Can Nosferatu be Nosferatu?

When I first started the game, I put off playing a Nosferatu. When playing other characters I saw all the manholes near places you needed to go and how you could get around using the sewers. I thought it would be an interesting challenge.

Then I played one...

The only person I can remember actually having a real reaction was the diner lady, who dies - so you're out $50 as the health inspector. Everybody else (or almost everyone else - maybe guys like Tin Can Bill and the bum notice, but not the people who 'matter') made up their own rationalization for why you look the way you do. Ok, I figured I can accept that - you've got to be able to do the quests after all. There's still the challenge of having to use the sewers to get around.

Then I find out that everyone is freakin' blind. As long as I ran down the middle of the street, nobody noticed me. I might have gotten one or two masquerade violations from being accidentally spotted the whole game - and once you get obfuscate leveled up and you learn how to feed, you don't even have to worry about that.

But what if people actually did freak when they saw you? You wouldn't be able to do any quests that didn't involve a vampire or a ghoul (which leaves quite a lot of them, actually). Mercurio and maybe Tseng (or Ox, if you can make him a shop) would be the only shops you could use - so you'd have to live on what you found lying around or scavenged off bodies. Good thing you don't need much to get through Santa Monica or the Elizabeth Dane. You could adjust Mercurio's inventory to include more 'basic' items.

If you increased normal people's sight radius you would be forced to either keep yourself obfuscated/stealthed or use the sewers to move around (kind of like what everyone in the game says you should do).

That would be a cool challenge to play.

And if you lose too many XP, you could give them a +1 XP modifier. That would mitigate it somewhat but I think they'd still end up quite a few points short of a normal playthrough.

Since I have never played a Nossie, I haven't done any research on this topic. If I find something, I'll use it, but at least for the first version(s), I'll have to work on system changes that apply to every clan.

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I think Zer0 mentioned making some progress in this area before he disappeared.

Dragatus wrote:

I think Zer0 mentioned making some progress in this area before he disappeared.

Yep, he mentioned something about it. And I think Wesp said something about a config-variable frightened_humans that decides how many humans must see a Nossie before he gets a violation.

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I made ALOT of progress on this before I disappeared and it was a scripting nightmare let me tell you, but it works. In TFN 1.2 if the Samedi is in the streets and he stands up near anyone, he gets spotted and the police get summoned. It's VERY hard but realistic. Same applies indoors as well except people just freak out and hide in corners, the police don't get summoned. If indoors and their is a security guard present, he will come running if someone spots you and will shoot at you.

I need to release TFN 1.2.

Zer0Morph wrote:

I made ALOT of progress on this before I disappeared and it was a scripting nightmare let me tell you, but it works. In TFN 1.2 if the Samedi is in the streets and he stands up near anyone, he gets spotted and the police get summoned. It's VERY hard but realistic. Same applies indoors as well except people just freak out and hide in corners, the police don't get summoned. If indoors and their is a security guard present, he will come running if someone spots you and will shoot at you.

I need to release TFN 1.2.

Sounds fun to play, in a very PP way. But are the quests doable? Like the diner lady etc?

Hey Zer0, welcome back among the unliving!

And I agree that you should release TFN 1.2, we probably all do.

Dragatus wrote:

Hey Zer0, welcome back among the unliving!

And I agree that you should release TFN 1.2, we probably all do.

Hell yeah!

Hopefully there's not more left unfinished than you can do with life and all.

Feral wrote:

Sounds fun to play, in a very PP way. But are the quests doable? Like the diner lady etc?

Well you couldn't speak with Doris in vanilla Bloodlines as a Nossie anyways or she would die so that still proves true as a Samedi. And the quests are doable as far as I know but I'd like to do a Alpha test run through before releasing 1.2 just to make sure.

Zer0Morph wrote:

Feral wrote:

Sounds fun to play, in a very PP way. But are the quests doable? Like the diner lady etc?

Well you couldn't speak with Doris in vanilla Bloodlines as a Nossie anyways or she would die so that still proves true as a Samedi. And the quests are doable as far as I know but I'd like to do a Alpha test run through before releasing 1.2 just to make sure.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if some of the quests can't be done - makes it more of a challenge (and realistic, if you can use a word like that for one of these games). If you lose too many XP, you could give them an XP modifier to help out, but I finished the game on a 'no side quest challenge' at one point, so I can't see missing a few XP here and there being totally game-breaking.

I know it's more work, but for some you could take the "diner lady" approach - stealth in and pick up quest giving item...

Hm, for the xp, I could turn the Bertram cd quest back to Nossie only. Same for the Imalia guy magazine quest, if you don't need it to get the Tawni quest. And then you won't get xp for it.

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Mask of 1000 faces? Obfuscate option in dialogues?  
Or just auto spend blood or three when starting a conversation.

Jad.3 wrote:

Mask of 1000 faces? Obfuscate option in dialogues?  
Or just auto spend blood or three when starting a conversation.

There is a merit to your suggestion...

So the horrible looking monster comes up to you, and then while talking to you it turns into Adonis...?! 

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Limitation of engine you hairsplitter.
Care to re-do Obfuscate?

Jad.3 wrote:

Limitation of engine you hairsplitter.
Care to re-do Obfuscate?

Yea. Hide the coven would be really useful in bloodlines...

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Childe of Malkav wrote:

So the horrible looking monster comes up to you, and then while talking to you it turns into Adonis...?! 

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Under V20 p&p rules that's perfectly possible, though it would cost 5 blood.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Jad.3 wrote:

Limitation of engine you hairsplitter.
Care to re-do Obfuscate?

Yea. Hide the coven would be really useful in bloodlines...

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You can't ask for wishes and then be mean ;)Ask yourself, what would Silent Bob think of that?

Dragatus wrote:

Childe of Malkav wrote:

So the horrible looking monster comes up to you, and then while talking to you it turns into Adonis...?! 

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Under V20 p&p rules that's perfectly possible, though it would cost 5 blood.

Nice! That is the point, making conversations possible but at high cost.

The 5 blood is for the Adonis (Appearance 5). Looking like Joe Normal would cost only 2 blood.

Jad.3 wrote:

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Jad.3 wrote:

Limitation of engine you hairsplitter.
Care to re-do Obfuscate?

Yea. Hide the coven would be really useful in bloodlines...

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You can't ask for wishes and then be mean ;)Ask yourself, what would Silent Bob think of that?

Dragatus wrote:

Childe of Malkav wrote:

So the horrible looking monster comes up to you, and then while talking to you it turns into Adonis...?! 

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Under V20 p&p rules that's perfectly possible, though it would cost 5 blood.

Nice! That is the point, making conversations possible but at high cost.

The problem with that is blood is so easy to get is really isn't a high cost. You're just saying "If you play as a Nosferatu you need to feed more often", rather than "If you play as a Nosferatu, you can't talk to normal people and need to hide your fugly arse." Personally, I'd rather the latter, as I have five other clans that can play "normally".

The idea (at least for me) is to make the Nosferatu "experience", if you will, substantially different from that of playing one of the other clans. Giving them the ability to talk to mortals - even with a blood cost - defeats that purpose.

There actually had been talk about overpopulated streets, it may have been done in TFN (?), it made Seduction worth XP. Imagine a Nosferatu's seductive powers ("You're one beutiful rat!").
Malkav, do I have to start a new topic 'cause of the 'overpopulated streets'?

Other than that, your opinion is as good as any

Jad.3 wrote:

There actually had been talk about overpopulated streets, it may have been done in TFN (?), it made Seduction worth XP. Imagine a Nosferatu's seductive powers ("You're one beutiful rat!").
Malkav, do I have to start a new topic 'cause of the 'overpopulated streets'?

Other than that, your opinion is as good as any

It's not so much overpopulated as knowing where they are. Examples:

The red haired chick outside Trip's place (sometimes a guy, sometimes both)
The long cool woman in a black dress downtown - you can grab her in the alley or in the shadow between the street lights - if you're reasonably quick you can drain her before tie man walks up, and them grab him.

The two guys taking a piss by Asylum.

The prostitute on the corner downtown - you can just feed off her.

The guy and woman by the jewelry store in Hollywood.


Even if you randomized it all though, you've got to keep some rats in the sewers, so you'll always be able to get blood. I don't think that's a problem. Managing blood shouldn't be that big a deal. If you want it to be, then do it by increasing blood loss. That could be another something for difficulty levels that shouldn't be hard to put in. Less blood loss on Easy, Normal on Normal, Double on Hard, and Triple or Quadruple on Insane.

The personal mod I'm playing now (well, was playing till I screwed something up that CTD when I try to zone, even in new games - probably put something in a python file that compiled, but introduced a logic error) I have a blood pool of 48 and can easily burn through all that in one battle if I play mage style, or if I have a long run where I need my disciplines on. I may have to duck in and out of buildings a few times, but I can always get my bloodpool filled back up pretty quickly.

It does seem that I frenzy earlier - is that based on a percentage of bloodpool?
Probably just that I don't care too much about killing innocents  

Anyway, my point is taking sources of blood away will be a lot of work to implement, and after that players will still be able to fill up, it may just take an extra minute or two. Very worst case - you zone in and out of the sewers and drink a rat (except for Ventrue - they may take a real hit by this). Way too much work for too little gain IMHO.

Unless you want to make it especially challenging for Ventrue - there's another topic actually: Can you implement something specific that makes a challenge for each clan.

Examples:

Fewer blue-blood sources of blood for Ventrue.
Can't talk to mortals and mortals on the street can actually see you for Nosferatu.
Toreador make great Gun Bunny's: you could raise the price of ammo if you choose that clan.

I think you should raise ammo prices for everyone in general, anyway - that goes a LONG way to solving the 'too much money than I know what to do with' thing.

I may split this off into it's own thread if I can think of more clan-specific challenges, or maybe someone else can start one and get the ball rolling.

Too pointless; Didn't read. Perhaps I wasn't clear: 'overpopulated' means there would be lots of people added to the streets, making feeding harder. No more freebies from a frequent pisser.

Jad.3 wrote:

Too pointless; Didn't read. Perhaps I wasn't clear: 'overpopulated' means there would be lots of people added to the streets, making feeding harder. No more freebies from a frequent pisser.

Ok, here are the 'bullet points' of my post:

1) It doesn't matter what you do, if you can get one blood point you can get 100. Not worth the effort to try and limit blood this way. It can be done through bloodloss - and that can be adjusted by difficulty level. Remember: very worst case you zone in and out of the sewers and eat a rat.

2) Ventrue may have a harder time since they can't feed on rats. Maybe you could work something in so every clan has a 'challenge'. For Ventrue it would be getting blood. For Nossie's it would be not being able to talk to mortals. Maybe you could raise ammo prices for Torries (you should raise them for everybody, anyway).