I recently posted to request an option to turn off all paranormal activity or have a setting in City Management to control how much paranormal activity there can be in your city. I’ll link to the thread, but I also learned that other players have asked for a toggle to prevent ghosts in their game (I’ll also link to the other thread I know of.)
Given that earlier wishes for a toggle or control over the ghost feature have gone unanswered, it’s likely that the devs don’t want us to be able to disable ghosts entirely. That could be because of cultural reasons (though if Korea has so much visible paranormal activity, I wonder how they keep it secret from the rest of the world!), or something to do with the planned Fate Engine.
However, there are some serious problems caused by NPC ghosts right now that require fixes/improvements as soon as possible (preferably via new gameplay mechanics).
Problems caused by NPC ghosts:
Ghosts pile up in the city population and the Karma report shows most have Best Karma, and Karma is a resource ghosts need to prepare for their afterlife. A player can only play as a ghost for 3 days, so these NPC ghosts should clear out after 3 days in my opinion and reasoning.
The game warns us that a too-high population of ghosts will prevent new births in your city, but since ghosts do not leave the city, the ghost feature works as an expiration date for save games.
There is no gameplay solution for dealing with the ghost population. The little bell object enables you to talk to a ghost, but you cannot encourage them to cross over to the other side or leave you alone, etc.
Ghosts haunt public places and cause immersion-breaking problems for players, leading to abandoned save games (probably long before the ghost population is high enough to prevent new zoi births).
What we need:
Gameplay mechanics for getting rid of NPC ghosts. One could be enabling our zois to carry the spiritual bell item in their inventory to use it to reveal ghosts in a haunted location, so they can talk to the ghost and ask them to leave them alone, or choose to help them cross-over to the afterlife. Another option that would help players who are busy with their own stories would be to have a Ghost Whisperer our zois can hire that will go and clear out the city’s ghost population (and destroy all unclaimed urns at the cemetery, since there are way too many of those for the player to enjoy doing themselves).
Restrictions for where NPC ghosts can haunt. If they don’t have a family living in the city, please keep them confined to the graveyard. Make zois with the Adventurous trait or Challenger value get urges to see a ghost, and the urge could have a tool tip suggesting to visit the cemetery to try to witness paranormal activity.
Cheats to control hauntings. Players who are storytellers or video creators would benefit a lot if they want to have ghosts (they could add a number of them with a cheat),or players could quickly get rid of any ghosts on the property to keep them out of the screenshots or videos.
I do agree with this. It’s good reasoning and there’s no real need for NPC ghosts to keep wandering around for longer than that, particularly since the natural thing to happen is for more zois to die either accidentaly or of old age as the save progresses. Otherwise cities are going to become ghost towns
I don’t know if you have shared this in Discord for the brainstorming, but if so please share it there so I can upvote. Kjun will be writing today so there’s a chance he will read it!
Players requested a slider to control the frequency of ghosts and supernatural events, as well as options to turn supernatural content on or off depending on player preference. Some players suggested minimizing these elements or separating them into DLC in order to preserve the game’s realism and immersion. This is something we can handle. The final form may still change, but we are planning to add options in city edit mode that let you control ghost appearance frequency or turn them on and off entirely.
From Kjun’s discord responses today! It seems like we will get a slider for ghost appearances, and even the option of turning ghosts off completely. It seems like a step in the right direction!
This is incredible! Where can I find Kjun’s responses? I get Discord notifications whenever a Brainstorm thread is posted, but they no longer send notifications when he replies.
I thought that meant he hasn’t had time to reply in a long time.
I spend more time on the forums than Discord because it’s easier to have conversations here, find information, etc. But I feel like I’ve been missing out on a LOT of information if he’s been replying all this time and they just stopped notifying anyone.
Discord does make you feel like the communication is more direct, but it is kind of chaotic which is a downside. I do like the forums more too, but I keep using Discord because it feels like what you post there actually reaches Kjun!
Here’s the link to the exact message where Kjun replies. Ghost are mentioed but a lot of other interesting stuff too, like a taxi driver active career!
Yes, that’s the truth (about actually reaching Kjun with our messages). Every time I post something here, like an idea for how to improve ghosts, someone will suggest posting it on the Brainstorm thread on Friday. In this thread it was you.
I shared an abbreviated post with the suggestions, and it sounds like Kjun took it in entirely. I like that the team can accommodate both a slider to control the amount of paranormal activity and a toggle to turn it off completely. I think that’ll be nice because perhaps players will want to play with some haunting, but nothing out of control and ruining their save game or their enjoyment of playing.
Thank you so much for the link to his reply! I’ve got to post somewhere there that I hope the mods will go back to making an announcement and link to the first post where Kjun replies to the community feedback.
