Ideas to make Werewolf and Vampire more Accessible and Appealing

Erickson9610

These are the three ways you can gain lycanthropy or vampirism on a character for the first time:

1. You can purchase a Werewolf or Vampire bite from the Crown Store.
2. You can get bitten by another player at a shrine in The Rift, Bangkorai, or Reaper's March.
3. You can find a rare enemy spawn at nighttime in The Rift, Bangkorai, or Reaper's March, then let it damage you long enough for you to get infected, then find the NPC in the main city of that zone (whichever belongs to your character's alliance) to accept the quest that leads you to that zone's shrine.

In short, there's a paid ultra convenience option, a free option which requires socializing with other people, and a free roleplaying option which takes a lot of time.

New players may not even know these options exist, so here's a few ideas to expand upon these existing options:

Each of the three options has a downside. Since the Crown Store option is appealing for its convenience, I'll focus more on how the other two options could be expanded without overshadowing it.

As mentioned, getting a bite from another player requires communication. It also places the player who delivered the bite on a temporary cooldown. To expand this option, I'd suggest allowing players to give bites to others within player homes. For instance, Hunter's Glade would be the place for giving Werewolf bites, and Bastion Sanguinaris would be the place for giving Vampire bites. Both homes are massive, thematic, and expensive, making them the perfect guild homes for Werewolf or Vampire-themed guilds. So, if a player joins such a guild, they could ask for a bite inside the guild home, which is a great opportunity for guild events and roleplay. Players can build very elaborate shrines within their homes, so it would be an experience that wouldn't be possible in the overland.

Getting infected by werewolf/bloodfiend enemies in the wild should be expanded on as well. I've seen players try to get infected off of common werewolf enemies in Glenumbra, not knowing that there was a 0% chance of getting infected there. Since it's trivial to remove the infection without accepting the curse, I think there should be more options for getting infected from enemies. For instance, there could be a very low chance of getting infected from a common werewolf or vampire/bloodfiend enemy, while those rare enemies should still spawn at night with a high probability of infecting the player. Maybe those rare enemies are given a unique name, appearance, and increased health pool to signify that they're more likely to infect you, and to make them more difficult to kill by accident.

Along with the above, I think the number of zones to encounter shrines and rare spawns should be expanded. For instance, I would expect a Werewolf shrine in The Reach or Malabal Tor, and maybe a Vampire shrine in Blackreach or Rivenspire. That would reduce the significance of The Rift, Bangkorai, and Reaper's March as the zones to get cursed for free, and it would mean that players who spend more time in other zones would be more likely to discover or encounter these curses.

If you look at previous entries in The Elder Scrolls, you'll find that sometimes players are guided to discover these curses by means of a quest:

For instance, the main quest for the Bloodmoon DLC in Morrowind has you get infected with lycanthropy, and you are given three in-game days to cure it if you want to side with the Skaal instead of with Hircine. The main quest for the Dawnguard DLC in Skyrim gives you the option of gaining vampirism and siding with Lord Harkon's court, or rejecting it and siding with the Dawnguard.

The important takeaway is that a player might not have stumbled upon these curses through gameplay had it not been for a quest giving them the option. Morrowind has rare werewolf enemies on Solstheim that you could've gotten infected from before starting that quest, and Skyrim has vampire enemies that could've also transmitted a lesser version of vampirism to you. Unless players actively seek these curses out, they'll likely overlook them. This is why a quest-based option to gain these curses should be discoverable.

So, my suggestion is straightforward: Introduce more quests which give the player the option of gaining one of these curses. Preferably, these quests are a bit inconvenient to reach (so as to not undermine the Crown Store option), and they should bring up a dialogue box which asks the user to confirm whether they want to accept that curse. The main story of Moon Hunter Keep (ESO's Wolfhunter DLC) used to provide players the option to cure their lycanthropy, but players would mash through dialogue and accidentally cure themselves. So, preventative measures should be put in place to prevent players from altering their characters by accident.

I think the most appealing place to put a quest which gives the player lycanthropy or vampirism would be the final quest of a Companion's questline, or rather, unlocked immediately after it. In Skyrim, after you gain lycanthropy from The Companions or vampirism from Lord Harkon, you can actually ask to be given the curse back from Aela the Huntress (lycanthropy) or Lord Harkon/Serana (vampirism) if you had swapped curses. We've never had a Werewolf or Vampire Companion before, but it would be really cool if we could ask Companions afflicted with such curses to spread the curse they have to us. In order to reach that point, we would need to gain a lot of rapport with those Companions, so it wouldn't be nearly as convenient as outright buying the curse from the Crown Store.

However such a quest is implemented, it's important that a player would be able to discover it as they run through zones completing quests. Presenting players with the existence of these curses and the option of taking on one of them is a good way to raise awareness about them.

In addition to more ways to gain these curses, there should also be more reasons to try these skill lines out:

What makes Werewolf or Vampire unique from anyone without a curse? Primarily, it's the exclusive abilities they have to use. Here's how to make those abilities more interesting:

Skill Styling. Vampire recently got its first Skill Styles this year, changing Eviscerate and Mist Form to a purple hue. Werewolf already has two Skill Styles, changing Roar and Infectious Claws to a green hue. However, this system could be expanded tremendously, given that Skill Styles are able to change the animation, texture/model, and audio of skills. Imagine a Skill Style for Blood Scion which makes your character look like a Vampire Lord, or a Skill Style for Werewolf Transformation that makes you look, act, and sound like a different creature, like a Werebear. The animation, audio, and model/texture can change to make the character stand out when using those Skill Styles.

Scribing. Neither Vampire nor Werewolf have any Scribing Grimoires that are exclusive to their skill lines. As such, nobody has a need to be a Werewolf or a Vampire to use every Grimoire. What if Vampire got a vampire-themed Scribing ability that made playing with Vampire abilities feel better? Or, what if Werewolf had a Grimoire that could round out its toolkit, with a thematic ability that is either martial in nature (such as a biting attack) or invokes Hircine's blessing, the way Hircine's Bounty works? Players would want to try out Werewolf and Vampire, if only for a while, to play with these new abilities.

Most importantly, any eye-catching Werewolf or Vampire Skill Styles should be made available through the Crown Store to increase visibility. Also, with all Grimoires seemingly being sourced from the same place, a player who starts Scribing would encounter the Werewolf and Vampire Grimoires being sold by the merchant and decide to pick up one of the curses to try the curse-exclusive Grimoires for themselves.

Of course, any update to Werewolf and Vampire will draw attention to them. DLCs focused around these curses (such as Wolfhunter and Greymoor) certainly draw attention to them. So, I suppose a good way to make the curses more appealing would be to give them continual updates. That would get people talking about the curses more, increasing visibility. Hopefully the above suggestions help with increasing the accessibility and appeal of these curses, giving players a few more ways to obtain these curses and reasons for doing so.

LunaFlora

those seem like good ideas.
i especially would love quests to get Werewolf and Vampire bites.

robwolf666

I have both a Vampire and Werewolf and sometimes hang around the Bangkorai (Vampire)/Rift (Werewolf) shrines on an in-game full/new moon for around half hour if anyone wants to come looking.. Just walk up to me and give me some kind of invite emote.

moderatelyfatman

I think Werewolf and Vampire need to become their own classes with 3 skill lines.
With subclassing, each class can go Wolf or Vamp-lite but you will need all 3 lines if you want to go full Ulti transformation.

Gabriel_H

Erickson9610 wrote: »

You can find a rare enemy spawn at nighttime in The Rift, Bangkorai, or Reaper's March, then let it damage you long enough for you to get infected, then find the NPC in the main city of that zone (whichever belongs to your character's alliance) to accept the quest that leads you to that zone's shrine.

Just to clarify: They are not rare - they are timed. Vamps are out on nights that have a new moon. Wolfies are out on nights that have a full moon.

A month in Tamriel is roughly around 4 days irl. Meaning every 2 days irl there are either vamps or wolfies out that can infect you. It's very easy to get infected if you know how.

Vaqual

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

I think Werewolf and Vampire need to become their own classes with 3 skill lines.
With subclassing, each class can go Wolf or Vamp-lite but you will need all 3 lines if you want to go full Ulti transformation.

Sure, because nothing can go wrong with balancing 3 lines for a thinly stretched theme when not even 1 can maintained properly.

LalMirchi

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

I think Werewolf and Vampire need to become their own classes with 3 skill lines.
With subclassing, each class can go Wolf or Vamp-lite but you will need all 3 lines if you want to go full Ulti transformation.

Yes, turning these "Curses" into proper classes would be great. How that could come to pass is unclear.