@Talyrion@Arranir7 This is probably related to the fact that we recently decided that it would be better for all RO to be “playersexual” but didn’t finish updating everything related to it. I think it might be working fine now.
There was indeed a bug related to this, it took me a while to find out and fix it. I tested it myself and it should be working like this: Rose will invite you a few nights after your first meeting with Russell. You have to go to the meeting with him first, though, or this event won’t pop you.
Also, keep in mind that you’ll probably have to restart your game for the fixes to come into effect. Make sure it says “(version 0.7.2)” in the title screen.
Damn, glad to see that this game is back and polished more than ever.
I do have some things to report:
. Would it be too much to ask if the free time you had in Chapter 1 before the meeting with Russel was extended a bit? Between Chapter 2’s free time lasting for about 5 days and Chapter 3 most likely jumping straight into the action with no free time, it could be easy to miss out on some great scenes like Morgan’s duel or encountering the Ratman.. Would 5 days be too much?
. There’s an error with one of the requests. When I give the outlaws that shack they wanted for 2 Ankhs, the paragraph that talks about how they got into a shootout is shown over and over again-I think it even overrides the hub scene and prevents you from picking what to do in the current night.
. I gotta admit, the game’s references to the Regent’s personality is underwhelming. Mainly because it only does so when the character has a high Ruthless stat. It’d be nice to see those kind of references from the other stats. Maybe if you have a high Honest stat, Oswald would say “credit where credit is due, you’re not as sleazy as the rest of the stakebaits” or something like that before his fight, or if you won a really hard poker match (I think I remember one that needed Epic Perception) with high Impulsive, someone could say “never thought someone as reckless as you could be this good in a game of patience and skill.” Hell, you could even combine two stat checks for a reference-have an MC with high Ruthless and Honest be called “harsh but fair”, or someone with high Deceitful and Impulsive to be a “fucking psycho”. The sky’s the limit when it comes to stuff like this.
. There’s also another error where I sent Juarez to investigate the Blazing Grave and never got a call back from him.
. One thing that’d be nice to see is the requests that you fulfill affect the world around you. Maybe if you funded that rock band, the Blazing Grave guy at the beginning of Chapter 3 could have a video of them sucking the blood of their fans while backstage. If you talk to Mayor Christie, she could thank you for funding money to the party or talk about her vacation with Georgia. Maybe we could finally ask Mad Dave how in the hell did he clog up a urinal with blood. Not the kind of stuff that’d have a massive impact on the story, but it’d be nice to see even the little actions you do make some sort of difference.
. A spoilery question, if I might. Will we have the chance to turn our puppet into a vampire and be their bloodmaster soon? Or is that not part of the game.
Also, thank you for spotting this. It was a coding error–the code did not check whether the MC is male. Alice should be a male-only RO and her pathway should be fixed now.
@Arranir7
Morgan’s case is different. We left him as an accessible RO regardless of gender. Initially, Morgan was female-locked, but now you can access his RO pathway even if you are not playing a female MC.
@AAO
Thanks for keeping in touch! So, to your bullet-points:
We have been discussing how to tackle this problem. On the one hand, we want players to access as many random scenes as possible–because, just like you mentioned, many alternative pathways are only available through specific scenes. On the other hand, we don’t want to force players to play more scenes if they don’t want to (that is why, at the moment, you can move on to the Boltnei Avenue’s deduction as early as in the first night after the shootout).
As a temporary fix, and to measure players’ feedback, there are now three weeks between Russell’s letter and Russell’s meeting (originally two). That means (at least) 21 possible random events. Let’s see how it goes.
I’ll look into it. Thanks for reporting!
This is great feedback. I will keep that in mind when revising the scenes.
You mean after the confrontation with Valentina/Theresa, right?
This kind of content is not added to the game yet, as we are still working on the warehouse heist scene. But be sure that you will hear from Juarez if you sent him out to investigate those pricks.
Great feedback as well. Some requests already have in-game impact, but some still lack acknowledgment.
But of course. This is one of the story’s epilogues.
Alice will only agree to flee Mordhaven with you if you haven’t done some actions that might piss her off – like sentencing initiates to death in the fencing club. That said, the escape scene is not completely implemented yet.
I answered you with the earlier drafts in mind–in which Alice was meant to be a male-only RO. This section of the code is not yet updated. But since the last major update we are in the process of making the four ROs accessible regardless of gender. Zaper even wrote this a few posts back:
So, mea culpa. Alice, just like Morgan, should not be gender-locked anymore.
Is it possible to have for example a sort of “activation timer” between key events? For example after a certain number of days a scene or action might become available after which a player may immediately “move the main story forward” while those who like to do more “game exploration” can continue doing their stuff without been forced to “move ahead”.
Maybe you could add some in-game penalties for too much time delay eg a crucial meeting/appointment missed, unsolved/unresolved situations and the problems that follow that
Man, @AAO beat me to the punch with a lot of that feedback. Been lurking and playing for a bit now, and this is my absolute favorite WiP. Really hope it gets published. What a blast for vampire or World of Darkness fans.
Here’s what they didn’t steal from me:
Is it too late to suggest a combat-related option for Balkanics with their Transmutation during the fight with Oswald? I remember on one mission you can turn and attack enemies with other Balkanics, and it was simply a Physique and Perception check, I believe? I know we fight Oswald alone, but you could merely make it more difficult to pull off. I’m just disappointed we can’t turn into our forms during the fight and remind him he’s not fucking with the natural. Maybe every form simply attacks his face viciously, and if we succeed the stat check, we lead him off the roof?
Speaking of that power, the game states right at the beginning that you were told there was more to it. Will we be able to actually pursue this at some point? Are we talking wolves and rats and maybe even swarms? Or something unique, like a vampire beast form?
I really enjoy Alice as an RO. She’s loyal and not afraid to get her hands dirty. I smiled every time she automatically joined with fencing swords and helped me on missions. Great stuff, really adds to the immersion.
During missions with combat, I couldn’t help but notice we had no choice in how we fought. I was dissatisfied when my vampire would just join I’m shooting his pistol while Alice has melee weapons and so did other characters. I feel if this was expanded, it would really go a long way. Maybe give us just a few choices when missions have a main focus on combat. And they should use different stats. For instance, my Regent always has lower Perception. Why can’t I use a weapon that’s just Physique? Such as a barbed bat, plank, or club? Maybe even a sledgehammer. I think this would give us a lot more agency and allow us to be more versatile, as we should be as Regents. I am confident using the pistol works Perception. It just seems restrictive if that’s the case. If not, I would at least like Alice to be able to pass me a fencing blade, dammit!
Didn’t even complete a playthrough, but I could tell just by reading that I would love it. Keep doing what you do. Can’t wait to see the finished product.
We have three big events that cannot be postponed after they trigger. One is a meeting scheduled since the first scene in the game(which you can, of course, decide to not attend), and the other two are a deadline and a direct order given by the most powerful vampire in the continent. You can also miss the deadline(which prompts the assassination attempt by Valentina) and refuse to follow the order(which basically puts you against everything and everyone). There is, though, still a way to escape/survive all that and get an early ending that might even be a happy one, depending on what you want for your character.
The thing is, those 3 events are locked because they are game-changers: they impact the narrative and even the mechanics in a major way. They always need to trigger at some point, and they cannot be delayed after that initial trigger.
What we can do(and are trying to), though, is to find a good number of days between each of those triggers.
The main chunk of the game always lasts roughly a month. The first trigger happens after two or three weeks, and then it’s up to the player to decide if they want to milk the remaining days by delaying their investigation or if they want to go straight to it.
I like the idea of letting players rush things because I don’t see a reason to force them to wait before solving the case if they already know the answer. This benefits people that have been paying attention(but paradoxically also makes them lose some scenes) and people who are doing a second playthrough. But some players might get the impression that the game was too short because of it.
We have been adjusting how many nights it takes for some of the clues to appear, though. A few of the most important ones were almost instantaneous, and that might have led people to rush the investigation. We’re working based on the feedback people give us related to those things.
We can also offer different difficulty settings to the game, which changes the max number of days between each main trigger. The more time people have to prepare, the easier they are.
Honestly, this is going to take a while to figure out. But we’re working on it.
I like the idea of jumping from the roof with him and then transmuting. It shouldn’t be hard to implement.
We’re saving that for a very special moment, but I can tell you that there are two characters in the game already that serve as examples of some of the things that can be achieved by this. You don’t always meet them, though, and even when you do meet them, they not always show you their true powers. It depends on your choices.
I like when the ROs integrate with the game as well. We could do with a bit more of that.
I’m all in for making the player have more options to deal with physical encounters. I think we ended up focusing too much on firearms and neglected all the fun possibilities that blades can bring. There’s still time to correct that.
In fact, I want people to give us precisely that kind of feedback: was there anything they wanted to roleplay as, but for some reason couldn’t? Was there some type of action they felt they should be able to do, but the game didn’t let them? Some type of choice, or dialogue option, or even personality trait they felt should be there but wasn’t?
As much as we care about the story and the plot(and believe me, there’s a lot of fun stuff yet to occur and be revealed), for me, players being able to roleplay what they want is as important as anything we can come up with.
Honestly, I think a cane sword (which could actually just be an artifact we get from a character) would fit perfectly and be worth adding as an optional flavor piece and seperate weapon. I really want to roleplay a vampire that sulks around with a cane just for looks, so why not go one step further? Its concealable, realistic, and fits vampires so obviously well. Many characters would definitely carry one over just a dagger. It’s not too different from that, but obviously offers more reach and parrying ability.
Not to mention, fencing is already such a huge part of our characters. This offers us the ability to properly incorporate all that training we can do! So it fits in with the game itself, as well, not just who we are.
One thing I thought of is there should be option to non lethal things , fight with hands or daggers . Guns feel a bit weird and I kinda expect vampires to be fast enough to avoid getting shot in head easily . Maybe it’s just me idk . Good luck on the progress.
The character George Russell uses a cane with a sword hidden inside it, and you can get it from him as a relic if you kill him at the Japanese restaurant or at the graveyard. I guess its just a matter of turning it into something that you can use in battle. There’s also Morgan’s sword, which you can win from it. I think those two + at least one vanilla cold weapon from character creation should do the trick.
Other than the regenerating ability common to all, vampires in this setting usually only have supernatural speed and strength if they “preserve their physique from the perpetual mediocrity of immortality”. It is one of the main reasons as to why vampiric hubs tend to have some sort of melee practice tradition.
Basically, the value assigned to each of your three stats (Physique, Perception, and Manipulation) will determine what kind of feats you are capable of. Our vampires aren’t faster than bullets here, although some can move faster than someone’s aim, if they have the stats for it. I do think, though, that we focused too much on firearms for non-Neshmaal vampires in combat encounters, and that’s something we are working on right now.
Hey, I just finished reading and have to say that it was a pretty good and interesting to read. I also have found a small bug that, when you don’t take out the cheat menu in the final version, be used to get some money, because when you attack the people that transport the, I think it was, military grade weapons and check the phone of the vampire you can take out money multiple times without the option greying out also while im on that topic could us keeping the weapons make a small or bigger difference since both the vampires and vampire hunters would be fighting with high grade weapons. And, even though the world building was very good, if like to know more and maybe influence the ways the Cloud gets money since we’re the regent. Another thing if like would be maybe a newspaper at the start of each day where either (when you did nothing special the previous night) it just states that XY people died/a small convenience store was robbed etc. to remind that you’re in a not so peaceful place or that (when you’ve done something the previous night) it states what the public thinks and/or what happened. Another option I’d think could be nice would be to either get more options to feed on humans and maybe, like it sometimes says at the start, from vampires that are under you or just say that you as a regent doesn’t have enough time to feed directly from any source and just drink you of blood bags. And since the last few days in the game are still pretty fresh in my mind I’d say that there shouldn’t be an option to just do everything on day and instead keep a steady flow of information and since I’m already talking about the investigation I wasn’t able to view the gathered evidence before the last day
and in the very last pages of the game I’d like to have a little bit more professionalism from the hunters kidnapping you and maybe make them give the Regent something for their arts like this tea that was used in the poker game with the leader of the outlaws for Scrying, keep the eyes covered in the end when the regent can use induction, make the hunters wear special gloves when the regent can use Enfever and I have no idea what could be used for Transmutation maybe introduce some special kind of metal into the game(could be silver) or put everything in so that the hunters at least look like they know what they’re doing. Another thing that would be nice is to give an option to spend time with another character as an option and maybe some interesting things that are said from older vampires like story’s of the crusade or wars. I also as a last word have to praise you for the world building and making a world that you can easily understand with some nice little details of how everything works in this world.
Setting is very similar to vampire the masquerade bloodlines. Which is great. There are some dialogues which should not appear after making certain decisions or knowing certain things in earlier in different event. I guess it is not possible because of randomness of event. But it feels kind of unatural. And there are a lot of characters but less time to explore all of them before main events. Some people want depth in each playthrough. Increasing the timeline of first event will be good.
The world building is intriguing. I like russel and rose. But alice need more development. There wasnt many interaction with or wasnt able to interact with Morgan and Sebastian but from little interaction i had morgan is similar to sheriff in bloodlines with some personality.
There are also some issues like - during post deduction event when i chose to stay inside car; i was given choice to jump inside the car while when i chose to come out i was give choice to press the accelerator.
Although I like this project, I think the same, there a lot of characters and we’re not really able to enjoy them or they just appear for a bit and then just disappear. I don’t really mind it too much but I do enjoy getting to know characters.
Thank you for the detailed feedback. I can’t quote bits of your message because of the spoilers tag, so I’ll enumerate the answers instead:
1 - The bug where you could take Kev’s money more than once has been fixed. Thank you for reporting it.
2 - If the hunters remain with the weapons, it’s harder to fight them later on at the warehouse where they take you(coming in the next major update). If the Cloud gets the weapons, the battle becomes a bit easier for your side. Selling them in the black market impacts the Crime rate in the city, which brings consequences on the epilogues.
3 - We used to have a system where you could have more control over the Cloud’s finances(which were separated from your own), but it was growing too complicated, and we got some bad feedback on it, so we decided to strip it. I do think the current “anarchocapitalist” method where you either choose initiates for free or pay agents to perform tasks makes sense in the scenario and works well with the current mechanics, though.
4 - If the city’s crime rate is high, there are little snippets throughout different events that reflect that. Some options or unique events might pop up because of that too.
5 - Originally, I wanted the option to feed on humans to be one of the main ways to spend nights, but there have been suggestions that this might be problematic in the long run. We decided to focus on certain specific situations where you can go after innocent people instead.
6 - We recently did some massive changes on how the nights and the investigation work. We’re looking for feedback on that, but I think it’s working better now.
7 - That particular scene about the hunters kidnapping the Regent will change a bit as we eventually connect it with the rest of the game in a future update, but I think it’s worth mentioning:
1 - The Regent is there willingly, aware that if he/she tries something, the hunters will release the videos. They know that as well.
2 - They keep the Regent’s eyes covered most of the time. They only take it off at the end, because they want the Regent to see what they were about to do to him/her. As demonstrated in the scene with Oswald and suggested in one pathway where you face the Circadians, there are ways to counter or prevent Induction. This is expanded further later on as well.
3 - We specifically mention that the windows are closed, so there’s no way of trying to escape by flying. The hunters are also wary of the Regent’s hands if he/she is a Neshmaal, as the text describes if you try something.
8 - I like the idea of vampires talking about stories from the past. We have a bit of that with Belmont and Morgan and maybe one or two other characters. There’s also the lore you can unfold if Lucille is your puppet or if you meet Georgia in the café to talk about Merovech. I’d say the place where we’ll have most of that, though, is during the encounter with the Nephelai, after the battle with the hunters.
OBS: as for the bug you posted in the screenshot, it happens when we update the game’s files in the middle of someone’s playthrough. There’s no way around it, as far as I know, other than restarting the game from scratch. Even then, it might be that you need to delete your cookies from dashingDon’s website.
Can you give some examples? Most of the time there are ways to fix those kind of things, we just need to know where they are first.
You’re right, there was a bug there. We fixed it in the last update, thank you for the report. We also raised the number of days and changed a few dynamics.
We’re working with a large cast indeed, but I think it makes sense given the “organizational” aspect of it. There are a lot of secondary and tertiary characters, but I think all of them eventually have their moments if you take into consideration all the possible pathways and the epilogues later on.
We’re still going to run the whole thing through Grammarly and ProWritingAid, but we always fix those whenever someone reports them. Shoutout to PieGuyonline on Discord for all his help with this.
The problem with this should have been fixed in the last update, as we changed the structure of those events. Now it’s just a matter of fine-tuning it, but I think the current number of days we have (42) is a good one for this part of the story we wanted to tell. The next segments happen outside that game loop, and we are very excited to show it to you guys.
