» Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:17 am So apparently, lorewise Cyrodiil and Volkihaar vampires actually become more powerful the less they feed... And this is the reason why the vanilla feeding system seems so counter intuitive to people who are accustomed to classical vampires who function the opposite way. While it answered some questions about why the vanilla vampires of Oblivion and Skyrim are the way they are, it also triggered some more questions, a lot more questions.
When they drink the blood of mortals, they don't absorb their victims power becoming more powerful, they simply absorb their victims... Non-vampiric characteristics to temporarily hide amongst mortals easier, as well as temporarily become less vulnerable to the sun. As I saw someone mentioning in a thread on these forums the other days, and that partially explained why Bethesda had vampires in these two TES games be the way it was.
Classical vampires on the other hand slowly become more powerful from drinking the blood of multiple living things, until eventually they can become stronger than quite possibly any living being in existence... As their power, was basically stolen from the very life energy of other living things. They don't just heal off of blood or life energy or whatever, they actually grow in power from it.
This implies that Cyrodiil/Volkihaar vampires don't gain their power by stealing the combined power of their living feeding victims, but rather instead they are constantly slowly progressing into these undead humanoids, that become more and more deviated from their original mortal forms, the more they transform through these stages the more powerful they become, but also the more obvious their lack of mortality becomes, as well as their weakness to sunlight and fire.
And drinking the blood of mortal humanoids is the only way to reverse, or slow down this gradual progression. As opposed to classical vampires who eventually gain the combined might of all their victims, and only become visibly undead when they've been weakened.
The question is this... What of Morrowind and Daggerfall vampires? Why don't they have a feeding system, either like the Volkihaar/Cyrodiil vampires, or like the classical types of vampires? And how come only post Oblivion vampires, have a type of feeding that only applies to humanoids, where as pre-Oblivion vampires have the same mechanics for feeding on non-humanoid animals?
Even though I know lorewise the Morrowind/Daggerfall variety are supposed to be less able to hide their vampirism, how come feeding has no effect on how powerful they are? (other than healing themselves).
What is the reason for this? Is it game mechanics/game limitations/an oversight cause Bethesda was focused on other stuff? Or is there some unexplained lore here?
The vampires in Morrowind weren't able to heal by sleeping, and their health didn't regenerate automatically. This was the primary thing motivating them to feed. So why do the Cyrodiil/Vokihaar slowly regenerate health without feeding? Is it because such a game mechanic was seen as too much of a nuisance, or too big of a weakness, or is there some lore specific reasoning behind this? Was that an oversight?
It is a massive difference in gameplay mechanics, going from being UNABLE to heal from sleeping- thus encouraging feeding just to survive injuries, to actually becoming STRONGER from NOT feeding. Implying that there's a huge difference lore wise, between Daggerfall/Morrowind vampires, and Cyrodiil/Volkihaar vampires.
The Morrowind/Daggerfall vampires also weren't exactly like classical vampires themselves, They didn't grow stronger from feeding, but also didn't become weaker from it. They simply relied on feeding to heal. Rather this was due to game mechanics/Bethesda deciding to change things later on, or due to lore I'm not sure.
Also lore wise I'm curious, what is supposed to be the difference between the feeding ability post Oblivion vampires have, and that absorb health spell they all have? How come only one ability acts as a self heal, and the other actually absorbs the mortal characteristics of the feeding victim?
The reason for feeding before Oblivion, was because it was one of the only ways to heal yourself, the reason for feeding after Oblivion was because it was the only way to avoid being discovered- as well as the only way to avoid getting fried by the sun other than hiding from it- or to be done in the middle of combat according to certain situations.
Even though I've seen a lot of in game books about vampirism, I'm now very curious about why the gameplay mechanics for vampirism have changed so drastically, and almost reversed in the TES series, making me wonder if it's because of lore, or if it's simply the result of game mechanics being altered to be more like most modern games.
