Crucifixes not working?

[Seoulwave1227]

After the recent update, I can have an entire room covered by 2 crucifixes, I and another player have experienced insta-hunt deaths, or the ghost is spawning the hunt from an adjacent room, not the favorite room. I'm literally dying every game now, and I havent changed any settings. What is going on?

[halflife2]

Originally posted by WolfLink0370:

As far as I am aware, there is nothing forcing and/or requiring that the ghost stops moving before performing their crucifix check, and then begin the hunt upon reaching where they were supposed to stop. We can see this sort of behavior already with how the "Dots State" works with ghosts with that evidence... so there is some credibility to this theory, just not any hard proof (as we obviously don't know if the decision making for the two works exactly the same as each other).

So, just to be clear, you're proposing that the ghost could start outside the range of the crucifix and decide to head to the area where the crucifix happens to be. On the way to the destination (and before reaching the range of the crucifix) it "decides" to hunt. It doesn't hunt immediately but is primed to start the hunt when it finishes what it's currently doing (moving to a new location). When it gets there it starts the hunt *within the crucifix range*.

That sounds like a reasonable account of what could be happening. If that is the case then it would seem a bit unfair to the player (there's no defence against it and the crucifix is effectively occasionally useless). Perhaps the solution (if any developers are listening ;-)) would be for the ghost to perform an additional crucifix range check just prior to actually starting the hunt, once it reaches the destination.

[Quineloe]

Originally posted by WolfLink0370:

Originally posted by Quineloe:

I have nothing to gain from convincing a bunch of steam users. It's on the discord, you can find it there if you feel like digging.

It's not like I'm the only one who has experienced it, I didn't start the thread and there is yet another guy posting right above you who had it happen too.

Okay... and I in turn gave a perfectly logical reasoning to why this may be happening... to which I will repeat.

As far as I am aware, there is nothing forcing and/or requiring that the ghost stops moving before performing their crucifix check, and then begin the hunt upon reaching where they were supposed to stop. We can see this sort of behavior already with how the "Dots State" works with ghosts with that evidence... so there is some credibility to this theory, just not any hard proof (as we obviously don't know if the decision making for the two works exactly the same as each other).

we're playing 0 second grace, therefore grace period movement is irrelevant. The ghost literally starts the hunt where it triggered the check.

[WolfLink0370]

Originally posted by halflife2:

Originally posted by WolfLink0370:

As far as I am aware, there is nothing forcing and/or requiring that the ghost stops moving before performing their crucifix check, and then begin the hunt upon reaching where they were supposed to stop. We can see this sort of behavior already with how the "Dots State" works with ghosts with that evidence... so there is some credibility to this theory, just not any hard proof (as we obviously don't know if the decision making for the two works exactly the same as each other).

So, just to be clear, you're proposing that the ghost could start outside the range of the crucifix and decide to head to the area where the crucifix happens to be. On the way to the destination (and before reaching the range of the crucifix) it "decides" to hunt. It doesn't hunt immediately but is primed to start the hunt when it finishes what it's currently doing (moving to a new location). When it gets there it starts the hunt *within the crucifix range*.

That sounds like a reasonable account of what could be happening. If that is the case then it would seem a bit unfair to the player (there's no defence against it and the crucifix is effectively occasionally useless). Perhaps the solution (if any developers are listening ;-)) would be for the ghost to perform an additional crucifix range check just prior to actually starting the hunt, once it reaches the destination.

This is more or less exactly what I'm theorizing, yes... but there is a defense - place the first crucifix to cover the main part of their favorite room, and the second one in the path they are most likely going to be roaming through to get in/out of the room... minimizing the amount of overlap so as to ensure maximum protection.

But even then, Twins specifically can legitimately bypass the check, as the order of operations is that they do the check and then pick which "twin" hunts; the "Fast Twin" does NOT hunt from the current location of their singular entity, and instead teleports to the last place their "long rang interaction" did something... which could be inside the range of a crucifix... and then start from there, appearing to ignore it as a direct result.

[halflife2]

Originally posted by Quineloe:

we're playing 0 second grace, therefore grace period movement is irrelevant. The ghost literally starts the hunt where it triggered the check.

The grace period only comes in when the ghost actually starts the hunt (and the player will see the signs of the hunt). What we're talking about here is that the ghost decides to start a hunt while still wandering but it's going to finish its wandering before it actually starts that hunt. If its eventual destination is within the crucifix area then it isn't checking when it gets there but somewhere while still outside the area. In my mind it *should* check the crucifix when it's actually ready to start the hunt, not some time before when it's elsewhere.

@WolfLink - while that could be some defence, there are lots of situations where there would be multiple routes. Also, it could start its wandering a long way from the player (and, in fact, a long distance travelled increases the chances of it deciding to hunt along the way). eg, it might be in the cellar and decide to travel to the hallway and decide to hunt while on the stairs out of the cellar. There's no defence against that.

[Quineloe]

Any source on this delay between the hunt check and the hunt actually starting? We'd need multiple seconds given ghosts move at regular speed while not hunting and the zefix covering 5 meters on tier 3.

[WolfLink0370]

Originally posted by Quineloe:

Any source on this delay between the hunt check and the hunt actually starting? We'd need multiple seconds given ghosts move at regular speed while not hunting and the zefix covering 5 meters on tier 3.

that's the thing - we don't know if there is an arbitrary delay due to it still moving into position after passing the check.

And yeah, in that scenario Half-Life it might be harder to protect oneself... but I don't think it would be overly impossible - at the end of the day though, this is for the most part the realm of conjecture and for all we know this may or may not what is causing these supposed crucifix failures to happen; in other words, what I'm saying is just one possibility that may in fact be false... but we can't really know for sure otherwise without some deep insight into the games code, which.... at least as far as I'm personally aware... has not been documented, even in the realm of detailed mechanical spoilers.

[Mersi (double check that it's me]

I have been having the exact same issue with the Crucifix ; it must have gotten messed up with the latest update somehow.

A quick aside, I wish that the post-game summary included the ghosts favorite room so we can report if there were issues there, such as the temperatures not lowering in said room; I know the evidences are supposed to be unreliable but not on amateur like when I am teaching my friends the game!

[Quineloe]

Originally posted by Mersi:

I have been having the exact same issue with the Crucifix ; it must have gotten messed up with the latest update somehow.

A quick aside, I wish that the post-game summary included the ghosts favorite room so we can report if there were issues there, such as the temperatures not lowering in said room; I know the evidences are supposed to be unreliable but not on amateur like when I am teaching my friends the game!

you shouldn't teach them on amateur. You should use a custom difficulty that makes investigation easier while also increasing the payout. Amateur is a very bad difficulty.