What does your ideal "Vampire MOD" contain?

[pt3579]

 Discuss anything about vampires. Any thoughts could be a good idea for an overhaul MOD or a quest MOD.

 

Vampire attributes, appearance, related stories, in-game functions, etc.

 

 For example, I prefer that vampires can retain their mortal appearance after they're turned so that they can hide themselves in mortal society.

[winny257]

O man, I hate Vamp's! head off a wooden stick through her ​​heart, just kill.    

[Teddar]

I'm more interested in stories and quests than I am overhauls of mechanics where vampires are concerned. Mthralling is good in that respect.

 

It would be nice if a talented modder would take a look at the vampire feeding animation. Its about as erotic as watching someone eat an onion.

 

 

[pt3579]

O man, I hate Vamp's! head off a wooden stick through her ​​heart, just kill.    

 But what if you can only kill a vampire by chopping off her head or sticking through her heart in game(maybe using an option or a power), while she is flagged as "Essential" when you use other attack types?

 

 

I'm more interested in stories and quests than I am overhauls of mechanics where vampires are concerned. Mthralling is good in that respect.

 

It would be nice if a talented modder would take a look at the vampire feeding animation. Its about as erotic as watching someone eat an onion.

I had used Mthralling for awhile. It's a wondelful MOD. Great idea and well-scripted.

 Don't quite understand the animation issue you talked about.

[Guest]

Vampire: The Masquerade series is about as good as it gets, so anything using that as a benchmark is off to the best possible start.

 

I enjoyed Dawnguard, but TES vampire lore is generally pretty weakly conceived imo. So anybody wanting to build a vampire mod with any decent narrative structure to justify it's existence beyond what Vampiric Thirst and Better Vampires already do well mechanically, well there's not much to tap into, you'd be doing a lot of work.

 

I'd love to see a really ambitious attempt to try something approaching the convolutions of Masquerade, that'd be legendary. But I don't think it'll happen with Skyrim, maybe the next TES game, whenever the heck that is. 

 

 

[winny257]

 

O man, I hate Vamp's! head off a wooden stick through her ​​heart, just kill.    

 But what if you can only kill a vampire by chopping off her head or sticking through her heart in game(maybe using an option or a power), while she is flagged as "Essential" when you use other attack types?

 

 

 

 

this was just a fun. by the way silver bullets and silver arrows go to kill a vampire, too.

[pt3579]

Vampire: The Masquerade series is about as good as it gets, so anything using that as a benchmark is off to the best possible start.

 

I enjoyed Dawnguard, but TES vampire lore is generally pretty weakly conceived imo. So anybody wanting to build a vampire mod with any decent narrative structure to justify it's existence beyond what Vampiric Thirst and Better Vampires already do well mechanically, well there's not much to tap into, you'd be doing a lot of work.

 

I'd love to see a really ambitious attempt to try something approaching the convolutions of Masquerade, that'd be legendary. But I don't think it'll happen with Skyrim, maybe the next TES game, whenever the heck that is. 

Couldn't agree more.

 

The VTM series show a dark world with many kinds of supernatural creatures. Its background is basically 1500s-2000s of the real world. Humans believed that they're dominant on Earth but seldom realized the existance of the dark world. However, TES game series have a rather independent system of history, culture, religion, not to mention the well-known Divines and Daedras. People on Nirn are not as arrogant as people on Earth, which I believe is not good for a vampire story to develop.

 

Also, behind the VTM series there are a well-written script providing numbers of option for the player to control the whole story. What you do really matters in the game. I think that's what makes it a legendary RPG, whether it's a vampire-theme game or not: you're really composing your character's life. Skyrim, unlike Fallout 3(without BrokenSteel) and Fallout NV, doesn't have a true ending. It's a double-edged sword. Can enjoy the world more completely but give up the sense of achievement. 

 

 Just a few opinions of mine.

[afa]

...I kind of just want encounters with gargoyle and vampire lord in the wild.

I have heard that gargoyles might happen but never seen it.

[Lexi SubZero]

Welp...I'm still looking for a perfect Vamp Lord transformation...  

As a great Legacy of Kain fan, I'd like to see one inspired by the series...

..could be something more monstrous..

..like Elder Kain

or wraith form Raziel

 

resulting in something like this:

..with wings.

...or could be more human-like..

Raziel as Kain's lieutenant

or the Ancient Vampire style

 

 

 

[Mondaiji]

I use Better Vampires, Royal Bloodline and Shaydows VampireLord Overhaul i did some copy/paste action to remove the visual changes of vanilla skyrim to vampires. I would love a mod that could give a cleaner look for the skin but the one's i did try did mess things up. As for what i would like is to have a faction based system as is hinted in vanilla skyrim (similar to Masquerade) and more lore, story and quests.

[Spyder Arachnid]

I already use BVFE and DVA which are perfect for me right now. I haven't really thought about any kind of overhaul type deal, as Beth kind of left the vampires in the dust when it comes to story telling. Though like ww3beast1e said, Vampire the Masquerade would be perfect. I absolutely love that thing (as my member title clearly states).

 

Being able to play in actual clans and such and have a society would be awesome, though it would require a ton of work to get that into Skyrim. But when it does, bring on my Toreadors and Malkavians.

 

 

Otherwise, I want a feeding attack animation. Something like how it is in Bloodrayne. Being able to leap onto someone in combat and drain them would be awesome. Or even how it is done in VTMB.

 

[pt3579]

...I kind of just want encounters with gargoyle and vampire lord in the wild.

I have heard that gargoyles might happen but never seen it.

Looks like the event will only occur during an eclipse. Haven't seen it either.

 

 

 

Welp...I'm still looking for a perfect Vamp Lord transformation...   

 

As a great Legacy of Kain fan, I'd like to see one inspired by the series...

 

..could be something more monstrous..

Well that would be a ton of work...

 

 

I use Better Vampires, Royal Bloodline and Shaydows VampireLord Overhaul i did some copy/paste action to remove the visual changes of vanilla skyrim to vampires. I would love a mod that could give a cleaner look for the skin but the one's i did try did mess things up. As for what i would like is to have a faction based system as is hinted in vanilla skyrim (similar to Masquerade) and more lore, story and quests.

Theoretically speaking, it's not difficult to change vampire face textures to human face textures if that's what you mean. Actually I've seen some similar MODs on Nexus.

Lore, story and quests MODs are beyond the existing vampire MODs. However, a story that is compatible with Dawnguard is difficult to compose.

 

 

I already use BVFE and DVA which are perfect for me right now. I haven't really thought about any kind of overhaul type deal, as Beth kind of left the vampires in the dust when it comes to story telling. Though like ww3beast1e said, Vampire the Masquerade would be perfect. I absolutely love that thing (as my member title clearly states).

 

Being able to play in actual clans and such and have a society would be awesome, though it would require a ton of work to get that into Skyrim. But when it does, bring on my Toreadors and Malkavians. 

 

 

Otherwise, I want a feeding attack animation. Something like how it is in Bloodrayne. Being able to leap onto someone in combat and drain them would be awesome. Or even how it is done in VTMB.

Yeah, as I've said above, Dawnguard as an official vampire-theme DLC itself in a way limits other vampire-theme stories from composing. Really tons of work.

Better Vampires does have something like feeding attack animation. When an enemy is bleeding, you can feed on him(just like the power bite in Vampire Lord form). In Bloodrayne and VTMB, you can feed on any human eneny anytime, which I think lower the difficulty in battle( and the "Stylish" of course). Anyway, it's a good idea.

[Guest]

Some musings:

 

aside from PC vampire mechanices, what bugs me most about vampires in skyrim is the npcs themselves. They're not lurkers in the dark, they're not silent and deadly,  they're just mages who use absorption magic, attack head on and make a lot of noise. They behave more like wolf packs when they should behave like big cats on the savannah . 

 

There's nothing remotely menacing about any vampire encounter I've ever had. Vampires should always be opportunistic predators who play to their advantages, that's how those skills evolve after all. They should be lskulking in bushes at blind bends on the road, or at entrances to quest markers, or hunched on rooftops. And they need to be pouncing on you, not brazenly poncing about the landscape with their hands readied with blood magic, lighting the place up like it's christmas.

 

If I had the ability and the engine could support it, I'd:

 

- design them to be silent and deadly:

 none of the usual audio cues or anything, just a brief glimpse of black flitting through the trees or a flicker of movement in the dark sky to give you a fleeting opportunity to take evasive action (which I'd like to be made the preferred option) before they strike. 

 

- When they do strike I'd have it full on:

if you haven't prevailed in those few few seconds of contact I'd have them on you in a flash and sticking like glue as they start to suck your stam and hp dry, and as it diminishes, shrugging them off becomes harder. If you do manage to shake them in those first few seconds, then you're entering into face off weakened and disorientated, but only at that point do any advantages you might have come into play. Vampires should have significant weak spots, fire should be devastating to them, but the game shouldn't be so ready to let you exploit that, you should have to fight to even get the chance to take advantage of flame or silver.

 

- extended prey stalking mechanic

a bit like how Skyre and Stealth Rebalanced handle things, if you do decide to run for your life to find a hiding spot, you should feel that awful sense of something fast and deadly at your back, swiping at your hp as you hope your stam holds out long enough to get away. I'd have these lone vampires remorselessly conducting systematic searches, and unless something else diverts their attention like easier prey, a really very good hiding place, or you have something that can throw them off your trail, the probability of them finding you before they've given up is high. I'd have it so your hiding becomes a long, nerve shredding experience as they sniff about, like that Nazgul scene in LOTR. Anybody who's ever played System Shock 2 or the Bioshock games knows how scary that sort of mechanic can be. Proper fight or flight decision making as you're in that scary panic zone the game's worked so hard to put you in. 

 

- high self preservation instinct

In developing that idea of predatory behaviour, I'd like vampires hurt in a fight to back off as swiftly as they strike to lick their wounds before trying again. Like those frustrating times you've shot a deer and it's managed to get right out of range before you could finish it, and your only chance of getting it is to wait for it to reset it's alert behaviour,  I'd love it if vamps you didn't kill were like an angry wasp in the room - you know they're out there, if you don't finish them off they'll inevitably pounce again. So you become both hunter and hunted. 

 

- Sands of Time style visitations:

they should be disturbing your 'gamey' routines at those least expected moments. You've had any number of cooking sessions at the camp fire in the depths of the forest, sure they're great for immersion, but just once in a while I'd like those cosy sessions abruptly interrupted by a dark visitor leaping at your back. The 8 hours of sleep on your bedroll cut short as you become aware of something standing over you. 

 

- vamp country is bad country:

All of that stuff is exponentially more likely in their territory. You wouldn't willingly pitch camp near known vampire nests.These fuckers should be actively hunting at night. If your in those badlands, prepare to sleep with an eye open and to have to defend your camp at a second's notice. Or make for the nearest village like any sane adventurer would. 

 

- vampires who live among the herd

should be the ones do the seducing. Being on the streets at night, a figure approaches from the gloom. Maybe the encounter doesn't readily announce itself as a vampire one to lull you into accepting a conversation prompt as though it was any npc. Depending on the choices you make in the convo branch, maybe the conclusion of it is a seduction attempt that acts like a daze effect, locking you down unless you have successfully passed some sort of resistance check. They feed and you bleed out, coming to the following morning with wrecked stam and hp that only a long sleep will fix. And then it's a visit to priest or cleansing alter.

 

 - thrall gameplay

One too many successful vamp attacks over your lifetime that have led to bleed outs, regardless of cleansing, makes you ever more susceptible to becoming a thrall. If that happens you spend all subsequent game time as a significantly weakened sort of half-vamp who can't feed to replenish, has no magic pool or  real powers of your own  other than basic weapons skills. A bunch of new radiant quests come into play that involve you and your master accomplishing their various goals. Any destinations are dictated by them, you're along for the ride. 

 

- master/servant/master:

You only gain extended abilities and replenished hp and stam  when you're within effective range of your master, thus forcing you to trot around in their zone of influence like an eager lapdog on an invisible leash. The only way out of the predicament is to continue with these radiant quests until you've gradually amassed enough powers to stage a coup, a do or die showdown between newly awakened and empowered servant and haughty, unsuspecting master. Perhaps the only way to defeat them is to overpower them and then drain them, so gaining all of their base powers.If successful, you then embark on a life as a 'made' vampire, but one already guilty of a heinous crime from the get go. The real fight for survival in vampire society begins at this point. 

 

- upon becoming full on vamp yourself:

that's when I'd have the game reveal a whole new world of knotty factions, dark machinations,political intrigue and jockeying for power, a'la Masquerade. You've shaken off your master and think of yourself as powerful, only to find he was a mere clan foot soldier and you've taken his spot at the bottom of a very greasy pole. 

 

Something like that anyway..

 

edit: also one last thing - anything that exists in the game to reduce the chance of attack or keep them at arms length, anything intended to be used as rock to their scissors should be mandatory equipment. Travelling in vamp territory without them should be genuinely foolhardy. Right now, silver weapons are a convenience thing, if you're not packing them the fight just lasts marginally longer. If I had my way, normal steel against a vamp would be like using a spoon to fend off a tiger. Silver weapons? check. Holy water? check. Garlic rosary...oh shit, better go get some if I plan on getting any rest tonight.  That kind of thing.  

 

And the same applies to you as a vamp, you'll be facing not just easy prey but often prepared vampire hunters. Maybe you've been picking off village folk, the more you linger and over-hunt the same area, the better prepared the militia are, and the more likely they are to turn out in force. Instead of steel arrow heads they switch to silver tipped crossbow bolts. How dynamic that would feel, your appetites having to be curbed in order to feed comfortably without stirring up a hornets nest of furious villagers who are constantly on the look-out, hired militia brought in and everybody armed to the teeth with vampire dispatching equipment. Time to move on or adopt a new approach. 

[pt3579]

Some musings:

 

aside from PC vampire mechanices, what bugs me most about vampires in skyrim is the npcs themselves. They're not lurkers in the dark, they're not silent and deadly,  they're just mages who use absorption magic, attack head on and make a lot of noise. They behave more like wolf packs when they should behave like big cats on the savannah . 

 

There's nothing remotely menacing about any vampire encounter I've ever had. Vampires should always be opportunistic predators who play to their advantages, that's how those skills evolve after all. They should be lskulking in bushes at blind bends on the road, or at entrances to quest markers, or hunched on rooftops. And they need to be pouncing on you, not brazenly poncing about the landscape with their hands readied with blood magic, lighting the place up like it's christmas.

 

If I had the ability and the engine could support it, I'd:

 

....

Great ideas! However I doubt whether such complicated functions could be done in Skyrim...

[Eth4rlad]

Better Vampires pretty much provides me with everything i could want in regards to the overhaul of Powers and Weaknesses. It's customizability makes it so great. Visualy, i found it pretty easy to tweak the Tintmask and Textures to make them look like i want.

 

I have Vampire Dens from Gonkish in my Loadorder for almost 2 Years and would never disable it again. Not that i ever used the Hideouts as Homes, but the Flavour. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/24475/?

He placed Vampire NPCs that lurk the Streets and Inns at Night, neat little Notes and Books in the Hideouts that suggest that the Vampires inhabiting these Hideouts are building underground Networks, look for influence in the Nobility and generally are secretly working behind the Scenes in many places. 

 

Sybille Stentor is my favorite Vampire-NPC in Skyrim bar none. How she's working the Court in Solitude, the comments from NPCs how she's never been seen eating anything, how she sometimes "visits" the Prison, stuff like that, that suggests how Vampires move right between Humans unnoticed, even at highest Positions. I'm not talking about "Vampires are the Illuminati and control the World" - that's boring. But why would they all hide out in Caves and do nothing either?

 

So my Ideal Vampire Mod would probably add different Vampire Clans into the Game (Morrowind had them already, goddamit) and a lot of fluff and flavour as well as Quests that show how these Clans struggle for Control and Ressources while staying under the Radar as much as possible.

 

[pt3579]

Better Vampires pretty much provides me with everything i could want in regards to the overhaul of Powers and Weaknesses. It's customizability makes it so great. Visualy, i found it pretty easy to tweak the Tintmask and Textures to make them look like i want.

 

I have Vampire Dens from Gonkish in my Loadorder for almost 2 Years and would never disable it again. Not that i ever used the Hideouts as Homes, but the Flavour. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/24475/?...

Agreed. Quests MODs about vampires are rare resources. Those that did this part were usually excellent MODs.

[Myst42]

Blood, blood and uh... MOAR blood!

 

Now, hungry desires apart I'd say my combination pretty much suits most of the stuff mods can do, let's see...

Got better vampires to get rid of the annoying sun damage... DVA and some face fixes to retain human appearance and change eyes whenever I want to

Better vampires has a thing too that allows for slowed time perception at moments, Predator Vision allows the hunter part...

 

Now, let's draw some lines here:

 

I Imagine something similar to the masquerade, where some things about the masquerade settings I don't like, most are pretty nice

 

Clans - Perhaps a clan should be associated with a unique kind of playstyle. Take Tremere would do most of the fighting using elemental magic and perhaps some sort of telekinesis allowing to even take people through the air and of course, the blood manipulation spells allowing to steal it or make it burn inside your enemies aaaand of course, blood regeneration like that bad guy at the end of Blade 1 movie, Gangrel could use some sort of animal transformation like werewolves, but instead you could choose your animal totem and develop from there, Malkavians would fuck with people's minds, Nosferatu and Lasombra could have an awesome invisibility skill that does not deactivate, only you get visible when entering combat, but you can return to the shadows intermittently like that shadow guy in the X men movie. Tzimisce would get morphed by their own skills at will, the more evil the more powerful your morphs, also an acid kind of magic would be nice to create flesh-crafted creature to obey you (you could also be a nice Tzimisce if you want but you would get other kinds of morphs...

 

The important thing, is to make these abilities, your clan's creed, make them so nice and important that you can develop them into better versions, instead of just having another random spell on your book list

 

And of course, keep all the basic goodies like what already comes in better vampires

 

Also... Moar NPC who can challenge you... really challenge you, like a quest or something, damn I love that Miraak dude, why did I had to kill him?

[redeyesandlonghair]

An animated lunging attack where I jump on someone, pin them to the floor, and bite their neck!

[nekekami]

vampire embrace from way back when in morrowind had the one feature I don't think has been done since where you could fight someone barehanded and reduce their stamina to under like 20% and then hit a hotkey to feed on them.  After you'd done that you could rip their throat out to instant kill them or enslave them and turn them into cattle. 

[xenic]

Really simply idea. When sleeping in a public place, I want there to be a chance of a vampire biting you while you sleep. But I want to see it come up and bite me while my character lays there asleep. Then your character feels drawn to that vampire. You get a map marker for it's location and have to decide to serve it or kill it. If you serve it, 3 days pass and you are full vamp. Then he/she will give you quests and your position will increase. Eventually, you can start your own vampire clan.  Okay, so that's not simple.... but there it is.

[BRANDNEWMEMBER777]

'What does your ideal "Vampire MOD" contain?'

Dead Vampires! (dead as vampire dust).

 

I'm with Winny on this one, I too hate vampires (unless they are, sexy blue, maybe ...).

 

I would say plenty of dedicated vampire hunters with an arsenal of skills/weapons/resources for eradicating the land of vampires. This would mean a different faction from the dawnguard/vigilants of stendarr, though they might work together at times.  They might try to break up vampire clans in a piecemeal manner or get them to fight each another to weaken their numbers.

 

[sweforce]

I would like a fully voiced vampire follower that HATES vampires after a forced transformation and prevented from getting a cure until it was to late. This follower, unlike Serana do need to eat so picking this one up will give you a semi permanent stat penalty due to you having to donate blood. Will comment on your use of the Dawnbreaker, and complain that those explosions hurt! Basically all the stuff that should be with Serana but wasn't since they choose the easy way out.

 

A Dawnguard aftermath mod that extend the campaign of the DLC a bit. When the DLC ends the extension starts. A background story can emerge about Sybil Stentor being the mind behind the Dawnguard. Basically inspiring Insran and help fund him to clean up the out of control Volkhair vampires. Sybil can hire adventurers to take out some troublemakers but Volkhair are just to powerful, hence the need for a fully fledged military organization for the job.

Dawnguard and castle Volkhair are both rebuilt and and a sort a peace treaty struck up. Castle Volkahir will take care of well behaved vampires that do adhere to the masquerade under Valericas control if the player chose the Dawnguard. Further the Dawnguard will merge/ally with the remnants of the Vigilants of Stendar and broaden their scope to general monster bashing. This new Dawnguard are also religiously neutral so followers of Merida can safely join to hunt undead instead of having to hide from the Vigilants for being daeidra worshipers.

 

 

[sweforce]

Vampire: The Masquerade series is about as good as it gets, so anything using that as a benchmark is off to the best possible start.

 

I enjoyed Dawnguard, but TES vampire lore is generally pretty weakly conceived imo. So anybody wanting to build a vampire mod with any decent narrative structure to justify it's existence beyond what Vampiric Thirst and Better Vampires already do well mechanically, well there's not much to tap into, you'd be doing a lot of work.

 

I'd love to see a really ambitious attempt to try something approaching the convolutions of Masquerade, that'd be legendary. But I don't think it'll happen with Skyrim, maybe the next TES game, whenever the heck that is. 

 

Maybe there is a masquerade and the reason you haven't seen any is due to it's effectiveness and the vampires we kill are troublemakers that refuse to follow the rules. There is a reason why Sybil Stentor actually give us a mission to hunt down some vampires.

[Killing Joke]

I see there are references to vampire the masquerade... some people have fine tastes around here. Bloodlines is still my favorite CRPG along with Planescape: Torment. If you're looking for a great RPG experience involving vampires, don't look any further.

[Guest Vendayn]

It is in Russian...but this one sounds like the best of any of them for Skyrim.

 

Except no English and it shows up as russian in-game. Which, comes out really buggy in my Skyrim and I can't see the MCM menu options for the mod.

 

http://tesall.ru/files/file/4503-mivs-vampirism-overhaul/