A Comprehensive Review of TFN 1.2

The Final Nights is an impressive mod to a famously flawed game, which overhauls just about everything in one way or another. On their own, many of these changes produced mixed results. However, taken as a whole the mod is extremely successful in its goal to provide a challenging and different experience for the veteran bloodlines player (I would echo the creator of the mod in suggesting new players first complete the game using only the unofficial patch or Camarilla Edition Mod).

As a first time TFN player, what stands out to me the most about the mod is how it attempts to resurrect an old game by replacing linear elements with more "sand box" style improvements. It can't be said enough that the base game is extremely linear in its progression. Every time you see a new weapon for the first time, it is a definite upgrade over its predecessor. Every hub features higher social skill checks for persuasion/seduction/intimidation, and locks/computers get harder to circumvent. Attempting to change these elements leads to some pretty interesting choices and gameplay.

Since the Mod changes so much, I will break my review into sections, and provide a final summary at the end. I appreciate the work of the creator of this mod, and hope this feedback can be taken as it is when/if he considers changes for a 1.2 version.

BUGS AND PERFORMANCE ISSUES

Bloodlines was released before it was ready. The problems in the base game were caused by both the rushed schedule to release it in time for the Time Of Judgement tie in with the pen and paper old world of darkness and by the early beta version of the source engine used to build the game. I bring this up, because I can trace all of the bugs/performance issues I experienced in my two TFN play-throughs to issues with the engine itself.

1. The lighting problems with the Santa Monica pier, where the distant lights can be seen through the brick walls of the stairway down to the beach is a problem in the base game. I only list this here because recent versions of Wesps unofficial patches have fixed this issue. TFN is based on an older version of the unofficial patch, but it would be nice to see the fix for this issue included in any future release of TFN.

2. The infamous shade fight particle effects. I won't go too far into this, as it is well discussed on this forum (and the modder has already indicated he will solve this in future releases). I only bring it up to say that the fault here is entirely on the game engine.

3. The blood hunt very late in the game has similar issues to the shade fight due the the large number of vampires using disciplines on the map. Using triggers to spawn the blood hunt vampire as the player approaches rather than spawning all of them once the player enters the map would likely reduce the performance issues here.

These were the only problems I encountered in my TFN games. Given how unfriendly this game is to modders, this is outstanding and worthy of praise.

The Bloodloss Timer System

TFN features a variable timer system that causes the player to lose blood throughout their game. This timer changes based on your humanity and stamina. I loved this addition to the game. I found it added a certain level of stress to my games, similar to the "spirit counter" in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer. It forced me to plan for how my character would feed, which is one of the most important considerations for planning a vampire character at the table-top. I found this to be an extremely successful addition to the game. My one note would be that it was sometimes frustrating to have the counter go off right after a successful feed, and that it would be nice if feeding or otherwise gaining blood could cause the timer to reset.

Prostitution and Blood Doll System

One of the "sandbox" style changes this mod introduces is normalizing the blood dolls in the various clubs/bars and reworking the pricing system for prostitution. In the base game, your ability to feed on local cattle in various nightclubs depends on your seduction score keeping up with your progress in the game. Here, the modder has changed this by implementing a probability based check system across all blood dolls in the game. I find this to be a curious choice for two reasons. First, his stated goal seems to have been achieved without this change. The driver behind this change was the desire to "increase the importance of the seduction feat". This was already accomplished in part just by adding the blood loss system, which would have made backtracking to previous hubs for easier seduction checks less effective due to blood loss incurred by travel time. My second misgiving with this change is that the payout for exp investment in seduction is actually reduced by this change. By normalizing the difficulty on all blood dolls, you remove any reason to cap out seduction (a part from perhaps 2-3 dialogue options). I don't see how this change can be said to encourage the player to invest in seduction past enough to unlock the easier blood dolls, at best players now have to target 6-7 seduction instead of 5.

The other part of this system change, was to change the pricing level on prostitutes throughout the game so that they factor in both the seduction score and haggle feat of characters. While I agree with much of this change, I also find the workings of it run counter to the designer's intent. Having prostitutes become the main blood source for high haggle characters is a good idea, as it adds another different playstyle to the mix. The problem is that this change effectively nerfs the seduction score! In the base game, extremely high seduction scores can be used to seduce prostitutes for free while in TFN it only reduces the price. This change seems to run counter to the goal of making high seduction more useful; in TFN the ability to feed almost at will from any prostitute (thus bypassing the need to cross the entire map to enter the bar/club) would be an extremely useful ability fitting for someone who spent the exp to actually max seduction.

My suggestion to improve this change is to scale the blood gained from blood dolls in clubs based on the seduction score of the character. This would represent the characters ability to seduce higher class, and therefore more fulfilling blood dolls. I would also scale prostitution cost based on haggle alone, while bringing back the ability of characters with capped seduction scores to seduce prostitutes for free. THIS would encourage players to consider actually maxing their seduction score, while allowing some blood access to those with more average seduction abilities.

The Weapon System

I will admit that I was very concerned when I read about the massive weapon balance overhaul in this mod. Part of this was based on the narrative; that you had no access to useful weapons early on made sense as LaCroix expected/wanted you to die prior to returning to Downtown (which explained why Mercurio, with all of his access to military grade weapons lets you go off to that warehouse with a pea shooter and standard shotgun). I was pleasantly surprised by how well the weapon adjustments came out in an actual play-through. There were only two weapons I felt were not appropriately balanced in my game:

1. The Ninjato: The stealth bonus on this was too high. I was able to stealth through the last sections of the game (The Temple and Lacoix Tower) with the ninjato, 2 dexterity and no points in the actual stealth skill. Even with the noticeably harder stealthing in this mod, this weapon made using stealth without any real investment in the skill too easy. I would suggest halving the bonus to 1.

2. The Scoped Sniper Rifle: Your balance change added an extremely long reload animation to this rifle. The problem is, due to how the weapon is coded you can NOT toggle the scope on or off during the reload animation. This means if don't quickly toggle the scope after you fire, you are stuck fully zoomed in for the entire animation, unable to effectively move as needed to defend yourself. Even when you do toggle it in time, the reload is simply too long. By comparison the AUG is simply better at fufilling the niche role of the sniper rifle; if you need to snipe something/someone you are better off using the AUG. The Sniper rifle is a very niche weapon in bloodlines which requires extremely high firearms to use effectively, due to map design mainly there are not a lot of areas where you can safely use it to pick enemies off. Given this, and the effectiveness of the AUG (available at the same time in the game), I feel that the reload time on the sniper rifle should come down some.

The Masquerade Violation System

This system is part bug fix, part overhaul. It replaces the static spawns (and their buggy despawning triggers) from the base game with hunters who don't accidently despawn before doing anything. It is perfect in its execution. I do believe that this system makes the hunters spawning from masquerade violations more in line with what the developers had in mind (as in, they actually work and are impactful). This gets a huge thumbs up from this reviewer.

The Inspection System

I rather liked this system. I was guilty of leaving my inspection feat low on non-firearms characters, but now this is a VERY useful feat. I would love to see this expanded upon in future versions of TFN to include more areas. You can always go BACK to a hub once you increase your inspection... but if you added items like this to maps we only visit once, you add even more value to the inspection feat at earlier points in the game.

Humanity/Frenzy Changes

I left this system for last, because I found this to be the most problematic change.

The following is a situation that can actually happen to a player using this mod if they are playing a low humanity character: You walk down the street downtown when you come across a random fight between a pedestrian and a gang member. When the pedestrian dies, you lose the game.

This is an extreme example, obviously, of a character playing at 1 humanity. But it remains just as silly.

I find that the humanity loss system effectively works to restrict roleplay within a roleplaying game; characters that fit within the setting (low humanity characters) are essentially out of bounds. This is not good functionally, and I feel the biggest change I'd like to see in the entire mod is having a floor put back on humanity. There are already pretty strong repercussions when your humanity is low in TFN between bloodloss happening faster and much increased frenzy chance at 1-2 humanity. There's no need to tack on the risk of sudden game-ending situations.

Conclusion

The Final Nights is a fantastic accomplishment, and a very enjoyable mod. Taken as a whole, it is highly successful at reinventing an old game that's been played far too many times through by its fans. I highly recommend those looking for a challenging and new experience in bloodlines give this mod a try.

PS: any chance we'll see presence in dialogue down the line? It's awesome in CE 1.6, and would be a welcome addition.

I'd just like to point out that in TFN 1.1 bloodloss is not based on Humanity yet. This is going to be a change in the upcoming 1.2 version of the mod. Right now bloodloss is based purely on Stamina and you get no penalties to it for having low Humanity.

but a good review otherwise.

Wow that's a long review, but I appreciate it non-the-less. I haven't read it yet because I was slammed with stuff to do this weekend and I'm now just finally getting to sit down to continue alpha testing the new Samedi system for 1.2. As soon as I get a free moment in the next few days I promise to read this. I noticed you posted in the Humanity/Frenzy system section and I actually liked your idea, something to think about.

Anyways, back to playing 1.2, I just wanted you to know that you weren't being ignored.

Zer0Morph wrote:

Wow that's a long review, but I appreciate it non-the-less. I haven't read it yet because I was slammed with stuff to do this weekend and I'm now just finally getting to sit down to continue alpha testing the new Samedi system for 1.2. As soon as I get a free moment in the next few days I promise to read this. I noticed you posted in the Humanity/Frenzy system section and I actually liked your idea, something to think about.

Anyways, back to playing 1.2, I just wanted you to know that you weren't being ignored.

I'm very excited to have finally have a more... difficult time playing the noss/samedi.

If I might make a suggestion while you're playing with the files... all those times you are forced by the game (or encouraged by the game) to basically break the masquerade and talk to a mortal (the critic at the restaurant in hollywood, Killpatrick, etc)... SPAWN HUNTERS for the Samedi. No masquerade violation... but spawn some hunters ;p

Sezneg,

First off I wanted to thank you for taking the time to not only play TFN, but to also post a very well written and easy to understand comprehensive review that was well thought out. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. As what I've done with many other well written reviews, I will break down each point and respond accordingly.

1. The lighting problems with the Santa Monica pier, where the distant lights can be seen through the brick walls of the stairway down to the beach is a problem in the base game. I only list this here because recent versions of Wesps unofficial patches have fixed this issue. TFN is based on an older version of the unofficial patch, but it would be nice to see the fix for this issue included in any future release of TFN.
I agree, though I didn't realize that Wesp had fixed this. I will try to contact him to see how he did it and mirror the results. I have something I want to try myself first and if it doesn't work, then I'll illicit his help.

2. The infamous shade fight particle effects. I won't go too far into this, as it is well discussed on this forum (and the modder has already indicated he will solve this in future releases). I only bring it up to say that the fault here is entirely on the game engine.
This will be updated in version 1.2. The problem is that the invisible body still casts a shadow so if you follow the shadow on the ground, it negates the whole point of making him invisible. I added the smoke to cover the shadow and the less particles I use, the more visible the shadow becomes. That's why I used such thick particles, otherwise it would've looked dorky. The trick will be to find a good balance of particles vs. players with shit computers. The ultimate fix is for people to simply upgrade their computers to something modern so I won't have to turn it down. I haven't had any slowness issues with the shade... EVER, then again I'm always upgrading my machine. So, making the Shade look professional vs. accommodating old machines is my main goal. I won't be able to please everyone, some people will have to upgrade or deal with it.

3. The blood hunt very late in the game has similar issues to the shade fight due the the large number of vampires using disciplines on the map. Using triggers to spawn the blood hunt vampire as the player approaches rather than spawning all of them once the player enters the map would likely reduce the performance issues here.
My response to this is the same as point #2. I've never had any slowness issues on this map however I have slightly reduced the number of Kindred on the map. I reworked this so that the first wave of Vamps will be weaker but greater in number. As you swathe your way through the parking garage the Kindred will get harder but lesser in number. I'm hoping that helps reduce any lag. I of course can't tell being that my computer is modern so I'll have to leave it to the players who have crap machines to let me know if they had issues.

TFN features a variable timer system that causes the player to lose blood throughout their game. This timer changes based on your humanity and stamina. I loved this addition to the game. I found it added a certain level of stress to my games, similar to the "spirit counter" in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer. It forced me to plan for how my character would feed, which is one of the most important considerations for planning a vampire character at the table-top. I found this to be an extremely successful addition to the game. My one note would be that it was sometimes frustrating to have the counter go off right after a successful feed, and that it would be nice if feeding or otherwise gaining blood could cause the timer to reset.
Actually I haven't implemented Humanity affecting the Bloodloss Timer yet, that will be a new feature in 1.2. I'm glad you liked this feature. This was the first system implemented in Camarilla Edition so many years ago and has been the staple of everything TCI does. I'll have to look into resetting the timer immediately after feeding. Childe of Malkav made it so you can get a 16th blood point to compensate for this but I didn't like how you could see the red bar go above its intended position making a minor graphical issue on the hud, otherwise I would've just used his fix. If I can correct this I will, otherwise it may stay the way it is now which though not optimal, still works for what I wanted.

One of the "sandbox" style changes this mod introduces is normalizing the blood dolls in the various clubs/bars and reworking the pricing system for prostitution. In the base game, your ability to feed on local cattle in various nightclubs depends on your seduction score keeping up with your progress in the game. Here, the modder has changed this by implementing a probability based check system across all blood dolls in the game. I find this to be a curious choice for two reasons. First, his stated goal seems to have been achieved without this change. The driver behind this change was the desire to "increase the importance of the seduction feat". This was already accomplished in part just by adding the blood loss system, which would have made backtracking to previous hubs for easier seduction checks less effective due to blood loss incurred by travel time. My second misgiving with this change is that the payout for exp investment in seduction is actually reduced by this change. By normalizing the difficulty on all blood dolls, you remove any reason to cap out seduction (a part from perhaps 2-3 dialogue options). I don't see how this change can be said to encourage the player to invest in seduction past enough to unlock the easier blood dolls, at best players now have to target 6-7 seduction instead of 5.

The other part of this system change, was to change the pricing level on prostitutes throughout the game so that they factor in both the seduction score and haggle feat of characters. While I agree with much of this change, I also find the workings of it run counter to the designer's intent. Having prostitutes become the main blood source for high haggle characters is a good idea, as it adds another different playstyle to the mix. The problem is that this change effectively nerfs the seduction score! In the base game, extremely high seduction scores can be used to seduce prostitutes for free while in TFN it only reduces the price. This change seems to run counter to the goal of making high seduction more useful; in TFN the ability to feed almost at will from any prostitute (thus bypassing the need to cross the entire map to enter the bar/club) would be an extremely useful ability fitting for someone who spent the exp to actually max seduction.

My suggestion to improve this change is to scale the blood gained from blood dolls in clubs based on the seduction score of the character. This would represent the characters ability to seduce higher class, and therefore more fulfilling blood dolls. I would also scale prostitution cost based on haggle alone, while bringing back the ability of characters with capped seduction scores to seduce prostitutes for free. THIS would encourage players to consider actually maxing their seduction score, while allowing some blood access to those with more average seduction abilities.
I understand what you're saying here however you forgot to mention the blood dolls placed in the main hub areas. Those blood dolls require a 9 or 10 (I forget which) seduction to feed from freely which saves you a trip to a night club. These blood dolls were originally created for CE however I left one in each main hub area (except in LA where the new blood doll is in "The Last Round") to act as a prostitute for Seduction players. So the vanilla blood dolls are chance based on Seduction, the main hub blood dolls are guaranteed if you have a Seduction of 9 or 10, while the vanilla prostitutes still give a discount, but are mainly used for Haggle based players. I don't know if that clears up any confusion or if you agree with these choices, but that's how it stands as of now.

1. The Ninjato: The stealth bonus on this was too high. I was able to stealth through the last sections of the game (The Temple and Lacoix Tower) with the ninjato, 2 dexterity and no points in the actual stealth skill. Even with the noticeably harder stealthing in this mod, this weapon made using stealth without any real investment in the skill too easy. I would suggest halving the bonus to 1.
I've never played with the Ninjato but the purpose of that weapon was so that the player could benefit from the stealth bonus, along with it being an aggravated damage weapon. I wanted to balance this better with the knife so that the knife was still a weapon with purpose. I will probably keep the stealth bonus but reduce the damage so the knife does more in comparison. I specifically had non-Obfuscate players in mind when I created the weapon so they could carry it during stealth missions to offset the difficulty of the mission. The Dane and the museum can be downright frustrating if you have a low stealth skill so I thought this would be a handy tool to carry to help them through.

2. The Scoped Sniper Rifle: Your balance change added an extremely long reload animation to this rifle. The problem is, due to how the weapon is coded you can NOT toggle the scope on or off during the reload animation. This means if don't quickly toggle the scope after you fire, you are stuck fully zoomed in for the entire animation, unable to effectively move as needed to defend yourself. Even when you do toggle it in time, the reload is simply too long. By comparison the AUG is simply better at fufilling the niche role of the sniper rifle; if you need to snipe something/someone you are better off using the AUG. The Sniper rifle is a very niche weapon in bloodlines which requires extremely high firearms to use effectively, due to map design mainly there are not a lot of areas where you can safely use it to pick enemies off. Given this, and the effectiveness of the AUG (available at the same time in the game), I feel that the reload time on the sniper rifle should come down some.
I didn't realize this, thanks for pointing that out. I'll take a look at it and see what I can do to reduce the reload time. The problem is the reload time must match the reload animation or it won't look right. I'll see if I can fix it though we may be stuck with it.

I rather liked this system. I was guilty of leaving my inspection feat low on non-firearms characters, but now this is a VERY useful feat. I would love to see this expanded upon in future versions of TFN to include more areas. You can always go BACK to a hub once you increase your inspection... but if you added items like this to maps we only visit once, you add even more value to the inspection feat at earlier points in the game.
I completely agree with everything you've said here and I plan on adding more items to find for high Inspection characters. The implementation of this system is only half complete. I got the main street hubs setup very nicely but some of the other smaller maps, like shops or even night clubs could really benefit from more items to find. To expand on this, I would even like to start adding high lock picking containers and filling them with nice treasure as an incentive for players to max out there lock picking skill. I think finding high priced items like occult items, several elder vitae bags, or even high end armors in some containers with a lock of 9 or 10 could add a new playstyle.

The following is a situation that can actually happen to a player using this mod if they are playing a low humanity character: You walk down the street downtown when you come across a random fight between a pedestrian and a gang member. When the pedestrian dies, you lose the game.

This is an extreme example, obviously, of a character playing at 1 humanity. But it remains just as silly.

I find that the humanity loss system effectively works to restrict roleplay within a roleplaying game; characters that fit within the setting (low humanity characters) are essentially out of bounds. This is not good functionally, and I feel the biggest change I'd like to see in the entire mod is having a floor put back on humanity. There are already pretty strong repercussions when your humanity is low in TFN between bloodloss happening faster and much increased frenzy chance at 1-2 humanity. There's no need to tack on the risk of sudden game-ending situations.
I think you have a good point here Sezneg. When I implemented this, Humanity did not play a factor in the Bloodloss System. The only penalty for having low Humanity was the risk of frenzy which I felt wasn't strong enough of a penalty. Now that your Blood drains very quickly with a low Humanity, I suppose removing the instant Game-Over feature could be a possibility. I will let you do the honors of creating a new thread asking the forum what they think about this. I would like to hear what the community has to say about it before I remove it.

PS: any chance we'll see presence in dialogue down the line? It's awesome in CE 1.6, and would be a welcome addition.
I guess it's a possibility. 3 out of the 7 clans have presence so I don't know if that would be overkill or not, or if having this would unbalance the game. I don't know how presence is setup in CE but I would be afraid it would make some of the other social feats obsolete. I would also have to figure out how Childe implemented it and if I think his idea fits well into TFN or not, and how long it might take to put in TFN. There's just alot of questions that I don't know the answers too yet. Right now I'm leaning towards no because of all of the other things that I feel are more important right now, but it's still a possibility.

If I might make a suggestion while you're playing with the files... all those times you are forced by the game (or encouraged by the game) to basically break the masquerade and talk to a mortal (the critic at the restaurant in hollywood, Killpatrick, etc)... SPAWN HUNTERS for the Samedi. No masquerade violation... but spawn some hunters ;p
I think after you've seen what I've done with the new Samedi system (flaw) I think you would agree that this idea would be overkill. I'm playing as a new Samedi now and it is VERY DIFFICULT with how quickly pedestrians will call the police if they see you. It's a ton of fun in my opinion because it makes you work for every tiny thing, but very rewarding. I'm still in Santa Monica and I already have 2 masquerade violations and I'm pretty good at not getting caught feeding. This just shows how awesome this new system is. If I were to implement this idea, it would be impossible and unfair to the player, it's hard enough as it is. You'll see soon enough

Thanks again Sezneg and I hope you stick around the forums. You have alot of good ideas and know what makes an RPG fun!

Zer0Morph wrote:

I find that the humanity loss system effectively works to restrict roleplay within a roleplaying game; characters that fit within the setting (low humanity characters) are essentially out of bounds. This is not good functionally, and I feel the biggest change I'd like to see in the entire mod is having a floor put back on humanity. There are already pretty strong repercussions when your humanity is low in TFN between bloodloss happening faster and much increased frenzy chance at 1-2 humanity. There's no need to tack on the risk of sudden game-ending situations.
I think you have a good point here Sezneg. When I implemented this, Humanity did not play a factor in the Bloodloss System. The only penalty for having low Humanity was the risk of frenzy which I felt wasn't strong enough of a penalty. Now that your Blood drains very quickly with a low Humanity, I suppose removing the instant Game-Over feature could be a possibility. I will let you do the honors of creating a new thread asking the forum what they think about this. I would like to hear what the community has to say about it before I remove it.

I think instant game over from reaching 0 Humanity is fine as long as it was your own fault that you dropped to 0. So instead of removing the game over at 0 Humanity, I would instead remove getting Humanity penalties from witnessing kills when you have 3 or less of it.

Dragatus wrote:

I think instant game over from reaching 0 Humanity is fine as long as it was your own fault that you dropped to 0. So instead of removing the game over at 0 Humanity, I would instead remove getting Humanity penalties from witnessing kills when you have 3 or less of it.

That would go along nicely with PnP rules: as Jad put it, at so low levels grilling a kindergarten wouldn't move you at all.

Dragatus wrote:

I think instant game over from reaching 0 Humanity is fine as long as it was your own fault that you dropped to 0. So instead of removing the game over at 0 Humanity, I would instead remove getting Humanity penalties from witnessing kills when you have 3 or less of it.

Unfortunately that's impossible. It's built into the game engine that murders stop reducing humanity at 4. I had to create a python code to allow it to drop further. There's no way to tell the game who killed the innocent, you or a cop/gang member, etc....

I haven't played TFN in ages. I think the last time was beta testing for 1.1. So I don't recall a lot of it.

So just my 2 cents on a few of the topics:

First I lerned about computers when developers still said: "If there isn't enough memory, I'll have to find a better algorithm", and not "...then the user will have to buy a better machine..."

But more important: Presence in dialog. First thing to mention is that EntenSchreck has created the whole thing for the PlusPatch. There it's mostly used with Presence 1 to have the same results as Dominate 1.
For CE, I have expanded the functionality. It still costs 1 blood per use, but you need at least Presence 2 if you want it to work like Dominate 1. In addition, you can use it to boost your social skills. If your character has at least half the needed feat value, and the Presence level can bridge the gap, you can use it. For the upcoming new version I have plans to change this a bit. The bonus will be a maximum of 3 for seduction and intimidation, and 2 for persuasion. But in addition, in some places where seduction is restricted to only one gender, Presence users of the other sex will be able to use their Presence to get the seduction option as well.

Zer0, for technical purposes, you can have my code, but for the particles, please contact EntenSchreck and/or Wesp for permission as well.

For the bloodloss directly after feeding, just make the bar in the hud bloodcounter a bit longer, and check for ovrfeeding more frequently (CE does it every 5 seconds). Then there is no obvious gap, and the chance of players abusing the 16th bloodpoint is very small.

More hunters for Samedi, I really don't know. This is WoD, not some ego shooter "Kindred against the holy inquisition". Finally... I got the chainsaw... Now all I need is a bit of gasoline and a few hunters to have fun

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