I only see Hitman as a stealth game if you choose to go Suit Only and try to ghost a level, and that is a challenge run.
There is a spectrum naturally. Something like Thief or Styx are “pure” stealth games, as in a non-stealth state is not really sustainable. It is too difficult to complete your objectives outside of stealth.
On the contrary, you could gun your way through Hitman murdering dozens to achieve your objective…by design.
Dishonored also, allows for a direct approach. It actually feels like it goes out of its way to make it very viable, if not more so than the stealth approach.
But it hasn’t. Hitman 2 is technically free to play but all the missions past the training are sold as a (single piece of) DLC. And Steamspy just estimates the number of installs for the main game, it doesn’t estimate DLC sales.
The best guess on actual sales is about 25% of that number. (Reasoning: According to achievement stats 25% of the players finished Nightcall, which is the first mission if you’ve bought the full package and takes about 15 minutes. The missions you’d get shunted into with the demo version show higher finish rates.)
I am not so sure about that. You used to be really capable of mass murder with guns, but every time I’ve tried that in Hitman 2 I got swarmed and ended in about 40 seconds.
Aren’t we talking about a game that sells for 59.99. Am I missing something. I thought you had to pay to play this game and then there is additional DLC.
The base game you download is free, and comes with one mission (I think), plus if you own Hitman 1 you can play those missions in the Hitman 2 engine. You can then pay for the actual Hitman 2 content beyond that first mission (and a “legacy” DLC that’s the Hitman 1 stuff for a bit less than that game costs still) if you want. Calling it “free to play” is pretty generous, I think, but it’s maybe technically correct?
No they aren’t. They’re assassination games with very light sneaking elements. Ones of the devs, Charles, somewhat infamously scoffed on this very forum that anyone expecting AC to be a stealth game was a silly person (despite it being heavily marketed as a stealth game).
Good sub thread actually. What makes good stealth? I suggest player agency and planning being way more important than the AI’s detection methods for example. In other words you should always know WHY you have been spotted and have been able to plan better. A random “I guess he spotted me” is pretty unsatisfactory.
No. We are talking about that free game where all the non-trivial content is sold as a DLC.
If you see that game on Steam in any context, the price will show up as “Free”. That’s in comparison to games with a demo, even if progress from that demo carries over. Those get separated into a separate SKU by Steam.
This is actually a meaningful distinction, since the context where this keeps coming up in this thread are things like concurrent player counts or Steamspy sales estimates. Those numbers can just tell us how many people installed the free version with just the two years old training levels. They can’t tell us how many people actually paid money to IO. And unfortunately it’s the latter number that matters for whether IO can continue making these games.
Is actually the DLC? So it downloads like F2P but it sells like a regular pay to play games because their DLC is 60 dollars? I am starting to feel like i see part of their problem.
Right. Or actually the standard edition consists of 7 separate pieces of DLC, but you can’t buy them individually unlike in the original.
They probably had a good reason for doing this related to carrying over the Hitman 1 content to Hitman 2. And for someone who is actually looking to buy the game, it’s probably not that confusing. They’ll see the standard edition, buy that, and get exactly what they wanted.
On the other hand somebody just browing will see this:
So there are going to be a lot of tirekickers around who install it just because it’s free, and except for achievements they’re indistinguishable from actual buyers in the stats.
Don’t use VGChartz as a source. Their methodology is “make stuff up and hope no one notices.” There are no reliable video game sales numbers available in most regions, except those released as part of investor meetings and quarterly reports.
I don’t actually have much to say about stealth games, aside from that stealth missions are up there with escort missions for “things games insist on including when they really shouldn’t,” and saturation of stealth missions is to the point where it’s not hard to imagine the mainstream not being interested in a game made primarily of stealth missions, the same way the mainstream doesn’t want a game made primarily of escort missions (and only Fumito Ueda was ever crazy enough to try). Obviously it’s a bad idea to launch a stealth game in the November launch window, too.
Well according to current data, good or otherwise, they’re not really selling this well. There’s only been two of them. This is their first attempt carry something over and it’s not, well, working. F2P players are going to look for lots of content and small buy ins. Other players will generally prefer to fork out their money and be done with it… assuming their interested at all. Which group were they going for?
It is overhead isometric, however. It is on my wishlist, but I have not played the demo yet.
Then there are games like JA2 and Underrail where stealth is a viable alternative depending on your build and how you want to play.
I have to agree with earlier comments that stealth games are stressful. I never completed the original Thief games because the feeling was overwhelming after several missions.
I never played Hitman. The white-guy-with-shaved-head stuff was off-putting.
I don’t think the free prologue has had any material impact on the sales of the game. To somebody who is looking to buy the game, the standard edition is what appears to be for sale and it contains exactly what one would expect. (For example you looked at that Steam page and clearly felt that this was a normal $60 game). There just doesn’t seem to be any kind of evidence here for any kind of customer confusion.
But it does have impact on the Steam metrics, and people are quoting such metrics without understanding that most of the apparent player base have just downloaded the engine but not bought any of the content.
I am the under the impression the game is not doing well. I do not think it’s because of it’s genre, thus the topic subject.
So if it’s not stealth games are dead, it might be something else. What’s unique about this particular game besides it’s rather uninteresting setting and main character… well the way they’re selling it is pretty darn weird.
I mean if it was selling really well it might be easy to say customers are not confused. Since it’s not selling well, and it sounds like we are agreeing it’s not selling well, how can anyone say this doesn’t have something to do with it? They clearly didn’t keep their original playerbase and probably didn’t add to it, and the add to it would be the players who didn’t follow the game, didn’t play the first one, and might not have any idea what they’re trying to do. It’s kind of weird.
