Dear Lum

I support the addition of a fourth option like this to help in facilitating group play and specialization. It's almost second nature for a long-time gamer to want to stick to a role or theme when building a character, especially in group/mmo kinds of settings, so not allowing someone the option to just train the abilities and functions in the game they honestly wish to pursue and forcibly segregating people at an early level is just going to cause unnecessary frustrations.
I'm okay with leaving the 3 original options planned intact; but just so long as we have that fourth option to simply 'choose our own path' for our combat skills and starting area, because it's just the simplest and most elegant solution to solving the "grouping up" dilemma.

 

The tutorial as a teaching tool for skill load outs does not work, as is. For three reasons: 1 ) there is not necessarily a fool proof connection between the three principles and the weapon/skill set, 2) there is no presentation in game letting us know that our choice of questions and guiding principle will lead us to a certain weapon/skill choice, and 3) the eventual scene one ends up in does nothing to train us in the selected skills/weapons. So a skills/weapons tutorial does not feel like a *good* reason that we are selecting a certain principle. It really needs to be connected to game lore, character backstory, etc. to have meaning to the player.

On a different topic, I like the perspective that the tutorial skills granted by Arabella are *bonuses* earned for answering a few questions. It only starts to break down when we start seeing them as some God-given right.

All this said, none of this solves the issue that a new player not familiar with SOTA or past ultimas will have, which is that they answered three questions and got stuck with a weapon and some skills they weren't expecting and didn't want, and will be saying WTH. The Baron offered one solution to that. I would rather see a solution connected to story, character and lore rather than giving the player some free pass outside of the lore.

 

This is not true. There is a tutorial popup that specifically tells you this.

"But Lum, I turned off all the tutorial popups because they annoy me!"

*shrug* If you turn off part of the tutorial, please do not complain about being confused by other parts of it.

 

That being said, we are going to explicitly tell you at the end of the conversation which class build you chose, and allow you to choose another one regardless of how you answered the questions originally. Hopefully this both keeps the Ultima flavor of the initial questions and still doesn't make people think they are "trapped" by the dialog into choices they don't want.

Things we are not going to do - allow you to pick your own skills, create a new anti-virtue choice

 

Thanks for the reply.

I don't like the answer, but thanks.

 

I like it. I didnt even mean to make a Mage, and was surprised when I got that

 

Hm. Doesn't this kind of invalidate the whole process? I can understand the logic, of course; but the "ultima" feeling will be pretty shallow if none of your answers to the questions actually matter and you can just pick any type of character you want after the fact.

 

I think he basically means you can change your skills any time at a trainer.

 

Ah. That isn't how it sounded, but makes more sense.

 

Nope. Bubonic is correct. However in this case hewing to the Ultima legacy needs to take a back seat to playability - we are seeing many people irritated at choosing "wrongly" and deleting their characters to start over.

 

...bummer :/

 

Why aren't we letting people pick their starting skills for playability? That's a huge bonus to people that like or will accept fire magic and blades.

 

I think it is probably because of still wanting to have some control over the start builds to ensure things "can" be built around it. It stops new people unfamiliar from crippling themselves. I agree that having full control would be nice to have, but I understand that is something they very much don't want to let open so I respect it (even if I don't like it).

Bummed that there won't be anti-virtues though.

 

I am ok with the three choices (classes), but the weapon rack idea is good. A warrior start should have the tutorial say 'equip your weapon'. Who cares if it is a sword, mace, or pole. Same with mage, use your close range fist skill or whatever after you pick up at least a choice of three schools of magic books. Ranger, well, somebody else can think of a good choice for that. Leave the choice from your decision (or allow the rethink if need be), but please add a small subset if choice after the fact. Thank you.

 

I've thought about it quite a bit more... and no matter how I rearrange the thoughts in my head, it feels very disappointing that there has been all this hype about the gypsy, and the questions, and so on and so forth... only to have the realization that it is (essentially) wasted and has no actual impact on gameplay. Being able to dismiss all of the choices you made before even entering the game renders the entire thing null and void.

I guess I had hoped that the "ultima feel" was more important and not so easily dismissed.

 

I think you are missing the point. Some people like to think for themselves, and forge their own path!

Like for example the path of greed, or the path of destruction. Remember, our avatars are meant to represent ourselves. Not some ideal to which others aspire.

 

Having never played an Ultima before, I would've preferred that my gypsy choices meant more. I wasn't lobbying for the choices not to mean anything on a virtue level. I just didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of wasted skills that I'll never use, and points that would make it easier for me to play the game.

I mean, if I'm using blades and fire magic this is GREAT! But say I want to use Moon Magic and no melee weapons at all? So sorry, you don't get any starting points at all. (This seems really crazy to me, it's punishing people for doing what they really want to do.)

The "solution" to let people choose Warrior, Ranger, or Mage after the questions are answered (and ignoring the answers) is "ok" because I don't understand what LOVE really has to do with Archery anyway (etc..) but it seems like a sloppy job of creating a starting scene to me. I mean, this is the entire start of the game! It's pretty important if you want to set the stage for the average player. I understand that they don't want to spend more time here, but they should. Forget about the anti-virtue path, what's wrong with just having one path that is more flexible?

You answer the questions, PICK your weapons, (so if I pick a freaking dagger I get subterfuge skills - how hard could that be?), and then we go on our way to one of the three paths. I'm really having a hard time understanding why this is so difficult to do.

 

Play the Ultima games already!

 

It cuts into my grinding time. I want to pvp competitive before I retire.

 

I wonder if the virtues now are like the kelvin scale. Instead of equal opposites, there is just one side. In the kelvin scale there is no cold, just a lack of heat. No Yin Yang, just Yin.