[gameplay] Afterlife. Ghost's motives and risks

[avilmask]

I thought it still too early to make any real suggestions about ghosts, and changes of ghosts are planned any way (because unlimited powers with no price just don't fit the game).

But maybe it's not a bad idea to make a thread about one possible concept (actually, I was asked about this). It's kind of hard for me to make a big, well-designed message, because English isn't my native

 

First things first, it's obvious that ghosts are just overpowered. They can do nesty things and passively affect another players without any threats and penalties to them. As I already told, it's just not DS kind of thing. Also ghosts can meaningly avoid resurrection to make experience of other players worse (griefing).

 

Opposite to players that steal and burn stuff to make game unplayable (that's a subject for another discussion), evil ghosts can be changed to actually make game more interesting and balanced on public servers, without using a banhammer.

• ghosts slowly lose their connection with a real world. After death, player loses his max. health over time (really slow, like 0.5/minute). Ghost form shouldn't be abused without price;
• weak ghosts, that almost lost their connection with a real world, can't affect it! Ghosts with a half of their life don't lose max. health over time any more, and can't interact with world;
• ghosts keep their connection with a real word through their remainings. Ghosts don't suck sanity from players, their remainings do instead. Alive players can revive a ghost using an item on it's unrest bones (and revive without penalty, excepting normal way). Alternatively they can use another item (ex. name Salt) to pacify a ghost and remove sanity loss. After pacifying, ghost losing his ability to interact with a world.
• unrest bones keep affecting players even if ghost disconnected from a game. No more "please disconnect for 5 min, I almost out of sanity!". I.e. player can be revived or pacified even if he disconnected.
• magic item to detect ghosts and unrest bones.
• and last one, and I still not sure if necessary. Ghosts need limitations to their powers. I'm not sure if it's too harsh to make ghosts to lose their max. health whenever they interact with crafted items (i.e mess with other player's items), or is better to make a special power meter, that regenerates slowly and spent faster when used on crafted items. I also thought about structure, that regenerates ghost's powers, like Night Light;
• also this.

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That will deal with some current problems:

- sanity drain griefing;

- abuse of ghost abilities;

- disconnection to prevent a sanity loss;

- also it's somewhat makes game more interesting, adding a new adventure in order to catch and punish a nasty ghost (or revive a friend without penalty).

 

Kicking from a server for making ingame stuff is never an answer in survival game, even bad behavior should make a game more fun

[Zillvr]

I'm all for the Unrest bit also with a way to find ghosts and their bones. The per minute penalty sounds reasonable to me, -0.5max health per minute. Being a ghost for 5 in-game days sums up to -20 health penalty. Which is the default max health penalty for being revived with tell-tale hearts.

 

Which ever Klei decides to handle ghosts' mechanics, we can only hope for the best.

[Michi01]

ghosts slowly lose their connection with a real world. After death, player loses his max. health over time (really slow, like 0.5/minute). Ghost form shouldn't be abused without price;

I think that's kinda how it worked in the alpha. You had some hunger-like meter that could be stopped from decreasing by haunting and when it was empty you lost your max-health pretty fast.

[rezecib]

I think rather than have regenerating ability to haunt things, a ghost should form with a set amount of haunts. Harmful haunt effects (e.g. destroying a structure) should reduce the haunt meter more. If there's a way to fill up the haunt meter again, it should definitely involve cooperation with a living player. Charging it up with a night light is interesting, and would make night lights actually useful for once. Maybe haunting a night light would take some of the fuel out of it and transfer it to the haunt meter? That would be neat.

 

I'll summarize the stuff from this I like in my own words:

• Bring back humanity draining as a ghost, they could make it a separate game mode initially even. This solves ghost griefing.
• Sanity drain coming from the corpse instead of the ghost; this solves the incentive to kick ghosts from the game.
• Limited ability to haunt that could be replenished on cooperation with living players. This limits ghost griefing and makes ghosts a little more balanced in other cases.
• Ghost/corpse warding/detection. This helps reduce the impact of griefing cases where a player dies really far away and then disconnects, leaving a hidden sanity-draining corpse.