Community VtmB patch controversy quelled and patch reboot

[psycojester]

Those of us who have active and healthy sex lives

this subject as what it is: an enjoyable distraction and a celebration of human female beauty

my hobby of producing nude re-skins

OH one of these things is not like the other! One of these things just doesn't belong!

 

[Vault Dweller]

You guys are *still* talking about this drama? There is a new NWN2 interview, go read it instead of arguing about this crap.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Well, I too got the impression that he was cybering Tessera (wearing whatever skin).

Christ. You people don't even try to hide your stupidity.

 

[psycojester]

We're busy Vault Dweller! We're watching a master at work , Tessera is a dumbfuck of such skill and delusion that he makes Sheek and Volourn seem grounded in reality and perfectly reasonable.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

For starters, don't even try and play the intention guessing game.

Sorry, but very often you are forced to guess how a broken thing was supposed to work of if it even was broken in the first place.

Guessing how a broken thing is supposed to work based on a dialogue file and the script is one thing. Justifying it as Troika's intention is entirely another.

Like, as I said, that camera quest where you place the cameras and don't get seen yet still fail because the quest thinks you did.

Okay, I did that. But I also moved one of the cameras into the kitchen, because this is where Imalia says it should be placed. Was that too much already? I also gave a warning that you failed the quest the moment you left instead of becoming aware of it after two level loads. Should I have left that out or was I fixing bad game design there?

Dialogue says camera should be in the kitchen and you didn't alter that in any way? I'd say the camera should be placed in the kitchen then. With regards to the warning, I always figured that if I was seen, the characters in that apartment would re-act and freak out. Maybe that's just me?

The bits of dialogue that weren't included because the loop was missed and pointed somewhere else.

Even in that case, how should I know if that was not intended because Troika thought less speech would streamline the game? It's guesswork most of the time.

See the part where I said "don't even try and play the intention guessing game"? Apply that rule here. What happens? Suddenly, we don't care what Troika did or didn't want. We now look at it reasonably objectively and ask "is it broken"? If for example, you need to add in your own custom line of dialogue to make it work, then I say you're breaking the "don't create new content" rule. If that line is already there though but it points somewhere else instead, and changing it to point to the missed loop suddenly adds in a bunch of stuff, I'd say that's okay.

You've gone beyond a basic patch. If that broken item involves you having to add it into a map and then re-balance everything around it. Nope. You're creating new content now. That's not a "basic patch".

Okay, I understand that you are a purist who likes to have such "basic patches", but Troika themselves did more than those, so did Dan and so do I. Did you complain that Troika changed too many things in their TOEE patches? Did you complain that they made a quest easier to get in their own official 1.2 patch?

Here's the thing, if they changed bits I didn't like, I wouldn't install the patch. It's really a simple concept that's not that hard to grasp. In your patches, as far as I'm concerned, you've changed a lot by adding in every extra model you found and putting in new items. That's fine. You can do that. I'm not saying you can't. I'm just saying two very simple things here:

1. The patches you've made are not what I want.
2. I just want a patch that doesn't try and re-add models and other broken items that Troika left out, regardless of whether or not Troika "intended" them to be in the game had they had the development time to implement them.

What I find interesting is how you assume the art is always correct. As you no doubt found out, art is a time consuming thing to change compared to changing a text file.

Yes, and that is the reason I prefer to change a text file to an art file . In the case of the weapons though most of the item files were named like their real world version as well so it was text and model together against a name that we all know was only changed for licensing reasons. Anyway, what's so bad about having the real names back?

Who decided to give the weapons made-up names? Troika. Who decided to give them their real names? You. Why? Because you could. Was it broken? Nope. Did the weapons need to have their names changed? Nope. Again, it moves beyond a basic patch and starts crossing that line of arbitrarily changing stuff because you want to. Not because it's broken or not working in any way, shape or form.

But don't change the kickback or how much damage it does.

Now that a different issue and I'm aware that this is more than "basic" but again it's the same stuff that Troika did in their own patches and the changes were more on the cosmetic side that affecting the gameplay.

Troika != You. Stop using what they do as a justification for your actions. If you really want to go down that path, you could reasonably argue about changing every single damn thing in the game to whatever you wanted simply because "Troika could do it too". That's not to say there's nothing stopping you. I'm just saying I like what Troika do. I don't like what you do.

Where is the borderline?

How does it affect the game, what happens to balance? Suddenly you're re-balancing the whole thing. That's not what I want. I can't speak for anyone else here but that's just not what I'm after.

I understand your point of view but still I think you are exaggerating. None of the restored items or weapons are powerful enough to un-balance anything.

You mean after you've renamed all the weapons, modified their damage, changed their kickback and everything else. As I said, it's not what I'm after. It's not a complex concept to grasp.

Case in point: That change you made that allowed you to sleep with Jeanette regardless of story and then regardless of whether you said you'd accept her quest or not. Where did that come from?

That one came from reading about it somewhere and noticing that the chances to get to that point were minimal in the original game. Also you actually need to accept her quest and you only get that chance with a high Seduction feat at exactly one special point. Sometimes the short descriptions in the readme are not accurate enough.

In other words, you took something that was meant to be a rare, special event and decided you'd make it easier because it was teh hard. Think about that for a moment and you'll understand why I'm wary of fan patches and why I only want a "basic patch".

 

[galsiah]

In other words, you took something that was meant to be a rare, special event and decided you'd make it easier because it was teh hard. Think about that for a moment and you'll understand why I'm wary of fan patches and why I only want a "basic patch".

I'd agree with your sentiment here if Bloodlines were a game that thoroughly supported replayability throughout - to the extent that many players might replay perhaps five or seven times. As it is, Bloodlines is not such a game. I'd guess that it's very rare for a player to play through more than three times.
Having rare, special events be rare and special because you only see them on the fifth playthrough, is great. Having rare, special events be so rare and special that most people never see them, is pointless.

You're free not to want/like what Wesp is doing, but there's a perfectly good argument for making rare, special content less rare, in a game that doesn't support many playthroughs. Of course the ideal would be to keep it rare AND support replayability throughout. Until Bloodlines does that (which it doesn't), making content common enough that most players get to see it before binning the game is not a terrible decision.

It's not a question of things being "teh hard" - it's a question of giving the player as much variety as possible in the playthroughs he has. Keeping things rare and special achieves that in a game that will be replayed many times - but Bloodlines won't be (by the overwhelming majority of players). Replaying Bloodlines even once involves going through a huge amount of repeated content. Requiring players to do that many times in order to access interesting parts of the game is not good design.

 

[Claw]

What I'd like to know: Has anyone tried the "true" patch? It's supposed to be fixes-only, but Wesp5 claimed that his changes were arbitrarily removed or kept, so what's the result?

So people could have complained much earlier than when I got involved and it seems nobody actually cared about this issue before Tessera turned up.

You think so? Let's look at a few of comments on your first couple of "unoffcial patch" releases:

Though, I raise in eyebrow at some of the "fixes". Yeah, the Tawni thing needed to be fixed. Is the haven of a vampire cult that "illogical" of a place to have a necromancer's sword? Is in the possession of a "soldier of christ" anymore logical? Plus getting it by hollywood before you can get a regular katana imbalances the game.

It would seem a better idea to release a fix pack for genuine bugs and a balance patch for more arguable fixes separately.

Unfortunately, "game fan" and "better ideas" don't always go hand in hand. Sometimes, the later is violently snuffed out by the former.

Are those actually bugs or errors being fixed, or are they things gamers disagree with and wanted to be changed?

The knockback range for the guns isn't so much a fix as something that needed changing. I can't say I agree with all that other stuff though.

What I dislike on this patches is when someone decides "hey, acording to the files this is working as its intended but I dont like it and so change it and ship it along with 1001 corrections to bugs".

Seems to me these fan patches are moving more and more to the mod regions.

I hate "fan improvements"... I'll never use patches that'd add things a modder deems need be in the game. Why would it be som impossible to have those things set as optional?

I agree, it sucks that fans can't keep their improvements seperate from actual fixes.

It really should be one patch for fizes and an extra one for the non-fix game changes.

I agree why do they always start adding or changing shit? Why cant they just fix the bugs and leave well enough alone.

Yea, it does sound pretty good. Too moddish for me, though.

Again I ask for any dubious changes to be brought up and discussed. There is always the possibly to fix them...

Sure. Here's a selection from the changelogs:

• Fixed Hitman quest bug that showed failure when making them friends.
• Awarded 1 xp for getting Imalia's magazine to compensate money loss.
• Lowered award for rescueing Ash from the Society of Leopold to 1 xp.
• Adjusted knockback ranges for McLusky, SWAT rifle and the shotguns.
• Provided 1 humanity point for not telling Hannah that Paul is dead.
• Removed illogical placed flamethrower and Ra blade from Hollowbrook.
• Chastity will have the Ra blade and a crossbow can be found nearby.
• Made Yukie give you the Ra blade instead of taking it from Chastity.
• Adjusted damage values of Steyr Aug, SWAT rifle and Ithaca shotgun.
• Lowered lockpicking skill needed for chemical substances door to 10.
• Provided 1 xp for keeping Zhao alive and modified quest accordingly.
• Awarded 1 xp for killing Bruno Giovanni and changed log accordingly.
• Made cemetery quest easier
• Created Justicar guards at Giovanni Mansion
• Granted occult hacking powerup as reward for doing Mitnick's quest.
• Placed Obfuscate and lockpicking powerups at Nosferatu and LA haven.
• Made Empire clerk bisexual, responding to Seduction from either sex.
• You will loose a humanity point for making Ash exchange his clothes.
• Lowered additional damage done by all weapons using the zoom modus.

Also, I was under the impression that the premise of the "true" patch was to take your patch and undo certain changes. I couldn't find all of the items mentioned in the changelogs to the unofficial patch, so I'm not 100% sure those are changes from your patch in the first place, maybe you could clear up a few of those as well:

• Removed xp reward for letting Julius go.
• Increased baseball bat and tire iron skill requirements to original numbers
• Removed crossbows and their ammo from Trip's shop
• Put computer and firearms research books back in Trip's shop.
• Removed humanity loss for sending Copper after Nines, LaCroix, or the
  President
• Restored .38 ammo cost to original value
• Made Thisle increase defense again, rather than dodge.
• Put dex and strength occult items back in Tseng's shop.
• Put blood back in Tseng's shop
• Ox gives cash rewards now instead of occult items.
• Restored Jeanette's e-mail
• Restored humanity points in killer's dialogue
• No longer lose humanity for finishing Tawni quest
• Bertrum Tung's quest now available for Nosferatu only, as per original.
• Tseng will offer the Spaz later, as per original
• Removed humanity gain for warning Wong Ho about Ming Xiao.
• Restored original conditions for Johansen's secret info.
• Made Yukie not give you the Ra Blade, and restored her dialogue about her
  sword.
• Restored original presuasion requirements for all Giovani dialogues.

 

[Roqua]

You guys are *still* talking about this drama? There is a new NWN2 interview, go read it instead of arguing about this crap.

COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!
COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!
COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!
COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!COWBELL!

 

[RGE]

I agree with you but in my experience the likelihood to save Jeanette was much worse than to save Therese so most people would never have had the chance to see that scene. That was the main reason I included it in the first place.

It's not that hard to figure out that Jeanette promises sex if you're nice to her (logic) and have a high enough Seduction feat (game logic). So even if only one option (side with Jeanette) leads to that, while three options does not (side with Therese, pick no side, mediate between them), it'd still be there as a choice for the player to make. While numerous replays can't be expected, I sided with Jeanette the third time. I aimed for it the second time, after stalling the first time, but that second time I got the blue Persuasion lines, so I chose to go with those instead. So yeah, it sure was unlikely, but it's not some kind of random chance we're talking about. It's a choice, and it should be up to the player to make that choice and experience the consequences.

That one came from reading about it somewhere and noticing that the chances to get to that point were minimal in the original game. Also you actually need to accept her quest and you only get that chance with a high Seduction feat at exactly one special point. Sometimes the short descriptions in the readme are not accurate enough.

Is this about the art gallery quest? Because that one seemed impossible to avoid. I've read that someone refused to do it, but in my experience I don't get to see Therese until I've done that quest for Jeanette. Is there another quest? One that is so hard to get that I haven't even gotten it yet?

Awarded 1 xp for getting Imalia's magazine to compensate money loss.

This would be bad if the quest could only be gotten by pissing Imalia off, as in the original game, because XP is worth more than money, and it makes no sense to objectively reward the player for pissing someone off. But since the quest has been enabled even for people who don't piss her off, I don't see a problem with a reward. Though I don't know who enabled the quest. I suppose that it could be changed to the original version, which would only punish those who dare insult Imalia while she's paying attention to them.

Provided 1 humanity point for not telling Hannah that Paul is dead.

Humanity did seem a bit too easy to come by. Even when I killed cops for their guns to sell for fun and profit I still managed to get a very high humanity at the end. Though this point did not contribute, because at the end of that conversation I didn't have a choice thanks to my currently low humanity. Hehe. :twisted:

Provided 1 xp for keeping Zhao alive and modified quest accordingly.

It seemed to me as if he was destined to die, but I still managed to save him the second time I played through. And I liked the extra reward, even though Zhao didn't seem to care. Or notice that the fight was over. I found that boxes help a lot. They're like... bulletproof.

Awarded 1 xp for killing Bruno Giovanni and changed log accordingly.

That one never made much sense to me. Definitely not part of the mission objective, and it in fact nullifies anything accomplished with the three aspirants to the inner circle. And with no drawbacks, why wouldn't one kill Bruno for extra XP?

Made cemetery quest easier

It can't be made easy enough. Because it's too hard for the silly setup that it is. All the zombies somehow sense that the usual guradian is gone for five minutes? Right. And you don't even get to kill him if you fail. Is it because he's named after a real person? Stupidly hard quest, I say. Is it supposed to be a reward for having the Celerity discipline or something?

One thing that's come up though, is that the hands down easiest way to do this quest is to sit on top of the end of the wall near the upper gate, and then shoot all zombies at both gates with a scoped weapon with enough ammo to last through the fight. There's one such weapon - the Steyer AUG. So suddenly this quest is postponed to after the Society of Leopold, since one is extremely likely to come out of there with a fully loaded Steyer AUG. That's bad gameflow to me.

Granted occult hacking powerup as reward for doing Mitnick's quest.

Ah, so that's why I don't really have to use skill points to improve my Computer skill? (That and the Nosferatu quest for everyone.) It's that skill and the Melee skill that seems to be boosted quite a lot by occult items and/or NPCs teaching the PC. And books.

Placed Obfuscate and lockpicking powerups at Nosferatu and LA haven.

The one in the LA haven seemed strange, but I never looked that gift horse in the mouth. And on my second playthrough I failed to get that haven because apparently it can only be gotten if one chooses a particular dialogue line during a particular conversation. With the Ra blade hidden behind a high security door, I guess that getting the LA haven would become slightly more important. As if enemies ever paid much attention to the difference between lethal and aggravated damage. Maybe the Fortituders among the Sabbat and Ventrue do?

Made Empire clerk bisexual, responding to Seduction from either sex.

And what about the man in Santa Monica? Was he like that to begin with?

You will loose a humanity point for making Ash exchange his clothes.

Unfair. Who could've have known that the hunters wouldn't even check to see if it's a vampire they're killing? Bloody humans. (Oh, was I supposed to feel bad afterwards?)

 

[Wesp5]

Guessing how a broken thing is supposed to work based on a dialogue file and the script is one thing. Justifying it as Troika's intention is entirely another.

I think I never really justified something that way, that is what Tessera does.

With regards to the warning, I always figured that if I was seen, the characters in that apartment would re-act and freak out. Maybe that's just me?

IIRC the problem here was that they could still hear you in the level below...

Here's the thing, if they changed bits I didn't like, I wouldn't install the patch.

The same goes for my patches .

I just want a patch that doesn't try and re-add models and other broken items that Troika left out, regardless of whether or not Troika "intended" them to be in the game had they had the development time to implement them.

You got that patch already even though created under dubious circumstances, and you'll probably get a properly done one some time soon.

Who decided to give the weapons made-up names? Troika. Who decided to give them their real names? You. Why? Because you could. Was it broken? Nope.

Yes, from my point of view it was. Because if one can clearly recognize a weapon but it has some silly name this kills the immersion for me and for a lot of other players too (that change was not my idea, it was suggested). The names and models show that Troika intended to use real-life weapons but probably just couldn't afford to pay the license fees (they closed down afterwards you know). If they would have wanted made-up weapons they surely would have been able to create made-up models too!

I'm just saying I like what Troika do. I don't like what you do.

Ah, now if Troika would have changed some weapon stats in an official patch 1.3, you would have liked that because Troika did it? Maybe that's the real issue here...

You mean after you've renamed all the weapons, modified their damage, changed their kickback and everything else.

Did you even test the weapons with my patches and notice a difference? Also what basically always surprises me about you "purist" people is that Troika made lots of mistakes and lots of bugs but balancing the weapons was certainly fine, every xp and humanity point was given absolutely correct. They never would have done anything wrong on these issues, even if it would contradict their own tutorial or manual. Hundreds of bugs elsewhere but there, no, they never would. They didn't even finish complete weapon and ammo models but the rest of the weapon stats were perfect alright. You know it.

 

[Wesp5]

So people could have complained much earlier than when I got involved and it seems nobody actually cared about this issue before Tessera turned up.

You think so? Let's look at a few of comments on your first couple of "unoffcial patch" releases:

Great. These were probably done here on this board only, which I noticed the first time when the whole bug-fixes-only patch came up. No one bothered to mail me or look which forum I was active on. Couldn't have been that dramatic then .

Sure. Here's a selection from the changelogs:

I'll answer to those that were not already discussed by RGE.

[*]Fixed Hitman quest bug that showed failure when making them friends.

Is this a copy and paste error or why would you list this here?

[*]Lowered award for rescueing Ash from the Society of Leopold to 1 xp.

Well, I see it like this. You help Ash and you get a reward. Otherwise what would be the point of doing this at all?

[*]Adjusted knockback ranges for McLusky, SWAT rifle and the shotguns.

To be honest I just don't remember what was the issue there. Maybe people have been blown backwards into walls all the time?

[*]Removed illogical placed flamethrower and Ra blade from Hollowbrook.

This has been discussed here already. Why would the Sabbat not use these weapons?

[*]Adjusted damage values of Steyr Aug, SWAT rifle and Ithaca shotgun.

Again I don't remember what I did there exactly but it was nothing substantial. Something along the lines that both shotguns should do similar damage or that a Steyr should do more damage than a submachine gun.

[*]Lowered lockpicking skill needed for chemical substances door to 10.

That was done because I don't think that level 11 exists in the WOD.

[*]Created Justicar guards at Giovanni Mansion

You probably don't know what this means. I just changed the looks of some of the Giovanni guards to a cool unused model. No big gameplay changes at all, just a little more variety.

[*]Lowered additional damage done by all weapons using the zoom modus.

Yeah, I know there are no headshots in Bloodlines but this was done really bad. Just zooming would raise the damage completely out of proportion using the same ammo.

[*]Removed xp reward for letting Julius go.

That was clearly an oversight. You solved the quest and didn't get an xp.

[*]Increased baseball bat and tire iron skill requirements to original numbers

I think I did that because with the original numbers you would do more damage with fists than with a bat or tire iron.

[*]Removed crossbows and their ammo from Trip's shop

That goes hand in hand with my making this weapon available much sooner in the game. By the time you found it in the temple in the original the game was practically over and it made absolutely no sense to use it because it was much to weak at that point.

[*]Put computer and firearms research books back in Trip's shop.

These were moved because of an exploit of the inventory system which made it possible to sell the books right away, then re-buy them and increase your stats several times.

[*]Removed humanity loss for sending Copper after Nines, LaCroix, or the
President

Well, in the manual it says that killing an innocent looses humanity. This is emphazised in the tutorial as well and you are sending the innocent Copper to certain death. Go figure.

[*]Restored .38 ammo cost to original value

Don't remember exactly but I think it was just a little bit too expensive.

[*]Made Thistle increase defense again, rather than dodge.

This was just a mislabeling bug. Thistle always increased dodge which increases defense. You can just look at the sheet. I just changed the info text to reflect this.

[*]Put dex and strength occult items back in Tseng's shop.
[*]Put blood back in Tseng's shop
[*]Ox gives cash rewards now instead of occult items.
[*]Tseng will offer the Spaz later, as per original

Okay, this goes beyond basic patching I know, but all these go together in my eyes.
1) Tseng's case shows the Spaz so why should he not offer it, especially as you can get it from other vendors already at that time.
2) Tseng has no fridge so where would he keep the blood? Also it is never ever hinted at that he knows about vampires at all.
3) The same goes for the magic items. Why should a ex-military offer them when there is no indication he knows about the occult?
4) Ox obviously knows about the occult, he probably is a mage and then just offers you money? Bad storytelling here in my eyes.

[*]Restored Jeanette's e-mail

I don't think I removed it in the first place or restored it later because it was a bug...

[*]Restored humanity points in killer's dialogue

I think the issue there was that through some dialogue loops you could get several humanity points at once.

[*]No longer lose humanity for finishing Tawni quest

Again an innocent dies. Listen to Jack in the tutorial.

[*]Bertrum Tung's quest now available for Nosferatu only, as per original.

But there were Malkavian lines already in there so what was planned?

[*]Removed humanity gain for warning Wong Ho about Ming Xiao.

Again an innocent dies.

[*]Restored original conditions for Johansen's secret info.

I think this was Inspection vs. Perception.

[*]Made Yukie not give you the Ra Blade, and restored her dialogue about her
sword.

I've done the same in my latest patch.

[*]Restored original presuasion requirements for all Giovani dialogues.

I think the issue there was that one needed a higher persuasion without it being reflected in the dialogue or the reward and that it wouldn't make sense to get the feat that high.

 

[Wesp5]

So yeah, it sure was unlikely, but it's not some kind of random chance we're talking about. It's a choice, and it should be up to the player to make that choice and experience the consequences.

But how was one supposed to know about any consequences? The email comes later in the game and some people probably never bother to show up at all. But then maybe Troika hid this on purpose for the Americans .

Is this about the art gallery quest? Because that one seemed impossible to avoid. I've read that someone refused to do it, but in my experience I don't get to see Therese until I've done that quest for Jeanette. Is there another quest?

It's the gallery quest and it's your only chance .

Though I don't know who enabled the quest. I suppose that it could be changed to the original version, which would only punish those who dare insult Imalia while she's paying attention to them.

I enabled that quest because it is the only one where behaving stupidly is rewarded with an additional quest and I didn't like that.

Provided 1 xp for keeping Zhao alive and modified quest accordingly.

It seemed to me as if he was destined to die, but I still managed to save him the second time I played through. And I liked the extra reward, even though Zhao didn't seem to care.

My point of view is that you achieved something special and should be rewarded.

Awarded 1 xp for killing Bruno Giovanni and changed log accordingly.

That one never made much sense to me. Definitely not part of the mission objective, and it in fact nullifies anything accomplished with the three aspirants to the inner circle. And with no drawbacks, why wouldn't one kill Bruno for extra XP?

Because one would die? You win a fight against an elder and get no reward at all?

Granted occult hacking powerup as reward for doing Mitnick's quest.

Ah, so that's why I don't really have to use skill points to improve my Computer skill? (That and the Nosferatu quest for everyone.)

But you can't know this from the start and after restoring the powerup I had to find a fitting place for it. As Mitnick never gives you another reward it was perfect!

Placed Obfuscate and lockpicking powerups at Nosferatu and LA haven.

The one in the LA haven seemed strange, but I never looked that gift horse in the mouth. And on my second playthrough I failed to get that haven because apparently it can only be gotten if one chooses a particular dialogue line during a particular conversation.

That was the reason I placed them there. Both were restored hidden items and I wanted to reward players for getting each special haven, not only the Tremere one.

Made Empire clerk bisexual, responding to Seduction from either sex.

And what about the man in Santa Monica? Was he like that to begin with?

Is there another bisexual in there? I don't know. This was done by the guy who did the spellchecking and I just never cared to change it .

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Here's the thing, if they changed bits I didn't like, I wouldn't install the patch.

The same goes for my patches .

Which is why I've never installed any of your patches? :WINK SMILEY LOLZ!!1!oneone:

Who decided to give the weapons made-up names? Troika. Who decided to give them their real names? You. Why? Because you could. Was it broken? Nope.

Yes, from my point of view it was.

And that right there is the problem. Your point of view != My point of view.

I'm just saying I like what Troika do. I don't like what you do.

Ah, now if Troika would have changed some weapon stats in an official patch 1.3, you would have liked that because Troika did it? Maybe that's the real issue here...

Troika wouldn't have decided to make sleeping with Jeanette easier because some retard couldn't figure it out. That's the difference. It's like that new X-Com remake where they've decided to make soldiers immortal. It's just one decision and sure, it probably doesn't change much but it's a decision that's probably endemic of the entire game. If they fucked that one up, what else have they fucked up? It's a trust issue.

Did you even test the weapons with my patches and notice a difference? Also what basically always surprises me about you "purist" people is that Troika made lots of mistakes and lots of bugs but balancing the weapons was certainly fine, every xp and humanity point was given absolutely correct. They never would have done anything wrong on these issues, even if it would contradict their own tutorial or manual. Hundreds of bugs elsewhere but there, no, they never would. They didn't even finish complete weapon and ammo models but the rest of the weapon stats were perfect alright. You know it.

No, we just want to play the game Troika released. If we want to then play the fan-fixed version, we'll do that later. It's not a hard concept to grasp. No really, it isn't. I'm sure you can justify every single one of your changes with "some random fan requested it on some forum I read once". Sorry, that's not the kind of game I want to play.

I just want a patch that doesn't try and re-add models and other broken items that Troika left out, regardless of whether or not Troika "intended" them to be in the game had they had the development time to implement them.

You got that patch already even though created under dubious circumstances, and you'll probably get a properly done one some time soon.

Hey, you're the one who asked why anyone would want a "typo's only" patch.

 

[Claw]

Great. These were probably done here on this board only, which I noticed the first time when the whole bug-fixes-only patch came up.

If you noticed them, why did you claim noone cared about the issue until Teressa brought it up? That's obviously not the case.
Of course these are all from this board, even that was an unusal effort. I hope you don't mean to imply that because all my examples are from the Codex, noone outside the Codex felt likewise. That'd be like claiming that only members of NMA, DaC or the Codex are bothered by the idea of Bethesda producing Fallout 3.

No one bothered to mail me or look which forum I was active on. Couldn't have been that dramatic then .

Considering that the main choice is to either install your mod or not, and several people already stated they won't, that seems dramatic enough for a game.
Quite frankly, I don't see why you're making such a noise about whether something is dramatic or drastic. We're talking about a mod for a game. I sure hope noone's slitting his wrists over this (But in the case I'm wrong, good ridddance.) and you clearly didn't require percieved issues with the game to be drastic to be worth changing, so why should a change be drastic to be worth bitching about? Bitching is easier than modding, so logically it should have lower rather than higher requirements. :wink:

I'll answer to those that were not already discussed by RGE.

OK, although I wish you had also adressed his last concern.

Is this a copy and paste error or why would you list this here?

It's a change from the changelog of v1.5, as per Worthplaying. I tried to avoid listing changes that were undone later, but it's of course possible I overlooked it.

Well, I see it like this. You help Ash and you get a reward. Otherwise what would be the point of doing this at all?

Because you're a nice person ..err, vampire?

To be honest I just don't remember what was the issue there. Maybe people have been blown backwards into walls all the time?

Well, it couldn't have been much of an issue if you don't even remember it.

Zing!

Well, in the manual it says that killing an innocent looses humanity. This is emphazised in the tutorial as well and you are sending the innocent Copper to certain death. Go figure.

Hmm. You're not actually killing him, though.

Don't remember exactly but I think it was just a little bit too expensive.

I'm sure that was a very good reason to change the game. I think this nicely expemlifies why some people take issue with your mod. So many little changes that one may or may not agree with. And your main argument for why we shouldn't take issue with them seems to be "Come on, it's not a big enough change to make a fuss" - then why change it in the first place?

4) Ox obviously knows about the occult, he probably is a mage and then just offers you money? Bad storytelling here in my eyes.

Wouldn't a mage prefer to keep occult items while gladly parting with money?

I think the issue there was that through some dialogue loops you could get several humanity points at once.

And you just removed them? Couldn't this have been solved in a better way?

But there were Malkavian lines already in there so what was planned?

I dunno. Maybe the quest was originally meant to be available to Malkavians as well, but then they reconsidered? In any case, you made it available to ALL clans, not just Nosferatu and Malkavian, didn't you? Do you have any reason to believe that was planned?

I've done the same in my latest patch.

I see.


Allright, thanks for adressing a couple of randomly selected point. I'm a little disappointed since several of your replies fell a bit short of being answers, but nothing's perfect.
I guess we're left with what we already knew: As a modder who's taken it upon himself to fix percieved flaws in the game, you take the liberty to change what you don't like for more or less substantial reasons, and we don't always agree with that, so we are in two minds about your mod. Some people use the mod because or despite many changes, and others don't. At least we know there is another modder who is trying to achieve a result that fits our preferences more closely.

 

[Wesp5]

Here's the thing, if they changed bits I didn't like, I wouldn't install the patch.

The same goes for my patches .

Which is why I've never installed any of your patches? :WINK SMILEY LOLZ!!1!oneone:

Well, then you don't really know what you are talking about. Great base for discussion .

Troika wouldn't have decided to make sleeping with Jeanette easier because some retard couldn't figure it out. That's the difference.

Yeah. And Troika would never have made it easier to get E's quest because some retard couldn't figure it out. Oops, they did...

No, we just want to play the game Troika released.

No, you want the game Troika released with just the bits corrected that YOU think are problems. Good luck with Acrimonious patch, maybe he is closer to your point of view.

 

[Wesp5]

If you noticed them, why did you claim noone cared about the issue until Teressa brought it up? That's obviously not the case.

As I said, noone cared enough to complain with me which at least Tessera did. And as also stated here, I've always been open to suggestions so if people would have bothered me or Dan Upright about this from the start, you may have gotten a more basic patch. But the majority of people seems to be happy with the way we handled the issue.

OK, although I wish you had also adressed his last concern.

You mean making Ash change his clothes? I think the reason has been stated in this thread several times. You kill an innocent. Just replay the tutorial.

It's a change from the changelog of v1.5, as per Worthplaying. I tried to avoid listing changes that were undone later, but it's of course possible I overlooked it.

Yeah, but this was just a bug fix.

Well, it couldn't have been much of an issue if you don't even remember it.

Yes, that happens a lot. I fix a small issue and later I don't remember why it was done. Just look at the readme, these are hundreds of fixes!

Well, in the manual it says that killing an innocent looses humanity. This is emphazised in the tutorial as well and you are sending the innocent Copper to certain death. Go figure.

Hmm. You're not actually killing him, though.

Yeah, how would he end up trying to kill the president, kill Nines or LaCroix?

Don't remember exactly but I think it was just a little bit too expensive.

I'm sure that was a very good reason to change the game.

Yes. Probably some guys noticed that .38 was more expensive that it should be. I changed that and they were happy. Nobody else probably noticed, so what?

4) Ox obviously knows about the occult, he probably is a mage and then just offers you money? Bad storytelling here in my eyes.

Wouldn't a mage prefer to keep occult items while gladly parting with money?

Why are other people offering magic items that they could use themselfes? Or where would Tseng have gotten his ones when everyone would be keeping them? Besides Ox is probably too powerful to need them as his teleporting shows...

And you just removed them? Couldn't this have been solved in a better way?

Sorry, but I don't remember the details. But it's strange that you complain about single points taken or added for getting people killed while getting a bunch during one dialogue is fine. Because Troika did it and because they never made errors regarding humanity?

But there were Malkavian lines already in there so what was planned?

I dunno. Maybe the quest was originally meant to be available to Malkavians as well, but then they reconsidered?

Why? Why would Tung trust Nosferatu and Malkavians only?

At least we know there is another modder who is trying to achieve a result that fits our preferences more closely.

Yes. And if we would work together we would have future patches splitted to keep everyone happy!

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Yeah, how would he end up trying to kill the president, kill Nines or LaCroix?

Jail and/or mental institution or dead, injured or severly injured, jail and/or mental institution or dead.

Do remember that this is Copper we are talking about and that he is kind of a pussy.

For trying to kill the president, he'd be either gunned down by the men in black or thrown in a jail cell, depending on how "far" he went.

For trying to kill Nines, Jack, Damsel and Black Nam would most likely throw him out the window before he could make a move. Maybe even from the second floor, but that might be going too far. Again, Copper is a fucking pussy. Nines, however, is portrayed as a bad ass mofo +200 in the Downtown introduction. It is not realistic to say Copper would have a chance at this. And would the Anarchs kill him? Maybe, but probably not. They'd see him as nuisance, I'm sure. And I never saw them as cold blooded killers. Really.

For trying to kill LaCroix, he'd be stopped by lardman first and asked to get an appointment. So how would he get an appointment? "I'm selling these fine leather jackets" ? I don't think so. At "best", he'd kill lardman and get gunned down or taken into custody by security or police.

So, yes, it is all possible that tricking Copper will send him to a certain death, but it's more likely he'd get taken into custody or beaten senseless.

But the point is, listen up, the PC is not directly responsible for his death. Yeah, hard to believe, eh? The manual and tutorial you hold oh so dearly, clearly says: "hey, boy, kill innocents and you're inhuman!" But all the PC is doing is telling lies, something the manual (or at least the tutorial) clearly says this about: "hey, you do what you gotta do."

To be perfectly honest I never cared much for tricking Copper. I realized that it was obviously put in for comic relief the second time I played through the game and never found out about Coppers fate. It would have been cool if you could have used him to trick the factions and gain an upper hand or so... but no such luck, eh?

 

[Claw]

But the majority of people seems to be happy with the way we handled the issue.

Wrong. The majority didn't care. Why is a matter of interpretation, but allow me to forward two alternative options:

1) They didn't mind the bugs so much that they needed your patch/mod or
2) they had already played the game and didn't feel a terribly strong urge to replay it.

You mean making Ash change his clothes? I think the reason has been stated in this thread several times. You kill an innocent. Just replay the tutorial.

But you don't. I reiterate:

Unfair. Who could've have known that the hunters wouldn't even check to see if it's a vampire they're killing? Bloody humans. (Oh, was I supposed to feel bad afterwards?)

Yeah, but this was just a bug fix.

Oh? Some people beg to differ:

It's understandable that the Hitman quest should display a failure, considering you are quested with killing one or the other for the key. If you end up doing something different instead, it is failing that quest.

Yes. And if we would work together we would have future patches splitted to keep everyone happy!

Yes, that would be ideal.

 

[RGE]

I think that it's a good idea to show that the hitman quest was a success, even if it might not have fulfilled their initial requests. After all, the journal is supposed to show what the player/PC/NPCs think about the whole deal, and they'd all certainly consider it a success. Right? The quest journal is hardly supposed to be some objective computer's view of the case, is it?

And to be frank, I could see how getting innocents killed would reduce humanity, assuming that the PC didn't feel bad about it afterwards (in case it was unintentional). The PnP game has a conscience roll for that - fail it and you lose humanity, succeed and you feel bad about what you did. But without the conscience virtue in Bloodlines, all you get is loss of humanity for something which you wouldn't or couldn't anticipate, such as the death of Copper (I agree fully with Locue), the death of Imalia (you lose humanity for wanting to get paid, but not if you refuse payment, so I guess that's the chance to show remorse) and the death of Ash-look-alike (I never would've thought they'd kill him like that - I would've expected them to realise they'd been tricked when they got that close).

About Ox giving away occult artifacts, well, that was all right with me. Makes perfect sense that he'd be able and willing to spread some minor stuff around. Buying them from Tseng would've made money slightly more useful, depending on prices, but it would've been quite lacking in atmosphere.

But how was one supposed to know about any consequences? The email comes later in the game and some people probably never bother to show up at all. But then maybe Troika hid this on purpose for the Americans .

Uh... that email was pretty clear to me. And while you couldn't know about the sex, you could certainly expect something like that if you side with her. Sort of like you could expect something like that with VV.

It's the gallery quest and it's your only chance .

You mean that you only get one chance to do the gallery quest? I think I once tried to refuse, and then returned a bit later to see if Therese would show up, but there was only Jeanette there, and she still wanted me to do that thing for her. Could be wrong I suppose.

I enabled that quest because it is the only one where behaving stupidly is rewarded with an additional quest and I didn't like that.

But if the quest is just a fed ex that eats time and money, it's not much of a reward is it? Feels more like a punishment to me.

My point of view is that you achieved something special and should be rewarded.

Only trouble now is that I achieve that 'something special' by doing something stupid. Such as grabbing every loose box in the warehouse and stacking them in a wall in front of Zhao's window. Works quite well as long as none of the guys run upstairs. Or unless the boxes fall down from being pummeled by bullets from both directions. Yeah, I do it just to spite the game!

Because one would die? You win a fight against an elder and get no reward at all?

I don't remember dying that much. All those guys got guns, which don't hurt nearly as much as Potence or edged weapons. And by starting the fight on the balcony you can easily avoid getting shot by all of them at once, and easily kick the crap out of anyone who gets to the top of the stairs. But my #1 response would be:

... where behaving stupidly is rewarded ...

Because you really don't have to fight him, so doing so isn't the smart thing to do. And isn't his Desert Eagle reward enough?

But you can't know this from the start and after restoring the powerup I had to find a fitting place for it. As Mitnick never gives you another reward it was perfect!

No, I can't know it from the start, but I know it now.

Why? Why would Tung trust Nosferatu and Malkavians only?

Well, he did mention that he thought that Malkavians were all right. But then again, he also seemed to like Ventrue as well. Didn't seem to like Brujah, Toreador, Gangrel or Tremere though.

That was done because I don't think that level 11 exists in the WOD.

Perhaps they intended for that lock to be effectively impossible to pick? And the designer at the time didn't know about keycards or didn't want to use them? Or... something like that?

I think I did that because with the original numbers you would do more damage with fists than with a bat or tire iron.

That doesn't surprise me, and I think fists even attack faster than the bat or the tire iron. Though that could be my misperception. After you subtract skill requisites from a weapon's lethality, a lot of the melee weapons seemed to do the same damage, so the only incentive to pick up a weapon that's more difficult to use was if it also had a higher damage multiplier.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Yeah, how would he end up trying to kill the president, kill Nines or LaCroix?

Jail and/or mental institution or dead, injured or severly injured, jail and/or mental institution or dead.

Well, he is still a vampire. I don't think jail/mental institution is an option - not with the Camarilla maintaining the masquerade. So the options are: Dead, severely injured or dead (if Nines is the target), dead.


Just finished replaying the game with the 3.5 unofficial patch (it's been a while since I played the "vanilla" 1.2 patched game) and I must say that I liked it. I'll use this opportunity to ask Wesp a few questions about his patch.

I've played the Tremere with the Eldritch Prodigy history and have found that the thaumaturgy damage varies wildly with the opponent - from practically negligible damage on zombies to massive damage on bosses (500+ on late game bosses). This makes the boss fights very, very short - even the sheriff and the Ming Xiao die with three shots (that can be released in less then a second for a cost of just 3 blood points). Is this working like intended?

Also I noticed that blood shot and blood salvo only return blood from human targets. Why not from vampires? Or is this just working the same way in an unpatched game (as I said, it's been a while since I played it)?

And a suggestion - why not put the galdjum in the Downtown haven and give the locket to Mr. Ox? Galdjum affects the disciplines, same as the other two items found in Tremere/Nosferatu havens - it even looks balanced compared to them. And the item that gives a lockpicking bonus would fit with Mr. Ox.

 

[RGE]

Could it be because the other havens are only accessible by doing stuff in Hollywood, whereas the LA haven becomes accessible while doing stuff in Downtown? And I believe that originally the Galdjum was also found in (under) Hollywood, thus being balanced to that time of the game?

 

[Zero Credibility]

Could be. Don't know how much of an effect it would have on game balance. It's just that the item (imo) really fits there when compared to the items found in Tremere/Nosferatu havens.

 

[Jaesun]

If all these mod/patch changes where originally done via a WeiDU type of system, people would stop bitching.

You could simply add the mod/patch that is to your liking.

I did appreciate all the work Wesp did do for Bloodlines, but never tied his mod/patch because it changed too many things for my liking. I had always hoped Wesp would do a Bug Fix ONLY mod, and then offer other changes/mods as a separate option.

What Tessera and co. are doing is the thing I have been waiting for (FINALLY). But maybe perhaps shame on me for not asking for you to make parts of your mod/patch Wesp separate. I think a few people requested this on the Planet Vampire site, but most people didn't seem to care.. if I remember correctly. So I didn't press the issue further. You seemed to just want to continue to develop your patch/mod as is.

 

[almondblight]

What -- if anything -- does my hobby of producing nude re-skins have to do with the subject of this thread..?

Quite simple - if you do so, you have no case for calling people losers or saying you're above them on the internet food chain.

Because you're into elf porn.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Here's the thing, if they changed bits I didn't like, I wouldn't install the patch.

The same goes for my patches .

Which is why I've never installed any of your patches? :WINK SMILEY LOLZ!!1!oneone:

Well, then you don't really know what you are talking about. Great base for discussion .

Are you suggesting your readme file isn't an accurate representation of what you've done? I know it's not fully detailed but I'd have thought anyone would be quite capable of deducing from that whether the patch contains things they want patched or not and hence whether it's worth installing that patch.

Troika wouldn't have decided to make sleeping with Jeanette easier because some retard couldn't figure it out. That's the difference.

Yeah. And Troika would never have made it easier to get E's quest because some retard couldn't figure it out. Oops, they did...

This goes back to the Troika and trust issue. If they did all of your changes in an official patch, I'd probably install it because it's their game and they're the ones who have made the decision on what to cut or include. Your patch, on the other hand, contains everything every random fan thought was wrong with Bloodlines, including more sex with Jeanette. As I said, I trust Troika. I don't trust some random fan.

No, we just want to play the game Troika released.

No, you want the game Troika released with just the bits corrected that YOU think are problems. Good luck with Acrimonious patch, maybe he is closer to your point of view.

I hope he is. As long as he can keep the fan stuff out of it, it should be a decent patch.