Change the way enthrallment works

[Resilynn]

One of the more consistent complaints I've heard lately is that enthrall is overpowered for vampires, and that the players don't enjoy being forced into enthrallment for an entire round.

All a vampire has to do to absolutely take over a station is drink enough blood packs from medical and maybe drain one person before they can just enslave person after person. The combination of suggestion and enthrall basically means any vampire who can get close enough to a captain or HoS has control over the entire station.

I like enthrall as a concept, but I think it would be WAY cooler, and way more balanced, if it expired. Imagine waking up from enthrallment and either not remembering anything people say you did, or not remembering why you did it. If enthrall expired every, say, 30 minutes, it would force vampires to keep more of an eye on their thralls to renew the enthrallment. I think this would add a lot more intrigue to vampire rounds, it would make vampires a little less able to steamroll the station, and it would give players some respite from 3 hours of launching themselves at security until they're inevitably shot.

Ideas? Suggestions? Criticisms?

[ajstorey456]

I don't like the idea of a timer, I do like the idea of changing enthrall.

Enthralling someone right now is as easy as it is to S U C C, and that's not very fair. Getting the bloodsucc hold is pretty easy as is, too, but that's not what we're talking about, and succing doesnt make you a slave forever. I think Enthralling someone should be a few things: More expensive, more risky, and more difficult. The blood cost is high, don't get me wrong, but for how good it is, it might not be high enough. There is no risk enthralling somebody, because they follow every single one of your commands, no exceptions I believe, have no chance of betraying you, and best of all, show no signs that they may be enthralled. Something to change there might be a way to detect that the person is out of their will, or has been altered in some way. For example, full body scanning might show irregular signs of brain damage, or something, or even more obvious, have paler skin. And finally, make the difficulty higher. It's too easy to disarm, grab, reinforce and succ. It's much too quick, and if RNG decides that you're horizontal, you're fucked. Maybe have it so you need one level higher grab, like you would to ling absorb, or have some kind of ritual, so that it takes much longer, and the victim may resist while it's happening.

As for the possibility of escaping being thralled, there is a chaplain. With holy water. Make him more useful, or something.

[EDIT:] Forgot to include because of brainstorming, make it so you can't succ your thralls. Have some kind of flavorful reason, like the dark magic that tainted their soul and mind has also tainted their blood, making it putrid. Maybe also have blood tests for identifying thralls and using transfusions to cure them, making 1+1+1=3.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Enthrall is not as easy and overpowered as you make it out to be. Enthrallment costs quite a pretty penny in blood. Vampires are always balancing their blood levels - and if you're trying to not kill the targets yet, you only get 50 - 60 units from people. Enthralling ONE person is over 100 units of blood afaik so it's quite an investment.

It's already risky, expensive, and difficult. You have a thrall who listens to you but has no otherwise special powers. It's a permanent 'dominate' command.

I don't think it's fair that you don't think it's fair that people are dominated permanently. There is so much complaining about antagonists that take their victims out of the round by killing them, and one of the most consistent complaints with changelings is that they kill their targets unanimously. A vampire here has a nonlethal way to directly get you involved in antagonist action and DIRECTLY have you involved ALIVE and OSTENSIBLY HEALTHY, and it's still bad??

[Kaed]

Weeeeh I lost in a vampire round because the vampire knew what they were doing, pls nerf so I can win more often.

This is what I am hearing right now.

These threads pop up basically any time someone loses against an antagonist and, filled with salt and a lack of understanding into the nature of the antagonist mechanics involved, decides that the fault lies with OP GAME MECHANICS and not skillful use of what they have. Like jackboot said, it is not cheap to enthrall someone.

Nor is is fast to gain enthrallment. So let me explain the mechanics, as someone who has experienced them.

It takes 300 units of blood from living players before you can use enthrallment. To give you some perspective, you can gain approximately 100 blood from a player before they begin to fall unconscious and be at seriously be at risk of dying. Generally, if you are not going for MurderSucc mode, you have to moderate your bloodsucking to about 50 units per kine, if you want them to be able to walk away just feeling a little lightheaded. Leaving corpses is problematic, as is dragging people to medical who have passed out from mystery bloodloss.

So, if you're trying to be subtle, that's about 6-7 people you've bloodsucked, assuming no one found you, or interrupted you, or something else didn't come up that caused you to take less than your ideal 50 units per victim. Even going for full kill, that's 2-3 people you're sucking dry, because the moment they die, your blood gain is halfed per 5 second tick and it stops accruing to your 'total blood' score (the one that unlocks abilities)

Finally, when you actually DO get enthrall, it costs 150 blood to accomplish. That is fully half of the blood you probably took just to get the ability in the first place. You probably also had to spend 20-25 blood just getting someone in a good position to be enthralled, via dominate or glare/hypnotize combo.

The amount of work and risk you put in makes enthrall worth what you get in the current code. It does not need a nerf.

[ajstorey456]

I wasn't complaining, just theorizing, so put your rudely worded response away for a moment.

You are right, I forgot to consider the unlock cost, because I simply forgot it was a thing. So, as far as it goes, cost is fair, I'll admit. Doesn't stop it from being as uninteresting mechanically as a left click though.

As for my other points, a thrall ought to show signs that it is a thrall, and be curable. Its not necessarily a heavy nerf, but it makes it more interesting and winnable for when everyone is a thrall.

There's other solutions too. Maybe thralls can be less of a permanent thing, with something better than a timer. I would suggest changing unlock to be lower, cost lower, but have enthrall more like a channeled thing. You could use it like dominate, or similarly, and they become "enthralled" for as long as you maintain connection with them. Maybe have it cost like 100 to initially, then for every X minutes, you can spend an additional 30 or so to keep them enthralled. This allows for both easier and harder enthralling to begin with. And, like your other abilities, have it level with your strength. It costs less or takes longer between refreshes for every 100 total blood gained, until you are master vampire and you can enthrall permanently.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Guest

[Resilynn]

I came up with this idea after steamrolling the station with ease as the only vampire.... not because I lost....

[Kaed]

I came up with this idea after steamrolling the station with ease as the only vampire.... not because I lost....

 

That's kind of weird, because in your original post you make no mention of anything that indicates you were the one playing the vampire, with such things as

-players don't enjoy being forced into enthrallment (this is normally a complaint that victims make)

-All a vampire has to do to absolutely take over a station is drink enough blood packs from medical and maybe drain one person before they can just enslave person after person (I just discussed why that is not the case. One person is simply not sufficient to unlock enthrallment, and blood packs only add to your usable blood, not your blood total for unlocking new abilities)

-combination of suggestion and enthrall basically means any vampire who can get close enough to a captain or HoS has control over the entire station. (Except that dominate doesn't work on people with loyalty implants unless you've gained over 600 total blood and unlocked your full power. You cannot dominate the chaplain either until that time. Unless it does and this is a bug that needs to be fixed?)

I'm probably sounding like I'm wearing my 'condescending dickhat' again, but I don't really understand how you managed to 'steamroll the entire station' and somehow completely miss all the finer details of your own mechanics in the process. Unless the players were just really incompetent or let you win? That does not sound like it's a good standpoint from which to suggest changes either way.

[Resilynn]

I came up with this idea after steamrolling the station with ease as the only vampire.... not because I lost....

 

That's kind of weird, because in your original post you make no mention of anything that indicates you were the one playing the vampire, with such things as

-players don't enjoy being forced into enthrallment (this is normally a complaint that victims make)

-All a vampire has to do to absolutely take over a station is drink enough blood packs from medical and maybe drain one person before they can just enslave person after person (I just discussed why that is not the case. One person is simply not sufficient to unlock enthrallment, and blood packs only add to your usable blood, not your blood total for unlocking new abilities)

-combination of suggestion and enthrall basically means any vampire who can get close enough to a captain or HoS has control over the entire station. (Except that dominate doesn't work on people with loyalty implants unless you've gained over 600 total blood and unlocked your full power. You cannot dominate the chaplain either until that time. Unless it does and this is a bug that needs to be fixed?)

I'm probably sounding like I'm wearing my 'condescending dickhat' again, but I don't really understand how you managed to 'steamroll the entire station' and somehow completely miss all the finer details of your own mechanics in the process. Unless the players were just really incompetent or let you win? That does not sound like it's a good standpoint from which to suggest changes either way.

This was a couple of months ago. I was a doctor, so I was able to run a blood drive, drink from everyone, and by the time I did anything suspicious I had ample blood. Once you get one thrall it's easy to get another, you just keep your thrall fed and you have a steady flow of blood incoming. You command your way out of most conflict, you drink every few minutes to keep up. By the end of the round security gave up and I boarded the shuttle no problem.

That being said, this was a couple of months ago. I normally don't have any antag roles enabled, so admittedly, I don't play it often. But a lot of people have complained about vampire rounds to me since, and, well, I've been on both ends of the problem.

I don't understand why I have to defend that I understand the way the game works to you.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

That sounds less like enthrallment is overpowered and more like you used a successful strategy, haha

Kudos to you that's a really creative and amusing vampire strategy. I genuinely think it's great. "All donations go to ME! BLEH!"

I just disagree that it's an example of enthrallment being overpowered. Having a thrall is useful but even if you use them as livestock there is still risk/reward to feeding on them and ensuring they don't die or are too lightheated to be useful in a conflict.

Vampires are all about persuasion, and as someone who semi-regularly rolls vampire I too can absolutely dominate the station if I play my cards right, but if I get into an actual physical confrontation with the crew because my cover is blown then I can very quickly get overwhelmed and vanquished. Every combat ability uses blood you can't use for the vampire's actual strengths - domination and persuasion.

[Scheveningen]

Exerting complete RP control over the experience of another player is indeed, overpowered.

But until we get mindslave implants I think vampire can be excused to have this mechanic as they are the only antagonist in the game that exerts this IC and OOC power over a character and their player. It's fair. There are ways to avoid vampires. And sometimes you just have to deal with something with no counterplay.

Dominates are getting nerfed anyhow. Enthrall takes 300 blood. It is fair.

[Skull132]

Timers are ass and ew no thank you. It's a crude and uncreative solution.

I did originally have an idea for fleshing out enthrallment a bit more before pushing the vampire rewrite, but binned it under feature creep. The general idea was that thralls would have a slight upkeep mechanic to them.

Essentially, a thrall is slaved to the blood of the vampire. A vampire's blood being highly unnaturally addictive to humans. And they see their master as the only source of said blood, thus essentially becoming a slave. Think of them as drug addicts, but instead of losing your teeth and dying, you get a few boosts and a new person to call your master. With that background in mind, the idea would have been to effectively implement withdrawl. As a thrall spends more and more time without getting a fresh batch of blood, make them slowly descend into lunacy.

This would:

• Make thralls a slightly more contentious option to choose.
• Allows thralls to actually somewhat counter-play their masters if they end up descending into the negative upkeep.

 

The idea is that it wouldn't be something as severe as like, you have to feed your thrall every five minutes. But more about, if you completely neglect them, due to your decision or not, you'd be fucked. It would also allow for interesting scenarios, I feel: torture someone by thralling them and then letting them hunger; create a station of madmen by thralling a few people and letting them run dry.

As for the suggestion of making thralling as an act harder, eh. I've yet to figure out a good alternative. In reality, a vampire would more than likely simply entice the future thrall to drink their blood, or maybe spike their drink, Even the slightest taste makes you hyper-aware of the vampire, and want to look for more. So you'd be inclined to, say, follow them down a dark alley and let them have their way with you. However. Because people absoloutely do not play nice with suggested or complex conversions (cult comes to mind), I chose to not go that route. Your own whips lashing at this point.

[Bygonehero]

A admin's blood being highly unnaturally addictive to humans.

 

Time to succ.....

Withdrawal sounds neat though, in all seriousness.