Revisiting VtM: Bloodlines

[makiavelli747]

Kind of irrelevant if the disciplines aren't useful, isn't it?

no, because with disciplines you could be stronger. if you don't want to make your build stronger then you might as well finish the game with 200 or whatever unspent skill points and say that every skill in game is useless

Making a "haggle" build work doesn't make haggle a useful skill.

how so? I might as well say when you playing combat char, sneak is useless, when you playing melee build unarmed skill is useless.
of course you don't need blood when you are not using discipline. but playing char with discipline and high haggle is actually easier, and when playing certain type of build makes the game easier then that means skills that have been used by that build is useful.

fuck, this conversation becomes very retarded

Is Thaumaturgy as situational as it seems? Seems like the only mainstay spell is Blood Shield with everything else growing more and more useless over time.

with talisman, 5 lvl of thaumaturgy is very powerful. 1st lvl in vanilla is always OP

 

[Multidirectional]

I like destroying everything with maxed disciplines, they make combat less shit for me so I don't know why would anyone prefer multiple basic combat skills. Raising just one of them high is plenty for me.

with talisman, 5 lvl of thaumaturgy is very powerful

Yep that thing can do some serious damage.

 

[makiavelli747]

And yes, I can prove that a build that accomplishes all quests, can hack everything, lockpick everything, and fight in any available fashion is better than a build that...

being able to do everything does not mean its easier(=build is stronger). playing jack of all trades is always harder, that's why you are forced to metagame everything with that kind of build

 

[Average Manatee]

Kind of irrelevant if the disciplines aren't useful, isn't it?

no, because with disciplines you could be stronger. if you don't want to make your build stronger then you might as well finish the game with 200 or whatever unspent skill points and say that every skill in game is useless

Not really, the untaken disciplines are simply weak and not worth the blood cost.

Speaking of that. Is Thaumaturgy as situational as it seems? Seems like the only mainstay spell is Blood Shield with everything else growing more and more useless over time.

Blood Strike is kind of shit. I think in vanilla you didn't have a cast time for blood powers and could rapid-fire it away which was quite OP (or combine it fluidly with melee or guns with no downtime), but in the unofficial patch it sucks spending several seconds for a fairly weak attack when you can just use your melee or guns.

Blood Purge is very good and seems to work against everything humanoid, stunning it so you can take a good 7ish seconds of meleeing it.

Blood Theft (plus patch) is I-win against normals while the vanilla version is I-win against crowds of normals. Kind of good, but its the easiest fights in the game anyway. OTOH they are both effectively free powers since they'll return their cost.

Blood Boil is... just too extravagant and a waste of blood. I guess the explosive effect is good against crowds of normals, but its no better than your level 4 power and way more expensive. Against bosses it still has pretty poor damage, worse than guns or melee. I guess it would be useful against the gargoyle for a gunner?

I like destroying everything with maxed disciplines, they make combat less shit for me so I don't know why would anyone prefer multiple basic combat skills. Raising just one of them high is plenty for me.

I agree for other characters with better high level disciplines.

 

[makiavelli747]

Not really, the untaken disciplines are simply weak and not worth the blood cost.

lvl 5 celerity is weak and not worth the blood cost?

 

[Average Manatee]

Not really, the untaken disciplines are simply weak and not worth the blood cost.

lvl 5 celerity is weak and not worth the blood cost?

Do I look like I'm playing a character with celerity?

Christ you're a moron.

 

[makiavelli747]

Do I look like I'm playing a character with celerity?

even auspex gives +3 to firearms/dodge... do you know actual deference it makes in damage?
do you know exact amount of damage of blood boil?

 

[Average Manatee]

Do I look like I'm playing a character with celerity?

even auspex gives +3 to firearms/dodge... do you know actual deference it makes in damage?

Auspex gives less returns than simply investing in those stats. Why would I pay 10 XP for a point of Auspex that gives me +1 wits in exchange for blood when I can buy wits directly for 8 xp? Of course, I'll get it eventually. It's not like I said the build was completely maxed out.

Do you understand how to capitalize the first letter of a sentence? Or how to spell "difference"?

do you know exact amount of damage of blood boil?

Vs. Tzimsce

MAC-10 @ 8 skill: About 6-7 damage per shot, I'd estimate well over 100 DPS. @ 13 skill (i.e. maxed stats + auspex) it does about double that. A magazine takes away about 80% of his health, using Blood Purge to stun him and keep him from teleporting away.

Hunting Rifle @ 8 skill: 57-76. @ 13 skill around 105-130 damage.

M37 Shotgun @ 8 skill: 26-36. @ 13 skill 38-44. Surprisingly good actually, shows that early game guns aren't too bad (reload time is still a killer though).

Sledgehammer @ 8 skill: About 70-80 damage for a 3 hit combo. Note that the tzimsce doesn't block, enemies that block lower damage significantly when they do so and this is the big thing that makes melee slow against some other bosses.

Blood Strike w/+40% charm: 22 damage

Blood Boil w/+40% charm: 54-72 damage

Now in vanilla where AFAIK you don't have the long cool down and can spam the blood spells, yeah you can take anything down in seconds if you have the blood (like Harm in Arcanum). With it they are about as fast as the Hunting Rifle, maybe slightly faster.

I'll still say that Thaumaturgy is quite powerful since it only takes one discipline, but its behind high-level melee or ranged characters.

 

[Vibalist]

Are there any mods out there that decrease the amount of XP you get, forcing you to specialize more?

 

[makiavelli747]

Why would I pay 10 XP for a point of Auspex that gives me +1 wits in exchange for blood when I can buy wits directly for 8 xp?

you are right, in vanilla its not worth it yet, but instead of spending 32 points on physical attributes you still could have auspex 4 for 25 points and in meleefight just use bloodbuff anyway.
additional 24 points in research would give you free dodge/firearms 5 plus level in persuasion and intimidation. max skillcheck is 7 for intimidation(upd: nope, its 8. 7/7 is better then), if you don't use persuasion above 8, then 6-7 is enough(7 only for Chinese killers and to persuade Ricky at Johnny's club, with persuasion 6 you still can get in to basement of Giovanny mansion). plus, add points you spend on thaumaturgy and dominate, and you could easily had 11 or even 12 lvl of ranged weapons by this time. seduction 4 is useless, you can fuck Jeanette w/o seduction skill, and feed on the street or just buy whores and save another 10 points.
and w/o disciplines like celerity, potence, fortitude or presence its not worth to invest a lot in melee(but yes, its almost free in this case)

Do you understand how to capitalize the first letter of a sentence? Or how to spell "difference"?

of course I don't

Now in vanilla where AFAIK you don't have the long cool down and can spam the blood spells, yeah you can take anything down in seconds if you have the blood (like Harm in Arcanum).

you can switch between spells while cooldown

 

[makiavelli747]

Are there any mods out there that decrease the amount of XP you get, forcing you to specialize more?

I did it a long time ago but it was part of much bigger changes
all you need to do is modify txt files at Vampire\vdata\system, its quests_santamonica, quests_downtown etc.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Played a bit further with my ninja Malk.

The Bishop Vick fight is fucking frustrating. Obfuscate is useless since the devs in their wisdom don't let me stealth kill him, and I'm not doing a whole lot of damage even with the shotgun. It is beatable but not fun.

Melee Ventrue went through it like a wrecking ball. Tremere had no trouble either.

Yeah, obfuscate doesn't work on bosses (even when they should logically, Vick is just a regular vamp that doesn't even have Auspex on). Still, if your ranged is decent you shouldn't have much trouble pop-a-moling Vick with a Glock, just use that turned table in the middle of the room as a cover. It's distanced enough from him to take a lot of bite out of his shotgun blasts while being a good range to just let loose and fire rapidly with a Glock. His zombies will come after you of course but they're slow and die from one headshot (zombies overall are the only type of enemy in the game that suffers from a headshot multiplier, don't think it makes a difference against anyone else).

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Blood Boil is... just too extravagant and a waste of blood. I guess the explosive effect is good against crowds of normals, but its no better than your level 4 power and way more expensive. Against bosses it still has pretty poor damage, worse than guns or melee. I guess it would be useful against the gargoyle for a gunner?

Blood Boil is useful because unlike some other instant death disciplines (suicide, spectral wolf etc.) it always works (can't be resisted) against non-boss vampires and it takes out a group of humans no matter how HP spoungy they are otherwise (like SWAT troops at Ventrue Tower or monks in the Golden Temple).

Plus, blowing up people with your creepy Blood Magic is just plain fun, Tremere are feared by other clans for a reason. I nearly always rush Thaumatorgy when I'm playing a Tremere, can't wait to make things go BOOM in the night.

 

[WhiteGuts]

We were having a nice interesting discussion about the game, and now it turned into autistic minxmaxy shit

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah TBH the mechanics aren't really interesting enough to warrant this type of discussion.

I only brought up my problem with Vick and the ninja Malk because IMO it illustrates a problem with the game -- it encourages you to make different builds and usually gives you many different ways to approach situations, but in some cases hits you with fairly massive difficulty spikes if you haven't built for straight-up toe-to-toe combat one way or another.

I know this is a bit of a contentious issue here -- "no bad builds" and all that -- but I feel pretty strongly that character-building systems should strive for differentiation rather than simply "better" or "worse" characters (which are going to be a side effect no matter what you do).

I.e.: if your character-building system uses a single resource pool and gives you choices to distribute them between, say, talking, sneaking, lockpicking/hacking, brawling, and shooting, then your game should support each of these styles as well. Bloodlines gives the impression that it wants to -- most quests have multiple ways to approach them and talky skills plus lockpicking and hacking feel really rewarding -- but then it hits you with boss fights that can only be approached by straight-up combat, some of which are on the crit path and unskippable (Blood Guardian, the Tzimisce, Bach, Ming Xiao, the Sheriff etc.). This is a fairly significant flaw, and one that would not have been all that hard to address. This is IMO more of a design flaw than just lack of polish; there are so many instances that it can't be just happenstance.

 

[Gord]

Of course I failed my saving throw and had to reinstall it again a couple of days ago.
Playing a Tremere (too much talk about them here).

Wesp's patch enables some dominate responses in dialogues for Tremere, but it does feel a bit arbitrary which you get and which don't (though I don't have a Ventrue run parallel to compare):
E.g. you can make Vandal forget about Lily in the blood bank and convince the Russian Mobster that Venus' debt is off, but you can't make Milligan forget about what he saw at the hospital.
Granted, you might argue that the hospital scared the shit out of him, so it would require more effort.
Don't remember how it was in vanilla, did Tremere get any dominate options in dialogue?

 

[Lambach]

Don't remember how it was in vanilla, did Tremere get any dominate options in dialogue?

Nope, Ventrue only. The idea in the vanilla was that each Clan was supposed to have one unique weakness and one unique advantage. Ventrue's unique advantage was the use of Dominate in convos, while Tremere's was having access to Thaumaturgy. Which isn't really much of an advantage, considering that Thaumaturgy isn't that good of a Discipline outside levels 2 and 3.

 

[Vibalist]

Nah, which is strange. Why would a Tremere's Dominate discipline be weaker than a Ventrue's? It's just videogamey nonsense as far as I can tell.

EDIT: Oh.

 

[Lhynn]

Are there any mods out there that decrease the amount of XP you get, forcing you to specialize more?

Why would you ever do this? half the fun in this game is experimenting with shit.

 

[makiavelli747]

Wesp's patch enables some dominate responses in dialogues for Tremere

in UP+ Tremere gets only level 1 dominate in dialogues

 

[laclongquan]

Does anyone feel as irritated as me when people talk about wesp's unwarranted changes that he call fixes?
Good grief.

 

[Gord]

This is a fairly significant flaw, and one that would not have been all that hard to address. This is IMO more of a design flaw than just lack of polish; there are so many instances that it can't be just happenstance.

Given the number of mandatory fights, we can safely assume that they simply didn't want to give players the possibility of a fully pacifist run and consider some amount of combat part of the setting.
At least all clans can be made efficient fighters without too much effort or xp investment initially - and later on you know to expect some fights from time to time.
With that in mind, yeah, it would be cool to have the possibility of pacifist runs, but calling it a design flaw is exaggerating a bit, imo.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I only brought up my problem with Vick and the ninja Malk because IMO it illustrates a problem with the game -- it encourages you to make different builds and usually gives you many different ways to approach situations, but in some cases hits you with fairly massive difficulty spikes if you haven't built for straight-up toe-to-toe combat one way or another.

There exists a problem yes but Vick doesn't illustrate it because it's optional. A variety of different builds should be viable for tackling the main path content, that shouldn't translate into every sidequest having a sneaky, talky and straight combat option. That would be artificial, boring design.

I know this is a bit of a contentious issue here -- "no bad builds" and all that -- but I feel pretty strongly that character-building systems should strive for differentiation rather than simply "better" or "worse" characters (which are going to be a side effect no matter what you do).

No bad builds is an issue because of the ways designers usually go about achieving said goal, watering down stats' impact on the gameplay and making social stats give derpy combat bonuses. That's taking the easy way out, if you want to do it properly you have to create appropriate content (which obviously takes time, resources etc.) and have a strict requirement from player to play to their build's strengths (so yes if you build a social butterfly you should avoid straight-on combat whenever possible).

I.e.: if your character-building system uses a single resource pool and gives you choices to distribute them between, say, talking, sneaking, lockpicking/hacking, brawling, and shooting, then your game should support each of these styles as well. Bloodlines gives the impression that it wants to -- most quests have multiple ways to approach them and talky skills plus lockpicking and hacking feel really rewarding -- but then it hits you with boss fights that can only be approached by straight-up combat, some of which are on the crit path and unskippable (Blood Guardian, the Tzimisce, Bach, Ming Xiao, the Sheriff etc.). This is a fairly significant flaw, and one that would not have been all that hard to address. This is IMO more of a design flaw than just lack of polish; there are so many instances that it can't be just happenstance.

Blood Guardian is optional but your point stands. It is a flaw but to a degree it's simply a consequence of Bloodlines' biggest flaw which IMO is level design, it's overly linear and rudimentary compare to similar types of genre hybrids. Complex, organic level design that lends itself to different playing styles in a non-forced/artificial manner a la Deus Ex would have done wonders for the game.

 

[makiavelli747]

E.g. you can make Vandal forget about Lily in the blood bank and convince the Russian Mobster that Venus' debt is off, but you can't make Milligan forget about what he saw at the hospital.
Granted, you might argue that the hospital scared the shit out of him, so it would require more effort.

you can make him forget with dominate 3 as Ventrue(in vanilla the same)

 

[Gord]

Does anyone feel as irritated as me when people talk about wesp's unwarranted changes that he call fixes?
Good grief.

There are changes where I wonder what's supposed to be the advantage of having them. I.e., they don't seem to serve any purpose.
That does bewilder me a bit, but it's not really irritating, since most of that stuff is simply inconsequential.

Some of the bigger ones (e.g. disciplines) are optional, luckily.
Otherwise, I guess there's always the basic patch, or Tessera's patch (unless he has currently quit the internet forever, in which case you might have to check back in a few weeks).

you can make him forget with dominate 3 as Ventrue(in vanilla the same)

Ok, with the restriction that Tremere only get lvl 1 Dominate in dialogue, that explains at least why it doesn't work from a mechanical point of view.