[WIP] Belua Sanguinare Revisited

[MofoMojo]

Thank you all for your help on the beta. I've got the notes done up from Jakisthe and will begin hammering through this work as soon as I can start. Likely sometime this weekend. I'm interested to read up on this health bit.... :)

[elricshan]

As I planned it there, it instantly takes that % from your current (not maximum) health pool, with each level of vampirism taking more. Then, over the next 10 seconds, you get X times that much health back.

 

Say, for instance, that you're a fledgling with 100 health out of 100 (for simplicity >.<). Use DG, and you lose 5(5%*100)hp. Then, over the next 10 seconds, you get 10hp back, at a rate of 1 per second.

Then, you level up, and you've gotten more maximum health via normal leveling. But you're hurt down to only 100 hp out of 500! What do you do? DG takes 66(66%*100) hp, leaving you with only a scant 34 left. However, then the good bit kicks in, and you gain 264(66%*100*4)hp over the next 10 seconds, at a rate of 26.4 per second.

 

If this seems too powerful, I am considering the potential of adding a non-refunded magica component.

 

it sounds like a great idea

[MofoMojo]

As I planned it there, it instantly takes that % from your current (not maximum) health pool, with each level of vampirism taking more. Then, over the next 10 seconds, you get X times that much health back.

 

Say, for instance, that you're a fledgling with 100 health out of 100 (for simplicity >.<). Use DG, and you lose 5(5%*100)hp. Then, over the next 10 seconds, you get 10hp back, at a rate of 1 per second.

Then, you level up, and you've gotten more maximum health via normal leveling. But you're hurt down to only 100 hp out of 500! What do you do? DG takes 66(66%*100) hp, leaving you with only a scant 34 left. However, then the good bit kicks in, and you gain 264(66%*100*4)hp over the next 10 seconds, at a rate of 26.4 per second.

 

If this seems too powerful, I am considering the potential of adding a non-refunded magica component.

 

it sounds like a great idea

 

What if we allowed you to heal yourself at the sacrifice of satiation? Say 10-20 points of satiation for 100% health, magicka, and stamina recovery?

 

-MM

[nskin039]

As I planned it there, it instantly takes that % from your current (not maximum) health pool, with each level of vampirism taking more. Then, over the next 10 seconds, you get X times that much health back.

 

Say, for instance, that you're a fledgling with 100 health out of 100 (for simplicity >.<). Use DG, and you lose 5(5%*100)hp. Then, over the next 10 seconds, you get 10hp back, at a rate of 1 per second.

Then, you level up, and you've gotten more maximum health via normal leveling. But you're hurt down to only 100 hp out of 500! What do you do? DG takes 66(66%*100) hp, leaving you with only a scant 34 left. However, then the good bit kicks in, and you gain 264(66%*100*4)hp over the next 10 seconds, at a rate of 26.4 per second.

 

If this seems too powerful, I am considering the potential of adding a non-refunded magica component.

 

it sounds like a great idea

 

What if we allowed you to heal yourself at the sacrifice of satiation? Say 10-20 points of satiation for 100% health, magicka, and stamina recovery?

 

-MM

 

Sounds good to me.

Remember that vamps are undead and are supposed to heal fast. Maybe increase the recover health rate slightly as well.

[Jakisthe]

Well, I didn't want it to be TOO powerful; for players that don't care about satiation, it would mean they could heal 100% whenever they wanted. Plus, if a player is starving, that takes away any detriment at all, and they can again go for that 100%.

 

The way I saw it, people normally had regen spells at their disposal during a fight, but they were never something you wanted to use constantly, because then you wouldn't be hurting the enemy. Similarly, between fights, it was really trivial to get back to full health - as long as you survived a fight, you were set.

 

So I wanted to make spells which were organically useful for either during fights or after. DG, while able to be used during a fight, would be a definite tactical thing, as it would instantly hurt you quite a bit depending on level. Course, this hurt would get refunded, albeit over time, making it's use in a fight a rather risky proposition. Plus, it's universal across all levels and types of vampires, whereas I think a satiation cost would be overly painful to sires (as they get to starved quickest and are the ones with the most need for healing powers) and hp is an immediate resource that every player, no matter their playstyle, cares about intrinsically.

 

As for combat, I assumed that most vampires would be getting splattered with blood while fighting, hence the increased combat regen (also to counter balance the fact that DG is a much safter out of combat choice). Not only that, it allows the player to focus on dealing damage, as vampires tend to do, but also offered the above tactical superheal :thumbsup:

 

 

...That said, MM tells me such a spell is quite complicated, hence why he suggested the alternative :unsure:. Which I do think is a step in the right direction! Buuuuut....a bit of an unbalanced one.

[nskin039]

Well, I didn't want it to be TOO powerful;

 

Personally playing through I felt that vampires were less powerful than non-vampires. Non-vampires can heal whenever they want potions and can use restoration spells.

There should be some really great positives to offset some major negatives of being a vampire (weakness to sun no restoration spells no magika etc)

Vampires either need to heal really quickly (which is lore friendly) or have other means to heal themselves. Right now IMO even with the awesome being a vampire is more of a negative than a positive.

 

 

[nskin039]

Have you seen this mod? It may help with ideas for flying. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=15775

[MofoMojo]

Have you seen this mod? It may help with ideas for flying. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=15775

 

Nskin039,

 

Yup, I've been a lurker in the flight thread that Porrone haunts for quite some time. Both Draeka and I got our flight ideas from those folks. Porrones flight does something a little different than ONLY changing the havok gravity multiplier and using Translate. He does do that, however he detects the direction the player is intending to move and translates them into that direction for flying. It's still got the drawbacks that we have in our implementation. You can clip through trees, houses, small objects, etc,.

 

-MM

Edited April 28, 2012 by MofoMojo

[MofoMojo]

On Feeding and Trespassing.

 

Can those that experienced it tell me if they simply didn't get the option to feed on sleeping victims when trespassing? There's no pre-requisite check for whether you are trespassing in order to feed. I tested this again just to ensure, and I can feed when I'm trespassing (assuming the victim is asleep) so one question:

 

What level vampire were you?

 

I ask this because as a fledgling you don't have the "Sense Garlic" capabilities of the other Vampire levels. You won't be able to feed off of those carrying garlic, but you'll not have any indication and simply don't get "Feed", "Sneak Feed", or "Feed Attack" options. Just to clarify, All people are safe from feeding if they are carrying garlic. You don't get the option to feed on these people, but only as a Risen and higher will you notice the "smell" of garlic hanging in the air around them.

 

It looks like at least two folks ran into this issue so I want to make sure I personally am not missing something so any other details you might be able to provide would be great!

 

On Feeding from essentials:

 

Any thoughts or considerations on how this should be handled? Disabling the ability to feed from essentials and protected (such as followers) doesn't seem the right approach, and by their very nature of being essential and protected can't be killed by normal means (not suggesting that they should be killed). I could track the last essential actor you fed from and the amount of time that's passed since you fed, and only allow you to feed from them once every 24 hours.

 

I'm open to suggestions here.

 

Another alternate to feeding on essentials:

I figured out a method that could just keep you from feeding on any essential/protected NPC except once every 24 hours. That might work out best.

 

On Healing/Magicka/Etc,.

So two other things while I'm working on getting some POC work around Dark Gift and ... a Dark Sacrifice spell...do away with those undead followers for fun and profit..well not fun and profit but Magicka and Health.

 

During the beta there was a bug which prevented anyone from getting the really useful "Fresh Heart (Heathy)" hearts. So effectively all you got was a heart that restored 100 health/magicka/stamina, instead of the uber ones. The percentage of getting those healthy hearts was supposed to work this way:

 

Fledglings 15%

Risen 30%

Masters 45%

Progenitors 60%

Sires 75%

 

The Fresh Healthy Hearts were meant to more or less FULLY replenish your health, magicka, and stamina. This bug has been fixed, but for those that felt the chance to restore health and magicka was too nerfed, would this fix alone resolve that?

 

Finally, what if we allowed you to harvest hearts DURING combat, but there was a greater chance of getting an unusable heart if you were in combat and no chance to get a perfectly healthy heart? The way it would work is this.

 

Out of Combat:

75% chance to get a "Fresh" heart. If you get a fresh heart the chances of getting a healthy fresh heart (uber heart) are as described above. This is the way it is now, and intended to be in beta.

 

In Combat:

50% chance to get a "Fresh" heart. If you get a fresh heart, it will be damaged.

 

Thoughts?

 

-MM

Edited April 28, 2012 by MofoMojo

[MofoMojo]

Just a status update for everyone. I've burned through a lot of low hanging fruit as for the bug fixes go. Of the 40 or so things on the master list, I've gone through and resolved about 1/4 of them, 3 more items are more or less fixed or works in progress waiting for some additional feedback and then around 10 of the items in the list are either game engine bugs (things out of our control) or things that can't be fixed because of their design requirements, or inability to identify root cause.

 

One of the larger issues reported was the inability to join the Companions because of the initial requirement to pass the test without using magic. That one is potentially impossible to work around. Many of the mechanics for our Vampires rely on active magic effects that use "Cloaks" to do things such as detect whether people are carrying garlic, allow you to harvest hearts on death, and a few other effects. I'm afraid that there might be no real easy fix for that. I am thinking that if "Magic" is considered by the companions as something you cast DURING the fight, or that appears to be an effect cast from the player to an actor, I could possibly modify Forma to dispel those types of cloak spells. That would mean you have to use forma during the fight. That would also mean that under normal use you couldn't detect people with garlic while forma was up, harvest hearts, etc,. I'm hoping that the game would not see an active magic effect as spell use, otherwise you'd have the same problem if you happened to have say, a blessing on you or any effect for that matter. So maybe there's some potential there to work around it. Is that a willing sacrifice? Quite honestly, I didn't even think vampire's could be in the companions unless you became a vampire AFTER joining them. Thank you much for your hard work!

 

It says a lot, just how dedicated our testers have been, to see that the above has shown up with much frequency!

 

Oh and big news on the Vampire's Kiss front. I have it working pretty effectively. There still has to be a bed within reasonable distance to the NPC, but it is much more effective than before.

 

-MM

Edited April 29, 2012 by MofoMojo