A question about ghosting ...

[kfort]

I had a question about a fine-point concerning what is considered a "bust" and what isn't. When looking through the official ghosting rules, I notice it mentions in the commentary: "Any mission objective that explicitly demands that the player break one of the rules above is OK to complete and does not bust the ghost." My understanding is this concession was made to allow for missions which require property damage or other mayhem for completion.

Now my question is, does it make any difference if the objective is optional? For example, if a mission objective is "Kill three haunts" I would expect that completing this objective would not be a ghost bust, because it must be done to finish the mission and the objective is very clear on the action to be taken. But what if the objective was "Kill three haunts (optional)"?

While we are on the subject, what if the objective is a bonus objective which only appears *after* completion? So in this case, the "Kill three haunts" objective would miraculously appear after you kill three of the undead, but would not be visible before. Would killing the haunts count as a ghost bust (assuming you knew of the objective prior to going on your murderous rampage)?

And finally, what about player-triggered events? Continuing with my same example, what if completion of one objective (let's say "Push the Big Red Button") causes the three unfortunate haunts to explode violently or releases a crowd of hammerites to pound them into bone dust - is this a ghost bust?

I'm interested to hear what people think. Thanks for your time!

[Peter Smith]

This is my interpretation.

If it is an optional objective to kill, you don't have to do it, so it would be a bust.

A bonus objective is an obvious bust. The idea is to not be heard, be seen, or to do damage. Killing and then looking for forgiveness after the fact is not in the spirit of ghosting.

The player-triggered event has always been a thorny subject. They are so open to various interpretations that some of us wish they had never been allowed in the first place. One example I can think of was to push a button to flood a room in "The Cistern," after which one found that some bugbeasts had drowned. It was all an illusion. The player did not kill directly. It was required to push the button to complete the mission, but it was not an objective. This created pages of forum discussion in the good old days.

Things like this can go either way. In the end, all you can do is to make it a reportable incident and not claim unqualified success.

The point is that succeeding at ghosting for technical reasons is not so important as the fun in the game play. It is just as much fun to say you were busted by some unavoidable circumstance as to try to make a technical argument for why you weren't busted.

[Klatremus]

I think I agree with Peter in everything but the optional objective dilemma. I'd say an optional objective basically is the same as a normal objective, the only difference is the game won't let you finish the mission unless you complete all the non-optional ones. But in realistic terms, to Garrett, every objective is optional if the alternative is sacrificing his life. I dunno, perhaps I'm reaching for something here, but hopefully you get my point.

On another note, what about optional objectives for Supreme Ghost? Included in those rules is a clause saying you have to finish all objectives. Now this rule must have been implemented to target optional objectives specifically, otherwise I don't see the point in having it. Does this mean Supreme is busted for completing an optional objective if the instructions is to carry out an action that goes against the rules, just because "(optional)" is written next to the objective text?

Thanks for listening to my rambling...

[kfort]

Thank you for letting me know your thoughts. I asked about this because I'm currently designing a Thief mission and I'm trying to decide how best to setup the objectives. One of the side quests involves knocking out a person and moving them to a specific place. I was debating whether or not this goal should be optional. I was curious how that might affect ghosters playing the mission.

I've decided I will make it an optional objective to give each player the power to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to complete it. As a general rule, I prefer to give the player choices rather than force a specific play-style and finishing the side quest does not affect the main goal of the mission. Since it appears as a visible optional objective, each ghoster can decide for themselves if they would rather complete all goals or avoid dealing any damage. Either way the mission could be completed successfully.