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

[ERYFKRAD]

are we posting ideas for what we want to see in a vampire game?
vampire is a decoy protagonist that gets burned alive by a vampire hunter after you already did a bunch of sadistic shit and met a lot of the important vamps and you play as a vampire hunter for the rest of the game getting rid of the vampire filth

Man I'd play that

 

[Zombra]

The player should have the freedom to try making the idea work if he wants to. And the GM should punish retardation. But abolishing guns in the campaign would merely reduce player choice.

Cool. Well I want to play a vampire dentist who runs a modest little office and drains a bit of blood from every patient he puts under anesthetic. It's certainly a better idea than dude who runs around shooting people in the streets like a maniac. I expect the next vampire CRPG to have fully integrated systems for running a small business, office management and a dentistry minigame. Because I should have the freedom to make every idea work no matter how dumb it is.

 

[True Ukrainian]

The player should have the freedom to try making the idea work if he wants to. And the GM should punish retardation. But abolishing guns in the campaign would merely reduce player choice.

Cool. Well I want to play a vampire dentist who runs a modest little office and drains a bit of blood from every patient he puts under anesthetic. It's certainly a better idea than dude who runs around shooting people in the streets like a maniac. I expect the next vampire CRPG to have fully integrated systems for running a small business, office management and a dentistry minigame. Because I should have the freedom to make every idea work no matter how dumb it is.

Why not? Kingmaker had rules for nation building. NWN2 had fort management. Even bioware games doubled as low grade dating simulators.

 

[Zombra]

Why not?

Because putting every fucking stupid idea into a game is a sure way to make it garbage.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Why not?

Because putting every fucking stupid idea into a game is a sure way to make it garbage.

Your idea is no different from being the baron of the whatever lands. Except now you're the dentist of Miami.

 

[Zombra]

Why not?

Because putting every fucking stupid idea into a game is a sure way to make it garbage.

Your idea is no different from being the baron of the whatever lands. Except now you're the dentist of Miami.

Cool. Well I expect you to complain just as loud when Bloodlines 2 does not have dentistry features as you did about lack of persnickety inventory management.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Why not?

Because putting every fucking stupid idea into a game is a sure way to make it garbage.

Your idea is no different from being the baron of the whatever lands. Except now you're the dentist of Miami.

Cool. Well I expect you to complain just as loud when Bloodlines 2 does not have dentistry features as you did about lack of persnickety inventory management.

Can't be a dentist if you don't even have an inventory to put your tools in. Check and fucking mate.

 

[Grunker]

Why not?

Because putting every fucking stupid idea into a game is a sure way to make it garbage.

Your idea is no different from being the baron of the whatever lands. Except now you're the dentist of Miami.

Cool. Well I expect you to complain just as loud when Bloodlines 2 does not have dentistry features as you did about lack of persnickety inventory management.

Can't be a dentist if you don't even have an inventory to put your tools in. Check and fucking mate.

 

[Wesp5]

Your idea is no different from being the baron of the whatever lands. Except now you're the dentist of Miami.

That idea reminds me of the "Dresden Files", where Dresden's vampire brother works as a hair stylist feeding from the emotions of his female customers. Whether this would be any fun as a computer game is another matter !

 

[Can't handle the bacon]

are we posting ideas for what we want to see in a vampire game?
vampire is a decoy protagonist that gets burned alive by a vampire hunter after you already did a bunch of sadistic shit and met a lot of the important vamps and you play as a vampire hunter for the rest of the game getting rid of the vampire filth

Just make a Hunter: the Reckoning game instead. Actually, no, don't, because the main moral of the story is going to be that hUmAnS aRe ThE ReAl MonSteRs, and that we must be tolerant and open-minded towards "those who are DiFfEReNt". The main villain of the game will be the vaguely-Catholic and/or evangelical grandmaster of the vampire hunter's order, and the protagonist will team up with a possy of rainbow-colored multi-racial trisexual gender-gaseous vampires and witches to take him down for his bigotry and religious fanaticism. :clownworld:

 

[Storyfag]

The player should have the freedom to try making the idea work if he wants to. And the GM should punish retardation. But abolishing guns in the campaign would merely reduce player choice.

Cool. Well I want to play a vampire dentist who runs a modest little office and drains a bit of blood from every patient he puts under anesthetic. It's certainly a better idea than dude who runs around shooting people in the streets like a maniac. I expect the next vampire CRPG to have fully integrated systems for running a small business, office management and a dentistry minigame. Because I should have the freedom to make every idea work no matter how dumb it is.

All fine and dandy, right up until someone a hunter walks into your dental clinic with a gun. At this point, believe me, you *will* pull that sweet, sweet Colt Anaconda out and waste him. So as to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to yourself by making his blood boil.

 

[Storyfag]

are we posting ideas for what we want to see in a vampire game?
vampire is a decoy protagonist that gets burned alive by a vampire hunter after you already did a bunch of sadistic shit and met a lot of the important vamps and you play as a vampire hunter for the rest of the game getting rid of the vampire filth

Just make a Hunter: the Reckoning game instead. Actually, no, don't, because the main moral of the story is going to be that hUmAnS aRe ThE ReAl MonSteRs, and that we must be tolerant and open-minded towards "those who are DiFfEReNt". The main villain of the game is going to be the vaguely-Catholic grandmaster of the vampire hunter's order, and the protagonist will team up with a possy of rainbow-colored multi-racial trisexual gender-gaseous vampires thinbloods and witches to take him down for his bigotry and religious fanaticism. :clownworld:

Found a way to make it even worse.

 

[Can't handle the bacon]

DHAMPYRES!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Zombra]

Just make a Hunter: the Reckoning game instead.

I miss the Vampire Hunter mod for Half-Life.

 

[Harthwain]

Cool. Well I want to play a vampire dentist who runs a modest little office and drains a bit of blood from every patient he puts under anesthetic. It's certainly a better idea than dude who runs around shooting people in the streets like a maniac. I expect the next vampire CRPG to have fully integrated systems for running a small business, office management and a dentistry minigame. Because I should have the freedom to make every idea work no matter how dumb it is.

He's right about the general idea though. RPGs thrive on player's choice. The challenge in making a cRPG is how you implement player's choices within a system. It doesn't help there are plenty of clans to cover as it makes everything even more complex, because then you have more than just the base structure to consider.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Some ambitious indy developer should just create their own vampire IP that explores similar themes to VtM:B and avoid all of this stupid BS. There's a hole in the market for something like VtM:B, and I doubt Paradox will fill it anytime soon.

 

[Can't handle the bacon]

are we posting ideas for what we want to see in a vampire game?
vampire is a decoy protagonist that gets burned alive by a vampire hunter after you already did a bunch of sadistic shit and met a lot of the important vamps and you play as a vampire hunter for the rest of the game getting rid of the vampire filth

Just make a Hunter: the Reckoning game instead. Actually, no, don't, because the main moral of the story is going to be that hUmAnS aRe ThE ReAl MonSteRs, and that we must be tolerant and open-minded towards "those who are DiFfEReNt". The main villain of the game is going to be the vaguely-Catholic grandmaster of the vampire hunter's order, and the protagonist will team up with a possy of rainbow-colored multi-racial trisexual gender-gaseous vampires thinbloods and witches to take him down for his bigotry and religious fanaticism. :clownworld:

Found a way to make it even worse.

Ok hold on, I've got the perfect recipe.

The protagonist's immediate mentor will be a somewhat sympathetic White woman with "moderate" views who will try to reason with the "fanatical" old straight White male grandmaster of the order who wants to *gasp* wipe out all vampires and their human sympathizers (coz how can blood-sucking living corpses not have human sympathizers?), only for her to get cruelly and mercilessly murdered by him in the middle of the game for "treason" (fraternizing to some degree with vampires et al, for the greater good of course), thus setting him up as the real monster that plagues humanity. After he is brutally killed at the end of the game to the gleeful celebration of the rainbow-haired diversity brigade who high-five each other while dancing on his corpse, we see an epilogue where the Hunters' order is reformed as a bigotry-fighting organization that includes vampires, dhampyres, werewolves, catgirls, fairies, ghosts and demons as full members.

Also, the game will have character customization and multiple romance choices, but all of the promotional materials and author interviews will establish the protagonist canonically as a Black lesbian woman. And there will be a poorly-voiced autistic side-character with an obnoxious amount of screen time.

 

[Zombra]

RPGs thrive on player's choice.

Of course. The obvious point is that computer games, since they are finite, require design boundaries. Those boundaries should be dictated by what the game is and is not supposed to be. The devs here decided that the game was supposed to be about vampires who use vampire powers to do vampire things, and the player choice would revolve around what powers they selected and how to achieve their objectives using those powers, plus of course a lot of player choice in story decisions. They decided it doesn't make sense for a vampire to get attached to guns - they might pick one up and use it, the same way a human might pick up a handful of dirt and throw it in a guy's face during a fight. But what kind of human would carry handfuls of dirt in his pockets? Do we need an inventory system for dirt?

We agree that it IS POSSIBLE for a vampire to exist who likes guns a lot and enjoys comparing stats, collecting an arsenal and carefully managing ammunition, but I think we also agree that this is a weird edge case vampire who is kind of doing it wrong. So since a video game can't have literally everything, do we make an inventory system to cater to this doing it wrong vampire or not? What % of dev resources should be allocated to cater to this doing it wrong playstyle? How about instead we create a range of build choices for vampires who act like vampires?

Lastly, I know many of you are disappointed because you were looking forward to a game with lots of guns, gun stats, ammo management etc. I am delighted to inform you that a small indie studio recently released a game about shooting guns! It's an obscure title and I can't find the store page right now but if you search carefully I bet you can find it.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I agree. So now take a look at the Bloodhunt gameplay trailers !

Dude, Bloodhunt is the antithesis of everything I said.

 

[gerey]

but I think we also agree that this is a weird edge case vampire who is kind of doing it wrong

A shotgun to the face is a pretty good way to kill a vampire. Bloodlines even mentions this fact.

If you're a vampire and know the weaknesses of your kind it's not much of a stretch to assume you'd arm yourself with an shotgun with "dragon fire" rounds, or perhaps a large calibre battle rifle, or some other firearm that's good at shredding unarmed targets if you know trouble is coming your way.

Granted, if you're some vampire from a few centuries ago you're likely going to have trouble grasping the use of modern firearms, or see little point in using them, but a player character is going to be playing through the game at a power level where guns are likely to be a very good addition to his arsenal against opponents of a similar strength.

There's also the simple fact that it's much easier to maintain the Masquerade if you kill someone or something with a gun, than resorting to whatever vampire juju you've got - at least under enough circumstances for it to be a worthwhile investment to learn how to use guns and stock up on them and ammo.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

[...]

One of the themes of VtM is maintaining the mindset of a human against becoming a complete monster, so saying something is vampire-like is just as much a reason not to do a thing as it is to do the same thing in the setting. There's even a humanity mechanic to reinforce this.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Long guns would attract an incredible amount of unwanted attention once we go past video game bag of holding logic. People carrying rifles don't go unnoticed.

 

[Wesp5]

I agree. So now take a look at the Bloodhunt gameplay trailers !

Dude, Bloodhunt is the antithesis of everything I said.

Exactly. I just mentioned it because it seems to me Paradox does not understand much about the IP they bought at all...

 

[Wesp5]

Just make a Hunter: the Reckoning game instead.

I miss the Vampire Hunter mod for Half-Life.

I didn't even know one existed, you probably mean the multiplayer hunter vs vampires mod? Anyway, you should check out Prelude Part I in which you play a hunter too: https://www.moddb.com/mods/vtmb-prelude

 

[Flying Dutchman]

That idea reminds me of the "Dresden Files", where Dresden's vampire brother works as a hair stylist feeding from the emotions of his female customers. Whether this would be any fun as a computer game is another matter !

It's fun in What We Do In the Shadows with the emotional vampire, but admittedly, that's not a game, just a damn funny series.