Freelancer mode is no fun at all

[🎇TYPHOON🎇]

It's a nice idea with alot of potential. It just doesn't click for me. There are too many negative mechanics that make me want to stop playing.

You lose all items you bring with you on a mission in case you get downed. That's totally fine. But half of my earned cash? Who the hell thought this would be a good idea? I guess it's just me but I always hated games that take away a % of cash or xp or anything when you die. It's just the dumbest mechanic ever.

Almost all the items you can find on any given map are gone. Only a few remain. For example, ALL propane bottles have been removed from Dartmoor. You have to be kidding, right?

The prices for many items at the dealer are absolutely ridiculous. I'm not grinding that much just to be able to afford a lockpick that I will lose at some point anyways.

All in all it's enough to keep me from playing this mode. I don't care about having to manage my inventory so I bring the right tools for the job, because I cannot find any good items on any map to work with, even though we players have no idea what items would be useful to bring to the next mission.

[DyD&Marina]

Voland님이 먼저 게시:

impossible situations and lack of progress, seems pretty much two major problems with this mode. i hope they patch this out

I get a side mission where you need to kill 3 guard with a smg type of weapon.

All the type of guard have assault rifle or shotgun...

Instead for the target i needed to poison at least one with emetic.

Both target not drink or eat...

I searched all the map for the boxes with random items hoping for something useful.

Nothing, only one emetic but needed to use in drink or food.

Third side mission was to not have witness, at least this was possible to do.

It was possible to finish the mission but 2/3 of the side quests was impossible to do from the start of the mission.

I think the more easy way to patch this is to insert in the boxes you find items in the map one item to finish each side quest.

Actually isn't a challenge mode, but a luck based mode.

[Jordan]

i think its really cool

[DyD&Marina]

Jordan님이 먼저 게시:

i think its really cool

The idea is cool, the problem is is poor excuted on the part of side quests.

Which are really important considered are the only resonable way to earn money to buy things.

[SagaSWP]

I'm actually really enjoying it, even though I failed the first two missions I took on the last stage and lost all my good stuff. It's a really nice change not having to worry about getting spotted or killing people, you can do that all you want. And if you don't have the items or can't find them to complete one of the secondary objectives, it's no big deal, just move on to the next mission. Look for the good stuff on the map to take back with you.

[TimeLost in the spectrum]

Jeff enjoyer님이 먼저 게시:

You have to play perfectly to enjoy this game mode, like another rogue like, your first runs will be very hard/ impossible, you won't get far, you'll lose thing, you'll explore the map and see where it's worth to go, then after a few run, you'll be able to win

I see this gamemode as a binding of isaac thing, losing will indeed make you lose all your weapons but unlike isaac you only lose half your money, and you can have infinite lives on a live that isn't a showdown, unlike every other rogue like, it's experimenting and learning how to levels works/ are different to enjoy

Yeah im just on that hardmode thing, its rinse and repeat you get to keep items even if you complete fail thus on your next time you have stuff to help you out, I went from 25k and in like 10 mins i lost it all now im back to 25k taking it nice and slow not stupid, Ive had times where ive had to kill 30 or more guards in one room to escape because of a ♥♥♥♥ up, I only play with instinct mode on though

[HoneyDrake]

Gex님이 먼저 게시:

People don't seem to understand that this mode is supposed to be the ultimate challenge in the game. There are so many other easier modes already; go play the main missions, contracts, escalations, complete masteries on all maps. Freelancer requires you to be already very good at the game, it's not actually adding anything new: it's a challenge mode. A sort of "permadeath" is what for many people is creating that feeling of being a real assassin with a high stakes situation. Making freelancer easier would be pointless. For what? Just coz people need to max out everything, when in reality the mode doesn't add anything that wasn't already in the game to begin with? You are not supposed to complete all optional challenges and prestige on each missions, so it makes sense that some of them are not attainable. Just complete the objective in the best way you can and make it out alive. That to me creates a more realistic feel to the game. Imagine being a real life hitman: the client may reward you if you complete a certain extra objective, but it may happen to be really hard or even impossible, so you just make the decision to not risk it all and just complete the mission.

this is not some "ultimate challenge", it's just a mixture of "hoping you get a decent roll on objectives" paired with "did you know where to find all those items in the normal map? Well, quess what: we deleted some of the important ones and now you have to be lucky that those you remembered are still there".

While you can ignore the optional objectives, the moment you go to hardcore, it becomes an hassle.

I have finished an hardcore campaign, it was horrible.

"Ohh, all your money disappears when starting a new campaign"
"Prestige missions are forced on you, you have to finish them on top of killing all targets"
"Prestige missions including epic and legendary weapons or some impossible to do time restrictions as targets are picked all over the map you can not even reach if you are ignoring every NPC on your way"
"Being forced to use items you can just be denied off, as they don't exist on the map and also are not sold by the NPC, if you even earned enough money to buy them"
"Ohh, you need to do Silent Assassin? Sorry, but we gave you some target which is straight up impossible to murder without anyone noticing" Which gets worse if it's also adding the condition of being "Suit Only".

And so on. Failure means being forced to restart the whole campaign. What a lovely experience.

What about my choices on approaching the targets? It's utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Hardcore is showing off how bad the mode actually is, while normal mode is fine, if you don't care about objectives/money/etc.


Edit:

Btw, the most common prestige mission I had was "UNSILINECED Pistol Elimination - epic". Anyone dare to quess how many epic unsilenced pistols exist? Well, you quessed it most likely right: ONE. No clues about the two DLC's and if they add another one, or if the mastery unlocks have another unsilenced epic or legendary pistol.

[Harris]

So I made posts during the test how Freelancer is anti-Hitman, checked it out now, and my opinion holds. If you enjoyed the base game, don't bother with Freelancer, because it is not the game for you. The amount of bad design choices - even after all our feedback - is appalling.

One of my main gripes has always been one optimal gear set. You always grab a silenced silverballer for how OP of a weapon it is - mostly because all other weapons in the game are garbage with either nonexistent damage or ridiculous spread/recoil. You always grab a lockpick - because every map has so many locked doors (with keys not always readily available) that not grabbing it feels like severely handicapping yourself. You always grab a briefcase, as it's essentially free as you can put anything behind it and still enjoy the item with great utility from melee weapon to distraction. Freelancer does nothing to address that and in fact makes it even worse - you are always thrown into the action with no prior knowledge of your target. Planning is nonexistent. The only viable choice of gear is one that lets you survive the shootout after you make an inevitable mistake - and surviving is the #1 goal in Freelancer with how punishing and disrespectful to the player's time it is.

I just got a campaign failed getting downed AFTER actually killing the leader. That makes no sense. Uninstalled.

The biggest pity is the resources that went into that. The safehouse on its own looks nice and fun to explore. If they made it a sandbox with no silly Dark Souls elements and finally added actual weapon upgrades instead of Diablo-esque "Epic" and "Legendary" shovels it would be much better received and added longevity to the game for years to come.

Bottom line - I never cared for tryharding, speedrunning or competing for highest score in a single player game. While I appreciate some people might be into that, I really doubt they constitute the larger part of Hitman community and I don't understand why was the mode developed specifically to cater to them - to the exclusion of everyone else.

[miChi]

it's like any other rogue-like where you'll get better over time and improve and then it'll become easy peasy, for a lot of we've already mastered hitman so we tend to not run into issues until end of the campaign.

you don't lose weapons, only items too, so if you're stocking on weapons and maintaining a good flow of the money by doing the various things that earn you them you'll have a rhythm going thats very forgiving on you dying.

at least for me, I always leave a mission with 2 weapons on average so even when I die I still had like 10 weapons ready to go.

[Pelvis]

I love it

[SnuffSaid]

After more time in the mode, I'm going to change my major gripe to the showdown suspects. What is the point in giving me a description if it fits literally every suspect? All 6 of them have grey hair, glasses and a hat, and how ridiculously unrealistic is that too? The mission is also on high alert despite the fact I did nothing to trigger that, all previous runs were successful and silent. But yeah, whoever thought this suspect system would be fun needs firing, Hitman already requires a lot of patience so to add something this tedious to make missions even longer is absurd.

[NandV;E]

The idea with Freelancer mode is to think of the destinations more and more as a sandbox. That many tools you use can either be bought, found, or you need to change your approach. Because of the nature of the game to begin with, this works. The risk to reward is high, but it depends on what you want to accomplish.

I wanted to bank at least some of money before when playing. Instead I just changed my approach, sometimes entering the destination with a tool that I have multiple of in the safehouse sometimes just risking it. It really is up to you and you can grind xp through failure. Honestly failure doesn't bother me it challenges me.

Just how you look at it. I would imagine hardcore gamers who play silent assassin would enjoy it more and that's fine. But even a hardcore silent assassin gamer would have to change their approach for the rewards.

Honestly think it is an interesting approach. Considering in other games you could skip the grind by buying "time savers"

[DyD&Marina]

BIN님이 먼저 게시:

The idea with Freelancer mode is to think of the destinations more and more as a sandbox. That many tools you use can either be bought, found, or you need to change your approach. Because of the nature of the game to begin with, this works. The risk to reward is high, but it depends on what you want to accomplish.

I wanted to bank at least some of money before when playing. Instead I just changed my approach, sometimes entering the destination with a tool that I have multiple of in the safehouse sometimes just risking it. It really is up to you and you can grind xp through failure. Honestly failure doesn't bother me it challenges me.

Just how you look at it. I would imagine hardcore gamers who play silent assassin would enjoy it more and that's fine. But even a hardcore silent assassin gamer would have to change their approach for the rewards.

Honestly think it is an interesting approach. Considering in other games you could skip the grind by buying "time savers"

The fact is totally about luck based to find or buy the right tool for the side quests.

There are various time where simple there isn't the right tool to complete a side quest.

This is simple bad game design for a challenge mode.

Because made the completition of side quest luck based instead of based on skill and planning of the player.

Freelancer isn't a gamemode adapt to people search a challenge, but more a people want to play random generated mission without worrying about the challenges.

[Piano man]

I mean, there are a few things that could be remedied very easily. If you're given an objective to try and kill the target by lethal poison, make sure there is a lethal poison in on of the stash boxes peppered around the map. At least this way it makes us hunt for the stash box.
Some of the time you'll go into the map. Your reward is 200 mercer (lousy) for killing the target, and the optionals are at least 1000 each, but most of the time you can't achieve them because there is no way to access the weapons or specific item you need to achieve said items.

It should always at least give you the ability to achieve the optional objectives, no matter what map you're playing on.

[DyD&Marina]

Piano man님이 먼저 게시:

I mean, there are a few things that could be remedied very easily. If you're given an objective to try and kill the target by lethal poison, make sure there is a lethal poison in on of the stash boxes peppered around the map. At least this way it makes us hunt for the stash box.
Some of the time you'll go into the map. Your reward is 200 mercer (lousy) for killing the target, and the optionals are at least 1000 each, but most of the time you can't achieve them because there is no way to access the weapons or specific item you need to achieve said items.

It should always at least give you the ability to achieve the optional objectives, no matter what map you're playing on.

Yes this is the easiest solution to fix the bad random generation of side quest and item locations on map.

Actually the "planning" is totally inexistent and is only luck based.

At least with a fix like this, there will be the need of exploring the maps.

[HoneyDrake]

There should be one thing they should be focused on:

Being able to go into any mission, at any given time, without a single item being brought with you. And still being able to finish every objective.

For prestige objectives you should always have one option to chose from, which is possible on that map.

Like already said by others: it's way too limiting in the current state.