Do you consider the vampire antag to be balanced?

[kooarbiter]

I see Vamps possibly more than traitors and changelings (at least I used to, as of the past week or so I haven't seen as many), and being so common you'd think I would have learned a thing or two about them but I try to keep my knowledge reasonable IC. I don't know variant names or specific spells other than what is immediately visible. I don't read the wiki or try to "interrogate" them about their powers IC (although thinking about it now, doing this could be soulful....). I say all this to indicate thus: Vamps are common, and I know very little about them and their mechanics, so I ask the greater para community: Are vampires balanced?

 

Really, there is only one power I super duper want to talk about, and if you have played as or against vamp I'm sure you know which power this is: Glare. A power that stuns, knocks down, and mutes a target without a nullrod, no save otherwise, and can instantly win any 1v1 with security if the vamp has cuffs or a weapon. It can be used in an AoE to temporarily stun everyone around them like a more powerful flash, and forces whoever is pulling them to drop them. There may be more to this, but as I don't know jack or shit about vamps other than what I've learned (I have yet to get an opportunity to test judo eye poke, which if it works would be a really funny way to buff judo), and I haven't asked around enough to get the community's opinion on it. I think maybe glare's ability to say fuck you to an entire security team with a single button press and no reasonable counter play (other than shoving holy water down their mouth before they have a chance to glare after getting stunned, or badgering the chaplain to pull them and not die), is maybe a bit much especially since every single vamp has this by default and it is the cheapest power. Either give the different strains different glare effects, increase the cost and grind required to glare, or limit it to either slowing down a group or fucking over an individual.

 

There are other things as well: Big boss ouch tooth, due to the power of friendship, can become exponentially more powerful than the other vampire type strains, and can especially dominate on low pop or with low sec. Other than glare thralling is a power I think should be heavily looked at as its ability to scale and create an undead army to rival security. Of particular note about a month or so ago I as warden lead a gallant defense of the cargo bay where we were outnumbered and outgunned by a thrall army with melee weapons, and beaten to death while each of us had lethals and armor. Now I'm sure we each could have been more robust but I'm not sure it's exactly great that a vamp can do this, maybe there were multiple thrall types that worked together to create this army, but at a certain point unless you metagame that there are vamps and there IS a thrall type well before they can raise their numbers, it sometimes feels like you're fighting an impossible battle against a horde of non space law following, magically powered, suicidally murderous ex crew.

 

 

Did I miss anything important? did anyone else forget the big angy strain exists? let me know what you think, I am but one man and I have at best one side of this conversation.

[HMBGERDO]

Glare is a good strong ability and yeah it can stun everyone around(or actually just knockdown, its kinda hard to stun everyone), however counterplay to glare is extremely easy. Just dont stay near the vampire with all your squad. You need just one person to cuff them, others can stay nearby and keep their stun with disabler or come close, stun and walk away. If security do this, vamp has almost no chance in escaping being cuffed and detained. Yes, it requires you to have multiple security on sight but its not bad imo, lone sec shouldnt easily arrest a vampire.

Dantalion on lowpop or with low sec team is an issue yes. While his general powers are strong enough for escaping and fighting, having multiple thralls ontop of that makes this vampire the strongest of all four. If you are facing a dantaion as lowpop sec, just unload your lethal weapons. Space law allows you to use lethal equipment against a group of enemies, especically if you are outnumbered. One by one you will kill their thralls and leave the vampire alone. Just keep in mind that Dantalion can pacify you, making you unable to use any lethal equipment or harm attacks at all for about 30 second(i dont know exact time but its long), so you should stay in pair and support your mate with disabler/baton if you were pacified.

In the end, i would say vampires are balanced enough compared to other antagonists. I dont want to mention mindflayer here, the god of unbalanced abilities, even without him we have a lot of traitor items/antags that break the game loop completely making chasing/fighting them almost impossible. If vampires need a nerf, i would say lets block dantalion subclass on lowpop rounds and thats it.

Edited May 30 by HMBGERDO

[Spacemanspark]

3 hours ago, HMBGERDO said:

Dantalion on lowpop or with low sec team is an issue yes.

Honestly I feel like this is the crux of the issue. A lot of modern paradise antagonists are assuming a fairly high pop count, and are balanced around such. Currently we're stuck in a lowerpop era due to a few circumstances (namely the Byond DDoS) so a lot of these antags aren't getting as much of a difficulty curve as they'd usually get. 

Lowpop antags generally don't work too well across most servers in my experience, they just don't have enough opposition to make them interesting. Did you know that wizard can roll on just 20 pop on Paradise? That's wild to me! 

As for glare itself, I'm actually not too fussed about it. Most may know me as the psychotic asshat who hates instantstun mechanics, but for some antagonists it's fine in small doses. Vampires are lone antagonists with less tools to work with than traitors or even changelings when starting out, and I feel giving them that little push is somewhat justified. When a vampire is detained, security generally knows to have one person carrying the suspect, while others lag behind. 

[kooarbiter]

8 hours ago, Spacemanspark said:

Honestly I feel like this is the crux of the issue. A lot of modern paradise antagonists are assuming a fairly high pop count, and are balanced around such. Currently we're stuck in a lowerpop era due to a few circumstances (namely the Byond DDoS) so a lot of these antags aren't getting as much of a difficulty curve as they'd usually get. 

Lowpop antags generally don't work too well across most servers in my experience, they just don't have enough opposition to make them interesting. Did you know that wizard can roll on just 20 pop on Paradise? That's wild to me! 

As for glare itself, I'm actually not too fussed about it. Most may know me as the psychotic asshat who hates instantstun mechanics, but for some antagonists it's fine in small doses. Vampires are lone antagonists with less tools to work with than traitors or even changelings when starting out, and I feel giving them that little push is somewhat justified. When a vampire is detained, security generally knows to have one person carrying the suspect, while others lag behind. 

The problem is that vampires are very often not alone, and can easily find ways to meet without sec knowing. Also Thralls kinda tip the balance of "glare is okay because the vamp is alone" since having an army is a built in function of that strain

[Aligote]

   I think a forest is being missed through the trees. Looking over the discussion so far, the main topic of vampire balance seems to be vampire balance against security. Now I understand it's because that's the general framework Paradise determines balance with, the Rules themselves state, "If you want to hunt antags, then there is an entire Department for that: Security. We attempt to balance things around Security and their Rules of Engagement and equipment." However, the majority of players during a round still deserve mention. How does the crew fair against vampires?
   Well, pretty awfully. Crew are very easily stunned, de-radioed, and snatched into maints. The worst part is that's generally accepted as a core feature for a vampire's survival during a round, including by staff. For the sake of "balance", vampires "need" stuns to be able to catch prey in the first 15 minutes so they don't starve. That's what I find so weird about discussions of balance, rather than discussing the impact of things in terms of the broader playerbase, it boils down to how it affect antags and security, leading to conclusions that aren't great for anyone involved. Stuns are accepted because they allow vampires to catch prey and are counterable by security, crewmember just have to deal with it because "losing is part of the game". 
   I think a better question to ask is how do vampire currently affect roleplay? Well, vampires will starve if they don't get blood and are pressured to get blood, discouraging roleplay early in the round. The victims of vampires aren't really experiencing roleplay. And Security doesn't roleplay with vampires. This leads to most rounds being security and vampires playing pac-man in maints while some crewmembers are picked off in the process, with no real benefit to anyone. Nobody is getting an interesting story or experience in a situation like this. All the issues of low sec pop are just symptoms of the fact that balance focusing on antags and security, with a disregard to roleplay, is a flawed concept.

Edited June 3 by Aligote

[HMBGERDO]

Vampires can take blood IV and that will feed them or they can get any monkey and suck its blood. There is no 15 minutes timer unless you dont know these ways.

And yeah, no shit when people shoot disablers at each other and try to play around glares and batons, there is no roleplay. But its part of paradise. It is fun and many people are playing because Paradise has interesting combat system with overall roleplay around it.

Roleplay always suppose that you get worse in pure combat. All these attacks during texting and other shit, its all an issue, people do abuse when someone wants to roleplay to get an advantage. And most of the time you need a plan B to do anything. And most of the time there is no plan B. And many many times people get punished for being nice or roleplaying by their opponents. Thats why we dont see many roleplay here, not because of anything else. 

Make the vampire stronger so they always have plan B as they are too powerful, they will abuse strength and kill security team because "hey they chased me". You cant enforce roleplay. Even tho this server is called Medium roleplay server, you cant enforce it or punish for "not enough roleplay" until it hits some very low limits.

[Yisati2]

I play medical mostly and I've never been a vampire (Somehow) but I'll give my two cents on the vampire issue

First off Vampires are annoying for medbay to deal with. Could we please just be able to buy O- blood from the cargo terminal instead of the mixed blood box. Way too many of ya'll are O- and if you're a vamp who steals the O- blood bags I will find you. I will be glared, and I will die. But it's about the message.

Besides that, it all comes down to the first victim, this is the most key moment of whether or not the vampire will be a total wash. Patient comes in completely drained we revive them then one of two things happen

1) The Victim gets questioned goes "Idunno man" and walks off. The vampire remains anonymous and powers up freely

2) The Victim gives a full description, vampire is identified quickly station goes to red, vampire is caught shortly after

It just seems to matter if the victim believes they have their full memories after being revived. If that happens early the vampire is on such a back footing it's difficult to come back from. Sec so early in the round usually doesn't have much to do unless the other traitors are being active early on. There's not much the vampire can do at that point as they're publically known since the vampire is forced to go out and target people.

Dantallion and the Umbrae always do good because they're the stealthier options. Dantallion by not having your victims get sent off to medbay and still having them to do some dirty work for you that aren't known traitors to the crew. And the Umbrae for simply being able to get around being tracked constantly.

Then we get to when Lethals are authorized. Then vampires are a joke. Half of the difficulty is being forced to get near them. With Lethals you don't get have to get near them. Any times lethal are a go I'm brought a charred husk of a vampire moments later.

I genuinely think Vampire needs a complete rework. It either has to focus more on stealth forcing players to not remember the vampire when they get full drained, or become a higher level changeling/mindflayer threat instead of the traitor adjacent threat they're roughly at now. I think now regular traitors offer more dynamic and varied rounds compared to vampires. I'd rather a traitor be in a round than a vampire any day and their variety of items creates alot of experiences.

[Meow19]

"Do you consider the vampire antag to be balanced?"

No, antag's shouldn't be balanced, antag's should be removed and self antagging rules should be 1% of what they are. Features get gutted, removed because of balance. It's physically impossible to balance an antag because each round:

- the map affects balance

- pop affects balance

- amount of antags and their skill and whether they cooperate affects balance

- amount of sec and their skill affects balance

- whether there is an admin who will send an ERT and what kind

- random events affect balance

It's not doable for any human to balance this, it's up to players to obey rules and make the round fun and not do their best to win.

[Aligote]

9 hours ago, HMBGERDO said:

Vampires can take blood IV and that will feed them or they can get any monkey and suck its blood. There is no 15 minutes timer unless you dont know these ways.

And yeah, no shit when people shoot disablers at each other and try to play around glares and batons, there is no roleplay. But its part of paradise. It is fun and many people are playing because Paradise has interesting combat system with overall roleplay around it.

Roleplay always suppose that you get worse in pure combat. All these attacks during texting and other shit, its all an issue, people do abuse when someone wants to roleplay to get an advantage. And most of the time you need a plan B to do anything. And most of the time there is no plan B. And many many times people get punished for being nice or roleplaying by their opponents. Thats why we dont see many roleplay here, not because of anything else. 

Make the vampire stronger so they always have plan B as they are too powerful, they will abuse strength and kill security team because "hey they chased me". You cant enforce roleplay. Even tho this server is called Medium roleplay server, you cant enforce it or punish for "not enough roleplay" until it hits some very low limits.

Fun is a subjective term, and there has been a decreasing amount of players ever since 2021, I think we need to address reasons why that's the case. This idea that it's just "part of Paradise" is what I'm critiquing, neglect of roleplay in order to balance combat is not a natural phenomenon. It needs to be stated, every other medium roleplay server does not explicitly state that they balance combat around security and antags. The way Paradise rounds currently operate isn't natural, it's the result of administrative enforcement like any other server. For instance, the crew are limited in how they can respond to antags, if a crewmember spots an antagonist attacking another crewmember, they are expected to radio security and only assist by shoving (Aligote,Self-Defense/Validhunting Rules and Space Law). Likewise, antags are limited by their objectives (Aligote, Admins and Antag conduct), while security is limited to Space Law. All these are examples of staff enforcement of sec vs antag balance. Crew can't directly affect antags and antags can't really affect anyone outside their objectives, limiting roleplay options. Paradise doesn't pride itself as a combat system with roleplay seperate from it, it prides itself as the perfect blend of roleplay and combat. It ironic how this statement claims that roleplay shouldn't be enforced, when the main issue is sec vs antag balance being enforced; the solution would mainly be removing restrictions.

Also, Paradise already enforces roleplay standards with Rule 2, and other servers already have ways for antags to nurture roleplay. Some servers have escalation policies that incentivize antags and non-antags creating and escalating situations of conflict (Grinkdaboy,escalation). Virtually all other servers also allow antag gimmicks, unlike Paradise. Again, Paradise prides itself as the perfect blend of roleplay and combat, perhaps we can analyze where it falls short of that statement and adjust correctly

Edited June 5 by Aligote

[kooarbiter]

the scope of vamp/sec/crew roleplay is outside the scope of this topic, however I will say mandating some kind of roleplay to people you gank into maintenance, and vice versa for either getting jumped or arresting the vamp, would go a long way to making things more interesting. Doesn't matter what kind of RP, you have to do more than callouts or silently drag into maints, if you can't do that you should assess what value you're bringing to the round, on either side.

[Spacemanspark]

On 6/4/2025 at 2:40 PM, HMBGERDO said:

It is fun and many people are playing because Paradise has interesting combat system

Para's combat system is fairly comparable to many other servers. In fact, I'd probably even go as far to say that Para's combat system is lacking compared to many servers. This isn't even really a problem to me, I'm just suggesting that there's many better things to pick paradise as a server over. 

And to be somewhat blunt, if someone is choosing to play on an RP-wanting server purely because of a combat system, they may want to reconsider if playing on that server is going to really be fun for them in the long term. Not only does that impact everyone around said person who isn't just there for the bloodshed, but it's also going to wear that person out pretty quickly. 

Edited June 5 by Spacemanspark

[kooarbiter]

Is everyone okay with the balance between variants?

 

I know some strains are better than others in general and situationally, but are they reasonably balanced between each other? is each about as viable in a regular round?

[PollardTheDragon]

Personally, I think vamp strain balance is mixed.

Dantalion is the strongest vampire type currently.

Gargantua and Umbrae are about the same. Different tools for different purposes, but about the same level of overall strength.

Haemomancer could use some help. 

[kooarbiter]

why do you think bloody mary is worse off?

[dafrek]

Vampires are mostly balanced in my opinion, although glare, Dantalions, and Umbraes are a bit too strong. Umbrae is just a bit too good at evasion, which is not a big problem compared to Dantalions. Dants can thrall their first three victims using the blood they drain from them with the usage of blood bags. This means there are zero victims to go and tell security what is going on, resulting in a 4 man antag squad not being known to anyone usually. Glare's mute is a bit oppressive and should stop working after the vamp reaches a certain blood level.

tldr; umbrae a bit too evasive, dants too stealthy, and glare a bit too mutey.

[kooarbiter]

thank you for your feedback

[TheSeren]

I heavily dislike the glare, but I also dislike all one/two hit stuns in general. The vampire's glare recharges so fast that, even if you do get captured, taken into maints, cuffed, and manage to break out, you just get glared and cuffed again immediately. Being a victim to a vampire really feels like you have no chance at all against them, ESPECIALLY when the first glare mutes you, which I think is ridiculous. In my experience, the only way to get away from a vampire is to either get lucky and have someone around you, or go against someone that hardly knows how to play the game at all. IMO, the first glare should just be a half stun, and apply confusion, short cooldown before the second glare can be activated and stun your victim fully. 

[PotatoCatWithaHat]

I'm not the best at balance discussions or formatting ideas really so fair warning.

 

vampires should have the advantage in 1 on 1 fights to be honest. they need a somewhat reliable way to kidnap victims so they don't starve. They also have to deal with multiple officers, AIs, Cyborgs and witnesses to their kidnappings charging at them at once. Every antag sorta has their own area they are strong in. Traitors have a build your own playstyle balanced around TC, changelings can mimic people and revive from the dead vampires are strong in melee range but have a hard time dealing with things like disablers, lasers, immolators, being in space, being on fire, being in the chapel when not full power, holy water. They already have a number of disadvantages, having one strength to help with crowd control adds a bit of paranoia and discourages people from just running at the vampire head on while alone. 

 

If you don't want to be kidnapped easily by a vampire then simply don't be alone. a lone crew member wondering maints has about the same chances of getting away as a lone sec officer in maints. maybe grab a buddy to tag along with you if you have to go into maints for some reason. not much a vampire can really do against a group of people if they drag each other backwards when one gets glared and spam disarmed. they might be able to glare some members of the group and run away but capturing a single member of the group will be a challenge since they have to wait for their cooldowns to refresh. Vampires will eventually mess up a glare at some point either because of a badly timed disarm or just getting unlucky/noticed by a witness and called out on comms. 

 

I'm of the opinion that vampires should at least try and talk to their victims before taping their mouth closed. if the person spams the scream emote its fair game but if they haven't yet screamed then there's no real reason to shutdown RP preemptively. I would like to see more RP that isn't just call sec but people are kinda afraid of dying to a vampire which is fair considering the amount of time it takes to get healed in medbay after a vampire kills you. I feel like most of the resentment of vampires comes from that. a vampire can only get 200 usable blood from a single victim so full draining could probably be restricted a bit more unless the vampires literally starving, they can get the blood in other ways. monkeys, blood bags for example. Might also be worth hooking up bloodbags to the victim to make sure they at least make it too medical alive so things aren't always as lethal. 

 

As far as subclasses go it would be nice if the number of thralls a Dantalion vampire can have was scaled by server population. So, in the event that its low pop and there are no sec officers or anyone willing to join as ERT then the crew aren't stuck with a vampire and 4 thralls openly draining people in the hallways. But I'm not sure how that would work considering Dantalion would need to have something else unlock for them since their kit is built around having thralls. They should have at least 2 thralls regardless of the population. Might be better to have Dantalion not be selectable as a vampire path unless the population is over a given amount. 

Garg are pretty fun to play as and fight against 

umbras are in a good place 

Haemomancer are in a nice place 

[kooarbiter]

I think it's valid that they need a dedicated way to take people down without calling sec, I will say to mitigate this some way, you could add stealth feeding like on yogstation13, where you saddle up to someone, and stealthy drink blood from them without telling them, it's slow and unreliable, but if you just need to feed you can do that. Maybe if we want glare to be powerful but not Op it is not mute by default, but placing a mark on a valid succ target and follwing them for a few seconds makes them "marked" and able to be muted.

[TheSeren]

I think screamspam is valid because it is literally the only way to get out of a vamp actively glaring and kidnapping you other than luck/vampire being bald.

[kooarbiter]

If a vampire can prevent you by talking at all by staring into your eyes, it seems weird you'd even be able to shout. Like logistically what part of the brain is being affected that stops your vocal cords from working only in one of these cases?

[Yisati2]

I think the main problem is Glare is just so much of the vampires power that even nerfing it remotely at this point completely neuters them. They already struggle when sec actually straps in to stop them and it would render them completely defenseless to just be stun baton'd down.

I think vampires should just passively have higher max stamina if the glare is touched at all and I'd like to see more general buffs to the vampire so that glare isn't needed as crutch.

However Glare still needs to be strong due to needing to get victims early in the round if you want to scale up at all. So it's a shitty situation all around to balance and I think it shows the issue with how strong the current stun baton is versus melee focused antags. I think Glare needs to find that PERFECT middle ground where it's less of a defensive tool and more of a subduing your victims tool. Then just make the vampire itself more defensive naturally to deal with the weakness it now has.

 

[kooarbiter]

yes but if vamps naturally have higher stamina that can be very easily gamed when the greytider that's supposed to go down in a certain amount of disabler shots no sells what should be a stamcrit without injecting anything or becoming jittery/fast