gurfan
commented
3 years ago The suggestion ability sounds like a nightmare for admins, but the rest sounds epic.
Open kilozombie opened 3 years ago
gurfan
commented
3 years ago The suggestion ability sounds like a nightmare for admins, but the rest sounds epic.
kilozombie
commented
3 years ago The suggestion ability sounds like a nightmare for admins, but the rest sounds epic.
It's extremely questionable because it relies on people immediately understanding the rules and following them. It's one of the ones I wouldn't mind dropping from the actual implementation, or reworking very heavily.
jjpark-kb
commented
3 years ago The suggestion ability sounds like a nightmare for admins, but the rest sounds epic.
It's extremely questionable because it relies on people immediately understanding the rules and following them. It's one of the ones I wouldn't mind dropping from the actual implementation, or reworking very heavily.
However, another positive to suggestion is that its definitely log-able, so at least the admins can know what is being done. Perhaps they could even have write up a what suggestion they want for the victim, and then it gives a popup to admins, who then can approve or deny it.
SageOfLight
commented
3 years ago no Castlevania vampire build
Into the trash it goes.
kilozombie
commented
3 years ago no Castlevania vampire build
Into the trash it goes.
One of the castes is literally called "vain vampire" and has three or more direct references to Castlevania's Dracula, including two sprites that are ripped directly from the games
SageOfLight
commented
3 years ago no Castlevania vampire build
Into the trash it goes.
One of the castes is literally called "vain vampire" and has three or more direct references to Castlevania's Dracula, including two sprites that are ripped directly from the games
No werebat demon transformation or fireballs? Telling lies, Johnny?
kilozombie
commented
3 years ago no Castlevania vampire build
Into the trash it goes.
One of the castes is literally called "vain vampire" and has three or more direct references to Castlevania's Dracula, including two sprites that are ripped directly from the games
No werebat demon transformation or fireballs? Telling lies, Johnny?
You can literally become a bat
SageOfLight
commented
3 years ago You can literally become a bat
Better be one fuggin' big bat.
Also there's a True Vampire Killer whip in the code. It's normally adminbussable but if this mode could make it an acquireable weapon to counter the vamp somehow that'd be amazing.
Also I actually think this rework concept is great, I just want homage in the actual abilities of that Vain tree. My suggestion would be making the vampire form a werebat that starts temporarily invulnerable and can deliver a devastating attack but upon striking, you cancel out of being untargetable, and a spread of hellfire that acts something like the magic missile spell where they knock down assailants.
APCUnlocked
commented
3 years ago Vampirestation 13:
Step 1: Pick Vain Vampire Step 2: Use Night's Curse on Urist McShit who just happened to stumble into your lair Step 3: Said Urist McShit becomes a vampire too and picks Vain Vampire Step 4: Repeat steps 1-2 until everybody is a vampire
Honestly i'm not sure i'm sold on the "you can get your powers without interacting with the crew" part. It ain't a vampire to me unless it's supposed to suck blood.. You don't need to interact with the crew at all to grow in power, and they probably won't even act hostile against you, probably the opposite seeing as there's myriads of ways of getting da free antag ticket in these kits. Grab Nosferatum, Rigor Mortis and the Opulent Ring and you're downright unkillable. The part about meta-escalation I do kinda agree on, and if this rework ever sees the light of day i'd be really interested to know how the players react to it.
Shuttle screeching is an age-old tradition and shame on you for trying to kill it, though.
kilozombie
commented
3 years ago Also I actually think this rework concept is great, I just want homage in the actual abilities of that Vain tree. My suggestion would be making the vampire form a werebat that starts temporarily invulnerable and can deliver a devastating attack but upon striking, you cancel out of being untargetable, and a spread of hellfire that acts something like the magic missile spell where they knock down assailants.
I think there's a lot of potential. Maybe as a 2-point mutation, but right now Vain is at a place I'm fine with, and it'd take a bit of doing to balance. Thank you for the addition, though
Step 1: Pick Vain Vampire Step 2: Use Night's Curse on Urist McShit who just happened to stumble into your lair Step 3: Said Urist McShit becomes a vampire too and picks Vain Vampire Step 4: Repeat steps 1-2 until everybody is a vampire
It'd take a lot of coordination. If even a single person chooses to be anything else besides a Vain Vampire who takes Night Curse, the chain breaks. I think it'd be relatively fine, though it's easy to patch out.
Honestly i'm not sure i'm sold on the "you can get your powers without interacting with the crew" part. It ain't a vampire to me unless it's supposed to suck blood.. You don't need to interact with the crew at all to grow in power, and they probably won't even act hostile against you, probably the opposite seeing as there's myriads of ways of getting da free antag ticket in these kits.
Yeah that was part of the tradeoff with this rework. To get powers, all you really have to do is be mildly suspicious by grabbing some blood or meat in some secret place-- I wanted it to be a way to quickly get your heart racing without ending your round early. There are several ways that a Vampire can straight-up make you an antag, but I'm hoping that because a Vampire can still pretty easily kill whoever it doesn't like, this still becomes a risk for everyone involved, if not the kind of risk it is now.
There's some discussion to be had about if the arbitrary 100u blood or 5 meat requirement is really concrete... it was one of the earliest features and could be replaced with something else. I consulted and somebody said that a time gate might be in order. Primarily though, for this rework, killing somebody should not be necessary to advance your powers. It's a tradeoff, but one I'd argue is better for the health of the game.
Overall though, succing blood is way less important. Whether or not that needs to be remedied is kind of up to the masses.
Grab Nosferatum, Rigor Mortis and the Opulent Ring and you're downright unkillable.
Probably difficult to kill. You'll be totally useless in space, and if your Lair isn't protected, that ring will only last a few encounters. Rigor Mortis is not a very powerful ability and really only exists for flavor, since relying on a coffin to heal will only work if your Lair is always safe, which it won't be
Shuttle screeching is an age-old tradition and shame on you for trying to kill it, though.
My most controversial removal yet...
I was yelled at to remove it. Also shuttle screeching, funny as it is, does encourage a vampire to wait to use any of its abilities until the very end of the round, for fear that they'll die before the moment where it's funniest. I've played rounds where three vampires existed, but none of them did ANYTHING loud until the shuttle.
APCUnlocked
commented
3 years ago Yeah that was part of the tradeoff with this rework. To get powers, all you really have to do is be mildly suspicious by grabbing some blood or meat in some secret place-- I wanted it to be a way to quickly get your heart racing without ending your round early.
Adding to this, this does encourage the good old "go to the research outpost with 200 boxes of monkeymen" meme that was/is a thing on other (mainly TGcode in my experience) serbs. It's not a challenge, it's not heart pounding and nobody will bat an eye, most of the time. Is that good or bad? I'd argue bad, but i'm sure people have varying opinions on this.
kilozombie
commented
3 years ago Adding to this, this does encourage the good old "go to the research outpost with 200 boxes of monkeymen" meme that was/is a thing on other (mainly TGcode in my experience) serbs. It's not a challenge, it's not heart pounding and nobody will bat an eye, most of the time. Is that good or bad? I'd argue bad, but i'm sure people have varying opinions on this.
In coming up with this hyper-basic arbitrary system, that strategy already came up in my mind as well as people I had go over the document. The idea is that even if it's easy for your job to get blood or meat, it still provides a trail for almost every job. It provides a way for people, especially powergaming people, to get suspicious. It's a flavorful, but ultimately meaningless, way to get Vampire powers. There are other ways that could be invented, as well as time gates or objectives to make it more complicated, but for now I am of the opinion I would rather let an antagonist easily get the fun stuff instead of having to take the biggest risks the earliest into the round.
The main problem with the "arrivals shuttle with no memory" solution to avoid permanent round removal is that pocket station bounced radios exist, camera bugs exist, SPSes exist, etcetera. Sure, a vamp can fullstrip to avoid having to deal with it, but eventually the Meta (TM) will evolve and if vamps are confirmed there's just going to be a guy at arrivals telling people about bad men and mass producing stakes. There's also the thing that it doesn't allow for any metagay protection, the fact that people can recognize that Powergay McAssistant is mysteriously on the arrivals shuttle with no glubbs 5 minutes after roundstart, the fact that eventually vamps are going to keep metagay lists of "who's going to accept antagonist" in the same vein as pre-Seer gult because the alternative is just letting someone go free to get valids on you another day, etcetera.
I think with this and other feedback I've heard previously I'll rework the two conversion abilities, specifically Binding Ritual and Night Curse, and remove this feature from Chimera to buff that ability greatly. I have not played a Cult round in a very long time, but I'm assuming that with Seer you can spot who has antag preferences set to what? If that's the case, here's the new proposed definition for a conversion attempt:
Vampire antag preference will apply to both Vampire and Thrall conversion attempts. I think this is better than bloating the special roles screen with one for 'thrall' but this could be changed.
My initial goal with the arrivals shuttle plan was, indeed, to provide an out for everyone involved that didn't involve permanent round removal. I actually think that being able to metagame people in the shuttle is fine-- after all, the Vampire is putting themselves at risk by offering the ritual, and this can be investigated by other elements. However, I think you're right in that it will be very hard to police the 'memory loss' feature. I may implement it somewhere else as something a victim could opt into-- "your memory will be erased, but the Vampire will let you leave to live another day", kind of thing.
Also keep shuttle memescream, it's funny and it does, in fact, posess counterplay - 'zine and maggies.
Hard to put on magboots or take hyperzine when you don't even know a Vampire exists. It'd theoretically be less of a problem in V2-- there will be fewer Vampires who are usually louder. Still, if you're constantly chugging the funny juice or have magboots activated at all times, you're kind of a plebian.
There is also the problem of Persuasive Attire being both strictly worse than a toolbelt, the test wire, and reflexes greater than a snail and very easy to confirm thanks to anyone being able to strip it and use it in their hand.
This is true. It's pretty shit. Most of Corporate Vamp needs work
To me, unless you just pull a post parasting removal ling and just use the antag abilities for wizard level survivability and just go for classic gunsilicarry retardation, Vampire 2 can't kill. Ever.
I want Vampire to be more like a blend of Wizard and Traitor, gamemodes that I think are good. Still, it errs on the side of Wizard more often, while usually deprecating offensive spells. I think that there's an argument to be made in favor of more harming tools, but at the same time, I don't personally think those are fun or interesting. There is a place and time for buying a revolver as Traitor and going on a rampage, but it's not my thing. I wouldn't mind input on whether or not people legitimately think that that's good for a gamemode to allow.
Implementing fun offensive abilities is doable-- I like Sage's proposition of a big bad werebat. It would require rebalancing of some existing abilities, but it wouldn't be hard. The only question is if that'd be very enjoyable to play against and wield.
Still, I think the biggest priority was taking out the bloodsucc mechanic. A gamemode which forces you to kill people to do anything fun is lame, whereas a gamemode where you can choose to murderbone is fine in my book.
Ambush is ridiculously telegraphed and will force out use of lockers to avoid the glow from rearending you
It's got a one-second windup. I think there's potential for it to be used in creative ways, sitting around a corner in Maintenance or somewhere else, but it is fairly underpowered. I wanted to lean into underpowered first, but it could probably use a hefty buff.
Persuasion is a fucking headache, especially considering the fact of ambiguous bullshit such as randomly 15u gloraling people and dragging them to the vamp as a Persuasion order who you can't CONFIRM will actually kill people with it, or wiring together a single plasma valve directly into distro to make le ebic blasmafludd fifty times easier, and letting the vampire in, or cuffing oneself, fullstripping, turning off SPS in maintenance, etcetera - just give me temporary mindslave a la goon and /be fucking done with it/
I'm assuming you mean Suggestion, and yeah, it's heavily flawed. I'm planning on probably removing it, cool as the lore may be. Could you elaborate on what temporary mindslaving is like on Goon? I'm assuming it turns you antag temporarily, possibly with an order? It sounds like it might be workable for V2.
kilozombie
commented
3 years ago Alright, well, that's a lot to take in. I can't even properly answer a lot of that because you make a ton of good points. When I try to look at the mode holistically, I think there's holes in any loadout-- which have to be patched by grabbing guns or other shitter tools. I may go in and begin making some drastic changes.
Overall:
You make an especial point about:
I am asking for versatile, effective tools that each vampire type is designed around, preferably with uses both outside combat and in combat, and that provide him with strong, viable answers to different opponent types.
I want to let every Vampire build their loadout differently, or at least to express themselves with loadouts. However, it seems like too much freedom makes it too easy to stumble into a strategy that just doesn't work, which is also the opposite of what I'd like. I want everyone playing Vampire to be able to have some fun, even if they're not very robust, but without those empowering tools invading on gameplay for non-antags.
A few notes--
The Vampire 2 also lacks any innate mute-tools, forcing out danbar EMPs unless you like the feeling of fifteen secborgs gravitating into xenobiology maintenance
This is why Ephemeral was my favorite ability. It very simply makes silicons nigh-useless against you, at the cost of having fewer points to deal with everything else. It is sort of a middle finger to those strategies. I don't know quite how it'd work in practice, if everyone would take it, or if it would only be relevant on certain rounds.
in case of 5 secborgs, get spammable EMP,
My first idea on this is a tradeoff ability where you periodically emit EMPs from yourself. That'd make your own use of energy weapons totally useless and be super loud. I mean, obviously a targeted EMP is also cool. That's going to be high on the priority list from now on, since I'm remembering just how nice it is to have.
because he's built around his lair, which will get metachecked at similar scales and velocities to gult bases, has no answers to said fifteen secborgs,
Two of the Castes can have bases that are virtually invisible. Divining takes effort from all over the board and if you start meta-checking locations, you'll get nowhere unless you are Divining. Even if it's an Elder Vampire with a base you can identify once you step in, I'm hoping to make Elder Vampire lairs exceptionally dangerous to just stumble into. You should be terrified to prowl Maintenance with one of those around, is the idea.
Ephemeral should, in my mind, make silicons very weak against Vampires, but an EMP ability is still going to be essential.
As stated here, Vampire 2 as an antagonist is very strong when used as an augment to classic silicarryguns, but very weak when you rely on its abilities exclusively.
Despite the fact that I've designed the gamemode inadvertently to really benefit ablinos, that's the opposite of my intent. I wanted the removal of blood costs to incentivize using abilities to assert dominance over people who don't have them, rather than just forcing you to do normal antag stuff without tools that really help. I'm going to have to re-examine a lot of stuff, especially relating to Castes.
kilozombie
commented
3 years ago You are genuinely the best critic I've had for this yet. I value this more than you can know
I'm going to work on an update and I'll post the details once I've changed the document. If you notice any flaws, if you're still willing to do me the kindness, let me know about them, but keep a few shitter tools to yourself. It's no fun if you report everything right away, is it?
The gamemode will hopefully be a lot better because of you, so that's not "asking for an asspat" considering you're being a huge fucking help. I'll drop an easter egg in there, don't worry, ha.
APCUnlocked
commented
3 years ago Despite the fact that I've designed the gamemode inadvertently to really benefit ablinos, that's the opposite of my intent. I wanted the removal of blood costs to incentivize using abilities to assert dominance over people who don't have them, rather than just forcing you to do normal antag stuff without tools that really help. I'm going to have to re-examine a lot of stuff, especially relating to Castes.
This also stood out to me since there's no glare or jaunt or blink or whathaveyou. Either nobody cares about you and let's you do your gimmicks, or you need to gear up in the hottest top of the line science ablino gear to stand a chance, only to get owned by the first flashbang&stake you come across. It's kinda the same with wizards who in 9.9/10 cases pick blink, since if you're instavalid on sight as a non-crew member hostile alien type of deal, you NEED to be able to get the fuck out then and there or die. You have warp to the lair but it has a 20 minute cooldown, which is a LONG ASS TIME inside the space station 13.
Fighting the vampires feels weird too, either they fall over and die since they didn't pick one of the 200 projectile dodges or your only bet is hitting a flashbang&stake since any other form of stun will be blocked.
Some of those mutations seem nigh useless too. Nazusheb, this literally has no use outside dwarf vampire gimmicks which I don't think we'll ever see. Viral sounds terribad especially since it's of a random intensity, curing viruses literally takes 1 minute. Burgeoning sounds pretty bad too. Reactive blood teleporting you up to 60 TILES away is massive, even if it has a 5 minute cooldown, coupled with the other reactive teleports.. Screech having a wind-up period sounds kinda weird. Domination sounds pretty bad too, considering if your victim dies you die too, why even take over anyone's vampire power lacking ass if you can't even do bad stuff without the fear of getting ashed. The duration should be a fixed amount and the vampire should be able to hightail out of the body with the press of a button, perhaps with some form of wind-up period where the victim falls to the ground unconscious or something. Claws are bad too, having toolbox arms isn't really worth a mutation slot unless you intend to be the strongest cagefighter in the station. I also think the null rod should have some form of use, as it stands it's not mentioned in this document at all.
I get that not everything should be good and OP and all that, but when the choices are this blatant, it's hard to see anything but Wizard 2.0 happening where certain spells and mutations are consistently taken over others since you need them in case there's a goonsquad gunning for your ass. It's even better now since you can be "cured" of vampirism, so unless I have hope that the vampireman will turn me into an antag using his items, i'm being shoehorned to cult-checking him until he gets all his "fuck your ballistics/lasers/stuns" ablino mode and turns the station horizontal.
Incense and the null rod could nullify or weaken some of the vampire's powers, possibly lower the effects of Opulent Ring, Nosferatu and Deathly Cold among others.
kilozombie
commented
3 years ago I won't tackle the other things you've brought up because they're basically all insightful and valid. I'm at work with making some large-scale renovations over the gamemode. However, I do wanna highlight why Domination is written as it is:
Domination sounds pretty bad too, considering if your victim dies you die too, why even take over anyone's vampire power lacking ass if you can't even do bad stuff without the fear of getting ashed. The duration should be a fixed amount and the vampire should be able to hightail out of the body with the press of a button, perhaps with some form of wind-up period where the victim falls to the ground unconscious or something.
The feedback I was getting about Domination was that it would be too easy to kill your Dominated victim for free, in addition to doing all kinds of station-havoc activities along the way. My goal was to make it basically impossible for you to kill the Dominated victim directly. If the timer was stationary, you could cause an incoming death right before the timer ran out. If you didn't match the Dominated person's damage, you could kill them without killing yourself. Etc.
This isn't purely necessary for it to function, but I wanted it to be something that would not instantly take somebody out of the round without any control, and to have to watch themselves do it.
I won't get into all changes currently in the works, but Domination will probably be reduced to a 3-point cost-- a utility spell that lets you cause immense chaos if used well.
APCUnlocked
commented
3 years ago I see what you mean with Domination and killing somebody easily, but it's no less different than me being able to unzip a revolver and brain you without you having a chance to do anything. In addition to that, if it only checks damage received, not chems injected there's a gorillion of bad chemicals you can sniff the moment your time is running out to kill him anyway, extra points if you do that after putting on a straightjacket and a muzzle. 10 minute cooldown, your own body being immobile AND the fact that you ash as well if the host dies? A really interesting and unique idea but it needs a bit less downsides, if you get what i'm saying?
kilozombie
commented
3 years ago I have made a pass on every Mutation to put them into a better role. For one, they almost universally cost one point. In addition, they are almost all buffed to a point of usefulness, aside from the ones which really needed a nerf/clarification. Feel free to check out the document again--
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UXgQdQyDjNpbppVeFF9S2wjxT4r5cF1sPkJZxC0bWxY/edit?usp=sharing
or check out my changelog.
https://pastebin.com/raw/qUjxi4V4
After this I'm going into full drive trying to figure out how to fix up Castes. For now I have some base ideas that I could use a hand on.
Some kind of mechanic based on having an income tax that grows based on the size of your Lair, giving you an infernal currency. Then, you spend this currency to sabotage the station or use manipulative spells, like astral projection ("Corporate Hologram") or other manners of fuckery. More spells and theme around being the aristocracy, the CEO of the station.
No more Artifacts, their abilities will stay as written, except Ambush which will probably be reworked. The main gimmick is that you can constantly change your abilities and Mutations at will while in your Lair using Chimera. Basically, you get to be an ever-changing threat, at the cost of not having the most powerful Caste abilities. How exploitable is this?
Binding Ritual revamped as mentioned earlier, so you can see antag preferences. Possibly an ability relating to memory wipes if both parties opt in, but not as consequence for denying the thralling. Grow power by having more Thralls, but some way of stunning people easily to get them to your Lair? Maybe an extremely powerful, long-cooldown stun if somebody wanders into your Lair, so you set a trap and wait for people?
I have the least confidence in this one. The vague thought is a ton of cool artifacts and abilities which you can mix and match and use, but which all have a limited charge. You have to recharge by standing in the Blood Fountain. More Castlevania-inspired abilities and theme, but I'm not sure how to balance it all, considering if you have to recharge in the Fountain too often your Lair will be easily revealed, and if you never have to recharge, it'll be inherently pretty OP.
Any thoughts on these concepts before I get to work actually setting them into stone?
gurfan
commented
1 year ago Is there a way I can get ahold of the .dmi files for this project? I've had an interest in bringing this back from the grave (ha) for a while.
kilozombie
commented
1 year ago Is there a way I can get ahold of the .dmi files for this project? I've had an interest in bringing this back from the grave (ha) for a while.
absolutely brother, here is a transparent .png but let me know if you need anything else. good luck!
gurfan
commented
1 year ago Is there a way I can get ahold of the .dmi files for this project? I've had an interest in bringing this back from the grave (ha) for a while.
absolutely brother, here is a transparent .png but let me know if you need anything else. good luck!
Thank you!
A design document for a proposed new Vampire rework titled V2. To summarize the goals:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UXgQdQyDjNpbppVeFF9S2wjxT4r5cF1sPkJZxC0bWxY/edit?usp=sharing
I've shared this with a half-dozen people to seek advice and rework mechanics. It's gonna be important to get more feedback on possibly overpowered or underpowered mechanics, as well as advice on the overall structure of the new gamemode. I'm not a coder, but I was able to do spritework for most abilities. This is not going to go anywhere unless people volunteer to do coding work, and if it dies before then, that's okay. I had a good time just trying to rework this gamemode into a version that isn't so shit.
If you're interested, feel free to give the design document a read. If you'd like to contribute any coding or spriting work, it would be massively appreciated. Thanks.
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