Solasta Solasta II - coming to Early Access - demo on February 24th

[Abu Antar]

While it isn't a huge feat, what little was shown of the UI looks better than the one in S1.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

While it isn't a huge feat, what little was shown of the UI looks better than the one in S1.

It's still well within the browser based cheap ass mmo territory, its size relative to everything else on screen makes it feel like a cheap mobile game. I hope they're just mockups and not the finished product as intended.

 

[Abu Antar]

While it isn't a huge feat, what little was shown of the UI looks better than the one in S1.

It's still well within the browser based cheap ass mmo territory, its size relative to everything else on screen makes it feel like a cheap mobile game. I hope they're just mockups and not the finished product as intended.

They do say that's early alpha stuff, so there is time for change.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Rolls two 17's with disadvantage? Immersion shattered.

Hell I rolled a crit once while having disadvantage.

 

[anvi]

More purple, what a surprise.

 

[rojay]

Rolls two 17's with disadvantage? Immersion shattered.

Hell I rolled a crit once while having disadvantage.

Once?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Rolls two 17's with disadvantage? Immersion shattered.

Hell I rolled a crit once while having disadvantage.

Once?

Once. It's a 1 in 400 shot so I'll take when I get it.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2362300862

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

Rolls two 17's with disadvantage? Immersion shattered.

Hell I rolled a crit once while having disadvantage.

I have rolled a critical failure when I had advantage... More than once...

Spoiler

 

[Artyoan]

Watched about half of the video. Most interesting part was the change to the cover system. Instead of needing to be right next to something that grants cover, the amount of cover is based on line of sight. He gave the example of firing an arrow at a character behind a tree might mean partial cover without needing to be right next to the tree, just having it present between the attacker and defender.

 

[Alienman]

Watched about half of the video. Most interesting part was the change to the cover system. Instead of needing to be right next to something that grants cover, the amount of cover is based on line of sight. He gave the example of firing an arrow at a character behind a tree might mean partial cover without needing to be right next to the tree, just having it present between the attacker and defender.

Sounds a bit messy.

 

[anvi]

Getting KCD2/Veilgard woke vibes from this too. But I liked the first one, would like more especially with some improvements. I hope *the agenda* doesn't get in the way.

 

[Artyoan]

Watched about half of the video. Most interesting part was the change to the cover system. Instead of needing to be right next to something that grants cover, the amount of cover is based on line of sight. He gave the example of firing an arrow at a character behind a tree might mean partial cover without needing to be right next to the tree, just having it present between the attacker and defender.

Sounds a bit messy.

It might be. Hoping they make a push for clarity as to whether it is being offered or not. Moving next to an object is still likely going to be preferable for the sake of cover anyway. If done well, it could be great.

They are covering classes one by one. Rogue is first and supposed to be the next article I believe. Said they would have an article on the change to the cover system too. A few other things:
-Reach weapons won't be implemented, seems to be mostly an issue of animation complexity and hitting around (not through) party members
-No innate support for anything but four man parties
-Still unsure on 2014 vs 2024 5e ruleset, depends on SRD release time window
-No update on the dungeon maker, still unknown
-New subclasses meant to reflect inhabitants of the new continent, no returning to the old lands. Likely just two subclasses per class to start with.
-Demo is during the Steam Next Fest, which is late February
-Reaction system is also changed, instead of cycling through the potential reactions without knowing what they all are, all reactions should be prompted so the player can choose one.
-Crafting system is changed but doesn't go into detail from what I recall
-Campaign structure is closer to Lost Valley than the other two

 

[Nortar]

Watched about half of the video. Most interesting part was the change to the cover system. Instead of needing to be right next to something that grants cover, the amount of cover is based on line of sight. He gave the example of firing an arrow at a character behind a tree might mean partial cover without needing to be right next to the tree, just having it present between the attacker and defender.

Sounds a bit messy.

It might be. Hoping they make a push for clarity as to whether it is being offered or not. Moving next to an object is still likely going to be preferable for the sake of cover anyway. If done well, it could be great.

They are covering classes one by one. Rogue is first and supposed to be the next article I believe. Said they would have an article on the change to the cover system too. A few other things:
-Reach weapons won't be implemented, seems to be mostly an issue of animation complexity and hitting around (not through) party members
-No innate support for anything but four man parties
-Still unsure on 2014 vs 2024 5e ruleset, depends on SRD release time window
-No update on the dungeon maker, still unknown
-New subclasses meant to reflect inhabitants of the new continent, no returning to the old lands. Likely just two subclasses per class to start with.
-Demo is during the Steam Next Fest, which is late February
-Reaction system is also changed, instead of cycling through the potential reactions without knowing what they all are, all reactions should be prompted so the player can choose one.
-Crafting system is changed but doesn't go into detail from what I recall
-Campaign structure is closer to Lost Valley than the other two

Is it just me, or the more they tell, the less interest I have.
Same shit with no real improvement. No grappling, no reach weapons, no party increase.
No good stuff, just a facelift. Why even bother?

 

[Artyoan]

Is it just me, or the more they tell, the less interest I have.
Same shit with no real improvement. No grappling, no reach weapons, no party increase.
No good stuff, just a facelift. Why even bother?

I have the same concern. The switch in engines has it feeling like reinventing the wheel. There isn't a lot of 'new' here so far, at least mechanically. At this point I'd prefer the 2024 5e rules just to be different from Solasta 1 at a base level. Demo in a month, so at least that to look forward to.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I don't hate Concentration. But it's weird when your character has a wide selection of crowd control spells and you realize he might never get to use most of them. The concept might work better if "Concentration spells" were their own special category and you could only have one at every spell level or something like that.

it got to the point I would not choose concentration spells, or at the very least not memorize but a couple at a time.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Question: How many classes will Solasta II have?
Ideally we want to have all 12 classes available at 1.0 - however as we’re a small team of 35 we don’t know yet if we’ll be able to squeeze all of that content in… but that’s our goal for now, 12 classes each with 2 subclasses for a total of 24 archetypes when 1.0 hits the store.

Having a sequel with 24 subclasses when the first game in its final form has 48 is a level of decline for which I'm not ready.

Personally, I 100% blame Fedora Master, the harbinger of decline.

Meh.
Thanks to WotR I really got over the "more classes must mean the game is better!" line of thinking.
At some point it's just an unelegant design.

agree, but I would like more than 4 party members. Having 48 class variants in the last game was not as exciting because you really only had 4 characters. However some of the fan made modules had 6+ characters, which was good.

 

[notpl]

Lmao at "we're a small team of 35" (triple the number of people that made Gothic, for example)

 

[NJClaw]

Lmao at "we're a small team of 35" (triple the number of people that made Gothic, for example)

People still compare Solasta to BG3. Larian is a company with 500 employees.

 

[Roguey]

35 is a Fallout-sized mid-90s B-team. Bigger than garage dev, but not working with a budget of tens of millions of dollars.

 

[Lacrymas]

Tomb Raider was created by 6 people. Old World had 7 devs. Only if you start unnecessarily complicating graphics that you need huge teams. Not that Solasta doesn't need the face lift, it really is quite unpleasant to look at, but that's not because of fidelity of graphics.

 

[Vulpes]

Lmao at "we're a small team of 35" (triple the number of people that made Gothic, for example)

Gothic had the same number of people, if not more, working on it for about four years.

 

[Myzzrym]

Dropping by to answer a few questions I see here^^

Is it just me, or the more they tell, the less interest I have.
Same shit with no real improvement. No grappling, no reach weapons, no party increase.
No good stuff, just a facelift. Why even bother?

When you make a choice there will always be people that agree with it, and people who will disagree. In this case, the choice we made was very likely not the one you were hoping for - which if I understand correctly would be re-using Solasta 1 to make Solasta 2. Something along the lines of more features, more subclasses, more options - keep the same engine, "don't fix what ain't broke" mindset. Keep improving upon what exists to make the ultimate toolbox. This would be somewhat similar to what Pathfinder did with Kingmaker => Wrath of the Righteous.

There are quite a few reasons why we decided not to go that route (and ultimately went with Unreal Engine 5), among which:
- There was the whole Unity fiasco which did not really encourage us to stay with Unity.
- Big partners are also much more interested in hearing about a new project using UE5 than Unity, and you have to remember that a game very rarely succeeds on its lonesome.
- Working on "more of the same" isn't always the most motivating thing for people, especially when the foundations aren't necessarily fantastic.
- There was a large potential for improvement by moving to UE5 and starting fresh now that we had experience with Solasta 1.
- We want to have a new coat of paint. To make things look better, and not have to convince people all the time that "hey yea it kinda look like ass but trust me it's good".
- Probably a lot more that I don't have in mind right now.

Now of course that does mean "reinventing the wheel" to a certain extent. We are building the foundations again, even though we already did in the past (although now the house won't sink in the bog in 10 years, if I want to keep the imagery rolling). One example would be that we are building Solasta II with multiplayer in mind instead of tackling it on top later. But yes that does mean losing on level 11-16, a whole lot of older subclasses, not adding reach weapons or grappling...

At the end of the day you also have to keep in mind that we're a business. We think making the game a little more approachable can help sell more. Adding grappling? A humongous cost (animation, code, exceptions...) for probably not so much. There are many things we'd do instead like adding more monsters, subclasses, or levels if we had the time/budget for that. Do I wish we had grappling? Sure I do, more gameplay options is always nice. I even built a grappling rogue in my last D&D campaign (although he died quick), so it's not like I don't get the appeal. But would I push for grappling when I know how costly it would be? Absolutely not. I'd much sooner have level 20 than grappling.

35 is a Fallout-sized mid-90s B-team. Bigger than garage dev, but not working with a budget of tens of millions of dollars.

Aye, but don't forget that the 90s were 30+ years ago now. Budgets are far from the same - tools, platforms, expectations, salary, inflation, so on and so forth. Competition is also much fiercer now. Don't get me wrong, these guys were pioneers and for some I'd easily even say geniuses, but I think if you want to make comparison it'd be more fair to compare to the last 5-10 years. And again, I'm not saying there aren't any indie success stories - you had Darkest Dungeon, Hades or Stardew Valley blowing up, etc etc.

 

[Artyoan]

I'm all for a more solid foundation, just lamenting that the cost is currently very steep. In addition to subclasses and level 11+ content, there isn't assurance of a dungeon maker component ever being added and all of Unfinished Business must start from scratch with no assurance that much of its features can return as well. Since it is a new engine, there may also be foundational issues that crop up in the process of learning it, just as Solasta 1 had with Unity.

From a business perspective, I understand. Just airing concerns from the external perspective, especially from a community that prizes the mechanics over the graphical uplifts.

 

[Raghar]

That's when I wrote games and complex simulations in my home for free, I had control over all my code. And that's why stuff was fast and bug free.