Vampires

[Simius]

I'm starting this thread so that we don't derail the Awesomemod requests thread.  The goal of this thread is to come up with some improvements to make the vampires better.  I think they are fairly good already and with a few changes I'm sure they could be great.  I really like that they can't eat human food, although being able to drink juice box blood is a bit lame since I want them to be forced to drink from humans.  Anyway, here is the discussion so far:

Anyway, it would be nice if there was a "force drink" interaction vampires could use if they weren't friendly enough with the sim to do it with their permission.  This should result in a heavy negative relationship drop... maybe even a fight breaks out first and if he wins then his thirst bar is filled.  Also it would be cool if drinking a sim caused that sim to lose 25 or 50 hunger points so there is a chance you could accidentally kill them.

I second the wish for less nice vampirism. Hunt, catch, feed. Screw the mind reading and chatting them up. Something linked to fight skill, so weakling vampires would be forced to live off their pathetic little juice boxes.

Thirded. Vampires are kinda ridiculous. The plasma juice in the fridge also needs to be done away with completely. The only options should be friendly drinks, non-friendly drinks, hiring and befriending a maid/butler and drinking from them daily, and ransacking the hospital.

[Claeric]

I also think that, during the daytime, they should have to be asleep or in a room with no windows, with an accelerated rate of burn otherwise. They will burn outside, but it takes a long time to even START. They're a little overpowered when there's little to no downside to being awake during the day. I also think their motives should be static when sleeping during the day, but not at night.

I remember getting a Sims 2 vampire for the first time and finding it a real challenge to keep them away from windows if they happened to be up in the day. The problem there was that they had no real benefits. Sure, they had no motive decay at night, but that just meant that when they were sleeping during the day, all their motives were going down and they'd have to deal with them anyway. I don't know, it was stupid.

[Tanja]

I love the Vampires in Sims 3, but I dont like the way they act... Really... drinking from juice boxes or plasma fruits?? WTF... That isnt a real vampire feeling at all!
I want to have vampires that really act, like they should! I also want a tuning file that makes vampires act autonomously, when they are hungry, well thirsty they should start to hunt and then drink from a chosen sim!
Only then it would be  a real vampire feeling in the game. Atm it feels like they just looking like vampires but act like normal sims!

I hope that will be changed sometime.

[OmegaStarr]

If you think the juice boxes and plasma fruit are lame simply don't use them, problem solved. But I do agree with the fact that there really is no difference between staying outside in the daytime from the night time, I usually keep the vamp vigor moodlet all the time. Has anyone had any vamp children yet? Do they age properly? I know I read they can't drink from another sim until YA, that would be good to change. I was kinda looking foward to having little creepy evil vamp children running around.

[bloodredtoe]

Has anyone had any vamp children yet? Do they age properly? I know I read they can't drink from another sim until YA, that would be good to change. I was kinda looking foward to having little creepy evil vamp children running around.

I played the Hemlocks for a bit. The kids age normally, have normal needs etc. until becoming YA. The only vampire features I noticed were the vampire look and ability to drink from the plasma juice boxes, possibly also eat plasma fruits without the sick moodlet, but I didn't try that.

[Simius]

If you think the juice boxes and plasma fruit are lame simply don't use them, problem solved. But I do agree with the fact that there really is no difference between staying outside in the daytime from the night time, I usually keep the vamp vigor moodlet all the time. Has anyone had any vamp children yet? Do they age properly? I know I read they can't drink from another sim until YA, that would be good to change. I was kinda looking foward to having little creepy evil vamp children running around.

Yeah, I turned my fridge around for my vampire sim so he couldn't sneak a juice box snack when I wasn't looking.  When I get a household with a vampire and regular sim in it I'll just need to install one of those door mods that keep certain sims out and block off the kitchen that way.  So it isn't too big of a deal since I can effectively get rid of juice boxes that way on my own.

About your vamp vigor moodlet always being active:  It shouldn't be.  Mine goes away at 6am and comes back at 6pm.  Also, if you are outside for more than an hour you should get the "heating up" moodlet and if you stay outside for another 3 hours you should get the "too much sun" moodlet.  It sounds like that isn't happening for your vampire so either he is glitched or you have some cc that is conflicting.  

[seanzol]

Also, if you are outside for more than an hour you should get the "heating up" moodlet and if you stay outside for another 3 hours you should get the "too much sun" moodlet.  It sounds like that isn't happening for your vampire so either he is glitched or you have some cc that is conflicting.  

I think the main point was that it takes a severely unrealistic time for anything to actually happen as a result of sun exposure. I've never heard of any vampire that took over four damn hours to burn up in the sun.

[J. M. Pescado]

I think the main point was that it takes a severely unrealistic time for anything to actually happen as a result of sun exposure. I've never heard of any vampire that took over four damn hours to burn up in the sun.

Uh...what? Did you actually use "realistic" and "vampires" in the same statement?

[OmegaStarr]

About your vamp vigor moodlet always being active:  It shouldn't be.  Mine goes away at 6am and comes back at 6pm.  Also, if you are outside for more than an hour you should get the "heating up" moodlet and if you stay outside for another 3 hours you should get the "too much sun" moodlet.  It sounds like that isn't happening for your vampire so either he is glitched or you have some cc that is conflicting. 

The vigor stays active just aboot all the time, I do still get the heating up moodlets. But I guess what I meant to say was that even though you get those moodlets there really isn't any real side effects to staying out in the sun as they are not life threatening as in Sims 2.

[seanzol]

I think the main point was that it takes a severely unrealistic time for anything to actually happen as a result of sun exposure. I've never heard of any vampire that took over four damn hours to burn up in the sun.

Uh...what? Did you actually use "realistic" and "vampires" in the same statement?

Yes, a severely bad choice of words on my part, I know. I just meant to say that it seemed to take an oddly lengthy amount of time for vampires to react to the sun, and even longer to really cripple them at all.

[J. M. Pescado]

If it *WERE* more threatening, I suspect that since every sim in the neighborhood is active at once, all of the vampires in the game would kill themselves instantly.

[bloodredtoe]

What do you want people? Dracula could walk in the sun except he'd lose his powers if he did. This is EXACTLY what happens with vampires in NL.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes, the entire "vampires burn to death in the sun" thing is not part of the original, anyway.

[seanzol]

If it *WERE* more threatening, I suspect that since every sim in the neighborhood is active at once, all of the vampires in the game would kill themselves instantly.

Ah, true, I hadn't thought of that.

[OmegaStarr]

But do they actually lose their powers in the sun light? Or is the sun setting by the time that kicks in too, like the heating up moodlets. It just seems to me that there should be more of a penalty for being out in the sun, like sparkles.

[dedust]

The vampires seem to show up in mirrors, and that's just wrong. At least mine did, though it could be a bug too. Also the 'coffin' is kinda stupid, they don't really sleep inside, just hover on top without even changing to nightwear.

Other than these minor annoyances, I think the vampires are far better than TS2 versions. At least they don't have that stupid skintone that covered their makeup.

[bloodredtoe]

Clearly people don't want dracula.

Doesn't matter what they want, you can't make everyone happy when putting vampires anywhere, simply because there are so many interpretations. I'm pretty happy with Dracula interpretation and think it would actually be funny if they were sex predators, but it's a 12's-friendly game, so they can't obviously do that. No instant death in the sun is actually there for practical reasons, too, as mentioned several posts above. And I guess the coders didn't want to make it impossible to fulfill most of the opportunities for vampire sims.

Besides, there are so many screw-ups in this EP, vampires are like least of the problems.

The vampires seem to show up in mirrors, and that's just wrong.

I think that one is for the sake of graphic engine sanity. Reflections are reflections in the game, if they wanted to omit some elements in those, they'd need a separate render, as far as I know, which would be quite resource-heavy.

[Gastfyr]

One change that would immensely improve vampires imo would be to change the word "plasma" to "blood" in all vampire related instances.  The only place I know of where this would look stupid is "blood juice box" but then again "plasma juice box" already looks pretty stupid.

As far as the juice boxes go, they'd be better if they gave some sort of negative moodlet similar to "tastes like fridge" or the WA one from eating low quality dried food.  In fact, you could just use "tastes like fridge"; that'd work for me.  Of course, I find the entire idea of free food from the fridge to be offensive, regardless of the type of sim who's eating it.

Of course some sort of unfriendly drink is a must.  Why the heck else do all non-vampires feel "hunted" around unfriendly vamps?

[Claeric]

"Hunted" is implied to literally only be there so that you can tell there's a vampire in the room.

And I believe "Plasma" was chosen in place of "Blood" because the "meat" of the blood, blood cells, is only found in blood plasma (which is 55% of the blood), and even then 91% of blood plasma is water. So it makes more sense to drink plasma than blood, because you benefit more from it for the same amount of liquid.

So they compensate for the fact that it isn't fresh from a kill by making it plasma instead of whole blood, I guess.

Though the fact that it's stored in the fridge and not microwaved or anything is silly. You'd think they'd prefer it warm. That alone is reason enough for it to give a negative moodlet.

[Moryrie]

I don't see any issue with the juice boxes apart from the name. Just call it, "Synthesized Plasma" and you're good to go. Hell, Underworld mentions Synthesized Plasma as a big money maker for the vampires. =P

[Tanja]

If you think the juice boxes and plasma fruit are lame simply don't use them, problem solved.

Yeah for the playable sim, but what is with the npc vampires? They just dont do anything a vampire would do... Just eating plasma fruits.. I would really know what would happen if I delete the
code that 3 Plasma Fruits will be added in every NPC Vampire inventory. Will he/she die, because cant get a plasma fruit to eat? Thats so wrong. They should also drink from sims.
But autonomously they dont do anything.

I like the vampires so far, but some things need to be changed. Well first at all some other bugs should be fixed, before modders will make those kind of mods. And bugs are enough in this EP!

[Skadi]

I am loving the eyebrows, I think it is a much better show than the TS2 stalking and blehing. I'm not sure about the V tattoo on their neck though.

[OmegaStarr]

Yea that tattoo is no good. BTW the action hunt does more than show a vamp is in the room. When a vamp uses hunt the game chooses one sim that would extra delectable. You get a lousy moodlet that's slightly better than the basic one you get for drinking. It would be possible to replace the juice box mesh and name with something else, yes?

[Claeric]

It takes ~4 hours of sunlight to get "Too Much Sun", at which point you lose 17 Hunger an hour. With a full bar of 200 hunger, that would take just under 12 hours to die.

12 hours or so of daylight in a day - 4 hours of free time with no "Too Much Sun" moodlet = 8 hours of sunlight during which you can die, at the MOST = complete impossibility of death from sunlight with full hunger.

Even with half your hunger, 8 hours is still only -136 health, meaning a sim with just over a full Thirst bar would still live. You need to be halfway thirsty at the time you get the Too Much Sun moodlet to die from being in the sun for the entire fucking day. That's ridiculous. You pretty much have to TRY to die in the sunlight.

You can easily change the Too Much Sun moodlet to cause more hunger loss (150 per hour seemed to work nicely), but that doesn't fix that it takes 4 hours for it to even show up. It should show up immediately and drop at a rate of, say, 75 thirst per hour.

Stuck at a bar when 6AM rolls around? Have fun hanging out in the lobby all day, lest you die on the way home. Stuff like that.

[bloodredtoe]

Stuck at a bar when 6AM rolls around? Have fun hanging out in the lobby all day, lest you die on the way home. Stuff like that.

Don't bars close at like 2-4AM in the game? (I thought it should be like 6AM, but again I have no experience with real-life bars, so maybe it's a realistic closing time)
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