So, outfits...

[BanDHMO]

Does anyone else find the whole idea of outfits being a big part of a VtM game really weird? I mean, sure, letting the player dress up their character, fine, but for it to determine game mechanics significantly? I hope they are not planning something like "I don't talk to you unless you are wearing a suit" BS.

There are Nos and Gangrel, and other types who barely resemble a human at all, and we're worrying what clothes the character wears? Just seems weird. You'd think most eternal creatures should be way past stuff like that and more interested in the substance/utility of the creature before them.

[BanDHMO]

Originally posted by W.R. Winter:

with the outfits they've revealed so far the only game mechanic I can see being implemented is every NPC laughing out loud whenever they see you

:D I hope it's mod friendly enough for this to become a thing.

[[Countess]Vol†z]

It's a dumb mechanic if that is the mechanic. I hope it's not and they take a CP2077 2.0 approach. I really don't like it when fashion has stats without transmog. Maybe what style a character wears gives small bonuses, but a Clan should not 100% effect what you can and cannot wear.

[LotR[Henchman]]

No... it generally would make sense. Think Fallout New Vegas and being able to disguise yourself or some such. And it would make sense for some human bouncer trying to stop the guy in completly dirty clothes from entering a club or something.

But it needs to be well done and not overdone - as otherwise it becomes a "inventory juggling" and with games it often ends up breaking the immersion, as no one can be arsed to run back to some toilette/hideout to changes clothes so switchig clothes 5 meters from the bouncer to get in without a hassle? Yeah nah....

And so i'd prefer ability/skill/discipline checks or clan reactions 100% over NPCs reacting to clothes ;)

[BanDHMO]

Originally posted by LotRHenchman:

Think Fallout New Vegas

Fair enough, if it's just uniforms as disguise then I get that. I thought they mean more than that. I guess we'll see what it's actually like when it comes out, but it sounds weird to me.

[Anvos]

I really don't get the OP as one of the key things of the Masquerade is your ability to not needlessly attract the wrong type of attention to yourself, and thus dressing the part to a location for what message you want to send is important.

Take for an example a scientist

One person is in khaki pants, a button up t-shirt, and a lab coat and the other is in torn up jeans and a baseball print shirt covered in burger stains, which one would get taken more seriously as a scientist.

[Coffee Break Hero]

Originally posted by Blackdragon:

LOL, they literally stole the Tremere look from Bloodhunt!

https://bloodhunt.com/en-us/clans/tremere/scholar

Everything, the trench coat, the leggings, the patterns, even the short hair and ridiculous red hair dye.

They have zero creativity!

This seems to be the correct answer

[Coffee Break Hero]

The problem isn't the use of outfits, but that the outfits and the character design are not appealing. feel like a mix of bland and uncanny.

[BanDHMO]

Originally posted by Anvos:

Take for an example a scientist

One person is in khaki pants, a button up t-shirt, and a lab coat and the other is in torn up jeans and a baseball print shirt covered in burger stains, which one would get taken more seriously as a scientist.

Both? Don't know about you, but I've seen my share of sloppy-dressed scientists as well as sharply dressed ones.

But this isn't about us or scientists. It's about whether a vampire would be perceived differently enough based on the outfit to justify a separate game mechanic. It's a freaking corpse, who needs to spend supernatural resources to appear fully human. To me that's a bigger deal than whether the suit is custom tailored or store brand.

In the context of some specific quests where you have to infiltrate a lab, so you dress up like a scientist, it has been done in many games, but it's not something I'd tout as a cool feature unless the scope goes way beyond that, and IMO it shouldn't.

[Coffee Break Hero]

I think it should be a combined score. Like, a very low humanity vampire wouldn't be able to infiltrate anywhere without supernatural means.
But if you have a good humanity score, and a good social score you can use, outfit can definitely give a small, commentable bonus.

Wouldn't it be funny if a torrie in BL1 would be able to use max level presence and a unique outfit to fool chuck into thinking he owns the place?

[Chroniver]

Out of interest: where was this info about outfits released?

[LotR[Henchman]]

Originally posted by Chroniver:

Out of interest: where was this info about outfits released?

https://youtu.be/uwXf5nMa-UI?feature=shared&t=670 - it's talked about how it might change interactions, before that quite in the beginning he talks about the different outfits.

[CapJackRackham]

Also...

Taken from the Tremere clan reveal on the website..


"Image: Render of female Phyre with one of the Tremere-styled outfits. All clans can earn all outfits."

So it's definitely not clan specific clothing...it's pre made clothing non clan specific.

So a backwards step from bloodlines 1!

[CapJackRackham]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by CapJackRackham:

So a backwards step from bloodlines 1!

How is it a backwards step to let you wear whatever clothes you want?

Nobody said anything about this being a problem when the original build of the game told us we could choose our fashion style.

-------------------

Maybe I don't want my Elder Brujah to dress like some street trash gang member, and actually present themselves as the 'philosopher king' their clan pretends to be.

My apologies, that's not what I meant.

With bloodlines 1 you had your starting attire and then 3 new attires you could buy which gave increasing amour Vs decreasing dexterity. All items were unique to each character and then both male and female. That meant there were 7 clans, 14 characters and 56 unique outfits.

Now in the interest of customisation, I have no problem with interchanging the outfits (Even if it looks out of place on the clan you choose to place it on).

Where we have an issue is, the outfits will open dialogue options depending on what you wear.

So are we saying we are likely to have 6 clans (Inc DLC), 12 characters and 48 unique attires that can be interchangeable between clans?

I'm not saying we are likely to have 3 new attires as per bloodlines 1 armour that would grant us 48 unique outfits. But the point I'm making, the mechanic of having certain attire that will open new dialogue options says to me that we will have our starting outfit and then we will have attire we purchase in the game only there will be no need for individual unique clan attires because the same attire can be obtained by any clan. So I'm looking at there being a few unique outfits but not to the extent of what Bloodlines 1 have us.

Even if by some miracle they do invest the time and make 48+ unique outfits, the fact we can dress our vampire in attire that goes against the clan we choose is in complete opposition to the fact we have a single character irrelevant of clan.

It makes zero sense to give us a more customisable vampire in 1 aspect but less customisable in another.

This why it looks like a backwards step from the original, I'm not anticipating such an array of outfits for what will amount to 1 characters story.

And the icing on that cake...the plus patch for bloodlines 1 also added the unreleased content of being able to give your vampire a history that directly changed your vampires. Such options as:

True Brujah
Many blame the stereotype of the rebellious Brujah on Troile, the hot-blooded Methuselah whose progeny comprise the bulwark of modern Clan Brujah. You share no blood with Troile. As such, you are predisposed to learned idealism instead of belligerent iconoclasm.

Gender: Both
Bonus: Swap the priority order of your Attributes to Mental, Physical, Social.
Penalty: N/A

So with such a linear story of Phyre's, the unlikely event that we get to customise our vampire to this extent but will be given more outfits than the original bloodlines?

Hell...maybe it'll be the 1 thing the team surprises us with and proves me wrong.

[CapJackRackham]

Originally posted by W.R. Winter:

Originally posted by CapJackRackham:

Where we have an issue is, the outfits will open dialogue options depending on what you wear.

So are we saying we are likely to have 6 clans (Inc DLC), 12 characters and 48 unique attires that can be interchangeable between clans?

keep dreaming, it's gonna be closer to 5 clans, 1 character and 6 outfits. only 5 clans available in the base game, Phyre will not change meaningfully based on clan or gender choice, and there'll probably be 1 default clanless outfit.

also I'd reel in expectations for how they'll impact dialogue. remember this is wheel dialogue; it's far more likely that outfits will generate different NPC responses rather than opening up whole new dialogue branches. big difference.

Yeah I thought it was 4 clans in base plus 2 as DLC?

Either way, you are correct. That's the point I was making, we won't get the same or more than the original therefore it's a step backwards.

Forgive me but I'm not sure what the difference is between a wheel dialogue Vs whole new dialogue. What's the difference?

[CapJackRackham]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by CapJackRackham:

My apologies, that's not what I meant.

With bloodlines 1 you had your starting attire and then 3 new attires you could buy which gave increasing amour Vs decreasing dexterity. All items were unique to each character and then both male and female. That meant there were 7 clans, 14 characters and 56 outfits.

Now in the interest of customisation, I have no problem with interchanging the outfits (Even if it looks out of place on the clan you choose to place it on).

Where we have an issue is, the outfits will open dialogue options depending on what you wear.

Personally, I'm interested to see where this goes, and to hear more about the system. I've never seen a game before that has reactivity based on what you choose to wear in public, aside from maybe the Fable series, but that seemed barely noticeable.

If my understanding of the situation is correct, there will be some outfits which we might consider 'clan neutral' but may be thematically appropriate for certain stereotypes.

For example, I don't expect every biker / street outfit to have the Anarch / Brujah logo emblazoned on a patch like the one showcased so far, but such outfits might be more fitting to wear as a Brujah or Gangrel, than one of the higher clans.

Ahhh ok. That makes sense.