[WIP] Hungering Werewolves - An Overhaul

[Mattiewagg]

OK. Here we go :laugh:. I'd like to say that any improvements I suggest aren't meant to say your original ideas were bad at all, since they're quite good. You may also want to change these up a bit, to make it more challenging as a werewolf. But while I agree a werewolf shouldn't be overpowered, they should still be something to be feared. Still, you may want to add a few more negative factors to my suggestions.

 

I like how your mod focuses a lot on how a werewolf loses control of himself. But as lofgren said, it's far too easy to get fresh flesh in Skyrim, so it's unlikely any werewolf would reach such a level of depravity unless they had a good reason for it, i.e good bonuses when hungry alongside the bad ones.

 

You should apply your concepts of how long you've been a werewolf to any ideas if mine you use, since I think it's a great concept having the ability to resist the wolf within as your experience grows.

 

I think the stages should be somewhat like this (very long so I've enclosed it in spoiler tags):

 

 

 

 

Satiated: 85%+

 

Like you said mostly. I think you should have a slight unarmed buff here, like 5 extra damage, which is constant and only increases throughout the stages of hunger as your wolf side comes closer to the surface. The unarmed buff should be here because your wild side is calm, but it's still part of you.

 

Hungry: 70% - 84%

 

You're hungry, and the beast inside of you begins to ready itself for the hunt. You are more alert and aware of your surroundings, increasing your sneak by 5% and slightly increasing the radius at which you can detect enemies. However, you find it difficult to concentrate on the pleasantries of daily life and your speech drops by 15%. Can be sated slightly by raw meat.

 

Starving: 55% - 69%

 

You need to hunt now. Your body is ready to kill, to feast. Your stamina is increased by 50 (or maybe 10%) and you can sense enemies from much further away. Your speech drops a further 50%, and your magicka regeneration stops. You gain unique dialogue options because people can clearly tell you're unhinged.

 

Frenzied: 20% - 54%

 

You are so hungry. You can't think about anything else. You lose 30% of your magicka on top of all the effects from being starving, and your health regeneration slows to 75% of its usual rate due to lack of nutrients. Your claws begin to show, and you gain an additional 15 damage buff. Your damage is increased by 5% because you have much harder blows (stronger) and your resistence to normal weapons increases by 10% as you begin to gain a leather-like quality to your skin.

 

Ravenous: < 19%

 

Random (50%+ chance) of transformation, much like the Ring of Hircine - you've lost any semblance of control. An effect like Predator Vision by Gopher - like all you can see is the head and lifeblood of your enemies. Slight red tint to the screen, heartbeat pounding in your ears, sound gradually growing as you become hungrier. No howls, enhanced strengths like you said, and enhanced weaknesses. Perhaps add a timer, so the longer you're in this state, the more powerful your weaknesses become and the less powerful the strengths become. This effect would make sense because it's like you had an initial burst of adrenaline, but then you begin to run out of energy since you haven't had any sustenance.

 

 

 

 

So that's my opinions on the hunger states. I also think you should add a small bonus right after you eat, which becomes larger the hungrier you were before eating. This bonus wouldn't extend to non-human meat (so not raw beef or venison).

[WinterFlower]

Thank you for your feedback! Those are wonderful suggestions and I will certainly consider them!

 

I'd like to give you my justifications as to why I chose those particular percentages and bonuses/penalties. I'm not dismissing your ideas!! It's all very fluid at this point because I've only coded a small part of it.

 

Of course how long you've been a wolf matters. It affects pretty much everything, as each day increases max satiation value slightly, and days spent without transforming increase it more, and without feeding on humans (while not satiated or ravenous) even more. Feeding also increases it, but much less. You don't control yourself by feeding on everything that moves! Feeding however improves werewolf bonuses over time (new perks), so players will have to decide whether to keep their inner beast tame for a more social gameplay, or simply submit to it.

 

I chose 90% for satiated because it's as much a vanilla state as it is a penalty state for having fed too soon. Satiated werewolves can't shapeshift because their lupine side is too weak at this point. But the unarmed buff is a fair point, even though I was planning to give an unarmed buff regardless of hunger.

 

The sneak buff is a good idea! But I (and many other users) play with SkyRe, which makes Speech a much more important skill. So I'm not going to give penalties to it too soon. And just to be clear, raw meat can bring you to 89% hungry, but NOT satiated. I'm also considering moving the stamina bonus to this stage. I mean a famished person should be significantly weakened in terms of endurance (personal experience).

 

The reason for my large margin (40% total) on the Starving stage is because many werewolf players might choose to stay starved simply for the things like dialogue perks and other bonuses. I know "dialogue options" is pretty vague, largely because I'd like to not spoil things, but those are lines you can use on NPCs with varying success to provoke them, strike fear, intimidate them into giving you a discount, or even attempt to rip them apart right where they stand. Which is a fun blend between social and feral werewolf gameplay!

- Related question: can I play the finishing move animations without the kill-camera? That's how I plan on animating the "ripping the heart out of their chest" thing. It could even depend on the weapon equipped!

- Even better: can I use werewolf animations on a humanoid character? Like the one where the beast claws viciously at the victim's chest. I'm no expert but I highly suspect other animations would have severe clipping issues.

 

As for frenzied, it's a state where it's literally possible to black out and start attacking at random, AND something is so obviously wrong with you that people would suspect your true nature or just think you're plain mad, thus refuse to speak with you (much like they refuse to speak to obvious vampires in Oblivion). That's why I've picked very low values for it (obviously they can be easily tweaked). Still, you do NOT want to become frenzied unless you plan exclusively on playing as a feral werewolf.

- Is that actually codeable? Banning NPC interactions? I haven't got there yet

 

And noooo, no random chance! Random chance may go to Frenzied state, but a ravenous wolf has lost ALL their willpower, human nature, or any sort of sense. There is no more self-control. At all. Though I might increase the margin to 10% instead of 0%, as to keep the restriction a bit more severe instead of having it go away with a single corpse. And weakening over time sort of makes sense, although enhancing things like weaknesses takes an awful lot of different clones of the same custom abilities, which is huge pain in the creation kit. So I think I'm going to leave them static, but make the player pass out as time goes on, increasingly frequently until the chance is like 30% every 10 seconds. That's MORE than enough incentive to finally kill something already.

 

But I dig the visual and sound effects! I really like MsLeeches' vampire mod which makes excellent use of them, so I'm certainly going to do a similar thing.

 

And of course numbers can be changed at any time. Even by the players themselves. I prefer to scale unarmed damage values to player level (so a level 10 werewolf won't hit as hard as a level 50 one) and generally all bonuses and penalties to % rather than strict numbers.

Edited July 5, 2014 by WinterFlower

[lofgren]

adjusting attributes and raw skill numbers by a percentage is generally a bad idea. Skill effectiveness can be adjusted by a percentage by adjusting skillmod or skillpowermod, and for regen rates there are the regenmult values. But to adjust raw skill values or attributes you would need to script it, and then your numbers would get thrown all out of whack if the player changes their values through some other means before your script to undo changes runs.

[WinterFlower]

I created something conceptually similar already, albeit obviously far less complex.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32649

 

Let me know if I can be of any help.

 

One piece of feedback: the way you have constructed the stages of hunger, satiated is clearly and by far the best stage to be in, so why would any player even see the second or third or nth stage of hunger? It's not as though food is hard to find in Skyrim, being as every jarl and half the citizenry are happy to point out a bandit den for you to eradicate. Might be good to take a note from the stages of vampire hunger and provide benefits to entice the player to try out the later stages. A bonus to intimidate isn't very useful if your speech is simultaneously dropped to 0 and extra unarmed damage doesn't amount to much unless it actually makes bare-fisted fighting more effective than using a weapon – which seems unlikely.

 

Sorry! Didn't see your mssage at first. Let me explain:

 

1) You can't stay satiated forever. This is a core mechanic as hunger deteriorates over time and there is nothing you can do in your satiated form to stop it. It will eventually drop below 90%, and raw meat can keep it at 89% but not further.

2) You cannot access your wolf form while satiated.

3) Being hungry has more benefits than unarmed damage, which CAN actually become better than weapons (just like werewolf attacks are better). The bonus to intimidate is huge enough to make up for the speech loss, besides I already explained in the previous post about the dialogue options. There's more to it - speed, power attacks, being resistant to damage...

 

Something to keep in mind, werewolves are not vampires. They are mortal and when they starve, they get weakened just like any human or beast. It makes little sense to give them mega powers when they haven't eaten in ages.

 

That said, your mod has great ideas, namely restricting the transformation to night-time. That makes a lot of sense lore-wise and gameplay-wise, and I'll certainly consider including something like that. And you can be of great help if you can answer my questions! (scattered thoughout the thread atm but when I have more time I'll add them to the OP post)

 

 

 

adjusting attributes and raw skill numbers by a percentage is generally a bad idea. Skill effectiveness can be adjusted by a percentage by adjusting skillmod or skillpowermod, and for regen rates there are the regenmult values. But to adjust raw skill values or attributes you would need to script it, and then your numbers would get thrown all out of whack if the player changes their values through some other means before your script to undo changes runs.

 

I wasn't planning on adjusting them with %, but rather on including %-based bonuses and penalties rather than raw numbers (like 300% weakness to silver instead of -50 stamina for example).

Edited July 5, 2014 by WinterFlower

[lofgren]

I still don't see why anybody would let themselves fall below hungry, at absolute worst. I don't really care how somebody interprets what "makes sense" for werewolves. My suggestion was based on what provides for interesting gameplay. If there are benefits to falling below hungry, then the player has to balance for themselves whether or not they want the benefits. If there are no benefits, as you have described, then falling below hungry is simply something to avoid. That could still provide an interesting gameplay challenge if keeping well-fed was actually a challenge, but it isn't. There's infinite food available in Skyrim and it's easy to find.

[WinterFlower]

And that's all right. You're a modder yourself and you've made a werewolf mod that suits you. I already said I'll consider your suggestion but please don't get hostile if I disagree with you.

 

I have been planning this mod on and off for two years and I've played modded vampires in Skyrim for long enough to have a general idea of what's challenging to upkeep and what isn't. Thanks for your opinion though. (:

[lofgren]

If I start to get hostile, believe me you'll know. All I meant was that I have no interest in debating what does or does not "make sense" for completely imaginary magical beings with powers granted by gods. Having that discussion doesn't "make sense" because it's all opinion and interpretation. As you can see based on the differences between my mod and yours, I do not share your opinion and interpretation of what makes sense for werewolves in Skyrim, as you do not share mine. For me to criticize your interpretation of lycanthropy in Skyrim would be silly. Obviously, the whole purpose of creating your mod is to better realize what makes sense to you, which is different from what makes sense to me and different from what makes sense to the original devs. That's a good thing in my opinion and it's the beauty of a moddable game that all of these conflicting opinions can be realized. That is why I wanted to limit the discussion to game mechanics.

 

But OK, point taken. We should be talking about hard numbers. How often do you intend for a PC to have to feed on human flesh to avoid falling below the third stage of hunger?

[WinterFlower]

For a first time wolf it takes 40 hours to go from full stomach to completely empty, so that means 12.4 hours without feeding will bring you to the third stage. Which is something that will probably happen a lot (fast travelling, questing in undead dungeons, etc), but not annoyingly too often.

 

Eating a person in werewolf form consumes the whole body and sets the hunger back by 20 hours. Human wolves only eat the heart and set the hunger back by 10 hours, although you can learn with experience to butcher the corpse for the heart (if you haven't eaten it) and some human flesh that has the same effect as raw meat but can be consumed in all stages. That still means you have to eat at least a person per day as part of your diet until you advance enough to control your hunger better (you earn 1 hour every 24h without feeding or transforming, 30 minutes every day without transforming, and 12/6 minutes every time you feed in wolf/human form, capped to 1 hour gained per day and a total of 240 hours, which sets the first stage to 1 day, second 2 days, third 4 days, but requires A LOT of gameplay hours and probably a year of game-time). All those values can be changed as well as the rate of hunger.

 

I've designed the mod to make the third stage the most beneficial one in terms of combat/social power to weakness, hence its large margin of 40%. The lower stages are heavily focused on melee combat exclusively in the wild, so there are circumstances where you'd want them but not too many. I emphasise immersion over preserving power-to-weakness ratio, so they are designed to be more of a punishment than a bonus to make the werewolf player feed often - I mean, that's the point of playing a vampire/werewolf in the first place, being constantly reminded of your character's predatory nature and constant hunger. You will eventually see every human NPC as nothing more than a potential piece of meat (Arnbjorn's response), which is the real curse and loss of humanity. That, in my experience, is true immersion. (:

Edited July 6, 2014 by WinterFlower

[TenderHooligan]

If this is completed to your vision, it will be the greatest alt. form overhaul for Skyrim.

 

I loathed werewolves in vanilla. To the point that I avoided the Companions questline for half a dozen playthroughs, and when I finally decided to see it through to the end for completion's sake, I literally never transformed after the first night gaining the beast blood and cured myself as soon as it was possible. I recently gave werewolves a second spin because the Enhanced Companions Mod is the single best faction overhaul mod. I tried a ton of the werewolf mods (Moonlight tales, Werewolf Mastery, Werewolf Perks Expanded, Beastial Hunger, Predator Vision), which certainly improved the experience, but even with all that I felt the form was 1) overpowered and 2) had hardly any downsides.

 

My favorite ideas of yours are the hunger stages (and bonuses and penalties associated with them), the improvements to the pc in human form (Werewolf Mastery added some, but they were relatively minor and very generic), the way gaining the beast blood through the companions offers a smoother transition than if you're turned by a werewolf savage, and, my favorite, your plans for npcs recognizing your beastial nature and the silverhand patrols that show up as a result. Moonlight Tales had Vigilants and Silverhand Elite after you, but this sounds much more realistic in terms of how they locate and hunt you.

 

I wish I could help you, but I've only just started dipping my toes into mod creation and development, and by the time I feel competent enough to help with a mod of this scope, you'll probably be on version 11 or something :smile:

 

Definitely following this WIP. Good luck.

Edited July 9, 2014 by TenderHooligan

[WinterFlower]

Oh, by the way I will regularly update the OP with progress and new questions, so if anyone can answer I'll be very thankful!