Revisiting VtM: Bloodlines

[Wesp5]

That could be it but there's also the fact that all of the vampire powers were much less effective (or not at all, many were immune) against bosses in the official version of the game (even with the last 1.2 patch) which hurt Tremere the most probably (blood mages).

Hm, I can't remember anything like this and a quick comparison of Blood Strike does not show it either. I only remember that some bosses wouldn't correctly react at all because of missing animations, like the spiderchick freezing in the Blood Boil explosion.

Unofficial patch changed that (in addition to buffing the Steyr Aug damage) even in it's Basic version, before Wesp even took over years ago IIRC.

You are right here though, there is a damage increasement for the Steyr Aug that should have been for the zoomed version only in both basic and plus. I'll fix that!

They are as far as I'm aware, but it seems like the exploit is only fixed in the plus version for some reason.

The reason is that I can't really fix that bug, but I just tried to hide it by moving the books away from the shops so people would be less prone to notice it at all .

Poking around the CC again. Found a fairly hilarious bug. If you go back to Sheet and change your background, your available pips gets reset, but the pips you've distributed are still there. You can max out everything by going back and forth enough.

Even better, when I got to the tutorial, Jack chewed me out on my incredible stats. :D

Another unfixable bug, so I used Jack to show that I at least know that the player cheated !

Dementation seems to be made much less fun.. What the fuck, reinstalling with Basic patch..

Classic :
5 Bedlam - The target and any others near him all randomly suffer one of the first four levels of Dementation.

We replaced the Thaumaturgy, Dementation and Domination disciplines that were only repetitions of others with unused new disciplines we found. And as already stated at the time, you can choose not to do that during installation of the patch...

Yes, having played it we all know that it's just scripted sequences, and you probably can't die there even if you try; but you have no way of knowing that when you're stumbling through for the first time.

Actually I died quite often while patching the Ocean House just by carelessly running into a steam jet or magical fire !

 

[makiavelli747]

I would suggest to add "manipulation" attribute to all dominate-lines checks

 

[Wesp5]

I would suggest to add "manipulation" attribute to all dominate-lines checks

This would be a pretty large gameplay change. Is this the case in the PnP game?

More observations from early in this thread:

In 1.2 flamethrower was running out if fuel literally in two seconds. Was it changed in UP?

I increased the ammo size a bit because on modern computers the fuel is burned up too quickly.

Respawning enemies is an extremely autistic complaint to make, that happens maybe a single digit number of times.

Not necessarily, I turned a lot of spawning off with the UP because it was illogical and I hate it !

 

[makiavelli747]

This would be a pretty large gameplay change. Is this the case in the PnP game?

Yes, in PnP it was always dominate+manipulation.

 

[Wesp5]

Yes, in PnP it was always dominate+manipulation.

Hm, but I read that many of the stats and feats are different in the PnP. It would create absolute imbalance to change all this!

More stuff:

The game sets it up so you look like an one night stand whom your sire decided to embrace for kicks, but the way that Lacroix immediately finds out is pretty suspect.

It might be interesting for some of you that there is a Prequel mod in the works that should shine more light on this.

I wonder if those are indeed all the 'unused levels' or just the ones Wesp has found and remade.

I think this is pretty much it! I looked hard at all the game files and even the Smoke Shop and the Coffee Shop had only few infos. I found some textures and models referring to a bunker and chateau map, but as both wouldn't fit into any of the hubs I used them in the Malkavian Maze...

 

[makiavelli747]

It would create absolute imbalance to change all this!

Absolute imbalance is when you allowed to choose backgrounds without increasing all skillchecks in a game. Manipulation+Dominate checks will make "manipulation" attribute useful.

 

[Wesp5]

Absolute imbalance is when you allowed to choose backgrounds without increasing all skillchecks in a game. Manipulation+Dominate checks will make "manipulation" attribute useful.

The latter argument is brought to me a lot: Please add this stat to this feat so it's more useful. Sorry, but I have not intention to do this and no time at all to check how this would unbalance the game. The restored histories were unfinished and I just repaired them a bit. It seems most are playable, but of course I didn't test any of them either .

More stuff:

I think Caine is just observing, there is no reason for him to get involved in this specific scenario.

I think Caine was testing his children, or like Jack says in the restored lines at the ending: "Hey, it happened just like you said. They never even knew what hit 'em. Threw that sarcophagus out there and they just tore each other up tryin' to get to it." He wanted to see with his own eyes how his children would behave in a situation like this. And the result isn't good looking for any of the factions...

Jeanette sends me into a diner where I know the three guys are about to jump me as soon as I pick up the phone but I have to pick up the phone, it's a main quest.

You can persuade these guys in the plus patch to no attack as an alternative. The problem with doing more like this for other quests is always the missing voice-over!

Brian Mitsoda said that he was completely exhausted by months of crunch and himself was going stir crazy himself when he wrote the Malkavian dialogue, so it's probably satire.

Referring to this line by Chunk: "Nobody expects the Malkavian Inquisition." I have to admit that line is by me, there wasn't anything there for Malkavians in the original game...

Last time vanilla is too long ago, but at least with Wesp's patch Auspex lvl 1 has a very close range, hardly 2-3 meters or such.

I don't think I ever changed that or even would know how to do it .

 

[makiavelli747]

The latter argument is brought to me a lot: Please add this stat to this feat so it's more useful. Sorry, but I have not intention to do this.

Well, of course you will never do this. It's not just about making something useful, but something that make sense.
You did a lot of stuff like for example, allowing a player to kill zombies for Romero and then to buy a hooker for him... You allowed unique nosferatu quests to be available for every clan, etc. But have you seen screenshots on the first pages of this thread about dialogue with Strauss? It takes about 5 minutes to fix that horrible bullshit lines

 

[Wesp5]

Well, of course you will never do this. It's not just about making something useful, but something that make sense.

What I meant is if I would do something like this, I would have to make over a lot of other disciplines and stats as well.

But have you seen screenshots on the first pages of this thread about dialogue with Strauss? It takes about 5 minutes to fix that horrible bullshit lines

I was never aware of this before I read it here and I'm still not sure if this isn't intentional to show the player protesting against Strauss and the Camarilla.

 

[makiavelli747]

if I would do something like this, I would have to make over a lot of other disciplines and stats as well.

lol
No, you don't.

I was never aware of this before I read it here and I'm still not sure if this isn't intentional to show the player protesting Strauss and the Camarilla.

When was the last time you played this game?

 

[Wesp5]

No, you don't.

Really? I remember people suggesting similar stuff already to bring stats and feats closer to the PnP game. I'm not sure but aren't a lot of the feats composed of different stats in the PnP game? Aren't some PnP disciplines not even needing blood points? To bring this closer to the PnP game would need another mod for itself, and I think Offkorn's PnP mod already went this road!

When was the last time you played this game?

You mean from start to finish? Ten years ago ! For patchiing? Just a few hours ago.

 

[Wesp5]

This is IMO more of a design flaw than just lack of polish; there are so many instances that it can't be just happenstance.

Maybe it's intentional. The tutorial clearly shows that there is a war going on! How can you expect to survive this with no combat powers whatsoever? I for one find it ridiculous that in some games you kill hundreds of enemies only to convince their leader to give up completely with a few lines afterwards. FO:NV I am looking at you!

Why would a Tremere's Dominate discipline be weaker than a Ventrue's?

Tremere don't get full Dominate in the plus patch because 1) Ventrue should keep it as unique advantage and 2) there was a technical issue which made me check for Thaumaturgy instead of Domination for Tremere, so only level 1 will work for them. As far as I remember Dominate itself internally always tests if you are Ventrue.

And during this playthrough I've noticed a new ending that must have been restored by Wesp5:

Spoiler

:D :D :D

Best easter egg ever made by best game developer ever.

Indeed, this was found unused already in the game files. I only fixed it and made it available !

The plus patch has Nines give you the grenade as the weapon for the final showdown. Would be funny if it was cut specifically because someone looked at it, said "but he's supposed to have used the grenade to kill the Werewolf", and then wesp restoring it is actually messing up the intended sequence of events. But doubtful since as mentioned the werewolf head is on display.

This would imply that Nines has only this one grenade. Bach is throwing them around by the dozends when you attack him and there was a whole "thrown weapons" category cut which included throwing stars and possibly more weapons like smoke grenades, Molotov cocktails and concussion grenades.

 

[makiavelli747]

I'm not sure but aren't a lot of the feats composed of different stats in the PnP game? Aren't some PnP disciplines not even needing blood points?

Thing that I suggest has nothing to do with other PnP stats, disciplines and clans. In terms of balance, requiring dominate+manipulation instead of just dominate, will simply make the player to spend more skillpoints for using dominate in dialogues as Ventrue. This will result in more variety of Ventrue builds by making dominate a more complete and separate dialogue skill. And at the same this will make manipulation stat to play a role it supposed to in description, also Ventrue's char list in general will fit their clan's description better.
It has absolutely zero impact on other skills and disciplines, thus I have no idea why would you talk about PnP rules at all in this case. I did it actually when I was modifying Camarilla Edition mod for my personal use, and it worked just fine. So its not like i'm asking you to do it for me, but just as a suggestion to make the game better, based on my own experience.

 

[Lhynn]

I'm not sure but aren't a lot of the feats composed of different stats in the PnP game? Aren't some PnP disciplines not even needing blood points?

Thing that I suggest has nothing to do with other PnP stats, disciplines and clans. In terms of balance, requiring dominate+manipulation instead of just dominate, will simply make the player to spend more skillpoints for using dominate in dialogues as Ventrue. This will result in more variety of Ventrue builds by making dominate a more complete and separate dialogue skill. And at the same this will make manipulation stat to play a role it supposed to in description, also Ventrue's char list in general will fit their clan's description better.
It has absolutely zero impact on other skills and disciplines, thus I have no idea why would you talk about PnP rules at all in this case. I did it actually when I was modifying Camarilla Edition mod for my personal use, and it worked just fine. So its not like i'm asking you to do it for me, but just as a suggestion to make the game better, based on my own experience.

It would just make it harder to have an effective discipline as a ventrue. Not a very good idea unless you created scenarios where youd gain extra experience or other rewards, due to having a high manipulate + dominate value. You need to justify the cost.

 

[makiavelli747]

It would just make it harder to have an effective discipline as a ventrue.

Dominate is a good discipline on its own. its not weaker than animalism, for example.
Right now most players will make a fighter from Ventrue, because for 15 points(dominate 3) you get maximum level of dominate in dialogues, and you basically don't need any other speechskill, no reason to invest in social skills at all as Ventrue. So in fact, Dominate is very overpowered as it is right now

Not a very good idea unless you created scenarios where youd gain extra experience or other rewards, due to having a high manipulate + dominate value.

Free "haggle" is already a reward in this case

And of course a lot depends on exact values, dominate 2 + manipulation 3 as max check would not make a big difference

 

[Wesp5]

It has absolutely zero impact on other skills and disciplines, thus I have no idea why would you talk about PnP rules at all in this case.

It would set a precedence. Right now no discipline in Bloodlines needs any other stat to work! People expect this and live with it. Once I would follow your suggestion I'm pretty sure other people would come up with similar ideas for their favorite clans...

 

[Old One]

Thanks and fixed! Anything else to change in texts there or elsewhere?

I'm planning to do a Ventrue game in the near future, so I'll try and remember to take some notes.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

As far as I remembered I was told that the claws the ghouls use at the mansion should't do aggravated damage because they are not magical, so I fixed that which had the side effect that the blood guardian weapons changed as he uses them as well.

Sure and I agree with the people who complained that aggravated damage was use too liberally in the game. The side-effect of that change however is that Blood Guardian is now the toughest fight in the beginning (as he does more damage) but given that it's for an optional quest and it's still doable (you just maybe need to use a blood pack, blood healing on plus patch etc.) I don't have an issue with it.

This was changed because honestly how can fists do more damage than batons or tire irons? In the original game all the early melee weapons were useless! Also I disagree about an "intended" weapon progression mentioned here. To me it was always about choosing the fighting style that fits best to your character or playing style. Distributing XP first to unarmed, then melee and then ranged would have you end up with lots of wasted XP!

Well as I said, I agree about fists having more damage and even lethality (lol) than a number of early game weapons didn't make sense in the first place so I'm fine with that change. However, I'd prefer if there was a way for to increase unarmed checks for feeding so that it still feels like a worthy skill investment.

Hm, I can't remember anything like this and a quick comparison of Blood Strike does not show it either. I only remember that some bosses wouldn't correctly react at all because of missing animations, like the spiderchick freezing in the Blood Boil explosion.

I recently replayed 1.2 version and while damage disciplines work (especially low level projectile powers like Blood Strike and Burrowing Beetle) anything that stuns/disables has no effect whatsoever on the bosses. On the other hand even in the Basic version of the unofficial patch (and I mean years back not just the latest version) you could for example nearly completely incapacitate Sheriff with Blood Purge from Thaumaturgy discipline.

Not a big deal anyway, If I feel powers are too effective in my game I can always install (optional from your patch plus) casting hand animations that makes powers more challenging to spam/use.

You are right here though, there is a damage increasement for the Steyr Aug that should have been for the zoomed version only in both basic and plus. I'll fix that!!

Personally, I'd prefer if you leave the damage increase (in addition to high lethality) as Steyr Aug is supposed to be one of the end-game weapons (and as such should be top-of-the line when it comes to automatic fire weapons available in the game, not have worse base damage than something like Uzi) but drop the zoom damage increase all-together as it sort of encourages player to zoom-in even on an enemy that is few feet away in order to do more damage which results in derpy gameplay.

 

[Prime Junta]

Sure and I agree with the people who complained that aggravated damage was use too liberally in the game. The side-effect of that change however is that Blood Guardian is now the toughest fight in the beginning (as he does more damage) but given that it's for an optional quest and it's still doable (you just maybe need to use a blood pack, blood healing on plus patch etc.) I don't have an issue with it.

What, Blood Guardian is optional? How do you avoid it?

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Sure and I agree with the people who complained that aggravated damage was use too liberally in the game. The side-effect of that change however is that Blood Guardian is now the toughest fight in the beginning (as he does more damage) but given that it's for an optional quest and it's still doable (you just maybe need to use a blood pack, blood healing on plus patch etc.) I don't have an issue with it.

What, Blood Guardian is optional? How do you avoid it?

Tell Jeanette to go fuck herself when she offers you the quest. She'll persuade someone else to do it and Therese will still blame you for it afterwards.

 

[Wesp5]

On the other hand even in the Basic version of the unofficial patch (and I mean years back not just the latest version) you could for example nearly completely incapacitate Sheriff with Blood Purge from Thaumaturgy discipline.

Ah, I think I get it now! This was changed by Populism who was the first to tackle incomplete discipline reactions. The sheriff and some other bosses were not mentioned in the Thaumaturgy file at all, they basically didn't see any of it. He correctly assigned all of them to Hit_Supernatural_NoEffect which does no damage but takes some time to play out and this stuns them.

Personally, I'd prefer if you leave the damage increase (in addition to high lethality) as Steyr Aug is supposed to be one of the end-game weapons (and as such should be top-of-the line when it comes to automatic fire weapons available in the game, not have worse base damage than something like Uzi) but drop the zoom damage increase all-together as it sort of encourages player to zoom-in even on an enemy that is few feet away in order to do more damage which results in derpy gameplay.

I think a zoom increase could be granted because it limits the field of view of the player. Also this in done the same way for the rifles with zoom mode. On the other hand I changed it at the time because of similar reasons to yours because higher caliber should do more damage. So if I would stick to that why then would a MAC 10 do much less damage than a Uzi?

 

[Multidirectional]

Tell Jeanette to go fuck herself when she offers you the quest. She'll persuade someone else to do it and Therese will still blame you for it afterwards.

Damn, all these playthroughs and I could never refuse tits.
Also Wesp5 , why is "Hengeyokai"' spelled "hengeyMkai'" in subtitles now? Also subtitles for Yuki dialogue are kind of weird in general. Don't remember them being this way. Why did you remove japanese words?

 

[laclongquan]

It's a good tradeoff for that measly 2XP for convincing them to work together~

 

[Wesp5]

Also Wesp5 , why is "Hengeyokai"' spelled "hengeyMkai'" in subtitles now? Also subtitles for Yuki dialogue are kind of weird in general. Don't remember them being this way. Why did you remove japanese words?

The strange subtitles are caused by special characters like ô in hengeyôkai. They are displayed correctly in my game, maybe this is a windows problem on your side? Also the Japanese words were translated because otherwise it wouldn't much sense to have subtitles in the first place and the Russian words were handled the same way already in the original game.

As for the weapons, I compared some more and decided to increase damage for the MAC to 2 while compensating with lowering base lethality and indeed have zoomed and unzoomed damage of the Steyr stay as before and I did this for the SWAT rifle too. After all it's illogical otherwise and I really hated in Deus Ex that weapons became much better just by zooming in!

 

[Multidirectional]

The strange subtitles are caused by special characters like ô in hengeyôkai. They are displayed correctly in my game, maybe this is a windows problem on your side?

Ok thanks, I'll have to look into that.

Also the Japanese words were translated because otherwise it wouldn't much sense to have subtitles in the first place and the Russian words were handled the same way already in the original game.

I understand why you translated them. I don't understand why your removed them entirely. No matter, not a big issue. I will have to try your basic patch on my next run. I realised I've been playing with plus version for so long I don't even remember what it's like without it.