Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines (Discussion)

Adamantine · April 2023

Next year, in November 2024, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines (VtMB), one of my all time favorite games, will be 20 years old.

It was the last masterpiece from Troika Games, who before had created "Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura" and the rather bland "The Temple of Elemental Evil".

VtMB has some amazing artwork, such as great character speakers, and, at least to me, is an artpiece as a whole, with a great main story and many well designed quests.

To this day it has an unofficial patch that still sees current developments, the last release right now is 11.3 which came out in February. It now unlocks the ability to play parts of the game as a Vampirehunter, a change which motivated me to play VtMB again.

There have also been failed projects trying to port the game to a new engine. Unfortunately copyright issues stopped this idea dead.

There have also been various fanmods - though to me they are mostly a demonstration how massively much better in quality the original Troika quests are to anything fans are able to produce.

The only fanmade patch I personally can only highly recomment is the plus version of the unofficial patch. Not only does it make the game more interesting and better balanced, but its also less buggy than the standard version, and the least buggy version of the game you can get at all. It adds one fan designed quests which sucks balls in oh so many ways, but you're not forced to solve that one and it doesnt break any other quest.

If you're interested in playing the game, the general recommendation is to avoid Nosferatu and even more so Malkavian for the first game. Nosferatu have to avoid being seen by mortals and thus requires good knowledge of the game mechanics. They also have to solve quite a few quests differently than other clans. Malkavian gets very funny dialogue, but their dialogue is also full of spoilers, because Malkavians can see the future. Both clans are also the weakest in combat, too, though they also get the wonderful Obfuscate ability that makes quite a few quests much easier to solve.

The main warning when playing this game would be that you should make a pause in gaming every two hours or so - save, terminate the game, restart. There is unfortunately a memory error in the engine and if you run the game too long, very weird things will happen due to the 4 GB of memory that you get as a 32 bit application is simply running out. Thats the one important bug one cannot fix without changing the game engine. There are other unfixable bugs, for example you can tweak getting more skillpoints in the character creation by keeping spending them, then switching the character class. But these problems dont get in the way of regular gameplay.

Other than that dont expect great combat mechanics, and expect a rather oldschool roleplaying experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade_–_Bloodlines

Nilden · April 2023

It's an absolute shame Bloodlines 2 is dead in the water. Also a shame World of Darkness got canned. I love this setting. A good VtM MMORPG would be awesome! Even an Unreal 5 remake would be fantastic.

This game really is a masterpiece. I've played through on multiple vampires. It's very different playing as nosferatu vs gangrel vs malkavian etc.

Adamantine · April 2023

Hu ?

I'm not aware VtMB2 would be dead in the water ?

Paradox, who owns the rights, switched the developer, and unless I've missed it, we still dont know who that new developer is.

A quick Google doesnt tell me otherwise. So I think thats still current information.

Considering that the original was rushed out the door, unfinished, and full of bugs, I'm certainly not complaining that this time around we'll get a solid product. Hopefully. Troika Games terminated soon after the release of VtMB1, too, so we never got much in regards of patches. Thank god for Wesp5 and the many other people who contributed to the unofficial patch, because with that the game is really very playable, except for the aforementioned memory bug.

And besides the original developer of VtMB2 was pretty horrible. They only wanted to do five clans[1], only melee weapons, each clan only gets two disciplines[2], etc. And when they talked about the game itself, they literally went all woke in overdrive. I dont know about everybody else, but as I see it, I spend very little time in VtMB1 being concerned about defining who my character is. That happened in chacter creation. And getting concerned about vampire politics was also not usually my focus either. But those are the two things they talked about when discussing the game !

All I want from VtMB2 is the same recipe we got in VtMB1:

- great main story

- many well designed and interesting side quests

- great artwork, for example amazing character speakers

- high replayability with many clans and many ways to play a clan

The two games I know from Paradox are Crusader Kings and Stellaris (I know they have more but I havent looked into the other titles much). Both games suffer from the same problem, a massive overcomplexity of the game resulting in a poor AI that doesnt really pose much of a challenge. Which is why you can for example overdrive the crisis in Stellaris by factor 25 so even experienced players face a real challenge.

But they are solid titles so I'm very hopeful about VtMB2 getting great under the supervision from Paradox.

Adamantine · April 2023

Hmm. Strange. Somehow my notes got deleted ?

Anyway, they went something like this:

1. The five clans in VtMB2 are: Brujah, Malkavian, Tremere, Toreador, Ventrue. So they dropped both Nosferatu and Gangrel, both very interesting clans to play.

I would not have complained much if they dropped Brujah and Ventrue, because those two play very much like Toreador anyway. Well, at least in VtMB1.

2. Specifically:

Brujah - Celerity, Potence; loses Presence

Tremere - Thaumaturgy, Auspex; loses Domination

Toreador - Celerity, Presence; loses Auspex

Ventrue - Domination, Fortitude; loses Presence

Malkavian - Demention, Auspex; loses Obfuscate

I mean as sort of a compensation we get one out of three thin blood disciplines. Nice, I guess.

Another plus was that they wanted to make the disciplines closer to the original, where you actually use abilities. That only happened for a few of the disciplines in VtMB1: Thaumaturgy, Demention, Domination, and Animalism. So thats also nice.

Still, its against the rules, and it makes little sense, and at least in VtMB1 terms its highly unbalanced, too. Toreador was already the most powerful vampire clan and they keep their two good disciplines here. Malkavian was the weakest vampire and they lose their stronget discipline, Obfuscate, which at least allowed them to solve certain otherwise hard quests easily, and was a fun thing to have in general. And Ventrue without Presence ? What ? I mean its nice they keep Fortitude, which after all is their strongest discipline.

Anyway I hope the new developer team changes/improves this a bit. Replayability is definitely a strong property of VtMB1. Would be great to have it back.

TheDalaiBomba · April 2023

Nilden said:

It's an absolute shame Bloodlines 2 is dead in the water. Also a shame World of Darkness got canned. I love this setting. A good VtM MMORPG would be awesome! Even an Unreal 5 remake would be fantastic.

This game really is a masterpiece. I've played through on multiple vampires. It's very different playing as nosferatu vs gangrel vs malkavian etc.

It's not officially dead in the water, like Adamantine said. But it sure has been quiet.

It would be one of the largest industry disappointments in recent memory for me if VtM:B2 never got released.

Nilden · April 2023

Well I think my dead in the water nautical reference was close. It's for boats without movement where the engine died. I tell you what there's not a whole lot of movement from VtMB 2. I'd say indefinitely delayed resembles that.

Hopefully Paradox can do something and whoever they got on it can make a great game. Maybe it would have been better to call it troubled development... although that seems like an understatement.

Here's hoping. I would love another good game in this setting!

Adamantine · April 2023

Whatever companies do, people complain.

If companies develop in silence until they have a finished game, people complain its dead in the water.

If companies offer stuff like early access, people complain the game is buggy and whatnot.

Really the only option that seems to work is just come out with a finished game and completely shut up about it beforehand.

Iselin · April 2023

Adamantine said:

Whatever companies do, people complain.

If companies develop in silence until they have a finished game, people complain its dead in the water.

If companies offer stuff like early access, people complain the game is buggy and whatnot.

Really the only option that seems to work is just come out with a finished game and completely shut up about it beforehand.

They didn't exactly start developing in silence with the hugely hyped live reveal event they streamed. They set the tone with that and went almost totally dark afterward, even to the point of keeping the new studio's name a secret.

It seems very weird to change their development messaging from inviting everyone to party with them and then going into stealth-development mode.

Sovrath · April 2023

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines is definitely one of my favorite games. It sort of has that "kooky" early game design. Doesn't really feel formulaic at all. Of course as one plays one can tell that it was rushed out the door but the entire experience is still amazing.

I hope they continue the 2nd one. I hear that someone is working on it but who knows what that means.

It's a delicate project as they need to somehow capture what made the first game amazing yet create something that modern audiences would play.

Adamantine · April 2023

It doesnt feel rushed anymore if you play with the current Plus Patch. Except for a few unfixable bugs which are in the game engine itself. Mostly restart the game every hour or two and you should be fine.

Iselin said:

They didn't exactly start developing in silence [...]

Well yeah that was my point.

Adamantine · April 2023

I wished the VtMB forum would be up again.

[Deleted User] · April 2023

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Sovrath · April 2023

Adamantine said:

It doesnt feel rushed anymore if you play with the current Plus Patch. Except for a few unfixable bugs which are in the game engine itself. Mostly restart the game every hour or two and you should be fine.

Iselin said:

They didn't exactly start developing in silence [...]

Well yeah that was my point.

But it does feel rushed as far as how the new maps/story elements play out as you go further into the game.

Chinatown has hardly anything in it as compared to the first map (can't remember the city.)

eoloe · April 2023

I loved to bite the guy peeing in the back street.

Adamantine · April 2023

The city of VtMB1 is Los Angeles, California, the location of Hollywood.

The four levels of VtMB1 are:

- Santa Monica

- Downtown

- Hollywood

- Chinatown

I dont think Chinatown has the least amount of quests, at least not by a relevant margin. These four levels are all fine.

The dullness of the game starts with the Society of Leopold, gets even much worse with the following Sabbat mission, then we get the Werewolf, and then we are in the final combat after combat after combat territory.

The city of VtMB2 was Seattle, Washington when the first developer talked about it. We dont know which changes the second developer does to the game but Paradox said that they are unhappy with what the first developer was doing, so all kinds of things may change.

[Deleted User] · April 2023

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[Deleted User] · April 2023

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Adamantine · April 2023

eoloe said:

I loved to bite the guy peeing in the back street.

Aaaah, hunting for blood in VtMB.

Definitely a lovely minigame in itself. So many possibilities !!!

First possibility is the seduction game.

If you have Seduction 8+, you can always just ask any of the prostitutes for free. Only a Toreador (Decadent Enchantress, +1 Appearance, +1 Subterfuge, female only) is likely to have that in the early game, though. A Ventrue would rather stay away from prostitutes either way and, for that matter, from bums, because of the 50% chance to lose the blood again after feeding.

Nosferatu always has Seduction 0 and cant change anything about that. But they can feed on rats, easy, and forget about anything else. Rats are a possibility to everyone else but Ventrue, too, but they are kind of bothersome if you only get 1 instead of 3 blood from them, like a Nosferatu does. Besides all my Nosferatus are Blunt Fangs (female only) and thus get only 2 points of blood from a regular person, 0 from bums, 3-4 from people they can drain completely. So for them, really only rich people have an advantage over rats.

Personally I also never go for Seduction on Gangrel, for roleplaying reasons and because if you want to get Celerity from Beckett, you have to have all disciplines at 3+, so my Gangrels are always hurting big time for XP.

By the way if you go the Seduction route, I would go 4 for Santa Monica, 5 for Downtown, and 6 for Hollywood. But I wouldnt bother with Chinatown, because that blood doll for some reason needs 8, not 7. She also has the damn hardest questions. So hard that for a long time I thought she wouldnt actually be a blood doll in the first place, lolz.

The biggest challenge is Santa Monica. But even there a completely safe bet is the nurse and the doctor (Malcolm St. Martin) in the clinic. In that order. If you do the doctor first, you get a Masquerade violation. Of course in older versions of the unofficial patch, that nurse wasnt even there, so this was quite nasty to introduce her this way. Malcolm apparently is just too sleepy and exhausted to notice you feeding on the nurse, lolz.

With Seduction 4+, you can ask the two blood dolls in the pub (The Asylum) or the rich dude near your haven whos car is damaged, though for the later gender might play a role (frankly not sure, I dont interact with this guy a lot, except of course for getting his money and items through Persuade and Intimidate). The later can also be asked if you have mind control abilities (at least Ventrue and Toreador, I think Brujah too ? Not the Malkavians though). I also never took his blood more than once and am not sure if his bloodpoints reset.

If you dont have Seduction and dont want to reenter the medical clinic all the time, theres the hunt.

Beware of policemen. They are well fed and have more bloodpoints than others - but dont actually reset their bloodpool. Now that was a nasty surprise when I found out, lol.

The guy in the back street peeing is sort of the "lamest" pick, actually. If he actually walks there, just make sure you sneak before you start feeding, and you wont ever be spotted. If you dont sneak, people sometimes use the phones and then you'll be spotted. Not a nice surprise when I found out, lol.

Then theres Gimble, theres sometimes somebody waiting down there down the stairs, thats also 100% safe, you dont even need any sneak. But a bit out of the way from other hunting grounds and its kind of rare-ish somebody is down there.

My most favorite is the girl next to the shop. She's often alone. But not always - and beware especially bums may hide in the shadows all too well. Sometimes a dude walks behind her, then you can pick HIM off instead of her if you pick the right spot, when she already has her back on you two. There still might be a bum as well, though.

Then theres the other street. Theres also a girl, same graphic model actually, who is likely to be alone, though you usually need to block her way until the police guy walks away.

The bums near Kilpatricks are just too packed. Also of course, they dont give much blood anyway.

On the other end theres a decent possibility you only meet one guy or gal in the entry of the garage. Often there are two people though. There is also another spot where a dude might piss, but thats a lot riskier, still with sneak I remember I got away with it.

The challenge of course gets lower and lower with every level after that. Until you get a full house with apparently well fed prostitutes in Chinatown that you can drain for blood, I think its four prostitutes in total ? And even my Ventrues can do that, they never have to puke it out again. Can get you from 0 to 15, easy.

All in all the hunting game is definitely fun and theres always the nasty surprise when the Masquerade is violated, lol.

I sometimes watch videos of other people playing VtMB to give me new ideas, and those players who dont keep their bloodpoints maxed at all times, as some of them do, just drive me nuts, lol. I understand when its during missions where there is no new blood to have, but between missions you can always hunt for blood.

Though the worst is people who, instead of hunting for blood (or rats or seduction), burn money on buying bloodpacks !!! And then are surprised when they dont have any money, ever, lolz. Those bloodpacks are damn expensive ! They are mostly for the final bosses. Dont use them to refill your bloodpoints when you can hunt instead.

You can get a total of about 10k in this game if you only buy the most essential stuff, use all occasions to get money, and dont push finance (and pushing finance does very little, as I found out, you merely can get to like 11K, not much of a difference). So thats 100 bloodpacks or 50 blue bloodpacks. Very easy to burn all money you ever get in this game this way.

Still its fascinating how other people play the game, often gives you new ideas.

For example for over a decade I played VtMB while simply ignoring defense. Then I saw a dude who pushed defense hard, early. While I would still say doing so is a stupid idea, early in the game you are really XP starved, hard, and need to spent your XP very carefully, and you mostly get small groups of opponents, and one on one you really dont need the defense stat much at all, for the later game when you really face larger groups of opponents having good defenses makes a huge difference.

With high defense, suddenly Chinatown was so much easier than before, lolz. You still cannot act without a care in the world, but its suddenly quite easy to keep Zhao alife. Just run around the Tong and keep killing them instead of feeding on them, they focus on you instead of on Zhao, then when they're thinned out feed on them to restore your health - Zhao might kill them before you're done though - and kill the second wave the same way.

Adamantine · April 2023

... and yes, I clearly enjoy talking about VtMB too much.

Adamantine · April 2023

Remali said:

Bloodlines was ok but I prefer redemtion which is one of my favorite rpgs of all time

Could you give any reasons for that ? I watched some Redemption footage and lets just say I wasnt impressed at all. I prefer actually fighting the opponents over mainly fighting your group AI.

ZenJelly · May 2023

Masterpiece no. Boring and overrated yes.

Adamantine · June 2023

Correction to Seduction:

- You need 4 to romance Jeanette (if you want to call it that) and for the two blood dolls in Santa Monica

- You need 5 for the blood doll in Downtown

- You need 6 for the blood doll in Hollywood

- You need 7 for asking any prostitute for blood (well, she thinks you want something else) for free

- You need 8 for the blood doll in Chinatown. Of course once you solved the initial main quest in Chinatown, you have a full house with no less than four prostitutes that you can feed on instead.

I previously incorrectly stated you need 8 for the prostitutes. You definitely dont. 7 is sufficient.

All blood dolls and of course the prostitutes accept females, too. I think only the one on the upper floor in the Asylum in Santa Monica even comments that she doesnt usually go for women. You also have to solve the same "say the right thing" game as a man before you're allowed to "smootch".

Theres a funny fan theory that because the blood dolls in Santa Monica (ground floor), Downtown and Hollywood all have the same character model, only different hair colors, that they are all actually sisters.

Scot · June 2023

Best Vampire RPG ever made, what else do I need to say?

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Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines (Discussion)

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