Making Perfect Investigations A Bit Easier On Larger Maps.

[Emurinus]

Introduction

Here's a quick rundown for those that don't know what a perfect investigation/game is or what it entails:

Complete all 4 Objectives (Correct ghost + all optional objectives)
Collect the Bone
Obtain ten 3-star photos (photo type does not matter)

Accomplishing this nets a bigger sum of money at the end of your contract, and it is counted within the difficulty multiplier, meaning a perfect game will yield much more money and XP compared to just figuring out the ghost and and a couple objectives/photos, especially on higher difficulties.

Problem

On small maps, this is pretty reasonable. The 4 objectives are often easy enough to do, the bone only has so many rooms to hide in, and photos are often consistent to take (bugs aside). In comparison, perfect games on larger maps often feel like a crapshoot.

Personally, I blame this mostly on the bone. The bone really bottlenecks this achievement because of the number, and size, of some rooms that you have to search, and depending on the size of the bone model, you could easily miss it too. To make matters worse, only the Ouija Board can help you find the bone, and it costs a whopping 50% sanity to ask where it is.

So, what are my proposals? I only have two in mind.

Suggestions

1.) Reduce the Ouija Board sanity cost.
2.) Increase the amount of bones on a map, depending on map size.

#1 is straightforward. Asking where the bone is should go back to a sanity cost of 20% instead of the whopping 50% that it was changed to in 0.8.0.3.

As for #2, the amount of bones on the map should be increased base off map size. The small maps retain one bone, medium maps (Maple Lodge and Prison) would have two, and large maps (High School and Sunny Meadows) would have three. In addition, only one bone is required to get a perfect game.

Reasoning

The bone has ultimately become negligible to find outside of perfect games ever since it got removed from the difficulty multiplier and photo rewards got reworked to not rely on a points system. In regards to the Ouija Board, it only has a 1/7 chance of spawning in the first place on top of the aforementioned. As a result, there is no need for the sanity cost to be so high anymore since it's much less valuable than it used to be.

As for multiple bones on the larger maps, this is simply a quality of life suggestion to help reduce the slog of checking every room, especially in solo play. On the large maps in particular, High School has 58 rooms while Sunny Meadows has 69. You'll more than likely run low or out of sanity before you find the bone unless you get lucky and pick the right area to look, and will probably spend more time looking for the bone than the ghost as a result. With multiple bones, you shouldn't have to look as far unless you get really (un)lucky and all three spawn in the same room, but the devs should be more than capable of adding a buffer so bones are reasonably far apart from each other. Of course, this also raises the issue of the Ouija Board needing to find multiple bones, but I believe the easiest way to address that is simply have it locate the bone closest to the board.

Conclusion

I understand if the idea of multiple bones on larger maps may be a bit controversial, but overall, I believe these would be great QoL improvements so that perfect games are unaffected on small maps but are now more reasonably obtainable on larger maps (while also providing a bit more rewards if you manage to find more than one bone). Any criticism on my suggestions are greatly appreciated. I simply ask that they be constructive!

[WolfLink0370]

All in all a good idea, although I wish to provide an alternative solution.

I propose that instead of multiple bones in the larger maps - I think we should take a page from the cursed possession spawns. Now to be clear, I'm not saying the bone should be in the main entrance 100% of the time - no, I'm merely suggesting that all of the possible bone spawns for maps with main entrance cursed possessions are within some reasonable proximity to the entrance.

So for example, lets use Sunny Meadows - we should all be aware of the "common ground" that all the restricted variants share yeah? The bone could have its spawn be localized to only those rooms, and this would apply to the unrestricted version of course.

Now then there's the small elephant in the room that is Maple Lodge Campsite (and maybe by extension Camp Woodwind), which is the only medium/large map that doesn't have it's possessions centralized in one spot. In this case... lets say that the bone has to be limited to an indoors area, such as a tent.

[Strawberry Poison]

I would also like to suggest that only certain types of bone models can appear on the medium and larger maps. Those maps have a lot of debris on the floor, making finding one of the small arm bones like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Restrict it to the skull, spine, scapula, rib cage, pelvis, and femur. Maybe the hand and foot bones as well.

[Vahnkiljoy]

Wait is asking where the bone is REALLY 50%?! WHY, it's a little extra money holy hell.

[WolfLink0370]

Originally posted by Vahnkiljoy:

Wait is asking where the bone is REALLY 50%?! WHY, it's a little extra money holy hell.

As stated in the original message - it's a condition for the perfect investigation bonus, which the total value is that of all objectives combined, PLUS a hundred bucks... and IS affected by the rewards multiplier.

So while the bone itself is only a static 25 bucks, finding it can potentially be worth a LOT more.

[Emurinus]

Originally posted by WolfLink0370:

All in all a good idea, although I wish to provide an alternative solution.

I propose that instead of multiple bones in the larger maps - I think we should take a page from the cursed possession spawns. Now to be clear, I'm not saying the bone should be in the main entrance 100% of the time - no, I'm merely suggesting that all of the possible bone spawns for maps with main entrance cursed possessions are within some reasonable proximity to the entrance.

So for example, lets use Sunny Meadows - we should all be aware of the "common ground" that all the restricted variants share yeah? The bone could have its spawn be localized to only those rooms, and this would apply to the unrestricted version of course.

Now then there's the small elephant in the room that is Maple Lodge Campsite (and maybe by extension Camp Woodwind), which is the only medium/large map that doesn't have it's possessions centralized in one spot. In this case... lets say that the bone has to be limited to an indoors area, such as a tent.

I did consider that, but I figured that the potential of more bones would still encourage exploring bigger maps, since you could still get a bit of extra money, but finding even one of them removes that tedious restriction on perfect games. Still, I'm not against your suggestion either.

[Cathulhu]

IMO the generic "find bone" is boring and should be replaced with "find evidence of how they died." It would be cool if the scenes of death had other kinds of evidence besides just a single bone, like a weapon or notes, and you could get the perfect investigation by photographing or collecting a single piece of evidence (or asking it on the Ouija Board, which would justify the 50% cost).

Also, on larger maps, it would be helpful if near the death location there were more indicators that could indicate the general area. Things like dried blood splatters or trails, damaged or knocked over objects indicating struggles, or police tape.

[Emurinus]

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

IMO the generic "find bone" is boring and should be replaced with "find evidence of how they died." It would be cool if the scenes of death had other kinds of evidence besides just a single bone, like a weapon or notes, and you could get the perfect investigation by photographing or collecting a single piece of evidence (or asking it on the Ouija Board, which would justify the 50% cost).

Also, on larger maps, it would be helpful if near the death location there were more indicators that could indicate the general area. Things like dried blood splatters or trails, damaged or knocked over objects indicating struggles, or police tape.

I do recall the devs saying that they plan on adding an object tied to the ghost model at some point, kinda like an anchor that ties the ghost to the map (basically what you are suggesting). Whether that replaces the bone or not I do not know though.

I like the idea of there being a better indicator to tell you the general location of the bone on larger map. However, I'm still not a fan of keeping the high sanity cost on the board unless the extra evidence was really worth grabbing.