MofoMojo Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 So Forma still uses Magicka I was hoping, (based of one of your previous comments) that you were going to change that. Making it cost a lot of magika to cast but once cast it stays up but also disables certain abilities. For right now yes. As jakisthe mentioned we're discussing other alternatives. Now, I haven't had to deal with it too badly but I HAVE had to deal with it and right now the changes are working pretty well but I don't know whether everyone will like it. There's a lot that sounds good on paper, but in execution isn't working out so well. Forma is still a multi-use spell. It acts as Entrall for Masters, Progenitors, and Sires and also acts as your Mask when you are attack on sight. I think the changes in Attack On Sight undermine, in a positive way, any need to have to have Forma up for extended periods of time. That said, if you have to spend massive amounts of time in front of guards (say, talking during quests objectives, etc,. ) then it might not go without a hitch. But if you need to get INTO a city, form will hold out for someone with only 100 magicka long enough to do that. Then you have two choices. Avoid Guards all the time, or hide until you regen enough magicka to use forma again. It really needs more testing. Well, hopefully the optimal settings will work their way out of the woodwork in the beta. One idea we were tossing around, however, was that it would take 100% of your mana to cast...and then stay up for a certain amount of time, from a fledgling with 10 minutes, to a Sire with 5. Yup... I thnk the beta will tell us much more. I've got some more thoughts on this form I'll share later. -MM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chow404 Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Couldn't you make forma a toggle spell that takes100% magic and stunts regen until you untoggle it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MofoMojo Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 (edited) This morning I was testing out various races of vampires... while it never really got to me I noticed the skin was very dark for vampires, yet people comment that you look as pale as the snow. Um... yeah don't ask why I just thought about it, I know we mentioned it pages ago. So I modified the vampire races so that they now have appropriately pale skin across the board. Is that OK with you all? Also, I was able to remove the ice/snow particles for our rehashed "FrostFX" use in the casting art for conjuring foggy weather. So... I'm at a loss on one thing.... I've been getting a lot of playtesting in, and as you know I've made some changes such as ability to harvest hearts, feed from the harvested hearts for minor satiation (user configurable). Hearts are relatively easy to come by. 75% chance that you can harvest a heart (assuming you're not in combat) and then a scaled chance to get a Damaged Heart (restores 100 health, magicka, stamina + satation) or a Healthy heart (restores...all health, magicka, stamina) based on your vampire level. Even as a Master I think I've harvested....1 healthy heart. Ever. :) The game hates me. So the loss thing... Feeding on people is very challenging, as it should be under normal circumstances. Then it got me to thinking. What about a charm spell, that staggers your victim, and allows you to feed on them willingly? Here's how I'm envisioning this... I'm going to use the extreme and say you're in combat. You're in combat and being attacked by multiple foes. You charm one and they fall to their knees for 5 seconds, enough time to give you a chance to feed. Since you're in combat, you'll only get 5% satiation damage and only 5 satiation from the victim. You kill off ALL other combatants except one and your magicka has restored (this will cost 75 magicka or be a shout based spell to enforce recovery) so that you can cast it again. Rather than finish off the combatant you cast it again. This causes the combatant to stagger to their knees, and also removes you and them from combat since you two are the only ones left fighting. This time when you feed, you'll get the full benefit of feeding from a willing victim out of combat, meaning you'll get 25 satiation (and you might even kill them). If you don't kill them, they'll attack you once they've snapped out of it and you'll even have a chance to Feed Attack them if they start to bleed out. So of course, the idea here is to provide more opportunity for the player to feed but not so much that they never have to worry about satiation. Maybe that means that satiation drops at a faster pace (it's 4 per hour by default). 4 per hour doesn't sound like much until you're a Master, Progenitor, and especially a Sire when you will likely be countering the wait for sunlight vs. potential starvation. As a Master, I hop from shadow to shadow already, biding my time as I heal under cover from the sun. I haven't even done long playtests with Progenitor or Sire yet and starvation makes you even more vulnerable to sun damage. Thoughts? Edit to answer Chow404's question: Couldn't you make forma a toggle spell that takes100% magic and stunts regen until you untoggle it Certainly could and forma IS toggleable right now, it just consumes magicka, at a slow rate if you're not hungry or AOS, at a faster rate if you are. My opposition to the "Consume all magicka" approach is getting my head around why someone that focuses on Health or Stamina only loses 100 magicka when someone that focuses in Magic loses potentially so much more. That's why I had been pondering the idea of drawing from both stamina and magicka because odds are good that you have a pretty good pool from each when combined. I would drain the lowest one first (because the lowest one is likely the one the player doesn't care about) and then draing the other. I would not allow either to regen until forma was either turned off, or dispelled because it ran out of resources to draw from. -MM Edited March 31, 2012 by MofoMojo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nskin039 Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 You comments above sound good. If the restoration tree and potions are limited in usefulness (useless for upper levels) vamps need another way to feed/rehealth. That got me thinking, what about a charm spell/power that makes an NPC go to sleep? So that you can feed. (No good for combat but useful in other situations). Maybe this one ought to be limited to once a day or maybe multiple time upper levels like sires. As far as Forma goes I really think we are over-complicating things. I personally would like to see Forma cost magic (it is an illusion skill after all) I don't see what stamina has to do with maintaining a human illusion. Once cast, it will stay equipped forever until it is toggled off. I think that would be the best and easiest option to implement. You could add negatives such as losing skills, no feeding, etc, but that is optional. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LonerFO Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 (edited) Just want to poke in again here and say great work. It seems I arrived at a nice time in this thread because I'm seeing a lot of updates, then again maybe it's been like this all 50 pages. I'm a big fan of vampires ever since I was a kid so I just want to know a few things about 1 negative aspect of being a sire and that is the attack on sight. In a way I can understand this for balance purposes but in another it seems weird. I mean in some stories even the most powerful of vampires maintain their human looks but in others their are physical changes. The Nosferatu in Vampire the Masquerade(RPG book game I played) comes to mind. So I can sort of understand that at the Sire level your body is corrupted more. As in your more vampire than human and that can be noticed but I feel that if your not 100% pure vampire(as in if your not a born vampire) that your physical appearance shouldn't have an effect to cause a full out attack on sight. I just feel like I will be casting Enthrall over and over again and it would feel more repetitive than anything. To have a new spell that is say toggle-able like someone mentioned before would be nice. Perhaps restrict what we can do, or add negatives to it, when that spell is on to avoid it being overpowered/constantly being up. Another thing I wanted to know is how will the - fire resist effect a Dunmer(Dark Elf) that has 50% resistance to fire? At Sire instead of -100 fire res it will be -50 or because of the change of race it will be -100? Also how is death handled? When you die do you resurrect in a few hrs and have to feed within a certain time or when you die you die. It would be pretty cool to resurrect if you didn't die from silver, from fire, from being beheaded or dying in the sunlight but that might be overpowering. Thoughts? Will their be a change to the AI vampires at all? Any chance we can expect a long quest chain to be able to walk in the sun later on and become the ultimate vampire :dance: ? I'm also wondering about how Werewolves will react to us. Any chance their is some bad blood there? I saw you speak of sense dead and stuff, is it possible to sense supernatural beings? Like werewolves and other vampires? Sorry for bombarding you with questions, I wanted to post earlier but work has kept me pretty busy and I didn't have a chance to sit down and write this up. Awesome work again guys, the original vampire setup for skyrim was pretty pathetic and it was quite disappointing, I'm happy to see you guys took it upon yourselves to do it right. Edited March 31, 2012 by LonerFO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nskin039 Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Another thing I wanted to know is how will the - fire resist effect a Dunmer(Dark Elf) that has 50% resistance to fire? At Sire instead of -100 fire res it will be -50 or because of the change of race it will be -100? I cannot speak for the mod owners but to my knowledge being a vampire is actually a new race. So the dumner fire resistance shouldn't apply. I could be wrong though, :confused: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MofoMojo Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 That got me thinking, what about a charm spell/power that makes an NPC go to sleep? So that you can feed. (No good for combat but useful in other situations). Maybe this one ought to be limited to once a day or maybe multiple time upper levels like sires. That actually was in our original plans and fell through. Charming people to go to sleep would be an ideal way to handle it. As far as Forma goes I really think we are over-complicating things. I personally would like to see Forma cost magic (it is an illusion skill after all) I don't see what stamina has to do with maintaining a human illusion. Once cast, it will stay equipped forever until it is toggled off. I think that would be the best and easiest option to implement. You could add negatives such as losing skills, no feeding, etc, but that is optional. Agreed on it's an illusion based spell. I think it should cost something though given the return it provides. The simpler solutions are usually the more elegant. ...will keep thinking on this. Another thing I wanted to know is how will the - fire resist effect a Dunmer(Dark Elf) that has 50% resistance to fire? At Sire instead of -100 fire res it will be -50 or because of the change of race it will be -100? I cannot speak for the mod owners but to my knowledge being a vampire is actually a new race. So the dumner fire resistance shouldn't apply. I could be wrong though, :confused: Nskin039, you have it absolutely right, the way it's working right now. The Vampire's are a new race, and what Bethesda did was have dunmer/darkelf blood continue to provide a 50% resistance to fire. I have removed that. As fas as I'm concerned, you no longer have the dunmer blood you had before, it is vampiric blood and so that bonus is gone. -MM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nskin039 Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 (edited) That got me thinking, what about a charm spell/power that makes an NPC go to sleep? So that you can feed. (No good for combat but useful in other situations). Maybe this one ought to be limited to once a day or maybe multiple time upper levels like sires.That actually was in our original plans and fell through. Charming people to go to sleep would be an ideal way to handle it. Does that mean charming people to sleep is not possible because it "fell through." Or is it just something you don't want to add to the mod? Edited March 31, 2012 by nskin039 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MofoMojo Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 (edited) That got me thinking, what about a charm spell/power that makes an NPC go to sleep? So that you can feed. (No good for combat but useful in other situations). Maybe this one ought to be limited to once a day or maybe multiple time upper levels like sires.That actually was in our original plans and fell through. Charming people to go to sleep would be an ideal way to handle it. Does that mean charming people to sleep is not possible because it "fell through." Or is it just something you don't want to add to the mod? Means it was in my design docs that I've been using for checklists and got off of it. So, this mornining I added it back in. It works, but it's also got some quirks when used in places where the actoer is not in the same location as their assigned bed. But, it does work now. You can charm them and for 60 minutes they'll walk toward a bed and lie. I think there are some potential morality issues that is making them decide not to use other peoples beds when not in use. I'mn going to tr and fix that. -MM You now what would be a big help. I'm lookinf for pointers on hw to determine whether a player is touching water. i.e. Dangling a little toe in it should be enough. If I can get that I might have a better impllemendation of water walking for us. Edited March 31, 2012 by MofoMojo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MofoMojo Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Ok, Forma + Mist Form, works REALLY well together. -MM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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