This game is in a terrible state. I'm going to rant about it.

[Dizzeke]

It seems the latest update did nothing but increase tedium and causes nothing but confusion and headaches in the menu. Why they didn't have players who actually play a lot and have a shred of competence playtest it first before launching the update is beyond me. New shop is terrible, revert it.

Not to mention how inconsistent ghosts are getting. I just found out they changed emf 5 on the car graph, WHY? little ♥♥♥♥ like that is what pisses me the ♥♥♥♥ off. Ghosts are so inconsistent with behavior that even after thousands of hours it's sometimes impossible to know what a ghost is without 3 evidence because you'll get poltergeists doing the MARE SIGNATURE INSTANT LIGHTSWITCH FLIP several times in one match and without throwing almost any items during the hunt, ruining a whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ round for no legitimate reason. ♥♥♥♥ that.

Little things like that NEED to be 100% consistent for this game to be good. It seems they're constantly changing the game so ghosts are harder and harder to know what they are without evidence by making their individual characteristics and behaviors less individual and unique. This KILLS the fun of 2 or less evidence. KILLS IT. Make ghosts consistent. Make ghosts identifiable with unique attributes.

A veteran ghost hunter should be allowed to know ghosts well enough to identify one immediately even without a single shred of evidence. That's the entire skill ceiling in this game and you are RUINING THAT. They are driving this game into the ground by forcing you to have to grind out the evidences like on professional but then having no consistency to further identify ghosts with limited evidence.

Also, ♥♥♥♥ the change to spirit boxes. whose bright idea was it to add random meme voices from the internet as the means of communication? "Where are you?" "CLOSE TO BUSTING NI--" like okay dude there is no place for a response like that in this game. We all know what the last word is meant to be even though it cuts off.

I've played since day 1 launch, was the first player to reach level 1000 without cheating. I reached level 16,420 before the rework and made it to prestige 20 level 300+ now after.
I can say with some degree of knowing what the ♥♥♥♥ i'm talking about when I say this dev team does not give 1 single ♥♥♥♥ about this game.

[fluffyninja75]

Originally posted by Mors:

Welp, this aged like fine wine :D
No doublechecking the assumed ghost, lack of preparation and a general misunderstanding of the side-evidence is so apperant here.
Our team plays No Evidence exclusively and the times where we get the ghost wrong is usually from one or two options and always because of either missed opportunities (i.e. early loss of sanity medication/incense) or poor preparation/haste. Something commonly referred as ""skill issue"". They goryo is also there, but we don't talk about it :mhwhappy:
If you go by these abilities, you always have to take into the account that almost all side-evidence in some circumstances can be performed by anyone (aside from some signature things as the Banshee scream). ]

This is fine for experienced players but us low levels are trying to learn a game where the evidence points to one thing but it ends up being something entirely else. I'm sorry but having to wait 30 plus minutes real time for dots is not right in a game. It's hard to listen to footstep speed and such when your sanity is drained and you are running to hide. I'm not saying make it easier but evidence to be more consistent would be a great start.

[Mors]

Originally posted by fluffyninja75:

Originally posted by Mors:

Welp, this aged like fine wine :D
No doublechecking the assumed ghost, lack of preparation and a general misunderstanding of the side-evidence is so apperant here.
Our team plays No Evidence exclusively and the times where we get the ghost wrong is usually from one or two options and always because of either missed opportunities (i.e. early loss of sanity medication/incense) or poor preparation/haste. Something commonly referred as ""skill issue"". They goryo is also there, but we don't talk about it
If you go by these abilities, you always have to take into the account that almost all side-evidence in some circumstances can be performed by anyone (aside from some signature things as the Banshee scream). ]

This is fine for experienced players but us low levels are trying to learn a game where the evidence points to one thing but it ends up being something entirely else. I'm sorry but having to wait 30 plus minutes real time for dots is not right in a game. It's hard to listen to footstep speed and such when your sanity is drained and you are running to hide. I'm not saying make it easier but evidence to be more consistent would be a great start.

Oh yes, I get that. You are correct on this side completely. The game is extremely beginner - unfruendly. The journal/hints aren't even specifiying many details that you wouldn't even get naturally. Most the things we know and tested now is from wiki/forums/guides.
It certainly has to be worked on in terms of the learning curve and explanation!

[Dizzeke]

Originally posted by UmbraVulpe:

Like a Banshee completely closing a door. I guessed Yurei. Polter not playing, Myling too loud, Myling playing like Polter, Oni doing Air Ball... Onryo hunting with a lit candle... These things and yet, nothing new. Same houses, ghosts roaming and teleporting like crazy, even in pro. Ridgeview still a mess, almost 3 rooms in one. Bad design... Seriously, I understand his speech and I will never defend a DEV as if he were someone in my family.

They are making bad decisions and "new store"... For me, it is a solution to the bad store design they made. No custom characters, no new ghost models... They're just lazy because there's no game that can compete with Phasmo so far. This game is proof of what DEV is all about, lots of players, lots of content creators, money they are making, and we only have this "new store" fix... Phasmo is a joke until the 1.0 release.

Demonologist has potential to outright beat phas in every capacity if they could get hiding from ghosts down. right now its literally just run and pray.

[Silver_KSA]

Originally posted by UmbraVulpe:

Like a Banshee completely closing a door. I guessed Yurei. Polter not playing, Myling too loud, Myling playing like Polter, Oni doing Air Ball... Onryo hunting with a lit candle... These things and yet, nothing new. Same houses, ghosts roaming and teleporting like crazy, even in pro. Ridgeview still a mess, almost 3 rooms in one. Bad design... Seriously, I understand his speech and I will never defend a DEV as if he were someone in my family.

They are making bad decisions and "new store"... For me, it is a solution to the bad store design they made. No custom characters, no new ghost models... They're just lazy because there's no game that can compete with Phasmo so far. This game is proof of what DEV is all about, lots of players, lots of content creators, money they are making, and we only have this "new store" fix... Phasmo is a joke until the 1.0 release.

if not for LC, you won't be seeing any update in the last months. I hate to see such game dying slowly by the developer himself.

[WolfLink0370]

Originally posted by Silver_KSA:

Originally posted by UmbraVulpe:

Like a Banshee completely closing a door. I guessed Yurei. Polter not playing, Myling too loud, Myling playing like Polter, Oni doing Air Ball... Onryo hunting with a lit candle... These things and yet, nothing new. Same houses, ghosts roaming and teleporting like crazy, even in pro. Ridgeview still a mess, almost 3 rooms in one. Bad design... Seriously, I understand his speech and I will never defend a DEV as if he were someone in my family.

They are making bad decisions and "new store"... For me, it is a solution to the bad store design they made. No custom characters, no new ghost models... They're just lazy because there's no game that can compete with Phasmo so far. This game is proof of what DEV is all about, lots of players, lots of content creators, money they are making, and we only have this "new store" fix... Phasmo is a joke until the 1.0 release.

if not for LC, you won't be seeing any update in the last months. I hate to see such game dying slowly by the developer himself.

Okay I need to chime in on this specifically - Lethal Company is not even hiding the fact that it is a completely different core game genre as Phasmophobia; you're basically doing the equivalent of comparing Apples to Oranges... just because they are both considered fruit.

Eventually, LC will hit its own slow period of development, where it will be basically doing what Phasmo is now and strengthening the games core foundation.

As for the Demonologist - It will IMHO never hold a candle to Phasmophobia, at least so long as it's horror aspects are 100% scripted events. Like the moment I heard that I didn't even bother to watch anything regarding it.

[💚⁧⁧ Peach]

Originally posted by Dizzeke:

Originally posted by UmbraVulpe:

Like a Banshee completely closing a door. I guessed Yurei. Polter not playing, Myling too loud, Myling playing like Polter, Oni doing Air Ball... Onryo hunting with a lit candle... These things and yet, nothing new. Same houses, ghosts roaming and teleporting like crazy, even in pro. Ridgeview still a mess, almost 3 rooms in one. Bad design... Seriously, I understand his speech and I will never defend a DEV as if he were someone in my family.

They are making bad decisions and "new store"... For me, it is a solution to the bad store design they made. No custom characters, no new ghost models... They're just lazy because there's no game that can compete with Phasmo so far. This game is proof of what DEV is all about, lots of players, lots of content creators, money they are making, and we only have this "new store" fix... Phasmo is a joke until the 1.0 release.

Demonologist has potential to outright beat phas in every capacity if they could get hiding from ghosts down. right now its literally just run and pray.

That potential is already gone.

[Xepher]

Yeah, I know what you mean. This game have some stupid things like that ghost supposedly "afraid of fire". It's almost sure you are against one of those so you lit 4 f**cking candles, wait for about 30 minutes and the stupid ghost doesn't attack even if it blowed off the 4 candles like 30 times. Bull**it.

[Timothi' Graggle]

The competition is running away with the genre that PHAS brought back. Demonoligist and Ghost exile have somehow surpassed this game, and continue in my opinion get better. Unfortunately The wife and i hardly play this one anymore.

[Jimmy Hunter]

Originally posted by Timothi' Gragle:

The competition is running away with the genre that PHAS brought back. Demonoligist and Ghost exile have somehow surpassed this game, and continue in my opinion get better. Unfortunately The wife and i hardly play this one anymore.

Ghost Exile surpassing Phasmo? Lmao. That game is the definition of a low effort asset flip.

[Cool Cereal]

Originally posted by Timothi' Gragle:

The competition is running away with the genre that PHAS brought back. Demonoligist and Ghost exile have somehow surpassed this game, and continue in my opinion get better. Unfortunately The wife and i hardly play this one anymore.

What competition? Doesn’t demonologist do nothing but crash and Ghost exile is even less polished with more asset flipping?

24 hour peak players:
Ghost Exile: 112
Demonologist: 601
Phas: 19,157

Is this what “running away with the genre” looks like to you?

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Timothi' Gragle:

The competition is running away with the genre that PHAS brought back. Demonoligist and Ghost exile have somehow surpassed this game, and continue in my opinion get better. Unfortunately The wife and i hardly play this one anymore.

The most important stat for comparing competitors in the gaming industry is paying and playing customers. It doesn't matter how long your feature lists or how unique your ideas are and even more so it doesn't matter, how shiny your graphics are, if you can't keep your players in the game or overtake your competitors in numbers, then that's not really about "running away", but more about "trying to keep up".

And as of now, Phasmo has 15.000 players, while the closest competitor is Demonologist with 400 people and Ghost exile und Ghost Watchers make it barely above and other games like forewarned (39) or Ghost Exorcism Inc (5) doesn't even reach 100. Like lets be real, Phasmo has >95 % of the players of this genre, so it's still pretty much a monopole up to this day

Also from what i've seen, the player numbers of all these games constantly lower as well, so it's not like that most players, who have tried the new Phasmo updates and are now waiting for the next one even consider all these other ghost hunting games an option.

[WolfLink0370]

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

Originally posted by Timothi' Gragle:

The competition is running away with the genre that PHAS brought back. Demonoligist and Ghost exile have somehow surpassed this game, and continue in my opinion get better. Unfortunately The wife and i hardly play this one anymore.

The most important stat for comparing competitors in the gaming industry is paying and playing customers. It doesn't matter how long your feature lists or how unique your ideas are and even more so it doesn't matter, how shiny your graphics are, if you can't keep your players in the game or overtake your competitors in numbers, then that's not really about "running away", but more about "trying to keep up".

And as of now, Phasmo has 15.000 players, while the closest competitor is Demonologist with 400 people and Ghost exile und Ghost Watchers make it barely above and other games like forewarned (39) or Ghost Exorcism Inc (5) doesn't even reach 100. Like lets be real, Phasmo has >95 % of the players of this genre, so it's still pretty much a monopole up to this day

Also from what i've seen, the player numbers of all these games constantly lower as well, so it's not like that most players, who have tried the new Phasmo updates and are now waiting for the next one even consider all these other ghost hunting games an option.

Exactly, and in the case of Lethal Company being the "Phasmo Killer" - it's not only using a different general Horror theme but also a completely different gameplay genre (LC being more action oriented and uses monsters to instill it's horror, while Phasmo is definitively more akin to puzzle and lets the ambiance be the main horror contributor).

If anything - Both games stand tall as their own individual things, and compliment each other by offering different experiences. I personally think both games will do well as a result.

[Give em ol' ONE TWO.]

I just had a jinn use its ability with a broken power box.

[Emurinus]

Originally posted by Dizzeke:

It seems the latest update did nothing but increase tedium and causes nothing but confusion and headaches in the menu. Why they didn't have players who actually play a lot and have a shred of competence playtest it first before launching the update is beyond me. New shop is terrible, revert it.

I understood the new shop within 5 minutes and didn't even need a guide.

General synopsis of how the shop operates is this:

Store: Buy stuff directly (frankly unnecessary if you have a load-out enabled) as well as the menu where you upgrade your equipment/read their descs.

Item Manager: Behaves like the v1 shop. Add/remove stuff one at a time. More useful with a group cause you better delegate who can add/remove stuff from the truck where necessary.

Quick-Loadout: Improved version of v2 shop. Auto-buy and auto-add are fully integrated in. Loadouts can be renamed, enabled/disabled to add/remove stuff from the van instantly, and can even do the same things item manager does. There's even an add all function that makes looking at the shop take as little as 2-3 seconds if you really don't care about a dedicated loadout.


The most common complain I've seen across several platforms is just how ugly the shop is (which has been a subjective complain ever since v1). Most have agreed that, functionality wise, it's an improvement over previous versions.

Not to mention how inconsistent ghosts are getting. I just found out they changed emf 5 on the car graph, WHY? little ♥♥♥♥ like that is what pisses me the ♥♥♥♥ off.

For someone claiming to have played since day 1, how have you not noticed this until now? This was changed well over 2 years ago now.

Ghosts are so inconsistent with behavior that even after thousands of hours it's sometimes impossible to know what a ghost is without 3 evidence because you'll get poltergeists doing the MARE SIGNATURE INSTANT LIGHTSWITCH FLIP several times in one match and without throwing almost any items during the hunt, ruining a whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ round for no legitimate reason. ♥♥♥♥ that.

Ghosts have either "hard tells" or "soft tells" that often appear even in 0 evidence. Ghosts with hard tells can be figured out almost instantly because it's something other ghosts cannot replicate*

Ex: Wraiths avoiding salt, Oni blinking, Banshee screams on paramic, Phantoms disappearing in photos, Revenant speed difference, etc.

Soft tells, on the other hand, are tells that any ghost can do randomly, but certain ghost are more likely to (not) do these or have a bit more nuance to them.

Ex: Goryo not changing favorite room, Mare instantly turning off a lightswitch or just breaking the lights, Spirit smudge cooldown, Yurei door touch, Banshee singing events, etc.

Thankfully, most of the ghosts have hard tells that often eliminate other ghosts instantly, so they become very easy to ID or rule out on limited-to-no evidence. As far as some ghosts not behaving properly, the only common case I keep seeing of these are involving Shades hunting in the same room as players (I have yet to have this myself, though there could be room border shenanigans involved as far as I'm aware). Everything else has been either reported as a bug (with a majority of these bugs already patched), or some kind of user error.

*Mimics can copy nearly any ability, as their name implies, with the sole exception of Goryo DOTS due to lack of DOTS as evidence.

Little things like that NEED to be 100% consistent for this game to be good. It seems they're constantly changing the game so ghosts are harder and harder to know what they are without evidence by making their individual characteristics and behaviors less individual and unique. This KILLS the fun of 2 or less evidence. KILLS IT. Make ghosts consistent. Make ghosts identifiable with unique attributes.

Every ghost has some level of 0 evidence tell, even if some are more annoying to figure out than others. Barring bugs, they are all consistent and some ghosts simply require extensive testing.

A veteran ghost hunter should be allowed to know ghosts well enough to identify one immediately even without a single shred of evidence. That's the entire skill ceiling in this game and you are RUINING THAT. They are driving this game into the ground by forcing you to have to grind out the evidences like on professional but then having no consistency to further identify ghosts with limited evidence.

Partially disagree. Yes, all experienced ghost hunters should be able to rule out ghosts with no evidence given, but some ghosts should be more subtle than others because if they were all bombastically different then the matches get boring arguably faster than if you had to stay for a bit longer. A majority of ghosts can already be figured/ruled out in just one hunt, and several others have noticeable no-hunt tells that you can check whenever possible.

Hell, in one hunt alone, you could rule out or confirm the following ghosts:

Wraith
Phantom
Poltergeist
Revenant
Hantu
Yokai
Myling
The Twins
Thaye
Raiju
Obake
Moroi
Oni
Deogen
Jinn

With two or more hunt tests, you can figure out these ones:

Spirit
Demon
The Mimic

The rest either have no-hunt tells (ex: Yurei door touch, Banshee paramic scream), or their hunt tells are tied to when/how they hunt (ex: Onryo candles, Shades not hunting in same room). The only real time where 0 EV tells become really obnoxious are on Apoc Gold or other really high multipliers like 11.47x camp woodwind (specifically where Jinn are concerned).

Also, ♥♥♥♥ the change to spirit boxes. whose bright idea was it to add random meme voices from the internet as the means of communication? "Where are you?" "CLOSE TO BUSTING NI--" like okay dude there is no place for a response like that in this game. We all know what the last word is meant to be even though it cuts off.

That's literally how irl Spirit Boxes work. I get that not everyone wants to hear streamer voices specifically though, so they could do more about the voices later on.

Also, I've never heard the "ni---" end to it. I've always heard it stop right after saying "busting" (which, according to the wiki at least, should be saying "...close to a bustling...").

I've played since day 1 launch, was the first player to reach level 1000 without cheating. I reached level 16,420 before the rework and made it to prestige 20 level 300+ now after.

Congratulations! You're no more special than everyone else who's done it!

I can say with some degree of knowing what the ♥♥♥♥ i'm talking about when I say this dev team does not give 1 single ♥♥♥♥ about this game.

Evident by the OP, I beg to differ.

[💚⁧⁧ Peach]

Originally posted by Timothi' Gragle:

The competition is running away with the genre that PHAS brought back. Demonoligist and Ghost exile have somehow surpassed this game, and continue in my opinion get better. Unfortunately The wife and i hardly play this one anymore.

I have no idea what you're smoking, but both of those games were not even close to being in the same competition as Phasmophobia, and it never will be.

Demonologist has been overrated for so long while Ghost Exile is just low effort.

Forewarned is basically the only game that did well in my opinion, but it seems like Forewarned is near the end.