The entire blood-drinking mechanic sucks.

[Iamnuff]

I posted this as a comment in the thread about the latest update, but i'm making a thread for it itself for increased visibility.

The problem with the blood-drinking mechanic is that it's genuinely awful to use, for multiple reasons.

First of all, almost all attacks are AOE and the only way to drink someone's blood is to bring them near death without killing them, but sucking blood takes multiple seconds and you get no Iframes while sucking, so if you do it on someone who has allies, you'll just die.

So you'll often end up killing your intended target while trying to clear out his allies.
Edit: Sucking blood has a long cooldown too, so if you accidentally bite the wrong person, go ♥♥♥♥ yourself, I guess.

Second, Blood is a temp buff that wears off far too soon, and completely vanishes if you die, so there's absolutely zero point spending hours seeking out the coveted 100% blood of the type that you want, because you'll just lose it shortly anyway.

I've never engaged with the prisoner mechanic, since they just die of depression anyway after you feed on them a couple of times. It always felt like a huge waste of time for a very minor buff.
And i'm not going to play a fishing minigame in a vampire game to feed my prisoners for me so that they *don't get sad*
That's not what i boot up a game about an evil vampire for.

The entire blood mechanic feels really annoying and arbitrary to use. It's all makework for no serious benefit, so me and my friends just chow down on whoever's nearby when we start getting hungry (or come back from a respawn) and then completely ignore it
If a boss is too hard for us, we just bang our heads against it until we get through with brute force.

That feels much better than seeking out a powerful blood-type to fight a boss with and then dying on the first attempt and all that prep being for nothing.

Temporary buffs are already trash. A temp-buff that takes this long to acquire and then vanishes in ten irl minutes isn't even worth considering.

Your entire blood-drinking mechanic wants a total rethink/overhaul.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by Iamnuff:

I've never engaged with the prisoner mechanic, since they just die of depression anyway after you feed on them a couple of times. It always felt like a huge waste of time for a very minor buff.
And i'm not going to play a fishing minigame in a vampire game to feed my prisoners for me so that they *don't get sad*
That's not what i boot up a game about an evil vampire for.

Here's your real problem. You can get everything you want, but you ignore it and then blame the game for it.

Send your servants to get fish if you can't be bothered to get them yourself. An unlimited source of the best blood is waiting for you if you put in the effort.

[Iamnuff]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Originally posted by Iamnuff:

I've never engaged with the prisoner mechanic, since they just die of depression anyway after you feed on them a couple of times. It always felt like a huge waste of time for a very minor buff.
And i'm not going to play a fishing minigame in a vampire game to feed my prisoners for me so that they *don't get sad*
That's not what i boot up a game about an evil vampire for.

Here's your real problem. You can get everything you want, but you ignore it and then blame the game for it.

Send your servants to get fish if you can't be bothered to get them yourself. An unlimited source of the best blood is waiting for you if you put in the effort.

Just because it's possible doesn't change the fact that it still sucks.

[( ͡° o ͡°)]

Originally posted by Iamnuff:

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Here's your real problem. You can get everything you want, but you ignore it and then blame the game for it.

Send your servants to get fish if you can't be bothered to get them yourself. An unlimited source of the best blood is waiting for you if you put in the effort.

Just because it's possible doesn't change the fact that it still sucks.

Yea, "I don't use it very often and I don't like it, so I am a perfect person to comment on that topic" kind of guy.

[Bomoo]

Originally posted by Iamnuff:

almost all attacks are AOE and the only way to drink someone's blood is to bring them near death without killing them, but sucking blood takes multiple seconds and you get no Iframes while sucking, so if you do it on someone who has allies, you'll just die.

I think by your own admission you're new to the game, and so even if they removed the blood drinking mechanic you're describing, you would still need to do what I'm about to describe for capturing prisoners.

The spear is one of your best friends when it comes to capturing prisoners or keeping high quality juice bags alive. As you pointed out, almost all attacks are AoE, but not all. Find the attacks that aren't AoE and use those to surgically remove the juice bag's friends so you can drink or capture at leisure.

Yes it sucks, it's a vampire game and vampires suck.

Keep trying and you'll get better at it.

[Bomoo]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Send your servants to get fish if you can't be bothered to get them yourself. An unlimited source of the best blood is waiting for you if you put in the effort.

Correct, that is one of the better ways to score fish. Another way is getting into the habit of checking merchants for fish whenever you happen to be passing, and cleaning them out of their stonks. There simply isn't anything much to spend copper coins on after a point, and buying fish in the farbane woods is a solid way to burn some of your copper coinage off.

It's completely understandable not wanting to fish, especially since the fishing minigame is barely present and exceptionally lacklustre when compared against the better fishing games out there, and even against something like wow of warcrap it feels uninspired.

[Yumeko]

impressive way of showing us you have close to 0 understanding of the game.

Imagine feeding on a mob with other mobs around of dangerous level. Just clear mobs to isolate the one you want to feed on like everybody else lol. Most things are simply not aoe.

[weirdee]

The game has multiple tools for being able to separate your target from others, but I get it can be frustrating. Transporting prisoners in particular is annoying up until you get prisoner pokeballs, anyway.

You need to feed them food that will lower their stress levels to make proper use of them, but one vial of high grade blood blows all of your other options out of the water, really. 100% scholar blood in particular is very clutch and will get you out of so many bad situations.

[Mia]

Based on the original post, i am assuming he means early game. Keeping prisoners gets proportionally easier the further into the game you get. To add to that, you can keep "refilling" your current blood without finding a new mob by killing and drinking a rift boss

[Muu]

My friends and I have also hated the mechanic since we got the game. We've often ranted about how it'd feel more fun to make it something you grind. Ie every source of blood you consume gives you exp to that particular blood type. Instead of finding high quality blood for their purity bonuses, youd be finding them for EXP in that blood type and potentially getting a gem-like bonus to a stat from that particular NPC. As you level up your vampire's concentration/mastery of that blood type you get the usual bonuses. Then there would have to be some kind of interaction at your base or consumable that allows for you to change between your active blood type like a character class.

[Iamnuff]

Originally posted by Moomi:

My friends and I have also hated the mechanic since we got the game. We've often ranted about how it'd feel more fun to make it something you grind. Ie every source of blood you consume gives you exp to that particular blood type. Instead of finding high quality blood for their purity bonuses, youd be finding them for EXP in that blood type and potentially getting a gem-like bonus to a stat from that particular NPC. As you level up your vampire's concentration/mastery of that blood type you get the usual bonuses. Then there would have to be some kind of interaction at your base or consumable that allows for you to change between your active blood type like a character class.

Collecting hearts and crushing them in a special type of blood-press to get potions of that blood type would also be fine. Something you can collect and then I guess mix with the new mixing table?

What blood-types/qualities you can find being pure RNG would be fine, if you could store them for later.
Them expiring is the problem.

[Iamnuff]

Originally posted by Yumeko:

impressive way of showing us you have close to 0 understanding of the game.

Imagine feeding on a mob with other mobs around of dangerous level. Just clear mobs to isolate the one you want to feed on like everybody else lol. Most things are simply not aoe.

"Isolate the one you want."

You can't see someone's blood quality until you're close enough to aggro them, and like I said, almost every attack in the game is AOE.
Don't talk nonsense.

If you stumble across someone with high-quality blood, it'll be by pure chance, and you'll probably notice _right_ before you kill them.
It's a bad mechanic.

Originally posted by weirdee:

The game has multiple tools for being able to separate your target from others, but I get it can be frustrating. Transporting prisoners in particular is annoying up until you get prisoner pokeballs, anyway.

You need to feed them food that will lower their stress levels to make proper use of them, but one vial of high grade blood blows all of your other options out of the water, really. 100% scholar blood in particular is very clutch and will get you out of so many bad situations.

I know you can feed prisoners fish to keep them happy, but i'm not playing a fishing minigame in my vampire game.
And as you've said, capturing prisoners (especially rare, high-value prisoners) sucks ass until you get the ability to just teleport them home.

[Bomoo]

Originally posted by Iamnuff:

You can't see someone's blood quality until you're close enough to aggro them,

Blood hunger.

Asking for advice and then immediately rejecting it as "nonsense" instead of being grateful. You have the solutions to your issues for when you're willing to listen.

[Sparow]

Originally posted by Iamnuff:

Your entire blood-drinking mechanic wants a total rethink/overhaul.

Sorry my friend your post is way to uninformed on how the game works. I either think you are trolling us or you have a very short attention span. With prisoner floors and fish you can very quickly get 100% of most all blood types filling up cabinets giving you a near limitless supply.

As for how long the blood lasts if I'm not mistaken the server setting allow you to also adjust that. Also Duskcallers let you instantly send the prisoner back to your base so I'm uncertain of what to make from your complaint/

[Iamnuff]

Originally posted by Sparow:

Originally posted by Iamnuff:

Your entire blood-drinking mechanic wants a total rethink/overhaul.

Sorry my friend your post is way to uninformed on how the game works. I either think you are trolling us or you have a very short attention span. With prisoner floors and fish you can very quickly get 100% of most all blood types filling up cabinets giving you a near limitless supply.

As for how long the blood lasts if I'm not mistaken the server setting allow you to also adjust that. Also Duskcallers let you instantly send the prisoner back to your base so I'm uncertain of what to make from your complaint/

I know exactly how the game works. Y'all are just in denial about how ass this mechanic is.
The fact that you can _eventually_ render it a non-issue doesn't change the fact that it sucks, it's not fun and it adds nothing to the gameplay experience.

The only positive interaction you have with the entire mechanic is when you finally have enough resources and a high enough tech-level to essentially remove it from your game permanently.
That's not engaging gameplay.

[Midnight Meows]

There are many things about this game that I wish were different, this is one of them. For example, they designed a vampire game where sneaking up to sleeping people to feed on them is somehow not a mechanic. We don't manipulate from the shadows or do any number of other vampire-like activities. We're all front line combatants and it's kinda meh.

Butm this is a PvP building game first and foremost, a survival game second, and a vampire game third. The vampire shtick is more of a motif than a focus; it's a means to an end.

This isn't the game for me but I bought this months ago and didn't play it much at the time. It's far too late to refund today. Not that it's a bad game, it's simply not what I was hoping for months ago. But that's on me for buying it and not looking at it much when a friend picked it up and then didn't touch it again.

This is probably not the game for you either, OP.