World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs

[Wesp5]

In that case it would be very stupid of the player to let him go to come back later with a new army

Everyone has their own code of conduct. Maybe the character refuses to kill people who are willing to walk away

If I remember correctly, you couldn't even come near to him without killing his army and his guards. At least I killed them without any options to talk and was then surprised that I had this option with him. Which in my eyes is a typical bad Hollywood cliche: killing all minor baddies but letting the main villain live! As I wrote, the Deadpool movie made good fun of this.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

In that case it would be very stupid of the player to let him go to come back later with a new army

Everyone has their own code of conduct. Maybe the character refuses to kill people who are willing to walk away

If I remember correctly, you couldn't even come near to him without killing his army and his guards. At least I killed them without any options to talk and was then surprised that I had this option with him. Which in my eyes is a typical bad Hollywood cliche: killing all minor baddies but letting the main villain live! As I wrote, the Deadpool movie made good fun of this.

unless you operated on him he's going to die soon anyways

 

[Alexios]

The menu theme makes my ears bleed.

 

[Infinitron]

unless you operated on him he's going to die soon anyways

They're talking about Lanius.

Wesp5 has an appreciation for dramatic coherency. It's true, passing a bunch of skill checks to let the evil warlord walk away after massacring an army of his minions feels weird and is kind of silly. I'd say that yes, quite possibly it's there just so you can brag about how you passed a skill check to avoid combat with the final boss. Games gonna game!

 

[Herumor]

The menu theme makes my ears bleed.

It's almost the same theme that the first Bloodlines game had, save for a few alterations, like the guitar riffs and such. You didn't like that either?

 

[Zombra]

If I remember correctly, you couldn't even come near to him without killing his army and his guards. At least I killed them without any options to talk and was then surprised that I had this option with him. Which in my eyes is a typical bad Hollywood cliche: killing all minor baddies but letting the main villain live! As I wrote, the Deadpool movie made good fun of this.

I didn't want to weigh in on this derailment, but I'll make one post and then

Caesar in FNV wasn't a great villain because he had a big army of tough guys with lots of hit points. He was a great villain because he had a coherent, debatable point of view with a consistent and even persuasive philosophy behind it. Breaking down his door and doing a final boss fight, shooting him a lot to show you had higher stats than he did, is a perfectly good way to defeat him ... but discrediting his reprehensible worldview in a clash of words and ideas is a much more substantial, and dare I say dramatic, victory. How is "passing a bunch of checks" (and carefully selecting the correct speech options) somehow a lesser gameplay challenge than W + M1? Who here actually read the text instead of just clicking through because they saw a speech check? Is being sweet at circle strafing necessary for a truly prestigious RPG experience?

Talking shit about letting an enemy commander live not being good drama. Jesus christ, didn't anybody see Ran?

EDIT: Also, for the record, I finished an NCR playthrough without pressing the attack button once, including talking down Lanius. So no, you don't have to kill anyone before confronting him.

 

[Alexios]

The menu theme makes my ears bleed.

It's almost the same theme that the first Bloodlines game had, save for a few alterations, like the guitar riffs and such. You didn't like that either?

It's "almost the same" in the sense that a Dubstep remix of Smells Like Teen Spirit is "almost the same."

 

[Herumor]

It's "almost the same" in the sense that a Dubstep remix of Smells Like Teen Spirit is "almost the same."

That's an absolutely exaggerated and completely inaccurate comparison. For one, this is made by the same person who made the original.

 

[typical user]

unless you operated on him he's going to die soon anyways

They're talking about Lanius.

Wesp5 has an appreciation for dramatic coherency. It's true, passing a bunch of skill checks to let the evil warlord walk away after massacring an army of his minions feels weird and is kind of silly. I'd say that yes, quite possibly it's there just so you can brag about how you passed a skill check to avoid combat with the final boss. Games gonna game!

I mean if you've gone the hassle to max out speech then you probably aimed for diplomat build. Just equip your legionare recruit rags and sprint to Lanius to suck him off with your silver tongue.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

unless you operated on him he's going to die soon anyways

They're talking about Lanius.

Wesp5 has an appreciation for dramatic coherency. It's true, passing a bunch of skill checks to let the evil warlord walk away after massacring an army of his minions feels weird and is kind of silly. I'd say that yes, quite possibly it's there just so you can brag about how you passed a skill check to avoid combat with the final boss. Games gonna game!

who the hell would let lanius go

 

[Roguey]

I mean, why give the option to let him go in the first place? It's like letting the main villain go free just to make the game solveable with no killing. I'm glad Bloodlines didn't do this!

In Bloodlines, you're given the option to side with LaCroix and Xiao despite those being extremely terrible and stupid ideas (that inevitably blow up in your face) and when you do go against LaCroix, you don't kill him, you just stab him a bit, drop the key (the thing he wants) and walk away (gambling that whatever's in the "don't open it" box will take care of him).

The New Vegas ending slides show that Lanius causes no more additional problems for the Mojave once he leaves. Would he cause problems elsewhere? Sure. If your character cares about that, kill him. If not, let him be.

 

[Latro]

A former Bloodlines 1 dev is posting in the Bloodlines 2 resetera thread

oof, codex mogged by resetera again

 

[luj1]

RE: Combat sucked in the original too


Yeah. Combat was probably the worst part of the original. I'm not sure whether combat in Bloodlines II is slightly better or slightly worse, but let's say they're neck and neck. The thing is however, in the original you had something to fall back to because the game had a backbone comprised of interesting characters, subplots, etc.

Therefore if this game can't reproduce that it will fall apart like a house of cards.

 

[ArchAngel]

RE: Combat sucked in the original too


Yeah. Combat was probably the worst part of the original. I'm not sure whether combat in Bloodlines II is slightly better or slightly worse, but let's say they're neck and neck. The thing is however, in the original you had something to fall back to because the game had a backbone comprised of interesting characters, subplots, etc.

Therefore if this game can't reproduce that it will fall apart like a house of cards.

People say combat sucked in Bloodlines but I find stat based combat always superior to twitch based combat of Dark Souls or Witcher 2/3.
So in my point of view, combat didn't suck at all. What sucked were some combat encounters where there were way too many copy/pasted enemies to kill.

 

[Kem0sabe]

RE: Combat sucked in the original too


Yeah. Combat was probably the worst part of the original. I'm not sure whether combat in Bloodlines II is slightly better or slightly worse, but let's say they're neck and neck. The thing is however, in the original you had something to fall back to because the game had a backbone comprised of interesting characters, subplots, etc.

Therefore if this game can't reproduce that it will fall apart like a house of cards.

People say combat sucked in Bloodlines but I find stat based combat always superior to twitch based combat of Dark Souls or Witcher 2/3.
So in my point of view, combat didn't suck at all. What sucked were some combat encounters where there were way too many copy/pasted enemies to kill.

If you are going to do an action rpg, then it should have skill based combat not some clunky shit tied to stats. And yes, Bloodline's combat was absolutely terrible.

 

[commie]

unless you operated on him he's going to die soon anyways

They're talking about Lanius.

Wesp5 has an appreciation for dramatic coherency. It's true, passing a bunch of skill checks to let the evil warlord walk away after massacring an army of his minions feels weird and is kind of silly. I'd say that yes, quite possibly it's there just so you can brag about how you passed a skill check to avoid combat with the final boss. Games gonna game!

Yeah, the Coalition gamed the Napoleonic wars, letting the arch fiend survive, not once but twice after massacring armies of his minions! Realty gonna real!

 

[Vibalist]

THAT face...

Speaking of which... don't they call that guy a thinblood in the demo? If he's a thinblood he shouldn't be malformed like that, like a regular Nosferatu.

You can definitely expect them to play fast and loose with the lore. They're already doing this whole 'from thin-blood to powerful vampire' thing, so...

 

[ArchAngel]

RE: Combat sucked in the original too


Yeah. Combat was probably the worst part of the original. I'm not sure whether combat in Bloodlines II is slightly better or slightly worse, but let's say they're neck and neck. The thing is however, in the original you had something to fall back to because the game had a backbone comprised of interesting characters, subplots, etc.

Therefore if this game can't reproduce that it will fall apart like a house of cards.

People say combat sucked in Bloodlines but I find stat based combat always superior to twitch based combat of Dark Souls or Witcher 2/3.
So in my point of view, combat didn't suck at all. What sucked were some combat encounters where there were way too many copy/pasted enemies to kill.

If you are going to do an action rpg, then it should have skill based combat not some clunky shit tied to stats. And yes, Bloodline's combat was absolutely terrible.

Pick up a gun in RL and try to shoot a person 30m away that it also shooting you back. I bet you will miss 90% of your shots. Action games let you perform perfectly accurate headshots in such situations even when just starting at lvl 1.
Stat based games at least try to simulate RL.
Shit games like DS or Witcher 2/3 go a step further and turn into rolling simulators. In RL your character would die after few such rolls as he would fumble and then get killed easily. Fuck that shit.

 

[Wesp5]

Stat based games at least try to simulate RL.

Indeed! I found firearms combat in Bloodlines not bad, the crosshairs show your accuracy and once you got some reasonable stats, it played like a normal shooter. Not absolutely stupid as completely stat based RPGs like KOTOR, where the player would fire his blaster at the feet of an enemy even it it was only 1 meter away if he got bad stats ! I never played Bloodlines melee much, but I heard that there are some issues there with combos not working especially in Protean form...

 

[Kem0sabe]

RE: Combat sucked in the original too


Yeah. Combat was probably the worst part of the original. I'm not sure whether combat in Bloodlines II is slightly better or slightly worse, but let's say they're neck and neck. The thing is however, in the original you had something to fall back to because the game had a backbone comprised of interesting characters, subplots, etc.

Therefore if this game can't reproduce that it will fall apart like a house of cards.

People say combat sucked in Bloodlines but I find stat based combat always superior to twitch based combat of Dark Souls or Witcher 2/3.
So in my point of view, combat didn't suck at all. What sucked were some combat encounters where there were way too many copy/pasted enemies to kill.

If you are going to do an action rpg, then it should have skill based combat not some clunky shit tied to stats. And yes, Bloodline's combat was absolutely terrible.

Pick up a gun in RL and try to shoot a person 30m away that it also shooting you back. I bet you will miss 90% of your shots. Action games let you perform perfectly accurate headshots in such situations even when just starting at lvl 1.
Stat based games at least try to simulate RL.
Shit games like DS or Witcher 2/3 go a step further and turn into rolling simulators. In RL your character would die after few such rolls as he would fumble and then get killed easily. Fuck that shit.

No game can simulate real life, so why try? The goal for devs should be to implement enjoyable game systems not bad simulations and abstractions of how an real world action would translate into a game.

I much prefer to play an action rpg with a fun, fast, fluid combat system.

 

[Nano]

Interesting.

 

[FreeKaner]

If your game is first person shooter the best way to go about character progression is with abilities and non-combat elements. The way games approached this issue in combat so far by manipulating your aiming or accuracy always makes it feel as if you are a geriatric.

 

[ArchAngel]

If your game is first person shooter the best way to go about character progression is with abilities and non-combat elements. The way games approached this issue in combat so far by manipulating your aiming or accuracy always makes it feel as if you are a geriatric.

I bet you would also say that if you played more realistic shooters like Counter Strike where guns are also not 100% precise and stuff like recoil exists.

Just because you can hold and fire a gun it does not mean you are 100% capable to shooting anything with it. When you are special forces or cop level that also means you raised your gun skill in the game just like how it worked in Bloodlines.
If you are still doubting me, watch this:

 

[Zer0wing]

Well, in Bloodlines guns are borderline useless with zero points in firearms and you can only thank Troika for that, at least the shotgun doesn't hurt back with recoil and doesn't fall on the ground, ammo magazine doesn't fall off, uzi doesn't jam with long burst fire, you don't shoot yourself while holstering the pistol and most importantly - your character doesn't hold the weapon like a retard. Since guns in real life hurt the inexperienced shooter more than the target.

 

[Roguey]

People say combat sucked in Bloodlines but I find stat based combat always superior to twitch based combat of Dark Souls or Witcher 2/3.
So in my point of view, combat didn't suck at all. What sucked were some combat encounters where there were way too many copy/pasted enemies to kill.

Bloodlines was an action game where stats determined damage. It was a clunky-playing one.

To attack an enemy with a melee weapon, approach the enemy and click on
the attack button. When pressing one of the directional keys along with the
attack button, the vampire will perform one of four different combo moves.
Each direction (forward, back, left and right) causes another combo move to
occur when the attack button is pressed.
Note: Some combos cause the character to travel great distances, so
experiment with combos to learn which one works better for you.
Additionally, some combos are directional and others are in great arcs
that can strike multiple enemies.

Remember to change up your combos to keep the enemy off balance and
allow you to connect for more damage. If you continue to use the same combo
over and over, the enemy will have an easier time blocking and countering.
When your character hits an enemy, the Melee combat feat determines how
much damage is caused and how easily an opponent can defend against your
attack. Depending on the effectiveness of your melee attack and the defense
of the target, several things may occur:
• The target can be sent flying back through the air.
• The target can be knocked off balance and open for another attack.
• The target can block your attack and leave the vampire staggered and
unable to attack for a moment.
• The target can dodge the attack.
• The target can dodge the vampire’s attack and counterattack.
If the vampire is on the defensive, use blocking to get the upper hand in a
melee battle. If the character is actively blocking (default key: Tab), you’ll get
a defense bonus equal to the vampire’s dexterity. When actively blocking,
different results can occur:
• The enemy is knocked off balance and open for a counterattack.
• The character defends against some of the attacker’s damage.
• The character cannot block the attack and is sent off balance.
A character can quickly turn the tide of battle by using a well-timed block to
knock an enemy off balance and set him or her up for a big combo attack.
To summarize, a higher Melee combat skill increases the chance of landing
crushing blows and clean hits while reducing the odds of being
counterattacked. On the other hand, a higher Defense Feat means the
character will be knocked around less and blocks will throw attackers offbalance
and reduce the damage taken.

(doesn't sound like RPG combat to me; additionally, none of this is necessary, thankfully, considering how awkwardly it feels)

It's an eternal source of frustration how nearly everyone except me gets how Bloodlines handles firearm accuracy wrong. The ranged feat doesn't affect the stock accuracy of weapons at all, just damage and how quickly the reticule shrinks after moving or firing. Troika made the stock accuracy of Santa Monica and Downtown guns absurdly bad because of utterly stupid ideas about how the game should be balanced.