Varik Keldun

Ancient
Mallius Odium
Ashen_Ring
Players Playing Bloodbath Demo
Immemorial
Cat Adopter
Ageless
Malleus Monday
OG 2020
Grim Scribe
Prophet
Vampire Scholar
Harbinger
Jan 10, 2020
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Michigan
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So while at work last night I started thinking specifically on the bloodlust meter itself.
The questions I asked myself were...


What type of mechanics is it trying to do?
How does it go about doing the mechanic?
How does the blood meter fit lore wise with vampires in general?
How do I honestly feel about the old bloodlust meter?
How do I honestly feel about the new bloodlust meter?
What are some other things that may help or take into consideration for the meter?

What type of mechanics is it trying to do?
From what we have seen during testing it is doing.
1) a combat attack speed buff.
2) the ability to move quickly via mist form teleport to enemies with danse macabre.

How does it go about doing the mechanic?
1) The original bloodlust meter was charged through killing enemies.
2) Current build it is charged by using the skill exsanguinate and overfilling the health meter. This in turn gives you a combat boon to the skill Danse Macabre.

How does the bloodlust meter fit lore wise with vampires in general?
1)The original meter (kill enemies, gain meter until bloodlust is used) seemed a bit at odds, with a "I have not fed in awhile so i'm getting faster and stronger"
2)The new system feels like it would fit the idea of "i've over indulged in so i've become faster and stronger"

How do I honestly feel about the old bloodlust meter?
I did like the original combat bloodlust meter, it was more actively engaging. It was rewarding you for fighting your enemies. With that said I honestly feel this version of the bloodlust meter would fit in much better for a revenant than the vampire.
The second iteration of the bloodlust meter where you gained life upon killing an enemy along with gaining bloodlust while hitting them, felt way to overpowered.

How do I honestly feel about the new bloodlust meter?
Mechanically and lore wise it makes sense, feed, gain bloodlust, then it drops over time. I do feel that it takes a bit to long to fill up the meter and that the meter itself drains a bit to quickly. This makes it feel less fun and more like a chore if you want to keep the blood lust going.
I will assume that there will eventually be more skills that will be able to benefit from the combat boon and other ways to fill the bloodlust meter.

What are some other things that may help or take into consideration for the meter?

The first idea that came to mind is have the meter become a buffer of sorts - when taking damage from enemies, and over time as a natural drain from the meter first before the health bar.

Second idea that came to mind was (and I know there will be people opposed to this. But just something to take into consideration) Split the bar in half a positive and a negative side. Positive being (blood lust) while negative being (desperation) while on the positive side it does what it currently does - faster attacks movement buff ect. While on the negative side due to lack of feeding your character might move a bit slower and your health drain a bit quicker while in turn maybe give a buff to amount or speed at which you consume, possibly some other mechanics you could come up with. It would make the mechanic play into the lore surrounding vampires themselves NEEDING to feed to stay alive.

Third - make the timer slower or give it a window to stay at full power before starting to drop. In it's current state you are constantly having to take steps back to recharge. If there was say a 1 minute window where it stayed at full power then every 40 seconds drops 1 tick down until you reached maybe half way then dropped every 20sec after that it would play into a full / hunger type bar. this would even work for a negative side the longer you go without consuming the quicker it would harm you. every 10 seconds half empty deals physical damage then every 5seconds at max negative as an example.

Lastly make the bloodlust meter affect everything the vampire does, if the bloodlust meter is a standard mechanic for the vampire based off of consuming, it should enhance or in the case of my second idea hinder all aspects of the vampire - faster/slower attacks, spells, transformations, damage, movement ect. not just feed and get a combat buff to one other skill (danse macabre)

If I can think up anything else i'll add it later but thats all I got for now.
 
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Bloodlust was conceived as an innate mechanic for the Vampire, where other classes would/might have their own.

Many potential ways to gain Bloodlust were considered, as well as many ways it would affect the player.

My favorite conceptualization of Bloodlust is it affecting each and every Tarot Card in a unique way. For Danse Macabre, that makes your attacks faster. For Exsanguinate, it could increase how many targets you Exsanguinate at a time, as an example. But these things are still being played with and it may change many times over. It may not even work this way.

Between gaining Bloodlust with attacks or drinking blood, I prefer drinking blood. The analogy is that of addiction. The more the Vampire drinks blood, that which he is addicted to, the more he craves it. The more he craves, the more vicious he becomes. I find it fitting, and I prefer that over losing all Bloodlust upon the first feeding.

The current system, as well as the previous one and any others to come, cannot have its potential properly recognized in a vacuum (not that you were doing that). The whole system depends on many other features being implemented and working together. An example of this is the fact that some weapons would cause blood sprays from which the Vampire can feed, which is something else that would add to its gain together with Exsanguinate. Another aspect is that we have a cooldown on Exsanguinate, which we are not supposed to. Another aspect is that it wasn't costing any mana, and that you couldn't choose how much blood to acquire at any one particular moment. These are all aspects that will be iterated upon over time, and each iteration is going to bring the pendulum to one side or the other, but the Tarot will only truly be judgeable once we have many other systems implemented together.

The main and only hindrance that I believe should be tied to Bloodlust is how fast the passive drain of your health is. On the first system you guys saw, the passive drain would kill you in the Physical State, which it was not supposed to. The idea was for you to stay alive with 1 health point minimum. That makes it so that when your Bloodlust is at maximum, and your health is draining extremely fast, you are more powerful on all your abilities, but you also die more easily, so it is a double-edged sword. Now, the idea is that the more Bloodlust you gain, the harder it is to increase it, because your health drain will also increase, and you must always drink more and more blood to maximize the Bloodlust. Doing so is optional, in the sense that you have no necessity to do it, but if you do it can bring you power, while also demanding that you keep a steady flow of feeding in combat, otherwise your thirst will not sustain itself. But this, too, has to wait until it is fully implemented to be balanced.
 
Good post Varik, and a very informative answer as always Xan :)
 
The analogy is that of addiction. The more the Vampire drinks blood, that which he is addicted to, the more he craves it. The more he craves, the more vicious he becomes. I find it fitting, and I prefer that over losing all Bloodlust upon the first feeding.
I do prefer not losing all the bloodlust after feeding as well.

But vampires need blood to live like humans need water / food to live. I guess that's where I feel the biggest disconnect for the thought process.
Use exsanguinate (or insert other future skills here) heal your lost life / mana / essence (depending on form) basically restoring and repowering yourself.
overfeed to gain even more power via bloodlust (faster attacks / movement / spell cast) but now that your have more than your fill your life drains at an increased rate which just honestly does not make any sense.


On the first system you guys saw, the passive drain would kill you in the Physical State, which it was not supposed to. The idea was for you to stay alive with 1 health point minimum. That makes it so that when your Bloodlust is at maximum, and your health is draining extremely fast, you are more powerful on all your abilities, but you also die more easily, so it is a double-edged sword.
This is also why I said it felt like it would fit right in with a revenant switch bloodlust with "rage" or something and the more you attack/get hit the more rage you accumulate until you do something to heal which takes away the rage.

Now the idea is that the more Bloodlust you gain, the harder it is to increase it, because your health drain will also increase, and you must always drink more and more blood to maximize the Bloodlust. Doing so is optional, in the sense that you have no necessity to do it, but if you do it can bring you power, while also demanding that you keep a steady flow of feeding in combat, otherwise your thirst will not sustain itself.
This is why I like the new system, though the drain is a bit too quick in the fact that you are only able to get a few attacks in before having to feed again making it feel like a chore (hence why I suggested at maximum allow a time frame to stay at max) or possibly even give an indicator as to how big the boon is or how long we have till it drops down to the next lower tier of the boon.
I don't know if i'm at maximum attack speed or attack teleport distance at 50%, 75%, 90% or only at 100% i know the full music kicks in at 50% but some way to acknowledge this would be helpful.
 
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While the new mechanic might be more thematically appropriate the old one was more mechanically satisfying but the problem is that neither is sustainable.

Innate class mechanics are meant to provide an additional skill requirement to an increased effect and should be integrated with the flow of combat.

The old mechanic did that somewhat but the requirement on the player were too great - not being able to take a single hit in that state leads to a highly increased difficulty to the point of which some games have that as an extra hard difficulty mode(like "Heaven or Hell" and "Hell and Hell" in Devil May Cry). You could argue that the mechanic is optional to use but it is not as the bloodlust meter naturally increased through the course of combat. Moreover the combat feels somewhat artificially slowed down if the bloodlust meter is not at least halfway filled.

The problem with the new mechanic is that it isn't integrated into the combat and breaks its flow severely. Currently it is not hard to get a full bloodlust meter, it just takes a few consecutive exsanguinates which just requires the player to stay in place and spam a button. Also again the combat feels artificially slowed down unless the meter is at least halfway filled and it is still way more fun to have the meter full or almost full. The whole process of filling the meter feels like a chore that you have to do before you have fun rather than a natural part of the combat.

In order for bloodlust to be a good fun mechanic it needs to be sustainable without interrupting the flow of combat by either having to stop and do repetitive actions or by having the character die unreasonably quickly. The passive health drain speed is absolutely horrid(possibly to this being a newbie vampire's level of health?) and increasing it with the bloodlust mechanic is just unnecessarily frustrating. Tying bloodlust to overheal partially solves that problem but in a very bad way because it completely negates the risk-vs-reward factor in maintaining the bloodlust state that you previously had while making the problem even more severe after combat as your health gets drained really fast and there is nobody to drink blood from. You can have the ability to purge the bloodlust somehow after the combat ends that would solve the second problem but I still do not like the inherent safety net that the fact it is an overheal provides.

A possible solution with the current system would be to make the bloodlust meter drain a lot faster but it should rain completely before the heath drain starts again. That way you again have that junkie aspect going on but at least you do not have the severe negative after-combat effects. Also if that system is to be kept there should be a quick cast version of exsanguinate that acts as an execution and drains quite a lot of blood from targets with low health while killing them. That would integrate the bloodlust mechanic better with the combat and give you a way to maintain it without breaking its flow and while increasing the skill cap. Also in that case non-execution exsanguinate has to be limited in some way by either a cooldown or having a condition before you can use it so you would not be able to just spam it and regain health.

Another possible solution is to remove the bloodlust bar completely and tie the mechanic to the health bar directly with the full effects of bloodlust being available when the bar is a a half or a third filled or less and the effects diminishing the more health you have. That way you have the element of increased danger for a combat advantage and you have the element of having to balance how fed you are during combat in order to maintain that advantage.

A third possible solution is to be able to choose whether you fill the bloodlust bar or the health bar while feeding and as a LoK fan I can appreciate this one as being similar to the choice of whether to feed the Reaver or Kain. Of course an execution style exsanguinate should be implemented in this case as well and the increased health drain should be removed in this situation as well unless there is a way to purge yourself of bloodlust when the combat ends.
 
but now that your have more than your fill your life drains at an increased rate which just honestly does not make any sense.

It does through lore yet unrevealed. :)

This is also why I said it felt like it would fit right in with a revenant switch bloodlust with "rage" or something and the more you attack/get hit the more rage you accumulate until you do something to heal which takes away the rage.

The Revenant is still being worked on, so it might/will change, but this is precisely what we are currently going for.

I don't know if i'm at maximum attack speed or attack teleport distance at 50%, 75%, 90% or only at 100% i know the full music kicks in at 50% but some way to acknowledge this would be helpful.

Currently, I believe your attack speed increases up until 100%. If you are not at 100%, you have not achieved maximum benefit from it.

As for Elveone's suggestion, all those options have been considered already. They are good suggestions. When I told Varik that the Bloodlust cannot be judged right now because it is in a vacuum, that holds absolutely true. There are aspects of it that currently feel off because there are no other systems that supplement it currently implemented, but when everything is working together, I do believe it will feel like a natural part of the gameplay, and then it will only be a matter of balancing it.

I will say that I personally prefer having the Bloodlust present rather than not. While it would be possible to invert it with health (the lower your health is, the more Bloodlust you have) as you suggested, I think this is something that would be especially fitting if the Vampire used blood as fuel for his spells, but the undead faction of DHS uses mana for that instead, so this alternative would fall out of place.

Lastly, I would like to say that I see people's concerns and understand them. I even agree with them, being a player myself. Keep in mind that, as features are added over time, they might initially feel off-putting until they are fully realized, and this realization may come through either changes to the feature itself, or the addition of completely new mechanics that supplement it, all being worked on. That said, the feedback is especially useful when it diverts us from directions we shouldn't be going and orients us towards aspects we should be focusing on.
 
Well, I know how games designed by a community end up so I am inclined to trust in the design team abilities. Still as a tester of the game and a developer in another life when confronted with a design problem I feel it is better to throw a bunch of ideas against the wall and see what sticks than to say nothing because you just cannot know where something interesting might come from.