So I am playing some days Bloodlines with this modification and wanted to share how Vampire:Bloodlines felt like to me after getting my Tremere to Chinatown.
I'll update this once in a while.
Good:
+ Blood timer even though not realistically but feels quite good and improved the feeling that you aren't just a human with a fancy mana bar but that you really are a vampire. Shame there is no day/night cycle in the game.
+ Blood doll system feels better now and not so massively repetetive. Also blood dolls actually doing something in the clubs also improved atmospere imho.
+ Last Round adding the flipper player and the blood doll and rearranging the Bruhja there. Generally less clones and more unique/different areas imprved atmosphere.
+ New Disciplines are pretty cool. Dementation does not feel like a slightly weaker Dominate ripoff anymore. Thaumaturgy improvedmuch with Theft of Vitae instead of Blood Salvo. Purge is a tad bit op now with the Eldritch Prodiy background since some vampires like Kanker can be locked down in puking and whacked away easily.
+ Few nice new quests which add a bit to believability like destroying the picture of the Nos for example, or destroying the entries from the asian vampire labtop.
+ College courses so you can finally spend your money on something useful
+ Removing books from vendors and making them unsellable
+ Getting some weapons like the Shin Guntso and from the asian vampire
+ Frenzy being a bigger factor now. Think the danger of frenzy should start a bit earlier maybe. So far only at 0 blood points did I really feel the big difference but it is relatively easy to prevent that. I think there should be a certain risk at slightly higher blood levels like 1-3 imho.
+ Tourette really giving you her weapon.
+ More sounds, added dialogues, passengers saying something when you bumpinto them, etc add up on atmosphere.
+ Persuading Jack to let you keep the pea shooter.
+ The recolouringof the Tremere armors are good. Especially the colours of the heavy clothing from Fat Larry looked atrocious in the vanilla version.
+ Brujah female model reworked looks better than the old one.
+ Tremere being able to use dominate in dialogues + Disadvantge being a noticable factor now => good.
Neutral:
* Increased ranged weapon damage. While in the beginning it is a bit harder I feel like the increased weapon damage makes the game a bit easier overall once you get some stamina and a good armor.
* Some weapons like the torch feel a bit uneccesary.
* Maybe use the old Brujah model for some wandering NPC.
* Decadent Enchantress and Uncanny Awareness feel much stronger than any other available history. First one enables you to get 9 Seduction at start making seducing a walk in the park right at start until the end while the second one makes you close to unhittable until Hollywood.
Improvable:
- I don't get it why Theft of Vitae does not work on any Tzimiszce creaion. I am pretty sure Blood Strike and Salvo returned blood to me albeit not 100% sure right now. It forced me to drink through quite some Blood Packs down there and I got about every rat living there as well. Theft of Vitae would not nullify the need for some blood packs but would have held it to a reasonable level imho.
- Likewise Cauldron of Blood does close to no damage to the two bigger creations of Andrei but instantly kills the small ones. I can understand why it does not really work on the Gargoyle anymore albeit in vanilla it did dealt damage to him, but why it is so weak compared to Bloodstrike baffles me. Normal humans in the blast radius eat like 150 damage with the Tremere amulet and they being produced mostly of human parts eat like 20% only of that?
Yes I know Bloodstrike does about double damage to them. Doesn't really make sense either.
I know it was like that in the vanilla version too and even here it made no sense to me.
Imho the long CD is more than enough to restrict it combined with the 2 blood points cost, no need to cut the damage that drastically against them.
Same goes for some vampires like Kanker and Vick who receive relatively few damage from all my Thaumaturgy. Their susceptibility to Blood Purge makes them easy meat though once I found out it works on them but I'd prefer to really use most I got instead of just Blood Purge -> Whack away since everything else is close to useless.
I don't get it why minor bosses have such a big damage reduction against Thaumaturgy. If they had Fortitude I would not say anything but innate high damge resistance against Thaumaturgy? Why? Did they found out some secrets about Thaumaturgy and are prepared by rituals about my coming or what?
It's fine I do not kill them instantly with it that would be quite silly. But so few damage with an ability which has a drastic CD and relatively high blood cost feels a bit strange.
- Cauldron of Blood available only via Hotkeys. I don't get this since beside the name and the blood cost nothing really changed about it or did I miss something? Theft of Vitae works fine being selected wheeling through the abilities and was changed more drastically.
- I think Blood Strike needs a short CD. It doesn't have one and spamming it like a Uzi feels a bit silly. Yes I know it is like that in vanilla version too.
- Theft of Vitae uses the same animation as Blood Strike. Might it be possible to use the animation used for Blood Healing but the red streams come from the victim and they move in a horizontal line towards you?
- Far too much ammo for the Glock. 255 ammo while all other weapons are restricted to like 50-90 bullets? Is a bit strange imho. Should be about halved or so.
- I really liked the old Faelike history for female Toreador especially with all the drawbacks. Modelwise it fits perfectly for her as well.
