My thoughts on the state of the game's balance and how to fix it

[Terotrous]

So I think pretty much everyone would agree that things between the Ghostbusters and the Ghosts are not balanced currently. If you're new, you probably think the Ghosts are super weak, whereas if you've been around a while, you probably think the Ghosts are far too strong. The latter is correct, but the reason for both perceptions is actually the same. It's the trap break mechanic.

For those who aren't familiar with it, when you attempt to trap a ghost, they get to play a little minigame to escape the trap. If they pass it successfully they gain a significant amount of invincibility and a speed boost, and the trap that was used against them instantly has its battery fully drained.

There is an option in the game's accessibility settings that makes the minigame significantly easier to win. With this setting turned on, most good players will escape the trap every time. Thus, when considering the game's balance we must assume that Ghosts will never fail to break the trap. This is why new players think the Ghost is weak, because low-level Ghosts rarely or never escape the trap, but once they find out about the setting they always will.

There is a failsafe in the game that prevents the game from being completely unwinnable against a ghost who knows how to escape the trap. A ghost can only escape traps twice per life, the third trap is guaranteed. Every time the ghost respawns, they get two more breaks. However, this means that to catch a good player without destroying any of their rifts, you must trap them 12 times (3 times per rift + 3 more times for the last life). This is functionally impossible to achieve before the timer will run out against a good player.

Clearly, the problem is that the ghost gets FAR too many trap breaks. You can attempt to destroy their rifts to cut down on this, but this is very slow and allows the Ghost to quickly haunt the building while you're doing it. Even in games where my Rifts are all broken, I am almost never trapped even 3 times to guarantee the catch on my first life. It's also kind of dumb that if I say, had to do 2 breaks early in the match, the optimal strategy is to deliberately get caught to refresh my trap breaks for the final sequence.

The way to fix the game is to slightly alter the way the trap breaks work. Rather than the Ghost getting 2 trap breaks per life, the way it should work is "Only the first X traps encountered by the Ghost are escapable". For most Ghosts, the value of X should be 2. This means that the Ghost can escape the first two traps used on it in the game, but all other traps after that become guaranteed, even if the ghost fails either of the first two traps. For Drake and Samhein, this number should be 3. This nerf hits Samhein harder than the others so he should get one more break (however, Samhein is crazily OP currently so him being hit hard by this change is desriable), and Drake is just bad and deserves one more escape to help him out a little.

This would help force the Ghosts to play somewhat smarter, rather than simply brute forcing the civilians because they literally don't care at all if they get trapped. Samhein would have to focus on using his unique abilities (he still retains better tether escapes based on map control) rather than just constantly spamming shield and waiting out the clock. Some further changes might be needed (as mentioned above, I almost never get trapped 3 times in a match), but this would at least bring the game far closer to a state of balance.

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

The problem is that ghostbusters generally have no clue how to play the game properly. I've seen it with people with tenure level 5 even.

If it's too hard to catch the ghost and he's owning everyone, go after his rifts. He'll either have to defend them, forcing a confrontation, or let them go, meaning he loses a life. This specially is crucial when fighting a specially ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Samhain player.

Another thing I almost never see is letting go of the tether before the ghost breaks it. Almost everyone that plays ghostbusters goes into tunnel vision mode and just keeps shooting instead of letting go of the trigger.

Ghosts are strong but nowhere near as what people make them out to be. A mildly competent coordinated team can catch a great ghost player, the problem is almost everybody in the ghostbuster team is out there doing their own thing.

[Terotrous]

Attacking the rifts just isn't that strong of a strategy. Whenever the busters attack my rifts I just let them have it and take the time to haunt since I know I'm not going to be in any danger. I can usually get like 25% haunt meter in the time it takes them to destroy a rift, so unless they're finding all the rifts instantly I'm probably going to get 100% haunt with 1 rift left, and there's no way they're trapping me 3 times in 75 seconds.

Plus, in a game like this, if you know the strategy the opponent will use, that's a big advantage. If they're just going to beeline for my rifts I can be way more aggressive with my early haunting, or I could even risk engaging them to steal a rift back. It's more threatening when the opponent team has multiple options that keep me guessing.

For Samhein in particular, if you're attacking a rift and he's not close by, he can just drop a Catalyst. This gives the busters the awkward choice of leaving the rift to chase the catalyst, which will spawn a bunch of Drudge, or breaking the rift and letting the Catalyst undo all their work. The optimal strategy is probably to split up, but Samhein is not particularly afraid of 2 Ghostbusters, you really need 3 or more to be threatening. You could maybe leave 1 on the rift, but you have to hope Samhein doesn't get to them first.

I do think there is room to further optimize Ghostbuster play. Something not a lot of people do is to try to cut off the Ghost's escape options. For example, if the ghost is in a room with a wall portal, someone should head towards the exit to the portal rather than all rushing that room. I also use the tether trick you mentioned, though the ghost still gets a small speed boost from this and you can overheat your pack pretty quick doing it.

The problem here is that saying "well you just need 4 godlike Ghostbusters and it's fair" is that you don't have much control over your team unless you have a full premade. Getting a new player or god forbid a bot is pretty common and shouldn't be a death sentence against a competent ghost.

In any case, all I know is that in the last 3 days as Ghost, I have only lost once (and that was on Drake, who kinda sucks). That's pretty concerning. And I'm not saying I'm just godlike or anything, I'm still learning new tricks and I can definitely further optimize my ghost play. However, I have enough experience that I can already recognize a number of "checkmate situations" where the Ghostbusters have already lost long before the match is actually over, for example, if the countdown starts and I have used no trap breaks, I've already won. They're not trapping me 3 times in 90 seconds when I don't even have to bother haunting. I've also played a fair amount of Buster and against pretty much any ghost who can hit the trap break 100%, the game generally feels unwinnable pretty much no matter what you do.

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

Originally posted by Terotrous:

Attacking the rifts just isn't that strong of a strategy. Whenever the busters attack my rifts I just let them have it and take the time to haunt since I know I'm not going to be in any danger. I can usually get like 25% haunt meter in the time it takes them to destroy a rift, so unless they're finding all the rifts instantly I'm probably going to get 100% haunt with 1 rift left, and there's no way they're trapping me 3 times in 75 seconds.

Plus, in a game like this, if you know the strategy the opponent will use, that's a big advantage. If they're just going to beeline for my rifts I can be way more aggressive with my early haunting, or I could even risk engaging them to steal a rift back. It's more threatening when the opponent team has multiple options that keep me guessing.

For Samhein in particular, if you're attacking a rift and he's not close by, he can just drop a Catalyst. This gives the busters the awkward choice of leaving the rift to chase the catalyst, which will spawn a bunch of Drudge, or breaking the rift and letting the Catalyst undo all their work. The optimal strategy is probably to split up, but Samhein is not particularly afraid of 2 Ghostbusters, you really need 3 or more to be threatening. You could maybe leave 1 on the rift, but you have to hope Samhein doesn't get to them first.

I do think there is room to further optimize Ghostbuster play. Something not a lot of people do is to try to cut off the Ghost's escape options. For example, if the ghost is in a room with a wall portal, someone should head towards the exit to the portal rather than all rushing that room. I also use the tether trick you mentioned, though the ghost still gets a small speed boost from this and you can overheat your pack pretty quick doing it.

The problem here is that saying "well you just need 4 godlike Ghostbusters and it's fair" is that you don't have much control over your team unless you have a full premade. Getting a new player or god forbid a bot is pretty common and shouldn't be a death sentence against a competent ghost.

In any case, all I know is that in the last 3 days as Ghost, I have only lost once (and that was on Drake, who kinda sucks). That's pretty concerning. And I'm not saying I'm just godlike or anything, I'm still learning new tricks and I can definitely further optimize my ghost play. However, I have enough experience that I can already recognize a number of "checkmate situations" where the Ghostbusters have already lost long before the match is actually over, for example, if the countdown starts and I have used no trap breaks, I've already won. They're not trapping me 3 times in 90 seconds when I don't even have to bother haunting. I've also played a fair amount of Buster and against pretty much any ghost who can hit the trap break 100%, the game generally feels unwinnable pretty much no matter what you do.

I never said that you need a godlike team of Ghostbusters to win, just a group with some self awareness that realizes what the objectives of the game are.

If you hunt rifts as a group you can destroy them in seconds, even against a Samhain player. Every time I find one I spam pings but only sometimes I get teammates coming to help. If I have a tether on a ghost most of the time my teammates will just start shooting instead of throwing a trap. Stuff like that.

At the end of the day it's an FPS game and like every other multiplayer FPS you need to have some basic self awareness and understand how it is played in order to win instead of saying "ghost OP"

[Terotrous]

Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus Rex:

I never said that you need a godlike team of Ghostbusters to win, just a group with some self awareness that realizes what the objectives of the game are.

Eh, I've fought many groups that were pretty solid and still beat them pretty easily. If there is a certain level of skill that can reasonably counter the ghosts, only an extremely small percentage of the playerbase has it.

Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus Rex:

If you hunt rifts as a group you can destroy them in seconds

With all 4 players it's probably about 30 seconds, but it also takes time for the players to get there, so around 45-50 seconds is probably about the average time from a rift being found to its destruction, assuming the players all focus it down.

Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus Rex:

At the end of the day it's an FPS game and like every other multiplayer FPS you need to have some basic self awareness and understand how it is played in order to win instead of saying "ghost OP"

There are definitely some noobs out there, but I've played both on and against some pretty good teams. Even then, it feels like the Ghostbusters have to play absolutely perfect to have any chance to win if the Ghost is good. The ghost just gets to make so many mistakes (oh, you trapped me? What a shame, I only have 10 more traps to give before I lose), while the time limit for the busters is so absurdly tight I almost never see a match end before the final countdown unless the Ghost is a complete noob.

[Terotrous]

Something else that bares discussing is the balance between the ghosts themselves. As pretty much anyone who has played the game can attest, the variety in Ghosts that you encounter when playing online is extremely low. At least 80% of players are using either Ectoplast or Samhein, and at least half the roster I've never seen except in matches where I'm using them.

As such, I'll summarise my thoughts on some of the different ghosts. The TLDR version of this whole topic is "nerf trap breakouts but make other non-top tier ghosts better / more unique".

Ectoplast:

Ectoplast is clearly extremely good. It's extremely fast and hard to catch, it haunts the stage really well, and it has great abilities. The basic gameplan for this ghost is to generally try to avoid the busters while haunting the stage and it has all the tools it needs to do that well, though it can also fight fairly well when it needs to, often doing a better job than more dedicated "fighter" ghosts. In a certain sense, this ghost is probably too much of a "do everything" character, where it's so good by every relevant metric that it's hard for the other ghosts to compete, though you wouldn't really want to just nerf it into the ground because it's also one of the only ghosts that's actually fun to play. If this ghost is going to get any adjustment I think the correct change is to remove the "easier tether escape" and give that to another ghost that needs more help.


Ghouly:

Ghouly lacks identity. I think the idea behind this ghost is that it's intended to be kind of an all-rounder but it neither fights nor escapes as well as Ectoplast, so it basically just feels like "Ectoplast but way worse". I think one of the biggest issues with Ghouly is its ultimate, which is almost certainly the lowest impact ultimate in the game. It comes out super slow and takes forever to down even a single buster, it's very common for Ghouly to get the jump on someone with this move and still lose a 1v1, which just feels bad. I think the correct fix for Ghouly is that its Ultimate should have invincibility. It would still be pretty weak in terms of impact, but this would at least make it a pretty good tool for 1v1s. I think getting downed by Ghouly should also probably be worse compared to other ghosts, probably by making it take like 50% longer to pick yourself back up, this would help cement its identity as more of an assassin-type character who wants to pick off lone ghostbusters.


Basher:

Basher is all right, but it's still kind of outclassed. Basher has one singular problem and that's that it does too little damage to busters. Its primary takes 5 hits to down a buster, which gives him a significantly slower time to down a buster compared to many other Ghosts, despite being a ghost that's intended to fight a lot. If it was 4 hits he'd be one of the better Ghosts. I also feel like he should probably have some kind of incentive to down busters, for example maybe every time he downs a buster he shaves 20 seconds off the cooldown for his ultimate or something.


Howler:

Howler is another ghost that's crippled by a single flaw, in this case it's the "longer scare cooldown". Everything Howler does is extremely slow (it also has very long windups on its skills) and it just makes the ghost feel stiff and bad to play. The idea of a ghost with a better, longer-ranged scare attack is interesting, but it's pointless if it comes with such a huge drawback that makes it inferior to the regular scare attack that all other ghosts have.


Poltergeist:

Besides Ectoplast and Samhein, Poltergeist is the other top tier ghost. In many ways, it feels like an Ectoplast that fights slightly better. A lot of this comes down to just having great abilties that activate fast, in particular Zappy's secondary might be the best secondary in the game. It comes out instantly, it's very hard to avoid, and it combos incredibly well with its primary. It kind of goes to show that one of the main things that goes into making a good ghost is not giving all of their skills obnoxiously long wind-up animations.


Glutton:

Glutton is probably the worst Ghost, or at least the one that feels the worst to play. Glutton's main issue is that its secondary is essentially a "dead ability". Its secondary has no utility whatsoever other than to charge its ultimate, which means it basically has one less skill compared to every other ghost. This is very easy to fix, pretty much the only change this ghost needs is that its secondary should also recharge PKE. This would not replace haunting objects, for starters it doesn't hide you and you're still very open while doing it, but it would make the general gameplan of this ghost feel much better, as you could use a kind of "haunt -> eat -> haunt" strategy when alone in rooms, rather than having the secondary just be a pure time-waster ability.


Possessor:

Possessor is fine. This ghost is probably 4th best after the big three of Samhein / Ecto / Polter. Like Drake, it is also kind of a "worse Ectoplast" but not by as much as its abilities are somewhat better. I think the biggest issue is that it feels somewhat boring to use as Possession is kind of an underwhelming ability. I think a lot of the issue is the PKE drain, which prevents you from ever being able to have too much fun while in human form, and tends to turn the ability into more of an "instant horrify civilian button" more than anything else. IMO, possessing humans probably shouldn't drain PKE at all after it's initiated. This maybe has the issue of having the busters potentially have a hard time flushing you out of a human if they already burned all their stuns, though perhaps this is a reasonable issue that the busters should have to take into account when playing against ghosts who can possess.


Watcher:

Watcher is cool. I think of all the ghosts, he's one of the ones that best feels like he has his own identity, owing largely to his unique mini dash from using his primary twice. The only issue to my mind is that you have to miss a primary attack to use the dash, I think you should still be able to dash even if your primary hits, this would give him some really interesting movement options and just make him a lot more fun to play.


Samhein:

Obviously, Samhein is incredibly OP. I don't think much even really needs to be said about this, it's very widely recognized to be the case. He's a fantastic fighter and is virtually impossible to catch, so the fact that he can't hide really doesn't matter. I think the change I described in the first post whereby you would get far fewer trap escapes is all that's needed to fix him, though, the problem is just that he can engage the busters with so little risk that there's no real nuance to playing him.

[Manda]

The reason most players are ectoplast and overload is because those are the only tho ghost classes available 'out of the box'. All the others are level locked, all the way up to Lv80 for the Watcher.
And I'm willing to guess that the majority of players don't even want to play ghost at all and don't even go in to change their class type from the ectoplast or overload after doing it once.

So unless you run into someone that's playing ghost at Tenure V Lv100, don't expect to see a lot of variety.

[Terotrous]

You're not wrong, the fact that the game re-locks the ghosts when you prestige is stupid (in fact, everything about this game's prestige system is stupid), but when you consider that those two are also the best it gives even less incentive to mess with the others.

Still, when you do see people on the other ghosts, they're usually low-level players who probably just unlocked them. They then play that ghost once, figure out "wow, this is so much worse than Ectoplast" and just switch right back.

[Manda]

Overlord Samhain can be pretty much tamed by having as much tether creation speed, and tether health as you can get. Other than that, if you see him raise his hand, or already with his hand up, he's dropping Black Lightning. Just run sideways until you hear the crash of it going off. Toss a trap at him and fire.

That's literally it. That's all it takes to turn him from OP to average.

[Terotrous]

Originally posted by Manda:

Toss a trap at him and fire.

You forgot "repeat 11 more times". Also, "drop everything if he spawns a Catalyst and rush it down or you insta-lose".

He's not realistically that hard to beat once, the real issue is being able to catch him 12 times before time runs out, with the amount that he can stall (I think the variant that has the shield is the strongest one, since it wastes so much time).

[Manda]

As Catt says, constantly, "focus on the rifts". That isn't just for Overload. That's for every match you're a Buster. If everyone is running around chasing the ghost like Scooby-Doo the entire time, they're being about as useful as a chihuahua dragging its butt across the carpet.
Only one Buster should be chasing the ghost as a harasser to occupy them while the others focus on rifts. Any ghost player that tries to defend or move a rift with 3 busters on it is asking to be put in the box.
As for the Overlord's Ultimate, the catalyst's are in your face. You can't miss them. One Buster by them self can break it in about 10 seconds without a damage build. Less if they are using a damage build.

Learn the artifact spawns. Be observant. If you find an empty artifact, 9 times out of 10 they hid the rift near by. Use you PKE meter. If you see an exposed rift, get on it immediately. Exposed rifts add a large multiplier to haunt buildup for the area they are exposed in. And the dredges popping out and expect a lot of haunt buildup quickly.

[Terotrous]

Originally posted by Manda:

As Catt says, constantly, "focus on the rifts". That isn't just for Overload. That's for every match you're a Buster. If everyone is running around chasing the ghost like Scooby-Doo the entire time, they're being about as useful as a chihuahua dragging its butt across the carpet.
Only one Buster should be chasing the ghost as a harasser to occupy them while the others focus on rifts. Any ghost player that tries to defend or move a rift with 3 busters on it is asking to be put in the box.

A single buster is no threat whatsoever to the ghost, he can easily just slime the buster and do whatever. If I know there's only one buster on me I'll often just haunt the room while the buster gets up and then down him again, you actually get a decent haunt bonus for downing a buster. Samhein can also easily put up a Catalyst if you put only one buster on him since he'll just down the buster while the Catalyst opens.

Focusing on the rifts will typically lead to a match where you do get all 3 rifts, but have no captures on the ghost when the final countdown starts, at which point you have lost, guaranteed, because you're not trapping the ghost 3 times in 90 seconds. It is considerably more optimal to break 2 rifts and trap the ghost twice, which gives you 75 seconds to get one trap on the ghost, which is doable. I mean sure, take the third rift if you can get it, but if you've already got 2 the ghost becomes the priority.

Also, while risky, taking the rift back from 3 busters is definitely doable with Ectoplast and Poltergeist's ultimates, both of which can instantly disable an entire room. Doubly so if they are convinced you definitely won't go for it and thus aren't paying attention. I think the correct choice in this situation is almost always to detonate the rift rather than move it, though, moving it is too risky, but detonating it gets quite a lot of extra value.

Incidentally, speaking of Tenure, Tenure is far more harmful to the busters than the ghost, since while the ghost has access to the full power of Ectoplast or Samhein from level 1, the busters lose all of their gear upgrades and are heavily gimped until they get back to level 30 or so, so that slants things even more heavily in the ghost's favor.

There's also just the inherent issue that beating a good ghost requires four good busters and this is rare. If you have a room with 4 good players and one noob, any time one of the four good players is the ghost they will win, since the busters are basically down a player. Obviously, when the noob is the ghost they will get utterly destroyed, but this still gives the ghost an 80% win rate. This isn't really a balance issue per se but it shows the danger of assuming all max level pro players when thinking about the balance of the game, since almost no one will actually experience the game this way.

[Manda]

I don't know what more advice to offer. I've shared everything that works for me, and works reliably well. There's nothing more I can add.

[Terotrous]

Sure, it's not bad advice or anything, but there's not really a "magic bullet" that suddenly makes it easy to beat good ghost players. One of the biggest issues (and this applies to any competitive game) is that if the opponent knows which strategy you will use, things become much easier for them because they don't have to focus on defending against the strategies they know you won't use. If you decide to leave the ghost mostly alone and focus on the rifts, the ghost can play far more aggressively because they don't have to fear getting caught. It's essential to remain at least somewhat unpredictable.

Granted, some of these issues, like the one with having players of different skill levels in a room, are probably unfixable, but that may not totally matter if the game is fun. This is why my suggestions tend to focus fairly heavily on what feels fun to play rather than what might theoretically be the most balanced. One of the least fun situations is when the match feels hopeless, which is why I think giving the ghost access to so many trap breaks is bad. The intensity of a match that could go either way is more thrilling than a match that is a foregone conclusion because we know the ghost still has 2 trap breaks and there's only 70 seconds left. Even if this might tilt things very slightly in favor of the ghostbusters at top level play I think it would make the game significantly more fun for pretty much everyone.

Similarly, for the ghosts, you could probably argue that the bad ghosts like Glutton are actually pretty well-balanced, but no one plays them in part because they're just not very fun. I'd like it to be the case that people look at the ghost roster and think "oh, the playstyle of that ghost is really cool, I want to try that out" even if maybe it might be somewhat broken. With the change I suggested in the first post, you could make the weaker ghosts more powerful (and thus more fun to use) without having to worry too much about the busters suddenly having no chance to win, since as long as they've gotten 2 traps on the ghost at some point they still have a chance in the final sequence.

[wolf_o_fate]

the overlord ghost type needs to be nerfed really badly.

[Jaregon]

i don't know, even with the auto mash button thing on, and helping by hitting my button. I can't seem to break out of traps. I sometimes do break out of a trap but its around 1/10 times. I don't know if there are other ghosts that are better at breaking out of traps, or other mechanics behind it.