Phasmophobia | 2024 Roadmap and Beyond...

[Moonface]

Given that Insym is a streamer I'm going to assume he has a very beefy PC so if he is getting performance issues with this game it clearly isn't just a matter of your laptop being unable to run the game (which makes no sense when the requirements for the game to run have never changed and you were fine in the past). It also means that the developers are going to have to address it because if that issue happens on the console versions it isn't going to look good, because whereas on PC someone might speculate if their hardware is having trouble with the game that isn't going to be the case on console; people will just immediately and rightfully blame the game.

[Dragon Lord]

From CJ said during one of Insym's streams, they fully plan on updating the PC version and the console version at the same time due to the cross-play functionality. Otherwise you have the weird situation where PC players are cross-playing with people who don't have the same content at them.

So for Insym's computer, last I knew he was running a 3090. Unless he upgraded to a 4000-series, but I can't remember if he ever mentioned it. I'm running a 3080 myself and can't say I have had any freezing issues with the game, but then again it has been a while since I played and the game might be having that issue more and more now than it was a few months ago. I plan to play some with my sister soon, so I'll be able to see then I suppose.

[Moonface]

From CJ said during one of Insym's streams, they fully plan on updating the PC version and the console version at the same time due to the cross-play functionality. Otherwise you have the weird situation where PC players are cross-playing with people who don't have the same content at them.

Good point, and something that I should've totally realized when questioning the lack of cross-save.

[Dragon Lord]

Man, I re-read my post there and I really need to stop posting on here before giving myself time to wake up properly, haha.

But yeah, it'd cause a lot of problems if you had PC players getting updates sooner. Though it also would be kind of hilarious if they added a new ghost and PC got it 1-2 weeks before console and console players would just be horribly confused by what the hell is happening, haha. Especially if it was one that had an extremely powerful ability that made it super dangerous. Like a reverse Revenant. Instead of being able to pin-point your location based on your flashlight being on and being able to super speed its way to you, it would instead be able to pin-point your location any where on the map if you turn your flash light off and be able to get to you in mere seconds.

...Actually that'd kind of be a cool ghost if they changed it so flashlights have a battery. That way keeping your flashlight on at all times would work against you, but turning it off during a hunt would risk getting you killed if you didn't know what ghost it was. Give it and Rev two of the same evidence so that way you end up with both of them as a choice and have to make a 50/50 decision on whether or keep your flashlight on during the hunt or turn it off.

[Moonface]

But yeah, it'd cause a lot of problems if you had PC players getting updates sooner. Though it also would be kind of hilarious if they added a new ghost and PC got it 1-2 weeks before console and console players would just be horribly confused by what the hell is happening, haha. Especially if it was one that had an extremely powerful ability that made it super dangerous. Like a reverse Revenant. Instead of being able to pin-point your location based on your flashlight being on and being able to super speed its way to you, it would instead be able to pin-point your location any where on the map if you turn your flash light off and be able to get to you in mere seconds.

Differences in experiences could maybe still happen if there's a bug on the console versions that isn't present in the PC one due to differences in platform requiring different coding or something, and considering most if not all AAA games have different patches for console and PC I'd be surprised to not see that happen here with a developer that is considerably smaller than most others out there.

...Actually that'd kind of be a cool ghost if they changed it so flashlights have a battery. That way keeping your flashlight on at all times would work against you, but turning it off during a hunt would risk getting you killed if you didn't know what ghost it was. Give it and Rev two of the same evidence so that way you end up with both of them as a choice and have to make a 50/50 decision on whether or keep your flashlight on during the hunt or turn it off.

If it wasn't tied to any specific ghost as a mechanic, it could work that flashlight batteries could be based upon difficulty. Dying Light for example has the flashlight do different things depending on difficulty, ranging from infinite battery (Easy) to just a dimmer light when the battery is empty (Medium) to outright turning off when the battery is empty along with malfunctioning at times while on (Hard).

[Dragon Lord]

Difficulty affecting how your flashlight works would be an interesting idea for the game. I'm actually surprised they didn't make No Flashlight a setting forInsanity mode when they introduced it. Then again I guess that does take away one of the Rev's abilities, so maybe they felt that would actually make it easier to face a Rev than harder, haha.

How about a troll ghost? When it starts hunting, instead of spawning in the ghost room, it will randomly spawn in one of the hiding spots on the map. You could be running for a closet to hide and SURPRISE! Ghost decided to come out of the closet.

Would also be a hilarious way to punish those players that just go hide right away and stay there all game. We also need a ghost that can pull players out of the truck and into the house to punish those truck campers.

[Moonface]

The best way to solve truck camping would be to just have equipment inside it begin to malfunction outside of hunts to encourage players to spend more time inside the house. The systems are already in place with stuff bugging out when a hunt happens, and would encourage teamwork since camping the truck is going to hurt the entire team when the equipment stops being useful in it. A player dying instead who camps the truck is still a hindrance too, but it would suck if someone has to go AFK and dies because of it. At least keeping the truck a safe space allows for AFK to happen, or even just making it that being AFK outside the truck but not in the house works that the timer for the equipment to break neither increases nor decreases. If you're in the truck, it'll increase after a set amount of time and then decreases when that same player goes into the house. If multiple players leave the house for the truck the timer could maybe go slower or something since that's likely happening for everyone to go grab equipment, figure out a plan, etc.

[Dragon Lord]

I feel like they tried to encourage people not to camp the truck when they made it so you could use a video cam while holding it, instead of having to place on in the room and go back to the truck to watch for Orbs and D.O.T.S, the problem is that people still truck camp just because they are too scared to go into the house at all.

Another thing is that someone staying in the truck actually doesn't hinder the team all that much, because that person's sanity will not drop at all (unless someone dies, in which case the entire team is hit with a... I think 25% sanity drop) making it so that the average team sanity stays higher. Perhaps the solution would be to make it so that sanity continues to drain while outside the house/in the truck, making it so that someone who camps the truck truly is hurting the team by continuing to lose sanity, but not actually going in to help locate the ghost/find evidence. I know Demonologist does that, maybe Phas should adopt that as well.

[Moonface]

I forgot about sanity as a mechanic entirely, but yeah just having the equipment in the truck bug out doesn't address the sanity issue that also comes from truck camping. Perhaps as the equipment starts to bug out more and more (I think it progressively getting worse would do well to show a player they're spending too much time in the truck) the sanity of that player also starts to drop with it. Make the drop faster on higher difficulties too to compensate for the already busted sanity screen, since that isn't going to be able to start screwing up as camping time increases.

That hallucination mechanic could also be used for truck campers too when it comes in. Perhaps on higher difficulties the info on the screens starts being different to someone truck camping but in a subtle way where they don't know if that's genuine or if they're starting to trigger the camping timer. Make the timer slightly random and the effects random and it might make it really hard for people to game the system by timing themselves to gain the maximum time in the truck and then replenishing it with house trips that involve just standing in the doorway or using the nearest hiding spot (although I'm sure a system could be put in where if a player is just camping in the house then their timer for the truck camp doesn't decrease as much compared to actually being active in the house).

[Dragon Lord]

I think overall having a mechanic that drags a person into the house if they spend too much time in the truck would be best, because that's the only way you can truly punish afkers in public lobbies who are just there to mooch exp/money off of the work of the other players. Sure, there's people who go afk for valid reasons, but a lot of times they aren't gone long, so they shouldn't have to worry about that. Just make it so if someone is in the truck for like...10-15 minutes, they get teleported into a random location in the house.

Though the devs could fix the afk problem by allowing you to kick players while in-game. Fixing the issue of people being too afraid of the game is... well, I don't even know why those people are playing the game in the first place.

[Moonface]

If someone is AFK for that long I'm tempted to say they should just be kicked from the game automatically, or at least pop a vote from players to kick them. Putting them into the house is really just waiting for them to get killed which would suck if they were the last player alive and everyone dead has to wait for them to be hunted, especially if that person has high sanity that needs to drain first before a hunt will begin. Especially if it's on a large map because unless the player is placed near the ghost room, a hunt might not even let the ghost reach that player. I recall how often on the old asylum map that a hunt would happen and none of us would see the ghost at all because it started with us in the lobby and the ghost room was on the lower floor far from any of the stairs. Putting them near the ghost room every time would be problematic if on a large map the ghost room hasn't been found yet or if the ghost is moving rooms as it would give an easy way to locate the ghost, especially if someone AFK's on purpose to easily find a ghost on somewhere like Sunny Meadows, especially if playing solo where finding the room could be really hard and time consuming.

[Dragon Lord]

It actually wouldn't take long for them to die because since they'd be the only player left alive, and the ghost hunts based on average team sanity, even at 100% sanity, the team average would be tanked.

Although that actually doesn't matter anyways, because every time a player dies, the rest of the team (no matter where you are) loses... I think a static 25% sanity. So with three dead players, an afk player would be reduced down to 25% sanity, which puts them in hunting range of any ghost in the game. The lowest sanity hunter is the Shade, which can only hunt at 30% or lower.

The actual only way that an afk player wouldn't be able to die in that scenario is if they were teleported into the ghost room, and the ghost happened to be a Shade, since Shades cannot hunt if anyone is in the ghost room with them. Though even then it would just take the Shade wandering into another room and then starting a hunt there to make it happen regardless.

The host being able to kick a player mid-investigation would work to solve the issue as well, though of course that also opens up the door for a lot of terrible griefing, such as a host waiting until everything was completed, only to kick the other three players and claim the prize for themselves. A voting system maybe, but I feel like causing the player to die would still be the best solution since that way they get punished by getting no money at the end, while the rest of the team (or at least those who survived the game) would still get their exp/money. Also if they happened to bring any items into the game, they would also lose those, while they wouldn't for being kicked from a game.

[Moonface]

It actually wouldn't take long for them to die because since they'd be the only player left alive, and the ghost hunts based on average team sanity, even at 100% sanity, the team average would be tanked.

Although that actually doesn't matter anyways, because every time a player dies, the rest of the team (no matter where you are) loses... I think a static 25% sanity. So with three dead players, an afk player would be reduced down to 25% sanity, which puts them in hunting range of any ghost in the game. The lowest sanity hunter is the Shade, which can only hunt at 30% or lower.

Wow, I really have forgotten a lot about how this game works.

Also, are moderators in a Steam store page post discussion mods for that particular game or just Steam in general? I just saw a mod comment in the post about the console ports saying that cross save may come later, but I don't know if that's someone involved in the game or just a random user spit balling since I dunno how Steam moderators work.

I wonder if the console port will utilize the speaker or lights on the DualSense controller in unique ways during hunts and stuff. It would be neat if when playing without a headset that regular game audio is on your regular speakers, but voice chat and spirit box responses are through the DualSense speaker. It would be cool to do since PS5 is going to let people functionally play the game without a headset. Xbox it seems doesn't have a microphone in their controller though so headsets are going to be required on that system, and would really make it the only platform requiring a headset since PC players may have a microphone without a headset either by having one separate or built-in in the case of laptops.

[Dragon Lord]

CJ did say that cross-save may be something they look into at a later time, but that's it. No confirmation or commitment to making cross-save a thing.

Yeah, there's a lot of potential for the game with the DualSense controller and all of its features, though I'm not sure if they are experienced enough/have the man-power to get around to making the game work with the DualSense. I guess time will tell, but I sadly fully expect this just to be a simple port of the game and the most work they'll do on it is maybe improve using a controller with the game compared to what it's like using one on the PC version right now.

[Moonface]

Hmm, good point on having the manpower to put into certain things that are more just extras rather than things that actually add to the overall game (especially since special DualSense stuff like that is going to only benefit a single platform). Maybe if the console port for PS5 sells well it'll be something they eventually add in as a QoL feature.