To Anyone who *Legitimately* believes the Starting Character isn't the Main Character:

[Onikage]

EDIT: To everyone who keeps saying "You can't assign Work to the main character so they don't die" WHY would that even matter if they're always able to respawn? Dying is NO consequence, if they can respawn anyway how would this put them at risk??

To clarify, I'm aware what the Devs said in their Q&A. The problem is it makes no sense AND makes it look like a really poor game-design decision. What I'm asking is, based on the implementation, why do YOU personally BELIEVE they are not or should not be the main character.

Original Post Below:

Seriously, if you really think (without being a jester-farmer) that the Starting Character is just that, someone to start the game with and then ditch/move on from just answer me these 3 questions:

1. Why can't we assign them Work when controlling another tribe member?
2. Why can't we kick them out of the tribe (without exploits)?
3. Why do they have zero Perks/Drawbacks unlike every other tribe member?

If the Mask is truly the main character, why are we permanently stuck with the starting person with no way to remove them OR make them useful when we're NOT controlling them?

[old mate]

how many times are you going to make this thread?

[Flint]

My answer to the question. Yes the starting Character is the Main Char, but the main goal of the game is not to develop this char.

That's the part of the game we all have to get used to. The Mask is the Main in this Game, followed by the Tribe and then the immortal starting Char or Main Character, the owner of the Mask and the Tribe leader.

The main goal is to get a Strong Mask and a strong Tribe, not the development of the starting character.

For me, the Game changed as soon as I had access to the Mysterious Stone Table. I searched for the right Tribe member of the highest Level I had access to and started playing with them.
Currently, I control a guy that has a healing as Class Skill and a companion that is set on defense behavior with shield and spear/blade. On the Controlled Character, I use the Hammer with the 50% damage taken reduce ability. They are lower level than the Tribe leader or Main char, but with the higher Skills and Stats the content is much easier than before, and with the Table I can resurrect them. So far they didn't die and I farm the content that was difficult before.
I plan to replace them with higher Level Chars regularly, so that the loss on death is reduced.

My advice, don't play the Char, play the Mask and the Tribe :-)


If you have a Main Char that can be fully developed from the beginning, there is no reason to play as a tribesman.

[Saint]

We are going to continue to complain about the gimp main character. Doesn't matter if it's exactly what they intended, a great number of us want them to alter this during the early access stage. Doesn't matter that you folks agree with the design decision, many of us don't. This is the correct place to express such views.

My first suggestions for a fix is to raise the caps to 60 for the main character allowing the 2nd perk on everything from the start.

My 2nd suggestion is that every boss killed opens a mask slot to raise proficiency caps by another 5-10 pts

My 3rd suggestion is come at this from the other end. Why are these NPC's gods? That's part of the issue here. Like, I get a good npc and it has 80 and 90 and some caps in the 100's. He is a fighter, why are all his non combat skills equally high? Why? If he is a fighter, then maybe depending on quality, a few non combat skills caps can be above 50, but most shouldn't be. Likewise, there should be great non combat npc's with crap combat skills.

So in short, create a path for higher caps for the player while reducing the god status of npc's in comparison to the gimped main character.

[Baxe]

I'm waiting for modders to get to this game, there are only 5 rn on nexus mods.

[Onikage]

Originally posted by Jordo007:

Do you want the main character to be assigned to gather and then die while you are out with a tribesmen and you also die and have to restart your entire adventure?

I've added this to the original post, but if they DIE while gathering and they can ALWAYS respawn, what is the problem exactly?

You listed the reasons they can't work as possible death... as a consequence for a character that can infinitely respawn... do you not see the instant contradiction and nonsense of that?

Originally posted by Jordo007:

I bet your ass would be right here on the boards complaing about permadeath then too.

Do you want to be able to kick your only infinite respawn out of the tribe and when you are down to single tribesmen, you go out to try to deter someone and you end up dying and having to start the whole game from scratch? Again, you'd be right back here complaining about permadeath.

I prefer Permadeath in my Survival games actually. So no, I wouldn't be complaining. In fact, if I can make that trade I would. If that was a setting, you enable Permadeath BUT that also means you can assign work to the starting character. 1000% fine with that.

Also when and why did so many people become such babies about permadeath? It's a EA game! You're afraid of losing all your progress? FFS any patch can do that. There's a chance with any update, especially the larger ones, that your entire Save File becomes obsolete.

As long as Permadeath is advertised in the game info, I'm fine with it. God the Survival Genre has become pathetic

EDIT: Also, read my original post. I flat out SAID I know what the Dev's reason is. I'm asking the players what they think. Hence the word "Believe" and the rest of the way I wrote it. Try having your own opinion and STOP assuming what other's want in their games or what their preferred playstyles are. If you wanna answer the question, explain why you THINK the starting character isn't the main character. Not because of what Devs said, what is your OPINION of why based on the way the game is structured.

[Onikage]

Originally posted by old mate:

how many times are you going to make this thread?

I only made one of these threads. If you think you're seeing it too much, good news! That is the point of EARLY ACCESS! To get feedback from players to make changes.

EDIT: To clarify, I made another thread before this one asking if anyone knew why skills were capped at 50 for the main character because during the Demo, there was lots of people saying it was a cap for the Demo-Only and it would be removed upon EA release

[Xea]

Originally posted by Onikage:

What they are saying is an extremely poor game design and character purpose. It also makes them look really incompetent from a Player Perspective.

I think it is splendid game design. There may be some neophobic and also some narcissist players who do not like it at all but I think that is a loud minority.

[DiViOS]

Originally posted by Xea:

Originally posted by Onikage:

What they are saying is an extremely poor game design and character purpose. It also makes them look really incompetent from a Player Perspective.

I think it is splendid game design. There may be some neophobic and also some narcissist players who do not like it at all but I think that is a loud minority.

Can you anti player character trolls please stop with the hyperbolic retorts.
Stop conflating what is being asked "make the player useful" with "make the player UBER"
I swear to god you people have reading comprehension skill issues. The OP clearly pointed out

1. Why can't we assign them Work when controlling another tribe member?
2. Why can't we kick them out of the tribe (without exploits)?
3. Why do they have zero Perks/Drawbacks unlike every other tribe member?

Sorry, these points don't read to me like they want to have an UBER player character. Why are you SO against having the PC balanced as a normal NPC?, wtf is the difference?? You're already going to recruit/kill/rinse repeat until you get the best tribe members you can find. Why is it so hard for you to accept the player as a tribe member?

[Onikage]

Originally posted by Xea:

Originally posted by Onikage:

What they are saying is an extremely poor game design and character purpose. It also makes them look really incompetent from a Player Perspective.

I think it is splendid game design. There may be some neophobic and also some narcissist players who do not like it at all but I think that is a loud minority.

Really? So let me understand: They created several Intro Cinematics, they have us take the time to fully customize our character's appearance and they did that all so we have a permanent "respawn" person INSTEAD of just letting you respawn as whomever your last living tribesman is, regardless? OR giving us the option to designate one tribesman of our choosing as the Survivor so our intro character can still contribute and not spend almost the entire game sitting at the fire?

Also there's an argument to be made that the Mask *chose* us for a reason. So if we're immortal, the main gameplay mechanic chose us AND we get to fully customize the character... yeah I'd say that's a MAIN Character and it makes even less sense now that we're gimped

[Onikage]

Originally posted by Jordo007:

Originally posted by Onikage:

You're quoting the Devs in their Q&A. What they are saying is an extremely poor game design and character purpose. It also makes them look really incompetent from a Player Perspective. The Character we Create is supposed to be the one we have the most investment in.

I'm asking players to explain why they think the first character isn't the main character. If you don't have your own opinion, that's fine but I don't think you understood the question

That is literally the reason why. Those game mechanics are the reason why it's not the main character. I'm quoting them because that's why it's not the main character.

What you are trying to do is ignore what the devs have explained to you, start a discussion about why the character isn't the main character so you can counterpoint someone because you're all up in your feels about not being able to play your initial character that you spend all of 2 mins making in character creation between 8 faces, 4 hair types, and a handful of sliders.

Do you want the main character to be assigned to gather and then die while you are out with a tribesmen and you also die and have to restart your entire adventure? I bet your ass would be right here on the boards complaing about permadeath then too.

Do you want to be able to kick your only infinite respawn out of the tribe and when you are down to single tribesmen, you go out to try to deter someone and you end up dying and having to start the whole game from scratch? Again, you'd be right back here complaining about permadeath.

The initial character is a weak ass ♥♥♥♥♥ who got caught and was next to be sacrificed, was it not for a tribe assault during sacrifices. The only reason they are semi-relevant now is because they were lucky enough to find the mask and the mask put itself on them. or they'd be right back to being locked up and being sacrificed in no time.

The mask is the whole reason they can recruit people and make a tribe. The mask is the reason they can see stuff ahead of time in the jungle. That mask isn't just the initial characters though, the mask is also the reason you can body hop and control other tribe warriors, guards, and hunters that you've recruited who ARE more powerful than the initial character.

Ok, if we can get different Masks then the Mask isn't the Main Character either.
Also, to easily disprove your nonsense about why they can't work: If they can always be revived, then there's no reason they can't gather or craft because if they do die they just come back.

At the VERY LEAST they should be able to Work. The fact they're useless after the first few hours of the game is absolute BS and poor design

[Elder Drake]

It's a crazy thought, but I was thinking, as I grind stuff to grind so I can grind, what if your character activated some ancient tech that just overwrote consciousness? That would account for no character traits, as basically, the main character is a shell now for the mask. A go-between bridge, so to speak that is mindless or without a 'soul' now.

Putting my tin foil hat on, what if another person is controlling your character now under the semblance of you as the player on the other side of the screen or the awesome Bioshock moment of 'Would you kindly?' reveal sort of twist? Maybe there are limitations on the original host for the mask, but once activated, the mask can 'control' others with their full skillsets.

[Banelord]

1. Just allow the official server players to ressurect the tribesmen as they were on death. No grinding levels back again. You can literally do wo without removing fast leveling perks as well, to even speed up the leveling, we dont mind
2. Have the ability to assign your PC to do chores while you occupy a NPC. As it is now, a PC is an useless member of teh tribe doing nothing while you are playing and occupying tribe slot.

[Kaos]

Originally posted by Baxe:

I'm waiting for modders to get to this game, there are only 5 rn on nexus mods.

Has the mods I expected to be in the game, but not the most useful one, a mod that allows us to change the appearance of our original character and our tribesmen. We can change the hairstyle and tattoos, but not their physical characteristics.

[evstock]

Having to retrain core skills on every follower after every death when fighting a boss has got to be an oversight

[william_es]

Originally posted by Elder Drake:

It's a crazy thought, but I was thinking, as I grind stuff to grind so I can grind, what if your character activated some ancient tech that just overwrote consciousness? That would account for no character traits, as basically, the main character is a shell now for the mask. A go-between bridge, so to speak that is mindless or without a 'soul' now.

This is probably the closest explanation. The main starting character was just some random person in a cage waiting to be sacrificed. We only know three things about them: They couldn't fight their way out of getting captured, run fast enough or hide well enough. They're just a random schmuck, not a hero.

Due to some random event, they escape, fall down a cliff and find a "magic" mask. In the intro, I can't even remember them putting it on. It sort of teleported onto their face.

The mask is obviously the main character, and it's the AI "spirit" in the mask that's calling the shots.

The AI can load itself into other physical masks (with different hardware), and control people as "hosts". And it's the explanation for things like your mesoamerican jungle character suddenly understanding how to make blast furnaces and other higher tech stuff. Far as I know, the historical cultures in that area never discovered or used iron. Much less steel. The mask is using the hosts to bootstrap up civilization thousands of years in a matter of weeks.

And as far as the main character being "gimped", that's something that's also in conan exiles (which this game appears to be HEAVILY based on). You could recruit thralls that were able to craft items your main character could never craft. And the thralls were about 20 tougher then your main character.

I kind of like the current system in soulmask. I just captured a level 48 barbarian from the wasteland. They have a permanent radiation and heat resist that my main will never have. They also have 3 gold buffs that increase skills, leaving them with 120 in one skill, and others in the range of 115+. And they have three green innate talents. If I want to explore the desert and wasteland, it's a much better choice to wear that body while doing so.