• ROUTING: This contract has really easy targets and permissive requirements. The goal is to test players' ability to get quick kills and navigate the level.
  
• CHALLENGE: This contract would be easy, but some combination of requirements or complications suddenly makes it more difficult. Overcoming the extra restrictions in a quick and efficient manner is the satisfactory part of these contracts. If they're too difficult they become bad.
  
• PUZZLE: This contract has a small number of targets and some kind of weird quality to it. Setting somebody on fire who is nowhere near a source of fire, for example. Drowning the Hospital Director as the Hospital Director and still getting SA. That kind of thing. It should be reasonably achievable once the player figures out what to do.
  
• SADISTIC: A contract that requires either a significant investment of time or a particularly tricky bit of execution that requires a lot of player skill. The contract is good, if it is good, because of the fun of overcoming a seemingly impossible scenario.
  
• CLUSTERFUCK: Any contract that combines too many of the above. No one wants to waste their time on a 30 minute disguise carousel puzzle contract with pinpoint execution requirements and instant fail conditions.

• Requiring Pistol in an environment where shooting even a silenced gun will draw attention means that people doing the contract need to find blind spots and get people out of sight/hearing of each other. This can be really interesting, but see the complications section below to avoid a massive pitfall.
  
• Melee kills require you to get close to the target and leave a detectable body, preventing long-distance shooting and accidents. If the target is difficult to get out of line of sight, or if you'd have to trespass for whatever reason to melee them, this can be an interesting requirement.
  
• Specific melee weapons may require actually finding that melee weapon on the map; things like Letter Openers can be in very few locations, and routing to retrieve the weapon you need becomes part of the execution of the contract. If the acquisition of the weapon is interesting, it's probably okay to require it.
  
• Large guns are no longer quite as interesting a requirement thanks to briefcase smuggling, but this still restricts the loadout slots potentially available to the player and could screw with them if the fastest route to something involves climbing. Large melee with a forced Suit or other civilian disguise can still work, as long as they don't fit in a briefcase.
  
• On the same note, many different kill requirements should generally be avoided, but if the goal is to force the player to bring a stuffed loadout and then improvise the remaining weapons this can be more interesting. Especially so if loadout-capable weapons exist on the map (such as Fiber Wire on Mumbai/Sgail), allowing players to decide what they'll bring and what they'll go after in the level.

• Suit is obviously a way to encourage Suit Only gameplay. Forcing Suit Only is annoying, however, unless the point is to force the player to trespass.
  
• Forcing another disguise should generally be avoided unless acquiring the disguise is a puzzle of sorts. The puzzle should be reasonable; Vampire Magician and Plague Doctor are fine, Street Performer and Prisoner are annoying to acquire or use, and Knight Armor stealth contracts are right out.
  
• Setting a disguise requirement and No Disguise Changes allows you to force a certain start point. Use this sparingly, but it can be interesting if it forms the basis for the entire contract (my 2016 featured, The Green Revolution, does this with Gardener in Sapienza).
  
• Guard disguises are dumb and too easy. If you're going to force people to do something in a certain outfit, make it civilian so they can't openly employ weapons.
  
• Multiple disguises should be avoided unless changing disguises and routing between them forms the entire basis of the contract. If you're doing this, all the kills should be Any Method and all the targets should be incredibly easy kills like the mopping guy in the Miami basement. The challenge of this contract type is getting from one costume to the other in a particular order and then to an exit quickly, don't compound it!

• Do Not Get Spotted, No Recordings, Targets Only, and No Bodies Found are utterly worthless (DNGS is technically useful right now but the spotting thing is apparently a bug so it will become useless again soon). These things already ruin SA and anyone who cares about score is going to restart to get SA if they gently caress these things up. All they do is tank your score further (if optional) or instantly fail you (if mandatory). Both are bad; see below.
  
• Time Limit is usually uninteresting and not helpful. It's best in puzzle or challenge contracts where the point is to get something done more quickly than it might initially seem possible, and a weird Time Limit in a contract should immediately stand out in that respect so that people can recognize that this is the challenge, not any other part of the contract.
  
• Required Exit is normally bad, but it can be useful for puzzle/challenge contracts if getting to it requires you to trespass or something. It can also be good if it's a routing contract with a centralized exit requirement such that routing to the exit is part of the point; don't use it if setting only one exit makes the contract really linear, as this is bad for letting people experiment and try different target orders.
  
• Hide All Bodies should only be used in a few instances. Puzzle contracts where the target is nowhere near a hiding spot are the best examples of where it can be good. It could also be interesting in a routing contract if figuring out the most time-efficient way to stash bodies makes for a fun challenge; test it out in the contract creator and see if it's actually fun first, of course.
  
• No Disguise Changes should be used to force Suit Only or to force a certain start point via the undercover starts. It really isn't interesting otherwise, with the exception of a routing contract that requires going between multiple trespassing areas. A good example would be Mumbai: Setting Any Disguise on all targets with No Disguise Changes could be intriguing if there are targets in Rangan, Kale, and Shah's areas, letting the player choose either Suit Only and trespassing everywhere or a disguise start and trespassing only most everywhere in exchange for a more restrictive start.
  
• Headshots Only is kind of stupid and should only be employed to prevent people shooting the sliver of a target's thigh with the Ghost. The other use of it is to prevent people from doing legshots, but legshots are a very obscure technique with tons of downsides already so I don't think it's really that interesting to prevent them. If you think legshots would ruin the contract or want to force somebody to get clever with concussion/flash effects, by all means, but meh.
  
• Perfect Shooter exists for two reasons, and every other reason you think it might exist for is completely loving wrong: Preventing the player from shooting cameras, and preventing the use of bullet distractions. Let me stress that again: Never use it for anything else, ever. On that note, if you are going to have Perfect Shooter as a complication, never force the player to use a firearm as the kill method. There is nothing fun about punishing the player for missing, so use Perfect Shooter to signal that the player shouldn't be shooting at all and make sure they aren't forced to do it. Any Method is fine (if people want to take the risk of shooting a target for speed purposes, let 'em), as is basically any form of melee weapon kill. Thrown Melee is much better than Pistol since the melee can't miss and won't gently caress your run if you screw it up somehow (outside of the usual ways, like getting witnessed).
  
• No Pacifications is pretty straightforward, but don't add it for no reason. If your goal is to prevent the easy acquisition of disguises, this is great because it forces the player to locate and utilize free disguises or go without them. It's great for preventing someone from cheesing an illegal item smuggle by using a guard disguise. It's good in situations where you want the player to figure out a more elegant (or risk-taking) solution that luring and knocking out half a level, but make sure that solution exists.

where the red fern gropes fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Dec 11, 2018