DeadricDamodred Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 One thing I'm thinking about doing is giving every single NPC a very remote chance, when the game is started, of being a vampire or werewolf. At first I was going to each and every town and picking out people I thought would make good vampires or werewolves, but then I got the random chance idea. This way I don't know who is normal, who is vampire, or who is a werewolf, in case I get physical with someone. Do NPC vampires stay at a constant rate of fed? Meaning even though they aren't scripted to go out and feed, does the game just treat them as fed all the time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elricshan Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 I know I'll be redoing all the powers and weaknesses. My biggest grip about how they do vampires is the fact that you get stronger the longer you go without blood. I find that to be tremendeously backwards. Considering vampires need blood, it makes way more sense that they would be at their most powerful after having just feed, while getting weaker the longer they go without feeding. So I will, just like I did with Oblivion, go into the script and change all that around so they have all the powers I want them to have after feeding with some weaknesses. Then the longer you go without feeding, the more powers you lose and the more damaging the weaknesses become. Agreed, I think this about gripes us all. The script is almost identical in format to what they did for oblivion (based on PEXD decompiling tool). In some senses they should grow stronger, but not mentally. "The Locked Door" from Skyrim (I posted parts of it in this thread) uses a Vampire Ancient which was starved for over a month yet still considered to have the capacity to "turn you into a bloodless hulk" in an instant. I think perhaps as they get starved they should lose their mental prowess, illusion bonuses, etc,. and go into a "Blood Lust" state if you will, of increased strength and speed, while being more susceptible to sunlight or, and this could be VERY interesting, perhaps their FEED ability will kill the victim instantly, rather than leave them alive or at least do a severe amount of damage to them if they aren't already in combat. Hmmmmmm..... I know I keep around Lydia as a female companion for my Vampire character just so I can feed from her (and she can carry like nobody's business). I've also removed the requirement for her to be sleeping and I've removed the child requirement (so you can't feed on kids) but I know if somehow I was starved to the point that I'd kill her if I fed from her, I'd HAVE to consider another victim. I couldn't let my poor Lydia die. OK...I'm implementing that! -MM how about when you feed on the same victom like five times wotout killing it it would turn into a vampire? Lol...that could be cruel. While in theory I like it, and it would be relatively easy to implement at a base level, what happens afterward? The vampires in the game don't follow the same requirements as the player. They aren't required to feed, etc,. so putting that in adds very little depth to the game if you don't take it farther. Taking it farther _IS_ a difficulty since the vampires in the game don't follow the same requirements that the Player does. Essentially, just being an NPC afflicted with vampirism they get the bonuses and the weaknesses and if added to the right/wrong faction, hated and most likely killed by the first NPC they meet. But, siring (did I just say that word?) a vampire might make for an interesting quest line. I don't know that the depth vs. development time to make the above happen with ANY npc is worth it. -MM well vampires are often cruel but a non cruel vampire would just chose to noot feed on the same person or killing it so they would not do it. as for faction they could be placed in an own npc vampire faction where they would live as usual but it was turned like they did the same things in the night like if a shop owner was turned the shop wuld be open in the night. as for siring it could be random like 2-10 (or something like that) of the turned could be used as a companion. and if the player want to have a npc vampire raiding party he would just downlade a more companion mod. that would make more imersion but mostly for the player that want to do some rpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MofoMojo Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 well vampires are often cruel but a non cruel vampire would just chose to noot feed on the same person or killing it so they would not do it. as for faction they could be placed in an own npc vampire faction where they would live as usual but it was turned like they did the same things in the night like if a shop owner was turned the shop wuld be open in the night. as for siring it could be random like 2-10 (or something like that) of the turned could be used as a companion. and if the player want to have a npc vampire raiding party he would just downlade a more companion mod. that would make more imersion but mostly for the player that want to do some rpg When I said Cruel, I meant you could do some rather cruel and unusual things with that for pure sadistic enjoyment. I like the idea! Actually, one mod I wrote for Oblivion was "Mofomojo's Provocation mod", here. It served VERY little purpose, got no endorsements and just only 10,000 downloads in what...6 years? But I thoroughly enjoyed it from the immersion perspective because instead of getting in trouble for throwing the first punch, I could provoke someone into throwing the first blow, unless of course I tried provoking them too much and then I'd get a fine and thrown in jail. It allowed me to start bar fights!!! How fun is that! And the chaos it caused! Sheer joy! So... I like the idea, if even just from the perspective of just adding vampirism to the NPC and throwing them into the Vampire Faction (and the ensuing chaos it could cause). But, fleshing it out a bit more so that you can change the AI package of any given PC might be difficult, but who's to say. I like the idea of finding a shop keeper and changing their shop keeping hours because they're actually a vampire. And then following up with making random NPCs become/behave like companions...I'm not sure that you can just throw an AI package on them for that but perhaps you can? We'll obviously know more with the CKs release. Thank you for the ideas, and please keep them coming. I likely wouldn't have thought in the direction of what to do after turning an NPC as you did. Most insightful! -MM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakisthe Posted January 28, 2012 Author Share Posted January 28, 2012 (edited) Having read this, seems to be two points to be made: -Vampires strength as they don't feed: This remains one of the biggest sticking points in vampirism. Not only is it important to balance strengths and benefits, but also what to do with temporal things like time since feeding! So, my thoughts are thus-they should enter some kind of "glass cannon" state. Decreased health and magic, double statistical negatives, lose all their non-direct damage spells, and slow down regeneration levels. On top of that, they'd get.... vicious-er. Now, the key point here is that they still shouldn't be the fighting powerhouses that werewolves are. More of an emphasis on speed...*Increase to player global movement speed*Increases, of various magnitudes dependent on time like all the other aspects, to player attack speed-Sprinting takes less stamina.-Vampiric evasion twice as likely to occur. -Perhaps an always on detect life at certain milestones of not feeding? That still doesn't, I think, truly capture their bloodlust...but things to think about, right? Right! -Making other vampires: Incredibly complicated. As MM pointed out, they don't suddenly act like vampires...they just gain their strengths/weaknesses. I agree that SOMETHING should happen if they're fed upon to a certain extent, but making them a full blown other vampire would be fraught with difficulty and inconsistency. Now, a lot of lore has qualifications for being a vampire, like can only be a certain age, can only do it willingly, etc. I had planned to have it where if you killed them while drinking blood, they'd become some kind of ghoul/thrall who'd "serve" you, as it were, but beyond that, I'm open to ideas. I like that shops they own would always be open and they'd never sleep....how about they are always in a state of +100 speech when being talked to by you? I phrased that horribly, but you know what I mean. I hope. But yes, making them a whole, "equal" vampire would be...a complexity which, while no doubt immersive, would be full of glitches and might even simply not work at all. EDIT: This goes for changing ANY npc. Like MM said (again), it could work for certain ones...but yes, not so much every man, woman, and jarl out there. Edited January 28, 2012 by Jakisthe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elricshan Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 Having read this, seems to be two points to be made: -Vampires strength as they don't feed: This remains one of the biggest sticking points in vampirism. Not only is it important to balance strengths and benefits, but also what to do with temporal things like time since feeding! So, my thoughts are thus-they should enter some kind of "glass cannon" state. Decreased health and magic, double statistical negatives, lose all their non-direct damage spells, and slow down regeneration levels. On top of that, they'd get.... vicious-er. Now, the key point here is that they still shouldn't be the fighting powerhouses that werewolves are. More of an emphasis on speed...*Increase to player global movement speed*Increases, of various magnitudes dependent on time like all the other aspects, to player attack speed-Sprinting takes less stamina.-Vampiric evasion twice as likely to occur. -Perhaps an always on detect life at certain milestones of not feeding? That still doesn't, I think, truly capture their bloodlust...but things to think about, right? Right! -Making other vampires: Incredibly complicated. As MM pointed out, they don't suddenly act like vampires...they just gain their strengths/weaknesses. I agree that SOMETHING should happen if they're fed upon to a certain extent, but making them a full blown other vampire would be fraught with difficulty and inconsistency. Now, a lot of lore has qualifications for being a vampire, like can only be a certain age, can only do it willingly, etc. I had planned to have it where if you killed them while drinking blood, they'd become some kind of ghoul/thrall who'd "serve" you, as it were, but beyond that, I'm open to ideas. I like that shops they own would always be open and they'd never sleep....how about they are always in a state of +100 speech when being talked to by you? I phrased that horribly, but you know what I mean. I hope. But yes, making them a whole, "equal" vampire would be...a complexity which, while no doubt immersive, would be full of glitches and might even simply not work at all. EDIT: This goes for changing ANY npc. Like MM said (again), it could work for certain ones...but yes, not so much every man, woman, and jarl out there. well vampires in lore are much stronger than a human but i agree that they shall not be as strong as one of the weredoggy clan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MofoMojo Posted January 28, 2012 Share Posted January 28, 2012 well vampires in lore are much stronger than a human but i agree that they shall not be as strong as one of the weredoggy clan Weredoggy's!!! lol, where's ElderInfinity? So I agree on the point that even when they're starved they should still be stronger than the average NPC, but their weaknesses are also increased. So while stronger physically, and perhaps even faster, they are also at their most vulnerable. Interesting idea on the always on detect life. That could actually be an interesting visual indicator. I personally think Detect Life can be annoying, but I haven't tried seeing if we can create new Detect Life shaders that have varying levels of intensity. For instance, when fully fed, I think Detect Life should be toggled/cast just like Night Eye. Now just tossing around some numbers... Perhaps as they get to around 50% "hunger" detect life kicks in with no duration. It's feint, just maybe...barley visible, at around 75% it becomes a little brighter, maybe not as bright as truly casting Detect Life. At 90% it's as bright as the actual Detect Life and at 100% it's brighter than that. Along those levels, various abilities start kicking in, increased speed, increased evasion, increased <whatever makes sense for starven frenzied blood lust> and you start losing some other abilities that you've gained... Dinner time! I gotta jet but would love to discuss this more. -MM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrimalMight1 Posted February 1, 2012 Share Posted February 1, 2012 I could see them maybe getting physically stronger to some extent. But there should be a limit. It shouldn't be mechanically advantageous to be at 100% hunger or stage 4 or however it is judged for long periods of time. They probably should get slightly stronger physically <as they become more beastly> but lose out on a lot of the special perks like invisibility or charm or any other sorts of powers out there. But they gain a slightly better slow time. And their vulnerabilities to fire, silver and sunlight probably should go up. But I will be under most in the agreement that a transformed werewolf should be physically stronger than a vampire. But a non-transformed werewolf should be stronger than mortals but weaker than vampires. That way vampires fear werewolves and werewolves fear vampires. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MofoMojo Posted February 1, 2012 Share Posted February 1, 2012 I could see them maybe getting physically stronger to some extent. But there should be a limit. It shouldn't be mechanically advantageous to be at 100% hunger or stage 4 or however it is judged for long periods of time. They probably should get slightly stronger physically <as they become more beastly> but lose out on a lot of the special perks like invisibility or charm or any other sorts of powers out there. But they gain a slightly better slow time. And their vulnerabilities to fire, silver and sunlight probably should go up. But I will be under most in the agreement that a transformed werewolf should be physically stronger than a vampire. But a non-transformed werewolf should be stronger than mortals but weaker than vampires. That way vampires fear werewolves and werewolves fear vampires. Totally agreed on all points. My intentions are that s you grow hungry you will lose many of your advantages as those depend on your state of mind and wellbeing as a vampire. At every stage, the vampire should be as equally weak (disadvantage wise) on many fronts as it is strong in abilities, and when in a hungered state it must lose out on most of its abilities and rely more on perhaps raw fenzied strength and speed. At least, that's where I'm leaning. You and I have similar thoughts as well on the werewolve vs. vampires strengths and weaknesses. -MM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Falconsflight Posted February 1, 2012 Share Posted February 1, 2012 I will be doing an underworld remake sometime in the future, maybe based just after the events of rise of the lycans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrimalMight1 Posted February 1, 2012 Share Posted February 1, 2012 And about the whole can't cross water. Well there are so many streams everywhere that passing into riverwood would be impossible pretty much and the like, I'd rather see this. A toggleable water walking spell. But also being immersed into water the size that requires the player to swim to start dealing damage and being completely underwater deals more damage, This way things like the whole can't cross running water or bodies of water is more of a suggestion and vampiric survival trait that gets passed down. Vampires let others believe that they can't cross it but its more like we have eternity so lets not risk it over prey getting away. Not being able to cross water or only with grave dust is well borders on too much harm than good. Rather water being harmful is in my mind the better route to take. This way mortals would have preconceived falsehoods about vampires as they hide their own weaknesses. And also maybe the altars of Dagon, Molag Bal, and some other daedric lords can give the players their version of a blessing. Vampires should have fake weaknesses that are leaked and most pretend to have them so the herd doesn't get wise. Werewolves should also have various pretend weaknesses like they would pretend to be weak against snowberries or juniper berries or the like. Supernaturals may or may not know the others real weaknesses as well they don't like to communicate with one another so rumor and hearsay are sometimes the only way to get information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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