Vampire stages still work the wrong way.

ParaViking

Raideen wrote: »

The entire vampire thing is completely fubard. I don't understand how a "talented" group of game devs can get things so wrong, especially when they have lore to draw from. It's not that hard, the vampire stuff writes itself. Go figure.

OMG! I can... It happens all the time in large companies, or in collaborative environments. All it takes is one alpha with a bad idea that can push a very intelligent (& talented) group of people down the wrong path... Think about it... "Who decided to launch the Challenger that fateful day after it had been covered in a blanket of ice all night?" It wasn't one guy and there where a lot of engineers that said don't do it, but it happened... How did Star Wars fall apart.

My guess is that it is the same guy that coined the phrase "Kiss Curse!" Probably a manager, or lead that did not think it all through very well... The people that knew better probably did not have the fortitude to stand there ground and fight.

Going against the grain can sometimes be hazardous to your career progression. It is a tough call. I have seen people get passed over for promotions. Probably hurt me a time or to over the years. You have to pick your battles, and even when you state your case well. You get stampeded by managers that just want you to shut up and do as you where told. My guess is that The vampire changes implemented were a freight train decision that no one wanted to get in front of, or could stop.

Now they are just being stubborn about fixing it, because in a since it would be admitting they where wrong.

But this is just speculation...

ManM

The end result of the vampire rework is that I get to play a vampire with no need to drink blood. Really, nothing happens. I look mostly normal, and play mostly normal. Worse, if I do drink blood, I grow so weak and frail that I can't recover from a stubbed toe or use my normal skills without quickly becoming exhausted.

This isn't even line with their own new lore, where Lamae tries to convince us that we grow stronger by drinking blood. The gameplay experience is opposite of the writing.

Every other vampire in the game suffers from the dilemma of having to sate their bloodthirsty nature. Player vampires? Can't relate at all. It's a huge point of dissonance in the game.

Xarico

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Nope. Strengths and weaknesses of classic vampires have always varied, which is indeed attributed to the strains.
Core mechanics have not. Feeding and stages have always been a constant.

Stages (and the associated mechanic of getting benefits from hunger) weren't a thing in 2 single player TES games with playable vampires out of the 4 that had them. Unless you want to say that Daggerfall and Morrowind vampires aren't canon, your cannot claim that all strains have the same core mechanics.

Lord-Otto

Xarico wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Nope. Strengths and weaknesses of classic vampires have always varied, which is indeed attributed to the strains.
Core mechanics have not. Feeding and stages have always been a constant.

Stages (and the associated mechanic of getting benefits from hunger) weren't a thing in 2 single player TES games with playable vampires out of the 4 that had them. Unless you want to say that Daggerfall and Morrowind vampires aren't canon, your cannot claim that all strains have the same core mechanics.

Feeding healed you in those. As in, made you more tanky, being at full health. Oblivion did the same, feeding made you more tanky by removing sun damage and fire weakness. Which is the complete opposite of what ESO does.

Xarico

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Feeding healed you in those. As in, made you more tanky, being at full health. Oblivion did the same, feeding made you more tanky by removing sun damage and fire weakness. Which is the complete opposite of what ESO does.

Oh, I'm not saying it didn't heal you or made you more resilient in general. I entirely agree that the new feeding system and stage debuffs, including the appearance changes, are completely backwards. I only meant to note that Oblivion was the first game to introduce the concept of getting stronger through starvation, and that lore-wise many (most?) bloodlines (including Lamae's descendants in High Rock and Hammerfell) only get weaker due to hunger, which goes against Lamae's new dialogue.

OmniDo

ParaViking wrote: »

The people that knew better probably did not have the fortitude to stand there ground and fight.

Correct, and quite typical human behavior.

ParaViking wrote: »

Going against the grain can sometimes be hazardous to your career progression.

Also correct, and again typical behavior.

ParaViking wrote: »

You get stampeded by managers that just want you to shut up and do as you where told.

Accurate.

ParaViking wrote: »

But this is just speculation...

Nah, you are painfully correct and your assessment is accurate.
This is the state of the reality in which we live: Force decides all outcomes via attrition, regardless of the type of forces involved.

But anyhoo, it's just a game, right?

Raideen

ParaViking wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

The entire vampire thing is completely fubard. I don't understand how a "talented" group of game devs can get things so wrong, especially when they have lore to draw from. It's not that hard, the vampire stuff writes itself. Go figure.

OMG! I can... It happens all the time in large companies, or in collaborative environments. All it takes is one alpha with a bad idea that can push a very intelligent (& talented) group of people down the wrong path... Think about it... "Who decided to launch the Challenger that fateful day after it had been covered in a blanket of ice all night?" It wasn't one guy and there where a lot of engineers that said don't do it, but it happened... How did Star Wars fall apart.

My guess is that it is the same guy that coined the phrase "Kiss Curse!" Probably a manager, or lead that did not think it all through very well... The people that knew better probably did not have the fortitude to stand there ground and fight.

Going against the grain can sometimes be hazardous to your career progression. It is a tough call. I have seen people get passed over for promotions. Probably hurt me a time or to over the years. You have to pick your battles, and even when you state your case well. You get stampeded by managers that just want you to shut up and do as you where told. My guess is that The vampire changes implemented were a freight train decision that no one wanted to get in front of, or could stop.

Now they are just being stubborn about fixing it, because in a since it would be admitting they where wrong.

But this is just speculation...

I get where you are coming from and I completely agree in normal environments. I am a designer by trade. I have never worked on a project where any one "alpha" took control. It's collaborative and lots of heads come together to find the best solution. That is all I have ever seen in a creative business environment.

That being said, ESO IS a bit different because its not designed as a product for fun first, its designed as a product to make money through the crown store and everything else revolves around that. Very few decisions go into ESO that are not based on monetization. From this perspective I can see a single person (bean counter) calling the shots.

But even that being said I don't see how vampire changes has anything to do with crowns or money or anything. I just find it amazing that vampires in ESO can literally write themselves into the game (appropriately) but somehow it's just not happening.

Cryptical

I looked at the vamp overhaul that came out and ran the other way.

Being well fed makes your health brittle and you are easier to kill? What? No way - it should be an incentive to feed. So having plenty of blood in your belly should buff your health regen. Unfed should be a debuff.

Being well fed makes you more vulnerable to fire? No way - it should be an incentive to feed. Blood is not gasoline. Being well fed does not mean your vamp sweat is flammable. So having plenty of blood in your belly should grant a buff against fire. Unfed should be a debuff.

Being well fed makes it take more effort (resources) to use your abilities? No way - there should be incentives to keep feeding. Being well fed should make it easier to perform your abilities. Unfed should be a debuff, because nobody does a good job while hangry. Or say that being well fed improves vampiric focus resulting in you being more effective.

Being well fed makes it harder to pass as normal? No way - appearance should be an incentive to feed. A starved vampire should look dry, gaunt, a bit ghoulish; while a well fed vampire should look as normal as anyone else.

Being well fed does make it easier to perform your vamp abilities. That’s as it should be.

Blood is food, blood is fuel, blood is life, blood is power. For a vampire, blood is what makes the world go ‘round. Any aspect of a vampire that is affected by blood should improve when the vampire consumes blood, because blood is life and power and fuel.

The individual aspects should be reordered so that more blood means better, for a vampire the answer should always be ‘feed more’. With mild debuffs for sitting at the stage of starvation, as a counterbalance to the buff from dark stalker passive.

Stages should not progress while logged out, to preserve people’s ability to pop on for a few moments to do quick chores etc. it would suck to pop on to check mail / refill trader / get something off that character and suddenly get jumped or shunned because you became starved while offline.

Vayln_Ninetails

The fact they designed a better rework for the NPCs over the players will always be funny to me.

They get a cool new skill line with Blood Knight and Vampire lord transformations (both of these easily could have been morphs with the base wingless scion being the default ability), cool new abilities including a bat swarm gap closer, summonable blood imps and death hounds, a life drain that stuns and lifts people in the air....various AoE blood magic attacks.

They look better, play better, and are designed better.

But hey! At least we get a claw swipe that is only used by blood fiends, right?

ManM

I suspect the designers were blinded by the simple elegance of the idea that the curse makes you more monstrous if you act monstrous. It's a neat and novel concept, but has ramifications that break any sense of actual vampirism.

The end result is that vampires face no negative consequences for abstaining from blood. This might be the only vampire in the history of the concept that doesn't really need to drink blood. Even worse, the skills and passives that make up being 'monstrous' leave you feeling rather weak and inept.

Before the rework, players had no incentive to feed because doing so made you weaker. After the rework, there is still no incentive as feeding still makes you weaker. They turned the lore on it's head while not addressing the root cause of the problem.

An effective rework would have Vampires get stronger when feeding, not weaker.

Anentet

I mean I kind of agree. I hate how vamp works. There are some really good builds for them, but not any I personally wish to play. I really liked it as an addon to my necro for cosmetic purposes, and I found one decent build for it but again, I dont want to be in mist form 24/7.. I wish what they did was made the ult that gives you stage 5 which removes the debuffs? I wish it would last for like an hour so to keep the debuffs off you have to use that ult at least every hour or even if this was less time Id be happy.

Lord-Otto

Xarico wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Feeding healed you in those. As in, made you more tanky, being at full health. Oblivion did the same, feeding made you more tanky by removing sun damage and fire weakness. Which is the complete opposite of what ESO does.

Oh, I'm not saying it didn't heal you or made you more resilient in general. I entirely agree that the new feeding system and stage debuffs, including the appearance changes, are completely backwards. I only meant to note that Oblivion was the first game to introduce the concept of getting stronger through starvation, and that lore-wise many (most?) bloodlines (including Lamae's descendants in High Rock and Hammerfell) only get weaker due to hunger, which goes against Lamae's new dialogue.

Ah, okay. Right.
C=

MornaBaine

Vayln_Ninetails wrote: »

The fact they designed a better rework for the NPCs over the players will always be funny to me.

They get a cool new skill line with Blood Knight and Vampire lord transformations (both of these easily could have been morphs with the base wingless scion being the default ability), cool new abilities including a bat swarm gap closer, summonable blood imps and death hounds, a life drain that stuns and lifts people in the air....various AoE blood magic attacks.

They look better, play better, and are designed better.

But hey! At least we get a claw swipe that is only used by blood fiends, right?

OMG ALL OF THIS! How can game designers be so tone deaf as to NOT understand that players resent it when the NPCs that are supposedly of the same type as your player character have a ton of abilities YOUR CHARACTER DOESN'T? When I saw the lead NPC from Thieves Guild CLIMB for a moment I was all, "Oh hell yes!" But wait... I cannot climb? What trolling [snip] is this??? Forever I have said vampires should have a gap closer because all the vamps and bloodfiends you encounter as NPCs do! Instead, ZOS just decided to make this situation about a hundred times worse. It's actually pretty infuriating.

[Edited to remove Profanity]

Vevvev

MornaBaine wrote: »

Vayln_Ninetails wrote: »

The fact they designed a better rework for the NPCs over the players will always be funny to me.

They get a cool new skill line with Blood Knight and Vampire lord transformations (both of these easily could have been morphs with the base wingless scion being the default ability), cool new abilities including a bat swarm gap closer, summonable blood imps and death hounds, a life drain that stuns and lifts people in the air....various AoE blood magic attacks.

They look better, play better, and are designed better.

But hey! At least we get a claw swipe that is only used by blood fiends, right?

OMG ALL OF THIS! How can game designers be so tone deaf as to NOT understand that players resent it when the NPCs that are supposedly of the same type as your player character have a ton of abilities YOUR CHARACTER DOESN'T? When I saw the lead NPC from Thieves Guild CLIMB for a moment I was all, "Oh hell yes!" But wait... I cannot climb? What trolling [snip] is this??? Forever I have said vampires should have a gap closer because all the vamps and bloodfiends you encounter as NPCs do! Instead, ZOS just decided to make this situation about a hundred times worse. It's actually pretty infuriating.

Especially when you realize the old vampire skill line had 2 movement enhancing abilities! Accelerating Drain and Clouding Swarm with it's Materialize ability.

Lunerdog

Basically now, both my vamps are just for cosmetic roleplay. My Magplar vamp uses the 'Drink from bottle' emote to simulate drinking from her flask of blood and my Magblade use the Swallow Soul skill to simulate drawing blood from her victims.


Zos truly made an absolute and dismal mess of vamps this time round and though the way vamps were previously was less than perfect I'd rather go back to that.

ManM

I think there is an argument to be made that a blood scion is not actually a vampire. After all, the core feature of a vampire is that they sustain themselves by drinking the blood of others. Scions don't need to drink blood at all. At the very least, I'd like to see them fix the experience so that it is consistent with actual vampirism.

barney2525

MornaBaine wrote: »

Once they'd lengthened the stages to 6 hours vs something ridiculous like 20 minutes (yes, that used to be a thing) I was overall content with the the way the stages worked and the unique justification for them. I liked being able to feed to reduce my stage. I dislike that now that we finally have all these cool feeding animations that feeding now advances your stage, pretty much meaning that I never do it. I deeply dislike and resent getting stuck with the vamp lord form as my Ult now. I will never use it.

But you know what I find most annoying? That they utterly failed to take this year long story focused on vampires to give us an overhaul of the visuals for vamps. That, at the very least they should not have failed to fix the vamp skins so that they don't utterly wash out body and face markings as well as makeup!

And it's just beyond my comprehension that they failed to create a variety of skins to offer us in the crown store that would allow us to customize the vamp look even more. Especially a "mortal" skin that, when donned, takes you to your original pre-vamp appearance.

Way to drop the ball and/or remain totally tone deaf to your player base.

Variety of skins in crown store - agree. A skin that when donned makes you look normal - disagree. The NPCs shouldn't react if you look completely normal, which means the skin could have an in-game effect, not just a cosmetic one. Keep the store cosmetic please.

IMHO

idk

Wolfster wrote: »

Tapio75 wrote: »

it makes keeping purifying bloody mara on your pocket mandatory to speak to certain services ike horse trainers

No it doesn't.

For banking use the outlaws refuge. For any other NPC that won't talk to you just use mesmerise on them.

This and the usefulness of Mesmerise has been discussed to great length in the forums already.

ectoplasmicninja wrote: »

Fennorian is weak at that point from having been tortured, and drinks the blood to restore his strength. There's no difference between the blood of willing and unwilling victims save for the morality of the method of acquisition.

If blood makes you powerful, it makes sense that you'd feed to increase your stage. The rework has framed it as feeding meaning giving into your vampiric urges and falling further into the dark side, as it were, so refraining from blood means becoming weaker and looking more normal. If you're a savage bloodsucker, you look commensurately terrifying and have to Mesmerize mortals to convince them to deal with you. That seems pretty logical to me.

Agreed that vampiric drain should increase your stage. If giving into the beast is such a slippery slope, it should apply here too.

and this. However, the vampiric drain being a regular skill would make it more than a skill. As such I can see the necessity for it to not affect our vampire level for MMORPG mechanic consistency.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Tapio75 wrote: »

You need to drink blood to get powerful AKA stage 4. This is wrong AND to add to the insult, it makes keeping purifying bloody mara on your pocket mandatory to speak to certain services ike horse trainers and even more annoying, you need to be ONLINE to get rid of stage 4 by waiting and waiting takes ages.

How it should work?

You drink blood, you get rid of your bloodthirst and weaknesses so you also get rid of stage 4 by frinking blood. If you wait, be it online or offline, you get bloodthirsty and get your vampire weaknesses back as well but you also get more powerful. Again, if you drink blood from unwilling victims, you lose your thirst for blood and get rid of weaknesses but you also get weaker on your powers.

You notice Fennorain going weak on that part of story where he is experimented on. That implies he gets weaknesses by being without his flask of blood from willing victims.

How that affects his powers however, is all speculation though... But blood takes bloodthirst away so purifying bloody mara dfoes the same, right. Purifying bloody mara being our flask of blood from willing victims.

If we use our vampire powers, that should also increase our vampire stage gradually... At least vampire drain should as well as that ultimate which i dont use because i still hate the whole bloodscion thingy.

They finally corrected it to work the right way they should not change it back
Back in elsweyr there is an nps vampire that cant fight the rest if her clan because the are too strong for her since they drinked blood and she didnt

Also we have a completely differand kind of vampirism as sunlight doesnt affect us like in other game, so they can do whatever they want with it

It's not how it should work. There's a precedent in the TES games, that's how it should work because that's how it's always worked, no matter the strain.

Same with the sunliht damage
And we dont die by being in the sunlight

No sun damage in Skyrim.

So it is possible to change vampirism

Nope. Strengths and weaknesses of classic vampires have always varied, which is indeed attributed to the strains.
Core mechanics have not. Feeding and stages have always been a constant.

Until now, there is a start for everything

TjPhysicist

Stanx wrote: »

Wolfster wrote: »

Tapio75 wrote: »

it makes keeping purifying bloody mara on your pocket mandatory to speak to certain services ike horse trainers

No it doesn't.

For banking use the outlaws refuge. For any other NPC that won't talk to you just use mesmerise on them.

Unless they're a pack merchant. For some reason, these guys are impervious to my mind tricks (real Watto vibes).

omg yes...i thought i was doing it wrong, or going crazy or something, any workarounds for this?

Lord-Otto

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Tapio75 wrote: »

You need to drink blood to get powerful AKA stage 4. This is wrong AND to add to the insult, it makes keeping purifying bloody mara on your pocket mandatory to speak to certain services ike horse trainers and even more annoying, you need to be ONLINE to get rid of stage 4 by waiting and waiting takes ages.

How it should work?

You drink blood, you get rid of your bloodthirst and weaknesses so you also get rid of stage 4 by frinking blood. If you wait, be it online or offline, you get bloodthirsty and get your vampire weaknesses back as well but you also get more powerful. Again, if you drink blood from unwilling victims, you lose your thirst for blood and get rid of weaknesses but you also get weaker on your powers.

You notice Fennorain going weak on that part of story where he is experimented on. That implies he gets weaknesses by being without his flask of blood from willing victims.

How that affects his powers however, is all speculation though... But blood takes bloodthirst away so purifying bloody mara dfoes the same, right. Purifying bloody mara being our flask of blood from willing victims.

If we use our vampire powers, that should also increase our vampire stage gradually... At least vampire drain should as well as that ultimate which i dont use because i still hate the whole bloodscion thingy.

They finally corrected it to work the right way they should not change it back
Back in elsweyr there is an nps vampire that cant fight the rest if her clan because the are too strong for her since they drinked blood and she didnt

Also we have a completely differand kind of vampirism as sunlight doesnt affect us like in other game, so they can do whatever they want with it

It's not how it should work. There's a precedent in the TES games, that's how it should work because that's how it's always worked, no matter the strain.

Same with the sunliht damage
And we dont die by being in the sunlight

No sun damage in Skyrim.

So it is possible to change vampirism

Nope. Strengths and weaknesses of classic vampires have always varied, which is indeed attributed to the strains.
Core mechanics have not. Feeding and stages have always been a constant.

Until now, there is a start for everything

Well, then let's start making vampires great again!

starkerealm

Vevvev wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Tapio75 wrote: »

You need to drink blood to get powerful AKA stage 4. This is wrong AND to add to the insult, it makes keeping purifying bloody mara on your pocket mandatory to speak to certain services ike horse trainers and even more annoying, you need to be ONLINE to get rid of stage 4 by waiting and waiting takes ages.

How it should work?

You drink blood, you get rid of your bloodthirst and weaknesses so you also get rid of stage 4 by frinking blood. If you wait, be it online or offline, you get bloodthirsty and get your vampire weaknesses back as well but you also get more powerful. Again, if you drink blood from unwilling victims, you lose your thirst for blood and get rid of weaknesses but you also get weaker on your powers.

You notice Fennorain going weak on that part of story where he is experimented on. That implies he gets weaknesses by being without his flask of blood from willing victims.

How that affects his powers however, is all speculation though... But blood takes bloodthirst away so purifying bloody mara dfoes the same, right. Purifying bloody mara being our flask of blood from willing victims.

If we use our vampire powers, that should also increase our vampire stage gradually... At least vampire drain should as well as that ultimate which i dont use because i still hate the whole bloodscion thingy.

They finally corrected it to work the right way they should not change it back
Back in elsweyr there is an nps vampire that cant fight the rest if her clan because the are too strong for her since they drinked blood and she didnt

Also we have a completely differand kind of vampirism as sunlight doesnt affect us like in other game, so they can do whatever they want with it

It's not how it should work. There's a precedent in the TES games, that's how it should work because that's how it's always worked, no matter the strain.

Same with the sunliht damage
And we dont die by being in the sunlight

No sun damage in Skyrim.

Technically Skyrim does have sun damage, but not lethal sun damage...

Hides

Okay, so, hear me out here: No.

Skyrim does not have sun damage. You can mod the game to include it, which is cool, but it doesn't have sun damage.

You have debuffs for being outside during the daytime, but that's not sun damage. It didn't even care if the sun was over the horizon. The clock struck 6am and you took the debuffs, even if it was still dark out.

Also, having sun damage (even non-lethal debuffs like in Skyrim) would be annoying as hell in an MMO where you can't control what time of day it is in game. So, you'd either need to have a way to skew the time of day negating the concept, or just scrap the idea.

linuxlady

Vamp progenitor is immune to fire. All offspring are ruined by fire


Yes please let me take the last name of the person who abused me, said no woman EVER!!!!

Toanis

linuxlady wrote: »

Yes please let me take the last name of the person who abused me, said no woman EVER!!!!

Sad truth is, they often did. Family "honor" and abusive husbands aside, there is also some dignity in maintaining the illusion of choice. Molag Bal made an example of Lamae, using her to show everyone that Arkay is nothing next to him, feeling betrayed by her god and rather being a defiant survivor than a sorry victim, she took Bal's name, and shielded by that name's authority found her own way in the world.

Elvenheart

If any of you watched the Underworld movies, I think it’s easy to see what has happened. Obviously, the werewolves are in control of ESO now, so they’ve made werewolves better in what was supposed to be the year of the vampire, while trying to also drive all vampires out of existence 🧛‍♀️ 🐺

Vevvev

Elvenheart wrote: »

If any of you watched the Underworld movies, I think it’s easy to see what has happened. Obviously, the werewolves are in control of ESO now, so they’ve made werewolves better in what was supposed to be the year of the vampire, while trying to also drive all vampires out of existence 🧛‍♀️ 🐺

Would make sense since the entire year's theme seems to be about killing vampires >.>