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In this video I want to talk about a topic that I see mentioned quite frequently at the moment. Are the hunts in Phasmophobia too easy, and does there need to be more difficulty?
I’ll be talking about the poll that I created and I’ll also be showing the results, including my own opinions, and proposed solutions.
source
Of course my proposed solutions aren't perfect, they are just some initial ideas that I was brainstorming. I'm interested to hear all of your ideas & thoughts on this subject!
If a ghost type had a unique hunt behavior, I'd be a little bit worried. Its a bit of a double edged sword. On one hand, you know what the ghost type is as soon as it starts the hunt, if you watch for its unique behavior… Less of an issue if you NEED to hide, but you still might get some sort of a clue. On the other hand, you probably wouldn't want to stick around to find out what the ghost is during the hunt, if you have no clue what its capable of… Just something to be mindful of when speculating.
Might be better if there was a bunch of unique hunting behaviors, randomly assigned to a ghost, like how it is with the alone and group ghosts. You could give different types of ghosts higher chances of having one ability, like a phantom being able to cast harmless clones of itself to wonder around, making you have to guess which is the real phantom, or the poltergeist being able to slam doors to block the players pathway… but if every ghost has the possible chances of doing these actions, then it can't be used to figure out the ghost without gathering evidence.
I find now Grafton is the most dangerous map as there is no lockers and nowhere really to hide. I don't know how to manoeuvre around to avoid them in a hunt and I die. Otherwise I can loop the main ground floor area with everything else.
Everything else is fine imo. Tho would be nice to have more security in a room. It feels like if I go into a bedroom or something and hide there I'm going to get dead. Was playing High School and we didn't know what type of ghost it was yet, Rev was still on the table, and got our first hunt, hid in the library on the right as you come in the main door behind some bookcases in the corner. Wasn't talking and the ghost hadn't seen me whole hunt. Decides to walk in there and actually go into the room, jammed myself in the corner to try and hide in case it pokes its head in and died.
I think making the ghosts more unique in how they hunt would make it more interesting.
Like,
Oni: All doors in the building shut and a random number is locked for the duration.
Banshee: doesn't care if it can see you, it always seems it's target. One can't hide.
Demon: spawn Number of players fake ghosts that can't kill but look the same and act the same
One thing I wouldn't want then to add is that the ghost will enter the closet when they see you going in. Because if you die you lose everything. That's kinda irratiting. I would like it if all ghosts are faster than the player. Not revenant level but between. I think that would be a good feature. If the ghost can enter the closet when they see you. Then the problem is you will probably die almost always against revenant.
Ghost abilities definitely need some tweaking, since, right now, 11 out of the 12 ghosts present absolutely no threat to anyone with a locker handy or even a little competence with looping. 0% sanity challenges are basically just "if anyone dies, it's a Rev". I'd like to see the other ghosts all get buffed to make them more actual threats.
Hunts are too easy
I personally don't want the game harder. I love the idea of finding evidence and getting spooked, but if I'm constantly worried about dying then the less I want to be in the area; then I'd speedrun evidence instead of being in the atmosphere. For me it's a multiplayer game, and as far as I'm aware, it's originally made for VR in mind and VR players cannot sprint(non-VR players find the game easier). I don't want a challenge as much as I want an experience. I always play professional for biggest payout & the most unique gameplay. I do appreciate the voice implementation in hunts, I actually always thought it was a thing until I realized it wasn't. As for lockers and closets being safe, not all maps have these. I don't mind their safeness. I love getting spooked, I hate the idea of making it harder.
I remembered a game where it would get harder to run when your sanity was low, the character would trip everywhere and fall making it easier for her to get caught (haunting ground) i feel this would be a perfect implementation since sanity has very little purpose in-game.
new maps, items and difficlts would make the game 10 times funnier and enjoyable
I think the Jinn should keep it's speed boost if the power is on, regardless of how far away it if from the player.
That would give players a decision to make, do you want light or do you want to survive?
Low sanity could have more side effects, like, the player walk more slowly
Yes. Too easy. If it was having to get five clues and maybe having to find 2-3 ghosts (depending on map size) matches would last longer and be more dangerous.
Idea for the game inspired from your Hide & Seek videos: a difficulty or game more rather that would allow you to select NO items at the start, because you (and your team) are going on a mission to a haunted location where another ghost hunting team has already gone but they all failed and died and you need to use their equipment which is sprinkled randomly throughout the venue (this can even be announced by the guy at the start usually saying if there was violence of not).
What do you guys think?
What if there was a ghost type that during hunts it had a random chance of teleporting in front of you IF the ghost has you in their line of sight.
What if the more you look at a ghost during a hunt the faster the ghost moves towards you.
I think another way to prevent cheesy loops is to make a hunt not end even after the time is up if the ghost still has line of sight
Can we please stop saying "just make ghosts faster." Speed is the Revenant's thing, other ghosts should have unique difficulty aspects.
Introduce a ghost that can travel through objects mid-hunt so you can't loop them. Introduce a ghost that mimics players during a hunt, and when it gets close it raises its arms towards you or reveals its true form last second to give you a warning. Make one that is silent and doesn't have footsteps; it just has faint breathing or something that is hard to hear. Make a ghost that teleports in the nearby vicinity mid-hunt so as you turn a corner it might cut you off. Add a ghost that can obscure your vision, or one that is very transparent and hard to see (maybe it's invisible and you can only see the shadow on the ground). Hell, there could even be a ghost which causes players to hallucinate and see multiple copies of the ghost when there's only one.
Yes, most of these options would be dead giveaways for what the ghost type is, but we already have giveaway ghosts in the game anyway (revenant, jinn, phantom, banshee), and most people use them in no-evidence runs, so it would just be adding variety. The previously mentioned quirks could be special abilities that are only used occasionally (higher chances on higher difficulties). If we are going to affect speed, I would say make a new ghost type (or all ghosts on professional) that moves at the same speed as players to heavily punish mistakes while looping or turning corners, or make one which causes a single target to move slower as it stares at them.
As for closets, being able to walk through closet/locker doors would just feel like a cheap death. I recommend including a resistance/force mechanic. Ghosts may slightly open doors, but the more noise you make, the harder it is to keep the door closed. Depending on how noisy, you may need 2, 3, or even 4 people all holding the same door to keep it closed, and if you keep making noise it will eventually just force it open (I imagine this is difficult to code though).
I just don't want every ghost to become a watered-down revenant.
I think sanity should play a far more significant role in the game. Perhaps as sanity reduces to low levels your sprint speed also declines, or maybe your vision blurs or something.
Here's an idea that might enhance game play in Phasmo: You know how a ghost can "show himself to you", without hunting? Other than an occasional jump scare, nobody cares about a ghost appearance, anymore, unless the lights are blinking.
So, change things so that a ghost can do "short hunts", in addition to the normal hunts. I think a normal hunt gives you an 8-second warning before the actual hunt starts, and then runs for about a minute, depending on the difficulty and ghost type? How about adding a short hunt type to the game? The lights don't blink, you only get 3 seconds before the hunt starts and it only lasts for 10 or 15 seconds.
How does that make game play more interesting? If a player is at risk of being hunted every time a ghost appears, and he/she doesn't know whether the ghost will hunt this time or not; then the player will have to react to a ghost every time it appears. No more "Ho-hum, who cares?" if the lights aren't blinking…
My opinion as a German player is that the hunt is really too easy. When you play for the first time you are still scared, but now I'm level 841 and I don't find the game as scary as on the first day. In any case, something has to be changed either in the hunt or just in the game itself because there is really no such scary moment when you go into the house
The players should run out of stamina if they are looping or running down the hallway
The best hunting AI in gaming was in Alien Isolation. I would love to see at least some of the hunting behavior from that game implemented in Phasmophobia.
Wraith: You can't hide, much like you can't run from a Rev. Wraiths see through walls and doors and you have to loop/outrun them.
Banshee: Appears within 6 yards of their target, regardless of room.
Demon: Move just slightly slower than a sprinting player, so it's more likely to catch up on a wide turn or mess up. Also, give them 2 rooms where they can spawn instead of 1.
I think all ghosts should begin to move faster as the group's sanity gets lower, and hunts should have a baseline of starting at 60% sanity instead of 50%.
I feel like poltergeists should be able to throw lockers and doors open instead of just gently tugging on them.
While I personally wouldn't mind the game being a bit more difficult, I know that not everyone has the same opinion. I think these kinds of polls should be taken with a grain of salt, since most people who do vote on them are people who already have extensive knowledge of the game. I don't think the poll reflects the real game community thoughts, as my personal experience (and the experiences of others who I've talked with about this) is that about half of the community seems to be completely fine with the game the way it is right now. And out of the other half, a majority are people who are completely new to the game and therefore don't really have a formed opinion yet. This would leave us at less than 25% of the community wanting the game to be harder.
Now what I'm worried about the most is the game becoming harder just for the sake of being harder. Like I said, I personally don't mind games that are hard, but not everyone is like that and I think that most of the people playing this game play it exactly because it's not too hard. The biggest selling points of phasmo for me personally are the atmosphere of the game which really gives a real horror feeling and the fact that I can play the game and not feel stressed over the difficulty. I don't have to strain myself to be able to figure out the ghost and do a great run most of the time, and when I do have that happen it's a welcome change in pace. So I think that making the game harder would be a very slippery slope that could very easily lead to the game dying out. The main thing we all need to remember is that the game survives because of new sales. If the game is too challenging, too hard or too stressful for new people, it'll lead to the game losing popularity, less people talking about it, less people buying it and trying it and eventually the game dying out. So what I think is that the only difficulty changes that should be made are small ones, such as:
-increasing all ghost's speeds to be the same as the player's movement speed, which would effectively make looping a bit harder and give less room for mistakes
-have the ghosts open the locker/closet doors completely
-make it impossible to keep the doors closed, so you have to actively close the doors if the ghost is opening them
-maybe add a new mechanic where the ghosts can destroy locker/closet doors after hunts, reducing the number of hiding spots over time (this would also be the biggest change I'd personally suggest in terms of difficulty)
As for the old community and adding replayability to the game, maybe add a "Challenge mode" difficulty, such as randomizers, in the game itself. Other than that, I think new content would be better than higher difficulty for the game, such as new maps and new ghosts (with the current evidence, there's 8 more combinations that are unused, for a total of 20 ghosts). So before talking about making the game harder for veteran players, maybe we should look at giving suggestions for new content and maybe getting the more difficult gameplay through that. This would give value to both old and new players.