Dear Lum

I'll try to find the video in which he clearly states that picking your own skills at character creation will not be an option, ever.

 

Thanks, I honestly don't think he said anything like that. But it would be interesting to see his reasoning if he did.

Especially since he's ok with people training however they want after that, but walking into the world they can't do it? Oh I bet I know what you're talking about. You probably mean how he's always ranting about character creation having players make these huge decisions in the beginning of the game and they don't even know how to play yet!

I would argue that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid by preventing the game from wasting all my skill points on stuff I'll never use. The fourth option would not only fit my real life reaction to this question and answer game, it would also allow me to use skills that my real life self would be interested in.

 

Ok, turns out it was Lum that gave the reasoning behind only three starting builds. Richard did get in on the question by talking about playing as yourself in game, but it was Lum who broke it down in the R22 Post-Mortem, starting a 19:42.

Paraphrasing ahead:
"When can you choose your starting skills as opposed to having predetermined skill loadouts?" and "Why am I picking virtues and having my character based on them?" Lum says there are a couple reasons and one of those reasons is the basic fact that they have to build a tutorial, and base that tutorial off your character build. If you pick a character build and it's not based on your virtue selection, they would need to build 9 different versions of the tutorials just based on the number of virtue choices multiplied by the number of preset character builds.

 

There are no "wasted" skill points because there are no hard caps. Having the automatic skills provided in the tutorial in no way limits your skill growth later on, so there is no waste. You got those points for answering a couple questions. Hardly an unfair use of your 5 minutes of play time to answer the questions.

 

I like this game because there is a story behind it. The story is not about "what I want". An open sandbox game with no story would be better suited for me if I wanted the freedom to reject the story and build my entire role-playing experience around myself. I can't understand wanting to play a game with a theme that I reject from the get-go.

Regarding the starting skills: In older offline RPGs it was cool to have the character class set in stone from the beginning. It gave the player the chance to to replay the game as a different class of character altogether and made it more interesting. I agree that in a game like multiplayer SotA, which will hopefully offer several years of enjoyable game-play, a set-in-stone character class not of one's own preference would not appeal to many (probably most) players.

For reasons of nostalgia only, I nevertheless like the idea of being given a "class" at the beginning. In SotA, this has no lasting effect, since SotA has a classless system, where you can mix and match skills any way you please. I don't see any contradiction in being handed a bow during the tutorial and not wanting to specialize in it later. From a mechanics point of view, I have no objection to letting the avatar decide what weapons and armor he gets during the tutorial, but it would take the nostalgic meaning away from the chosen path. So I personally prefer to let Arabella assign me a "class".

I totally disagree with the argument that the starting skills take away choice or are valuable in any sense other than helping the player get through the tutorial. They don't give players "speed bumps in progression". At the beginner level, skill progression is lightning fast, so it takes only a few minutes to train new skills up to the tutorial level.

 

How can you speak of a waste if those skills are just a bonus. You have done nothing till this point to earn any skill. It would be a waste if you earn XP during the tutorial and are forced to choose those skill but this is not the case here.
The second thing, why are you calling out for Lum? Those virtues and the story you start right at Arabella are from Lord British. Lum is only implementing the most ideas of LB and give them the good feeling quests should have.
You make it sound, as if we are forced to follow whatever we were given at this point, that there is not the chance to abandon everything after this. You can reach the level of the most given skills within an hour.

 

Captain Jack finds this very interesting! He has played many games in the past few years, some of those games having 10-20+ classes each. He had no idea Developers had to build customised tutorials for each of those classes! Must take a very long time.

 

Your sarcasm is not lost on me. I'm not the one designing this game, so I only know what they tell us or make for us to play . If Lum says they need to design tutorials around skill loadouts, I don't have enough information to call him a liar (or to vaguely insinuate he's feeding us BS).

 

That's interesting, I'm sure my job, family, and the government will be surprised to learn that I've been sucked into a computer video game never to return.

 

If you use those skills and I don't, then you just got a bonus that I didn't get. Those are all skills points that you didn't have to earn XP for, it's a HUGE deal. As someone that has never gotten to level 50 in any release, let me tell you it's not something you should disregard as a trivial thing.

 

I turn off all the tutorial boxes the second I get into the game. So what's that got to do with me? If they allow a 4th option, they don't have to build anything new, they just let me pick my skills like they used to before the skill based system was implemented.

 

Captain Jack thinks you have the solution. Link the forth choice to an automatic tutorial bypass and assume a non-first timer is playing the game. Captain Jack just imagines that the Devs are having issues reconciling both the wish for us to play the game as "ourselves" and the wish for them to give the single player/story crowd access to "meaningful decisions." Must be a hard act to balance!

 

I think they're making it a bigger problem than it needs to be. If we told the captain of the Titanic that he only had three options and all of them ended with the ship going down, does it matter if he takes a 4th option? The ship still goes down.

SOTA is moving in the direction that SOTA wants to move in. Why does it matter if players take a 4th option at the start of the game? It's an open world.

 

Captain Jack agrees, what does it matter. But Captain Jack also notices there are some *hic* philosophical reasons, as noticed *hic* by Jack that is, about how they are going to allow us to play ourselves in the game. It seems as if they *hic* are indicating the lack of options force us to play as "ourselves" as Captain Jack has now heard the phrase *hic* several times.

How about a song instead?

TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITanic,
That boat was long,
I wish Celine Dion,
Was on...
The TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITanic!

*hic*

 

If they do allow an unlocked, unguided starting experience, then I think you should be able to just ignore Arabella and just walk into the Lunar Rift. Since you didn't choose a path, you'd start wherever the Rift is currently tuned to go based on the time of day/calendar. Sure, you'd start with no gear, no xp, no skills, etc. but that was your choice. In a true open world game with complete player agency, you should be able to kill the gypsy.

 

Except that I don't think they want the player to ignore her by accident. I'm sure some group of players wouldn't realize they should talk to her.

Also, story-wise, Arabella might be controlling where the rift goes. That wouldn't be the biggest issue to get around, though.

 

Would be interesting to see a variety of paths... including chaos, artisan and perhaps a greedy merchant type!

 

I totally expected this to be a post about removing the find the key on the random body quest that welcomes new people to the game.

 

Yeah, which is why I think they will keep it a locked, guided starting experience. What they do with actual skill allocation is beyond that. As I suggested in the other threads about this, they should just offer a weapon rack, and whichever weapon you exit the starting scene with is the one you start the game with.

That makes sense, but I'd much rather see her walk with you to the Lunar Rift, wave her hands about and chant something, and then tell you that you're ready to enter.