When it comes to MMORPGs and live service games as a whole, there’s an emphasis on offering enough to do. Then, offering an array or repeatable things to maximize the time players play. With the MMORPG currently known as Ghost, Fantastic Pixel Castle’s Greg Street says that their game won’t “fill up all of your time”.
Sharing a series of posts on the topic on X (Twitter), Street says “One of the things we are doing with Ghost, that might be controversial, is we aren't going to fill up all of your time. If you are progression focused, you can likely finish until the next chapter. You can do more fun or optional things or god forbid take a break”. With this in mind, and after some questions, he clarified what this means.
One of the things we are doing with Ghost, that might be controversial, is we aren't going to fill up all of your time. If you are progression focused, you can likely finish until the next chapter.You can do more fun or optional things or god forbid take a break.
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 30, 2024
In terms of alts, of course they’re going to be offering opportunities for alts and, given the devs on this team and their target audience, there will be things to do. However, what they’re looking to offer is not just repetition. “We also aren't going to set things up so that once you finish one character you repeat the grind with a bunch more,” Street says on alts. With that in mind, they are planning on offering some motivation to roll alts to experience everything, but to also make it fun to play if you just roll one main.
Getting the most repeatable content into the game to offer something to do until the next big content drop is familiar to most of us. For FPC, it seems like they want the experience to be more dynamic and shaped through player choices on what to do, with hints at the greater community and world offering possibilities that aren’t all about the grind.
We believe the game will have factions associated with different classes. (Not HvsA factions) So you would need different classes to see all the content. But it's not the kind of game where you can't focus on a single main if that's your thing
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 30, 2024
“We want you to have downtime. Downtime is healthy. Do a scavenger hunt, go to a wedding, or maybe run a dog spa.” Though this is not a confirmation of dogs in the game just yet, as Street is quick to mention they don’t know if that will be the case yet. So, some hypotheticals, but they do offer some insight on their goals and the social and other elements that strengthen and make MMORPGs memorable experiences.
