Goonhub
04-19-2014, 04:38 PM
I've said this a bunch, but I'm probably the most openly cantankerous admin about vampires. Fuck 'em. To put it this way, when I screw around with or hand out Omnitraitor - the admin-only antagonist that gives you the powers of all antagonist types at once - 95% of what you end up actually using comes from the Vampire tab, with the occasional bit of Spit Acid, Abomination, and Wrestlemania. It's just that much better than everything else.
Vampires, IMO, went from crazy weak to crazy overpowered from a combination of changes. First off was when the blood stuff was changed to let you get 200 units of blood per person, instead of 100 if you were lucky. Suddenly, you only need to eat two and a half living people to come completely online, which really isn't that hard. Think of it, killing two people and roughing up a third is something you can do with your bare hands and some cunning, and vampires start with Glare, Hypnotize, and a permanent stun/drain if left alone. You can be at 600 blood and ripping crowds to pieces better than a wizard in five minutes if you're fast, and with absolutely no effort if you go to the diner to do it.
That brings me to point #2, Glare. Hoooly shit, Glare's one of the biggest single problems with vampires. It was added back when vampires didn't really have many options in their early game and when feeding was a lot more difficult. Their only option was effectively to find a braindead human or monkey to chew on until they got their actually useful powers - that, or find someone willing to be hooked up and used as a battery to fuel an antagonist rampage, which was unfortunately far more common than it should have been. So, Glare got added as a low cooldown, single-target flash with some big red bold text. Fair enough, right? Except it went through eye protection (and I'm almost certain it still does) and dazed everybody nearby in a wide area, scrambling their movement. Now, not only do you have a single target disable, it fucks with attacker movement long enough for you to sprint off with your ill-gotten assistant. Even at full power, Glare is a great way to follow up Chiropteran Screech or a swarm of bats.
Point #3 is basically everything already said about Cloak of Darkness, with Mist Form and Rejuvenate's upgraded form added on top of that. Oh hey! You have thermals/lucked out with your flashlights and found the vampire! Nope, fuck you, Rejuvenate -> Glare, then either Bats/Scream -> steal your shit and kill you, or Mist Form away. You can't outplay a vampire with enough blood, your only hope is that they fuck up somehow or they mismanage cooldowns. That's dumb and boring and unfun.
Vampires as-stands are ridiculous changeling-wizard hybrids that need to be viciously kneecapped and possibly reworked entirely.
Garlic is already full of holy water. Nobody ever bothers, because holy water is incredibly easy to make, botanists never do their jobs, and vampires will just butcher anybody force-feeding them garlic if they don't extract the holy water, and at that point why not just go to the bar and make more in less time?
For real, I have no idea why the cloaking sprite got changed to that stupid swoosh-every-couple-seconds thing. Even if you've got thermals, you have to be watching closely at the right time to see if someone's actually invisible. Shit's dumb, and Chameleon has a MUCH more visible effect for it. Make all the cloaking effects look like that.
Vampires, IMO, went from crazy weak to crazy overpowered from a combination of changes. First off was when the blood stuff was changed to let you get 200 units of blood per person, instead of 100 if you were lucky. Suddenly, you only need to eat two and a half living people to come completely online, which really isn't that hard. Think of it, killing two people and roughing up a third is something you can do with your bare hands and some cunning, and vampires start with Glare, Hypnotize, and a permanent stun/drain if left alone. You can be at 600 blood and ripping crowds to pieces better than a wizard in five minutes if you're fast, and with absolutely no effort if you go to the diner to do it.
That brings me to point #2, Glare. Hoooly shit, Glare's one of the biggest single problems with vampires. It was added back when vampires didn't really have many options in their early game and when feeding was a lot more difficult. Their only option was effectively to find a braindead human or monkey to chew on until they got their actually useful powers - that, or find someone willing to be hooked up and used as a battery to fuel an antagonist rampage, which was unfortunately far more common than it should have been. So, Glare got added as a low cooldown, single-target flash with some big red bold text. Fair enough, right? Except it went through eye protection (and I'm almost certain it still does) and dazed everybody nearby in a wide area, scrambling their movement. Now, not only do you have a single target disable, it fucks with attacker movement long enough for you to sprint off with your ill-gotten assistant. Even at full power, Glare is a great way to follow up Chiropteran Screech or a swarm of bats.
Point #3 is basically everything already said about Cloak of Darkness, with Mist Form and Rejuvenate's upgraded form added on top of that. Oh hey! You have thermals/lucked out with your flashlights and found the vampire! Nope, fuck you, Rejuvenate -> Glare, then either Bats/Scream -> steal your shit and kill you, or Mist Form away. You can't outplay a vampire with enough blood, your only hope is that they fuck up somehow or they mismanage cooldowns. That's dumb and boring and unfun.
Vampires as-stands are ridiculous changeling-wizard hybrids that need to be viciously kneecapped and possibly reworked entirely.
Firepower Wrote:Let botany grow garlic to use against the vampire?
Garlic is already full of holy water. Nobody ever bothers, because holy water is incredibly easy to make, botanists never do their jobs, and vampires will just butcher anybody force-feeding them garlic if they don't extract the holy water, and at that point why not just go to the bar and make more in less time?Crumplehat Wrote:And what's even lamer is that you the cloaker can't even tell when you're cloaked or not because that damn light sprite keeps appearing even when you're in full view sometimes, not that you can tell if it's there or not when it's not. Back when cloaking was just a straight up distortion field it was a lot more noticeable to thermals and AIs and shit but at least you knew if it was on or not.
For real, I have no idea why the cloaking sprite got changed to that stupid swoosh-every-couple-seconds thing. Even if you've got thermals, you have to be watching closely at the right time to see if someone's actually invisible. Shit's dumb, and Chameleon has a MUCH more visible effect for it. Make all the cloaking effects look like that.