Blood packs? Eww!

Hi everyone there, nice finally being a part of you, after weeks of just reading here. x]
Well, I like CE a lot, and would like to throw a 'thank you very much for the awesome mod' in right now, but I've also got a new idea. Maybe new, to be honest I didn't really search whether it was already suggested, but I also haven't seen it, so it's worth a try, right?
While playing through the game, I always stumble across the blood packs. Sure, everyone does.
And somehow it weirds me out that these things are actually ... still helpful, even if you don't drink 'fresh' blood after months of being a vampire.
I always thought them to be like our can food, you know what I mean? It's not bad, from time to time or if it's really necessary, but I wouldn't want it every day.
What about that for a vampire? Would you consider drinking a blood pack over just stealing a little blood from the pretty girl over there, even if that takes a few minutes more? *points*
Well, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't. After a certain time, I can't stomach can food even if it's necessary. I'd rather go on diet.
Why not vampires, too?
See? Now I'm getting back to my real point. ^^
What about considering a penalty for, let's say, every three drunken blood packs? This penalty wouldn't appear if you fed from time to time/blood pack to blood pack. Like a nice fruit salad between the can food.
I think the above mentioned penalty should result in you - the vampire - gaining less blood from blood packs but maybe a little more from a mortal. Except low-lifes. Fast food sometimes simply isn't as good as a real meal.
I don't know if that is even possible the way I thought about it, but I would certainly think it really cool - and even more realistic than the mod already is. :]
Anyway, keep going, guys (and gals). You're doing a great job here.
Bye,
-El

Hi,

first of all thanks alot for your praise This is what keeps us going (and going public with our effords).

For your idea on bloodpacks, I haven't really thought about something like that. But on the other hand, i prefer hunting for fresh blood anyway. I even dont use seduction alot. When i play the game, i rather risc a masquerade violation, than drinking a bloodbag.

For the technical aspect, I don't know if the game recognizes, where the blood comes from. So I cant say, how difficult it would be to get something like you suggested going. But i think, it's a good idea.

-

Oh you have lifted some interesting points here !


Here is my theorical point of view (because I know quite well the WoD and I like basic PRG reasoning.. and I have no programming skills or knowledges, so I can't say if it's doable or not)

I think it's a good idea, but drinking blood for a Vampire is about survival and basic instincts. Diet is just not "ok". Vampires are not humans, therefore they don't react the same about hunger (Beast, Frenzy..). Imposing human standards to something that's not human is just weird. A vampire restraining himself to animal blood/bloodpacks is possible, it's a question of will. And there is no will trait on Bloodlines charactersheet...

The gain of blood from a bloodpack, I think, can't change. It feeds you and your belly is full, even if you didn't like the taste. However, the will I mentionned earlier can be broken by the Beast you have restained for too long. So maybe not drinking from a direct human source in x time could make the character frenzy more often...

However in Bloodlines, contrary to the pen and paper game, Blood is Blood (the concept of "quality blood" doesn't apply, but you have sometimes effects of drugs and alcohol in the blood), so my reasoning may not be totally appliable to this particular WoD.


Now about the "applying this idea to the game".. Does the game differentiates the blood you get from bloodpacks than from other sources ? Because if they don't, it's possible that a huge amount of programming will be needed (changing the number of blood points in the bloodpacks for each bloodpack you drink, reseting the variable each time you drink human blood...).
Child, Zer0.. are way more fitted than I am to anwser this.


(edit : child you are a quickie !)

Welcome Eliza! I'm glad you made an account here, and I like your avatar picture... your ears and cute and pointy.

Like what Claudia said, you definately get points for ideas, especially because they're RPG ideas. I definately see what you're saying, Claudia also makes a good point about blood is blood regardless.

On the technical side is it possible? Yea I think it is, you would have to have a logic_counter running in the background that keeps track of the number of Bloodpacks your character has drank. Then you would need a cross referenced counter keeping track of how often you fed. If Bloodpacks becomes > (greater than) times fed we could implement a penalty of some sort.

So ya it's possible, it would require a bunch of conditions to be met to make it work but it's possible. It would of course be something that would need to be scripted in Python so for that I turn my attention to the great Wizard named Childe of Malkav.

Let's talk psychological

In the WoD "idea" itself, a Vampire restraining his beast to "canned blood" is a vampire having a problem with his condition (it may not be a huge problem, maybe because the vampire wants to keep his humanity high or because he has trouble with hunting, it might be just a well thought strategy..). This kind of vampire do not usually feed a lot (if you eat pasta as your only meat all your life, you'll not be having a huge festin of pasta..), and usually have quite "few" blood points on their system. The beast is frustated, the vampire is in a constant state of "starving"... The vampire is more likely to frenzy is temptation is too strong (someone cutting himself, etc..).
It's at this point where the Will (or Self Control) trait comes in, to avoid frenzy and falling into temptation.

So, in the metabolical point of view, the two blood points of a bloodpack will give the vampire two bloodpoints anyway (one to use as bloodloss -in the pen and paper, it's one point to wake up from the day-sleep- and other for, I don't know, faking breathing or any discipline). The number of vitamins/proteins/sugar does not depend on how you like the food and how tired you are of it, your body still ingests and uses it. This is why I don't think Bloodpacks should give you less bloodpoints.

However, I do think it's a good idea to cause the vampire frenzy more often when he has not hunt for a while. But how to determine the frenzy rate ? As I said, it depends on the will of the character, and every character has different wills and morals acting. For a Toreador, feeding on rats can be kind of frustrating for the Beast, but for a Nosferatu, it can be just as good. Does it mean the Nosferatu frenzy more often as they have less possibilities to feed on mortals ?
We can't just decide different rates for clans, because it's too stereotypical, and we can't create a will/self control trait.. Because in Bloodlines, a part of self control is in the humanity trait (frenzying in dialogues for instance)

Oh, my. O.O I didn't expect that many answers in one night. Woah.
(Yeah, to mention, I wrote the first post just before I went to bed. I never get the time standards right. ^^ Been dropping dead tired onto the table already, so I also didn't get the point with the diet correctly, but aw, nevermind.)
Childe, I can just sign that. I always buy the blood packs at the start of the game, but I never really use them, maybe two or three, but otherwise my characters feed right from the 'source'. Without seduction, too. Mostly.

Interesting point, too, Claudia. I'm just getting in touch with the WoD (VtMB left out, I could play that game blinded), but I'm more familiar with playing a vampire in RPG aspects. Been playing some German browser RPG games for about a year now and the characters work. I hope so, at least.
I meant diet differently than in human life. I thought it to be like 'Oh boy, another blood pack. Blech, no, thanks, I think I'm fine for another two hours or so without one, even if I'm slowly getting hungry. It's easier to keep the Beast at bay than to take a sip of that'. Of course, that's a little bit extreme and sounds a heck lot like a Toreador/Ventrue, but... well. Let's leave it as it is.
To think about it, yeah, you have a good point. Probably it would be better to increase the frenzy rate than what I mentioned in the first place.

And thanks, Zer0. The ava's one of my RPG characters. :] The first and favorite, to be honest!
I can't quite grasp your point, but as I think the essence someone inexperienced with programming like me should understand is 'It can work'. Right? ^^

And again, Claudia, you're good.
It's what I was thinking but unable to put it into words.
Someone with a great will could of course stand feeding on blood packs a lot more often than someone more ... impatient and weak-minded, so to speak.
About the problem of the frenzy rate: As you mentioned it is a fact of will, maybe it can somehow be attached to the humanity. If you work hard to keep your humanity at a high score, you would high likely not be frustrated so soon by drinking blood packs because you'd think it as a part of maintaining your high humanity score. Er, that's a weird sentence. If your humanity is very low, you of course don't care whether you frenzy or not because the humanity (both as the 'race' and as the score) simply doesn't matter for you.
Mh, I don't know if I said that as I wanted to. Probably it's better understandable if I say it like this:
If you care about human beings, you will take into consideration that the blood packs come from donated blood (correct me if I'm wrong) mostly and that nobody was killed for them, so you'd stomach the taste better than if you wouldn't mind at all if you kill somebody for feeding as soon as you're hungry.
Does that make sense?

Yeah, and I always thought I was good at English.
-El

Now if the character finds out the blood packs sold at the blood bank comes from unwilling persons... Supporting such thing could/should lower your humanity ; in my mind, a 8+ humanity character should refuse to buy from Vandal if the character finds out what's going on in there. Specially if you send in other "flowers" to replace her.... (not spoiling )

Hi there,

first a few things off topic:
- Claudia, do you know what is called a "quickie" in germany?
- Zer0, I'm not really that big "nasty-reptile charmer"
- Eliza, you are good at english. By the way, Zer0 is the only native english speaker involved in this topic. Claudia is from france and I'm german too.

Now back to the original subject. you all have come up with a lot of interesting ideas. Claudia you are certainly right about a vampire not being human anymore, so applying human standards is a problem.
I really like the idea of loosing humanity, if you continue buying blood from Vandal after you find out...
If you actually send someone, you get a humanity loss. A high humanity character should also get a penalty for even agreeing to do the replanting quest. From the technical point of view, getting a penalty for every answer that makes Vandal sell again isn't hard to do. My suggestion in that case would be, humanity 7+ gets a drop if you agree to his quest, and 8+ if you try something else to make him sell again, like bribing or using Dominate/Dementation.

-

My first and only language is English, however it's American English, not British, not sure if thats an issue or not. Either way, all 3 of you speak it extremely well, especially for it not being your first language.

Zer0,
you should ask 8people, if american english is in fact english or something else

-

A quickie is someone who ejaculates early
(I meant it as someone who is very quick, like the Garfield Quickies which are small sketches between stories in the tv show)

(I'll edit)

Edit : Ok then

Yes, as Childe said, I'm French, English is my third language (but I've lived in the US for about a year and I'm studying applied languages in university). Your English is good, I understand what you mean, it's just having trouble explaining the idea That's normal, even in your own language

Childe, I agree about the Domination/Dementation thingy. You don't help him get more blood but you still buy from him, so if you have 8+, it's a loss of humanity (supply and demand...). I think you got the "what should happen in the game" part of what I was trying to explain as in the global WoD.

Now about bloodpacks, you can find them here and there.. So putting this Vandal situation aside, what about this frenzying more often when not feeding from humans once in a while... But trying it to humanity may not be correct, since humanity doesn't affect willpower (you can be a complete inhuman bastard and liking to have control over your actions.. or very veyr human and have a weak will, which causes you to have remorses very often).
The best might be to create a will trait, as a discipline trait, but will is a 1 to 10 score... Well we could just put a scale of 1 to 5, but reviewing all dialogues to see what does and doesn't affect your will (high humanity + accepting Pisha's quest could ask for more willpower, since the character is kind of scared/disgusted...) could be a pain in the dead ass of Child, Zer0 or 8... Not mine, I have no idea how to do that

Claudia,

about this willpower thing. From browsing the files, i think they had originally planned to do something like that. There is a stat called will or willpower or something like that, but commented out. I'm not sure if it was planned as an attribute or as a feat.
And you are absolutely right about the pain in the ass, looking into all the dialogues.
There is another thing. I'd rather not build such a feat, because i don't want to take all the choices away from the player.

What if we could implement a "feeding counter" or something to check for bloodpacks versus fresh blood. Would a blueblood cancel more bloodpack uses than a "bum"? What about rats?
I know, it's technically impossible to implement, but I'd really like to have bloodpacks congeal over time. That would partly solve our problem.

Back to the Vandal quest. Does accepting the quest and actually sending someone warrant two humanity losses? And if it does for characters with high humanity, where should be the limit? And if it only warrants one loss, should that be set for sending or for accepting the quest in the first place?

-

P.S. I should have set a smiley to my remark about the quickie. Everybody loves a quick joke

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Would a blueblood cancel more bloodpack uses than a "bum"? What about rats?

This is the problem. Anything we do about this would be quite of a disadvantage for any Nosferatu player who wish to remain discrete.. as he has no access to blooddolls and attacking random people on the streets is very dangerous for him.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

I really like the idea of loosing humanity, if you continue buying blood from Vandal after you find out...
If you actually send someone, you get a humanity loss. A high humanity character should also get a penalty for even agreeing to do the replanting quest. From the technical point of view, getting a penalty for every answer that makes Vandal sell again isn't hard to do. My suggestion in that case would be, humanity 7+ gets a drop if you agree to his quest, and 8+ if you try something else to make him sell again, like bribing or using Dominate/Dementation.

For me it would be :
- When you find out Lily went to the Bloodbank and try to enter, as soon as you see her strapped, if you bought blood from Vandal, and have a 8+ humanity ; character losses 1 humanity ("I contribued to this", disgust of the bloodpacks you bought.. reality slapped your face, darkness of the world embraces you, etc)
- You free Lily, Vandal comes to you saying wtf. If humanity 8+, 1 humanity loss is dominate, dementation (indirectly needing a new blood doll, you can't close your eyes on your participation) and if humanity 7+, 1 humanity loss on agreeing to replace her (directly needing a new blood doll, saying yes to that at humanity 7 is harsh and "inhuman" ^^)
- The quest is agreed, so sending anyone will get you 1 humanity loss, but that's already the case.


If you have a very high humanity character, is it possible to implement a dialogue (or a quest) with Therese when you read her mails between her and Vandal ? Or if Therese died to Jeanette, maybe Vandal could "die" (or get him to be your ghoul or something ?) or be a junkie ghoul like Patty.. ?

I don't want to quote the whole message again, so let's go step by step:

For the bloodpack vs. fresh blood: If we make any changes, I'd say: for a ventrueonly an average human or a blueblood could be considered better than a bloodbag; For Nosferatu, who are more used to feeding on rats, a fresh juicy rodent could do as well, and for the other clans, it has to be human to be better than a bloodbag.
I don't know about Gangrel. At least some of them prefer living mostly outside the human civilization, so they might also be used to animal blood as sustenance.

On the technical aspect, i still have no idea how to implement a counter or whatever, even if we agree on the rules. I knot that the game can recognize different kinds of blood sources. You can use selections for rats, "lowlife" humans, bluebloods, and gender. But i dont know, how it's implemented.

Another thing for this part of the topic: What about blood from the odious chalice. Is that "fresh" or more like a bloodpack?


For the Vandal part. I think your idea is very good, but there are some problems with it. First, I don't know if it is possible to keep track of a characters purchaces. And another problem is, most players probably don't think much about these issues; so how do we explain a sudden humanity loss when the character sees lLilly strapped to the chair. Well it wouldn't be a problem for my characters. In all my games, I only bought one or two bloodpacks, and i didn't need them either. Usually i only need 4 bloodpacks in the whole game: 3 to sell to Copper on the beach, and one for Ash at the society of the turtle (Leopold is a good name for a turtle).


For a new quest or dialogue, it's hard to do especially with the main npcs. Where do you get a voice actor with a voice that is professional and similar enough to the character's. And i have no idea how to do the lip sync.
And do you have an idea what kind of quest it would be?
If Vandal gets to be a "junkie" ghoul when Therese "dies", do we send him to his own bloddbank?

-

For the Vandal part I don't think that you should change anything. Vampires aren't that sensitive ... neither are humans. Do you feel like an evil person when you eat animal meat, knowing that an animal was killed? I agree that you should lose humanity if you send a replacement... that's definitely evil but losing humanity in other cases isn't necessary.

Changing the blood mechanics sounds really good. Fresh blood is the best source and bloodpacks should not replace it. Drinking too many bloodpacks should definitely make the player go frenzy if he has an opportunity to drink fresh blood.
For example: if you drink 3 bloodpacks in a row without drinking fresh blood, you get frenzy check +/- 1 (I don't really know which one increaces the chances for frenzy... lol) and 1 -/+ for each bloodpack after the third one.
If you manage to drink fresh blood the penalty should reset and everything will start all over again.

The idea is good. I could even write a python function to count the bloodpacks. But I don't know how to call the function. What I can do quite easily is reduce the number of bloodpacks, a vampire can carry. Perhaps I could even let one of the bloodpacks the character is carrying go rotten after a certain amount of time. (Every five minutes or so)

I like the idea of anything that makes staying at full blood capacity more difficult.

It's too bad that bloodpacks cannot be made to congeal unless stored in a refrigerator or something. The three from the refrigerator in the pawn shop haven are typically the only three I ever acquire, and I don't use them until the boss fight on King's Way.

Despite not having seduction, nosferatu probably have the easiest time staying at full blood. They can feed in total safety and they get plenty of sustenance from rats. Plus obfuscate allows you to walk up to anybody, suck on 'em, and then become invisible again before they recover (even enemies who have already gone aggro and therefore recover almost instantly).

How is the check for tainted blood done? Maybe each blood pack you ingest increases your chances of vomiting?

Lofgren,
as far as I know, deseased blood (I think that's what you mean) is linked to the map model of the diseased persons, and the vomiting chance for ventrue is also connected to the person you feed on. Everybody can be lowlife, normal, or blueblood.
Well I sell the three bloodpacks from Santa Monica to thet thinblood on the beach. The ones you find later are more than enough to sustain me though the game.
-

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Well I sell the three bloodpacks from Santa Monica to thet thinblood on the beach. The ones you find later are more than enough to sustain me though the game.
-

Last time I played, I finished with 10 normal blood pack in my "backpack," 1 in the 'fridge (Persuasion was too low to sell any to the Thin-blood), and all the blue and elder blood packs the game gives you. I have no concrete suggestion, but I would like the game better (and this is no criticism of you or Zer0Morph) if it required more reliance on blood packs (maybe fewer rats in the upper levels of the Warrens). As it stands, even with the gradual blood loss of CE, getting blood is simply no problem whatsoever. It shouldn't be the focus of the game, but it should be a little bit of a chore.

Getting rid of the Odious Chalice would also make getting blood more of a challenge.