guns?

[PainKiller]

well... simple question about the modern vamps

[Clever Name]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Gesuma:

You are so right :(
I wonder how boss battles would even work? Modern games tend to make it unique in some way and often challenging (not what we had in BL1 other than the werewolf, which wasn't actually combat).

I have to think they wanted feedback without admitting it openly. They certainly couldn't believe the warehouse scene was going to be wildly popular and impressive to a lot of people. We only had two abilities to use, we had no consumables, so it was as barebones a demonstration as possible.

Anyway, yes, besides a boss fight, I want to see combat against other vampires. Mortals are dull as enemies, unless they're hunters or otherwise well-armed and trained.

If the number of playable clans is so limited, it does also make me wonder how varied enemy vampires will be. For instance, can we fight Gangrel? Will they have Protean? If we fight a Nosferatu, will they have Animalism? Will they have all the disciplines that we can't use in our player character?

[Gesuma]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Clever Name:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Gesuma:

You are so right :(
I wonder how boss battles would even work? Modern games tend to make it unique in some way and often challenging (not what we had in BL1 other than the werewolf, which wasn't actually combat).

I have to think they wanted feedback without admitting it openly. They certainly couldn't believe the warehouse scene was going to be wildly popular and impressive to a lot of people. We only had two abilities to use, we had no consumables, so it was as barebones a demonstration as possible.

Anyway, yes, besides a boss fight, I want to see combat against other vampires. Mortals are dull as enemies, unless they're hunters or otherwise well-armed and trained.

If the number of playable clans is so limited, it does also make me wonder how varied enemy vampires will be. For instance, can we fight Gangrel? Will they have Protean? If we fight a Nosferatu, will they have Animalism? Will they have all the disciplines that we can't use in our player character?

It is easier in single player games to make and balance unique skills for enemies, so it is possible. The question is how high a priority it will be as I see the lag of content share with us and likely cut content as a sign they are not given the time they need to make the game as planned.

Though, what they revealed showed they have more than only generic enemies, even if the manikins were not impressive in their differences.

[Clever Name]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Gesuma:

The question is how high a priority it will be as I see the lag of content share with us and likely cut content as a sign they are not given the time they need to make the game as planned.

Though, what they revealed showed they have more than only generic enemies, even if the manikins were not impressive in their differences.

They still have over six months to fulfill a vague 2024 release date. I'd bet it won't be released any earlier than November.

In theory they could still change some systems. Not dramatically, but for instance, rework how much feeding is needed; that could be as simple as reducing 'blood pip' costs per ability use. I think 3 is too high; maybe balance it with a short cooldown (10-15 seconds) system to prevent spamming abilities.

In terms of what they can show us, they could wait until as late as 1-2 months before release to show anything in real depth. That's what I originally thought they'd do.

I've bought several games lately where I didn't pay attention to development news, and only saw detailed gameplay footage about 4-6 weeks before release. I really don't see the point of showing anything besides trailers before then; showing unpolished, simplistic gameplay from some nebulous post-alpha, pre-beta stage, doesn't do any game any favors.

In many ways I feel this year-long slow release of info makes people more impatient and less satisfied with what's shown. It's a bad marketing concept that should be abandoned.

[Gesuma]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Clever Name:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Gesuma:

The question is how high a priority it will be as I see the lag of content share with us and likely cut content as a sign they are not given the time they need to make the game as planned.

Though, what they revealed showed they have more than only generic enemies, even if the manikins were not impressive in their differences.

They still have over six months to fulfill a vague 2024 release date. I'd bet it won't be released any earlier than November.

In theory they could still change some systems. Not dramatically, but for instance, rework how much feeding is needed; that could be as simple as reducing 'blood pip' costs per ability use. I think 3 is too high; maybe balance it with a short cooldown (10-15 seconds) system to prevent spamming abilities.

In terms of what they can show us, they could wait until as late as 1-2 months before release to show anything in real depth. That's what I originally thought they'd do.

I've bought several games lately where I didn't pay attention to development news, and only saw detailed gameplay footage about 4-6 weeks before release. I really don't see the point of showing anything besides trailers before then; showing unpolished, simplistic gameplay from some nebulous post-alpha, pre-beta stage, doesn't do any game any favors.

In many ways I feel this year-long slow release of info makes people more impatient and less satisfied with what's shown. It's a bad marketing concept that should be abandoned.

Well such changes is basically just balancing, which I agree is indeed what they are working on. I think they are more or less there with Haqim and Brujah, but the Tremere and especially Ventrue - I think that is where their balance issues would be at the moment, which is why we have seen so little from them.

Oh and yeah I agree they decided to reveal stuff way too early. They could had given us a trailer and told us we would see more in years time when they are ready to show more. This drip feeding has been more troubling than helpful.
I am almost hoping they would do an early access release with a 3 years plan on changes, fixes and new features as well as some serious communications with fans on what changes and added features they would like to see focus on doing that period, a bit like what Larian did with Baldur's Gate, but I guess Paradox are going to stick with their milking what they can plan, instead of building their fan base first.

[Clever Name]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Gesuma:

Well such changes is basically just balancing, which I agree is indeed what they are working on. I think they are more or less there with Haqim and Brujah, but the Tremere and especially Ventrue - I think that is where their balance issues would be at the moment, which is why we have seen so little from them.

Referring back to your previous mention of how boss fights would work, I'm not sure a conventional boss fight is feasible under the current game system in BL2.

In the original game, we had the Odious Chalice and bagged blood of various potency. I never needed either until the final battles, like against the Sheriff or Xiao, at which point I used them a lot; mainly for healing instead of regaining blood points.

In any case, we can't have a 1v1 boss fight in BL2 because abilities are far too costly. Which means either we'll need consumable items--or something like the Odious Chalice--that give us a lot of blood pips per usage, or we'll need a constant stream of low-level thugs who are present in the boss fights to act as refills.

Whatever the case, without secondary weapons, it's going to make boss fights pretty similar to each other. When we're not using abilities, all we can do is punch; which means BL2 bosses can't be designed like Xiao, since it was practically suicide to melee her.

If I recall, TCR made it so dodging towards an enemy while they're attacking acts as a parry, or something similar. I'm guessing that will have more value against bosses or mini-bosses rather than average enemies. And I would assume we can only parry melee attacks, not ranged.

[Anvos]

To be fair a certain party is usually caught off guard or horribly overconfident, for a kindred fight to be a straight 1v1.

Phyre unlike the Bloodlines 1 protagonist doesn't have the luck of being underestimated due to their age and people expecting them to be a higher generation than they were.

[Clever Name]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Anvos:

To be fair a certain party is usually caught off guard or horribly overconfident, for a kindred fight to be a straight 1v1.

Phyre unlike the Bloodlines 1 protagonist doesn't have the luck of being underestimated due to their age and people expecting them to be a higher generation than they were.

All or most of the boss fights in BL1 required you to fight through a lot of regular enemies to reach the 'boss area', so it's not like the bosses were unprotected. Several bosses had 'minion' helpers, like Andrei in Hollywood, Bishop Vick in the plague quest, and Xiao with her mini-tentacle clones. My point was that none of those minions could be fed from. So instead of making the fights easier by giving us a steady blood supply of mortal cannon fodder, the fights were harder because we had multiple enemies and none could be fed from.

BL2 can't give us the same kind of boss fights, because we'd burn up our blood pips so quickly that we'd be powerless in the first 30 seconds. If they mix mortals/ghouls in the boss fights, the end result will be an easier fight. Especially because we're invulnerable while we're drinking, and time effectively stops.

[Clever Name]

The problem with the entire 'blood pip' system is that even if they lower costs to 1-2 pips per ability, it doesn't change the fundamental need to feed constantly. Let's say a Tremere's vitae dart ability costs 1 pip. We can use it exactly one time before needing to feed again.

Under the old BL1 system, we could use a cheap 'ability' many times before feeding. Celerity, Auspex, Fortitude, Potence, Obfuscate, etc, were all cheap. Everything was 1 blood per use, regardless of level, except for Dominate, Dementation, Thaumaturgy, and blood buff.

Between low cost and the timer system, we could economically use multiple disciplines, and refresh them, for as long as most fights lasted. Feeding was usually only necessary once at the end of a fight, to refill so you're fresh for a later fight.

Even in V5 rules, there's a chance that disciplines don't cost any hunger to activate. While it's overall less generous than the V20 blood pool system, it's still far more generous than what's in BL2; because many disciplines in V5 last for an entire scene, they could easily run 5+ minutes, in combat or otherwise.

[Gesuma]

Remember the final boss fight in BL1? "Bonus" weak enemies would show up now and then so you could feed if you needed to.

They can also do like other games do during boss fights give us something that increase our pip or otherwise recharge our powers, when we have managed to survive a certain part of the boss battle - our pip could get boosts, something similar to adrenaline boosts doing the boss fight.

[Gesuma]

Hell, an oversimplified version with blood bags dropping and our character quickly chugging the bags.

[PERFECT DARKSIM]

You expect something that complex from devs that specialize in only Walking Sims? They barely have melee combat down and it shows. We're a few months away and still barely gameplay.

[Gesuma]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von PERFECT DARKSIM:

You expect something that complex from devs that specialize in only Walking Sims? They barely have melee combat down and it shows. We're a few months away and still barely gameplay.

You need better informed material...
The team you are thinking about are making this game:
Still Wakes the Deep
TCR build a new team, hiring over 70 people to work on BL2 with many RPG vets, though I am sure you do not care.

[Polyedra]

Guess I never really did buy in for either guns or other weaponry, rather the vampire experience. And I figure being truly amazingly strong and fast, and tough, there's no need for guns. There's also no need for it from a gameplay perspective. It was more a crutch back then too as there was little interesting going on in the game. Both from a looting perspective and a pure gameplay one. Imagine Bl1 hand-to-hand being the only option, Remarkable Intelligence; now that would've been a disaster. See how it works pretty much perfectly for Bl2 though, so some steps forward.

[Humble]

True, like superman or superhero or supervillian, they often don't need gun as gun is useless when one had greater power than gun itself, only thing gun might be useful if they weak, but still useless fighting other who had superpower whatever bulletproof, or super fast, or super healing or mind control, gun only work on weak mortal but not work well vs one who had superpower.

[PERFECT DARKSIM]

Path of Neo still had guns even though he became the Messiah.

There's no excuse not to have guns except for lazy writing and development.

They're taking the corporate approach like every other cookie cutter game.