nerf Veil Walk

[Roostercat]

In the most recent Vampire round at the time of this post, Solomon Shaw (would like to preface this by saying there was escalation and RP to the fights and that I do not hold ill will towards their player) used Veil Walk extensively to the point that every single engagement led to them being able to just fuck off through the wall and continue the chase for more or less the next two hours. I don't blame them for this, it's simply the smart thing to do when you are getting fifty tranq darts and bullets shoved down your throat. What I do blame is the fact that Veil Walk can be used this extensively in the first place. 

At some point during the round, I had successfully landed a Tranq dart on Shaw. They went under while Veil Walking (which I didn't even know could happen) and remained in Veil Walk for the next three minutes straight as all of security stared at them. It never wore off, the tranq dart DID wear off, and then they went right back through the walls and continued the manhunt. 

While antags having escape options is nice and good for the server, it should not be nearly this fool-proof and consequence-free. It sure as hell shouldn't last multiple minutes straight, at the least. I think the blood cost of Veil Walk should rise significantly, and preferably that a cooldown of some sort is placed on it, as this is pretty unfun to deal with as security.

[Fluffy]

As far as I'm aware (I don't play as a vampire), veil walk has a cooldown and requires blood to be used, is that correct? Any vampire player can chime in and clarify how it works?

[Evandorf]

Veil walk has no cooldown, to the point where if I accidentally double click I will blow through 80 - 160 blood. 
 

Veil walk lasted as long as it did because it spends blood as you move so you want to use it for short jaunts. If you stand still it uses blood at a trickle which I think is good because you can use it to stay in one place and talk with opponents without risk of getting bodied.  The problem is that I had around 1K blood when the fighting started so I had a lot of reserves. 
 

I think the blood cost is fine but stick a timer on it like glare and hypnotize have so it doesn’t get abused. 

[Carver]

A cooldown might certainly be a sensible adjustment that doesn't butcher it's unique identity. Prevent one from weaponizing it excessively, while not eliminating the ability to use it (on one activation) for as long as you have blood to maintain it. Might also help to give it some sort of feature so you don't immediately deactivate it on a spam click and get fucked over with it on cooldown after doing effectively nothing.

[N8-Toe]

I played that round but my take away was less veil walk was broken and more we just kinda got styled on as a team by shaw. Shaw had oodles and boodles of blood which tilted things in their favor. and IDK if you could do a cool down that is like.. a second per tile traveled

[Roostercat]

Just now, N8-Toe said:

. Shaw had oodles and boodles of blood which tilted things in their favor.

There isn't really a skill-based way to prevent this that does not involve metagaming that shaw is a vampire, though.

[N8-Toe]

Just now, Roostercat said:

There isn't really a skill-based way to prevent this that does not involve metagaming that shaw is a vampire, though.

I think that's fine though. If a vampire is able to accumulate that much blood, their reward is being able to make much greater use of that blood. The crew has a counterplay to a juiced up vampire, which is numbers, weapons, and teamwork.

[Roostercat]

The counterplay did basically nothing since every single engagement was avoided via veil walking until Shaw died which was purely because he just happened to not veil walk at the time when he probably could have. Something with no counter isn't really something to be rewarded.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Roostercat

[Susan]

Remove or reduce sucking blood bags for points, too. That's how these egregious blood amounts occur - or cap it at a much lower level.

[Evandorf]

4 hours ago, Susan said:

Remove or reduce sucking blood bags for points, too. That's how these egregious blood amounts occur - or cap it at a much lower level.

I get most of my blood from sucking people, especially early encounters when suspicions are low. If I turn off sensors I can get to enthrall levels of blood off my first victim. Then up to 700ish off my second,  maybe more depending on how risky I want to be. Blood bags are usually only good in a pinch and since medical is usually populated you’ll get found out.

I don’t know if making blood more difficult is warranted but maybe make taking so much from one person more life threatening, the obvious downside would be that you’ll have more accidental deaths from feeding and no one wants to take people out of the round. 
 

7 hours ago, Roostercat said:

The counterplay did basically nothing since every single engagement was avoided via veil walking until Shaw died which was purely because he just happened to not veil walk at the time when he probably could have. Something with no counter isn't really something to be rewarded.

Something I noticed was that even though you couldn’t interact with me while in veil walk, you could still pull me, which incurred the blood cost per tile. More than likely a bug but if we put VW on a cooldown I’d want to make it more useful for talking and RP so this sort of thing would need to get fixed.

[Omicega]

7 hours ago, N8-Toe said:

I think that's fine though. If a vampire is able to accumulate that much blood, their reward is being able to make much greater use of that blood. The crew has a counterplay to a juiced up vampire, which is numbers, weapons, and teamwork.

I don't play security at all anymore but you must be joking if you think it's in any way difficult for a smart vampire to get their hands on a lot of blood. The only reason the antag type ever got stigmatised as a weaker one is because it's always been heavily played by clueless hub players with no idea how to weaponise Aurora's anti-metagaming rules. They run out of blood 30 minutes in and hulk out.

By contrast, Evan plays antag rounds like it's his part-time job and knows exactly how to draw the full potential of veil walk out by fuelling it with enough blood to open his own hospital. Don't kid yourself that it's in any way difficult to reach a point as vampire where security physically cannot stop you unless either you want them to, or suddenly suffer from a critical dose of skill issue.

[Evandorf]

19 minutes ago, Omicega said:

I don't play security at all anymore but you must be joking if you think it's in any way difficult for a smart vampire to get their hands on a lot of blood. The only reason the antag type ever got stigmatised as a weaker one is because it's always been heavily played by clueless hub players with no idea how to weaponise Aurora's anti-metagaming rules. They run out of blood 30 minutes in and hulk out.

By contrast, Evan plays antag rounds like it's his part-time job and knows exactly how to draw the full potential of veil walk out by fuelling it with enough blood to open his own hospital. Don't kid yourself that it's in any way difficult to reach a point as vampire where security physically cannot stop you unless either you want them to, or suddenly suffer from a critical dose of skill issue.

I do think that yesterday’s game was an outlier and I completely take the blame for the goose chase it turned into. The story/plot the round was propped up on was flimsy at best. I could have allowed myself to be captured seeing as I would have had assault charges at best, and gotten out of prison later but instead it devolved into the antag v sec game, which later turned into the antag v crew armory game.

 

I don’t think we should be making changes to antags based off the poorer rounds. Nor do I think we should make changes based on how people who know the mechanics inside and out can leverage them. The majority of antag players are relatively new and making precise knowledge of the mechanics a prerequisite to having a good time as a particular antag will just push them towards other “better” antag prefs. 

[Evandorf]

Or to put it another way, the more proficient you are as antag the more responsibility you have to make the round enjoyable. New antag players should be helped to understand their role better and old antag players should be held accountable for poor play, but it’s a problem on a player level and trying to coax those changes via the mechanics is the wrong approach. 

[GeneralCamo]

Admittedly vampire's gameplay loop doesn't really lend itself to unique stories really. You're forced to drain blood from people, and those people are forced to either forget everything (which doesn't add anything) or contrive a reason to not (which can be tricky). Your ability tree is static, and you don't really have different gameplay per-round unlike ling. 

I agree with nerfing veil walking. But I do believe a larger rework of vampire may be desirable. 

[Evandorf]

I would like more interpersonal powers for vampire. Give me access to exploitables, maybe via mind reading or something, and give me more coercive abilities like presence.

[Evandorf]

I feel like the Srom is underutilized but seeing as how traditionally vampires are able to affect people’s dreams and subconscious it would be neat for them to be able to interact with it mystically, without the need for traditional psionics. Either to antagonize or affect the Skrell inside (I think thralling a Skrell via Srom sounds neat) or using their powers to force others asleep and pulling them into the dream.

[Roostercat]

9 hours ago, Evandorf said:

 

I don’t know if making blood more difficult is warranted but maybe make taking so much from one person more life threatening, the obvious downside would be that you’ll have more accidental deaths from feeding and no one wants to take people out of the round. 

This is how it used to work before it was changed, and it was changed because it ended up as fifty people being in medical within 15 minutes and the vampires getting gigaexecuted almost instantly as a result.

[Evandorf]

56 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

This is how it used to work before it was changed, and it was changed because it ended up as fifty people being in medical within 15 minutes and the vampires getting gigaexecuted almost instantly as a result.

Make feeding faster, draining the victim faster, and therefore more dangerous. But also cut the reserves in half to maybe a max of 500 instead of 1K so that if you want to be able VW regularly you’re going to have to feed tactically, which would be doable if the blood drained quicker.