The World of Assassination patch for August brings improvements, tweaks and fixes that improve the gameplay experience across all modes, including Freelancer.
Here's the link!
I might come back in an hour or two to add some details and my thoughts on them lol
Known internally as Patch 3.1.5.0, this update will bring more than 80 bug fixes, tweaks and improvements – with a focus on addressing many points of fan frustration for our new rogue-like mode Freelancer. We’ve also implemented a new location for Contracts Mode, with the ICA Facility’s Freeform Training mission now supported for the first time, giving players more options to be creative.
Before we release the full patch notes next week, we want to give you a look ahead at what’s coming up, including a new Prestige feature for Freelancer. Let’s start with that.
Link to the full blog post here, but let's have a closer look at it and discuss everything after the cut! 😀
FREELANCER PRESTIGE
We’re adding a new ‘Prestige’ feature to Freelancer that will give you more reasons to play and earn elusive Safehouse trophies for your collection. The ‘Prestige Laptop’ will be added to the Safehouse and will allow you to increase through five Prestige Levels.
You can advance your Prestige Level after you’ve collected all the weapons that can be stored in the Safehouse. At that point, three things will happen:
The base Merces payout and XP gain for completing missions will increase
Adds a Prestige trophy to your Safehouse for each Prestige Level (5 in total)
All items in your inventory, all Freelancer gear, all weapons on the weapon walls and all Merces will be reset to 0, as if you were starting fresh. Your safehouse customisations will not be affected.
Prestige in Freelancer is all about risk/reward. Once you’ve unlocked everything, you can start fresh with a higher base payout and XP bonus, earn the trophies for your Safehouse and show off your Prestige Level.
Okay, this sounds great! It'll be a bit painful to lose all weapons at once, but the XP bonus is very much needed once you reach 90.
And Prestige trophies? What a cute idea. Now I imagine Diana giving them to 47 when she's exceptionally proud of him.
ICA FACILITY CONTRACTS MODE
On May 11th, we’re expanding Contracts Mode to now include the ICA Facility location. More specifically it’s the Freeform Training mission that takes place on the yacht. Many of you will have spent hours and hours here in the HITMAN 1 beta back in 2016 and we’re excited to see what contracts you create here. Look out for some of them in the Featured Contracts section soon!
Still kinda happy about it. It's a fun training mission, and it always felt weird to have Contracts Mode for the final test, but not for the yacht!
I'm not too much into Contracts Mode in general though, so not sure how much I personally get out of it (apart from playing the featured contracts that will come).
NEW UNLOCKS
The Black Bruiser Suit
The "HITMAN" Challenge tasks you with completing any Freelancer campaign on Hardcore Mode. We think you’ll agree it’ll be worth it. Plus, if you’ve already managed to do that, the suit will be yours instantly when you launch the game after the patch. Get started now and claim it on May 11.
Finally a reason to play Hardcore Mode.
Exploding Pen
As the old phrase goes: ‘explosions speak louder than words’. That’s never been more true with the Exploding Pen you can unlock by heading back into the Patient Zero campaign and eliminating Craig Black under some specific and fitting circumstances. This item was previously an Elusive Target exclusive unlock in HITMAN 2, but we’re making it available to all World of Assassination players through this new challenge.
Still super excited about this! I love not only that they're making the original exploding pen available for everyone, but also even more the challenge they picked for unlocking it!
(Also, can Patient Zero please get more love?)
PATCH NOTE HIGHLIGHTS
At the time of writing, there are 87 individual fixes, tweaks and improvements ready to roll out in this patch. A lot of focus has been on player frustration around the Freelancer mode since launch, but there are also some more general fixes for the game in general that will keep things tight, but also have an impact on Freelancer indirectly.
Oh boy oh boy, let's hope the things that annoy me will get patched!
Only sharing the ones I care about here, read the full list of highlights on IOI's blog!
Spycam Toggle (Freelancer)
We’ve added an option to “Hide UI” when using the Spycam. This was in response to player feedback that the UI elements can make it difficult to identify the finer details of a character with the elements permanently visible. For example, seeing whether a suspect was wearing earrings.
YES! That's great, not only because the UI made it impossible to see details at times, but also because it made taking nice photos in Showdowns impossible.
Perfect Shooter Tweak (Freelancer)
We’ve made a change to the ‘Perfect Shooter’ objective (Do not miss a shot, you will fail if any shot misses a person), that will make an exception for security cameras or recorders. The objective text has also been updated. In short, you can now shoot security cameras and recorders and still earn the Perfect Shooter objective.
Really? I wouldn't have expected them to listen to those who complained. Not mad about it, because I like to shoot cameras, but how can you think it's unfair that shooting a camera fails an objective that tells you you'll fail it when you fire a shot that misses a person?
SA Recorder (Freelancer)
We’ve updated the Prestige Objective description for SA/NF and SA/SO to mention “Destroy Surveillance Recorder” if the player gets recorded. Previously, this wasn’t mentioned and the objectives would be failed on mission completion if the player was recorded but didn’t destroy the recorder.
Happy about it. I usually don't forget, because I always erase the footage before I leave a mission, but so many people failed Hardcore because they didn't know it wouldn't tell them.
SA Reward (Freelancer)
We’ve adjusted the Payout objectives and Prestige objectives to make Silent Assassin / SA Suit Only (SASO) and Silent Assasin / No Firearms (SANF) objectives more rewarding.
Fair. I usually pick Silent Assassin objectives, so I'm pleased.
Patient Fox
We’ve also removed the forced disguise restriction on the Club Entrance Starting location in Berlin for the main campaign. Same goes for the default starting location of the Patient Zero mission in Hokkaido.
No idea why they chose "August Patch Notes" for the meta, but also not sure why they chose Conor McGregor of all people, so I guess it's par for the course.
