Your opinion on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Click here and disable ads!

Oh god Wesp released 7.9 beta a month ago

Shoudl'n tit be a ne version by now? Did he die?

Christmas. They are all going to wait for it.

Co8, wesp, bear dude.


Soooo typical.

Oh joy, rather than see this discussion happen again just read this thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=50142
tl;dr: Troika is just as bad as Bethesda and you fanboys have no solid arguments against this whatsoever.
Edit: I see you were in that thread too, but in any case, any further discussion is going to involve arguing-in-circles for several pages so why bother?

I was under the impression that a proper Malk should be absolutely normal 95% of the time, and ideally quite intelligent and rational... But completely insane (i.e. a Bloodlines Malk) when specific subjects / keywords are involved. Now that I think of it, kinda like Black Cat (derangements tied to: body weight perception, hair color, ...), Awor (copyright, ...), Grunker (the 'Great Unnamed Role-Playing System'), etc. :whistle: But whatever, I'm anything but a VtM expert, so I might be wrong.

While we're at the subject, I remembered something I always wanted to ask: anybody knows how do Bloodlines dice rolls work? I think the PnP system uses d10s, with rolls of 7(?) and above being counted as successes, but I never saw anything similar referenced in the game. I was always curious about the difference between raising Strength (the attribute) and Potence (the discipline) - in PnP, the discipline is much more powerful (and limited by blood cost and duration) because X levels of Potence gives X automatic successes on related rolls, while X levels of Strength only gives X dice to the pool rolled. That's why getting 5 ranks of the attribute costs 40 XP, while the discipline costs 50 etc. (if I got my math right, the discipline would statistically give a 2.5 times greater effect; if I fucked it up, it would still be significantly greater and more reliable). Anybody know how the computer game handles this?

I'll leave a free (0 XP cost, all PCs start with it) Awesome Button that makes both of the above completely obsolete out of it... for now. But anybody looking for 'lore rape' should look no further than Blood Buff, imho. And yes, I know that most people would separate 'fluff' from 'crunch' in this instance - but I consider it akin to making a race of pointy-eared supermen with a snobbish sense of fashion (example chosen because of the original quote etc.), calling it 'elves', copy-pasting text from the Forgotten Realms campaign guide, and giving them the standard elven abilities of infravision, sleep resistance, and casting Fireball 3/day. 'The most faithful lore implementation ever' or 'lore rape'? The label used is irrelevant, it's fucked up and should be eradicated - and no, reducing it to 'just' casting Fireball 1/day in a fan patch is not enough

????

Just finished reading that thread, and you and Black Cat are clearly wrong. No lore rape takes place in Bloodlines whatsoever. What are you two on about?

There is Malk like that in the game, or rather what's left of him.

The main problem I have with VTMB is that the plot is shit and lacks the social intrigue that is so characteristic of the setting.

Grout.

iirc, the maunal for the tabletop game says something about while LOL CHEESEMONKEYS IMMA SO RANDOM XD insane characters are annoying for everyone involved, Malkavians should still maintain that "creepy fucker" aura whenever possible.

The lolrandom Malks still outnumber every other character archetype among VtM PCs though.

Clearly wrong, that's why all the great minds of the Codex can't actually argue against, it, right? Just go on, keep your head in the sand.

I still don't see the appeal of this game. The combat was generally shit and the story wasn't nearly interesting enough to make up for that.

I know there are a lot of troikacockgobblers and worldofdarknessfags on the codex but still.

I know, but I aimed for links to drama threads about it, though it seems this thread is going to generate some minor drama in a few pages

Of course, it's a great excuse to play a character without any depth.

After playing DE:HR and Deus Ex+mods I decided to replay this after many years and I've forgotten most of the game. With WESP 7.8 too.

DE:HR has third person look, no leaning, item highlight, health regen and bosses, guess which game has this too? As for combat, at least I can hit my enemies with melee while they are running around in VTMB, try doing that in Deus Ex when they are on fire. But cinematic takedowns are in real-time and you can get hit out of it.

Most of the dungeons are terrible, remember the carpark where you sneak from one vent to another at least 8 times? Well I just replayed it, it is more fun as a corridor shooter anyway. The stealth missions like the museum are poorly done, Alpha Protocol/Hitman/Thief/Deus Ex 1& 3 are all superior. I'm halfway through the sewers now, lololoz big creatures throwing green stuff at me here I come. Any way the plant explosives mission at the first hub, I did it without a single kill but the game didn't didn't acknowledge it, I did just made a run for it after bomb has been planted, being bullet-proof with health regen helps. Remember those youtube FPS videos of players running around without firing a shot, I bet you can do this too. But then we alraedy have obfuscate.

I'm impressed with the character system, but not being familiar with WoD I can't really judge well. Why can't I get a rifle until the end of the game?

Some missions reward you for stealth. Some missions don't.

Killing police officers or security guards tends to be a bad idea. But you will get penalized for killing them, in some cases, than rewarded for not killing them.

^ The mission says sneak and don't kill... even though I am suppose to blow up the building killing quite a lot of people. And you get an extra xp for killing everyone same as sneaking so... ??? Was there alternative dialogue for successfully sneaking?

I don't think it was needed. The Nosferatu guy mentions they are all sabbat aspirants (ie: they know of the WoD vampires). I think the original plan might have been substantially different, they might not even have been main quest related at all (since the sneaking path is still "operational", and it's possible to enter and return with it, and there are some cut things (the device under the wharehouse, exploding the train) that suggest it was more important before.

That mission doesn't tell you to sneak. As SCO said, the quest giver tells you that the humans are already aware of vampires and that you shouldn't break a sweat over killing them. In fact he even goes so far as to tell you that you're upholding the masquerade by killing them, and indeed there's a masquerade redemption point upon completing the quest.

How is the stealth in the museum worse than DX stealth? It has all the same elements: security cameras panning corridors, guards with patrol routes, noise based detection, throwable items to distract guards, hacking and lockpicking.

Why do you keep arguing when you know you're wrong? Is it that fun to troll?

Malks come in all shapes and forms. Some of them are normal 95% of the time, some aren't. Some are extremely creepy, some aren't. Some are lolrandom, some aren't. My favorite types are usually those that suffered from some sort of mental illness while alive, with their malk blood adding a supernatural twist to their derangement. Kind of like a paranoid person who suddenly has all sorts of hallucinations that confirm his paranoia.

Meh. I'm a troikacockgobbler and a worldofdarknessfag and I don't have any trouble admitting that this is probably why Bloodlines was, and still is, such an amazing experience for me. You're right that it has more flaws that The Codex likes to admit, but the atmosphere, music, art design, voice acting and dialogue makes up for it all. It's the epitome of flawed gem.