Truth,love and courage..choose your destiny...unless of course you wanna choose a different destiny

Not sure how useful aside for nostalgia sake the gypsy encounter is at the beginning of the game, especially since you can simply choose another path if you weren't satisfied with the direction your answers take you. Also if you start off as a fighter, why do you need to start off with sword skills as opposed to bludgeon or polearms? Why is it the first thing we are doing in a classles system choosing a class and what skills we will be most proficient at in that class?

 

Totally agree. They took that unconvenient approach because of nostalgia then they take it away by allowing you to pick the one you want. I'd love to see the "how i want to play" unlinked to the "who i am". While discussing this same topic on another thread i come with this.

I think that at least the very first part is doable.

 

Yep, gypsy right now is useless.

 

It's also inconveniencing being started down skill trees that we may want nothing to do with.

 

I played before last wipe, started out on the mage path; moved to light armor, blade and shield. This time, I started out on the ranger path; moved to light armor, blade and shield.

There's really no path that suits how I'm choosing to play, so I have to do this regardless. And I'm not complaining, either -- since its pretty easy. Took me just a short while to work up the right skills to where I needed them to play.

And, btw, I'm sure people deleted their characters in U4 and restarted. It was still a great game.

 

This is huge.

As a mage, there's a big disincentive to playing down the water skill tree after your starting skills put you on 30% fire down three tiers.

For some reason mages also get blades as a primary melee point, even though polearms are the better fit.

We have to be given some more limited choice on what skills to begin with, after the talk with the gypsy.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-are-not-rellevent-why-not.43791/#post-488025

Already covered here pick your poison

 

It is a bit weird, isn't it?

What they could do is have the gypsy ask the philosophical questions which results in your starting quest and perhaps some other kind of buff or boon or item, and then ask an additional few questions that were more obvious about what sort of starting vocation you preferred that resulted in your starting skills and equipment. That way there would still be a consequence for your initial answers but you would also be able to choose to start as say, a warrior. Rather than Arabella going "OK so I hear what you said. But do you wanna be a chef instead?"

 

...Or have questions ending in more than just three pre-canned builds - fire battlemage, swordsman and archer.

With just five questions, you can have upto 32 "starting packs" - enough to cover all schools and variants and combinations of armor/magic/weaponry.

 

I was asked 4 questions, (because i answered differently for the first 3). So the 4th made me choose between all three choices directly. :-( The system feels quite stupid and not nostalgic at all.

Here's what I think when I start the game:

"Okay, someone I don't know wants to talk to me, and tell me my 'destiny'. Well the introduction/trailer just told me F-that, forge your own path.. so I ignore her and search for a place to leave the island.. no way off.. surrounded by invisible walls, can't jump off and die even. I can't kill this lady who wants to control me either. Why do i have to talk to her? What is this portal that she can control, and how can I control it to travel around??"

Okay, after getting over my first frustrations to being left with absolutely no choices, i talk to her. She says answer the questions. I come up with my own answers, and it accepts them if I mention some key words, and she says my destiny leads me to one of 3 towns, and along the path of certain skills.. okay, cool. but then she says if i want different skills to start with, that will also change my destined path to a different starting town?? That doesn't make any sense. my path should be set in stone, and only my chosen skills should be changeable (if at all). I mean, isn't that what destiny means?

Finally, I go through the lunar rift: And enter a town after a devastating battle. Depending on the town, I can either ignore all the crap and escape out the exit.. (solace bridge), or i HAVE to talk to people and do exactly as they say.. be it steal stuff, and trade with criminals (for no apparent reason on my end), and then they say, 'ah, now that you have that random item i'll open this door for you'.. I asked you to open the door before, and you didn't even understand what i was talking about.. but now because i have this dagger you'll open the door?? (blood river) meanwhile, i was at the dock, and couldn't jump into the river because of more invisible walls. <mounting frustration>

I believe the starting areas should be tests.. live-action tests, that replace the gypsy questions. after completing the tests, the gypsy will tell you their purpose, and what your actions mean for your destiny. My actions are putting me down a path - makes much more sense than answering random questions that i can change with a single word at the end!!

Fighting skills should have nothing to do with any of the story elements and character development of the game. The fighting skills should effect who i will meet to join me on my quest, because ideally, we want to meet with others who will compliment our own skills. rather than giving us either a bow, or a sword, or magic at the beginning.. give us all of the above, all the same skills, allowing us to choose which to use and there need to be multiple ways to complete the beginning adventure, either through talking, stealth, fighting, magic, or maybe tinkering. Which ever ways we discovered and decided to use should be what determines our path, not some silly questions before we've even begun playing.

I hope we are put through some tests to discover our own inner virtue, then the gypsy should evaluate us after the tests are complete, and warn us that we will continue to be watched as we adventure through the lands of Novia..

Thanks.

 

It's important that the lead-up to the game be consistent. The trailer aside, the opening cinematic isn't so clear on you having a "forge your own path" type experience. However, it upends all character backstories by placing you as a middle-aged white male who comes to Novia because of what he found with his laptop. The way it's done, the answer can't be a stronger connection between the cinematic and the opening scene (e.g., what if you want to be a woman?). It would be good though if there was more than just a plop-down with a woman who waves you over. Plus, from a story perspective, is there a reason all avatars end up on the Isle of Storms in the first place? It's convenient for Arabella?

What would have been awesome is to create the Isle of Storms as a very clear dream sequence. Arabella appears to you. Then you wake up at Blood River, Solace Bridge or Highvale. Someone there finds you who ends up being your guide (with more reasonable quests as you say). This could be done easily with a bit of tweaking the explanations of things. If there was more time, the opening cinematic could be generic so that it allows everyone to imagine there own backstory as fitting into the world. I mean that's what being an avatar is all about! However, I doubt things will change much because of time. It will probably be best not to think about the opening too much and hope that once the story progresses, it gets better.

 

The point is that something like the beginning of a game is quite important and should be focused upon, not something that is an afterthought. The reason why so many people remember the gypsy in the beginning of the ultima IV was that it was impactful. In that game that the gypsy interaction statted you on path of enlightenment and also gave you a starting class reflecting the virtues you focused upon. We are now in a classless system and using this initial interaction based on three principals in this game doesn't hold the same weight as it did before. Seeing how things are progressing the nostalgia effect of the SotA undertaking has worn off quite a while ago

 

Thank you!

This was one of my main original responses to this issue. Let people re-make their character if they feel like they aren't happy with the path they chose. No one is going to give up on the game because of that. But will they give up on the game because they feel like their choices don't matter and the entire opening sequence is of zero consequence?

Very, very possibly.


Also, because I will now add this to any thread talking about the gypsy, The questions should affect ATTRIBUTES, NOT SKILLS.

 

This is your destiny, Avatar! If you don't like it... well, i have others.
Arabella Marx

The thing is... I'm told that my character is me, coming into New Britannia. Some peoples have issues with it... i dont, and i'll probably do my RP from that perspective. And from that perspective i'd like to answer honestly to that questions, but tying my starting role to them is giving me a reason to don't answer honestly, because i want to be an archer from the very start.

Why i can't be honest and play the character i want from the very beginning?

And if i find it first, i'll tag you That idea cannot be liked enough.

 

Of course you could've restarted the game in U IV, if that's what you wanted to do. We used our first go around with the gypsy and wound up as a fighter. Which was fine because it helped set the mythos of our own character (and made geoffrey an acquiantance as opposed to a companion lol). But that decision impacted the class based game that UIV was.

 

I think the simplest answer to dealing with the gypsy is to scrap the idea that your result gives you certain skills - because that's always going to be a system people will game. Skills are too important.

We've still got the Isle of Storms, and a working gypsy system would be great - maybe it should instead affect story only, so that you start along the line of truth or love or courage, and that can have later repercussions in the game. You can still game that, but it's not at all game-breaking, and still really cool.

 

everyone should just start with 10-20ish in all tier 1 skills, takes away the whole problem of choosing. I'd also be happy with 0 in everything and the abillity to vendor train a few points for a few hundred gold

 

Easy enough to write a "custom" dialog option (you say "custom" to Arabella) and then verbally pick however many skill or trees to advance.
Or if that's not enough, you get an XP pool starting bonus equivalent to the number of skills you get if you pick a 'path' and gold enough to choose those same skills.
It's quite a bit of XP/Time and quite a lot of gold. It's not an inconsequential choice.

For example, the non-mage, non-ranger choice (Love/Courage/Courage) grants as of R26/now:
30 Bladed Combat (Blades)
20 Thrust (Blades)
20 Double Slash (Blades)
10 Riposte (Blades)
10 Rend (Blades)
10 Bludgeon Combat (Bludgeon)
20 Glancing Blow (Heavy Armor)
10 Polearm Combat (Polearms)
10 Ranged Combat (Ranged)
5 Flame Fist (Fire)
5 Healing Touch (Life)
10 Light (Sun)
15 Healthy (Tactics)
5 Train Strength (Tactics)
10 Parry (Tactics)
1 Tame Creature (Taming)
1 Summoning (Taming)
Stats: 117 health, 104 focus, 90 carry capacity, STR 12, DEX 10, INT 10

Just the gold from those? 1700. To say nothing of the time investment to practice/use them all up to those levels. Especially the combat skills to 20, that's not simply 20 uses each, it's much much more.
And of course, during that time, your weapons and armor would be taking damage, which you'd have to repair, which isn't a small amount of gold either.