I honestly don't see what the point of that was. It's basically reiterating previous information from interviews and it doesn't tell us anything particularly new.
I am encouraged by the idea there are multiple routes or choices you can make and that there will be potentially severe consequences for breaching the masquerade.
Well, it does confirm there'll be an ability tree, and you can go places in Seattle, I guess.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I honestly don't see what the point of that was. It's basically reiterating previous information from interviews and it doesn't tell us anything particularly new.
I am encouraged by the idea there are multiple routes or choices you can make and that there will be potentially severe consequences for breaching the masquerade.
Well, it does confirm there'll be an ability tree, and you can go places in Seattle, I guess.
We saw the ability tree - in that it existed - in the gameplay trailer when they went into the main menu.
Since it's becoming increasingly apparent that the closest I will get to something resembling "Bloodlines 2 joy" is "feasting on the nostalgia of watching people play Bloodlines 1 for the first time" (hey it fits the setting at least), I've been watching some Bloodlines 1 runs on youtube lately.
I don't personally know the first, but do know the second person from a discord channel. I hope it's apparent from past posts that I am doing this to shill Bloodlines, not the streamers themselves (though they are both lovely and very welcoming people).
First up, Emalynde. This one is very wholesome and fun. Before Bloodlines, she had played a lot of Vampire the Requiem tabletop, but had no experience with VTM. This run lead to her tabletop group incorporating a lot of VTM stuff into their run, and a general passion for the setting. The playthrough also does a great job of pointing out the writing parts that haven't aged well, while also acknowledging that it's a product of its time thing and the developers/writers probably aren't all mean:
Next up, Skipford. He's played quite a bit of VTM tabletop, which means it's okay that he broke the first rule of "Malkavian for second run!" by making a Malkavian his first run. It leads to all sorts of fun and terrible outcomes, such as being an accidental low humanity run and making Jack hate him. Extra bonus points because he has actually met Chiasm, the artist behind everyone's favorite Santa Monica gothy nightclub theme. Worth it for his reaction to walking in The Asylum the first time alone (it's at 1:44:45 in the first video):
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I actually kind of dig the last update, it also shows a better look at how disciplines might work, and they understand the Brujah.
I'm still cautiously pessimistic, but it might not be a total train wreck at least.
It basically looks like AAA RPG 101, but still.
Image: Ability tree for Brujah. All clan abilities and the clan perk are unlocked. An ability from Banu Haqim has been equipped. Each clan has hundreds of different ability combinations.
That I'm curious about. Will you have to meet a BH to get one of their abilities? A partial blood bond? Or am I giving them too much credit to think they'll be that lore-accurate?
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I'll admit the whole skill tree thing is silly to me. The OG got a lot of praise for trying to mimic the tabletop character sheet as best they could within a CRPG, and it was intuitive and cool and easy to understand even as a 14 year old Fiatil who had 0 experience with the tabletop.
But ultimately all I care about is the writing, world, and strength of characters. All of the above is a footnote, really all of the combat is for the most part a footnote as long as it's not horrendously bad.
Show me some wordssssss. So odd to focus so much on combat and skill trees and so little on the world and writing, and none of what I've seen with the latter so far have been very impressive. The levels are pretty, but again it's all surface level stuff that won't make or break the game.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I'll admit the whole skill tree thing is silly to me. The OG got a lot of praise for trying to mimic the tabletop character sheet as best they could within a CRPG, and it was intuitive and cool and easy to understand even as a 14 year old Fiatil who had 0 experience with the tabletop.
But ultimately all I care about is the writing, world, and strength of characters. All of the above is a footnote, really all of the combat is for the most part a footnote as long as it's not horrendously bad.
Show me some wordssssss. So odd to focus so much on combat and skill trees and so little on the world and writing, and none of what I've seen with the latter so far have been very impressive. The levels are pretty, but again it's all surface level stuff that won't make or break the game.
I don't expect the writing to be very good, with any luck it'll be passible. The fact that they're playing everything so close to their chest doesn't fill me with optimism, whereas the original announcement was full of good stuff about the writing.
I'll admit the whole skill tree thing is silly to me. The OG got a lot of praise for trying to mimic the tabletop character sheet as best they could within a CRPG, and it was intuitive and cool and easy to understand even as a 14 year old Fiatil who had 0 experience with the tabletop.
But ultimately all I care about is the writing, world, and strength of characters. All of the above is a footnote, really all of the combat is for the most part a footnote as long as it's not horrendously bad.
Show me some wordssssss. So odd to focus so much on combat and skill trees and so little on the world and writing, and none of what I've seen with the latter so far have been very impressive. The levels are pretty, but again it's all surface level stuff that won't make or break the game.
I don't expect the writing to be very good, with any luck it'll be passible. The fact that they're playing everything so close to their chest doesn't fill me with optimism, whereas the original announcement was full of good stuff about the writing.
Yep. I know that I'm just pining over the ghost of a game that never really existed, but god damn look at this thing:
All of the trailers released, there were people critiquing character models and animations and combat and stuff; valid concerns! But I just didn't fucking care when you're putting out trailers like that that show how much you are fucking nailing the style and tone that I want from this game. Morbid, stylish, horrifying, grotesque, but also kind of fun and lighthearted too!
Have a friend I've been watching some shows with, we finished up a series, needed something new, aaaand her interests seemed like a good match, so this happened:
Steam link, lapboard, and cat were all up to the task. I'd say it went pretty well, as this is the message I received later in the night:
One of us, one of us.
(the boxes in the corner are because my cat loves sleeping in them and I'm too weak willed to take them from her)
Have a friend I've been watching some shows with, we finished up a series, needed something new, aaaand her interests seemed like a good match, so this happened:
This makes sense. A cat would like a game about stealthy hunting.
Steam Badger A greasemonkey script for better gifting and peering
Note: If you buy the game on Steam (where the launch-day DLC, which unlocks the Black Furies and Hart Wardens as playable tribes, is free during launch week), you can also unlock for free the ability to play it on the website and on Android (which is my preferred way to play). You need to make an account on the Choice of Games website, go to the profile page, and "Restore purchases from Steam". The process is janky: I get a 404 the first time I do it, and when I repeat the process, I get a message that 0 new games were activated and 4 games were activated previously (that means Night Road and DLC and Hungry Names and DLC, for me), but the profile page only shows Night Road, not Hungry Names. But it does actually work, despite the jank; I installed the Android version of the game, and it recognized that I bought the game, and unlocked the content. Now that I think about it, though, it's possible that the Google account that you use to install the Android game needs to be the same as the one connected to the Gmail address you use to create the Choice of Games account. If it doesn't work, you can email the Choice of Games support and I'm sure they can sort it out.
Interesting that they don't seem to be doing Quietus as its own Discipline but Sorcery does with with the Banu Haqim too given they have their own sorcerer caste within the clan. I guess they're avoiding truly unique clan disciplines in this.
I remember thinking that Quietus was pretty dumb and redundant with Thaumaturgy, and the level 5 power was just, mitigating the clan drawback to allow diablerie.
Imagine getting all the way up to level 5 in your signature discipline just to be able to do what any lucky caitiff can manage.
Yeah I mean, as cool as it is to get some less standard clans....they went with Banu Haqim instead of Nosferatu for stealthy clan because it's less work. You have to actually design around Nosferatu being hideous monsters. Same reason we're not getting Malkavians yet. Ain't no way Paradox is giving out unique content like that "for free" when they can charge for it as DLC after they test to see if the game bombs or not. The clans will almost certainly function nearly identically outside of combat -- it's an "action RPG", and the differences in the clans will be combat techniques. Can't waste money on content/voice acting that only some people will see, which they appear to be even extending to the unique clan disciplines as you can gain them even if you're not apart of that clan.
Must homogenize for market efficiency.
Fiatil on
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
In V5 they made a decision to try and eliminate any disciplines entirely unique to clans. So like Serpentus was replaced with Protean (and Protean was opened up to allow a bunch of different animal forms, at least from what I understand, never played the older stuff) and Quietus became part of Blood Sorcery (partially so two clans would have Blood Sorcery natively). They have added the concept of amalgam powers, powers which require you to have access to another discipline line, to bring back some of the unique discipline powers (like Viscissitude is now part of Protean, requiring you to have Dominate, with a few powers branching off of it).
This was probably done at least partially due to the Tremere and how absurd Thaumaturgy got in the older editions where it basically became a massive subset of entirely unique disciplines locked to the Tremere.
I mean, sure I know very little about V5. So if they smoothed out the unique disciplines because of V5 then I think that this issue is less with this game than V5. And it makes me less interested in V5 than I already was (though I am a Requiem wierdo)
I still think the approach of the current iteration of BL2 is... disappointing, and less exciting/ambitious than what we were seeing before.
I think Paradox Development Studio (the game devs) are still good ones, but Paradox Interactive (the publisher) is going increasingly Embracer Groupy. They went public in 2016 which seems to be around the time they went rancid.
In V5 they made a decision to try and eliminate any disciplines entirely unique to clans. So like Serpentus was replaced with Protean (and Protean was opened up to allow a bunch of different animal forms, at least from what I understand, never played the older stuff) and Quietus became part of Blood Sorcery (partially so two clans would have Blood Sorcery natively). They have added the concept of amalgam powers, powers which require you to have access to another discipline line, to bring back some of the unique discipline powers (like Viscissitude is now part of Protean, requiring you to have Dominate, with a few powers branching off of it).
This was probably done at least partially due to the Tremere and how absurd Thaumaturgy got in the older editions where it basically became a massive subset of entirely unique disciplines locked to the Tremere.
The clan specific splatbooks already made changes going in this direction.
In revised edition, Dark Ages version of Protean allowed for other animal forms even if it wasn't entirely spelled out: The opening flavor text specifically mentions a vampire turning into a stag. The Masquerade Gangrel splatbook later spelled out Gangrel being able to choose whatever animal forms they wished so long as one was a "fight" form and one was a "flight" form but non-Gangrel that learned Protean could only use wolf and bat for those. This did let them play with things like aquatic form Gangrel and Gangrel that used snakes for their forms having some kinship with Setites. Similarly, the Setite splatbook touched on a Mesoamerican bloodline that had Protean instead of Serpentis IIRC. So just folding Serpentis into Protean makes perfect sense to me given how much of the former was shapeshifting to some degree.
Similarly, even the core Revised rulebook for Masquerade mentioned Tzimisce, Assamites/Banu, and other non-Tremere with Thaumaturgy but still needing to pay the non-clan exp costs to learn it. It was ingrained into their clans so no narrative justifications were needed for them (unlike a Toreador picking up Thaumaturgy) but it still didn't come as easily as it did to Tremere. The Assamite/Banu splatbook slater pecifically listed out some clan specific discipline lines for Thaumaturgy and then broke the clan into three castes with different discipline specialties and weaknesses. While the sorcerer caste within the clan didn't pay extra for learning Thaumaturgy, they did get their own weakness in higher blood point costs or something similar. It admittedly felt a bit messy, a way to backtrack on what had been the stereotypical view on the clan, but did help explain a lot of the lore around the clan.
In V5 they made a decision to try and eliminate any disciplines entirely unique to clans.
Get out of here with your facts and evidence, we've got conspiracy theories to get to!
Paradox sell too much DLC == conspiracy theory? Nosferatu require more unique clan-specific design due to their monstrous appearance than Banu Haqim == conspiracy theory? Original game showcased how clans play uniquely outside of combat from the initial announcement and sequel has shown none of that == conspiracy theory?
This was probably done at least partially due to the Tremere and how absurd Thaumaturgy got in the older editions where it basically became a massive subset of entirely unique disciplines locked to the Tremere.
"Things got absurd " is a great way to describe like 95% of the source books in VTM. I mean, just look at Temporis.
In V5 they made a decision to try and eliminate any disciplines entirely unique to clans.
Get out of here with your facts and evidence, we've got conspiracy theories to get to!
Paradox sell too much DLC == conspiracy theory? Nosferatu require more unique clan-specific design due to their monstrous appearance than Banu Haqim == conspiracy theory? Original game showcased how clans play uniquely outside of combat from the initial announcement and sequel has shown none of that == conspiracy theory?
Okay then.
Grouping "unique disciplines gone" in with the rest is baseless, that's all I addressed. But lets shift goalposts and ignore what I quoted.
I just found it amusing it took like five posts for someone with V5 knowledge to actually address that Quietus had disappeared in tabletop, and this wasn't some innovation made by the Chinese Room.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
V5 makes a considerable number of changes compared to V20 (which is closer to what Bloodlines rules was originally). One thing that they've generally avoided in V5 is having disciplines that exist specifically for just one clan and any particularly weird abilities are amalgams of multiple disciplines instead (Vicissitude is another example). This is not a decision by TCR, but something that they are working with via using the new edition of the VtM rules.
I mean, sure I know very little about V5. So if they smoothed out the unique disciplines because of V5 then I think that this issue is less with this game than V5. And it makes me less interested in V5 than I already was (though I am a Requiem wierdo)
I still think the approach of the current iteration of BL2 is... disappointing, and less exciting/ambitious than what we were seeing before.
I am incredibly iffy on BL2 so far, so that's fair. I do like the changes in V5 though, since it kind of addressed an issue where some clans had unique disciplines and some just had generic ones. Like Ventrue with Dominate, Presence, and Fortitude being used by a ton of other clans kind of felt lame... especially when Tremere were there with Dominate and the insane toolkit of Thaumaturgy.
I think it's handled well for the most part, like when I played a Tzimisce I had a flesh-crafted coyote with rattle snake parts (inspired by New Vegas), a ghoul retainer with flesh-crafted bone blades, and I was able to turn into a humanoid jellyfish with bioluminescent tattoos and tentacles ending in leech mouths when shit started to go south and I needed to fight. It's just now a Gangrel could go out of clan for some Dominate and potentially delve into Viscissitude (if the storyteller is cool with this). Though one of the recent books does add in a clan unique power, so they may be back-tracking on things a bit (Koldunic Sorcery is a Blood Sorcery is a Blood Sorcery power that can only be taken by Clan Tzimisce).
I have been meaning to check out Requiem though, as I have heard good things.
The clan specific splatbooks already made changes going in this direction.
In revised edition, Dark Ages version of Protean allowed for other animal forms even if it wasn't entirely spelled out: The opening flavor text specifically mentions a vampire turning into a stag. The Masquerade Gangrel splatbook later spelled out Gangrel being able to choose whatever animal forms they wished so long as one was a "fight" form and one was a "flight" form but non-Gangrel that learned Protean could only use wolf and bat for those. This did let them play with things like aquatic form Gangrel and Gangrel that used snakes for their forms having some kinship with Setites. Similarly, the Setite splatbook touched on a Mesoamerican bloodline that had Protean instead of Serpentis IIRC. So just folding Serpentis into Protean makes perfect sense to me given how much of the former was shapeshifting to some degree.
Similarly, even the core Revised rulebook for Masquerade mentioned Tzimisce, Assamites/Banu, and other non-Tremere with Thaumaturgy but still needing to pay the non-clan exp costs to learn it. It was ingrained into their clans so no narrative justifications were needed for them (unlike a Toreador picking up Thaumaturgy) but it still didn't come as easily as it did to Tremere. The Assamite/Banu splatbook slater pecifically listed out some clan specific discipline lines for Thaumaturgy and then broke the clan into three castes with different discipline specialties and weaknesses. While the sorcerer caste within the clan didn't pay extra for learning Thaumaturgy, they did get their own weakness in higher blood point costs or something similar. It admittedly felt a bit messy, a way to backtrack on what had been the stereotypical view on the clan, but did help explain a lot of the lore around the clan.
That is neat to know, and makes sense that they had sort of started to go in that direction.
Requiem definitely leaned more into each Clan having specific Disciplines (and Bloodlines even more so). But there was also only 5 base Clans, so it was easier to make them feel more distinct.
Having had most of my Masquerade experience come from a Organization-LARP (full of no end of bullshit and favoritism and metaplot hording), Requiem was a breath of fresh air.
And Requiem did basically have better balance. But that's because they reduced the importance of some of the physical discipline/combat stuff, removed Generation as a mechanic, and axed Tremere/Thaumaturgy (and had better magic systems).
But a lack of a metaplot meant a lot of homebrew and a heavier lift on the ST, and it was a hard sell for a lot of folks. V5 sounds like at least it's heart is in the right place, so I suppose I can get off my nostalgia trip and just try it at some point.
In V5 they made a decision to try and eliminate any disciplines entirely unique to clans.
Get out of here with your facts and evidence, we've got conspiracy theories to get to!
Paradox sell too much DLC == conspiracy theory? Nosferatu require more unique clan-specific design due to their monstrous appearance than Banu Haqim == conspiracy theory? Original game showcased how clans play uniquely outside of combat from the initial announcement and sequel has shown none of that == conspiracy theory?
Okay then.
Grouping "unique disciplines gone" in with the rest is baseless, that's all I addressed. But lets shift goalposts and ignore what I quoted.
I just found it amusing it took like five posts for someone with V5 knowledge to actually address that Quietus had disappeared in tabletop, and this wasn't some innovation made by the Chinese Room.
Fair. I misread it as a broader point but that explanation makes sense.
Posts
what
the
FUK... i thought there was a benevolent god... but i was wrong...
Well, it does confirm there'll be an ability tree, and you can go places in Seattle, I guess.
We saw the ability tree - in that it existed - in the gameplay trailer when they went into the main menu.
https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2/news/what-is-a-brujah
"Cherish Goldshaw"?
I don't personally know the first, but do know the second person from a discord channel. I hope it's apparent from past posts that I am doing this to shill Bloodlines, not the streamers themselves (though they are both lovely and very welcoming people).
First up, Emalynde. This one is very wholesome and fun. Before Bloodlines, she had played a lot of Vampire the Requiem tabletop, but had no experience with VTM. This run lead to her tabletop group incorporating a lot of VTM stuff into their run, and a general passion for the setting. The playthrough also does a great job of pointing out the writing parts that haven't aged well, while also acknowledging that it's a product of its time thing and the developers/writers probably aren't all mean:
Next up, Skipford. He's played quite a bit of VTM tabletop, which means it's okay that he broke the first rule of "Malkavian for second run!" by making a Malkavian his first run. It leads to all sorts of fun and terrible outcomes, such as being an accidental low humanity run and making Jack hate him. Extra bonus points because he has actually met Chiasm, the artist behind everyone's favorite Santa Monica gothy nightclub theme. Worth it for his reaction to walking in The Asylum the first time alone (it's at 1:44:45 in the first video):
I'm still cautiously pessimistic, but it might not be a total train wreck at least.
It basically looks like AAA RPG 101, but still.
That I'm curious about. Will you have to meet a BH to get one of their abilities? A partial blood bond? Or am I giving them too much credit to think they'll be that lore-accurate?
Sounds like they got them right, at least.
Get yer blood nerd on
Yea thats what I'll go with.
Also now we know how the abilities from other clans work!
Pretty interesting.
Tremere having access to Banu disciplines makes zero sense, but sure, okay...
But ultimately all I care about is the writing, world, and strength of characters. All of the above is a footnote, really all of the combat is for the most part a footnote as long as it's not horrendously bad.
Show me some wordssssss. So odd to focus so much on combat and skill trees and so little on the world and writing, and none of what I've seen with the latter so far have been very impressive. The levels are pretty, but again it's all surface level stuff that won't make or break the game.
I don't expect the writing to be very good, with any luck it'll be passible. The fact that they're playing everything so close to their chest doesn't fill me with optimism, whereas the original announcement was full of good stuff about the writing.
Yep. I know that I'm just pining over the ghost of a game that never really existed, but god damn look at this thing:
All of the trailers released, there were people critiquing character models and animations and combat and stuff; valid concerns! But I just didn't fucking care when you're putting out trailers like that that show how much you are fucking nailing the style and tone that I want from this game. Morbid, stylish, horrifying, grotesque, but also kind of fun and lighthearted too!
Steam link, lapboard, and cat were all up to the task. I'd say it went pretty well, as this is the message I received later in the night:
One of us, one of us.
(the boxes in the corner are because my cat loves sleeping in them and I'm too weak willed to take them from her)
You don't just throw away a good carboard box that a cat likes. That's not weakness, it's survival.
This makes sense. A cat would like a game about stealthy hunting.
Steam Badger A greasemonkey script for better gifting and peering
According to the Steam store page, it's got 1.6 million words. That sure sounds like a lot of words.
Note: If you buy the game on Steam (where the launch-day DLC, which unlocks the Black Furies and Hart Wardens as playable tribes, is free during launch week), you can also unlock for free the ability to play it on the website and on Android (which is my preferred way to play). You need to make an account on the Choice of Games website, go to the profile page, and "Restore purchases from Steam". The process is janky: I get a 404 the first time I do it, and when I repeat the process, I get a message that 0 new games were activated and 4 games were activated previously (that means Night Road and DLC and Hungry Names and DLC, for me), but the profile page only shows Night Road, not Hungry Names. But it does actually work, despite the jank; I installed the Android version of the game, and it recognized that I bought the game, and unlocked the content. Now that I think about it, though, it's possible that the Google account that you use to install the Android game needs to be the same as the one connected to the Gmail address you use to create the Choice of Games account. If it doesn't work, you can email the Choice of Games support and I'm sure they can sort it out.
Interesting that they don't seem to be doing Quietus as its own Discipline but Sorcery does with with the Banu Haqim too given they have their own sorcerer caste within the clan. I guess they're avoiding truly unique clan disciplines in this.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Imagine getting all the way up to level 5 in your signature discipline just to be able to do what any lucky caitiff can manage.
Yeah I mean, as cool as it is to get some less standard clans....they went with Banu Haqim instead of Nosferatu for stealthy clan because it's less work. You have to actually design around Nosferatu being hideous monsters. Same reason we're not getting Malkavians yet. Ain't no way Paradox is giving out unique content like that "for free" when they can charge for it as DLC after they test to see if the game bombs or not. The clans will almost certainly function nearly identically outside of combat -- it's an "action RPG", and the differences in the clans will be combat techniques. Can't waste money on content/voice acting that only some people will see, which they appear to be even extending to the unique clan disciplines as you can gain them even if you're not apart of that clan.
Must homogenize for market efficiency.
This was probably done at least partially due to the Tremere and how absurd Thaumaturgy got in the older editions where it basically became a massive subset of entirely unique disciplines locked to the Tremere.
Get out of here with your facts and evidence, we've got conspiracy theories to get to!
I still think the approach of the current iteration of BL2 is... disappointing, and less exciting/ambitious than what we were seeing before.
I think Paradox Development Studio (the game devs) are still good ones, but Paradox Interactive (the publisher) is going increasingly Embracer Groupy. They went public in 2016 which seems to be around the time they went rancid.
The clan specific splatbooks already made changes going in this direction.
In revised edition, Dark Ages version of Protean allowed for other animal forms even if it wasn't entirely spelled out: The opening flavor text specifically mentions a vampire turning into a stag. The Masquerade Gangrel splatbook later spelled out Gangrel being able to choose whatever animal forms they wished so long as one was a "fight" form and one was a "flight" form but non-Gangrel that learned Protean could only use wolf and bat for those. This did let them play with things like aquatic form Gangrel and Gangrel that used snakes for their forms having some kinship with Setites. Similarly, the Setite splatbook touched on a Mesoamerican bloodline that had Protean instead of Serpentis IIRC. So just folding Serpentis into Protean makes perfect sense to me given how much of the former was shapeshifting to some degree.
Similarly, even the core Revised rulebook for Masquerade mentioned Tzimisce, Assamites/Banu, and other non-Tremere with Thaumaturgy but still needing to pay the non-clan exp costs to learn it. It was ingrained into their clans so no narrative justifications were needed for them (unlike a Toreador picking up Thaumaturgy) but it still didn't come as easily as it did to Tremere. The Assamite/Banu splatbook slater pecifically listed out some clan specific discipline lines for Thaumaturgy and then broke the clan into three castes with different discipline specialties and weaknesses. While the sorcerer caste within the clan didn't pay extra for learning Thaumaturgy, they did get their own weakness in higher blood point costs or something similar. It admittedly felt a bit messy, a way to backtrack on what had been the stereotypical view on the clan, but did help explain a lot of the lore around the clan.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Paradox sell too much DLC == conspiracy theory? Nosferatu require more unique clan-specific design due to their monstrous appearance than Banu Haqim == conspiracy theory? Original game showcased how clans play uniquely outside of combat from the initial announcement and sequel has shown none of that == conspiracy theory?
Okay then.
"Things got absurd " is a great way to describe like 95% of the source books in VTM. I mean, just look at Temporis.
Grouping "unique disciplines gone" in with the rest is baseless, that's all I addressed. But lets shift goalposts and ignore what I quoted.
I just found it amusing it took like five posts for someone with V5 knowledge to actually address that Quietus had disappeared in tabletop, and this wasn't some innovation made by the Chinese Room.
I am incredibly iffy on BL2 so far, so that's fair. I do like the changes in V5 though, since it kind of addressed an issue where some clans had unique disciplines and some just had generic ones. Like Ventrue with Dominate, Presence, and Fortitude being used by a ton of other clans kind of felt lame... especially when Tremere were there with Dominate and the insane toolkit of Thaumaturgy.
I think it's handled well for the most part, like when I played a Tzimisce I had a flesh-crafted coyote with rattle snake parts (inspired by New Vegas), a ghoul retainer with flesh-crafted bone blades, and I was able to turn into a humanoid jellyfish with bioluminescent tattoos and tentacles ending in leech mouths when shit started to go south and I needed to fight. It's just now a Gangrel could go out of clan for some Dominate and potentially delve into Viscissitude (if the storyteller is cool with this). Though one of the recent books does add in a clan unique power, so they may be back-tracking on things a bit (Koldunic Sorcery is a Blood Sorcery is a Blood Sorcery power that can only be taken by Clan Tzimisce).
I have been meaning to check out Requiem though, as I have heard good things.
That is neat to know, and makes sense that they had sort of started to go in that direction.
Having had most of my Masquerade experience come from a Organization-LARP (full of no end of bullshit and favoritism and metaplot hording), Requiem was a breath of fresh air.
And Requiem did basically have better balance. But that's because they reduced the importance of some of the physical discipline/combat stuff, removed Generation as a mechanic, and axed Tremere/Thaumaturgy (and had better magic systems).
But a lack of a metaplot meant a lot of homebrew and a heavier lift on the ST, and it was a hard sell for a lot of folks. V5 sounds like at least it's heart is in the right place, so I suppose I can get off my nostalgia trip and just try it at some point.
Fair. I misread it as a broader point but that explanation makes sense.