is it hard to make stand ins regenerate blood?

i found myself loosing humanity very easily through feeding on NPCs other than Blood Dolls and Hookers.

on a side note, i had problems with the skyeline security twice, once while hacking is comp and again while robbing apartment 3, and actually in a previous play through i lost two points of humanity on account of that, i killed him on coming from the basement and he got restored and i had to kill him again when i robbed apt 3.
and even worse my humanity dropped so low i was denied the dialogue options that would enable me to raise it again with hannah and with tin can bill on the pestilence-related quests.
this time i used hysteria and went off through the sewers, but it still was bothersome to get him off my case.

but later on i had used the computer college, and was therefore very low on blood, so i decided to feed on him, taking care not to drain him.
the first time.
but that hapened to me a second time, and i only realized that he HADN'T regenerated his blood too late, after draining him of the last blood point and loosing humanity.

that has also hapened to me in the museum, though i try not to kill any guard i still find myself compelled to drink from them, and often i have killed them inadvertently.

and that has also hapened on the back alleys of the hubs, trying to drink twice from the same NPC has led me to inadvertently kill him.

that is why i don't dare to force feed in the hubs, and why i consider seduction so important, for blood dolls and hookers, at least those i am sure that they regenerate their blood pool and i can feed from them repeatedly.

Velvet wrote:

i found myself loosing humanity very easily through feeding on NPCs other than Blood Dolls and Hookers.

I realize that this is not the exact point of your post, but I am in favor of making it harder to feed on people other then Blooddolls and cooperative prostitutes, to make Seduction a necessary skill.

Quote :

but later on i had used the computer college, and was therefore very low on blood, so i decided to feed on him, taking care not to drain him the first time. but that hapened to me a second time, and i only realized that he HADN'T regenerated his blood too late, after draining him of the last blood point and loosing humanity. that has also hapened to me in the museum, though i try not to kill any guard i still find myself compelled to drink from them, and often i have killed them inadvertently.

Some NPCs do not regenerate their blood. That seems to be normal for security guards. The one near the entrance to Larry's parking garage is the same way, as is the one at the end of the street in Chinatown.

Quote :

that is why i don't dare to force feed in the hubs, and why i consider seduction so important, for blood dolls and hookers, at least those i am sure that they regenerate their blood pool and i can feed from them repeatedly.

Some people other than Blooddolls and prostitutes do regenerate their blood. I think the bums do.

I can try to explain it from the point of view of the game's mechanics. Generally there are two kinds of people you can meet.
The ones that are implemented on the maps, so you meet them always in the same place. This includes most guards, the two thugs between Confession and Larry's truck, the backalley guys in Hollywood, and most hookers. If they are set as blooddolls (the hookers), they refill, if they are not, they don't refill, and if you keep feeding on them, you will eventually drain them.
The other group are the more or less random pedestrians. They get respawned every time the map is loaded. So they always start with a full bloodpool.
So don't feed on people you always meet in the same place (exception here: the "blowjobbers" at Confession), or at least keep track, if you have fed on them.

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Childe of Munster, actually you were correct, you did pick my point; that is, i had two points that got blended in the same post, but indeed the ease with which i found myself loosing humanity was indeed the driving point of the post.

Childe of Malkav: there was a thug that used to hang around in the alley behind the red spot store in hollywood, painting graffittis in walls, and i learned the hard way that... ah. he was anchored to that spot on the map, so he didn't regenerate, right?

anyway, Munster, you are right.
i am one of those that believes that vampires should only feed from designated kine like hookers and blood dolls, and that considers seduction an indispensable skill, even while acknowledging that it is not so useful in quests.

and this, the fact that other NPCs that you have to force feed on don't regenerate their blood pool so it becomes easy to loose humanity by feeding upon them twice, or demands that not only you have to go to the trouble (i know that to some it is the pleasure of the hunt) to force them, you have to keep track of them so you do not drain them when you next feed on them and therefore loose humanity, only makes my conviction stronger.

and i would agree with Childe of Munster, make force feeding in hubs even more difficult, more prohibitive.

I realize this is a few months after the fact, but I'll just throw this out there.

I know about the humans that are fixed on the map, who don't regenerate blood. But I don't see the big deal about all of the pedestrians regenerating. All you have to do to make them regenerate blood is to go inside a building, and come back out. If you do this, all of the (non-fixed) pedestrians have been restored to full blood levels. You can rationalize this by assuming that they're just different people (there aren't that many different skins, after all).

If I'm coming back from a battle where I've used a lot of blood, or just taken a class from the email college and my blood bar is low, I just go somewhere where I know the pedestrians are easy to pick off... like the alley between the Hallowbrook and Confession. My favorite is the chick in the black dress. About half the time, she insists on walking down that dark, foreboding alley... Personally, I think she's secretly a blood doll. She knows that walking down that alley will leave her feeling drained and weak-- but she likes the Kiss. Why else would she keep going down there?

After you've taken a few blood points, just pop into Confession or Strauss' chantry, and come back out. There she is again, heading dow that alley! Hussy...

PGM
not all regenerate.
there is a thug painting grafitti in the alley behind both the Red Spot Store and the Asp Hole that doesn't regenerate ever, something that i learned the worst way ever, at the cost of one humanity point, and also the security inside SkyeLine Apartments, to name just a few.
There are others that do, indeed.
the party goers in the patio just outside Confession for example, and those in CE 1.2 had a tendency to remain bunched up and had predictable movement parties, it was possible say with a Ventrue to Forgetful Mind the whole bunch and then to Trance one in particular and feed on him without anyone, both the other party goers and pedestrians outside the patio to be the wiser.
like Childe of Malkav said: some do regenerate, others don't. count yourself lucky that so far you have only struck upon those that do, i have been unlucky enough to feed upon those that don't.

I know not all regenerate. I'm saying that it's not hard to find the ones that do. I was half-joking about the hussy in the black dress being a blood doll in all but name (or was I?), but it's easy to find out which ones are fair game. A few times through the game, and I knew which pedestrians had the biggest blood pool, and which ones were full again after exiting a building.

Just as a side note, I've never seen this brought up in a forum... do you think the game designers based the level of Seduction necessary to feed from blood dolls on actual data, or self-research? I mean, the girls in Santa Monica are downright easy, while the chick in the Red Dragon is locked at the knees, unless you have Seduction feat of 9. Mercurio says the Troika guys are based in Irvine... do you think they had data on what parts of L.A. the easy girls hang out in? I'm jusy sayin'...

PGM1961 wrote:

Just as a side note, I've never seen this brought up in a forum... do you think the game designers based the level of Seduction necessary to feed from blood dolls on actual data, or self-research? I mean, the girls in Santa Monica are downright easy, while the chick in the Red Dragon is locked at the knees, unless you have Seduction feat of 9. Mercurio says the Troika guys are based in Irvine... do you think they had data on what parts of L.A. the easy girls hang out in? I'm jusy sayin'...

You made me LOL

Feral wrote:

PGM1961 wrote:

Just as a side note, I've never seen this brought up in a forum... do you think the game designers based the level of Seduction necessary to feed from blood dolls on actual data, or self-research? I mean, the girls in Santa Monica are downright easy, while the chick in the Red Dragon is locked at the knees, unless you have Seduction feat of 9. Mercurio says the Troika guys are based in Irvine... do you think they had data on what parts of L.A. the easy girls hang out in? I'm jusy sayin'...

You made me LOL

Yep,

PGM, I don't think they cared about the actual LA places and girls. They just cared about the places the character can access first. And it's always the same girl anyway. She just changes the colour of her hair. Probably she goes to the Asylum if she is in a more open mood, and to the red dragon, if she prefers to be left alone

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as you progress through the game, you earn XP, which you invest in becoming more powerful, but likewise the game becomes more difficult, requiring for example higher stats to overcome comparable challenges, like unlocking a door or the legs of a blood doll...
i guess it is all that should be read from it...
uh... did i miss a joke?
did i came down serious when i should have come joking??

Velvet wrote:

did i came down serious when i should have come joking??

I was just joking; I know it's just because everything requires a higher skill level as the game progresses... lockpicking, hacking, fighting, etc.

However, that would be handy data to have, if I ever visited the L.A. area. Kind of like a Frommer's guide, except for horny guys.

oh the other hand, hookers keep getting cheaper.
i mean, their starting asking price.
santa monica hookers ask for 50 dollars
downtown hookers only ask for 40
and i think the trend goe on

shouldn't that be otherwise?
i mean players will only get richer as the game progresses, better able to afford spending money on blood if they have no other way to get it
and santa monica is a zone in higher disrepair (correct me if i'm wrong) hookers should be cheaper there.

if i'm wrong, correct me and enlighten me.

Velvet wrote:

oh the other hand, hookers keep getting cheaper.
i mean, their starting asking price.
santa monica hookers ask for 50 dollars
downtown hookers only ask for 40
and i think the trend goe on

shouldn't that be otherwise?
i mean players will only get richer as the game progresses, better able to afford spending money on blood if they have no other way to get it
and santa monica is a zone in higher disrepair (correct me if i'm wrong) hookers should be cheaper there.

if i'm wrong, correct me and enlighten me.

Actually ALL hookers starting price is 50 dollars unless you have a higher Appearance or Seduction, I forget which. If you do then the hookers (All of them at once) will give you the 10$ discount. Now if you have a higher Haggle score, you can barter the price to about $25-$30 or so, I forget the exact amount. So Haggle and Appearance/Seduction plays a factor in the Hookers cost.

That's vanilla Bloodlines, in TFN it all works completely different.

aahh, so it is due to me that when i reach downtown they ask me only 40, not due to them! because i usually have high enough seduction for that.
well thanks for enlightening me.
and with suficient haggle you can barter down to 20, maybe even lower though i don't think so. just a reminder.

Is it 20? Ok I knew it was definately lower than 40 but I wasn't sure just how much.

Ya if you have a higher Seduction then the starting line when you ask them how much will be $40 instead of $50 (For a hot one like yourself, lol).

lol what, this? oh, i just threw together some rags, the first thing that came in handy