What was the design intention of player ghosts?

[Romløk]

I'm wondering why the developers included the green ghosts in the game? Do we know the reasoning?

From my perspective as a someone new to playing souls-likes, and still getting a handle on the controls, having this rolling, dashing, charging, blocking, sidestepping, pseudo-player constantly annihilating me and blocking my progress, I question the wisdom of including it - especially when spawned against low-level characters in a "tutorial" area.

If I hadn't already passed the 2 hours played mark, I would be sorely tempted to refund the game right now. Which would be a shame as I am otherwise enjoying it so far, but the green noob-ganker has been just that frustrating. :(

[Dimax-men]

Originally posted by Romløk:

From my perspective as a someone new to playing souls-likes, and still getting a handle on the controls, having this rolling, dashing, charging, blocking, sidestepping, pseudo-player constantly annihilating me and blocking my progress, I question the wisdom of including it - especially when spawned against low-level characters in a "tutorial" area.

Ghosts are dumb as a wooden plank, AI is not the strongest part of this game. You can easily kite them around something or make them fall into pits

[rasabt]

if this already brakes your will to play mate you might have chosen the wrong genre. it doesn't get easier ;)
that said, once you get used to how the ghost behaves (depending on what gear you gave him), he's quite easy to exploit.
you could always just get naked and kill yourself, losing your axioms, but getting the ghost out of the way in the process.

[Aetrion]

I think the ghosts are cool, they add an additional element of danger to the game by making it so that the more powerful your character becomes the more dangerous your ghosts are. It's a little turnabout that makes the game use all your dirty tricks against you. I don't think there is anything else to them than it just being cool to get to fight yourself every so often.

When it comes to souls-like games there is ultimately only one piece of advice that will carry you forward, and that is: "Get good". As dismissive as that sounds, your ghost isn't even close to the toughest enemy in the game, so don't look at it as a road block, look at it as a trial to overcome to be ready for what's ahead of you.

[OMNOMNOM BAGEL]

If you have a decent build going your ghost can get really annoying. If i die with my staff equipped he finds a liking in doing dodge attack with insane reach, stagger and around 45% max hp dmg.
TBH he's harder to beat than everything (including boss) else in the game.
But i like a punishment for dying and the ghost does not disappoint.

[Aetrion]

Yea, the ghost can become a real menace when your build becomes powerful enough. Especially when you've created a glass cannon build around magic or firearms that can actually shoot itself to death in a single hit.

[⭕Gavrak Daelin]

Unrelated from gameplay mechanics.
I think that when the ghost kills you it represents a version of you that you should be. The ghost is the future you showing you how it should be done. And when you kill it, you allso kill your previous failure.

[Aetrion]

Yea, I think that's what it means, the reason you failed is you, and only by overcoming yourself can you advance.

[likho1eye]

The ghost scales very poorly. It does about 5x the damage I do to him on just the second polarize level. If you ignore the camera issues when fighting large bosses, green ghost is easily toughest enemy in game.

[Romløk]

Originally posted by rasabt:

if this already brakes your will to play mate you might have chosen the wrong genre. it doesn't get easier ;)

It's not about the difficulty, I know I'm not good yet.
It just seems like a poorly thought through game mechanic, and if I'm hitting a poorly thought through game mechanic this early in the game, it makes me think the game is full of them. *That*'s what breaks my will to play a game - poor and not-fun game design.

That's why I want to know the reasoning behind the player ghost mechanic. If it's just "lol, let's screw new players", then I can be satisfied giving the game a negative review and moving on, but if the intent was something other than the experience it delivers for new players, then raising the question/issue to the developers might mean it could be tweaked in the future.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't included solely so that the developers could test Steam's refund mechanics!

[SingularWill]

I think the ghost was meant as a way to get back lost healing charges and to train the player for PVP. Ledges/drops are the ghosts worst enemy :).

[trisagion]

Originally posted by Romløk:

I'm pretty sure it wasn't included solely so that the developers could test Steam's refund mechanics!

It's a staple of the genre since the first soul game. As incredible as it might seems, the player get punished for dying.
Demon's Souls would get harder with every death, spawning more fearsome enemies. This was the opposite of the norm at the time, where some game would automatically lower the difficulty if you died to often.
Dark Souls makes you lose your human form and the various benefits associated to it, Dark Souls 2 lowers your maximum health with each death (!), in Dark Souls 3 you become more and more hollow.

In short, the frustation you are experiencing is an integral part of the genre: There must be a punishment for dying other than (the risk of) losing your souls/axioms. That's the way of those games to tell you to try and get better.

You might not like it, and it's totally understandable. You might think they could have done away with this mechanic, but honestly, as much as I love hellpoint, one has to recognize that it's not a souls-likes, but a souls-clone. Devs are not into redefining the genre.

[Romløk]

Originally posted by trisagion:

It's a staple of the genre since the first soul game. As incredible as it might seems, the player get punished for dying.

Great answer, thanks!

I guess in the absence of a "hollow" mechanic, the devs had to come up with something more serious than "oops! Souls gone, oh well".

However, I feel like the nature of this punishment is very different from the DS games (though perhaps somewhat comparable with DeS), since dying here doesn't make you weaker (with the ability to safely recover), but does make the one area where you died a lot more dangerous.

That's an interesting effect, since it makes challenging areas more challenging, encouraging players to explore somewhere else instead. Which could be either good or bad.

Alternatively, it encourages metagaming, by going somewhere you're not interested in just to die, before going back to the interesting place again to continue progress. Which could also be either good or bad, but sounds to me like busywork. :/

[Roger Roger]

Ghosts get pretty dumb at high levels. I am in the top armor and mine will one-shot me with a fast attack when I have to buff my weapon just to have enough tenacity damage to stagger him out of an attack, and still have to hit him at least 5 times to kill him with a Thespian Mace. Unless you have a lot of axions to collect, it's better to just jump off a cliff and save time.

[Aetrion]

Seems like the problem isn't the ghost but that the ghost gets scaled up like the rest of the enemies on top of already being a copy of the player, which is appropriately powerful for the difficulty level you're playing in.

[caroraim]

Still, you know how the ghost is built. If I die using a slow heavy weapon, I just switch to my saber and mop the floor with it. If he's using the saber, then I shoot him. Of course, it's still always nice to have a ledge around for it to fall off of, lol.
Ultimately, it's cool...its like fighting an invading you.