Welcome back to Phasmophobia! In this video I want to talk about some things that annoy me in Phasmophobia. I absolutely love this game but I think it could be so much better if some obvious flaws get addressed. What would you like to see changed most in Phasmophobia?
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NOTE: This video was recorded on Phasmophobia update v0.10.0.1
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What is the thing that annoys you most about Phasmophobia?
What would you like to see changed/added ASAP?
I hope you feel way better today 🤗
i hate it when ytbers say "i sound different bc im sick" to me you dont sound any different 😭
There's honestly no excuse for some of the design decisions that have gone into Phasmophobia. It used to be one of my favorite games and fell out of my graces insanely fast due to the developers stubbornly squashing any way to experience the game that doesn't perfectly align with their vision of it. The best example is their hatred toward modding – they don't want to compromise the game's horror by allowing people to modify it in ways that open up the code and reveal information… but the horror is already nonexistent after becoming even mildly experienced in the game.
Mods are going to exist for a game no matter what. Because the developers have outright refused modding support, though, the only mods I've found are texture edits that inexplicably add pornography to the game. So instead of the Phasmophobia modding scene being custom maps or marvels of creativity that the community could demonstrate, all we have is the ability to make the ghost naked or put a porno on the TV in Tanglewood.
And then recently one of the developers had the audacity to post a video about how Phasmophobia is the "only" good ghost hunting game. Motherfucker, it isn't even a good example of itself anymore.
Not only do they pretentiously demand that the player's gaming experience adhere only to their explicit vision of how the game should play – a vision that is clearly not strong in balancing, horror, replay value, or even fun in some cases – but they think that vision is the only correct one for the entire genre of ghost hunting games. It is insulting.
I'm at a point of considering compiling all of the insane arrogance I've seen off of Phasmophobia's developers into a document as a "what not to do" for the horror game indie dev community. In its current state, Phasmophobia is not scary, has no long-term replayability due to its limited maps and bland gameplay cycle, encourages cheesing photos for perfect games, has generally weird-ass balancing decisions (looking at you, monkey's paw & summoning circle), and just feels like a repetitive ghost exam instead of a videogame.
I really want they get an artist that can make all those asset textures not so asset textures, and a 3d model make that makes and animates characters and objects, this game always had a Lot of potential but also luck, it took the biggest piece of the "cake" of ghost Hunter games and that was because of quarantine from Covid and the fact that it was (I dont know it exactly) the first game of this kind of games.
I mean, if other games like Ghost Watchers had came out first we will be talking about that games, but phamo did it, and this game knew how to grow in popularity because of quarantine and content creators. But I think its time to not rely on those past things and restart the basis, renew the looks, renovate all phamo, from textures to animations and mechanics.
I dont want it to become other game, but polishing and taking yo the very edge the good product they have between their hands would be absolutely amazing.
Finally, dont get me wrong, I love this game, but I could love it even more.
I remember when I tried to help out multiple people in multiple games on getting perfect games, "Aw, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have risked it", like they said it was okay, but I want them to make this change ASAP just so that we don't have to be ultra careful and deliberate while playing the '0-risk' way only to get a minor bonus.
That way, we don't need to have a lot of pressure on trying to complete standard games, it would be very nice.
I really wish they stopped doing balance changes like this is some fighting game catering to hardcore players. All my friends stopped playing when they made ghosts being able to echo locate your flashlight because they also play a bunch of other games and can't be bothered to learn how to navigate a bunch of big maps in total darkness to find some safespot that may or may not actually work. I'm the only one that still likes to play, but I'm a social player and don't feel motivated to play if it's not with them. And it's increasingly harder to make them come back each time because the game keeps getting harder.
honestly i think they should just have photos go in the multiplier again. i heard there used to be problems with people just going in and farming 10 pictures on a high difficulty multiplier and just making a ton of money that way, so maybe they could add a condition where the photos only apply to the multiplier if you get the ghost correct, but at the end of the day there's always going to be a part of the playerbase that wants to find ways to get a lot of levels in as little time as possible.
the biggest problem with the perfect game multiplier as it is right now is, like you've said, a single 2 star photo just completely ruins it, and it's not worth going for a photo if you aren't sure you can get it. photo deletion would be fantastic too. just anything that makes it so a single mistake doesn't mean it's not worth it to try for photos anymore that round
The easy way to make deleting photos fair(if that's even why they waited so long) is to give each tier of the camera a certain number of shots again.
T1/T2/T3 would get 11/15/20 pictures.
The higher the tier you have, the more chances you have to screw up the photos on accident in case you get a 2 star.
Also, make the photobook categorized. Make it require 1 Ghost Photo, 1 bone photo, and then 8 more pictures and make salt only able to fill 3 positions max so you have you actually get good interaction shots.
GET BETTER SOON INSYM
What irritates me the most: the bones in the middle display case are not symmetrical
I got an idea… Change the "perfect investigation" bonus in favor of a "full investigation" bonus. This way you only have to fill in the photo book, collect the bone, and find the correct ghost to get the bonus. Then increase the money you get for photos by how many total stars you have from them. So if you get a full photo book with only 1 star photos (10 stars) then you would get paid less than a book with 3 stars (30 stars). Including the ability to remove a photo would help this much more.
About the photo system, they should just change the star system. For example, stars should go up to 4, salt photos should only worth maximum 2 stars, depending on the quality of the photo as well, and ghost photo should worth 3-4 stars. A perfect game then should be calculated according to the number of stars collected (30+ stars) and then the perfect reward should be multiplied by the difficulty level and the stars collected. That mean 10 salt photos will not be enough for a perfect game. You will need to take a couple of high rated photos to be able to get a perfect game bonus and if you wan the maximum amount, you should go for all the high rated photos. In addition, this improves the situation we have with the photos, since a mistake will not be fatal to the reward. Please upvote if you agree
Awesome video as always! I totally get the rage (for all the times I lost perfect games to photo-priority issues).
I think a possible fix for the "photo combo" thing would be to make all photos worht 10 bucks but, if you repeat the same photo, the next one is worth 2 bucks less, until the photo is worth nothing. This way, a maximum photo reward would be 100, and it could be pushed back into the multiplier. Also, the "photo level" could be dropped entirely — you either take a proper photo, or you don't. All of this, plus the ability to delete photos, would be somewhat of a fix for all the photo issues. I don't know how hard it would be to implement it in the game (I'm not a game dev), but I think, for the player experience, it would work well.
personally i think the game sucks totally now.. like imagine youre a newbie player like me. I havent really pllayed for 2 years and now all my money is lost, i dont know how to play for example nightmare mode, because there isnt any information on the ghost available in phasmo. basically you need to watch insym or other streamers and then learn for hours and hours what difference the ghosts have..
also why the game is shit now for newbies: you dont get any information or help. Things about ghosts from the book are wrong. And as a newbie player, you got the worst flashlight and the worst equipment, while good players like insym just can use T3 items.
IN WHICH WAY DOES IT MAKE ANY SENSE TO MAKE THE GAME THE HARDEST FOR NEW AND UNEXPERIENCES PLAYERS? THIS IS JUST SO DUMB
first full release then console that is my opinion
phasmo
Honestly the console thing killed phasmo for me. Was super hyped and into this game, and I understand the delays a lot of them were out of the devs hands. But as time went on and we got nothing more than single sentences to let us know there would be a nebulous chance to play in the future it just became insulting. Now, even though they were supposed to release it as soon as they were ready with it, it’s going to be 3 and a half more months. At this point I feel very ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ about console release news and that’s such a bummer
12:27 To be honest, phasmophobia should have a photo system thats pokemon snap-esque.
Add back the photo limit, say 15 for t1 cam, 20 for t2 and 25 for t3, whilst retaining the current differences between them too.
Then after the game is done, you pick and choose what photos to put through, the better the photo, the more of a bonus it gives you, scrap the stars system entirely.
An example of how this works would be handprints on the door for UV photos, if you take a door interaction, but theres no UV, that'd be worth less points than if you charge up the handprint with UV.
This would also tie into the core gameplay loop of finding out WHAT the ghost is and planning your photos around the ghost type, rather than just taking loads of 1 type of photo.
My friends and I all stopped playing awhile ago. When it comes down to it the game is just boring. The ghost isn't scary. It's really jank. I'm literally on a 4070, i7-13700KF, 32GB DDR5 with a SSD and there are times when the game just decides to spazz out (Insym also has a beast PC and you can see it in this video, the game just struggles sometimes.) Also the updates are so slow. I don't get why they need to wait to do a big update when the game should just be getting regular updates. They fixed or changed something? Why not just put it in instead of trying to release "Expansions". We've been playing for 4 years now and there's just so many times I can sit in a room waiting for the ghost to do anything.
I don't know if the direction or vision changed but original phasmo had such a different feeling to it. Phasmo today feels like I'm just waiting and waiting and waiting for the ghost to give me evidence and we're all tired of waiting. There are also so many great horror co-op games today that are all between $0-15 dollars that generally are much more exciting for a few hours of homie seshes. It's also really surprising that Phasmo doesn't have steam workshop or mod support. Example Left 4 Dead 2 is an amazing vanilla experience that you can dump hundreds of hours into no problem. Steam workshop has made it so that my friends and I are still playing after literally 15 years due to all the maps and customization. Same applies to Black Ops 3 Zombies.
We came back to try the light house map and it's cool and all but it's baffling that it took them as long as it did to make it… and STILL the ghost doesn't do anything different or have new scares or anything. We played for about 2 hours before we called it quits again.There are just much better horror co-op experiences today that we'd rather be putting our time into.
Being able to delete photos just makes realistic sense. Whether you're a professional photographer or an investigator, you're going to want to take a ton of photos to select the best from. Even from just a 'fun' standpoint; say you're playing an immersive game instead of an objective one, or that somewhere down the line they make it so that you can decorate your own headquarters and van. You're gonna want to take what you percieve as interesting photos. (-and video clips, but that's for a future update. It just makes more sense to capture video of a door moving rather than taking a photo and going "the door moved, bro, trust me")
In terms of photo evidence, devs, take a look back towards Pokémon Snap or something?
A maybe good feature would be a frequent (2 months?) evidence shuffle for each ghost. It would help keep the investigation aspect fresh and unique. With some time and experience even the limited or no evidence runs become quite stale
they should add a board in the truck just like the objectives, saying what to do to get a perfect game including doing the objectives, for example what to take pictures of…
I absolutely love your videos Phasmo content Insym, been watching you for ages. Plus always love hearing your opinion on the game and its content, alongside listening to the community too. Your my little safe haven of Phasmo goodness haha. 🙂
The only thing… which I would NOT want to see added, is deleting of photo's. I would love the photo system to be improved though… perfect ghost photo, yet it picks the salt far away… that needs addressing. I find weirdly enough the thing that always brings me back to playing Phasmo over and over again is the fact that your relying on pure RNG for perfect games is what makes getting "Perfect Game Bonuses" that edge of success. If photo's were to be deleted and re-added, I would find it would remove the motivation to come back and try to nail that game mode because you can delete what you took. But at the same time it makes sense as the photo system has its own thing going with counting what photo is what haha, but at the same time if the photo system was fixed and the deletion of photo's were added, I would find it to put a nail through the enthusiasm on getting perfect games. But though I am one who loves frustration so it might just be me haha. xD
But on a serious note though, I have not got any real things I would change with Phasmo, absolutely loved playing it since early 2021, and Insym being our mentor in mastering the ghosts! 😀
They could add a dedicated slot in the book for the ghost photo and make it, as you said, one of the main objectives. And allow us to delete photos. To be fair, deleting the photos is not as simple as add an X on the UI. There is a lot of code and tech behind it that needs to be implemented as well. I work as a game dev with Unity and the simplest things are usually one of the hardest things for some reason 😀 I hope they bring back the joy of taking photos! It was my main source of fun in the game. No time to get scared by the ghost, I took great pictures and got us a payday!
I commented before about this, but I think instead of distance for stars they should give a star for each type of photo, interactions, bones l, ghost photo all be 3 stars, stuff like crucifix, candle, etc be 2 stars and salt, dead, body etc be 1 star, not saying that exactly I just mean the idea.
Also would make sense that a perfect game is all 2 or 3 star photos and give 3 star photos a bonus
The photo system is so frustrating. Got a perfect shot of a dots ghost that didnt count as anything. The system really needs a rework. Its so bad it honestly makes me not want to play the game sometimes.
I hate to be the "Negative Nancy", but don't expect a console release anytime soon. I expect it will be delayed again right before the Halloween event.
They said the exact same thing last year and here we are.
They teased Point Hope like over a year ago, so the progress is slow as fuck and I was being generous.
The console announcement is probably the worst thing that happened to this game because it's not only divided the fans on the subject matter but also requires resources that would be better spent on fixing bugs and adding more stuff to the game that it REALLY needs, especially maps.
So mad he got sick
Yeah 1 map being the only new content for a year after it was teased how long ago is not good. Farmhouse and other changes probably not until October if the console is even coming then. What annoys me most it the lack of content and communication. Game is full of bugs and without new content for I dunno a year what are the devs expecting of people? Stay happy for no reason?
Not gonna lie, sick Insym talking kinda smooth tho 🤤
tbh the devs in charge of bug fixing/balancing/game mechanic and health in phasmo are just absolute shit
the game could be infinitely better than it already is with extremely minor bug fixes and design choices but it's like they have their head up their ass or in the sand
Candle change with Shade is buggy as hell. One time it blew out 4 candles next to me in the span of 10 seconds.
Adding a button to manually delete photos is totally over-complicating it, why not automatically make higher value photos replace the lowest value photo? That'd spare you quite some dev work creating and implementing an interactive UI and functionality in favor of some simple math.
New Insym yapping video just dropped 🔥🔥you love to see it.
The photo priority system has annoyed me more than anything lately and it seems to be getting worse. The fact that the bugged DOTs state hunt is still in the game is super annoying as well. While it can be rare to get, the fact it can even happen and has not been fixed is absurd. The fact the ghost can enter DOTs state, start a hunt where the ghost is invisible and you cannot hear footsteps, but it can kill you, should be fixed by now.
It would be so great if they made photos deletable and also made ghost photos required for perfect games and then they would add a separate board into the hideout containing all your ghost photos of all the models in the game with a little lore about them. Also an achievement for taking photo of every ghost model would be nice
I havent watched this video fully yet but me n the homies use to play phas all the time both deskstop in vr now just nothing and if we want to play something like it we'd just go to demonologist. It becomes more of a puzzle simulator rather than "hunting" ghost. I havent played since the item tier update so maybe it got better but the ghost has no way to interact other than (Move objects, turn something on/off, or Event/hunt) other than that its just trying to figure out the ghost type asap. The perception of fear was broken long ago and i couldnt see this game being any better until that Horror Update comes out. Again it seems to be doing good for the people who like doing the challenge and the prestiege or "end game" but for normal people who want a fun yet terrific experience, nothing really new happen. Maybe have the ghost do some crazy shit like drag someone off to a random location, be more audible and menacing, do something to the truck, and get some scary or spectral designs not the damned zombie_bundle_01 ahh models. I love this game and still do, but man does it feel like its gotten nowhere.
Just give camera a limit and we should be good with removing photo
i just downloaded the game, but i keep getting client disconnections durinf games… anyone know how to fix. I also have a semi new pc so it needs to be tweaked
I think they should give some window where like you can take 15 photos and can manage which ones you'd like to keep. And you should get different ammount of money depending on which photos you take or maybe taking multiple photos of same event lowers the bonus.
the thing that is most annoying is that hunts arent scary unless you fk up. The audio is completely ass, they should add some unique creepy audio tracks. Literally it's just crickets