[WIP] Belua Sanguinare Revisited

[phil11]

We're derailing. TRAIN WRECK AHEAD. lol. For starters these are based on theories I developed nearly 25 years ago, and then started to tie in with a book I began writing abount 3 years later that uses christianity, the nature of sin, and immortality to derive the first vampire. I don't really have the answer on the Soul. In those studies the Astral planes, the Ethereal Plane, and other planes of existence we all have our own bodies in seperate but characteristically joined together. The soul could be one of those on a higher plane, not necessarily. Quite honestly, I just like to pose the theory of vampire's reflections being a reflection of the soul related to the disconnection of the physical and astral/ethereal bodies because some think that those bodies are the soul. To me personally, the idea that a mirror reflects the soul is ludicrous, as molecular structures simply have no soul, and the mirror is just a reflection of light emitted bouncing off those objects and onto the mirrors surface.

Ah, okay. Your other post seemed reminiscent of platonic dualism, but I was way off; your hypothetical divide from the corporeal would have multiple metaphysical planes in some kind of heirarchy. That's what I was missing the first go around, the theory makes way more sense now. Pretty cool, I'd totally read your book when you finish it. And of course I agree with your position about souls not existing, as an atheist myself.

 

There's a lot of various mythos we could pull from, Jewish mythos, Chinese, Russian, nearly every major ethnic mythology in humanity has some variation of Vampire, and I think as humans have "civilized" to some extant, so have the myths. We've humanized the idea Vampires, whether right or wrong. Not everyone will be happy about it.

 

-MM

Very true, vampire lore definitely has changed a lot, and in Skyrim's context I definitely prefer the contemporary, anthropomorphized versions better. I can't see why anyone would want monstrous, hideous, purely evil vampires unless they have no plans to be one in the game. And if that's the case, why the hell are they reading this thread? LOL

 

::::Trainwreck clean-up initiated:::::

 

So how do we balance starving, KOS, and the multiple levels without encouraging players to just hit "T" to derank? That brings us full circle to a suggestion Phill11 made earlier which is that it also requires a ritual/quest to complete to derank. Perhaps that's the answer.

It could be simply going to a vampiric shrine or something somewhere once you've crossed the starving threshold percentage.

 

What if you used FranzLiszt's idea....but also made it so that the time it takes for the Sire to reach 40% starvation is nearly the same as what it takes the Risen to reach 85%, the Master 75%, and the Progenitor 60%. Essentially, higher ranks can go much longer without needing to feed, but when they don't they're noticed far easier.

 

Risen: 85% starvation (8 in-game hours without feeding to reach this level of starvation)

Master: 75% starvation (7 in-game hours)

Progenitor : 60% starvation (6.5)

Sire: 40% starvation (6)

 

You'd have to play-test to see what numbers work best (I don't remember what your original numbers were for starvation) and what's the most balanced, but this concept might balance it out a bit. And if you set it so that Vigilants of Stendarr and Silverhands have a separate chance of detecting you, where they might send hunting parties after you (as I mentioned in a previous post), then the conceal identity spell could come into play as well.

 

Oh and another question for feedback. Do you think if an NPC has garlic on them you shouldn't be able to feed from them? I'm currently creating a side on plugin which modifies loot tables of various NPCs to provide a chance that they'll have Garlic on them. Up front are Silverhand and Vigilants of Stendarr which have a decent chance of carrying garlic. Garlic actually disables the attack bonuses you get against that NPC in an attempt to signify that garlic protects the person who is carrying it. What about ALSO disabling the ability to feed from people carrying it? What I don't know is if loot is determined WHEN the NPC is loaded, or WHEN the NPC is looted. If it's on looted, then...well, that will stink.

 

Npcs with garlic shouldn't be easy vampire victims, but it would be cool if you could use something like the steal mechanic with a vampire to destroy garlic in enemies pockets or something- that is, if you could sneak up on them. Perhaps if you did this you could immediately feed on them.

It wouldn't make sense if loot was determined upon searching a body; I can definitely remember reloading several times after killing specific enemies, and they always dropped the same thing.

Edited March 1, 2012 by phil11

[Jakisthe]

So, seems to be a few new points of contention (which are welcome!):

 

-leveling up: A few views. The first being that it should simply be time (real time, so no wait n watch), which I think works rather well. I mean, if it's based on real time, it'll have the player doing things/exploring/experimenting naturally with their vampire powers; no one is just going to do nothing for a few real time hours.

The second is that it could be tied to level...which is interesting. On the one hand, it doesn't allow for super powerful early vampires, but on the other, that seems like a very artificial limiter to place on players, especially in a game like this. I see it as a parallel to lockpicking. You can still pick a master lock at lvl 1 in lockpicking; it's just incredibly hard. I don't want to put an arbitrary number limit on a vampires power.

Another idea I'm toying with in my head atm is...complicated.

 

Two parts to this leveling concept. One of them is incredibly drastic, so heads up...

-MM points out that no new perk trees. While an incredibly sad fact to begin with, this means no vampire tree. Unless we take something out..well, what about restoration? That's a holy tree...

-IF we were to take out resto and replace it with vampirism, I was thinking that you could level up your "vampirisim" via blood drinking, spell usage, and waiting real time..the formulas for which I'd need to poke around with, but it wouldn't be through the normal "use spell a thousand times".

-Once you get the required "lvl of vampirism", instead of spending perks (as it wouldn't be tied to your base player level), you spend dragon blood to unlock spells/the next tier, with higher tiers costing more blood to unlock (so, like, I dunno, Sire spells cost 4 each, progenitor 3 each, etc).

-Deleveling (however that ends up being >_>) would simply take away the spells in a vampire class...you'd still have all the other benefits/negatives. So, a "twice deleveled Sire" would have all the passive positives/negatives of a Sire, but could only use the spells of a master. This, obviously, is a very simple way of looking at deleveling/starvation, but...it's a thought.

 

Obviously, this is theortical, and MM would know better than I would if it's even possible. Still, I think that would be able to factor in player choice (deciding what to unlock), the need for progression via "naturally vampiric ways" (spending nights, feeding, using abilities) and placing a flexible barrier on advancement (as low level characters CAN kill dragons, it's just harder).

 

 

-metaphysics of vampires: well, this goes over my head as much as my stupidly complicated formulas seemed to do to MM, but I will say this:

*vampires were originally stories to connect diseases to religious beliefs of the day.

*it seems to follow the course of a natural disease

*Most lore makes not of a gradual change, not a complete species change.

That said...they're not all evil! That's up to the player to decide. As someone pointed out though, there isn't really much of a way around the fact that they are more or less "harvesting" humans. Not necessarily killing them, but forcing themselves on people to sustain their "unlife" or whatever you wish to call it. Now, some people might not care that they're being fed on as long as they're not dead, and you could certainly argue that without doing as such, vampires would suffer, but..it just doesn't strike me as a happy thing to do.

 

-Deranking: Oh boy. A rough one if ever there was one. What's important here, moreso than anywhere else, is that it 1) is possible, so people don't feel stuck on one level or another and 2) it's not done via waiting, since that's incredibly dull. Other than those two stipulations, I'd need to have a long theorycrafting session to hammer out a solution, since it also factors in starvation, player choice, and the aforementioned metaphysics....to say nothing of game balance :pinch:

[FranzLiszt]

We could make a long and difficult quest for deranking. It could be sort of like the cure quest. Also, there could be variable quests with increasing difficulty the farther down the vampire line you wish to go. The obvious hardest would be the Cure quest with decreasing difficulty above.

Also, with regards to coffins, do you think it would be possible for people to replace their house bed with one? I have seen people do some crazy things with houses and this could be the way to get homeland/coffin dust.

I don't know if walking on water was still being discussed or not but having your coffin in your house seems to make sense.

Gotta go

[Leeira]

@Jakisthe: Great idea to put restoration out, not only because it is holy but also because you have so much possibilites to heal through your vampire skills, vamprie skills+restoration might get some kind of overpowered.

The Dragon Blood idea is good but maybe it would be best to use dragon blood only for the stronger "perks" and have the weaker ones unlocked a different way (drinking normal blood, using vampire-skills and so on)? Because a vampire that MUST hunt dragons to become stronger is not lore friendly and forcing the player to hunt dragons when beeing a vampire would not be good either I think.

 

@MofoMojo: I like the idea that everyone gets visible as a vampire when starved to a certain ammount. I like version with Sire: 40% and so on more than Sire: 100% and so on because the longer you are a vampire the harder it should be for you to look human, the predator should come out earlier the older you are.

 

@FranzLiszt: Only my oppinion: But I hate the view that vampires have to sleep in coffins, why should they? It's some kind of dissease which changes your biology, but why should it make you have to rest in a coffin? A bed should be good, as long as it's out of sunlight at day offcourse. ^^

 

@All:

Bloodlust

Maybe some kind of bloodlust would be great to stop people from feeding 10 times in a row to level-up. When you drink too much although you are saturated you hunger level will rise up faster from now on. This would symbolize that you get addicted to blood when you drink far much than you need.

Beeing completly addicted could be a dissease the player gets which makes it cleat to everyone that you are a vampire all the time. Maybe staying out in the wilds and not feeding for some time should cure your addiction.

 

Feeding from animals

What about making it possible to feet from animals? It could give you much less than human blood but could give you a way to feet in the wilderness and adds to immersion.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Leeira

[MofoMojo]

Npcs with garlic shouldn't be easy vampire victims, but it would be cool if you could use something like the steal mechanic with a vampire to destroy garlic in enemies pockets or something- that is, if you could sneak up on them. Perhaps if you did this you could immediately feed on them.

It wouldn't make sense if loot was determined upon searching a body; I can definitely remember reloading several times after killing specific enemies, and they always dropped the same thing.

 

Phill11, I'll have to think about the other things in your post a bit before replying on those. If you're a good enough pickpocketer, you can steal the garlic. Note, that carrying garlic will damage you starting at Master Level. Currently it's 1dmg/sec/clove at Master, 2dmg/sec/clove at Progenitor and hehe....50dmg/sec/clove at Sire. Given our recent conversations, I'm sure this will drive some people crazy. :) But, if you stole the garlic from them then you'd be able to feed from them. In combat, good luck. There's certainly ways to detect what NPCs that are in close proximity have in their inventory. I can do that but I don't want the player to have to read it. What if there was a sort of....I dunno....visible indicator like a very light shader effect applied to the NPC if they're carrying it? Or what if I had a shader effect applied to the player? For that matter, I might even be able to repel the player away, to some extent if the person is wearing garlic. *might* I don't know if some of the havok functions work against the player since they have no mass.

 

Oh cool, you're comment about their inventory gives me hope that it's decided when they spawn. I extended the loot tables for common citizens, nobles, etc,. to also have a chance to be carrying garlic.Of course that means MANY of them won't be carrying garlic unless their inventory is reconsidered when you enter the cell/region.

[FranzLiszt]

@Leeira

I agree with you about vampires being altered biologically. My idea stems from past discussion of vampires needing to rest on soil from their homeland, with this related to the ability to cross water. I was thinking this could be a very inelegant solution. Better ideas are needed for it.

Is the unable to cross water thing still being thought of? It seems like it would be insanely difficult to program.

 

The idea of people carrying garlic is really cool!

Edited March 1, 2012 by FranzLiszt

[MofoMojo]

So, seems to be a few new points of contention (which are welcome!):

 

-leveling up: A few views. The first being that it should simply be time (real time, so no wait n watch), which I think works rather well. I mean, if it's based on real time, it'll have the player doing things/exploring/experimenting naturally with their vampire powers; no one is just going to do nothing for a few real time hours.

The second is that it could be tied to level...which is interesting. On the one hand, it doesn't allow for super powerful early vampires, but on the other, that seems like a very artificial limiter to place on players, especially in a game like this. I see it as a parallel to lockpicking. You can still pick a master lock at lvl 1 in lockpicking; it's just incredibly hard. I don't want to put an arbitrary number limit on a vampires power.

 

ok, I had this cool idea planned out around supporting ranking vampirism based on two OR conditions. You could level 5 levels from your current level (along with fulfilling drain and feed requirements) to get to the next level, or satisfy the feed and drain requirements and simply be greater than X level to get to the next level. Either one worked and it's easily doable but... I striked it all out.

 

I think we're trying too hard. I think we should just put in three conditions. Feed requirements, Drain (i.e. Kill via FEED) requirements, and DaysPassed since becoming the current level and Player Choice (striking realtime). As much as I'd like to not have player circumvent the levelling by just "WAITING" I think the best thing is that game mechanics should encourage them NOT to do it but not necessarily prevent them from doing it. My personal oppinion. To be quite honest, while some of the vampiric powers at Sire and Progenitor levels are fairly strong, they also have some major consequences and impact on mana and stability that if a player at level 1 wanted to be a vampire, they'd have a hard time surviving. Think about it. Sire's have roughly 7dmg/sec in sunlight. You have 100 health at level 1. you're going to last 14 seconds in the sunlight. You have 100 stamina. You'll be able to slow time for 5 seconds, and if you're trying to SPRINT and slow time at the same time...yeah, good luck with that. At Master (or was it Progenitor) I give you blood rend which allows you to absorb health. If you're mostly a fighter, you'll have 100 magicka. That spell costs 10 per second, and 10 per second/target. 1 target you'll be able to drain for 5 seconds. Two targets in battle, 3.3 seconds, three targets, just over two seconds and your mana is gone. I think we should focus on making sure the game mechanics don't support early levelling. Consider Player choice (after meeting the hard requirements) and please don't hold it to the current mechanics:

 

I'm a fledgling, I'm level 1. I have 100 health and I want to be a Mage. I want to level my magicka as opposed to my health. Somehow I contracted vampirism and I'm a Fledgling. I read the release notes and know that I'm going to take 2dmg/sec in the sunlight as a Risen and just don't want to do that yet. Because I've used my "attack for blood" attack in battle as it's useful, and satisifies my drain requirements but more importantly gives me 1 extra follower. I've satisifed most all conditions to go to the next level but I don't want to. I need to feed to keep from going starved and my last victim satisfies my last conditional requirement. I am prompted with the following:

 

You sense that you're feeding has made you stronger, you feel the power's of the Risen within your body. Do you

<button> Resist against my inhumanity and remain a Fledgling

<button> Given in to my inhuman nature and become a Risen

 

Thoughts?

 

Another idea I'm toying with in my head atm is...complicated.

 

Two parts to this leveling concept. One of them is incredibly drastic, so heads up...

-MM points out that no new perk trees. While an incredibly sad fact to begin with, this means no vampire tree. Unless we take something out..well, what about restoration? That's a holy tree...

-IF we were to take out resto and replace it with vampirism, I was thinking that you could level up your "vampirisim" via blood drinking, spell usage, and waiting real time..the formulas for which I'd need to poke around with, but it wouldn't be through the normal "use spell a thousand times".

-Once you get the required "lvl of vampirism", instead of spending perks (as it wouldn't be tied to your base player level), you spend dragon blood to unlock spells/the next tier, with higher tiers costing more blood to unlock (so, like, I dunno, Sire spells cost 4 each, progenitor 3 each, etc).

-Deleveling (however that ends up being >_>) would simply take away the spells in a vampire class...you'd still have all the other benefits/negatives. So, a "twice deleveled Sire" would have all the passive positives/negatives of a Sire, but could only use the spells of a master. This, obviously, is a very simple way of looking at deleveling/starvation, but...it's a thought.

 

Obviously, this is theortical, and MM would know better than I would if it's even possible. Still, I think that would be able to factor in player choice (deciding what to unlock), the need for progression via "naturally vampiric ways" (spending nights, feeding, using abilities) and placing a flexible barrier on advancement (as low level characters CAN kill dragons, it's just harder).

 

 

The biggest problem with this is we can't conditionally replace restoration. It's either replaced or it's not. That doesn't mean we can't COMBINE Restoration Perks with another Perk tree, or combine Pickpocketting with Sneaking to create a Vampirism Tree (like the Game Jam did for Lycanthropy) but this introduces a HUGE potential for mod incompatibility and everyone knows what I feel about compatibility. I don't want people to have to disable our mod, to switch out to another character where they DO use Restoration skill or whatnot. Trust me, my first venture into modding after the CK released (and hacking prior to) was trying to create a new Skill and Perk Trees and so far, it can't be done. We have to replace, and I don't like replacing. I may be swayed in the future. My mind does change.

 

Second, converting dragon souls to perk points requires external hooks, such as Script Dragon or SKSE. I know C and C# so it's not that big of a deal, but it intrdocues another level of complexity. Both SKSE and Script Dragon require recompiling and rereleasing whenever Bethesda pushes out a game update which means our mod is effectively broken until that happens and the player updates. I'm not big on external dependencies for that reason.

 

-Deranking: Oh boy. A rough one if ever there was one. What's important here, moreso than anywhere else, is that it 1) is possible, so people don't feel stuck on one level or another and 2) it's not done via waiting, since that's incredibly dull. Other than those two stipulations, I'd need to have a long theorycrafting session to hammer out a solution, since it also factors in starvation, player choice, and the aforementioned metaphysics....to say nothing of game balance :pinch:

 

Eh, forget the metaphysics of it, that's just me. I like the quest idea simply because it forces the player to do something while they are starved. Alternatively, we can ALSO make that player choice at the start based on our current mechanics. Give the player the choice of staying in their current form or deranking if they meet the proper criteria rather than all this if below some percentage and starved for x days you'll automatically derank discussion. I'd rather them be enjoying the game, whether they "WAIT" through it or not, rather than force them into realtime limits. Am I giving in to allowing them to just WAIT or SLEEP it out? Sounds like I am. I think it started with giving in to customization. If players are going to be allowed to customize the experience to some degree, then let's stick to our original mechanics. You don't feed, you get to starving level, when you've starved long enough you're given the following option:

 

You've hungered for long enough and you can feel your vampiric nature slipping away. Do you:

<button> Fight with all will to maintain myself or

<button> Allow that part of me to slip away and become a Fledgling

 

I think we're wrestling too hard to solve a relatively easy problem if we just step back. The hunger values, durations, maximums will all be configurable with the v1 release and will support NOT allowing you to regress at all if you want. And since these can be changed on the fly...well.

 

-MM

Edited March 1, 2012 by MofoMojo

[MofoMojo]

@Leeira

I agree with you about vampires being altered biologically. My idea stems from past discussion of vampires needing to rest on soil from their homeland, with this related to the ability to cross water. I was thinking this could be a very inelegant solution. Better ideas are needed for it.

Is the unable to cross water thing still being thought of? It seems like it would be insanely difficult to program.

 

The idea of people carrying garlic is really cool!

 

In regards to crossing water. Actually there are two things here. 1 is, for the most part, completely doable, neither are being considered at the moment:

 

1. 
    
   
2. Part of the quest mechanics in the game allows the player to "loot" dirt from a grave, their grave, what have you. We alter the PlayerVampireQuest script so that when they change to becoming a vampire they are loaded into a cell that has a graveyard, or a crypt, or whathaveyou that contains a chest or coffin (however it happens) with dirt in it. You can take one handful of dirt, and it stays in your inventory for 24-48 hours. As long as you have this dirt you can safely enter water. If you don't, you take damage. Or
   
3. The player can't cross water, i.e. over bridges or anything without the above mechanics in part 1.
   

 

The first of the two, entering water is doable. Detecting that they're crossing OVER water, not so much. Again, neither is currently being worked on.

 

TES Lore supports that there is a tribe of vampires that actually PREFER to live under icy frigid waters, and we've given our players the ability to "breath" underwater since, as the undead, you have no reason to breath. I wouldn't mind implementing the 1st mechanic above once we get to fleshing out the quests if Jakisthe's is interested in doing it. Right now Jakisthe's intentions are that vampires can't swim. This has not been implemented yet, as I I'm having a hard time with that. The potential for players getting stuck underwater are there, although Phase Walk in it's current implementation could and would get you out of being stuck. Actually, my implementation of Phase Walk is really what I had intended to be "Blink" only with a much greater range.

 

-MM

Edited March 1, 2012 by MofoMojo

[elricshan]

some ideas and personal meanings.

 

1. the garlic idea could be weary cool. hmm the visible marker can be like a white detect life smoke around them as it could be that your vampiric nose or eyes pic it up.

 

2. i think that people shal not atack you based on your vampire level as sire but soly upon how starved you are. this is because i meen that once you become a vampire your body wil stay as it is forever and then even if you are a 1000 years you would still look the same as when you were bitten, unles you starve yourself ofcause.. but maybe vampire hunters have some items that react to vampiric auras and if you are an old vamp you vil have a stronger aura. this could trigger some thing as if you did attak a man but instead of a guard talking to you it could be a vampire hunter that says get out of town before i slay you (like the warning you get if you trespass) but this warnig before you are attaked are like 50% posible to happen as not all vampire hunters hate the vamps but do it to protect the fellow humanoids.

 

the hide from being detected as a starved vampire spell that you talked about could be more like an enchanted hooded robe insted of a spell. yes it would make you use not so cool clothing/armor as before but as a starved vampire this is a smal problem.

[MofoMojo]

some ideas and personal meanings.

 

1. the garlic idea could be weary cool. hmm the visible marker can be like a white detect life smoke around them as it could be that your vampiric nose or eyes pic it up.

 

Interesting idea. I created an effectshader for steam rising off the body for when you're in sunlight as a visible indicator (although there's an indicator of health dropping and an audible indicator to at the onset). Also the same for garlic damage. I'm thinking just a very light shader effect. Not so light that you have to really look for it to see it, but light enough that it's not intrusive to normal play. Maybe they'd leave little...."scent" trails if that's possible.

 

2. i think that people shal not atack you based on your vampire level as sire but soly upon how starved you are. this is because i meen that once you become a vampire your body wil stay as it is forever and then even if you are a 1000 years you would still look the same as when you were bitten, unles you starve yourself ofcause.. but maybe vampire hunters have some items that react to vampiric auras and if you are an old vamp you vil have a stronger aura. this could trigger some thing as if you did attak a man but instead of a guard talking to you it could be a vampire hunter that says get out of town before i slay you (like the warning you get if you trespass) but this warnig before you are attaked are like 50% posible to happen as not all vampire hunters hate the vamps but do it to protect the fellow humanoids.

 

Ok, I'm definitely getting an overall sense that everyone else is onboard with "no marked for attack just because you're a sire" and it seems like everyone is ok with "marked for attack if you're starving". So I'm open to that change. Jakisthe?

 

Now then, as for the Silver Hand and the Vigilants. I don't want your character to be 100% safe as long as they follow the rules of the game. I want you to be sought out, or at minimum I want the random Vigilants that travel from location to location to attack you if they see you. I am, for the sake of ease, assuming they've dedicated their lives to eradicating "Evil" and have the necessary means to recognize that you're a vampire. Let's just call it a sixth sense about them.

 

the hide from being detected as a starved vampire spell that you talked about could be more like an enchanted hooded robe insted of a spell. yes it would make you use not so cool clothing/armor as before but as a starved vampire this is a smal problem.

 

Not sure if I'm onboard with "armor" (i.e. robes, gloves, hood, or other) having to be used to provide the effect. Maybe it's such that if you're that hungy then you better go kill some things and feed on them before entering a town and do your business well before you get back into that state. I've upped the hunger count down from 10 hours to 24 hours for now...but that may need to be tweaked down. It's really not that difficult to actually stay fed, which reminds me...perhaps feed attacks should restore only 1/2 as much as regular feeding.

 

-MM