Player Death Suggestions.

[Shecrio]

In my experience and opinion the worst part about this game is after you die, specifically in multiplayer. There's no room for soft punishment and in multiplayer sitting back and simply watching other people do things without you for 20 minutes or more is a pretty harsh one.
There are quite a few small little tweaks I would make that I think would make sense in in game lore and I don't think would interfere heavily with the core gameplay while giving dead player something somewhat meaningful to do without having to add assets unless you choose to.
Currently dead players can interact with the world in pretty much just two ways, carrying and throwing items, and watching for visible evidence changes. In VR death is much more engaging and less off putting because you can carry two items and much more importantly the other players can see what you are carrying while you are carrying it, allowing you to interact slightly more with alive players. Keeping in mind that "only play in VR" and "Leave and join a new game when you die" are unsatisfying answers. Basically the core concept of my thoughts are to let the dead players be detectable ghosts in the game about detecting ghosts in ways that are recognizable as separate from the actual goal. So here are sort of my patch notes for making this game have higher low points in the gameplay loop.
-Dead players' held items are now visible.
-Dead players within 2m of an activated spirit box can be just barely heard over the static, with a filter that cuts them in and out. (Consider also increasing the volume and removing the filter when the ghost is interfering with the spirit box)
-Dead players can interact with walls (specifically in places that a ghost cannot) to put a UV fingerprint on it.
-Dead players can sometimes appear very faintly in DOTs.
-Dead players can cause an EMF event of 1-3 when interacting with a dropped EMF detector.
-A faint pulsing ghost orb can be seen occasionally in the location of a dead player on cameras.
-Dead players can cause a firelight or flashlight to flicker on interact.
-Dead players are slowed for 90 seconds and drop their held item when incense is lit near them.
-Dead players cannot use any of their interactions and drop their held item when in the area of effect of a crucifix with charges left
-Digital thermometers update every minute without player interaction.

If that seems like too much they can do enable only a couple at random on death and giving dead players a new (spooky or destroyed looking?) page in their journal to find out their own evidences, and for each one they correctly identify give a small cash reward at the end. This should give dead players something to do that doesn't further or meaningfully hinder the main goal with the cooperation of living players, and once their noticeable interactions are discovered they can to try to use them to communicate potential evidences they can observe just by chucking random items like they do now.

Also just think about how funny the clips will be if you are trying to listen to your garbled friend on the spirit box when a hunt starts and then you just hear them very clearly laugh and tell you you're gunna die.

Anyway thread for thoughts on how to improve the dead player experience.

[forlornfruit]

This!!! Felt this this way for a long time. The game about ghost hunting needs to have more stuff for players who are ghosts to do. I enjoy the idea of many of these suggestions! It would be such a quality of life improvement to just let players who have died have more stuff to do when playing with randos or more specifically with friends. Love the "hearing people over spirit box" suggestion in particular, as long as it's audibly and clearly distinct from the spirit box evidence, or even just have it audible on the parabolic mic since that may cause less confusion with spirt box being a possible evidence. This would be amazing, it could be helpful for players still alive as well as add the potential for many goofy moments.

[Emurinus]

Absolutely no to dead players interfering with evidence equipment. We do not need griefers trolling players by dying then giving out false positives the whole contract.

[Shecrio]

So you just skipped over the part where I said "in ways that are recognizable as separate" huh. Also you could just have the amount of interaction depend on difficulty.
If you're worried about the ghost orb because I wasn't specific, have it tied to the exact location of the dead player, if you know dead players can sometimes be a ghost orb you're going to see it as a player orb because it doesn't drift around like the regular one and is smaller and dimmer.
If you're worried about DOTs a player character model looks and moves differently than a ghost one and I suggested that it look much more faint.
If you're worried about the single UV fingerprint explicitly in places a ghost can't put one we can make it half transparency too why not.
the rest of the suggestions are things that Aren't Evidence.
A whole games design shouldn't cater to the existence of griefers.

[WolfLink0370]

I agree with Emurinus - the pros do not justify the fact that death is fully intended to be a punishment... even if they were made distinguishable from actual evidence.

[Shecrio]

So you think it's good and intentional game design that there is no punishment state between "everything is good" and "you no longer can play the game until everyone else is done"
Part of the reason I'm willing to argue this is the next most fun Phasmophobia-like game IMO is Forewarned, and I think the core gameplay of it is simply not as fun, but the fact that dead players have Something that they can do makes the game more entertaining to play and to stream. Sure I could see it being annoying for a group that is both Try Harding and in Public Lobbies, which is why you could add it to the difficulty settings like everything else and turn it off, or heck add it to the difficulty settings as a thing to be turned on voluntarily. But ultimately the game isn't only for Try Harding and its often for lobbies of friends.

[WolfLink0370]

Originally posted by Shecrio:

So you think it's good and intentional game design that there is no punishment state between "everything is good" and "you no longer can play the game until everyone else is done"

Yes... because in the context of this game... dying is, in most if not all cases, entirely caused by the player themselves messing up in some way.

Additionally, if you made it a benefit... then it would completely destroy the intended way to play the game... which is to gather evidence -AND- survive

[Shecrio]

Originally posted by WolfLink0370:

Yes... because in the context of this game... dying is, in most if not all cases, entirely caused by the player themselves messing up in some way.

Additionally, if you made it a benefit... then it would completely destroy the intended way to play the game... which is to gather evidence -AND- survive

Sure, it is caused by the player messing up, or at least it could be avoided in some way. That shouldn't mean that they should be completely relegated to the new optimal thing to do being equivalent to standing in the truck and waiting for someone to say what ghost type it is before they leave.

Also in what way is this a benefit over a punishment, my idea is to make it a punishment that still has some engagement not A Better New Fun Cool Way To Play. You can still do very little, it's just more kinds of very little with an idea of something for you to accomplish other than waiting around. You still lose all your gear, you still have a point/cash penalty, you have no incentive to die on purpose.

God forbid the Devs add something that could hinder the core tenets of the intended way to play the game, like could you imagine if they added a difficulty setting that removed evidence or another that made the ghost never hunt? That would totally destroy the game... wait...

[Emurinus]

Originally posted by Shecrio:

So you just skipped over the part where I said "in ways that are recognizable as separate" huh. Also you could just have the amount of interaction depend on difficulty.
If you're worried about the ghost orb because I wasn't specific, have it tied to the exact location of the dead player, if you know dead players can sometimes be a ghost orb you're going to see it as a player orb because it doesn't drift around like the regular one and is smaller and dimmer.
If you're worried about DOTs a player character model looks and moves differently than a ghost one and I suggested that it look much more faint.
If you're worried about the single UV fingerprint explicitly in places a ghost can't put one we can make it half transparency too why not.
the rest of the suggestions are things that Aren't Evidence.
A whole games design shouldn't cater to the existence of griefers.

We still get people mistaking their breath or ghost events as DOTS, reading EMF 4 as EMF 5 on the (T1) EMF reader, mistaking snow for orbs, etc. The last thing we need is dead players now making their own "evidences," since that'll just further confuse other players even if they're gonna be subtle tells like UV in different places or faint DOTS models.

Firelight/flashlight flicker should be fine, but the other affects against smudges/crucifixes just exist to punish dead players even more for no real benefit. If you want to do something with dead players, then it should idealistically be separate from the living players so you don't actively interrupt the gameloop for them. What that would exactly entail though is up for debate, but I could see death being some kind of alternate, separate mini-game to pass the time.

[Shecrio]

I can understand trying to avoid confusing new players, that's sensible to me. I would only include the smudge/crucifix interactions if the evidence adjacent interactions are there. I think it's all just more cause to have it be tied to a difficulty setting. Low difficulties only have the most harmless interactions, medium difficulties could have 1 or 2 evidence adjacent interactions, and high difficulty could have 3 per dead player so they could try and figure out their own ghost type so to speak. I think tying it to difficulty settings is a good path, it lets people turn it off if they don't like it or otherwise curate it to their desired experience.
I think a dead player only goal that involves nothing visible or impactful to alive players is probably ideal but would be more work to implement, but at the moment Phas isn't a particularly fast game and the longer a player isn't able to do anything the less engaging the overall game is. I do personally think dead ghost players being able to interact with the alive players, who are professional ghost finders, simply makes sense and gives them a meaningful way to contribute to the game without breaking the game play or vibe of the game. An alive player using a spirit box next to a dead player's corpse to get poorly communicated information from them, or a dead player tapping a wall to indicate that the ghost that killed them has moved into that room just makes sense to me in and out of game.
At the end of the day though I would be pretty content with crumbs for dead players like hearing all chat or even just ghost chat as global.

[TheShadowKnives]

Overall I agree with implementing *something* for dead players to do bc it's boring af the way it is now and contracts can take a while on bigger maps / low evidence runs.

[Mithrandir]

If a player can carry stuff when they are dead i think the ghost should do the same as an extended interaction..... but I would like set it up like the ghost has some kind of roaming interaction not necesary linked to the ghost room but at least to the rooms close to it. Like the ghost wants to move all plates into the sink for example or loves to collect teddy bears and hates the bunny so it will throw the bunny out of the room...like give it some personality that the dead players can mess up.

It would be fun if the players are turned into a lesser version of that type of ghost and have like a 10% chance(compared to the ghost) of accidently leaving behind some evidence and the dead players don't know if they are leaving it behind or not.
That would mean a cursed object will target the closest ghost...including the dead player and that ghost room would be where the player died. Incense will bind players to their place of dead if they get cleansed.
But it would also mean in case that the ghost is hunting players are dead players are in the same way visible and a dead player accidently touching a living player will kill that living player and the hunt would be over unless extended by the gamesettings. And yes during a hunt a dead player will kill live players in the truck. Smudge and salt will affect dead players just like the gost..... inside as outside of a hunt.... but you would step through salt as you would be a lesser form of a wraith and are still heavy enough to disturb it(in case of a wraiht).
The dead player can not use any ghost ability and is restricted to player speed.

In case of a shade interaction with object appear normal to dead players but only happen to live player when they are outside the room and not kinda watching in the direction of the rooms of the interaction if the interaction starts in the same room as a living player.... Which would mean the shade can drop carry something into the room of a player and drop it.

[Shecrio]

I mean that first would be fun too, but dead players already CAN carry stuff you just can't see it until they drop it.
Dead players even potentially leaving evidence that indicates anything about the ghost could really screw up the game play unfortunately, because one player could die and then do everything they can to make evidence in a safer place away from the threat.
I think the way to implement what you're saying would be better set up more like forewarned where you can decide if you are going to be peaceful or violent after death. That unfortunately sets up some serious incentives to grief though and so it would make the game a lot sillier overall.

[The n00b A]

Originally posted by TheShadowKnives:

Overall I agree with implementing *something* for dead players to do bc it's boring af the way it is now and contracts can take a while on bigger maps / low evidence runs.

I'd say somehow have a minigame that forces the ghost activity to help players in the investigation or even protect a bit against hunts for the living would be a nice addition. Usually when half of the team dies i just call it a day and guess the ghost so they dont need to sit and wait for long.

[SIMMlc]

Having dead players be able to hinder the living ones in a game where you play together seems.. odd.

I'd find it far better if the dead players could help more.
make it so that they can gain other kinds of evidence to the living players and force the ghost to show certain evidences or make it appear for 5 seconds for photons or something. Maybe make the ghost sing (or moan or whatever), so that the living players can find the room more easily if not already known.
But giving dead players the ability to basically mess with living ones would be -very unfortunate-.

[Shecrio]

Yeah like I said in my last reply grief incentives aren't great for public games, but the original idea was simply ways to communicate and participate using the existing ghost hunting equipment.
I think having evidence only dead players can find, or have direct advantages to having a dead player is no good, because in an ideal game everyone manages to stay alive to the end.
Ultimately I think with a couple tweaks ghosts could have the ability to watch the kind of equipment people already like to set up as watchable on cams and then figure out what limited ways they have to communicate that they saw something other than just throwing around insanely visible clipboards.