Ok, let's try to have a conversation then. Or a proper bugreport / anaylsis.
Put yourself in my shoes, there's a guy telling me the damned crossbow does 30 damage at ranged 8, and there's another guy backing him up.
I didn't come up with the damage formula, I got it out of the walkthrough from GameFAQs and you can probably confirm it with Google from different sites. When I just tested the crossbow at Firearms 6 in the Red Dragon by killing all five NPC on the ground floor I got a damage of 28 for each one of them. Also since when does the crossbow shoot through vampire defenses when it has the very same damage type as the thirty eight and all other firearms? Or does your crossbow shoot flaming bolts already?
I tried to take a screenie of the crosbow and my stats to show you, but my basic print screen keeps taking a screenie of the loading screen despite me being in the game. This is a bummer because it would clear up that I'm not talking out of my ass and that the crossbow indeed does do 56 six with ranged at 6 for me and has before I put the new phyton in. Which is why, from my perspective, I have been given an insane nuke. Seeing that you found the 60 damage shocking, I suppose you didn't have the intention of giving anyone a 60 damage crossbow. All my talk about questionable decisions eroding confidence in the mod author - that's what eroded confidence causes. I didn't have trouble imagining you handing me a 60 damage crossobow and then defending that, because of the eroded confidence. And if your patch can result in people getting a 60 damage crossbow, I'm still doing a favor to you by informing you of this. If it were my mod, I'd be very eager to figure out how the hell that happened, because I'd know instantly that I broke the game by giving that to the player. If you don't believe me I suppose I could find some recording software and make you a clip so you can see for yourself.
If this is somehow a result of this beta patch, for example already applying boosted damage values for the crossbow, let me tell you right now - don't do it XD It's gamebreaking, and I hope you can imagine this.
http://vtmb.wikia.com/wiki/Crossbow this might be outdate or never functional, but that thing is that crossbows work against vamipers extra well because "they fire stakes at them". This is why hunters have them, and why Kuei-Jin have them (Kuei-Jin seem to be experimenting with ways to efficiently kill vamps it's a ongoing theme). If you're looking for an interesting thing to "restore", it might be fun although it would screw over guys who rely on tanking. Or something. I'm drunk currently, so take that particular suggestion with a grain of salt, if the crossbows don't currently go through soaking or whatever it's called there might be good reasons.
On the other hand you tell us you had a bug initiating automatic dialogue with all NPCs nearby for years which you fixed by using a Python version the Game Mod Loader creater advised me not to use. You claim it fixed the dialogue bug, but posted on Steam:
1) Mitnick never sent me the cameras for the nocturne theatre quest. I have the quest, but not the cameras. I found a throwing star in my box instead.
2) I tried using the console to give myself the cameras, but it turns out that giving yourself wireless_camera_3 gives you the squashed odious chalice
3) the squashed odious chalice didn't spawn in the Fu Syndicate, either, so the last one was a very luck bug for me
4) Gary asked for the compromising photo, I put it into my mailbox, nothing happened, so that quest is stuck
and
- As a Nosferatu (clan might not matter) I scared the food critic for La Croix. The quest log is stuck on "I ought to check my email", but I have allready checked my email and I think I even recieved my reward, but the quest won't go away.
- For some reason, something caused a lot of emails to disappear (certainly the two I got from Gary)
- The quest "Going the way of Kings" is stuck at "Isac has promised me a reward if I come later". I have come to him multiple times since then, nothing happened.
- There's an Item I've not seen (or don't remember having seen) outside of the UP+ patch which looks like a stone ring. It sayes it needs 6 research to identify, so I don't know what it is, but I have 8 research.
Everything of course is not due to the new Python version, but probably my fault. Anyone else here ever had these issues in one go? Anyone else here ever had the initiating automatic dialogue bug? Why don't you just check the console for Python errors and post the results here. Maybe we can finally find out what's wrong with your setup! It might well affect weapons for all I know...
Right, let's see about all this. My installation was GoG onto win 10, then your patch, started with the patch shortcut, game from scratch. There should have been no problems with it. The auto-dialogue bug fired up sometimes in Santa Monica, gave me grief all game up until I applied phyton (and until I restarted the computer after that, but not before). I happened to be Nosferatu so I didn't have to deal with the cabbie (which is game over with that bug if I recall correctly) which meant that because I have experience with it I could deal with the annoyance, and it was the most annoying in the Lily rescue quest, witch is sensible as it generally messes that up.
Phyton + restart fixed it, but I suppose if I make another playthrough I could probably make you a video of it so you can get familiar with it. I've seen you get reports about the Lily quest and you don't seem to know what's up with that, and really I absolutely wish I just taped it because it's obvious to the naked eye what's going on when you see that bug elsewhere and then there. For my next playthrough I can reinstal this same patch and not apply the phyton, I'll probably run into the bug again and if this happens I can probably tape it for you.
Now:
a) Mitnick
Right after the warrens, I happened to get a cluster of emails all at once, because when you find the warrens, in your patch, this seems to trigger both mitnick and gary. (
Q: Is this normal for Gary in vanilla?) Since I haven't done any sidequests in Hollywood, or checked my email, I also got LaCroix mail at the same time as Mitnicks and Garry's ones. Before that I came to Hollywood and just rushed through the main quest.
The first Garry quest worked fine and the first mitnick quest did too. However, when I was supposed to receive the camera I needed from mitnick I found a throwing star in my mailbox instead. This is very important.
Q: Is the throwing star is "restored content"? If so, it is possible, not necessary but definitely possible, that the relevant camera got replaced with the throwing star. I don't know how it works on the back end, but it might be separate lists for the mailbox or something. So from my limited perspective me getting a throwing star instead of the camera seems like something that would be easy for you to mess up phyton or no phyton.
Another thing is that I don't remember how you get the cameras from Imalia. Again, fiddling with the cameras, making them stackable, replacing them with other stuff - this could have indirectly messed up Mitnick, which is why it might not have been a good idea at all. Especially if it didn't occur to you that you could, in that way, actually affect mitnicks quest chain, because then you did something without being aware of the concequences. And if those were the concequences of what you did, you were also dismissive of the person trying to tell you this reinforcing the growing mistrust in your mental abilities on part of a very dedicated, very patient long time multipe-game tester that gets a few brofists and agreements and various other positive smileys when he isn't making faces at annoying coders.
At the very least - if the phyton messed up mitnick OR the way items get distributed, then make sure you've covered it when you do make the patch fully compatible with it. Me applying phyton didn't cause a mess all over the place, I've completed plenty of quests and sidequests afterwards, and the game didn't exibit massive bugs like the auto-dialogue thing, but if this whole mail mess is related to phyton in any way then make sure it works or other people might have the exact same problem.
b) Squashed Odious Chalice
You seem to have replaced the camera_3 with the squashed odious chalice. The chalice didn't spawn in the Mandarin quest, where it's supposed to according to the gamefaq guide, and the door to the room after the flamethrowers didn't open, and I'm not sure but I think they were supposed to. So it's even possible that the chalice was there but I couldn't reach it. Anyway, I gave it to myself after that quest this way, by accident.
The reason I didn't immediately give myself the camera_1 is that the console never displayed the option.
So:
- I couldn't find the chalice in the Fu Syndicate no matter what I tried, might be a bug might be me not knowing something, might be it only spawns if you have the appropriate garry quest
- The console doesn't display the camera_1 (and at that time also the camera_2 I think) option
- Might be phyton related, might not be, in case it is people applying phyton might get screwed up by it
I think I eneded up giving myself a name plate somehow, and I seem to have somehow acquired a fae charm from a non-canonnical source, which is important related to Isac.
c) I did the first gary quest without a hitch, but the mailbox wouldn't accept the photo which I picked up much much earlier.
The logical explanation for this might be that the mailbox didn't register that photo as the photo. I've seen this exact thing actually reported before, google found it and didn't like the dismissive tone with which it was handled. If you've been messing with the item ID's (I have no idea of how the whole thing is structured) it's perfectly possible that you caused this.
In fact, looking at things it seems you have moved the Damsel quest with the wooden toy (that you inserted), and this might have also caused it.
Also, I haven't actually met VV at the time I got this email, I have no idea if this is a relevant global stat / parameter, but, again, later I met her and Garry still didn't take his stuff.
And then Gary's emails dissapeared. How or why this happened I have no idea, but both the first and the second email dissapeared.
Ultimately, if phyton's behind this, it'll get messed up.
So from my perspective there's quite a bunch of stuff you fiddled with here that didn't exactly need fiddling with, but might have caused this meltdown. Handwaving it as "random mailbox bugs", again, erodes trust in your judgement further, as you could have actually messed it up in a number of ways. And I have actually seen someone being told to "just give themself the xp they don't need the other posters but the first one" and being stuck on this exact problem before.
You did a lot with the posters, things related to them very likely are due to you. And whatever the reason was for your alterations there, if it was working fine before you fiddled with it, return it to the way it was, by all means, all of it. As enjoyable as the changes might be, they can not possibly be worth being screwed out of the quest altogether.
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Then:
- Food Critic Quest
I happened to do the food critic thing for La Croix as a Nosferatu rather late. I seem to have also recieved the reward in the mail, but the quest seems stuck on "I ought to check my mail". I have allready, and the mail tells me that SL "hopes we will meet soon". So I suppose I'm supposed to check back with La Croix. If that's all there is to it, it wouldn't be a problem, but I can't do it because the door is now locked and I believe it'll only unlock once I have the sarcophagus (which I don't have yet).
So the problem with this one might have nothing to do with my installation, really, but with how that quest is meant to be resolved specifically and I'd be very interested to know this. Or when La Croix's door in the basement the Nosferatu comes in through gets locked, if just talking to him would end it.
- The Emails
Something did cause 2 of gary's emails to dissapear (a solved one and an active one). And possibly some other ones. I didn't delete any, they just dissapaeard. I would look into the potential bugs and screwups in the other quests before looking into this one, honestly.
- Isac's reward for "The Way of Kings"
THIS is weird. I've got this Quest stuck in my quest log as unfinished telling me to visit Isac after a while. The gamefqs guide with your stuff in it is a bit conflicted on it - in one place it says I'm supposed to get the gift after the ORIGINAL GANGSTER quest in Chinatown, in another place it says after the sewers in Hollywood.
This points me towards your alterations, rather than anything else, necessarily.
The guide says that you get the charm from Isac if you haven't purchased it from Tseng, a vendor in Chinatown, which could explain the delay - the game might be waiting for me to meed Tseng or something. IDK. If I knew the exact trigger for Isac to fork over the reward I could tell you if anything is actually wrong with it.
However, I do have a Fae Charm, which I don't think I could've got in ways other than your alteration and it seems you did a lot of fiddling with magic items around the place. If there's anything wrong, then this might be behind it, phyton or no phyton.
Also, the game says the time to visit Isac is after ORIGINAL GANGSTER. I've done it (albeit without saving the guy), and this doesn't seem to trigger Isac rewarding me.
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There's also some king of stone ring thing that says it needs 6 research for me to know what it is. It seems to be somethign you put in, I've got more reseatch but it doesn't tell me what it is. No idea what's up with that, could be some phyton thing, could be a mistaken research value. I'd love to tell you what it is so you can tell me what it is, but I don't know what it is, and I don't remember where I got it.
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About the basic patch changelog, you can find it in the patch readme, it's basically everything that has no "+ "in front of the line.
That is unclear. I've read it, and I've also found a disected version on the loonie board which is not flattering to either the loonies or you. Sad to say, I'd trade that sentiment and conclusion for a more in-depth list of what you've been fiddling with
As for cleaning up your inventory. I already added an option to give the warrens items to Gary, following Acleacius' idea, but not playing it out as a quest which it isn't. Everything else is bad meta-gaming and keys are different, because exactly how you said, you can't know whether you will need an item later, but you know that a certain key will only fit a certain door and is redundant.
In your place I would have the game clean up quest-related items automatically, fearing only that I mess up some item removal before the item becomes fully irrelevant. Because if I pulled that part off I would have less potential for active grief due to inventory overflow. Good clean design. But whatever.
As for the flavor stuff - a good idea would be that if you give it to garry, you might let him give the Nosferatu his haven right there. Getting your haven right before the Giovanni quest is annoying as balls, and is what made me just rush the main quest like mad this time around. So if it's possible to move that bit (might not be due to animations, I know).
As for the Gimble option, I have decided to remove it for now because of this drama, but I became aware that this is just one big meta-gaming fight between you and Acleacius. The latter wanted a solution for his "good" vampire and got it, because he already knows that Gimble is evil. You dislike this because you already know you are missing a nice bossfight. Both is pure meta-gaming!
I disagree that removing it because of the drama is the right way to go about it. But if that's the way you want to look at it... It's design. The reason I don't want this removed because "some guy said so" is that there could be plenty of powergamers who must've enjoyed the convenience of evading a fight and getting XP for it. Not because it makes sense but because it's just so damned convenient and because that's the way to squeeze the most experience out of the quest. I really don't have to be the next "guy who talked you into something", and I've enumerated why the thing was a bad idea from multiple angles. I would appreciate you removing it, although I'm pretty sure that it's in your best interest. Let's leave it there.