Phasmophobia | 2024 Roadmap and Beyond...

[Dragon Lord]

I think the only thing that would make it feel a little better on less than Nightmare difficulty is being able to see my sanity, because I would at least know if I'm currently in hunting range or not (excluding Phantoms) so I wouldn't need to be worried about telling if the ghost is hunting or just trolling with an event. Like DL mentions in their post below yours though, I expect the atmosphere would still get to me though and make me chicken out.

Do you mean Demon? Demon is the ghost that has the ability to hunt at any sanity threshold, though it's a pretty rare chance of happening.

If you're curious about the ghosts and their hunting threshold and what can influence them, I'll put it in a spoiler below:

Spoiler

Thaye = 75% at Age 0/15% fully aged (I believe it shares the ability to rarely hunt at any sanity threshold with the Demon, but I could be remembering wrong)
Yokai = 80% when at least one player is talking within 2m of it
Demon = 70% (+small chance of being able to use its ability to hunt at any sanity)
Raiju = 65% when in the presence of active electronic devices
Onryo = 60% at all times
Mare = 60% when the lights in its room are off / 40% when the lights in its room are on
Deogen = 40% at all times
Shade = 35% at all times (will never hunt when at least one person is in its room)

Any ghost not listed here is a standard 50% Sanity Threshold with no special abilities that can cause it to hunt early or increase the hunt chance. Cursed Hunts do not follow these conditions.

Maybe that information will be able to help you feel a little more comfortable solo, and also help you identify ghosts by their hunts as well. Oh, one thing I didn't list is about the Banshee. While the Banshee is a standard 50% sanity hunter, it does have one unique quirk about it. Unlike every other ghost in the game, the Banshee will not hunt based off of the team's average sanity (if playing solo, this obviously doesn't matter). Instead, if playing in a group, the Banshee will go based off of its target's Sanity only. So for example, if all four of us were playing, and I was the Banshee's target, only my sanity would matter. So if you three were at 100% Sanity and I was at 0%, we'd still be getting non-stop hunts. 

Though again, if playing Solo, obviously that doesn't matter because you're the only one there to be the target, but good to know when we're playing in a group and we got a Banshee on our hands! Lets you know that you should let the target prioritize keeping their sanity high over the others.

[Moonface]

Ah, my bad. I had a feeling I had the wrong ghost but at least I know everyone else who plays this game will know which ghost I actually meant. XD

Looking at that spoiler, I have no idea what that age thing is that's connected to the Thaye. Does that ghost age or something?
I assume a Mimic will hunt at the threshold of whatever ghost it is trying to be, or does that always hunt at -50% no matter what ghost it's trying to be?

As for the hunting info making me feel safer, it would if Nightmare didn't hide your sanity so I know that once I'm done collecting candy my sanity is going to start dropping again, and I'll have no idea what level my sanity is at unless a hunt happens. It doesn't help that I was trying to bring in just a camera, flashlight, and lighter along with the standard items you have to bring into a match by default (Dots, EMF, etc.) so that if I did die I wouldn't have to worry about losing much stuff. I did go into it prepared to die so long as I got everything I would need, but being accepting of death wasn't enough to make me feel okay when the ghost would do stuff that put me on edge while waiting for it to show up for a photo. The worst one was when it made footstep noises but really fast because I thought a hunt had started and it was chasing me. XD

I guess for the Banshee another good thing is if the target is at hunting range, it'll only go for the target anyway right? So everyone else is still safe whether it hunts or not and just the target has to worry about a hunt, right? What happens though if the target has hunting range sanity but stays outside the house due to lack of sanity pills? Will the Banshee just change target to someone inside or will it remain focused on the target until it kills them?

[Dragon Lord]

Thaye's "age" based on how long someone has spent inside of the ghost room and depending on its age, it will either be extremely fast (I believe the second or third fastest ghost in the game) or extremely slow (second slowest ghost, I believe). I forget how long the aging process takes, but as long as someone is in the ghost room, it will age and begin to lose its power. This makes the Thaye dangerous on large maps, as it can be much harder to locate the ghost room while your sanity drops, and once you hit that 70% threshold, you're going to have an extremely fast ghost on your hands.

Mimic can use the ability of whatever ghost it is mimicking. So yes, if its mimicking a Demon, it can pull off a 100% sanity hunt.

The Banshee will always only target a player inside of the house, so if it's target leaves the house, it will pick a second target. However, if the initial target were to re-enter the house, it will switch back to targeting that player. Essentially the Banshee picks its target order when the door opens (the ghosts do not become active until one of the doors are opened), so it will just choose its target from that order depending on who is currently in the building. If target #1 leaves, it switches to target #2. If both target #1 and target #2 are absent from the building, then target #3 is chosen. However, as I said before, once target #1 re-enters the building, the Banshee will go right back to going after them.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the Banshee also has one other unique aspect to its hunting. The Banshee has a chance to seek out its target from any where in the building (not sure what the range is on it, so not sure if it can do something like cross the entirety of Sunny Meadows), and once it reaches its target, it will begin to hunt. You might remember that one match we did on Campsite where the ghost was over by the bonfire area, but then it started hunting and spawned at the front gate right behind me and killed me? Yeah, that explains what happened, because that ghost was a Banshee. It followed me from the bonfire area to the front gate, and once it got to me, it immediately started hunting.

Oh, the Demon can also do that, but I think I heard the difference is that the Demon will start to hunt the moment it crosses paths with another player period.

[Moonface]

Oh I expected the Thaye to be more dangerous as it aged because of the lower sanity threshold, but it's neat to see that it instead works like a pick your poison scenario of hunt speed versus hunt frequency. I never knew that about that ghost and just that feature of it alone might make it one of my favourites in terms of concept.

Can Mimic's change the ghost they're acting like mid-game or are they locked into one type? If the latter, it'd be neat if the end screen could tell you what ghost it was mimicking since I wish I knew which ghost it was pretending to be in my solo game.

Ah, so it can't be cheesed then. I guess the target could just stay inside and go into a hiding spot permanently if they wish while everyone else just does stuff and the ghost keeps hunting for someone it will never find. Kinda surprised a Banshee doesn't share that trait one of the other ghosts have of being more deadly to people who are hiding so that targets can't abuse hiding spots to keep the rest of the team safe and trigger hunts.
Oh, just saw the second part of your post (I'm reading it as I reply lol) so will a Banshee teleport to a player in a hiding spot or will it just teleport into the room that hiding spot is in?

Eww, Demon's can teleport to players too? That's really mean considering it can hunt at any sanity if it wants to be a dick. Although I guess on large maps it can be a good thing if you've spent a while trying to find its room and haven't had any luck yet, provided whoever it crosses paths with is able to reach a hiding spot quickly from an unexpected hunt.

[Dragon Lord]

Yeah, Thaye starts out strong, but weakens over time. When you haven't spent any time in its ghost room, not only will it be able to hunt sooner, but it'll also be faster. Not that bad on small maps where you can find the ghost room really quickly, but on maps like High School, Prison and Sunny Meadows, the Thaye can easily be one of the most dangerous Ghosts in the game.

Mimics do change their copied power, I think every two minutes about. It can't change mid-hunt though.

The thing about the Banshee and Demon is that they actually don't teleport like the Wraith does. They actually walk across the map. If you put salt down and a Banshee walks through it on their way to stalk their target, you can actually follow the trail of footprints with a UV light. It's pretty neat to see. I was watching a streamer by the name of Insym do a game where he had a Demon, and it was in the boy's bedroom on Tangle Wood (the blue one near the entrance with the computer in it), and the Demon walked through the salt and walked all the way down into the basement, and Insym just watched the trail of footprints as the Demon walked there.

[Moonface]

It'd be neat if you could see a Banshee while it's walking to its target (either through a camera, salt, whatever, just something to let you follow it accurately) and let the target know so they could just try to keep moving away from it like when we were all running away during hunts on the school map when we were dicking around with custom games. I'm just imagining a Banshee trying to constantly catch up to its target to start a hunt and just never being able to because it's on a map like school that lets the target just walk in loops. XD

Also how the heck did Insym follow the tracks of a demon without it ripping him a new one? Unless it was just walking without the intent of doing a hunt?

[Moonface]

Phasmophobia v.0.8.0.0 Patch Notes
It seems these patch notes haven't been officially shared on the games Steam page yet, so I wouldn't have known about this upcoming update if not for @Dragon Lord mentioning it to me this morning. For everyone like myself curious about the full patch notes of this update, they are as follows:

Holiday 2022

• From December 14 until Early January, you can take part in the Phasmophobia 2022 Christmas event!
  
• Earn yourself a Unique Holiday Trophy for your collection as well as an exclusive Holiday '22 ID card and badge!
  

Reward Changes
Custom Difficulty will be getting tweaked to redirect its purpose to be primarily used for fun and interesting games, with unique twists, similar to other games with a "Custom games" mode, without the worry of how much you're getting out of it. Current balancing in the mode allows for players to quickly create games that are much easier or faster than their default difficulty counterparts while giving the same or more rewards, which makes the default modes redundant.

Furthermore, having a set reward per custom option makes them very fragile and limits what the developers can change for the default difficulties, or any future difficulties they would like to add to the game, and with the upcoming changes in Progression 2.0, the developers would like experience and money to be gained fairly for every player and try to avoid any cheesy reward tactics where possible. Redirecting the focus on custom difficulty to fun rather than rewards was also spurred by the fact most players do not use custom difficulty for rewards, as a large majority of players still play on Intermediate or Professional since the custom difficulty mode was introduced.

Due to all of those reasons, custom difficulty will now have an 80% reduction applied to the reward multiplier, in an effort to make it more about fun and challenge while the default difficulties remain the main route for character progression. However, current and future challenges (such as the Apocalypse challenge) will still be accessible in Custom and grant the same rewards as before for your collection. Due to this reward multiplier nerf, there will also be changes made to investigation bonuses in regular difficulties:

• If you can identify the ghost correctly and escape alive, you will double the money and experience you earn for the primary and secondary objectives you complete during that contract!
  
• If you manage to complete the above but additionally: collect the bone, and fill your journal 3-star photos, you will gain an additional sum of money and experience on top of the Investigation bonus!
  
• Secondary objectives will have their rewards reduced to make way for the Investigation bonuses.
  

Note: Investigation bonuses are affected by the difficulty multiplier!

Ghost Types
Certain ghosts will be getting tweaked with this update, as is the case with the majority of updates in this game:

All Ghosts

• Hunting ghosts' model flickers are now synced across all players (which should also help hunt photo reliability)
  
• When hunting, ghosts now affect lights at the same range as equipment, if on the same floor.
  
• Raiju - 15m
  
• All other ghosts - 10m
  

Wraith

• Wraith will never step in a salt pile
  
• Updated journal weakness
  

Obake

• During a hunt, Obake have a 6.66% chance each time it flickers to shapeshift into a different ghost's form. They will then return back to their original form.
  
• This is guaranteed to happen at least once per hunt, so keep your eyes peeled!
  

Revenant

• Instead of slowing down instantly after losing line of sight, Revenant will keep their increased speed until reaching your last known position
  
• Their speed will now decrease gradually over 2.7 seconds (0.75m/s) instead of instantly
  

Goryo

• Goryo can no longer change favourite room or roam long distances
  

Hantu

• Hantu cold breath will now play in any room during hunts if the breaker is off
  
• Hantu cold breath visuals have been improved
  

Yurei

• Yurei can no longer use their ability when there is no door in its current room
  

New Additions

• Fog has returned!
  • Fog will now only be where it makes sense and has received a visual overhaul
    
  • Locations will start at the same temperature as Clear weather (8-15°C)
    
• Sunrise weather has been added
  • Locations will start with temperatures between 10-18°C
    
• Weather effects have been completely recreated from the ground up
  
• Rain and snow have received large performance increases and improved visuals
  
• New graphics options have been added
  
• Sky light - For enabling sun or moonlight in each location
  
• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
  
• Fog quality
  
• FidelityFX 1.0 - AI upscaling for better performance
  • (Only compatible with AMD RX 400 GPUs and newer / Nvidia GTX 10 series GPUs and newer)
    
• Anti-Aliasing options - You can now choose between FXAA, SMAA, and MSAA. VR players can only choose MSAA
  
• You can now place crucifixes
  • When placing the crucifix, you can now see the range of its effect on the environment
    
• All post-processing effects have been adjusted and improved
  
• Added a text option for voice recognition. This will show UI for selecting what question to ask on the Spirit Box and Ouija Board
  
• If you swap to a new PC or reinstall Windows your save will now revert to your personal cloud backup
  

Changes

• The Smudge Sticks' burn effect has been improved
  
• The Haunted Mirror's effects and visibility have been improved
  
• Transparent objects and effects will now receive shadows from lights
  
• Resetting your save file will now wipe your cloud backup
  
• Improved performance on campsite maps
  
• Fingerprints have been moved on Willow doors to be more consistently placed
  
• Radios are now interactable with the breaker off
  
• All players must now be further than 5m from the Ouija Board before it breaks, instead of just the person who activated it
  
• The Ouija Board will now auto-deactivate when walking outside the map.
  
• Sanity pills no longer disappear when using them. Instead, they now drop on the floor and are no longer useable
  
• Improved all candle wax effects when lit
  
• Improved two hiding spots in Sunny Meadows; one by the restricted area door and in the one restricted wing
  
• Small tent cloth is now translucent
  

Fixes

• The 'average sanity' objective will now complete at the same time for all players
  
• The bone will no longer spawn inside other objects
  
• Tripods no longer count as electronic equipment after removing a camcorder
  
• Willow windows are now the correct way round
  
• The "Complete daily challenges" weekly challenge will now only trigger when a daily challenge completes, instead of when it progresses.
  
• You can no longer scroll to another item while placing something
  
• The ghost's room will now show on the board in the truck in Training
  
• The Deogen Spirit Box reply will now work if you are not crouched
  
• The morgue door VR grab point is now in the correct position
  
• Hitting the crouch button, then physically crouching in VR no longer pushes you enough into the floor that the ghost cannot kill you
  
• Computer monitors in the Prison no longer turn on when the power is off
  
• The "ghosts repelled" stat will now count if you are not the host
  
• In Sunny Meadows, the female hallway light switch will no longer toggle the utility room's light
  
• Journal on/off buttons are much clearer to understand
  
• The EULA accept button will no longer be clickable until you scroll to the bottom
  
• The objects moved stat will now correctly count Poltergeist throws
  
• Your inventory will no longer break if you grab more than one item before joining a game
  
• Room reflections will now be accurate after turning a light on and off quickly
  
• Russian and Ukranian fonts will no longer have grey boxes around most characters
  
• VR death room spawn position is now correct
  

Phasmophobia v.0.8.0.0, codenamed Tempest, will be available to all players on December 14th.

[Dragon Lord]

Lots of good stuff in this update. The new lighting looks fantastic! It took a bit of time getting used to how flashlights looked when I was watching Insym play the update, but after adjusting to it, gotta say it looks great.

Love that the Crucifix now shows the radius when you're placing it. Insym mentioned this in his stream, but he used to put two crucis on each side of a room before, because he thought the radius was much smaller. That's exactly what I do as well, because of the same reason. It'll be great knowing the area one covers so that I can place them better.

The fog weather effect looks really nice, and the sunrise weather with the new lighting systems looks gorgeous.

For ghost changes:

-Wraith never stepping in salt is a nice change. It gives a great use for Motion Sensors outside of the objective now, as you can put a motion sensor lined up with piles of salt and if you see the motion sensor go off, but no footstep in the salt, you instantly know you have a Wraith.

-Obake changing form when hunting is cool as hell. Too bad it can't shapeshift into a player though as a normal thing. This also encourages people to "git gud" at looping/avoiding a ghost during a hunt instead of hiding, so that you can see it shapeshift.

-The King has returned! The Revenant has now likely become the most dangerous ghost in the game once again. If that boi sees you, good luck getting away. As Insym said, the Revenant has become the game's most dangerous chaser. You also need to shut your equipment off right away, because if you're away from the room, but close enough so that the Revenant can detect your equipment, it'll go max speed right to where you are. So not only do you have to run away immediately when the hunt starts, you have to shut your flashlight off immediately as well, and if the power and lights aren't on, have fun trying to run away in the dark.

Glad the Deogen's spirit box issue was fixed. I didn't even know you had to be crouched to get it. I spent so much time during a match once with Elite trying to get that special reply with no results. Was probably driving poor Elite nuts with non-stop "Where are you?!" asking, haha.

Not a huge fan of the custom difficulty changes at all. In no way should you get less rewards for playing the game at its most brutally difficult than you can get for playing normally on Professional. Absolutely stupid change that's going to completely kill player interest in custom difficulty outside of getting the trophies. With the rewards being so pathetically low now, might as well just turn off losing items on death and play custom with a 0 reward multiplier.

Changes to making money on normal difficulties is decent at least. Potential to make good money on Pro/Nightmare, though you gotta really know your stuff for Nightmare mode since getting the ghost right is much harder. While we've been getting experience on Nightmare, I feel we're still a bit off from being able to reliably get ghosts right on it, so it's probably back down to Pro for a bit so we can actually make some money. I dunno about ya'll, but I completely ran out of money, haha. Made some back the last play session with Elite, but I really gotta get it back up so I can reliably buy gear again when I die.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah liking the Crucifix change, was always hard to tell how effective the two of them in the ghost area was covering. In a small room it was easy to place but a corridor, foyer, hallway or large room didn't know for sure. Plus a room like the sport gym hall in the school, didn't know if it was reliable to even put them down on the off chance the ghost was spawned outside the radius.

Also cool on the making the ways to identify a specific ghost better than before, and nice Rev back to it's former glory.

[Moonface]

Out of everything listed in the patch notes, these are the things I like the most:

• Small tent cloth is now translucent - I hope this means you can see outside the tent while hiding inside it. I think it'll be so cool to actually have a hiding spot in this game where you can see the ghost and everything else going on, since normally hiding spots block your sight entirely so all you have is sound to go off of.
  
• When placing the crucifix, you can now see the range of its effect on the environment - This is neat just because I have no clue how much distance a crucifix covers because I can never remember the range it actually covers. Judging by DL's post it seems a common problem. XD
  

-Obake changing form when hunting is cool as hell. Too bad it can't shapeshift into a player though as a normal thing. This also encourages people to "git gud" at looping/avoiding a ghost during a hunt instead of hiding, so that you can see it shapeshift.

I hope the form can change to ones with different poses, because it'd be hilarious to see someone looping the ghost around a kitchen counter only for it to shift into a form that crawls which means you can no longer see it over the counter and have no idea where it is. XD

Looking at the other ghost changes, the Hantu one concerns me a little only because the patch notes make it sound like cold breath is different for a Hantu due to the Hantu cold breath visuals have been improved note, in which case that would make it stupidly easy to know you have a Hantu, especially now that the cold breath appears in all rooms. I'm assuming it's just a weird way the devs wrote that cold breath visuals in general have been improved though and that it isn't attached to the one specifically caused by a Hantu.

Not a huge fan of the custom difficulty changes at all. In no way should you get less rewards for playing the game at its most brutally difficult than you can get for playing normally on Professional. Absolutely stupid change that's going to completely kill player interest in custom difficulty outside of getting the trophies. With the rewards being so pathetically low now, might as well just turn off losing items on death and play custom with a 0 reward multiplier.

Changes to making money on normal difficulties is decent at least. Potential to make good money on Pro/Nightmare, though you gotta really know your stuff for Nightmare mode since getting the ghost right is much harder. While we've been getting experience on Nightmare, I feel we're still a bit off from being able to reliably get ghosts right on it, so it's probably back down to Pro for a bit so we can actually make some money. I dunno about ya'll, but I completely ran out of money, haha. Made some back the last play session with Elite, but I really gotta get it back up so I can reliably buy gear again when I die.

I was a little iffy on the reductions to custom difficulty payouts, but hopefully the second part of this update comes soon to add in the new harder stuff with really good payouts, which for some reason I appear to have left out of the patch notes:

In the second part of this major update (coming soonTM), we’ll be adding something special for those wanting a regular, harder challenge than Nightmare and something super special!

Another change that could be fun now that we know crucifixes have a visible range is if on harder difficulties, the range gets reduced every time it stops a hunt, since the crucifix is damaged every time that happens until it is no longer usable. Would be great to know that in smaller rooms a crucifix isn't going to be a free pass on hunts three times in a row if the range goes down each time to a point that it doesn't cover a whole room at some point before running out.

[Dragon Lord]

Obake can actually change form to its own current form, but in a different position. For example, if you have the crawling baby ghost, it can actually change to the standing baby ghost. Kind of funny to see it go from crawling to standing, and then back down to crawling.

Hantu freezing breath visual isn't for the player -- the Hantu itself has freezing breath that you can see if you watch it during a hunt. They improved the visuals of its own freezing breath so that it's easier to see. Before you'd only be able to see its freezing breath when it was in its own room, but that also meant that it had its super speed boost, but now you'll be able to see the Hantu's breath no matter what room its in. It's another change that encourages players to be a little braver by looping the Hantu for a little bit.

I just don't think it's a good idea to actually punish players for playing games at their hardest. Bandai Namco loves to do this in Tales games as well by making it so you get significantly reduced EXP and money after battle on the harder difficulties, making the games extremely tedious when playing it at its hardest. x24 difficulty will give like $200 now if you get a perfect game (ghost correct, all 3* photos, find the bone), which you can basically just get by playing on Professional at least (Intermediate might give close to that as well, making it even sadder).

Oh, one other change I forgot to comment on was the change to the doors in Willow Street House. Thank god. It was so stupid that unlike literally every other map in the game, the fingerprints in Willow would show up near the very top of the doors instead of in the middle/near the doorknob.

[Mr EliteL]

Ah, that's when the fingerprints were showing up on the top of a door. When I usually just check around the door handle height or slightly higher to see any, it was the Willow house making me miss them, then you found them after. That was silly.

[Moonface]

Obake can actually change form to its own current form, but in a different position. For example, if you have the crawling baby ghost, it can actually change to the standing baby ghost. Kind of funny to see it go from crawling to standing, and then back down to crawling.

Good enough for me. Position/pose changes was what I wanted most from the change for the reasons I already gave.

Thinking of alternate things a ghost could do in a hunt, it'd be cool if there was a ghost that will turn invisible if it spots you so you can't tell where it is. Actually might be better to do it if the ghost is chasing you and has line of sight for 3+ seconds or something so that way there's enough time for the player to know it's actually a hunt and not an event or something, plus it would avoid the issue of the ghost just disappearing from spotting you without the player knowing the ghost saw them in the first place. Guess it depends on how punishing you want this idea to be.

Hantu freezing breath visual isn't for the player -- the Hantu itself has freezing breath that you can see if you watch it during a hunt. They improved the visuals of its own freezing breath so that it's easier to see. Before you'd only be able to see its freezing breath when it was in its own room, but that also meant that it had its super speed boost, but now you'll be able to see the Hantu's breath no matter what room its in. It's another change that encourages players to be a little braver by looping the Hantu for a little bit.

Ah, I didn't know that ghost had visible breath. I actually don't think I know/remember any particular quirks ghosts visibly exhibit during hunts actually, probably because I tend to either a) hide or b) die when a hunt happens. Last thing I'm ever doing in a hunt is eyeballing the ghost for hints on what type it is.

I just don't think it's a good idea to actually punish players for playing games at their hardest. Bandai Namco loves to do this in Tales games as well by making it so you get significantly reduced EXP and money after battle on the harder difficulties, making the games extremely tedious when playing it at its hardest. x24 difficulty will give like $200 now if you get a perfect game (ghost correct, all 3* photos, find the bone), which you can basically just get by playing on Professional at least (Intermediate might give close to that as well, making it even sadder).

Yeah, thinking on it more the custom difficulty could easily be tweaked so that adding only difficulty adjustments onto it will give higher payouts. By all means lower payments for settings that are for shits and giggles, but anything that is just making it harder shouldn't be that hard to balance alongside the regular difficulties, since the difficulty flags being added in custom games could be compared to the flags in the other difficulties to determine where it lies if it doesn't surpass Nightmare or figure out the payment fairly if it is higher than Nightmare. Right now the only incentive to play with a 24x difficulty is for that trophy or if you care more for the challenge than the reward, but neither of those are going to be long-term things most players will be doing.

Thinking of it, is anyone here who plays this ever going to try the 24x trophy challenge? I considered it at one point but that was before I got the rude awakening I got when I played the small maps in single player to try and do the Halloween event, so I have no clue if I'd ever have the balls to stuff myself into Asylum on 24x difficulty.

Ah, that's when the fingerprints were showing up on the top of a door. When I usually just check around the door handle height or slightly higher to see any, it was the Willow house making me miss them, then you found them after. That was silly.

I never actually knew the fingerprints in Willow were spawning at the top of doors. In the rare chance I had a UV light to look for prints I just never saw any so would assume there just were none. XD

[Moonface]

Phasmophobia - Tempest Hotfix v0.8.0.3 | Custom Game Penalty Removed!
It appears the changes made to Custom Difficulty have been unpopular enough since their rollout in the Tempest update that the developers have opted to remove the penalty changes and instead look into better ways to balance the modes earnings alongside the other difficulties in the game:

Welcome back! We've got an update for you.

REWARD CHANGES

Firstly we'd like to apologize. In our haste to remove money and XP farmers from the game, we penalized our Custom Difficulty goers way too harshly and bypassed the core concept of what custom was originally advertised as "Play your way".

In the long term, we will be rebalancing the entirety of Custom Difficulty's reward multipliers, to make sure that they are fairer, not overly rewarding when lower risk is taken, and stop cheesy tactics to farm easy rewards.

Today, we're removing the -60% reduction for Custom games, and adding the following until the rebalancing is finalized, early next year with 0.8.1: https://i.imgur.com/2Vc2xMY.png

Custom Reward Multipliers will now have a maximum cap of x15, displayed with the actual multiplier beside it in brackets.

Incorrectly identifying the ghost type will lower your multiplier to the next default difficulty (rounding down). E.g. 5x > 4x or 3.7x > 3x

Changes:

• Some Ouija board questions have had their sanity reductions increased, as they were much too powerful for the sanity trade-off
  • Ghost location – 50% (Previously 40%)
    
  • Bone location – 50% (Previously 20%)
    
• The Haunted Mirror's sanity drain has been adjusted, so that you can't entirely avoid the sanity drain with a ~1-second peek and still reap the reward. This should also encourage slightly longer peers into the paranormal realm.
  • The Mirror will now drain a minimum of 20% sanity per use
    
• Adjusted player freezing breath visuals so it will no longer block your view when walking too close to it
  
• Smudge Sticks will now visually animate much more accurately with the timing of their gameplay effect
  
• Improved Smudge Sticks' smoke effect
  
• Adjusted several inconsistent text capitalizations in English
  
• Rebaked Sunny Meadows
  

FIXES

• The DOTS and death room ghost will no longer be the wrong ghost model
  
• The reset save button will now work
  
• Sanity will now stop draining when you are in a lit area
  
• Snow will no longer fall inside the Bleasdale attic
  
• Willow front room window fingerprints will now be photographable
  

Removed several sky light leaks in the following locations:

• Willow
  
• Tanglewood
  
• Edgefield
  
• Ridgeview
  
• Grafton
  
• Sunny Meadows

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Glad to see that the penalties have been removed and that the developers intend to rebalance the earnings in Custom games over the long term. I also saw a developer comment on the current inventory management system in the lobby where they shared that that entire system is going to be changed based on the feedback they've been getting since it was implemented, which is good because I personally hate the current inventory system.

[Dragon Lord]

Glad they are reverting the unfairly punishing nerf to Custom Difficulty. Like I said before, it's absolutely STUPID to punish players for playing the game at the absolute hardest level it can be. When you could make as much money getting a perfect game on fucking Intermediate as you could x24 difficulty, something was horribly wrong.

50% Sanity for asking where the bone is?!?! What the absolute hell is that? The Bone doesn't do anything game-play wise other than give you some additional money, why the hell should it cost you half of your sanity to ask where it is? Sometimes it's the only reasonable way to find the bone on High School or Sunny Meadows. Holy shit what a stupid change. Hoping they get a lot of negative feedback on that and they revert that one too.

They make a smart decision only to follow it up with a completely idiotic one.