Friends, Franchises, Ghost Trading?
Buried among the many pages in the game are a few buttons that are grayed out, so we can’t use them just yet.
For instance, if you tap on the chat, and then anyone’s name, you’ll see a board come up with some information about the player. There are currently only three things you can do with other players: Whisper (talk directly to that person), Block, and Report. Grayed out are “Add Friends” and “Invite Clan” buttons.
Let’s discuss these features a bit more.
Coming Soon: Add Friends
In Pokemon Go, the friend feature was added early in 2018 to a great effect. It turned out that the ability to be connected to someone laid the foundation for two of the most requested features: trading and battling, and both of those features have been added to the game and are very dependent, if not entirely so, on the friend system. You can also collect and send gifts to friends that contain a few items, including special eggs.
What does this have to do with Ghostbusters World? The “Add Friend” button that shows up when you tap on someone’s name in the chat section of the game doesn’t do anything right now, but in a future update, it will.
This feature, like Pokemon Go, could (and I think it will) lead to trading of ghosts. I’m saving a lot of duplicate fantastic S level ghosts for this.
Coming Soon: Invite Clan
I am kind of hoping that they call these “Franchises” by the time they launch. I do like the idea of having friends and also the ability to create a “clan” or a “franchise” for a group.
In Pokemon Go, there aren’t small groups. Instead, there are three factions: Instinct, Mystic and Valor. These have an impact on gameplay, with gyms especially.
I wouldn’t mind factions in Ghostbusters World, but seeing as there are no “gyms” in the game, it really doesn’t make much sense. Plus, Ghostbusters has always been more about teamwork to take down the ghosts, than some competition… other than Ghost Smashers, that is.
I’m excited to learn more about this feature as it gets closer to launch, probably sometime this year.
Wishlist: Ghost Trading
As I mentioned above, the friend feature could be the doorway toward trading ghosts (and perhaps battling friends’ ghosts as well).
The way Pokemon Go has made trading work is pretty smart, and mitigates the risk of someone taking advantage of someone else, or borrowing their phone to trade away all of someone’s great pokemon. The way it works in Go, is that you must first be friends with someone. You build up friendship levels over time, trading gifts with each other, battling with each other, etc. After months of playing together, you can become best friends. As you move through the friendship levels, the stardust cost to trade Pokemon sharply decreases. You also need to be within 100 meters of someone to trade.
This is a good system to imitate for Ghostbusters World. It’s well thought out, and protects all players’ collections. I think that runes are going to be a question with regard to trading. (Do the runes go with the ghost?)
Wishlist: Dimensional Door Ghost Lists
I love being able to see what ghosts are close by. You currently have to go within range of a door to see the list of ghosts that will appear nearby.
That said when I’m in a park, or another place with a dense number of Dimensional Doors, I would love to be able to tap on a door, and then another “Ghost Tracker” button from within the Dimensional Door screen, so that I can see what ghosts may be generated around a particular door. That way, I can choose where to focus my efforts my search for rare ghosts, such as Yuki or Dixie.
Wishlist: Dimensional Door Speed Up (not how you might expect)
With the animation, the dimensional doors take a bit too long to collect items. I’m not suggesting that we remove the animation, or speed it up, as it is part of the character of the game, and if you want to watch it, you should be able to.
What I am suggesting is this: In Pokemon Go, when you go to a stop, you spin it, and then items show up in bubbles. You don’t have to pop the bubbles to collect the items, but you can if you want. You can also just tap to exit and all of the items .
I would love it if, as we do right now, you can tap on the door, but then, if you want to quickly collect the items, you tap a second time to skip the animation, and then tap a third time to exit. Same minimum number of taps, but mere seconds to collect items, rather than 11+ seconds per door.
Wishlist: Passenger Play
The game currently doesn’t let you play when you’re moving too fast, such as a fast moving car. When the driver is going slow enough, ~20 MPH, you’re able to play as a passenger. There is no override for faster moving cars, when it comes to catching ghosts. You can still play the PVP, Tower, and other features of the game that aren’t map related, however.
Wishlist: Seasonal Shard Rewards
Other games I have played offer seasons where you get shards of a specific ghost for playing during the season. This would especially be good if they implemented using shards for upgrading the ghost’s abilities. For instance, one season they could have prizes of Vigo shards, and I could use those toward unlocking or upgrading the Vigo that I already have. The next season could be Nine-Tailed Fox. Either way, seasonal rare ghost shards as rewards for playing PVP/tower would be a nice addition to the game.
Wishlist: Ghost Costume Variants
Christmas brought limited-time costumes for six ghosts. Dixie was notable, in that she usually wears white, but for Christmas she was wearing red, and a lot of people noticed because she’s one of the strongest ghosts in the game so she’s in a lot of teams. Anyway, it would be nice to have the ability to choose, on an individual, ghost-by-ghost level, which costume variant you’d like your ghost to wear. You would be able to see your regular Dixie in your Containment Unit, next to your Christmas Dixie, if you have two of her.
Wishlist: Ecto-Goggle Batteries by Types
Right now the batteries currently work for finding Light/Dark ghosts more easily. One of the major players in the game suggested that having different batteries for different types of Ghosts would be cool, like a Water ghost Battery that could help find, for instance, Yuki.
Reader Suggestions from Comments
Mark Tang commented with these ideas. Three of them, I believe anyone that has played Pokemon Go will appreciate. I’ve listed them below with some thoughts of my own on these.
Change Traps During Ghost Battle – I think this would be obvious. It is cumbersome to change traps in the menus, and would be very nice to be able to change traps mid-battle. I’ve also run out of a trap while trying to catch a particular difficult ghost. This would have allowed me to try a different level of trap. Love this idea!
Costume Attributes – Adding bonuses that the suits can give you is an interesting idea. It’s something I don’t really see them doing, but possible. If they did this, I would like to see them update other suits with bonus attributes as well.
Ghost Lure Modules – In Pokemon Go, for those that don’t know, you can attach a lure to a pokestop (which are dimensional doors in Ghostbusters World). These lures will last 30 minutes on a normal day, and 3 hours if placed during an event such as a Pokemon Go Community Day. They attract more Pokemon to the stop, and sometimes Pokemon appear that are a little more rare. I’ve thought about something like this, where dimensional doors could have a feature you trigger that only lasts an hour at a time, to bring in more ghosts. Perhaps it could be a “Lure Battery” or something like that, for the dimensional doors? Love this idea, though.
More Frequent Multiplayer Boss Ghost Appearances – Pokemon Go’s eggs tend to hatch every day, and all of them are multiplayer. The only one that I’ve had problems with are EX Raids which only seem to happen from Monday to Friday, during first shift hours. I can see where this is a big problem for many players. Bosses like Stay Puft only show every three weeks, so for a player like me, who can’t get out every Saturday that he’s around to bring him down and get the shards, it could take about 10 years to get a Stay Puft. I understand wanting players to play for longer to catch all the ghosts. I also understand that it’s currently a game that is still growing in number of players. It’s much easier to find a group of players when these bosses are so rare that you should try to show up when they’re happening. It’s a bit of a catch-22 right now. Perhaps when they add more “Legendary Raids” to the game?
So, what features would you like to see in Ghostbusters World? Comment below!