With the Ghost MMO project wrapping up its development in 2024, it’s time once again for the devs at Fantastic Pixel Castle to come together and talk about it in a podcast, as some of its major devs mark the game’s current journey and also break down some reactions to a recent gameplay video.
That preview opens up the first portion of the roundtable, as Greg Street points out that the lobby-style setup isn’t going to be the final form of Ghost; it’s mostly a prototype in order to see how blue zone and red zone gameplay functions at scale. “The gameplay is just as far along as the art is, meaning there are parts that are representative and parts that are totally stand-in,” he explains. “We are not going to have portals that you jump through and you see a loading bar. […] We certainly won’t ship like that.”
On that same subject, the devs discussed the design intention of red zones, pointing out the dynamic nature of boss spawns and objectives and how players will want to visit these areas for specific resources and rewards, all while being designed to encourage interaction with many more players versus the smaller scale blue zones.
Some other tidbits about Ghost include:
- Street admitting to liking rolling for loot and having master looter rules for parties, though quest items may be instanced.
- The devs considering ways to give extra rewards to those who run guilds.
- Confirmation that red zones will feel like more linear MMORPG questing experiences while blue zones are more like environmental stories or side quest.
- PvP details including a lack of PvP-specific ability balancing and gear, while some red zones will have FFA PvP that offer extra rewards for killing other players and some blue zones pitting two groups of players against each other to complete objectives.
- A desire to bring the MMO to consoles as well as make sure Ghost is fully playable on a gamepad.
The podcast further goes into talks about its art style, the urge to add pets sometime later, the importance of having MMO fans make artwork for the game, the impact of multiboxing, and how to prioritize where to focus development. It’s a pretty dense hour of discussion that can be listened to below.
