Ghost Face Rework Idea

DJWeebo

Hey all, I main Ghost Face and as you all may know he's not in the best of spots right now, so I thought I'd drop a rework idea for him that intends to preserve his core identity and gameplay loop while making him significantly stronger and also adding a lot of depth to his gameplay and counterplay.


Let's start a with simple, direct buff that would already go a long way into making him significantly better as a killer;

- Drop-Leg Knife Sheath as base kit. This is a change I believe many Ghostface players want to see because it directly rewards his normal gameplay pattern and gives a way for him to shorten chases on a killer who has absolutely no way of doing so normally.

There are other add-ons that I believe should be reworked, but I will save that for the add-ons section of this post, now I will discuss the main change to Ghostface's power: Night Shroud.


— Night Shroud Reworks—

Night Shroud currently is an extremely weak power that can be dismantled in it's entirety by somewhat competent survivor players, and is very hit or miss for the Ghostface player; the changes here are slightly demanding however I think would go a long way to refreshing a killer so beloved by the community. Keep in mind all the suggestions because the first few will sound ludicrous without reading the total rework:

- Ghost Face in Night Shroud can no longer be revealed by singular survivors looking at Ghost Face. Ghost Face can however still be revealed by 3 or more survivors looking at him at the same time.
- Stalk Progress builds -5% slower for every survivor Ghost Face is stalking (more on this soon)
- Ghost Face will lose Night Shroud if he lingers within 10-15m of a hooked survivor for too long (This is not the survivor revealing them, but more so meant as anti-camp).
- Night Shroud Cooldown increased to 45 seconds.
- Night Shroud now remains active after both unsuccessful and successful basic attacks (aka Ghost Face will remain stealthed no matter how stabby he gets)
- NEW OBJECTIVE: Cameras
4 Cameras spawn scattered across the map at the beginning of each trial, with their auras shown to survivors. Cameras take up the survivor's item slot and have a can be used to take a picture, which takes 3.33 seconds to do. If a survivor takes a picture containing the Ghost Face, the camera becomes unusable and is renamed in their inventory to "Photo Evidence". A survivor possessing Photo Evidence gains the "Wary" status effect (Unique to The Ghost Face) that diminishes the effects of Undetectable for the survivor carrying it, and makes the survivor immune to being stalked by The Ghost Face. Taking a photo of the Ghost Face notifies him with an effect on his screen (it should look similar to the one a survivor sees upon being Exposed), and though he can see which survivors are Wary by their portrait on the screen, he does not get shown Killer Instinct indicating their position. Possessing Photo Evidence does not cleanse the Exposed status effect if the survivor is already exposed (more on this later). Photo Evidence lasts for 60 seconds before it is burned away by the Entity and a replacement Camera is spawned randomly on the map.

Now to explain my reasoning behind these changes, some other comments regarding them, and why I think these changes would be extremely healthy for Ghostface in DBD:

These changes are all aimed at making Ghostface puts survivors in difficult situations but with ample counterplay, and also situations that are fitting for the Ghost Face from a lore perspective.

Firstly, Ghostface being unrevealable by singular survivors accomplishes two things: It gives Ghostface more agency in regards to one of the most survivor-dictated powers DBD, one that can be snatched away from Ghost Face by literally looking at him. Secondly, this creates this wonderfully fitting gameplay for Ghost Face where being isolated (or in a group of two) as a survivor against him is incredibly risky, and while optimal for gameplay can easily backfire on you. It heavily bolsters the fear factor of "am I gonna get jumped on for doing this gen by myself?" which is one of the best parts of the Ghost Face gameplay loop in my opinion for both sides, and this will make him an actually threatening killer in these circumstances since you will have no easy way out. Thirdly, it will create high risk, high reward situation for both for survivors and Ghost Face where a good way to counter Ghost Face is to group, obviously not fool proof and will definitely be hectic in solo queue, but if 3 or more people look at Ghost Face he will still lose his power which will now be on a much longer cooldown; at the same time it's incredibly risky as if no one locates Ghosty, he will potentially get massive stalk progress on the entire team, giving way to a series of potential downs. The Stalk Rate nerf for multiple people is intended to help an entire team not just lose Ghost Face instantly because they try and group. The change in general is also meant to reward skillful gameplay by the Ghost Face through things like good positioning to avoid getting revealed or seen by 3 survivors at once, and attempting to stalk only one person within a group to get the faster Stalk Rate.

As for the cooldown, as you can imagine the cooldown is getting increased by such a large amount because Ghost Face will essentially permanently be in stealth with these changes unless revealed by 3+ survivors; this is to increase greatly his effectiveness as a stealth killer and playing around with the idea of a single survivor or a pair of survivors being isolated, vulnerable and insufficient to deal with the Ghost Face by themselves and unable to "communicate" to their fellow survivors the plight that they're in.

And then, of course, the cameras. While being more difficult to implement I do not believe they should be that difficult, as the Camera item can be coded to be similar to a flashlight in terms of movement speed when holding it out to take a picture, and can potentially use pre-existing rules for revealing Ghost Face or flashlight saves when it comes to coding what counts as a picture of Ghost Face. Now to explain why I personally love the idea of adding Cameras from a gameplay and design perspective: First of all the numbers behind Cameras are designed to not allow survivors to abuse them cheesy ways and get away with bullying Ghost Face just because they have one; an isolated survivor should still be at a disadvantage even possessing a camera in order to reinforce the idea that Ghost Face is a killer that thrives against isolated targets, which is one of the reasons why the Camera is designed such that it takes longer to take a picture (3.33 seconds) than it does for Ghost Face to stalk fully while leaning, but slightly less than it takes for him to stalk fully while standing (this is done so that Ghost Face is still incentivized to lean-stalk, but that if he gets the jump on the survivor it should still be sufficient. Speaking of getting the jump on people, that brings me to the second thing the camera mechanic should incentivize a survivor to do: Stalk the Ghost Face himself! Yep, I think it would be awesome if one of the main forms of counterplay against Ghost Face was to stalk him yourself, and it fits very will with Ghostface lore in general with the idea of "exposing" the one behind the mask. Once a survivor acquires Photo Evidence, just as if they exposed the killer and found out his identity or had some dirt on him, it encourages to the survivor to make aggressive plays and emboldens them to try and be disruptive towards the Ghost Face as he tries to go for more vulnerable survivors, as he cannot stalk and expose the survivor with the Photo Evidence. This would also be encouraged to happen if a pair of survivors finds themselves up against the Ghost Face, with one person attempting to get a picture and try and take chase away from the other person who is either exposed or attempting to not get exposed.


Lastly, some random other tidbits to throw in that I'm really not too sure would improve or take away from the experience I just outlined if they were added:
- Not sure if Killer Instinct should be shown or not for a person who takes a picture of Ghost Face, because in terms of balance the Killer Instinct makes more sense to keep however thematically only seeing the notification for getting your picture taken as Ghost Face would be a lot more fun as it really would be like you're getting exposed yourself.
- Giving a survivor who gets injured in chase with Ghost Face the "Wary" status effect while they're being chased.
- I was thinking of a secondary objective if Ghost Face simply chooses to ignore the a survivor Photo Evidence, which is that after 45 seconds of the photo "burning in", in the 15 seconds right before the Photo Evidence is destroyed by the entity, the survivor could print it out into a Newspaper, which would reveal Ghost Face for the whole team, either by ending Night Shroud or granting everyone "Wary". The only issues with this are that it makes the killer's gameplay and power far more obtuse, and potentially gives the survivors far too much counterplay against the Ghost Face making him weak once again.
- Lastly either given these changes only or especially with the Newspaper in mind, more changes to improve Ghostface's lethality either by giving him higher speed while stealthed until in a range of a survivor, giving him a Kill mechanic upon stalking and hooking a survivor a certain amount of times, or some other wacky buff. A lot of it would potentially be unhealthy though and also would add to the clutter of the killer power if implemented, as is the case with most of these random changes and why I put them at the bottom here, I think the rework idea is probably better without them.



That concludes my idea for a Ghost Face rework! I hope it was an enjoyable read and if anyone does end up reading it let me know what you think! I really think Ghosty could use some love in modern DBD and I think these changes would be a good way to make him a threatening killer while preserving his identity.

DJWeebo

Small bump cause the post isn't a stub anymore and I actually managed to write the whole post (I posted it accidentally at the beginning with like 1 word in it). Edit: I was supposed to do an add on rework part as well… oops. I can add that onto this if anyone is interested but for now I am leaving it like this lol