The State of Vampires on RP

[Retrino]

I think it kind of goes without saying that vampires are one of the weakest antagonists to roll. They've always had a large number of weaknesses, but with more changes pushing them away from alternate sources of blood to now solely player blood From The Player Themselves, they've become incredibly underpowered.




Just to give an idea of the proportion for the nonhuman antags and their comparative weaknesses:

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Vampires-
Take severe damage from space INCLUDING ocean/acid maps where there is no starlight. Just water. You burn either way
Take tons of burn from a fair easy chemical to make (holy water)
Allergic to garlic (again holy water but it is a weakness in another form)
Take tons of burn from being inside the chapel
Have one of your only early game abilities (glare) nullified by an incredibly common item (sunglasses)
Lose your blood points when you're being stabbed in any way that would normally cause someone to bleed
Unable to consume more than 250 blood from one player
Unable to consume blood from any other means. Including freshly spilled player blood from the ground
Draining dead humans gives a much lower blood point intake
Chaplains are just straight up immune to you and can beat you to death with a book easily and swiftly
Extremely loud ability noises that !! aoe alert anyone within a 20 tile radius (going off multiple anecdotes. i have no personal idea)

Arcfiends-
Stuns (welcome to the club pal)
One funny gene

Changelings-
Smelling salts
Fire, theoretically ?? It stops their healing, but fire hurts everybody. Can it really be considered a changeling weakness
Stuns (though kill two people and you can just shamble out of any stun, or send a limb critter after your attacker)
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To further elaborate on how unfortunate the vampires have it, I took a small sample size of 80 arcfiends and 80 vampires just to compare their success rates, since they have very similar objectives to fill. These results were from the most recent 80 of each antag to roll.
Arcfiend success rate fell at ~42.5%
Vampire success rate fell at ~13.75%



So, what's the deal with vampires? Why are they so bad at being alive? Well, they're incredibly slow to ramp up. Their abilities have high blood unlock rates, and often a vampire that's successful is only successful because they've managed to get some thralls to help them gather more victims. Meanwhile, their arcfiend cousins are running around getting points from almost every object on station, and changelings are pointing and laughing at them from space with their free identity swapping and arm morphing. Building any decent amount of blood points is even worse on lowpop.

Alright, how do we deal with these issues. I don't think the answer is "bring down other antagonists power level to match vampires" because that'd just kind of suck shit for everybody. Could they use an additional weakness or two? Probably, they are pretty powerful, but their successes also aren't all that impressive. (Changelings almost always fail because they have some bonkers objective like 10 individual kills. Really game. You want me to kill one person every ten minutes? On MY rp server? don't think so) Instead, I do think the passive means of getting blood should be walked back. You shouldn't have to out yourself as an antag to get a crumb of point to spend to up your monster stuff. But, yes, sitting in a room with 20 IV bags also isn't great gameplay for anyone. My suggestion would instead be, have blood with player DNA be consumable for vampires, since it doesn't make all that much sense that biting someone directly and stabbing them then drinking the result works for one but not the other. I'm also on my knees begging for vampires to be able to walk out into the ocean without taking damage from "starlight". You are basically screwed rolling an engineer vampire on oshan, and acid already burns without a suit.

[Emimiyu]

Maybe reduce some blood requirement to some ability? I feel like the new vampire change makes vampire too close to changeling and changeling already gain a lot with killing 1 person (headspider that can be activated by suicide, legs that can force open door, abom arm the stun). While vampires get.... I dunno, thralls and batform? Two humans for changeling and they get an abom form, yet vamps need three more human for screech and frostbat. Sure, ling get shorter use of their ability, but a lot of those are pretty great.

[Chatauscours]

The main issues for me is that the ability sounds can be heard from the opposite side of the station.
I think lowering those sounds, especially the slurping and glare sounds will help a lot.
Also getting more blood / kill will or otherwise lowering the amount of kills needed for unlocking abilities (especially the frost bats, which are one of the only ways to fight sec as a vampire).

[Lt487]

Just spitballing some ideas to make vamps feel better to play as I do agree compared to other antags vamps can feel (worse/more frustrating) to play

Losing blood when you are bleeding as a vamp just feels bad even if it makes sense, I think that should be reduced/removed

Increasing the amount of blood per human would go a long way especially now as you cant aid your blood scaling from non human sources anymore, though I would want the cost of thralling to increase relative to the buff of how much blood you get per human.

Give something more to vampires at 0 blood, maybe allow their glare to disorient people with sunglasses? Just something to give them a bit more of an edge against a sunglasses staffie

There are a lot of niche counters to vamps that can really beat on em I would not be that upset if some of them get scaled back or just removed tbh

[Kateaclysm]

My other criticism with vampire is that the power scaling is basically flatlands and then a cliff. You have absolutely nothing to help you fight until you get frost bats, and once that happens you're *incredibly* dangerous. Something early on to help vampires secure victims or at least defend against attackers before the frost bats power spike could hopefully level things out a bit. It's kind of ridiculous that all of a vampire's actually effective abilities come at very late-stage blood levels.

[Solenoid]

I agree a lot with the points made in this thread, vampire power scaling is sort of ridiculous and it feels more tuned to classic antag gameplay than RP. Frost bats, as mentioned by others, is the big ability which makes you actually dangerous as a vampire, but it's locked behind several kills to get. The problem with this on RP is that you need to properly escalate, perhaps talk up your victim until they let their guard down, all while hoping that your last body you left behind isn't found by sec or some maint explorer.

I've honestly never had an RP vampire game with over 4 or 5 kills. Call it a skill issue, but getting that many kills while not just wordlessly glaring, dragging off someone, and draining them of their blood is difficult in itself, let alone with RP. I enjoyed the dynamics with vampires stealing the blood fridge/breaking into medbay to steal the blood and get some early power, but I get why those passive sources of blood accumulation were removed as well. The problem is that Vampire is already the weakest antag in its early stages, so it basically just made the early game upcliff climb even harder to overcome. 

I'd enjoy a nerfed ice bats(maybe 2 or 3???) unlocking after a single kill to help secure further victims, and definitely a decrease in vampire ability sounds, by a significant degree. I wouldn't mind even having the glare ability only be heard in close(2-3 tile) proximity to the vampire, but maybe that's a bit too far.

[NOOT]

Make full space protection still grant vampires sunlight immunity. more relevent on ocean maps than space maps.

Glare will still cause a disorient effect on sunnied individuals, (like 8 seconds of missteps and slowdown), so even if you do glare a random staffie in a gasmask and sunnies, the cooldolwn isnt /completely/ wasted.

definitely a glare sound reductions, in exchange for a small burst of light around the vampire when it is used, blocked by walls.

increase the frequency of drink blood ticks to match the action-cooldown speed of drinking an inhand item, but reduce blood amount gained to compensate. Its very easy to tell the difference between a vampire drinking blood and a staffie drinking from a pitcher just due to the time between each sip.

Coffin escape direction has a small randomization of direction at the start of the animation before correcting after about 2 screen lengths. This stops experienced players being able to directly pinpooint where the coffin would be based on the initial direction of the escape sprite.

Escape coffins sprite is only revealed in candlelight or torchlight (not PDAs), and is invisible and walkthroughable when unrevealed, like a floor closet.

[Kotlol]

I do agree that Vampires "Suck" these days.

But I think all stealth antags are problematic on RP in their ways.

On Roleplay the permission stuff and escalation rule makes it really hard to play em.
If you have to be an openly antagonistic antag... you gotta give up stealth...it can be fun.

Heck considering how some of the people act around antags even open ones. I keep going: "Dude.. escalation rules. I ain't killing anyone."
Everyone in RP seems more and more willing to go "Self defense means I can go vigilante"
Even when security is "controlling the situation." I seen crewmates come in with a chair to beat on the antagonist.. even when they are ARRESTED and haven't killed anyone.. just used their antagonist abillity to pull a prank or stun em or even holding out contraband.

Security lately has been also very on point wich I like and at the very least NEVER go for the kill right away.

But yea... now imagine every vampire to do a flash and staffy mcstafferson brings out the chair and starts beating on them... without knowing the context for the flash.
Like: "Vamp flashed since the bartender screwed up his order and took revenge on him"
It's a funny situation.

Anyway.... I don't think vampires need real buffs cept the AUDIO DOWN one.

[Silent Majority]

I think the problem with vampired is they're old. And crusty. And not designed for population like we have.

Vampires are loud. And slow. They get 3 total "win thr fight" buttons and 2 get out of consequence buttons.

Glare is very powerful. Yes. Sunglasses exist. In enough fornlike 15 people to wear them counting sec offs and command. Most Sunglasses are only 40% not 100.

Hypnotize is cartoonishly obvious but if they can't run away from you it goes through glare immunity.

Grave rot means you cannot win a fist fight with one without overwhelming odds

Frost bats are crazy powerful.

Escape is 100 percent full proof and perfect.

The stun cancel and bat form is super effective.

The problem is. These abilities are designed for like 30 and under. High population density leaves then uneven and stilted.

My suggestion:

I think vampires should begin with empowered musculature enhancement to make eviling easier.

I think vampires at higher level should get speed and hand to hand damage bonus.

I think vampires who glare empty space should send out a brief stun pulse like a flash.

I think vampires should have a drink toggle:
Drink(will work like normal and stop at half theor blood gone then inject some haloperidol) completely silent.
Drink deeply: will be half the volune of normal. Will kill. Identical otherwise
Drink Hungrily: loud as current. X2 faster blood drain.

I think vampires should be able to point at someone with grost bats active to send a bat at them like a normal projectile, or flip to send them in random directions.

I think grave touch should be a side effeft of being bit by a master vampire(thr big high blood)

I think dying of grave touch from a vamp should raise you as a thrall.


PHew. Thats all

[Lord_earthfire]

The problem with vamp is them being a ramping stealth antag.

Once you have ice bats or blood sucking bat form, recource generation is fine. But getting there is awfull.

The problem is, stealth gameplay does not work with how our sounds work. Why are you able to hear deathgasps or glare-effects through solid reinforced walls??

Also, our stations are too compact for that. We need much deeper maintenance areas so you can build hidden crime areas on station. The warrens in nadir should be like standard maintenance areas.

Stuff like this would properly enable stealth antags in general on high-pop.