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Suggestion: split Vampire stages into Hunger and Rage progression
Spectral_Force
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This is going to be another one of those "how to fix Vampire stages" suggestions. I will not be talking about possible changes to the Vampire skill line itself - I've done this before, and people have already created several discussions, both here and on the PTS forum, talking about how to address that.
I feel like what ZOS have done with the new vampire stages is they've conflated the physical and mental effects of vampirism - reduced Health Recovery and increased Fire Damage, as well as the passives, are what I'd consider to be the "physical" effects (i.e. the effects it has on your body) while the ability cost increases and reductions are what I'd call the "mental" effects (i.e. the effects on your soul/mental state). Pre-Greymoor, we had a similar situation with stages reducing your Vampire ability costs, but the system was still in its infancy and there were no meaningful tradeoffs for the advantages that Vampirism offered, so it wasn't really discussed. But since now the stages seem to be borked with no easy solution to fix them, allow me to introduce a (yet another) solution: separating these two groups of effects into their own separate progression systems - a Hunger system (four stages, the ones we know and love and sometimes hate) and a Rage system.
(I'd like to preface this by saying that the values shown aren't final and I provide them as more of a proof of concept. I haven't done any crunching on this as I wanted to push this idea out faster so people can start discussing it eariler. I'll be happy to hear your thoughts and suggestions if you think these values should be different.)
In the spirit of most of my suggestions, this solution is rather simple, mechanically speaking: leave the Hunger timer as is (four stages, four hours each), but introduce a second, shorter timer for your vampiric Rage. This timer will also have four stages, but these Rage stages will be much more brief, only 90 seconds (1.5 minutes) each. The Rage timer is independent from your Hunger stages (though you can introduce some fun interactions, see below); it starts at Rage Stage 1 (calm and collected) and progresses to Rage Stage 4 (blood-crazed). Using any Vampire ability adds 10 seconds to the Rage timer; when the timer reaches 90 seconds, it flows over into the next stage. Stage 4 Rage timer is capped at 90 seconds. At the same time, the timer continuously ticks down. So it would take 36 Vampire ability activations (36 seconds) to get from 0 seconds on Rage Stage 1 to 90 seconds on Rage Stage 4 (actually about four more, since the counter is constanlty ticking down), and it would take 360 seconds (6 minutes) to go from being fully enraged to fully calm. In case of toggled abilities, like Blood Frenzy and Mist Form, these abilities add 10 seconds to the Rage timer every second; Mist Form ends up increasing your rage at the same rate as if you were activating vampire abilities every second (as per global cooldown), and Blood Frenzy ends up speeding up your Rage, increasing your timer by as much as 20 seconds per second (10/s for Frenzy, 10/s for other Vampire abilities), making it possible to become fully enraged in as little as 18 activations, or 18 seconds.
Since now we have two separate categories of Stages, the strengths and weaknessess can be separated accordingly. My suggestion is to leave all the passives, as well as Fire Damage penalty and Health Recovery reduction attached to your Hunger stages; this will symbolize the physical/biological advantages and disadvantages of being a Vampire. However, the Vampire ability cost reductions and non-Vampire ability cost increases should be worked into the new Rage stages, similar to how they behave now, except perhaps revert the values to what they were like at the start of the PTS cycle (10/20/30/40% decrease and 5/10/15/20% increase, respectively). This will symbolize your "battle high", or your bloodfiend nature taking over, making it progressively easier to "act like a vampire", and harder to "act like a mortal" (ow the edge, but you get the idea). The refusal of service Hunger Stage 4 vampires are currently facing should be moved to one of the Rage Stages - for example, a calm and collected Stage 4 vampire (Hunger 4, Rage 1) should still be able to talk to people (they see that the vampire does not present any immediate threat), while even a Stage 1 vampire with crazy bloodshot eyes and foaming at the mouth (Hunger 1, Rage 4) should be terrifying enough for people to want nothing to do with you (and rightfully so). The Vampire Lord set I reckon can remain attached to your Hunger stages, giving you a flat cost reduction no matter your Rage stage (though it still needs a rebalance).
This system accomplishes many goals at once. First, it breaks the current Stage system into two smaller sub-systems, giving players a greater freedom to pick the stage they want (since your Hunger stage no longer affects combat quite as directly as it used to, though it is still noticeable), and giving ZOS more dimensions to fine-tune Vampire strengths and weaknessess to get it to a good spot. This system also makes it less of a requirement to use as many Vampire abilities as possible - you can go as high as Hunger Stage 4 and still use exclusively non-Vampire abilities and not be penalized for it, though you will still suffer extra Fire Damage and reduced Health Recovery (as people have pointed out, using only the passive abilities still makes you feel like a vampire, so that box remains checked); at the same time, you can choose to forego the passives altogether and remain at Hunger Stage 1 while spamming exclusively Vampire abilities, and you will be rewarded with lower costs for doing so. This leads me onto my next point - no matter which direction players decide to take their Vampire character, they will be rewarded accordingly. If you want to take Vampirism just for the passives and suffer the "physical" disadvantages (fire damage/health regen), your direct combat ability will not be affected by the non-Vampire ability cost increases (you will still need to feed every now and then to keep your Hunger stage up though); on the other hand, if you wish to be a more active vampire and use your Vampire abilities as much as possible, you will be rewarded for doing so with reduced Vampire ability costs, while the increased cost for your non-Vampire abilities will not be as much of a drawback for this playstyle. "Play how you want" in a nutshell. In addition, players will no longer be as penalized for going on feeding sprees if they just want/like to look at the different animations - after all, they will only suffer a part of the drawbacks since they are broken up into two different progression systems. Also, I find it really flavourful that activating Blood Scion form will cost less the more enraged you are, since Vampire abilities are cheaper the higher your Rage Stage. In addition, moving the service refusal from Hunger Stage 4 to Rage Stage 4 one of the Rage stages will mean that simply "waiting it out" becomes a reasonable option - even if you can only interact with merchants at Rage Stage 1 with 0 on the timer (completely in control), it will still only take six minutes of waiting around for a fully-enraged vampire to be able to interact with others again; as such, keeping Mesmerize on one of your bars is no longer a requirement. Finally, I'm sure most Vampire RPers will enjoy this mechanic, since it gives them something extra to roleplay around.
Now, onto the bonus suggestion. Remember how I said that Rage is independent from Hunger? Well, it doesn't have to be. If ZOS decides to put extra effort into making this work, it is possible to tie them together. For example, Hunger Stage 1/2/3/4 can advance your Rage Stage by 0/10/20/30% more (so activating a Vampire ability will advance your Rage timer by 10/11/12/13 seconds at Hunger Stage 1/2/3/4); similarly, your Rage Stage can speed up your Hunger Stage timer (perhaps by an extra 1 second every 3/2/1 seconds for Hunger Stage 2/3/4). This interaction can be explained by saying that Rage is like a blood afterburner - it makes you more powerful as a vampire, but it rouses your blood and makes you hungry. This serves a dual purpose - it pushes vampires to feed more frequently if they want to use Vampire abilities often (since constantly being at Rage Stage 4 will double your Hunger Stage decay rate) while also making it easier for Hunger Stage 4 vampires to achieve Rage Stage 4 (making it the logical choice for "active" vampire characters).
I sincerely hope ZOS sees this and takes note. I reckon this solution should be relatively easy to implement, and I really think it will greatly improve the Vampire experience.
Edited by Spectral_Force on May 31, 2020 3:34AM I feel like what ZOS have done with the new vampire stages is they've conflated the physical and mental effects of vampirism - reduced Health Recovery and increased Fire Damage, as well as the passives, are what I'd consider to be the "physical" effects (i.e. the effects it has on your body) while the ability cost increases and reductions are what I'd call the "mental" effects (i.e. the effects on your soul/mental state). Pre-Greymoor, we had a similar situation with stages reducing your Vampire ability costs, but the system was still in its infancy and there were no meaningful tradeoffs for the advantages that Vampirism offered, so it wasn't really discussed. But since now the stages seem to be borked with no easy solution to fix them, allow me to introduce a (yet another) solution: separating these two groups of effects into their own separate progression systems - a Hunger system (four stages, the ones we know and love and sometimes hate) and a Rage system.
(I'd like to preface this by saying that the values shown aren't final and I provide them as more of a proof of concept. I haven't done any crunching on this as I wanted to push this idea out faster so people can start discussing it eariler. I'll be happy to hear your thoughts and suggestions if you think these values should be different.)
In the spirit of most of my suggestions, this solution is rather simple, mechanically speaking: leave the Hunger timer as is (four stages, four hours each), but introduce a second, shorter timer for your vampiric Rage. This timer will also have four stages, but these Rage stages will be much more brief, only 90 seconds (1.5 minutes) each. The Rage timer is independent from your Hunger stages (though you can introduce some fun interactions, see below); it starts at Rage Stage 1 (calm and collected) and progresses to Rage Stage 4 (blood-crazed). Using any Vampire ability adds 10 seconds to the Rage timer; when the timer reaches 90 seconds, it flows over into the next stage. Stage 4 Rage timer is capped at 90 seconds. At the same time, the timer continuously ticks down. So it would take 36 Vampire ability activations (36 seconds) to get from 0 seconds on Rage Stage 1 to 90 seconds on Rage Stage 4 (actually about four more, since the counter is constanlty ticking down), and it would take 360 seconds (6 minutes) to go from being fully enraged to fully calm. In case of toggled abilities, like Blood Frenzy and Mist Form, these abilities add 10 seconds to the Rage timer every second; Mist Form ends up increasing your rage at the same rate as if you were activating vampire abilities every second (as per global cooldown), and Blood Frenzy ends up speeding up your Rage, increasing your timer by as much as 20 seconds per second (10/s for Frenzy, 10/s for other Vampire abilities), making it possible to become fully enraged in as little as 18 activations, or 18 seconds.
Since now we have two separate categories of Stages, the strengths and weaknessess can be separated accordingly. My suggestion is to leave all the passives, as well as Fire Damage penalty and Health Recovery reduction attached to your Hunger stages; this will symbolize the physical/biological advantages and disadvantages of being a Vampire. However, the Vampire ability cost reductions and non-Vampire ability cost increases should be worked into the new Rage stages, similar to how they behave now, except perhaps revert the values to what they were like at the start of the PTS cycle (10/20/30/40% decrease and 5/10/15/20% increase, respectively). This will symbolize your "battle high", or your bloodfiend nature taking over, making it progressively easier to "act like a vampire", and harder to "act like a mortal" (ow the edge, but you get the idea). The refusal of service Hunger Stage 4 vampires are currently facing should be moved to one of the Rage Stages - for example, a calm and collected Stage 4 vampire (Hunger 4, Rage 1) should still be able to talk to people (they see that the vampire does not present any immediate threat), while even a Stage 1 vampire with crazy bloodshot eyes and foaming at the mouth (Hunger 1, Rage 4) should be terrifying enough for people to want nothing to do with you (and rightfully so). The Vampire Lord set I reckon can remain attached to your Hunger stages, giving you a flat cost reduction no matter your Rage stage (though it still needs a rebalance).
This system accomplishes many goals at once. First, it breaks the current Stage system into two smaller sub-systems, giving players a greater freedom to pick the stage they want (since your Hunger stage no longer affects combat quite as directly as it used to, though it is still noticeable), and giving ZOS more dimensions to fine-tune Vampire strengths and weaknessess to get it to a good spot. This system also makes it less of a requirement to use as many Vampire abilities as possible - you can go as high as Hunger Stage 4 and still use exclusively non-Vampire abilities and not be penalized for it, though you will still suffer extra Fire Damage and reduced Health Recovery (as people have pointed out, using only the passive abilities still makes you feel like a vampire, so that box remains checked); at the same time, you can choose to forego the passives altogether and remain at Hunger Stage 1 while spamming exclusively Vampire abilities, and you will be rewarded with lower costs for doing so. This leads me onto my next point - no matter which direction players decide to take their Vampire character, they will be rewarded accordingly. If you want to take Vampirism just for the passives and suffer the "physical" disadvantages (fire damage/health regen), your direct combat ability will not be affected by the non-Vampire ability cost increases (you will still need to feed every now and then to keep your Hunger stage up though); on the other hand, if you wish to be a more active vampire and use your Vampire abilities as much as possible, you will be rewarded for doing so with reduced Vampire ability costs, while the increased cost for your non-Vampire abilities will not be as much of a drawback for this playstyle. "Play how you want" in a nutshell. In addition, players will no longer be as penalized for going on feeding sprees if they just want/like to look at the different animations - after all, they will only suffer a part of the drawbacks since they are broken up into two different progression systems. Also, I find it really flavourful that activating Blood Scion form will cost less the more enraged you are, since Vampire abilities are cheaper the higher your Rage Stage. In addition, moving the service refusal from Hunger Stage 4 to Rage Stage 4 one of the Rage stages will mean that simply "waiting it out" becomes a reasonable option - even if you can only interact with merchants at Rage Stage 1 with 0 on the timer (completely in control), it will still only take six minutes of waiting around for a fully-enraged vampire to be able to interact with others again; as such, keeping Mesmerize on one of your bars is no longer a requirement. Finally, I'm sure most Vampire RPers will enjoy this mechanic, since it gives them something extra to roleplay around.
Now, onto the bonus suggestion. Remember how I said that Rage is independent from Hunger? Well, it doesn't have to be. If ZOS decides to put extra effort into making this work, it is possible to tie them together. For example, Hunger Stage 1/2/3/4 can advance your Rage Stage by 0/10/20/30% more (so activating a Vampire ability will advance your Rage timer by 10/11/12/13 seconds at Hunger Stage 1/2/3/4); similarly, your Rage Stage can speed up your Hunger Stage timer (perhaps by an extra 1 second every 3/2/1 seconds for Hunger Stage 2/3/4). This interaction can be explained by saying that Rage is like a blood afterburner - it makes you more powerful as a vampire, but it rouses your blood and makes you hungry. This serves a dual purpose - it pushes vampires to feed more frequently if they want to use Vampire abilities often (since constantly being at Rage Stage 4 will double your Hunger Stage decay rate) while also making it easier for Hunger Stage 4 vampires to achieve Rage Stage 4 (making it the logical choice for "active" vampire characters).
I sincerely hope ZOS sees this and takes note. I reckon this solution should be relatively easy to implement, and I really think it will greatly improve the Vampire experience.
I've unearthed the Legendary Antiquity of Mêlée Island and all I got was this stupid T-shirt!
2
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XomRhoK✭✭✭✭✭Overall well thought concept, but i don't like several things.
1) I basically dislike rage as a vampire trait. Same with Blood Frenzy. I perceive vampires as more calm and calculating, maybe some of them can be more hot-tempered, but as a exception. And their frenzy tied closely with their hunger in my mind.
2) This system may be to complicated and can scare away novice players. You have to follow two scales(Hunger and Rage) and remember what stages means. I agree that they are not very complicated, and maybe this is not such a flaw as it seems to me.
But beyond that, again, very well thought concept, after reading this i thought that it coyld be used for some MOBA game, where heroes restricted with specific mechanics and couldn't add additional like in ESO.
I saw this thread only after you leave link in Vampire feedback thread. You may have chosen a bad time to publish, when some issue appeared and you thread just drown in flood of other threads, maybe partly because many PTS testers of vampires are already have fatigue.Edited by XomRhoK on June 1, 2020 1:21PM1 -
Spectral_Force✭✭✭
Yeah. I watched with horror how this thread drifted away to like the fourth page and thought all hope was lostI saw this thread only after you leave link in Vampire feedback thread. You may have chosen a bad time to publish, when some issue appeared and you thread just drown in flood of other threads, maybe partly because many PTS testers of vampires are already have fatigue.
To address your points though.
Perhaps "Rage" wasn't a good word for this (from now on I will be using "Rage" in double quotes to reflect this). What I was more referring to was the concept of the "inner beast" or similar that most Vampire fiction revolves around. Basically the thing most vampires embrace (making them "evil"), but some choose to resist/reject (making them "virtuous"). Being "enraged" in this case would mean to temporarily embrace that feral nature (the "battle high" I referred to in the suggestion) to make it easier to use your Vampire powers in exchange for "forsaking your humanity" (God this sounds edgy), making it more difficult to use "mortal" skills. Note that it's not entirely out of your control since you don't get increasingly more enraged automatically as combat progresses; rather, it's a fairly conscious choice the player has to make by using Vampire abilities often, and sparing use of these will not lead you to become enraged (which I personally find to be quite flavourful); since it's a conscious choice, it becomes a little detached from the emotional load the word "Rage" carries. But it seems that your issue can be resolved by simply using a different name for this mechanic - nothing really comes to mind at this stage, unfortunately, but I'm certain this sort of functionality can be explained as something other than "being angry".1) I basically dislike rage as a vampire trait. Same with Blood Frenzy. I perceive vampires as more calm and calculating, maybe some of them can be more hot-tempered, but as a exception. And their frenzy tied closely with their hunger in my mind.
As for frenzy tied to hunger... I admit that it makes more sense to have starving vampires be enraged more easily, but that is also a matter of terms used and lore. For example, if "Rage" is tied directly to your "corruption" level, then this will depend on which stage is the most corrupted (well-fed vs starving), and as it stands right now Stage 4 is the most corrupted. I will say though that when designing my suggestion I was mostly thinking about it from a gameplay perspective - I think you will agree that the players who want to play "full-on" vampire characters (i.e. the ones who will benefit from "Rage" the most) would also be the ones who feed often, and people taking Vampire for utility will find "Rage" drawbacks to be too annoying, hence the bonus suggestion making it easier to achieve that state when well-fed and vice versa.
It's more complicated that what we currently have, for sure, but not by much. I think the base concept of "spamming Vampire abilities will make them cheaper, but will also make regular abilities more expensive" should be easy to grasp even to new players, and the different "Rage" stages are simply breakpoints to avoid an even more complicated system involving bars/meters and percentage strengths/weaknesses based proportionally on their state (which will also make number crunching a nightmare given the continuous nature of such a system). The bottom line is, "full-on" vampires won't care for different "Rage" stages and will want to reach the highest stage as quickly as possible, while "passive" vampires also won't care and will want to keep it as low as possible. It's the "middle-of-the-road" builds that will want to balance between the two extremes, and will require the most finesse (and will bring the most depth), and I don't think novices are likely to want to do this in the first place. To help track your stages in combat, the icons used for the different "Rage" stages can be designed to be distinctive from one another, making it as simple as glancing at your status effect bar to see what stage you're currently at.2) This system may be to complicated and can scare away novice players. You have to follow two scales(Hunger and Rage) and remember what stages means. I agree that they are not very complicated, and maybe this is not such a flaw as it seems to me.
The biggest problem I see here is (again) in the wording of this system. I used "Rage Stages" and "Hunger Stages" for convenience (and to be able to better explain the new system by using old terms), and I admit that this can cause some confusion (for example, someone talking about "Stage 4" in this new system might be misunderstood). However, I think people will adapt to the new terms quite quickly and will, for example, start talking about stages as "Hunger X" and "Rage X". Not to mention that the mechanic needs to use these exact terms in the first place. It can be named something completely different, avoiding the issue altogether.
Anyway, thank you for your input @XomRhoK! I'm glad someone took the time to read my wall of text and engage with it
I've unearthed the Legendary Antiquity of Mêlée Island and all I got was this stupid T-shirt!0 -
XomRhoK✭✭✭✭✭
Yep, a change in wording can have a big impact on the perception of an idea. I thought how it can be changed and be related to blood or "vampire power", but didn't come up with anything.Spectral_Force wrote: »To address your points though.
Perhaps "Rage" wasn't a good word for this (from now on I will be using "Rage" in double quotes to reflect this). What I was more referring to was the concept of the "inner beast" or similar that most Vampire fiction revolves around. Basically the thing most vampires embrace (making them "evil"), but some choose to resist/reject (making them "virtuous"). Being "enraged" in this case would mean to temporarily embrace that feral nature (the "battle high" I referred to in the suggestion) to make it easier to use your Vampire powers in exchange for "forsaking your humanity" (God this sounds edgy), making it more difficult to use "mortal" skills. Note that it's not entirely out of your control since you don't get increasingly more enraged automatically as combat progresses; rather, it's a fairly conscious choice the player has to make by using Vampire abilities often, and sparing use of these will not lead you to become enraged (which I personally find to be quite flavourful); since it's a conscious choice, it becomes a little detached from the emotional load the word "Rage" carries. But it seems that your issue can be resolved by simply using a different name for this mechanic - nothing really comes to mind at this stage, unfortunately, but I'm certain this sort of functionality can be explained as something other than "being angry".1) I basically dislike rage as a vampire trait. Same with Blood Frenzy. I perceive vampires as more calm and calculating, maybe some of them can be more hot-tempered, but as a exception. And their frenzy tied closely with their hunger in my mind.
As for frenzy tied to hunger... I admit that it makes more sense to have starving vampires be enraged more easily, but that is also a matter of terms used and lore. For example, if "Rage" is tied directly to your "corruption" level, then this will depend on which stage is the most corrupted (well-fed vs starving), and as it stands right now Stage 4 is the most corrupted. I will say though that when designing my suggestion I was mostly thinking about it from a gameplay perspective - I think you will agree that the players who want to play "full-on" vampire characters (i.e. the ones who will benefit from "Rage" the most) would also be the ones who feed often, and people taking Vampire for utility will find "Rage" drawbacks to be too annoying, hence the bonus suggestion making it easier to achieve that state when well-fed and vice versa.
Make sense.Spectral_Force wrote: »It's more complicated that what we currently have, for sure, but not by much. I think the base concept of "spamming Vampire abilities will make them cheaper, but will also make regular abilities more expensive" should be easy to grasp even to new players, and the different "Rage" stages are simply breakpoints to avoid an even more complicated system involving bars/meters and percentage strengths/weaknesses based proportionally on their state (which will also make number crunching a nightmare given the continuous nature of such a system). The bottom line is, "full-on" vampires won't care for different "Rage" stages and will want to reach the highest stage as quickly as possible, while "passive" vampires also won't care and will want to keep it as low as possible. It's the "middle-of-the-road" builds that will want to balance between the two extremes, and will require the most finesse (and will bring the most depth), and I don't think novices are likely to want to do this in the first place. To help track your stages in combat, the icons used for the different "Rage" stages can be designed to be distinctive from one another, making it as simple as glancing at your status effect bar to see what stage you're currently
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