Swamp Slogger
Posts: 174
Joined: Saturday, 16th September 2017, 21:17
Player Ghosts, revisted
Ghost, in general, are something that I'm iffy about, and there are plenty of posts on that.
That said, I want to revisit a few of the top issues in the hopes that the devs and the players and the pro-ghosters and anti-ghosters can find middle ground.
First, I want to talk about some of the variables. Equipment specifically. I've had ghosts in some of my games appear with very powerful weaponry sometimes...and last game I ran into two draining wep ghosts before D:7. Ghosts like this are what I find troublesome -- some ghosts are just XP bags, while others are threats you can run from. Sometimes, though, things get much more annoying. There was one game where I was banished on D:3 from a single hit by a distortion wielding ghost. In a couple of recent games I was notably drained by ghosts who appeared amid combat and thus I had to tank a few hits...and those hits dropped all my skills. Things like this turn ghosts into a permanent hazard that is never worth facing (who wants to screw with draining?), but at the same time is a level-tied annoyance...so not really a kill condition, either (stairs always let you survive them/bypass them).
Solution: Keep the weapons used by ghosts unbranded.
Secondly, spells. Sometimes these are not a problem, but other times they certainly are. I remember meeting one ghost that is the most powerful I've seen in awhile. It was a cheibro worshipping gish (I forget the race/class), so it had super powerful offensives. I thought I could just outrun it, but it had CBlink. I was tanky, so I tried to fight it...it had summoning spells. I managed to get to stairs, but only after burning through most of my blinking scrolls and a number of potions. Other times I have had ghosts show up early game and cast spells like confusion on me repeatedly...and each time I cured/cancelled it with a potion I was just confused the very next turn once more.
Solution: Preferably remove spells from ghosts...or otherwise just limit the spell list to a certain selection.
Thirdly, the whole concept of being a ghost makes them immune to certain things right off the bat, which can be troublesome. For example, they fly, so anything terrain that slows you down they can ignore. Negative energy immunity can be troublesome for necromancy-heavy chars or pain-brand wielders. Unlike many other resistances that are based off of player equipment, these are freebies. Now, I've heard before that people oppose taking away the customized variances in ghosts because that would make them just a generic monster...but then if you want to "reflect the player that died" accurately, adding a bunch of small-but-useful bonuses seems illogical.
Solution: Make the ghost actually represent the dead player. None of this special stuff. OR make the ghost a ghost, more generically so, instead of trying to act like it is the player.
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Solution to everything, ofc, is just to turn ghosts into a nearly harmless popcorn enemy that offers almost no XP but also won't be a threat, and then add more ghosts. Not tons, but if the idea is to be "ahaha, my friend so-and-so died here!" then have more ghosts, or a ghost every level (if possible), but make them more like butterflies -- sure, you can kill them, but they don't actually post a threat.
Or just remove them, ofc.
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I, however, don't know the nuances of the game's coding or the behind-the-scenes stuff that many others do. So, the point of this threat, like I said, is for people to voice legitimate solutions to player ghost problems.
****If you want them removed, say that, but then offer a "2nd best" compromise solution since there seems to be resistance to the removal entirely. Vice-versa if you want them kept.