How would you fix the Crimson Curse?

[Xyarvius]

Most of us think, that the Crimcon Curse is not a very fun mechanic as it is right now. How would you change it, so it is still challenging und unique, but more fun and less frustrating and annoying?

Good ideas so far:
- reduce infection chance - maybe even restrict infection to medium and boss enemies
- less vampires outside the Crimson Court
- buff the curse - lifesteal?, less debuffs?, less random actions of infected heroes?

So the general idea seems to be ... make the CC more rare but make it more unique, more of a trade off.

Your ideas?

[My Name is Mud]

Stop costing me control of my characters, for starters. The random punching team mates in the face/blighting each other is trash.

It really does need something to make it "fun" in some way, but I'm not sure what. Honestly, I've turned the Crimson Court module off on my new game until they figure something out. Once you discount the 200 or so upthumbs the DLC got in the first 6 hours of release (you know, before anyone had actually played the content), it's clocking about 50% positive since, so obviously I'm not alone there.

[lessthanoff]

I'd really like to see less of the crimson court enemies in other areas, maybe by half. That way, the crimson curse won't feel so overbearing and inescapable. They could just bump up the invitation drop-rate to compensate. I'd also appreciate it if heroes with the crimson curse wouldn't cause stress or act on their own while they are sated. When they're craving and in bloodlust, I can understand them flipping out here and there, but not when they're in their "normal" state.

[GGE1 Except Legion]

Make the curse meaningful by only allowing a small number of enemies to inflict it. Right now whole teams get inflicted by wandering mosquitos and its super annoying. I was actually just now searching the forum to see if there's a way to disable the Crimson Court mechanics after activating it in a game. I seriously regret having activated it in my game.

I think the number of enemies that inflict the curse should consist solely of certain very powerful enemies who should be feared (or explicitly sought out in desire of creating a cursed character and hoping you survive.) As it is the curse feels less like a Vampire thing and more like a Zombie invasion.

[!?!]

I want to be able to remove it, if nothing else.
A way that doesn't require me to dig deep into the late game through a horde of enemies that can and will infect your entire roster and which will also spill into all the other areas.

And how about we don't do that instakill thing anymore?
Wasn't the deaths door mechanic put in place specifically to prevent that?

Also why can't my vampires do vampire things?
Like get a 5th ability that leeches life or is class specific when in bloodlust.
Or how about just grab some dudes off of the stage coach and drink their blood instead of only drinking that specific kind of blood enemies have to drop which makes it this awkward kind of resource management thing this game was obviously not built for.

[Shiroi Ren]

I just farm other dungeons till I get very rary trinkets that give disease resistance. This way I hope the chances of getting CC would be lower. Since it is disease...

[Reffy]

I've just defeated the baron. Since my whole roster was cursed, I had to deal with the curse unfortunately.

I would like to see tougher enemies, instead of handicaps to the player.

[Shirome Artiste]

For me the biggest issues with the curse is that it:
A: Is FAR too easy to get people infected with it. Not to mention once you've done the first Courtyard quest the mobs that can cause infection start spawning bloody everywhere so there's literally nowhere safe.

I would change this by drastically reducing the chance of infection by non-boss monsters(Especially the mosquitos, eeeeeugh.) and possibly removing infection attacks from some non-boss monsters as well.

B: The curse isn't a tradeoff, it's a HUGE negative. If the curse were a real tradeoff it would at least add an interesting bit of decisionmaking. Now it's just bad.

Why is the curse bad?
All but the first tier of hunger WILL cause characters to lose their turn doing something negative. This is a big deal and a surefire way to disable the courtyard for some.
The curse is a big pile of negative modifiers. Not a buff X debuff Y type-deal.
Bloodlust is a RNG fiesta that still isn't that great. Wanted to get some HUGE DAMAGE in? Sorry, your hero ranted for 2 turns then turned around and smashed your vestal's face in.


What needs to be changed here?

First off: Ditch the random negative actions from all but wasting level. It's a huge malus to have even a 10% chance of "pass turn" let alone something truly negative.

Second: Make the curse a true tradeoff. Vampirism should have some benefits, right?
Whether that be lifesteal, disease resistance, bonus speed, extra damage, dodge maybe even extra prot. Make it so it isn't just a big pile of negative stat modifiers.


Because right now there is absolutely ZERO reason to try and get the curse on a character. Rather than making the curse an integral part of a character's kit it is just a ball and chain dragging them down or possibly getting them fired from the roster instead.

[Enfild]

Eh... I would remove health penalty on passive state and it would make it more apealing for me.
But i woul not be against total rework of it, it is just kinda boring right now.

[Sad Pug]

Originally posted by Shirome Artiste:

Whether that be lifesteal, disease resistance, bonus speed, extra damage, dodge maybe even extra prot. Make it so it isn't just a big pile of negative stat modifiers.

It actually does give them speed, some small dodge and disease resistance.
And you know what? If that was it (with ability to use exclusive trinkets, obviously), that would be totally fine, problem is that there are way too many negatives to it. Random actions, seriously? In a game that already loves to screw you over with random actions already, be it a boss, stress or quirk? Was another one really necessary? And stress bursts too, really? When you already added another stress dmg "horror"? And not only they can die from that crap, but also infect everyone else in hamlet unless you handicap yourself and only heal infected?
Oh, but then you send uninfected on the mission, they get infected, because you didn't go far enough, and the cycle continues...
It's better to show infected the door rather than manage them, because curse now is really like a ball and chain. And I almost forgot the fanatic... So yeah, what are the cons of curse?
25% dmg, +4-7 dodge, bleed, blight, stun resist and that's when they have blood. In passive, they have amazing +1 speed... Wow.
And let's not forget the fact that your backpack/inventory is not bigger and you need to bring with you damn blood to the dungeon, taking away some space you desperatedly need.

Leave the buffs as they are, but remove the random action/stress BS with the ability to heal the curse after beating the first quest, but with slightly higher price. And with bigger progress, make it become cheaper. Or even better, make new building all together to heal CC and maybe even add some small buffs for infected. That would be a better trade off, rather than annoying as it is now.

[Wyngale]

Lower the chance of getting infected by 90%. Right now it's just inescapable.

[Slamadam]

somehow change the rate people get infected in. either less spawns outside of the court, or lower chance to get infected... i barely have any character even hitting resolve lvl 4 without beeing infected

[wusch]

I myself like the Curse as it is and it isn't really inecapeable. With self marking, disease resistance and quickly eliminating the main infecting enemies it can be handled I think. And on the plus side it actually forces me to use the tavern as I have to seperate the infected and not infected heroes for Stress relief.

[Shirome Artiste]

Originally posted by Dave Arnold:

-snip-

Indeed, I was referring to the passive effects.

At passive effect the curse gives:
BAD
-5% stun/blight/bleed resist.
-10% maxhealth.
-5% virtue chance
GOOD
+1 speed.

THIS IS TERRIBLE. Like, absolutely, incomprehensibly terrible. I would NEVER EVER EVEEEER keep someone with a trait that would do this.

It only gets worse after.

Craving gives:
BAD
-10% stun/blight/bleed resist
-20% maxhealth
-10% virtue chance
GOOD
+2 speed

Also, the character can at random: attack a teammate, stress the party, pass turns, stress people interacting with curios, deny healing/buffs, stress and damage self.

Of course, then you can give blood to trigger bloodlust
Bloodlust gives +25% damage, +15% blight/bleed/stun resist and +4 speed.

POSITIVES ALL AROUND... Except your character may or may not do any or all of the following: Deal stress damage to the party, move forward, punch a teammate in the face and possibly inflicting bleed/stun/debuff depending on the offender, deny heals/buffs and of course stress teammates a bit more.


I'm not even going to bother describing the wasting stat because it's basically an even worse form of craving.

So, to recap:
You basically have "all the bad quirks" except you can get more bad quirks, at any given time.
You can go berserk and roll the dice, praying you don't murderize your squishies if you roll a nat1.
You can infect your other poor sods by accidentally putting them in the same room.
Oh, and even trash mobs have a ~50% chance of inflicting the disease.


Have fu~un!


Seriously. This is NOT appealing in the slightest. Even if I discount blood as a resource in its entirity(Which, by delaying the first court quest, is doable allowing you to stack hundreds of it before having a single vampire on your roster.) this is a TERRIBLE proposition.

Why:
First off, you nerf every infected character, and with how easy it is to get infected that means your squishy, non-hitty characters get infected too and have literally 0 use for the berserk button.
Second: On EVERY stage that isn't passive your every move becomes a RNG fiesta just to see if they don't do something boneheaded and screw your party over. That might not be a bad thing at lv1 dungeons, but if your whole team skips turn against a buncha giants you're toast.
Third: Every moment you are NOT using berserk mode you are basically playing with nerfed characters.
Fourth: The Fanatic can and will screw you over completely in a couple of dungeons, forcing either teamwipes or retreats from the dungeon. YAY!

Seriously though. The curse needs fewer negatives and more positives.

[GGE1 Except Legion]

I just wish the curse had more meaning than "One time this hero failed a Dodge roll versus a Mosquito."The idea of vampire stuff is kind of cool and I was thinking okay I might even rarely end up with a vampire character I have to manage. But the curse can be acquired so easily from peon enemies. I know this is a game where characters can die from a string of bad rolls but it really just makes me wish I could uninstall the Crimson Court content. I installed a mod in the meantime to lower the infection chance. Honestly just kind of want to disable it, or only enable it on a small handful of dangerous monsters.

[Slippery When Dead]

i like the Curse. Of course it's really annyoing when we face the Curse-Enemies outside the Courtyard so often, when infected Heroes attack their mates, when we face the Fanatic because of the Curse and so on, and so on.

But that's just how the game works! It isn't your friend and won't ever take you by the hand. So please stop asking for changes, just to make your own playthrough easier. That's not DD.