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    Hitman: Absolution

    Game » consists of 11 releases. Released Nov 20, 2012

    Agent 47 returns after a six-year hiatus to embark on a mission of redemption for the only person he could ever trust.

    I dislike the way the scoring system works...

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    The_Ruiner

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    #1  Edited By The_Ruiner

    I understand that the game is about stealth and professionalism. But I think the way the game deducts from your score so heavily for certain actions is at odds with the freedom of choice it claims to promote. I can see them docking you points for mindlessly killing mobs of civilians. But for killing anyone that isn't your target? Even armed sentries? That seems excessive. Perhaps if you simply got far less points for killing guards than your main targets.

    And I'm not talking about spraying a crowd of shoppers with a machine gun. But if I managed to stealth kill a building full of armed guards using only a kitchen knife, I deserve to be rewarded for that rather than punished. Especially in a game that promoted a diversified approach each mission. But being punished for deviating from their predetermined play style just doesn't jibe with the "freedom" they are selling.

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    BlatantNinja23

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    #2  Edited By BlatantNinja23

    @The_Ruiner: The top goal of hitman is to be the "silent assassin." To go in kill the target, and come out like you were never there, no detection and no casualties. If you can make the death look like an accident then great. The grading is set up to support and compare that mindset, and that's kinda that. You do have the freedom to kill everyone, if you don't want to be a silent assassin then just ignore the scores. In the end, they really are just scores, and it's far from being punished.

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    august

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    #3  Edited By august

    Leaving everyone alive except your target is harder.
     
    Hence, more points.

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    andyboy

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    #4  Edited By andyboy

    Is there a way to turn off the scoring notifications? I could see that helping not make me feel like I am "doing it wrong" playing the way I want to.

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    PandaBear

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    #5  Edited By PandaBear

    @august said:

    Leaving everyone alive except your target is harder. Hence, more points.

    QFT ... why should the game reward you for not doing this? Should someone who doesn't kill anyone but the target get the same score as someone who does? Really think about that.

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    The_Ruiner

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    #6  Edited By The_Ruiner

    @august said:

    Leaving everyone alive except your target is harder. Hence, more points.

    killing everyone with a knife without getting caught is harder than that...

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    The_Ruiner

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    #7  Edited By The_Ruiner

    @BlatantNinja23 said:

    @The_Ruiner: The top goal of hitman is to be the "silent assassin." To go in kill the target, and come out like you were never there, no detection and no casualties. If you can make the death look like an accident then great. The grading is set up to support and compare that mindset, and that's kinda that. You do have the freedom to kill everyone, if you don't want to be a silent assassin then just ignore the scores. In the end, they really are just scores, and it's far from being punished.

    the points are directly tied to unlocks...so it's more than just that.

    @PandaBear: when did I say anything about same points? Give me less points fine.... give the silent guy more points whatever...but subtracting points for killing a room full of guards silently and efficiently and not getting caught is difficult to do and the game should recognize that. In Blood Money you at least got newspaper headlines and a cool title for it.

    Mark of the Ninja did a great job of rewarding you for different approaches as long as you did them well.

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    BlatantNinja23

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    #8  Edited By BlatantNinja23

    @The_Ruiner: you do basically get less points. If it was a silent kill, and you've hid the body you get most of what you lost back.

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    AssInAss

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    #9  Edited By AssInAss

    @The_Ruiner said:

    @BlatantNinja23 said:

    @The_Ruiner: The top goal of hitman is to be the "silent assassin." To go in kill the target, and come out like you were never there, no detection and no casualties. If you can make the death look like an accident then great. The grading is set up to support and compare that mindset, and that's kinda that. You do have the freedom to kill everyone, if you don't want to be a silent assassin then just ignore the scores. In the end, they really are just scores, and it's far from being punished.

    the points are directly tied to unlocks...so it's more than just that.

    @PandaBear: when did I say anything about same points? Give me less points fine.... give the silent guy more points whatever...but subtracting points for killing a room full of guards silently and efficiently and not getting caught is difficult to do and the game should recognize that. In Blood Money you at least got newspaper headlines and a cool title for it.

    Mark of the Ninja did a great job of rewarding you for different approaches as long as you did them well.

    You're subtracted points because you're not meant to kill any non-target person as a hitman. Don't want to leave a trail. In Assassin's Creed, you'd get desync'ed because your ancient relative wouldn't do that.

    You can still subdue dudes and not lose points if you hide their bodies properly.

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    BlatantNinja23

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    #10  Edited By BlatantNinja23

    @The_Ruiner: you do get less points. If it was a silent kill, and you've hid the body you get most of what you lost back.

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    ThunderSlash

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    #11  Edited By ThunderSlash

    I found that silently killing people with the syringe actually nets you more points. And that's not including the extra points you get for hiding the bodies.

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    Laiv162560asse

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    #12  Edited By Laiv162560asse

    I don't like the way the score is thrust in your face at every stage, along with the national average score, the worldwide average score and high scores from your friends list. All it does is guilt you into feeling like you're doing it wrong if you start to see negative modifiers pop up. As the OP says, it discourages diverse methods. Fine, do that on levels selected from the level select, but when I'm supposedly meant to be playing for the story (yeah, right), it's just one of this game's many immersion breakers. The scoring system isn't even a level playing field unless people have completed the same Challenges as eachother, so it's silly to force people to compare their scores to those of others on a first run.

    In story logic terms it doesn't hold up either. Penalising you for non-target kills made sense when 47 was part of the Agency, with clearly defined contracts and a desire to avoid attracting the eyes of law enforcement. Now that he's rogue, with the entire police force after him anyway, the penalties are just a conspicuous video gamey high score system without in-game rationalisation. Some of the time there isn't even a target and you're surrounded by gangsters who just want to kill you, yet you're still penalised for 'non-target kills'.

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    dekkadekkadekka

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    #13  Edited By dekkadekkadekka

    The scoring system is outright broken. Subduing someone (that is, getting up behind them and mashing X/Square to put them to sleep) should not affect your score, but it does, and it affects the rating. In Blood Money, you could knock out everyone on the level and still get a Silent Assassin rating. Also, while I'm ranting, why the hell did they bollocks-up the disguise mechanic?

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    jaqen_hghar

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    #14  Edited By jaqen_hghar

    @dekkadekkadekka: I never really understood that, how you could be called a "Silent Assassin" if the aftermath of the hit was ten chloroformed guards who could testify that, yes, someone was there doing something bad. When some guy dies by accident, and no one can say anything weird was happening, that is when you can call it a silent hit. So yeah, I like the fact that they score it this way.

    And if you knock out or kill someone silently, you get all the points you lost back if you hide them. As long as it's not a civilian that is. Might be different on higher difficulties, but this is how it is done on Normal and Hard at least. So you can still use the approach you used in Blood Money without ever getting subtracted any points. But you will end the level with Shadow (I think) instead of Silent Assassin.

    The disguise mechanic is something I hope they do something with though.

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    dekkadekkadekka

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    #15  Edited By dekkadekkadekka

    @Jaqen_HGhar: Even if you hide the body to neutralise the penalty, you still don't get the Silent Assassin rating. My problems with this game will go away once the disguise mechanic is fixed; as it is right now I feel like I HAVE to choke people out to get past them. On Blood Money, I can get a Silent Assassin rating on every single level on Professional difficulty in my sleep, even if I don't choke the entire map out (that was an extreme example, but you get my point.)

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    dekkadekkadekka

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    #16  Edited By dekkadekkadekka

    Oh and while we're at it, the instinct thing is bullshit; not the seeing through walls etc. but the mechanic to tip your hat or cover your face. It never bloody works when I need it to.

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    jaqen_hghar

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    #17  Edited By jaqen_hghar

    @dekkadekkadekka: That's what I said. When you hide bodies to neutralize the penalty, you get the Shadow rating instead of Silent Assassin. Because you was more like a shadow, never seen but leaving people knocked out or dead. I have gotten the Silent Assassin ranking on a few levels, but haven't gotten that far yet due to being sick. But it seems to me that the way you level up will make it easier to get through levels without taking people out when replaying the game. More instinct, using less of it etc will help in getting past people.

    But you are right, they need to do something about the disguise mechanic. Oh, and Instinct only works well if you are a bit further away from enemies. So if you are walking right past them, you will need to trigger it before they really start to notice you. Or so it seems anyway, not fully sure myself.

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    Pestulon

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    #18  Edited By Pestulon

    The problem with the scoring system in my opinion is that it rewards grinding the missions over and over to complete all the challenges. I doubt some of the missions can be even completed with a Silent Assassin rank on the first playthrough. So as long as you play the mission several times to complete most of the various challenges to bump up your score multiplier, you can then probably get away with neutralising a few extra foes and neglecting to hide all the bodies and still get the SA rating.

    Also, I think avoiding unnecessary kills and pacifications makes sense. But the weird thing is that there are sections in the game where the game wants you to kill a bunch of guys. I'm only up to like mission 8 or so, but there have already been two "bullet-time" instances where you actually have to gun down several random henchmen. Kind of breaks the immersion if you are going for the old-school "one shot, one kill" silent assassin approach.

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    Bobafeet

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    #19  Edited By Bobafeet

    I think the implementation of a "score" is the big fault of the game. It makes me feel like I'm playing it "wrong" at times and therefore is discouraging me from the experimentation that made Blood Money so awesome. The checkpoint system also completely sucks.

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    AndrewB

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    #20  Edited By AndrewB

    The part I hate is when you're walking along on the skirts of an area you aren't supposed to be in and suddenly get deducted from out of nowhere because you took one step too close and sometimes (at least, in my experience) they don't warn you when you're doing so.

    I'm trying to get over it, knowing I won't have a perfect run through the game on my first try. As long as it doesn't turn into a shootout bloodbath, I'm okay.

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    Crash_Happy

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    #21  Edited By Crash_Happy

    @The_Ruiner: I'm wondering if people are reacting like this because the score goes negative whilst it awaits the final payout. If the game was giving out points then players that go around chopping up room-fulls of guards, stealthy or not, would see points accumulating and those going about all stealthy would see nothing until a big score at the end.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #22  Edited By pyrodactyl

    @The_Ruiner said:

    I understand that the game is about stealth and professionalism. But I think the way the game deducts from your score so heavily for certain actions is at odds with the freedom of choice it claims to promote. I can see them docking you points for mindlessly killing mobs of civilians. But for killing anyone that isn't your target? Even armed sentries? That seems excessive. Perhaps if you simply got far less points for killing guards than your main targets.

    And I'm not talking about spraying a crowd of shoppers with a machine gun. But if I managed to stealth kill a building full of armed guards using only a kitchen knife, I deserve to be rewarded for that rather than punished. Especially in a game that promoted a diversified approach each mission. But being punished for deviating from their predetermined play style just doesn't jibe with the "freedom" they are selling.

    Knocking out ennemies and civilians and hiding them is equivalent to sliping pass them (zero score penalty). Headshoting, garroting and silently killing ennemies works to. You still have to hide the bodies though. Just be carefull, knocking out then killing ennemies, killing civilians, taking a meat shield and using the multiple shots abillity on multiple targets all have a negative impact on your score.

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    Snail

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    #23  Edited By Snail

    I think it makes sense. Agent 47 is supposed to be like a specter - an invisible, undetectable agent of death. You might have been in the building, but all the deaths of all your targets should appear like they may have been the cause of disease, or an accident: it should be so that people would imagine in fear that the infamous hired killer was at work, but no one could be certain, and that fear would sink in and no one would ever know. No other traces left behind, no other victims - just your targets, without any evidence of your involvement.

    Fuck.

    Fuck that's awesome.

    And it's awesome that the game rewards you for doing that.

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    Hunkulese

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    #24  Edited By Hunkulese

    I don't understand why people aren't just playing contracts mode. People keep saying I wish the game would do this and this when it already does most things people want in contacts.

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    sasnake

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    #25  Edited By sasnake

    actually if its a silent kill, and you hide the bodies, it resets the points you lost back to 0...unless its a civi

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    Gruff182

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    #26  Edited By Gruff182

    I don't mind being punished for killing anyone that isn't the marks.

    What annoys me, is being punished for knocking guys out undetected.

    I normally wouldn't be bothered by that, but the 'get in, take out your target, get out, without anyone realizing you were even there' argument is mostly void for this game because the levels are designed for Sam Fisher.

    Man I miss old Hitman.

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    hbkdx12

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    #27  Edited By hbkdx12

    I just completed Rosewood (the stage in the orphanage) with all but maybe 1 or two challenges completed and went through the entire level without being spotted or killing anyone. Didn't even do so much as touch anyone. AT ALL. 
     
    I didn't get Silent Assassin ranking. 
     
    I feel robbed. 
     
    I don't have any experience with previous hitman games other than blood money, and that was years ago, but IIRC, silent assassin ranking was tied to actual performance. Meaning you could kill just your targets or the enitre level, as long as no one saw you or suspected you and you covered your tracks, you were golden. 
     
    Now its' like even when you get through a level with the utmost stealth, your still not guaranteed SA ranking. And that's after considering the effects of the multipliers
     
    Just seems kind of shitty

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    hoossy

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    #28  Edited By hoossy

    @Laivasse said:

    I don't like the way the score is thrust in your face at every stage, along with the national average score, the worldwide average score and high scores from your friends list. All it does is guilt you into feeling like you're doing it wrong if you start to see negative modifiers pop up. As the OP says, it discourages diverse methods. Fine, do that on levels selected from the level select, but when I'm supposedly meant to be playing for the story (yeah, right), it's just one of this game's many immersion breakers. The scoring system isn't even a level playing field unless people have completed the same Challenges as eachother, so it's silly to force people to compare their scores to those of others on a first run.

    In story logic terms it doesn't hold up either. Penalising you for non-target kills made sense when 47 was part of the Agency, with clearly defined contracts and a desire to avoid attracting the eyes of law enforcement. Now that he's rogue, with the entire police force after him anyway, the penalties are just a conspicuous video gamey high score system without in-game rationalisation. Some of the time there isn't even a target and you're surrounded by gangsters who just want to kill you, yet you're still penalised for 'non-target kills'.

    This x10

    Totally kicks immersion in the balls.

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    Tennmuerti

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    #29  Edited By Tennmuerti

    I don't mind the scoring system itself per se.

    You can easily get the silent assassin ranking on any level with a kill on it as long as you were basically invisible. No multipliers are required to achieve Silent Assassin if you got no negatives in the scoring column. (or subdues are balanced with hidden bodies)

    What bothers me more is that if you do try to go for the extra objectives they are frequently broken or misleading. For example. Great Balls of Fire, one of the challenges is turn on the jukebox, finish the level, I get the first on so only finish the level mark remains, get to the bartender, don't get the challenge checked. Same level challenge requiring you to not get hit in a bar fight, A. if you don't start a bar fight you don't get it (even tho you didn't get hit) B. if you do start the fight you won't get the challenge if you get into a single fight yourself, regardless if you actually get hit or not, directly contradicting the description. Right after that is the shooting range, i stole the silverballers without alerting anyone, entered into the shooting challenge, won, did not get a completed challenge for winning it, or for winning with silverballers, nor for loosing, tried twice same result, no challenge updates at all. Finished the level not a single red mark, no one died, either by me or accident, yet the challenge for not killing anyone in the level did not update. After shit like this i'm now simply ignoring the extra challenges and playing Absolution just like i did previous games.

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