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Lassitude posted:Yeah he's a hengeyokai wereshark called a Same-Bito, which are sort of like the kue-jin of weresharks, in that they're an Eastern version of them. Except where kue-jin are presented as mechanically and historically distinct from vampires, hengeyokai Same-Bito are the same as Western Rokea, other than being hated by them.
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Oct 27, 2019 01:34
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Even the Hakken (Japanese werewolves) are just an offshoot of the Shadow Lords and are mechanically similar. Wan Kuei were mechanically different because they weren't vampires, persay, they were basically demons who possessed the bodies of the dead. A lot of people are super salty about KotE, but it was the one setting and book where you could just go full ham chop socky and really pulpy esoteric supernatural martial arts silliness and it was all fine and worked. Also the Ten Thousand Hells was a great book, and amazingly tame in terms of weird rapey bullshit considering that era of WW. Other than the underlying premise of KotE only rising from death because they're Asian, and Asian people are magic, the rest of the setting was actually pretty chill and Blood and Silk actually had a pretty well researched and involved take on Eastern History, something very few people in the U.S. learn about. It wasn't that bad a game. The martial arts rules were overly complex and stupid, though, but hey, they were the training wheels for Exalted, which ended up taking a lot of its cues from KotE
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Oct 27, 2019 05:41
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What is Clan loyalty like from Clan to Clan? Are some Clans tighter than others? I remember reading Gangrel are loners generally. I'm just wondering if any Clan has the rep/history of being more trustworthy with each other and if any Clan has the rep for being treacherous to their own.
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Oct 28, 2019 07:49
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NikkolasKing posted:What is Clan loyalty like from Clan to Clan? Are some Clans tighter than others? I remember reading Gangrel are loners generally. Venture, Toreador and Nosferatu keep close to their clanmates, both to cooperate and to compete. Gangrel, Brujah, Ravnos and Tzimisce mostly do their own things. Setites and Lasombra are backstabbers through and through. Malkavians are all of the above.
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Oct 28, 2019 08:48
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NikkolasKing posted:What is Clan loyalty like from Clan to Clan? Are some Clans tighter than others? I remember reading Gangrel are loners generally. Tremere are all bloodbonded to their immediate superior in the Pyramid's hierarchy so they're technically the most "loyal". Nosferatu tend to consider clan solidarity very important because the Niktuku are out there and also everyone else treats them like poo poo. Ventrue are loyal to the structure over the individual, though they take favors very seriously. Gangrel are mostly loners and prefer to rely on themselves, though they treat each other politely enough. For the Brujah, Toreador and Malkavian it's gonna come down more to individual personalities and politics, since they're the most passionate of the clans. Though the Malkavians also have the Madness Network so they have an inter-clan bond that isn't fully conscious and can be leveraged for collective action.
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Oct 28, 2019 14:46
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Fuzz posted:Other than the underlying premise of KotE only rising from death because they're Asian, and Asian people are magic, the rest of the setting was actually pretty chill and Blood and Silk actually had a pretty well researched and involved take on Eastern History, something very few people in the U.S. learn about. This doesn't sound as exculpatory as you think it does.
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Oct 28, 2019 16:47
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YaketySass posted:Tremere are all bloodbonded to their immediate superior in the Pyramid's hierarchy so they're technically the most "loyal". Past tense though for this, right? The Pyramid is destroyed in the Bloodlines 2 timeline.
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Oct 28, 2019 17:56
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:This doesn't sound as exculpatory as you think it does. It isn't meant to. Ultimately the flaw of the game was it was a bunch of white guys wanting to make a chop socky pulpy martial arts game in the vein of Big Trouble in Little China (which the game took the heaviest influence from), but being total 80s/early 90s boneheads about it and trying to whitesplain how it fit into the existing oWoD, something they were loving obsessed with doing at every turn, no matter how little they actually knew about what they were writing about (2E Gypsies) or how straight up White Man's Burden they sounded (Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom... just that name alone,  ). Somewhere in there, they actually had someone who actually knew about Eastern mythology and history, however, and out was clear that whoever that was, he/she actually put in the effort to try and work in all sorts of interesting stuff like Oni myths and Rakshasa, both of which were just "Kuei-Jin." Even that term was loving whitesplainy because they wanted some sort of pan-Asian term to collectively refer to everything in the book, so they just picked two words from unrelated languages via That Language - English dictionary and ran with it, because that's how White Wolf rolled back then. Forcing the connection to all the Kindred stuff was the stupid move, since even in the books it's basically laid out that there is a spiritual sphere of influence in the east where people worship these disparate gods and religions, however they all share a connection via the spirit realm and no one knows how or why some people come back as freaky demons, but they do. Basically, don't think about it too hard, some people come back as demons and crazy poo poo ensues.  They've made their own weird religions and spiritual beliefs based loosely on their real lives mixed with their hosed up afterlife lifestyle... so basically exactly what VtM did. The issue was trying to somehow cram them under the umbrella of "Kindred of the East" to use the name recognition to sell the book (it still sold like poo poo) even though the book wasn't actually about vampires... at all. It was about a specific type of demons/spiritual beings.As a south asian dude, it was neat seeing a lot of our mythology even be represented, let alone in a cool and novel way. I get that a whole bunch of white people are all  about even talking about it, it's totally understandable because holy poo poo was it not handled well overall, but this is loving White Wolf we're talking about... there are far, far worse and grosser skeletons in their closet than KotE.Edit: A pure KotE game without any of the other lines really encroaching in other than being faceless antagonists if necessary would still be fun, I contend. The whole game is meant to be played with a tongue in cheek over the top Wu Tang Collection type of insane vibe to it with evil overloads turning into freaky monsters (Demon Shintai), traipsing across a spirit world made up entirely of bizarre and oddly specific hells with demon overlords trying to eat you, only to end up on the street where a weird homeless guy with magic powers tries to kill you (Shih), before you're captured by a secret government organization that tries to turn you into a lab rat (Strike Force Zero). All throughout this you're riding motorcycles while wielding katanas, having a full on kung fu battle on the back of a flying turtle spirit, and doing crouching tiger hidden dragon on wires chases through the red light district of Hong Kong while there's a riot going on. That's basically the gist of the game, all the backstory poo poo doesn't actually matter. It is a painfully 90s game, but in a lot of good ways, too. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 20:25
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I just wanna suck people's blood man.
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Oct 28, 2019 20:54
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Hopping vampires really aren't in enough media.
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Oct 28, 2019 21:39
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Hopping vampires really aren't in enough media. Jiangshi are great, and yeah, they're in KotE. So is Lo Pan, for all intents and purposes, as well as a bunch of crazy poo poo from anime. It's never spelled out, but clearly you can run tentacle porn adventures with it, if you wanted to. The fact that it's not directly spelled out was honestly more surprising to me, because come on this is 90s White Wolf. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 21:54
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Nostalgamus posted:You can use blood bags as effectively healing potions. I threatened him in some way to keep selling me poo poo even after busting up his scheme, I must not have noticed the bloodpacks heal. I had a bunch since it's literally the only thing worth purchasing in the entire game AFAIK but usually just suck one down and then bloodheal in a safe spot. This hallowbrook hotel segment is pretty nuts. You got the big fleshy monsters who don't acknowledge you, but also you have no reason to at all go down to where they are, next to unopenable doors. That whole area doesn't seem to spawn enemies at all until some arbitrary trigger, but you can just go on safely immediately to the next room without hassle at all, it's only if you faff about that they try and getcha. The next areas you can't really sneak all that well, but if you start fighting you have to watch out for the eyeless creeps who give humanity loss if you kill em. pre-edit: Wrote this a couple days ago but didn't post. I have just now beaten the game. First, what the hell was this ending segment! More enemies in the last segments than in the rest of the game combined. The trip up to LaCroix has like, an actual shooting gallery part. Gotta be honest, wasn't a fan of these parts and I mostly got through them only by constantly huffing blood and blood striking everything (it's weird how some enemies you can throw as many as you want in a row, but others had a 2-3 cap). I had to restock between ming and lacroix, felt cheap, but being a sneaky vampire no longer worked and I had to be duke nukem for a bit so whatever. They also threw some random poo poo in, like the puzzle where you have to shove a pedestal to open the secret buddha door. It was just weird to introduce a new puzzle mechanic, only use it once, and at the very end of the game. The Sabbat boss seemed way harder than the others, maybe it was because I was low on blood packs at that fight but I only beat it because you can a) save in battle and b) sometimes he would goof out and just walk back and forth instead of doing his blood wolf dive bullshit. Ming fight was way easier than surviving her goons. Can the robot-armed sailor scout only help you in the outside area? She wouldn't follow me into the interior at all but I was worried it might be because she was glitched out shooting a crossbow at nothing forever. Just curious if there's a special interaction with her and ming. Ming fight itself was basically free blood strike shots as long as you strafed a little bit. All these vampire clans scared of some dudes with swords, crossbows, and a big slug that's weak to the first magic spell you get. Sheriff part one where he's doing Cloud cosplay was easy due to the stairs, he's super weak to guns but I didn't realize that until I had already chunked most of his health with blood strikes. The bat part was neat, I liked how the swat guys would shoot at batman sometimes for me, but I was a little confused about the werewolf adds kept spawning from. It was just weird to cap this RPG off with this stuff that would've felt better in an action game. The ending itself though was a treat. Just a good ol' dancing wolf party while the credits scroll. Since it was the first option I went for, I think that means it is canon for me. I went back and tried the other options, taking it for myself and then letting him blow himself up. I get the feeling I got, like, the "bad" ending or something, though. There was a mysterious figure in the Jack cutscene and then the cabby (I assume this is supposed to be caine?) says his thing.Was the dark feeling everyone was getting because Caine was in town, or because the PC was born? I made a save right before the cab driver choice, is it worth going back to replay all that with the alternate options? La Croix sucks, I was sympathetic to Anarchs but went with my gut of "gently caress everyone, gently caress this, gently caress you." I suppose if you side with La Croix you skip his end battle gauntlet, but they might also just make you do it anyway. I was hoping there was a Kuejin route but I didn't see one, probably due to my rudeness to everyone. Cool game, weird game, I liked it.
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Oct 29, 2019 05:18
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The game never says it but yeah, the game data files for the cabbie call him cain. The ending is indeed a slog of enemies, although you should be pretty OP by then.
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Oct 29, 2019 07:21
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The ending action bit was very rushed and it shows, it's completely antithetical to the rest of the game.
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Oct 29, 2019 17:46
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Mendrian posted:The ending action bit was very rushed and it shows, it's completely antithetical to the rest of the game. I'm hoping Bloodlines 2 condences the ending to one 2 mile long corridor in the sewers that is straight and a werewolf is chasing me. Then at the end I arrive at 3 colored doors, one for each ending slide.
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Oct 29, 2019 18:00
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Nah man, I want to take on that boss from Contra 3. (I actually didn't mind that fight at all)
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Oct 29, 2019 19:20
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The final sections are sort of rushed and the content is rough and too focused on combat, but the actual ending(s) are hilarious punch lines to everything the game had been building up towards. Look I like these kinds of farces.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:13
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I think Caine is gonna be in this game, as well as Goldconda.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:15
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Phobophilia posted:The final sections are sort of rushed and the content is rough and too focused on combat, but the actual ending(s) are hilarious punch lines to everything the game had been building up towards. Look I like these kinds of farces.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:16
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Is Bloodlines 2 choosing an ending to be canon or are they doing it in such a way it doesn't matter? "-If you install it from Steam, you'll need to install the Unofficial Patch found here. If you haven't played before, stick with the base patch, veteran players should consider the +Patch which fixes a lot of exploits and changes some things up." I think this is really bad advice, I would say new players should absolutely install the +Patch from the getgo. Was watching some reviews and analysis of the game last night and sooo much of them focused on all the buggy, broken bullshit that seemed to make the game a much worse experience. The plus content blends in perfectly into the game, like, Malkavian mansion without the crazy cool twisty rooms and poo poo would be boring and I don't even know how much else restored content would have been missing. The original game wasn't a sacred masterpiece, I can sometimes get behind going through a raw vanilla experience but I can't see any advantage of it in this game at this point in time. Khanstant fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 00:28
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Khanstant posted:Is Bloodlines 2 choosing an ending to be canon or are they doing it in such a way it doesn't matter? Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 00:40
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Zaphod42 posted:The game never says it but yeah, the game data files for the cabbie call him cain. Fuckin' Ming Xiao was a nightmare for me and my melee build. Also thank God I had some extra points left over to put into Guns or I would never have beaten the flying Sheriff. Anyway, I like to draw inspiration from other media. It helps me RP easier. I really feel like this moment from the irst Pirates of th Caribbean sums up being a vampire quite well: https://youtu.be/1fzXmJyolfY?t=8 "We are not among the living, and so we cannot die. But neither are we dead! For too long, I've been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starvin' to death and haven't died. I feel nothin'. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea, nor the warmth of a woman's flesh." It's not something you really get from Bloodlines. I felt the Toreador Clanbook delved into this better. Vampires can't feel or experience things like we do. Toreadors surround themselves with humans because they still crave the artistic pleasures of life but are utterly incapable of feeling them in un-life. They can only enjoy these things by living vicariously through humans.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:45
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NikkolasKing posted:Fuckin' Ming Xiao was a nightmare for me and my melee build. Also thank God I had some extra points left over to put into Guns or I would never have beaten the flying Sheriff. It is one of the great tragedies of the Cainite condition that they have an eternity of experience laid out before them, only for the great highs and lows of human emotion to have been rendered little more than a fading memory.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:50
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NikkolasKing posted:Fuckin' Ming Xiao was a nightmare for me and my melee build. Also thank God I had some extra points left over to put into Guns or I would never have beaten the flying Sheriff. If you like that style of Vampire can I suggest some Anne Rice?  I grew up reading Interview and The Vampire Lestat and so on so I played a few Toreador and Daeva characters. I do really like that idea of the conflicted vampire who is above humans but also laments that they are not human anymore and what they gave up. But now I'm more into Malkavs and Tremere because crazy blood magic, IDK, I guess I really like playing Mages and they're the closest vampires to mages lol. I'm honestly kinda surprised that I can still get into vampire fiction after loving Twilight. Sparkly "vampires" is just such an awful idea.
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Oct 30, 2019 01:01
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I'm probably a minority here - I've never played Bloodlines 1 in anything other than Malkavian. The main reason is in past plays, I never fully completed the game. I'm talking like 10 years ago when I first played. I went through the survey and was assigned Malkavian. Maybe around 2012 I gave it another try and stopped somewhere midway. Maybe it was at the point where you have to deal with that fuckin werewolf or a bit before. No idea why I lost interest. Anyways I finally gave it another try, like 2 or 3 months ago and completed the game, as Malkavian. I enjoyed it thoroughly, with some agreeable criticism on parts near the end. I love the Malkavian personality, but the abilities are excellent as well. I'm usually a fan of stealth / silent kills in other games so the Obfuscate abilities came into great use. Sneaking up behind and killing with a Katana. Especially getting to that Nosferatu lair and dealing with all those enemies. I guess there's a shortcut added to skip that, but using that is no fun at all. I rarely used guns, other than parts where it was necessary. Near the end, Vision of Death came into great use killing bosses. Think of it as a 100% accurate ranged weapon with instant damage to them - you just need to stock up on blood for you to refill after using. I started using that to get passed the last Sabbat boss fight, Ming Xiao, and the first part of The Sheriff. On a different topic - anyone where get into Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption? I actually tried getting into that game before finally finishing Bloodlines - didn't get too far. Maybe because my previous exposure with Bloodlines, the fact that I was stuck as some Catholic knight dude was sort of a turn off. I get he eventually turns, but yeah I stopped after a while. I did make it through the first cave part. There's a common complaint with that part as apparently the lighting is brighter with Voodoo Glide, but with DirectX it's darker and harder to see where you're going. Anyways I stopped a little while after finishing that part. I have to say that with some of these older 3D games, they can be harder to get into versus 2D, or even 2.5D like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. I've been playing computer games since the late 80s with sweet CGA graphics so it's not like I remember old 3D polygonal classics. Descent. Tomb Raider 1. Alone in the Dark. Unless you have some nostalgic connections to them, it can make it a little hard to immerse yourself in them. The fact that I never played this game when it came out might have to do with why I didn't push myself to get to the part where you're actually a vampire. Blah. Lemme know if I'm missing out on some epic poo poo with this game. Scrotum Modem fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 01:11
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Zaphod42 posted:If you like that style of Vampire can I suggest some Anne Rice? Oh I've read plenty of Rice. I think Interview with the Vampire absolutely deserves its status as a classic of the vampire genre. This post-Twilight world we live in likes to look back and misblame her for inventing the "sappy romantic vampire" but her vampires were still very monstrous and inhuman. It's just that we got to explore the psychology and feel sympathy for the monsters. Nobody can ever tell me "Interview" doesn't have the best ending of all time and a perfect indictment of the human race. Louis recounts his two centuries of misery on Earth and the reaction of the interviewer is "I WANNA BE IMMORTAL, TOO!" We all know that is what would happen and it's brilliant in how tragic it is. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 01:12
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Another thing to note - when I got to the Giovanni Mansion part I happened to have high enough lockpicking skills where I could use Bloodbuff + lock picking to unlock every door there. It seemed there were a bunch of unused NPC assets stored in locked up rooms. There was one male character locked in a closet in one of the rooms still stuck in "loading" position, with the arms spread out and such. Made me chuckle
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Oct 30, 2019 01:16
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NikkolasKing posted:Fuckin' Ming Xiao was a nightmare for me and my melee build. Also thank God I had some extra points left over to put into Guns or I would never have beaten the flying Sheriff. I feel like I've heard that one of the main community patches nerfs the flamethrower. That flamethrower is how I handled Ming Xiao originally, and I feel like on most subsequent fights. Just unload on her, take off maybe 70% of her health. It's a thing of beauty. I think there's some gimmick with spotlights to get the sheriff to land?
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Oct 30, 2019 01:26
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Vavrek posted:I think there's some gimmick with spotlights to get the sheriff to land? There is. If you turn on the spotlights while the sheriff is in bat form it blinds him and he will drop to the ground.
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Oct 30, 2019 01:31
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Vavrek posted:I feel like I've heard that one of the main community patches nerfs the flamethrower. That flamethrower is how I handled Ming Xiao originally, and I feel like on most subsequent fights. Just unload on her, take off maybe 70% of her health. It's a thing of beauty. The Plus patch definitely nerfs the flamethrower against Minx Xiao.
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Oct 30, 2019 01:32
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Vavrek posted:I feel like I've heard that one of the main community patches nerfs the flamethrower. That flamethrower is how I handled Ming Xiao originally, and I feel like on most subsequent fights. Just unload on her, take off maybe 70% of her health. It's a thing of beauty. The spotlight trick only works once or twice and I didn't kill him when I got him down so I had to use the guns from the endlessly respawning guards and whatever other ammo I had collected all game. Luckily he doesn't do much damage and has a fixed pattern so once you get rid of the...whatever the other things were, it's just annoying.
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Oct 30, 2019 01:41
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Joe Mama Poonana posted:I'm probably a minority here - I've never played Bloodlines 1 in anything other than Malkavian. The main reason is in past plays, I never fully completed the game. I'm talking like 10 years ago when I first played. I went through the survey and was assigned Malkavian. Maybe around 2012 I gave it another try and stopped somewhere midway. Maybe it was at the point where you have to deal with that fuckin werewolf or a bit before. No idea why I lost interest. I've done 8 or so play throughs and 6 of them were Malkavian. Every time a try a different clan I either get bored or keep questioning why I'm not playing the superior Malks instead.
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Oct 30, 2019 01:55
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I definitely regret not going malk like the survey said. Started a new playthrough with it, I think I would have enjoyed it but I can't be re-beating it again right now. I suppose a second playthrough would be a loooot faster, especially since I was sneaking around for half the game like it had MGSV stealth detection but you can be really sloppy with it and also just completely ignore enemies once spotted and just sprint to where you're going.
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Oct 30, 2019 02:10
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I can never play through the Malkavian storyline because while it does have some very nice atmospheric touches, it reminds me of when I used to LARP and Malkavian LARPers are the worst. Unlike we superior Nosferatu LARPers. 
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Oct 30, 2019 02:13
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chaosapiant posted:I'm hoping Bloodlines 2 condences the ending to one 2 mile long corridor in the sewers that is straight and a werewolf is chasing me. Then at the end I arrive at 3 colored doors, one for each ending slide. Agreed, but the werewolf has to bitch at you the entire chase about player agency and which patches to install.
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Oct 30, 2019 02:20
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angerbeet posted:I can never play through the Malkavian storyline because while it does have some very nice atmospheric touches, it reminds me of when I used to LARP and Malkavian LARPers are the worst. I saw this attitude a lot towards Malk players and "fishmalks" when looking up some of the lore stuff. On one hand, I can see a bunch of RaNdOm SpOrK types being annoying in RP. On the other hand, I cannot imagine a reality in which any person role playing as vampire could ever possibly be anything less than completely insufferable.
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Oct 30, 2019 02:27
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NikkolasKing posted:Nobody can ever tell me "Interview" doesn't have the best ending of all time and a perfect indictment of the human race. Louis recounts his two centuries of misery on Earth and the reaction of the interviewer is "I WANNA BE IMMORTAL, TOO!" We all know that is what would happen and it's brilliant in how tragic it is. It's funny how that was subverted later on by making Louis out to just be a sad sack idiot, though some of that was Lestat being an unreliable narrator during his manic vampire rock star phase since he had some pretty mopey phases too.
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Oct 30, 2019 02:29
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angerbeet posted:I can never play through the Malkavian storyline because while it does have some very nice atmospheric touches, it reminds me of when I used to LARP and Malkavian LARPers are the worst. The best is LARPing as humans in a vampire game "Hey guys, whatcha doin?" Don't break masquerade! 
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Oct 30, 2019 02:34
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Khanstant posted:I saw this attitude a lot towards Malk players and "fishmalks" when looking up some of the lore stuff. On one hand, I can see a bunch of RaNdOm SpOrK types being annoying in RP. On the other hand, I cannot imagine a reality in which any person role playing as vampire could ever possibly be anything less than completely insufferable. I'm a goon, insufferable comes with the territory.
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Oct 30, 2019 02:46
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angerbeet posted:I can never play through the Malkavian storyline because while it does have some very nice atmospheric touches, it reminds me of when I used to LARP and Malkavian LARPers are the worst. An aunt of mine had what I feel is the best Malkavian derangement for LARP in the ... early, mid-90s? Her character was mute. All the other characters going on and on, some players clearly using this as a form of therapy, and she'd just go about her own silent business (and, I assume, communicate through note cards).
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Oct 30, 2019 03:01
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