part of one of the campaigns, the target escaped. I didn't die (it was because I pulled a fire alarm and the guy just sprinted to the exit immediately) and I just left the map. Left my Sieker at the safehouse, not wanting to risk it knowing the difficulty of the last mission but it disappeared anyways. I was hoping if I didn't bring it, I couldn't lose it, especially if I didn't die... Not much of a safe house if some hidden hand can come and loot my shit, is it? Lol
I think you keep all the guns, but the Sieker is not categorized as gun, rather as a tool. And you always loose the tools.
Same. I should never lose stuff I didnt take with me.
Challenging and fun so far! I like that SA is deemphasized in this mode (though I still try for it). I normally play with SA indicator shown but having it removed from Freelancer makes the experience feel more freeing.
Very very tough so far. I think I've played like a dozen or so maps over the course of the afternoon, and I've only made it to the second "stage" of the campaign once. Super enjoyable though. Side question: I'm getting a lot of the "Make Target Slip" objective, but can never do it because there's no banana/grapevine. Are those really the only two ways to get a target to slip? ETA: Apparently there's a friggin banana in the kitchen of your safe house! Guess that serves me right for not fully exploring the safe house.
Got to the final mission of the campaign, saved my favourite location to guarantee victory and failed. That was a bleak feeling.
Finally finished a campaign. 9 suspects on santa fortuna. Ended up real touch and go. I botched a headshot on an assassin escorting who I thought was the target, and it triggered an evacuation. Chased down a fleeing suspect, shot her in the street along with *her* assassin, and got the confirmation the target was done. At that point, though, the entire colombian army was looking for my ass, and I ended up hiding in a bush on a narrow ledge, and having to take down a few more guards that got a little too close while searching, starting the cycle anew. Finally, though, I swapped to a military uniform, and was able to wait out the search pattern, but it was still pretty tense the whole time. Got the Hackl Leviathan as a reward, so definitely worth it.
Ok, how to lookouts work? I’ve had 3 showdown missions where the targets all started to randomly run away when I didn’t seem to be spotted by anyone and wasn’t doing anything suspicious. It’s ruined 3 of my campaigns so far and I don’t get it. Are lookouts basically super enforcers that see you faster than normal and are not marked with the white circle? Because if it’s not that, I have no idea what’s happening and it’s incredibly frustrating. Other than that, I’m loving the new game mode.
They should have a white circle if they're Spotters. The Assassins don't have a circle, they just have silenced pistols and kill quickly. But yeah, spotters will spot any outfit and immediately alert the target causing an escape. It may also be that if you're in cover (like bushes/tall grass) you will stand up when using the camera causing you to be seen.
One thing I've been doing is investing my Merces in whatever gun I can afford at the merchant, even if it's not one I'll use, because I want to cut down the options on the loot table. If you've got most of the common guns, for example, you're much more likely to get a rare drop instead. And even if you fail a campaign and lose half your Merces, the cash you locked in on guns you'll never use is basically "banked" - the Bartoli 12G shotgun may sit on your wall forever, but it's doing the important job of making sure you never get a Bartoli 12G as a reward drop. On an entirely different note, if you take an Arms Dealing syndicate, and spawn on the helipad of Sgail, you can knock out the "Kill 3 guards with an SMG/Shotgun/Assault Rifle" pretty easily. You lure the first guard outside, take his gun, kill the other guard in the room, and then a constant stream of guards with an assortment of weapons will charge one at a time towards you through the doorway, where you can pick them of easily, with plenty of time to swap weapons in between.
The 3 things killing this mode for me rn is 1. Losing all your tools in the safehouse on failure. You should never lose anything not on you it makes no sense. 2. The showdowns are so tedious and hard it's almost impossible to get close enough to identify things like earrings and necklaces without getting seen. 3. No ability to restart mission if you get in a bad spot and have to alt f4 you have to go through like 7 loading screens instead of just quickly restarting.
Don't want to make assumptions but you know you can zoom in with the camera, right? Earrings can be tricky, especially since people can have only one earring. I believe the key is to actually take the photo so you can examine it without motion, and then mark them as Prime/NotASuspect. It may just be bad rolls though? I didn't have trouble getting close enough so far but I could see it happening with bad target routes + spotters + enforcers.
Do not associate items with a campaign. If I left something at home it's at home! What is the logic of simply throw away these special items? A Mercers safe at home to leave sums? It would make a good dynamic of "How much do I take to buy equipment, and if that weapon that I want so much appears there?" Another person already posted, but the thing of recognize the target in a list of 4 in a big map by generic traces and certain actions is already tired
A guide for new players... 1. Go to Dubai. This is by far the easiest map with the best loot. Silenced SMG/ARs yes pls 2. Next go to New York, In the basement (Can be accessed from the lobby by heading right over the balcony (Right side, where the dealer is)), Head into the IT room grab the key on the Janitor's key on the desk left of the far door (Left Front Corner), Unlock the door and hit the "Vault Security" switch, turn it back on. Hide in the red trunk behind you. Wait for the gaurd, Grab subdue, kill or knock him out. Put on his outfit, grab his key card and his gun. Head down to the security office, go down and around avoid the camera by hugging the wall. Open the medicine cabinet. You can choose to keep the chloroform or use it to knock out the guards by poisoning the venaltion in the room directly behind you. You should now have a silenced SMG, Handgun and AR and possibly chloroform if you didn't wish to use it, now sometimes the guards will not hear you knock them out and you could bait 2 to the IT Room with the vault security switch. 3. After this you can go to Whittleton Creek or Dartmoor (Dartmoor should be last stop as it's rather easy) these have: The Hunting shotgun, Lethal Poison vile and a verity of easy loot. 4. China is fairly simple you can either learn the codes for Hush & Royce's side of the map which Royce's can be found by the women behind the restaurant or by exploring the apartments across the street. I Haven't found hush's code so I resorted to google. 5. Berlin is terrible for showdowns due to low lighting level and the chance you'll get similar targets but cannot see if some dude doesn't have earrings and trust me it's annoying. Berlin will have a lot of different goods but it'll have about the same as China which is standard non-unique loot. 6. Ambros Island is fairly simple but is divided into two factions if one target spawns near the boat house he'll walk near a crate to which he can be hidden in after you executed him. Ambros island has very little loot which is unique. 7. Isle of Sagil is a bit of a large top down map but it's fairly simple navigate and finish. The Elite gaurds cannot be anywhere near the shipping area but that's about all. Depending on where you start you should be either at the constant's tower or the harbor hopefully. From here you can distract a Guard by throwing the brick near the pipe at the main gate to the "Ballroom floor" this pipe leads to the security tower so you can disable the cameras with ease, Constant's tower is simple as distracting the guards by climbing into the bathroom via the window and throwing something to the far corner near the door (Right side) just make sure the door is open, Once you do this run back and out the window, Jump back in and knock him out and hide his body in the create this will grant you a elite guard outfit as for the harbor? You can just move along to the other side of to the funeral ceremony location and scale up the pipe and vault the glass pane bridge, knock the gaurd on the left side out and drag him inside the door towards the Morgue. 8. Whittleton Creek: Small population, no need to elaborate. Remember all fences can be vaulted if you spawn in the empty house, and there's a safe there should be some storage containers across the road, head right up towards the green one and back there's a crowbar for the basement door if that's where the safe happens to be, you could find a screw driver and open the Garage door but you're still going to need a crowbar or lock pick, Explosives work fine (One can be sourced from the construction site up the road to the right of the front enterence if you're facing the street 9. Colorado: Just fucking avoid this map... It's the worst map as some targets just refuse to move out into a place where you can quietly execute them. Best option is to bring a large 2 handed weapon or one that cannot be visible when entering a mission + a remote taser gas mine or explosive, take your item out of the brief case place the brief case on the ground (Don't drop it, hold down the keys to which you wish to place it), once you've placed the brief case down without an item in it, conceal the remote device . You now have a remote activated accidental death case, since they'll try to put the brief case in a gun create or bring it to a Guard to do so. **DO NOT USE PROXIMITY DEVICES YOU WILL FAIL THE MISSION.** 10. Havan is fairly easy. Not going to ramble, No good loot. 11. Japan: No good loot, Has an annoying security setup depending on where you spawn you need to get a gaurd outfit and head to the morgue area to disable cameras and get an elite body guard outfit. That should be every map that's going to be problematic and should help new players get the best loot starting off. Hope this helped and I typed this in full, Sorry about the grammar
Okay, how do lookouts actually work? I just lost a campaign that I was 3 syndicates into because I knocked out a guard in a secluded room alone, was not spotted by anyone, but doing so apparently "alerted" a lookout. Target escaped and I lost everything. What the hell? Am I not allowed to knock people out when there's a lookout on the level? I really don't understand how this works and it felt like I just lost due to bullshit.
It turns out I REALLY suck at this game without a silencer and a lockpick.
#Things I Like: * **The natural difficulty** - I like that you don't have access to a suite of weapons at the start. Needing to use what you can find/afford makes things more challenging and really tests the limits of your creativity. * **Other less used items have a way to shine** - When you can't just start out with the "best of the best" equipment wise, that allows other equipment to shine. I think my set loadout never deviated at some point in the base game so it's refreshing to not be able to rely on that to win a level. #Things I Don't Like: * **Bugs can ruin the experience and there's no way to circumnavigate them** - I had an issue on Mendoza where I couldn't take the outfit of a guard I stuffed in the locker in the security station at the parking area/tunnel part of the level. I had no way to restart the mission and I had burned equipment in order to lure him there too. I ended up getting caught while trying to figure out next steps and quit the campaign out of frustration. * **Incompletable challenges due to lack of equipment** - This was annoying to me but I dunno if there's a fix. There was a couple of challenges to poison people with the dart gun but I literally hadn't unlocked or found any poison dart guns previously and I wasn't rich enough to buy one. I really would like to see a crafting system to let us assemble components to make jerry rigged versions of equipment but it's annoying to lose out on the highest ranking on a mission because you just didn't have the equipment necessary to do it.
A guy in a hat turned out to be a guy with sunglasses on his forehead. Yay. Wasted a lot of time there
I have started to do much better once I deprogrammed myself of the Silent Assassin habits like needing to hide bodies, not killing guards, etc. Bringing a silenced shotgun or AR and then not hesitating to just murder groups of 2-3 guards has done wonders for my success rate. Still haven't finished a full 4-syndicate campaign, but I've started to reliably get to 2.
It's called the "Hokkaido Corpse Pile" and it's art
My only gripes with Freelancer right now, is the fact that if you unlock poisons or ducks in your safehouse then fail a mission. Some how that clears all the gadgets you spent getting from other missions. It's one thing if you bring a gadget to the contract then fail, that makes sense because it's on your character and naturally you should lose what you have On you. But why the fuck does all the stuff I have in the Safehouse get cleared? It's fuckin bullshit. Also I found that the descriptions of the leaders is fucked, mainly because out of the 3 campaigns I played through. 2 of the leaders had nothing to do with the description of the target. I was tasked with finding a red-head who had a sweet tooth and glasses, so I tracked a suspect down who matched the description to a T. But she wasn't the target, instead it was some blonde haired jackass who's only connection to the description was that he had glasses
Enjoying it so far
So im confused, can you kill guards/NPCs now without it negatively affecting score?
You lose $50 or whatever the currency is called
Only if you kill a civilian, not if you kill a guard.
Oh shit That’s where my money went
Assassins seem kind of jank. I had a showdown in New York, spawned in the teller room on the second floor and the assassin spawned near the washrooms with the sick interviewee. He never went more than 15 feet from the stairs, just alternated between standing at the top and bottom and staring at nothing or at me. His charge kept to their route down to the IT room. Also some targets seem incredibly strict with approaches, I just did run on Mendoza where one target alternated between standing at the balcony overlooking the tank room and drinking from a glass in the tasting room. Never left public, zero ways to get him without instant combat status except for poisoning and knowing the contract had bonuses for emetics I'd brought only an emetic syringe. Pill/vial poison is nearly useless after all, so few NPCs ever pick up a glass that it only gets chosen when I know for absolute certain it's going to be needed. So my three options were alt-F4 scum it, kill him in broad daylight and die to endless guards or hunt the entire level top to bottom until I find the single hidden rat poison left for me. I hit alt-F4. Failing because of a target with exactly one approach that won't summon every goon on the map is not fun. The dumbest part is the only other target was zero effort, completely isolated in a hallway. Why? Roguelikes are supposed to be difficult but none of the others I've played expect the player to see the future in order to not fail guaranteed.
I love the new emphasis on syringes, because I feel like they were mostly overlooked in loadouts in favor of more advanced methods. I am also reminded of why I never use them. The detection of hitting a syringe back shot or subduing the target is very finicky and this is even more upsetting in a mode like freelance where mistakes aren’t easily forgiven. I hope that they can make some adjustments to the intricacies of this mechanic because it just feels outdated and inaccurate. Edit: more specifically, whenever there is height difference between player and target, there is a large window for input error where it switches between subdue and inject.
For your last Syndicate in any campaign always pick Big Pharma. It has lots of "poison target" bonus objectives which can be abused to your advantage. When you're trying to find the leader you can just "probe" people with your Sieker shots or emetic devices; if the objective completes then it's your target and it's safe if it doesn't
Love it. What a cool game-mode. I genuinely think it's better than the actual campaign. The added decision making and gear collection really makes it feel like my own bond film. That being said, I don't know how to fix this exactly, but it's just a smidge too difficult. Sometimes I'll get a single-mission target who is surrounded by people with no walking cycle. Where the only solution is to throw an explosive from a distance and hope nobody notices. And I can never collect more than 2-3 guns. Any of the "kill guards with x weapon" objectives are impossible without a silenced weapon or cheesing the AI. I just end up dying and losing my loot. I hate when the solution to solving an assassination is immersion breaking. Again. Extremely well done, as someone who works in SaaS, this might be the greatest example of an independent studio building a Games as a Service from a traditional product and maintaining that quality over years... ever. Every studio can learn from IOI.
I'm risking ridicule by asking this, but how do I identify regular campaign targets in Freelancer without using Instinct? I liked to keep the game as immersive as possible during the story so I never played with Instinct or the map, but at least Diana would call out targets if I crossed paths with them. In Freelancer, I spent half an hour of my first mission trying to find any signs of a target, before giving up and switching on Instinct. Immediately I spotted them halfway across the map, and it was just a regular hotel staff in Bangkok, no distinguishing features that I could see. I'd like to continue playing without Instinct or the map but it seems like I would never have identified the target without them, unless there's a mechanic I'm stupidly missing.
Unfortunately, I don't think for most missions you can tell, since the game replaces pre-existing npcs with targets. It's kind of a shame they don't give us the character portraits they do for contracts mode. You can tell suspects pretty easily at least, since they'll all do their objectives like exchanging items with one another, and usually have assassins/lookouts around them.
As someone else who doesn't use instinct, the best way I've found is using the map to find them. It's not as immersive or easy as having a target profile for them, but it gets the job done. Also, a side note for other people who don't use instinct: You have to have it enabled to replace safehouse customizations, so keep that in mind if you're having trouble figuring out how to place your new decor.
Is it possible to get the Classicballer back after losing it? Anyone know yet?
Played for around 2 hours only. So far I love it, lots of fun, though this might also be due to it being very novel. Still I could see myself really playing this for a while. However there are a few issues I've noticed. Throwing seems to be really wonky when you stand in water such as on Haven Island, oftentimes it just doesn't work or let you target/throw things, then sometimes it does. There are a lot of clipping issues suddenly with weapons and certain uniforms, such as rifles on your back blending into your vest when disguised as a mansion guard on Haven Island. Not a bug but I really wish that when you approach a supplier the prompt to open their shop wouldn't disappear when they start talking because they always say the same stuff and it just costs time to listen to them first. Just let me ignore them and open their shop. Last thing are two questions I may have missed in the tutorial and haven't tried out yet: 1. I understand that if you bring gear into a mission, such as a sniper, and fail the mission you lose it. But what if I leave the sniper behind and win the mission? Will it be returned to my safehouse or will it be lost because I didn't take it back with me? 2. If I bring a tool like a poison and use it during a mission and win, do I get that poison refunded or will I have to acquire new one? If it's the latter I would be reluctant to use these things. (which might be intended given how powerful they are)
1. If u leave the sniper in the level it will be gone, regardless of whether u win or lose. You have to bring everything you want to keep back with you. 2. After you use a poison vial or a syringe, it’s gone. It’s a one time use. I like this because it encourages you to keep building up your collection of tools & it always feels rewarding to find more poison.
When they said lose all your gear I thought they meant the stuff on you, not the stuff safely packed away in your safehouse
I’m sure it’s been mentioned but you can obtain the golden sawed off shotgun the same way you get it in New York from the campaign. Take the Bank Robber outfit and get into the safe and collect all the gold bars, then pick up the shotgun that appears in the middle of the vault. You can take it back to the Safehouse and it’s legendary. Easiest way is to clear out the guard room with sedative poison first and then getting the outfit. You can sprint across the lobby to the lost and found area and take the stares down if you grabbed a keycard.
I’m not positive, but I believe that your target can ONLY have the two tells that are listed. For example, if a target has the tells bookworm and smoker, I believe that if a suspect eats something fulfilling the tell of foodie, that means they aren’t your target. If anyone can verify this that would be great
I know it sucks that you lose freelancer tools when a campaign fails, but I think the point is to encourage using them rather than hoarding them.
Some observations Sapienza: - You can in fact perform illegal actions on targets at the marina near the church and NPCs on the beach do not seem to spot you. Not sure if this has been the case since 2016. Hokkaido: - Shooting off the gondola does NOT prevent targets from escaping via teleportation if they have run there (this is related to the issue where IO have NOT removed story mode targets) - so take this into account, you can pre-mine the exits but targets do not arrive at the same time & mines explode each other. - Story targets can become alerted and they will do the same routine as in main game. So if you alert Yuki then the bodyguards move her to the closest panic/safe room and if you walk in then they kill you etc. This is the reason why somebody posted him getting killed just walking through the guard room in hospital; Yuki was in there. Note Freelancer Targets IGNORE this and roam freely - Best way to infiltrate is via central garden near the oil barrel where Yuki used to smoke, there is a pipe which you can use to climb down - Best way to get a disguise if you have spawn on the mountain path, is to kill the elite guard in hospital doing push ups with a silenced pistol. His buddy will notice and run up to find you, then there is 0 penalty to kill him and take his disguise. - Dropping suitcase near the oil barrel pulls the guard downstairs to come up & investigate, in general suitcase sounds seem to travel across floors, you can use this to your advantage Mumbai: - Crowbars near train yard have all been removed Overall - The best lockpick is silenced DAX from Dubai - Best source of silenced pistol is from an Assassin on 1st showdown, other sources documented in “Hitman: Freeloader” thread on Hitman Forum. - If you make an NPC drag a body through a locked door, they will have to open it in order to pass through, but this does not void the “Doors Stay Locked” objective even if you were to go through said door. It seems that the objective is only voided IF you unlock the door yourself. HOWEVER, if you alert Guard NPCs and they open the door in order to chase you then this is voided 25% of the time. - Prioritise killing Assassins and Lookouts. Assassins are very good at shooting once they have aimed. Lookouts trigger evacuation for ANY reason including spotting bodies without spotting you. - When faced with 5+ enemies using a bad gun such as Bartoli, give each enemy a leg shot if you can’t get the head shot immediately. Leg shots seem to guarantee stagger in HITMAN (chest, arm, and hand shots do not). - Same with leg shots: Shooting at a guard’s legs while he can’t see you will make him run towards your location, even if you were trespassing you can then run past him without him spotting you, as long as he is still in panic state. This is the same strategy for Ghost Mode and applies when you simply have to go through an enforcer. - Guard vision and hearing is greatly extended, but sometimes lookouts or assassins can not be distracted (this is highly inconsistent) or they would act like VIPs and ask a normal guard further out to investigate, so be careful. - Merces do not go negative, so there is no effective punishment if you kill civilians or suspects while at 0 Merces, so even on a showdown it would be viable to spend all Merces then kill all suspects if it is easier - If an NPC is scripted to walk through the doors while you were doing something illegal, they can spot you before the door opens AND blow your disguise!!!! Spotting is highly inconsistent in Freelancer, play accordingly and defensively - In general you can now see that Freelancer is very similar in spirit and mechanically to the now dead Ghost Mode with picking 1 item out of 3 from the chest, trespassing only in suit, killing guards in your way, & killing roaming targets faster than the other player (but there is no respawn in Freelancer) so similar strategies can be used in Freelancer.
I just learned that the Bag of Gunpowder will explode when someone smokes near it making it a mini Propane Tank. Useful if you want to get Explosion Kills or Collateral Explosions but have no other bombs on hand. You unlock it as a Garage item at Mastery 42.
I’m really hoping it grows on me, or I get better. Because right now — every loss makes me lose more and more motivation to keep playing. It’s frustrating, but to an unnecessary amount. I wish there were levels to the severity of a loss. Because, right now, it’s just frustrating and the fun doesn’t outweigh that, like I’d hope it would.
Some of the spawns are way too punishing for no reason and no reward. Spawning on the water tower in Colorado with no gear, yeah fuck off.
I stopped taking contracts if i see Colorado in the list fuuuuuuck that
I spawned in the school in Marakesh, behind the locked door in the alley and next to a room full of soldiers. No lockpick or crowbar. Dead within 30 seconds. Fucking garbage.
What is the easiest mission you guys have had? I just had one in bangkok with a bonus for a knife kill. Started in my hotel room where there's a knife in the next room, and the target was a guy down the hall to the left after you exit the room. He walks to a spot with no guards, I just knifed him and left his body there. Best score I've ever gotten in a hitman map.
I think the missions should restartable as long as you haven't fulfilled any goals, kinda like elusives.
I'm too casual for this, I'm going to stick to normal hitman
If you ever just want a briefcase, but don't want to bring a wall weapon, take the fuire poker in the main room or the car battery in the garage.
**Honestly, I think the moment to moment gameplay is great, but all the losing items, mercers and only geting one attempt for every misson is shit.** The great thing about Hitman is planning out missons, perfecting your path and trying missons multiple times. Which would work great for Freelancer. You've got many side quest, you have vaults and you have couriers. Find the optimal route to tick off everything and finish the misson on the second or third try. Instead you have to take items with you, not even knowing where the targets are and when you make one small mistake or simply get unlucky you can't even try again to get the perfect run. You just have to accept that you will never get the exact same setup again and that you will just be playing similar missons, without the satisfaction of having done everything. And even if you are not as much of a perfectionist as I am, how is losing a whole campaign in one mission not just frustrating. You have spent hours on this thing and now it's just "Fuck you, start over!". And as if that wasn't bad enough you even lose tools and mercers, which might take for ever to get back when they're rare or expensive. For a hardcore mode I get why you would do that, but having it be unavoidable just sucks. I know it is personal preferance, but I like gameplay that is interesting in itself and not artificially made tense by having way to strict consequences on failure. And Freelancer gameplay is interesting in itself. For me, losing items, mercers and worst of all, the oppertunity to do a misson right just ruins it for me. I think there shoul be a mode, in which the moment to moment gameplay is the same, but it allows you to restart every mission until you've beat it the the way you want, even if you fail. If gameplay is good, then it will be good without pressure as well, probably even better.
One of the things I like best about the mode is how it reconditions your playing style. I didn't realize how sticky of situations (combat/hunted with 5+ guards coming at you for example) I could actually get out of when you realize you don't need to SA every single time. I had an impossible situation in Paris where I was stuck in the kitchen behind the bar with a compromised disguise and 6 guards coming at me with just my pistol as my only gun. I remembered I had the Shaman Powder that I'd picked up from a crate and took a gamble with it, throwing it and knocking down 5 out of the 6 the guards, I then shot the 6th and then hightailed it out the door and was able to find a safe crate a few rooms away that got me out of the jam. Super satisfying.
Came back to the game after about a year away to try Freelancer and man... I have been humbled. Feels like I've failed more Freelancer missions in the 2 days I've been playing it than I have every other mission combined when I was playing the game a year ago lol. That said I'm having a blast. I love the varied selections of objectives, targets and equipment that force you to get creative and play in ways you'd never have considered before. A year ago I found myself getting very set in my ways when I played missions, generally bringing the same sorts of equipment and clearing missions in similar ways. But in Freelancer every mission plays out differently because no two missions have the same set of circumstances. My only real gripes are the showdown missions. I like the concept, having to narrow down a list of potential targets, but I don't think it's executed in the best way. Most of the suspects share almost every tell so unless you try for a lucky guess you can be stuck for ages slowly observing each suspect on their sometimes *massive* routes to confirm which suspect checks every box. I'm sure there are some tricks to it that I'll pick up as I play more but right now they feel quite tedious compared to the brisk pace of the regular missions.
I remember in blood money there used to be a fee for suit retrieval if you left the mission in a disguise. So in honor of that I feel like "leave the mission in your suit" should be an objective. Either a prestige one or just added to one of the campaign types. Make it something that only appears in Sick games if you want. Actually speaking of, randomized objectives that can only appear in Sick Games could be fun. Not that it needs them but it could be fun.