Solasta Solasta II - coming to Early Access in 2025

[Infinitron]

Just going to repeat this:

Re: encounter design, I just want to say this - I think it's very possible for somebody reading this thread who hasn't played the game to get the impression that Solasta is some sort of repetitive trash mob fest. But it really isn't. Altogether, the game does not really have that much combat. There were many moments when I was going through a dungeon and thought to myself "Some other game would totally have plonked down a filler encounter here".

Compare Solasta with Dungeon Rats, for instance. A typical scenario like the fire ant tunnels will have you encounter three ants, then four ants, then even more ants, and finally the final battle against the ant queen. A pretty typical encounter progression scheme in an RPG.

In Solasta, there are often only two encounters in this sort of scenario. The goblins outside Caer Lem and the goblins in the cave. The spiders over the pillars and the spider queen.

Or take an elaborate dungeon like the Manacalon Ruin, a pivotal location in the story where your party obtains the game's titular MacGuffin, which has only three battles in it (and the first one vs the cultists outside is a quick cake walk).

Or how about the Cradle of Fire, Solasta's "orc caves" where you don't actually fight all that many orcs. There are exceptions that are more typical like the zombie and ghoul-infested Dark Castle, but I think the devs did make an effort to do things differently here.

I just think it's weird how some people give Solasta a particularly hard time for its encounter design. It doesn't stand out but it's not terrible either, we've all played worse.

 

[Grunker]

Just going to repeat this:

Re: encounter design, I just want to say this - I think it's very possible for somebody reading this thread who hasn't played the game to get the impression that Solasta is some sort of repetitive trash mob fest. But it really isn't. Altogether, the game does not really have that much combat. There were many moments when I was going through a dungeon and thought to myself "Some other game would totally have plonked down a filler encounter here".

Compare Solasta with Dungeon Rats, for instance. A typical scenario like the fire ant tunnels will have you encounter three ants, then four ants, then even more ants, and finally the final battle against the ant queen. A pretty typical encounter progression scheme in an RPG.

In Solasta, there are often only two encounters in this sort of scenario. The goblins outside Caer Lem and the goblins in the cave. The spiders over the pillars and the spider queen.

Or take an elaborate dungeon like the Manacalon Ruin, a pivotal location in the story where your party obtains the game's titular MacGuffin, which has only three battles in it (and the first one vs the cultists outside is a quick cake walk).

Or how about the Cradle of Fire, Solasta's "orc caves" where you don't actually fight all that many orcs. There are exceptions that are more typical like the zombie and ghoul-infested Dark Castle, but I think the devs did make an effort to do things differently here.

I just think it's weird how some people give Solasta a particularly hard time for its encounter design. It doesn't stand out but it's not terrible either, we've all played worse.

Seems like a strawman to me. I've argued endlessly about why Solasta's encounter design ruins the experience - using arguments you usually support in principle, actually (content > system design).

Who has argued anything that sounds like "too many trash encounters"? Nobody. Solasta's encounter design is bad because it requires little thought or input.

Have you played Artyoan's mods? The difference between how the mod and Solasta proper uses the terrain features and systems in Solasta to produce interesting, thought-provoking engagements is plain as day.

For example, one of the first fights in Solasta involves an area that's very intersting on paper: you have to cross a divide and your only way across is a bunch of spaced out pillars. You have to navigate these pillars while fighting spiders able to climb on their sides.

I remember looking on my Spider Climb buffed Paladin stand sideways on the side of one of the pillars engaged with a spider thinking "this should be the most fucking cool thing ever, why isn't this cool?" And the answer was because the spiders, despite their superior movement abilities, posed almost no threat to the party. Their composition had no superiority in terms of action economy, placement or abilities, but were complete fodder.

That area alone shows Solasta's squandered potential perfectly. It is such a brilliant systems implementation used for nothing of worth at all.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Just going to repeat this:

Re: encounter design, I just want to say this - I think it's very possible for somebody reading this thread who hasn't played the game to get the impression that Solasta is some sort of repetitive trash mob fest. But it really isn't. Altogether, the game does not really have that much combat. There were many moments when I was going through a dungeon and thought to myself "Some other game would totally have plonked down a filler encounter here".

Compare Solasta with Dungeon Rats, for instance. A typical scenario like the fire ant tunnels will have you encounter three ants, then four ants, then even more ants, and finally the final battle against the ant queen. A pretty typical encounter progression scheme in an RPG.

In Solasta, there are often only two encounters in this sort of scenario. The goblins outside Caer Lem and the goblins in the cave. The spiders over the pillars and the spider queen.

Or take an elaborate dungeon like the Manacalon Ruin, a pivotal location in the story where your party obtains the game's titular MacGuffin, which has only three battles in it (and the first one vs the cultists outside is a quick cake walk).

Or how about the Cradle of Fire, Solasta's "orc caves" where you don't actually fight all that many orcs. There are exceptions that are more typical like the zombie and ghoul-infested Dark Castle, but I think the devs did make an effort to do things differently here.

I just think it's weird how some people give Solasta a particularly hard time for its encounter design. It doesn't stand out but it's not terrible either, we've all played worse.

Seems like a strawman to me. I've argued endlessly about why Solasta's encounter design ruins the experience - using arguments you usually support in principle, actually (content > system design).

Who has argued anything that sounds like "too many trash encounters"? Nobody. Solasta's encounter design is bad because it requires little thought or input.

Have you played Artyoan's mods? The difference between how the mod and Solasta proper uses the terrain features and systems in Solasta to produce interesting, thought-provoking engagements is plain as day.

For example, one of the first fights in Solasta involves an area that's very intersting on paper: you have to cross a divide and your only way across is a bunch of spaced out pillars. You have to navigate these pillars while fighting spiders able to climb on their sides.

I remember looking on my Spider Climb buffed Paladin stand sideways on the side of one of the pillars engaged with a spider thinking "this should be the most fucking cool thing ever, why isn't this cool?" And the answer was because the spiders, despite their superior movement abilities, posed almost no threat to the party. Their composition had no superiority in terms of action economy, placement or abilities, but were complete fodder.

That area alone shows Solasta's squandered potential perfectly. It is such a brilliant systems implementation used for nothing of worth at all.

I actually agree with both of you here. Solasta is serviceable, in a way that goes back to NWN: an okay OC that also packs in the ruleset and tools used to make even better modules in the future. But it's not a travesty, it's just that it could've been better. Thing is, they were never trying to make Knights of the Chalice.

The spider encounter example is interesting just because it's reasonably easy to see things that could have made that encounter better, e.g. webbed terrain, some sort of reason that you have to engage with them, or perhaps an escape objective to avoid being eaten by a bunch of spiders.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I think it's important not to lose sight that the package had a lot of great things that made it worthwhile in the first place. If you don't think so, tell Pierre to hurry up with the KotC2 modules and quit screwing around with his shitty models.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Pierre to hurry up with the KotC2 modules

 

[Roguey]

As our old pal Tim Cain would say, it's a poor game for you.

That's exactly my point. Tim Cain - and by extension you - is an idiot using the value assessment argument of a child. Using it, Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon is a greater work than War and Peace. Or, to steelman your position: at the very least you think the accessibility of the two works is a relevant value assessment, when it is clearly a completely seperate issue not related to the subject of quality at all.

Being less generous, "poor game for you" indicates you're beholden to one of the most foolish misconceptions of cultural debate; relativism. That is, that perspective is the only relevant factor in discussions about quality. If this were the case, no debate would ever be worth having, because relative perspective cannot be argued or debated. If truth - in this case the measure of something's quality - is simply in the eyes of the beholder, the truth-value of any statement is equal. Therefore, there's no sense in debating.

Fortunately, this is clearly not the case, as anyone with even a shallow sense of cultural understanding is able to argue why War and Peace is a greater work than Transformers using arguments based on the work's merits rather than popularity.

"It's just a matter of taste" is a crutch used by small minds to defend things they enjoy from the scrutiny of others. We have to figure out what we're discussing: quality/worthiness or popularity. The former is an interesting discussion that has to judge the work on a range of interesting merits that require actual scrutiny. The latter is what you use to derail just about any debate about any RPG in any thread.

Firstly, it's not an interesting discussion because it's not a discussion at all. Secondly and more importantly, you often mistake this discussion as being the same discussion as the former, when they are clearly quite unrelated. Thus, it makes no sense to reply to someone making a value assessment about something by replying that something would be less or more accessible. That's regardless of whether the person in question makes a good or poor argument - the point is you're not actually engaging with the debate at all.

Hence my example of the car. We are saying that Transformers is not a great work of fiction. You are saying that if it was, it would presumably be less accessible. Not only is that not the same debate, the second debate is an almost entirely binary discussion that is not only irrelevant but also so easily determined it is hardly worth talking about.

There's no shame in enjoying lesser things, mind. This is not a position about enjoyment at all. I'm just pointing out that what you enjoy and what is interesting or of quality is two seperate debates, the former being entirely uninteresting because it's so arbitrary and easily determined.

I'm not even arguing about quality. "Solasta is objectively a bad game" - yeah, so what? Enough people liked it. Tactical Adventures wants to make games for those people, not you. As mentioned earlier, the best you can hope for is that they deliver another toolset so some hardcore guy can make good content (with Unreal Engine I have my doubts this is likely).

 

[Fedora Master]

It doesn't stand out but it's not terrible either, we've all played worse.

Unlike THE FACES

 

[Artyoan]

I'm not even arguing about quality. "Solasta is objectively a bad game" - yeah, so what? Enough people liked it. Tactical Adventures wants to make games for those people, not you. As mentioned earlier, the best you can hope for is that they deliver another toolset so some hardcore guy can make good content (with Unreal Engine I have my doubts this is likely).

'Hardcore' wouldn't be the right framing. TA could make the design of their environments work better with the monsters they've created and the AI was already capable of handling much of the important elements. A sorak will climb up a wall to be out of reach of melee so that it can chuck spinal ranged attacks at the player while also looking for dark areas to hide in which strengthens/heals them. Undead archers will seek high ground and stand behind cover. Many of the archers will seek out a vantage point that allows them to fire diagonally to get by player cover. Undead that are hurt by light will sometimes retreat to dark areas. Though it doesn't matter in custom campaigns, many humanoid enemies know to shove the player if it will result in the player falling some distance.

I don't think it is hardcore to demand of the casual players, even on authentic, that they do more than attack and maybe dodge sometimes. Everything about the game is improved by having a difficulty curve that stays consistent while making each upgrade feel like it would meaningfully help against enemies capable of pushing back. It is only a subset of Solasta players that tried dungeon maker content but those that did weren't put off by harder difficulty. They were thankful for it. Level ups, feats, spells, new weapons/armor, etc all feel far better when the player knows it will actually matter.

If they stack the action economy against the player, with a diversity of monsters that have appropriate stats for the player level instead of throwing in some minor speedbumps aside the real threats, in an environment that both the player and enemy can exploit, the result will be better for everyone. Custom tuning of difficulty parameters also matters more when the basic elements like enemy action economy are appropriately set to begin with. As it is, there are often too few enemies in areas that are far, far too open.

 

[Jinn]

I no longer get enjoyment from completing difficult games.

Why though? Engaging in systems and struggling is one of the great joys of gaming. What is left if you're just breezing through it? The writing? The story? Art and music are a plus, but not enough to carry an entire gaming experience. I genuinely have a hard time understanding this viewpoint. Why even play a game at this point?

EDIT: explain yourself 0sacred.

 

[Roguey]

As it is, there are often too few enemies in areas that are far, far too open.

When playing it myself, "What this needs is more enemies" didn't go through my head at all (in the Dark Castle I strongly thought it needed fewer).

Why though? Engaging in systems and struggling is one of the great joys of gaming. What is left if you're just breezing through it? The writing? The story? Art and music are a plus, but not enough to carry an entire gaming experience.

I like clicking the mouse and killing things in moderation. I also didn't really pay a great deal of attention or fully engage with Solasta's systems, so there were some parts I found demanding.

Over a decade ago I made fun of Jeff Vogel's opinions on difficulty. Now I'm the age he was when he wrote those blog entries, and I understand where he's coming from completely.

 

[Jinn]

I like clicking the mouse and killing things in moderation. I also didn't really pay a great deal of attention or fully engage with Solasta's systems, so there were some parts I found demanding.

Over a decade ago I made fun of Jeff Vogel's opinions on difficulty. Now I'm the age he was when he wrote those blog entries, and I understand where he's coming from completely.

Total decline. I know you don't care, but that attitude is part of the reason why our hobby is getting worse by the year.