Vampire: Bloodlines

Malkavians are over powered,I support them being nerfed

It may or may not be, the devs have said that they're going to balance both respecting the source material while taking a more enlightened view of mental illness. Because the original Malkavian PC while amusing was very "lol!crazy" and there are ways that is problematic.

Plenty of tabletop players I know hate how loonie they made them,there's a difference between being bonkers and being flat out unpredictable bordering on psychotic

5th Edition stated that they've completely moved away from Malkavians being "realistic" mental illness and instead they are all insane solely because of their psychic powers.

Which I think was a good decision.

The 'lol!crazy' aspects were the weakest parts of the Malkavian playthrough, in my opinion. So if they do away with those for more of the insight conversation options, I definitely approve.

I wonder if any of following will be playable

Clan Assamite

Clan Followers of Set

Clan Giovanni

Clan Lasombra

Clan Ravnos

Clan Tzimisce

The devs have mentioned that extra clans will be added as FLC, so any of them could be added post-release even if they're not the vanilla clans.

Personally, I really want the opportunity to play as Clan Tzimisce. Inhuman vampire transhumanists who have the power to shape flesh is a really awesome concept, their alien worldview is just icing on the proverbial cake.

All Clans but Clan Ravnos and Clan Tzimisce have write-ups in 5th Edition.

Even if Hecata (Giovanni) is only in manuscript form.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 23rd 2019 at 10:16:16 AM

Wonder how broken the builds are gonna be if you play your cards right like the last game.

Malkavians always struck me as more like Delerium from Sandman - kooky, not quite in tune with reality but utterly certain of what she was seeing and therefore it just being normal.

Not giggly twitchy, but able to seriously look at someone and say "You are full of bees" and it actually MAKING sense. Oracle of Delphi weirdness.

The issue is people can't WRITE madness well without it being really OFF. "Madness" or mental illness is sometimes a person losing track of the world; or mood switching; or utter lack of empathy. A Malkavian in O Wo D could have "madness" manifest as psychopathy. kooky madness, such as talking to stop signs strikes me as more someone high or drunk.

The Malk should be prescient and written in a way that the PC knows whats happening EVEN IF THE PLAYER HASN'T twigged.

Almost like Deadpool breaking the 4th wall.

Not saying they should be comedic but that they should be unnerving. And it's hard to have a PLAYER character have that without actively impacting the player choices. Say madness was a mood swing or personality shift - imagine if your dialogue options SHIFTED all the time - so you COULDN'T choose some things at some random times.

In char for a Malk? Yes. Annoying for a player unless you REALLY bought into it? potentially (Especially the current gen who I feel sometimes dislike ANY restrictions on play at all - or maybe that's just developers now not wanting to restrict you at all)

double post

Edited by Ultimatum on Mar 24th 2019 at 4:09:47 PM

Gameplay interview,spoilers too

Edited by Ultimatum on Mar 24th 2019 at 4:09:18 PM

They could always go for the Lovecraftian "go mad from the revelation" route for the Malkavian. As long as they don't completely neuter Dementation.

So, it seems that they're going to charge $60 for this game, which is what the biggest and most expensive games tend to cost. The original game wasn't exactly a hit. It developed a cult following, and critics liked it, but financially it tanked, which contributed to Troika shutting down. This is all correct, right?

So, it seems like they are kind of taking a risk by charging so much for this sequel, and seemingly counting on it to be a big seller.

Not really, $60 is normal for a AA or AAA games and Bloodlines 2 is at least the former.

$60 is generally a normal maximum and any more is probably a Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition.

Oh, speaking of prices, the first game's $5 on GOG right now.

x4

Yeah... No game price is ever considered based on its original. Like, Psychonauts didn't sell great back in the day but I still expect the sequel to be at a $60 price point which is industry standard at this point. A company would be INSANE to sell a AAA title at a lower price and, in fact, a number of games have been slowly trending upwards to $80 at a base price and that's not even opening the conversation on if DLC should factor into the conversation.

Its because Video Games cost more and more every season, but the price remains the same. Resulting in companies looking for every way they can to make up production costs from DLC, to Loot Boxes, to god knows what else. The unfortunate matter is that the more everyone complains about DLC and Loot Boxes and other scummy practices, the more we're eventually going to have to have a hard conversation on this kind of stuff.

Especially if likable and smaller companies get caught in the crossfire of having to follow everyone else's lead or they risk going under.

It's what led to the video game crash in the 80's - price rises, market not being sustainable etc. The bottom fell out.

So, prices dropped, we got a reduced amount of shovelware and publishers were more experimental. We're now into the high cost thus high risk environment again.

And this has been a generation for reboots and remakes of "much loved" history; $60 matches expectations for any non-indie game in the market. Especially if you can garner that nostalgia wave AND boost sales of the original (Heck, they probably even have sales data showing it is consistently moving units on Steam and Go G.)

Also, Troika closing was due to a) Valve holding them to a arbitrary limitation over the source engine b) activision insisting the game launch AT THE SAME TIME as Half Life 2 c) the market at that point being saturated.

We've just had a resurgent in immersive sim games, showing them to be a fairly popular genre: the new Deus Ex games; Prey; Dishonoured. And as a market, they aren't hideously oversubscribed.

So, it makes sense. They acknowledge the risks, but also the active and vocal clamour for either a remake or more stories in the universe; plus Paradox want to make bank on their IP investment.

Well, I think the remakes and reboots problem isn't exactly that. Its not exclusive to video games right now as film and tv are having similar problems to some successes (Westworld) and failures (Disney Live Action).

The problem is more that, because the cost of these things is so high, investors and what-have-you want less of a risk on returns. They want a proven IP that will forsure have an audience over something more experimental or even just trying to build a new IP because risk means potentially money down the drain. So we'll reboot everything under the sun AND REBOOT IT AGAIN when just one of the sequels does 'ok' instead. A so-so sequel CLEARLY means that audiences are bored with this version so we need to make Laura Croft 6.0 now.

Did they ever specify if this is 1st person POV or 1st/3rd or something else?

I mean, I'm most likely in either way but I know which POV I would greatly prefer.

In all likelyhood first person

Unfortunately my thoughts too, given everything I've seen so far. Blast. That's not what I'd prefer and it makes it all-but-unplayable for my wife.

They've confirmed it's first person.

Has she tried adjusting FOV?

I've heard that a major cause of discomfort for First Person games is too limited FOV's. Total Biscuit used to talk about it allot.

Hopefully, Bloodlines 2 will have a FOV scale and if it doesn't then hopefully there will be a mod.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Mar 28th 2019 at 1:05:02 AM

I actually prefer first person to third person where your always looking at the back of their head