Telling us what room the ghost was in keeps you accountable.

[Mersi]

We have situations where the ghost will be in one room, knocking over things in another room, but will show tempuratures in yet a third room ALL ON AMATEUR DIFFICULTY.

I do not know why you guys made the decision to stop telling the players which room they were in, but this decision desperately needs reversal so that we can report glitches and issues much, much more effectively.

Please bring back the feature of showing players what room the ghost was in.

[Cool Cereal]

They got rid of it because ghosts are able to roam and switch their favorite room. It doesn’t need to be added back in.

[Emurinus]

I'm not against them bringing that feature back, but there's one potential problem with it: The ghost can change favorite rooms on Professional difficulty and above.

If the feature was still there, that means it has to keep track of every room change the ghost makes. On lower difficulties, this isn't as problematic cause it's rare if not nonexistent. On higher difficulties though, this could become a problem cause the ghost is much more likely to change rooms, making the lists longer. On larger maps, which often require more time to play, this gives the ghost more chances to change rooms too. This could lead to a lot of room changes needed to be recorded, thus could hinder performance depending on the data needed to record it. 1-2 room changes should be nothing, but what about 10 or more? 20 or more, etc? This isn't like simply tracking the flag that causes the room change, but having to read from that linked list of rooms every time a room change is initiated.


I'm not saying that this is a bad idea by any means, but it really depends on if it's worth reimplementing and, if so, what are the limits on it.

[WolfLink0370]

Wasn't the "telling of the room" thing only in the old Training mode? I don't recall them ever doing that in normal play.

Even then, I don't think it's overly required... given you have a very generous setup timer... and also the cursed possessions that can just help you find it (or in the mirrors case just outright show you).

If such a feature would return... yeah Emurinus makes a good point that difficulties with room changing would break it. I think there is a fairly straight-forward approach in implementation however... in that they simply take a page out of how they handled the sharing the information regarding how the ghost responds to the Spirit Box, and just hide it on the difficulties where room changing is possible.

[halflife2]

I think it's a good idea. On those occasions where you've struggled to find the ghost room on a large map it would be good to be able to see where you went wrong and where it was hiding all along.

As for how to implement it and how it could impact performance, I don't think that's an issue. It could be as simple as adding to a "log", possibly timestamped with the time into the mission, as the ghost starts or moves and display that log at the end in the state. eg, :

00:00:00 Ghost started in Dining room
00:05:23 Ghost switched to Hallway
00:12:15 Ghost switched to Bathroom

[WolfLink0370]

Originally posted by halflife2:

I think it's a good idea. On those occasions where you've struggled to find the ghost room on a large map it would be good to be able to see where you went wrong and where it was hiding all along.

As for how to implement it and how it could impact performance, I don't think that's an issue. It could be as simple as adding to a "log", possibly timestamped with the time into the mission, as the ghost starts or moves and display that log at the end in the state. eg, :

00:00:00 Ghost started in Dining room
00:05:23 Ghost switched to Hallway
00:12:15 Ghost switched to Bathroom

I think that might be too potent, as then we'd be able to do a bit of meta play and get a good grasp of how often a ghost roams.

Additionally, it kind of makes the motion sensors useless in general with that format... which they can in fact have their moments. Also... this would inevitably be something that would only be utilized on lower difficulties, to which... now that I think about it more... makes the setup timer equally pointless.

Overall, and reconsidering the uses of the setup timer... I'd say the implementation would have to be two-fold: First, as stated previously, the information would have to be hidden if the ghost is allowed to change rooms (because that mechanic would make the information need to be updated constantly, and would be too powerful if it did so). Second... I think it should now only be revealed if the setup timer expires (so as to not fully render it pointless).

[halflife2]

If the times would give too much away then by all means just list the rooms it's had as favourites. I don't see how that could give anything significant away really.

The motion sensors are something to use *in game* but aren't we talking about post-mission details here? I don't see it making motion sensors useless. Also, the motion sensors show the actual ghost location but aren't we only talking about 'favourite' room changes here? (IDK, I'm not familiar with what it used to do).

[WolfLink0370]

Originally posted by halflife2:

If the times would give too much away then by all means just list the rooms it's had as favourites. I don't see how that could give anything significant away really.

Well on the surface there's nothing... but I'm looking beyond that. A room change is already known to only occur after a long roam, so by knowing the frequency of the room changes... a high level player could deep dive and use this to get a rough idea of how often the ghost roams in general.

Oh but if you want the simple aspect of it... such an information system will just outright expose a Goryo without the need for evidence... so that's a point against it being constantly available.

Then again, the whole point of this suggestion that this was a thing on the lower difficulties... where the ghost was not allowed to change rooms in the first place. Hence why I've been saying that, if it would return, it should be hidden on higher difficulties... where the ghost would be allowed to change rooms.

[Ergolus]

Originally posted by Emurinus:

I'm not against them bringing that feature back, but there's one potential problem with it: The ghost can change favorite rooms on Professional difficulty and above.

If the feature was still there, that means it has to keep track of every room change the ghost makes. On lower difficulties, this isn't as problematic cause it's rare if not nonexistent. On higher difficulties though, this could become a problem cause the ghost is much more likely to change rooms, making the lists longer. On larger maps, which often require more time to play, this gives the ghost more chances to change rooms too. This could lead to a lot of room changes needed to be recorded, thus could hinder performance depending on the data needed to record it. 1-2 room changes should be nothing, but what about 10 or more? 20 or more, etc? This isn't like simply tracking the flag that causes the room change, but having to read from that linked list of rooms every time a room change is initiated.


I'm not saying that this is a bad idea by any means, but it really depends on if it's worth reimplementing and, if so, what are the limits on it.

I honestly do not think that putting a few characters into a string can have performance issues... at least not from a programmers perspective..

Additionally of course this infomation should only be shown AFTER the game...
it would not make sense to have this kind of information in the running investigation obviously...

[Mersi]

I apologize for the confusion: of course I'm only talking about in the post game, otherwise yes set up timer for lower difficulties would be redundant.

As for the log of Favorite Ghost Room(s) (again, in post game) I agree that it would start a sort off meta going but again: this is the post-game. And to prevent such metas from emerging, they could just shift the preferences from update to update and just not tell the players what rooms are the favorite more than others.

[WolfLink0370]

Originally posted by Mersi:

I apologize for the confusion: of course I'm only talking about in the post game, otherwise yes set up timer for lower difficulties would be redundant.

As for the log of Favorite Ghost Room(s) (again, in post game) I agree that it would start a sort off meta going but again: this is the post-game. And to prevent such metas from emerging, they could just shift the preferences from update to update and just not tell the players what rooms are the favorite more than others.

Ah, see that context was key. In that regard of it being only in the post-game summary, this is not a bad ask in the slightest.

[Emurinus]

Originally posted by Ergolus:

Originally posted by Emurinus:

I'm not against them bringing that feature back, but there's one potential problem with it: The ghost can change favorite rooms on Professional difficulty and above.

If the feature was still there, that means it has to keep track of every room change the ghost makes. On lower difficulties, this isn't as problematic cause it's rare if not nonexistent. On higher difficulties though, this could become a problem cause the ghost is much more likely to change rooms, making the lists longer. On larger maps, which often require more time to play, this gives the ghost more chances to change rooms too. This could lead to a lot of room changes needed to be recorded, thus could hinder performance depending on the data needed to record it. 1-2 room changes should be nothing, but what about 10 or more? 20 or more, etc? This isn't like simply tracking the flag that causes the room change, but having to read from that linked list of rooms every time a room change is initiated.


I'm not saying that this is a bad idea by any means, but it really depends on if it's worth reimplementing and, if so, what are the limits on it.

I honestly do not think that putting a few characters into a string can have performance issues... at least not from a programmers perspective..

Additionally of course this infomation should only be shown AFTER the game...
it would not make sense to have this kind of information in the running investigation obviously...

I don't think it would be a problem overall either, but I don't know how they typically code stuff so it's ultimately conjecture for how it behaves.