Solasta Solasta II - coming to Early Access in 2025

[Artyoan]

Over a decade ago I made fun of Jeff Vogel's opinions on difficulty.

I'd be curious to see if he still agrees with that initial blog post. It is from 2009 and if the Dark Souls series has taught me anything, it is that proper difficulty enhances every other aspect of the game. While I don't think crpgs match up entirely with a more skill based action game, the lesson about difficulty remains true. It should be capable of pushing the player and also play fair. Every advancement then becomes meaningful, which ingratiates the player to their own characters, choice of progression, the game lore/setting/plot, and even their own luck in managing it all.

A mindless grind is fine every now and then. But that tops out at an 8/10 game and it isn't what sticks with me over the years. Some frustration is a healthy thing. I think people are underestimating the 'normie' capacity for taking on some challenge.

 

[Mortmal]

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.

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.

I'm usually the one defending OK games against binary Codex criticism of "either it's bad or it's the best thing ever." I just didn't enjoy Solasta at all

But now you have two big threads for trolling , grunking and hear yourself talk, which is most likely your greatest delight. So don't deny it—Solasta has finally given you some enjoyment.

See, this is why I nominate you for the butthurt awards <3

How is it being butthurt to rejoice in seeing a fellow codexer finally enjoying himself? Merry Xmas!

 

[Morality Games]

The vast majority of gamers don't even notice that games like Skyrim, Red Dead: Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, Horizon: Zero Dawn, etc, etc, etc aren't very difficult, it never even occurs to them to look at the games in that light.

Of course I realize this. Doesn't change the fact that it's overall a bad thing for one of my favorite hobbies. It's a bad attitude for everything in life, in my opinion, and it promotes stagnation. I will always openly criticize it, but I'm generally surprised to encounter it on the codex, which is usually a haven away from such depressing normalcy.

The sort of tension between bread and circuses entertainment and genuine artistry is practically a pillar of civilization that writers and commentators have been bemoaning since before Pliny the Elder.

The time when PC gaming existed solely for the amusement of an extremely niche audience of a couple hundred thousand nerds who didn't mind if both their jobs and their hobbies were extremely technically demanding was a magical and wonderful time in the history of the hobby, but not one that is likely to be reproduced in the foreseeable future.

Tactical Adventures' situation is that they are one of a few studios in a unqiue position to capitalize on the new market opportunities left behind the wake of Baldur's Gate III where they can build a much larger, financially seucre, and much more famous studio than ever seemed possible (not that this is a foregone conclusion, but only that it is possible).

The logic in such a situation is (much like Josh Sawyer and Pentiment after the Microsoft acquistion), if you want to go back and put genuine artistry ahead of bread and circuses entertainment, you can always do it after you are rich and successful.

 

[Pink Eye]

You don't stay in business for long making high quality RPGs, just look at Iron Tower

VD has repeatedly said that Colony Ship sold more than AoD. It also sits at a mostly 80%+ rating on steam. The game resonates with actual RPG fans. As far as I'm concerned, Colony Ship *is* a success, period. The problem was that it didn't meet VD's financial expectations to secure the next game - that's the issue. Also, it's kind of disingenuous to use Iron Tower as an example against wanting quality RPGs when the studio barely gets any marketing - on top of having a super niche following. Colony Ship struggled in terms of attention throughout the entire Early Access period - that isn't a fault of the game but the fact that it had no marketing. Iron Tower is, and to quote VD: "A small stall in a giant gaming bazaar. Without exposure (media coverage, big YT names, Steam's front page, etc), this market of hundreds of millions shrinks to a quarter million players who know about the game (and might or might not be interested in it)."

That's the reality.

Iron Tower makes amazing RPGs. Those that do hear about them and play the games, have nothing but praise for them (again look at Colony Ship's steam user rating it speaks for itself); it's just that not a lot of people know about the studio. To further cement the point of marketing: Battle Brothers was recently covered by a german youtuber with a million subs, the game's visibility would sky rocket and it resulted in a ton of sales - the developers even dedicated a patch to commemorate the event.

It's not *just* about quality RPGs, it's also about breaking into the mainstream conscience. With marketing, you'll be throwing a bigger net that'll catch those dedicated players that may otherwise have not known about your game. Only reason why I even knew about Iron Tower to begin with is because of the Codex. Had I not been a user of this site I would never have known about AoD, Dungeon Rats, and Colony Ship - I would have missed out on three great RPGs simply because I wouldn't have known. That's the issue: not everyone uses the Codex and not everyone is going to know about the studio. It's all about attention and visibility, which is something Colony Ship struggled with.

The lack of visibility isn't due to the premise that people just want casual click simulators where they aren't challenged, it's simply because the game didn't get the attention it needed or deserved.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I do not think Solasta was particularly difficult. I do think it made creative use (and, to be fair, actual use) of PC's skills. Casting dancing lights is both an environmental benefit and also a tool in combat, since undead fear light. For a time it was also the first DND crpg where flight was actually used in a non gimmicky manner. Solasta, then, is a good choice for people who like tinkering with character sheets.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Crispy it's Chinese Open World Turn Based RPG. Combat is gridless tho (high AP pool for free movement).

It's exactly what Solasta could be. Exploration is meaningful and not just busy works with secret quests and shit to find. The world also support sequence breaking to a degree.

A very good example on how open world TB CRPG could easily works

 

[scytheavatar]

Over a decade ago I made fun of Jeff Vogel's opinions on difficulty.

I'd be curious to see if he still agrees with that initial blog post. It is from 2009 and if the Dark Souls series has taught me anything, it is that proper difficulty enhances every other aspect of the game. While I don't think crpgs match up entirely with a more skill based action game, the lesson about difficulty remains true. It should be capable of pushing the player and also play fair. Every advancement then becomes meaningful, which ingratiates the player to their own characters, choice of progression, the game lore/setting/plot, and even their own luck in managing it all.

A mindless grind is fine every now and then. But that tops out at an 8/10 game and it isn't what sticks with me over the years. Some frustration is a healthy thing. I think people are underestimating the 'normie' capacity for taking on some challenge.

Making a difficult game is by itself a difficult task. The Souls games are difficult in a brilliant way, even normies can get good at them without needing much reaction and motor skills. Fromsoft is very good at teaching their players how to handle difficulty, if it is too bullshit just run past it.

What which makes the Souls games so successful is how simple their system is, yet how much depth they have been able to extract out of it. It will not be as easy for a D&D game to achieve the same thing.

 

[Harthwain]

The vast majority of gamers don't even notice that games like Skyrim, Red Dead: Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, Horizon: Zero Dawn, etc, etc, etc aren't very difficult, it never even occurs to them to look at the games in that light.

That's because in these games difficulty as such isn't the goal, like it is in tactical games (the whole point of tactical games lies in beating its encounters). In all the games you mentioned it is about exploring the vast open world, which gives the player the sense of freedom and exploration.