Goonhub
06-07-2017, 08:38 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-07-2017, 02:11 PM by locusts. Edited 11 times in total.)
I actually like that concept a lot as it helps to further differentiate the Vampire from the Changeling, but I think it would requires a bit of workshopping to get it gel smoothly with what's already established.
So currently, the suggestion is that the Vampire starts off weakly, and if left unchecked becomes exponentially more dangerous. For comparison, the Changeling starts off as a menace but quickly hits the ceiling of how much more dangerous it becomes after eating a few people.
What this proposal changes is the starting goal for the Vampire. Instead of killing people, you're much better off draining some blood and letting them be on their way, as you cannot be identified. This raises some questions that need to be addressed:
- What is the end-goal for the Vampire in this case?
- If it's simply to accumulate blood, this change works in favour of that, but renders some of the higher level abilities somewhat superfluous.
- If it's simply to kill people, that doesn't really differentiate it from most of the other antagonists.
- At what point should the vampire switch from simply drinking blood to outright killing people, and what is the benefit?
I personally think a mix of objectives would work best, but the vampire needs a clear goal that separates it from the rest of the antagonists; something that is fairly difficult to achieve, but acts as an automatic win scenario for the Vampire.
My suggestion is this: the vampire's major objective should be to defile the chapel. After achieving Vampire Lord/Lady status, the vampire is not only able to walk freely inside the chapel, but also gains an ability to permanently taint it. I'm not completely sure what this ability should be, my current idea is a heavy blood cost ability that requires you to stay still, or at least inside the capel for some time to work, but promoting blood sacrifices from something the crew does sometimes for fun to an actual game mechanic might be workable.
After completion, the whole station should became an infinite spawning ground for monsters that will harass the crew, reminiscent of a disaster round. This is a clear win state for the vampire, and on round completion the stats will say that the vampire has won and gained dominance over the station, regardless of whether the vampire completed any of their other objectives or is even alive or dead. If a vampire achieves this goal, they can respawn in the Chapel indefinitely without a loss of maximum blood, though they start at 0/max on respawn and will have to regenerate it in order to further terrorise the crew. The shuttle is called automatically and cannot be recalled so that shitters can't prolong rounds into infinity. After this point, for the rest of the round the goal for the rest of the crew is simply survival.
This achieves several things:
- It creates conflict in an area of the ship which is usually more peaceful (chaos tends to centre around medsci, sec or the bridge).
- It's a clear-cut goal for the vampire, which gives the crew a scenario to work against once it has been confirmed there is a vampire aboard.
- If the vampire wins, it creates a fun mini-disaster round for surviving players, as well as rewarding the vampire for winning with free respawns.
- It promotes the vampire to arguably the most dangerous antagonist on the station in the endgame, achieving the stated design goal.
There should be other objectives on top, these are optional though and randomised at round start.
- Obtain X number of maximum blood points.
- Enthrall X number of crew members.
- Kill Crew Member X. (If there is a Chaplain at round start, killing the Chaplain should always be a listed objective)
Other misc stuff to do with chapel defilement:
- Portals summoning monsters over the whole ship is my intention, but should be a different set than the ones seen in disaster rounds, eg. Ice Spiders, Wendigoes, Killer Tomatoes, Man Eaters, Angry Bats, Zombies, etc. Anything "monstery".
- Considering my initial proposal includes automatically allying the Vampire and Wraith, perhaps some sort of benefit to the Wraith should be included too. Infinite respawns for the wraith too would be the obvious choice. Perhaps defiling the chapel automatically creates a random antagonist chance for dead players and the result is always wraith.
- There should be a system in place to prevent people from simply camping the Vampire on respawn. Perhaps constant damage for anyone not allied with the vampire while inside the chapel.
- Destroying the chapel would be too cheap of an option to prevent the vampire from winning. Maybe the amount of time/resources to taint the chapel goes down depending on how destroyed it is. A tainted chapel restores itself and shouldn't be able to be destroyed.
- A new tileset for a tainted chapel would be neat!
- Though a respawned vampire should start with an empty bloodpool, it should regenerate naturally now that they hold domain over the station.
- Corrupted announcement messages or AI laws would be an interesting thing to tinker with.
So currently, the suggestion is that the Vampire starts off weakly, and if left unchecked becomes exponentially more dangerous. For comparison, the Changeling starts off as a menace but quickly hits the ceiling of how much more dangerous it becomes after eating a few people.
What this proposal changes is the starting goal for the Vampire. Instead of killing people, you're much better off draining some blood and letting them be on their way, as you cannot be identified. This raises some questions that need to be addressed:
- What is the end-goal for the Vampire in this case?
- If it's simply to accumulate blood, this change works in favour of that, but renders some of the higher level abilities somewhat superfluous.
- If it's simply to kill people, that doesn't really differentiate it from most of the other antagonists.
- At what point should the vampire switch from simply drinking blood to outright killing people, and what is the benefit?
I personally think a mix of objectives would work best, but the vampire needs a clear goal that separates it from the rest of the antagonists; something that is fairly difficult to achieve, but acts as an automatic win scenario for the Vampire.
My suggestion is this: the vampire's major objective should be to defile the chapel. After achieving Vampire Lord/Lady status, the vampire is not only able to walk freely inside the chapel, but also gains an ability to permanently taint it. I'm not completely sure what this ability should be, my current idea is a heavy blood cost ability that requires you to stay still, or at least inside the capel for some time to work, but promoting blood sacrifices from something the crew does sometimes for fun to an actual game mechanic might be workable.
After completion, the whole station should became an infinite spawning ground for monsters that will harass the crew, reminiscent of a disaster round. This is a clear win state for the vampire, and on round completion the stats will say that the vampire has won and gained dominance over the station, regardless of whether the vampire completed any of their other objectives or is even alive or dead. If a vampire achieves this goal, they can respawn in the Chapel indefinitely without a loss of maximum blood, though they start at 0/max on respawn and will have to regenerate it in order to further terrorise the crew. The shuttle is called automatically and cannot be recalled so that shitters can't prolong rounds into infinity. After this point, for the rest of the round the goal for the rest of the crew is simply survival.
This achieves several things:
- It creates conflict in an area of the ship which is usually more peaceful (chaos tends to centre around medsci, sec or the bridge).
- It's a clear-cut goal for the vampire, which gives the crew a scenario to work against once it has been confirmed there is a vampire aboard.
- If the vampire wins, it creates a fun mini-disaster round for surviving players, as well as rewarding the vampire for winning with free respawns.
- It promotes the vampire to arguably the most dangerous antagonist on the station in the endgame, achieving the stated design goal.
There should be other objectives on top, these are optional though and randomised at round start.
- Obtain X number of maximum blood points.
- Enthrall X number of crew members.
- Kill Crew Member X. (If there is a Chaplain at round start, killing the Chaplain should always be a listed objective)
Other misc stuff to do with chapel defilement:
- Portals summoning monsters over the whole ship is my intention, but should be a different set than the ones seen in disaster rounds, eg. Ice Spiders, Wendigoes, Killer Tomatoes, Man Eaters, Angry Bats, Zombies, etc. Anything "monstery".
- Considering my initial proposal includes automatically allying the Vampire and Wraith, perhaps some sort of benefit to the Wraith should be included too. Infinite respawns for the wraith too would be the obvious choice. Perhaps defiling the chapel automatically creates a random antagonist chance for dead players and the result is always wraith.
- There should be a system in place to prevent people from simply camping the Vampire on respawn. Perhaps constant damage for anyone not allied with the vampire while inside the chapel.
- Destroying the chapel would be too cheap of an option to prevent the vampire from winning. Maybe the amount of time/resources to taint the chapel goes down depending on how destroyed it is. A tainted chapel restores itself and shouldn't be able to be destroyed.
- A new tileset for a tainted chapel would be neat!
- Though a respawned vampire should start with an empty bloodpool, it should regenerate naturally now that they hold domain over the station.
- Corrupted announcement messages or AI laws would be an interesting thing to tinker with.