Solasta Solasta II - coming to Early Access in 2025

[R@tmaster]

I don't get the 6-person party fetish some people seem to have.

In D&D you are obliged to have 2 warriors, mage and cleric. There are literary no combinations with 4 characters party limit.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Looks pretty enough. Hopefully the content is better this time around. I still haven't been able to force myself to finish (or even play much, frankly) the first one. And don't drip feed us classes again, pl0x.

We want to have all 12 classes at 1.0 launch. Just to set things straight, the 1st time around it was simply because our size / budget did not allow us to do that. It's not like we wanted to make a D&D game with only 6 classes, but we were like 15-20 people and it was our first game and money don't grow on no money tree... So yea, no promises but we'll do our best to have 'em all this time.

More important than a large number of character classes is having a larger party size than the meager four PCs in the first Solasta:
...

• More logistics and other effects to improve exploration
• ...

Please don't do that if it ends up being a couple of pointless menu's that I have to click through, which is the case in basically 99% of games.

The best part of Solasta 1 was combat. Instead of going for many things and doing them badly, I'd prefer a focus on areas that can be done competently. Linearity is fine if its used to setup interesting encounters, where everything is properly adjusted to the level and equipment of the party. Nonlinear design where I can happen to do the hard stuff first, such that the rest feels like trash encounters can kiss my ass.

 

[Serus]

I don't get the 6-person party fetish some people seem to have.

In D&D you are obliged to have 2 warriors, mage and cleric. There are literary no combinations with 4 characters party limit.

Plus it is not about any specific number. Six is simply used most often but 5 or 7 would also be better than 4 in most cases. More than 8 OTOH becomes too much, you may stop treating party members as individuals and start as just units.

 

[Mortmal]

Aren't we a bit premature with the doomposting here? All they've said is "we have new unfamiliar tools and are currently not sure how we'll implement things" not "we're dumbing things down because UE." I never played Endless Space 2 - did they dumb it down compared to 1 much?

And besides, as much as I hate UE's bloated file sizes and system requirements, I'll take it over the piece of shit that is Unity any day. At least UE doesn't turn your machine into a supernova while running games that look like 1999 would be ashamed of them, doesn't load saves for 5 minutes, and doesn't have suttters whenever you open any menu. Anything is better than Unity.

I don’t remember the first Solasta turning my computer into a supernova—it worked well on modest hardware and even had upscaling options. I could even run it in 4K with my old 8GB AMD card. I have nothing against Unreal Engine, but from my point of view, it’s not worth losing such important features.

Everyone who played the game probably remembers one of the first fights with the Sorak mage casting Levitation to gain an advantage on its attacks. But you could shoot him down, break his concentration, and watch him fall to his death. That kind of tactical gameplay is memorable. I think everyone agrees that extra campaigns and the workshop are also huge pluses.

Now, they’re changing engines, and they’re saying they’re not even sure if they’ll implement such important features. You better be sure before risking your company’s future. A Solasta 2 with less tactical gameplay but slightly prettier graphics won’t attract a crowd. What I’m hearing is more multiplayer and co-op support, but I couldn’t care less about something like that. I’m also skeptical people will really use it, despite their survey.

I still haven’t heard anything about maintaining tactical gameplay or adding more options.

 

[Artyoan]

Aren't we a bit premature with the doomposting here?

I'll list the good things I recall from the twitch presentation:
-Same music composer returning in Maxime Herve. I thought the first soundtrack was excellent and "Ambush in the Dark" is one of my favorite battle themes of all time.
-Multiclassing is present. I don't personally use it but the option is there.
-Better models, better faces, better voices.
-They will be making a better effort to present new gear pieces as showing on the player character. New gloves and capes should be visible. Likely going to be more options all around than Solasta's one or two armor sets per type.
-Controller support at launch, including WASD style movement for kbm. Nice quality of life element. Likely to come to consoles.
-The campaign intends to be much more freeform in exploration, which I personally think sounds great. Not every random encounter will be combat.
-DLC structure shouldn't be restrictive with some classes being locked off from the base. This was a common complaint on forums and reviews.
-Still a full custom party, though at one point it was mentioned that companions may join and actually be capable of leveling up this time.
-I recall at some point Girard (CEO) mentioning that movement should be more fluid/quicker. More animations.
-There won't be eight voices (four per gender) but they are looking into allowing for tone variation sliders/options so that the same voice can sound different. Nice option imo.
-Personalities should be single options rather than the complicated tagging system that could end up schizophrenic.
-They will be looking into making AI different based on difficulty options. More involved if harder. Solasta 1 had some options here in Deadly/Merciless checks to make AI harder or target downed chars.
-They are starting with 2014 5e but could use 2024 5.5e if they have the SRD early enough. Wouldn't surprise me if they give both options at some point in the game's life.
-Crafting will be overhauled with Myzzrym mentioning the silliness of Solasta 1's traveling between locations just to craft an item. They didn't specify the new direction though.
-Inventory management is supposed to be improved.

 

[Mortmal]

"The campaign intends to be much more freeform in exploration, which I personally think sounds great. Not every random encounter will be combat."

It’s not a good thing if it means encounters will be designed in a free-form style, with no real challenge as usual. Simply bloating HP in higher "difficulty" modes is not the way to make things challenging. 5E is still meant for dungeon crawling.

 

[whydoibother]

Aren't we a bit premature with the doomposting here?

Should be the tagline of the forum.

 

[Artyoan]

"The campaign intends to be much more freeform in exploration, which I personally think sounds great. Not every random encounter will be combat."

It’s not a good thing if it means encounters will be designed in a free-form style, with no real challenge as usual. Simply bloating HP in higher "difficulty" modes is not the way to make things challenging. 5E is still meant for dungeon crawling.

I'll be curious to see what their encounter design looks like this time. Including area/arena design. I put clutter all over the place for visual and tactical reasons in the DM. But then random encounters during travel have to use base game battlegrounds that tend to be far too open and spacious imo. Obviously I prefer my approach.

 

[Mortmal]

Aren't we a bit premature with the doomposting here?

Should be the tagline of the forum.

But when were we wrong?

 

[Alienman]

"The campaign intends to be much more freeform in exploration, which I personally think sounds great. Not every random encounter will be combat."

It’s not a good thing if it means encounters will be designed in a free-form style, with no real challenge as usual. Simply bloating HP in higher "difficulty" modes is not the way to make things challenging. 5E is still meant for dungeon crawling.

Could make leveling extremely slow to compensate.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

If they can make the game prettier then it's already a plus. Goddamn that one was ugly as fuck. Not just the characters.
Kinda sad that this entire franchise exists in a "we have BG3 at home" way, though.

 

[Infinitron]

Girard and his crew are good programmers. They achieved things with Solasta 1 that many people wouldn't have believed when the game launched. So there's reason to be optimistic.

 

[whydoibother]

Kinda sad that this entire franchise exists in a "we have BG3 at home" way, though.

Verticality and utilization of light/dark is better than in BG3. Everything else might be worse, but its not an objectively inferior product. Honestly everyone should play both.

 

[Roguey]

f they can make the game prettier then it's already a plus. Goddamn that one was ugly as fuck. Not just the characters.
Kinda sad that this entire franchise exists in a "we have BG3 at home" way, though.

Art is engine agnostic. I imagine they'll be reusing at least some art from the first game, otherwise, what's the point?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Kinda sad that this entire franchise exists in a "we have BG3 at home" way, though.

Verticality and utilization of light/dark is better than in BG3. Everything else might be worse, but its not an objectively inferior product. Honestly everyone should play both.

I did play both, but I think Solasta relied too much in the fact that they'd create an audience willing to make thousands of modules, like what happened with NWN. Larian themselves understood this and only brought back mod support in a very limited manner once they learned how audiences behave. Harebrained Schemes tried it and went out of business.

 

[Lacrymas]

Harebrained Schemes tried it and went out of business.

They aren't out of business? They made 3 games after Shadowrun and are currently making one right now. They just couldn't continue with Shadowrun because it's not clear who holds the IP rights to it iirc.

 

[Crispy]

Wilderness exploration, rather than merely selecting a destination on a map

I actually disagree with this one.

The problem with having large open outdoor areas to "explore" is that you wind up replicating one of BG's most irritating aspects: lawnmowing the terrain. It detracts from the game's authenticity imo and unnecessarily vastly increases development time, effort, and need for more quality control.

It's better to leave it like they did: you already are simulating (realistically) vast areas of wilderness that are almost completely uninhabited thus uninteresting, but you're still including "encounter areas" that, while they can still be relatively large in size, are not attempting to model the world's entire landspace.

Incidentally, this is the way D&D and its clones are run. The DM can't and shouldn't try to have all outdoor areas detailed down to the last pine cone.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Harebrained Schemes tried it and went out of business.

They aren't out of business? They made 3 games after Shadowrun and are currently making one right now. They just couldn't continue with Shadowrun because it's not clear who holds the IP rights to it iirc.

I thought they went out of business actually, they had made a game that died soon after release, and to be fair, they might as well be dead in the larger scheme of things. my bad though.

 

[Roguey]

Harebrained Schemes tried it and went out of business.

They aren't out of business? They made 3 games after Shadowrun and are currently making one right now. They just couldn't continue with Shadowrun because it's not clear who holds the IP rights to it iirc.

I thought they went out of business actually, they had made a game that died soon after release, and to be fair, they might as well be dead in the larger scheme of things. my bad though.

HBS did well enough for themselves with Shadowrun and Battletech (Microsoft owns the rights to both) that they were purchased by Paradox who proceeded to mismanage them into the ground with The Lamplighters League. Now they seem to be barely more than a garage dev. Nothing to do with modding though.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Wilderness exploration, rather than merely selecting a destination on a map

I actually disagree with this one.

The problem with having large open outdoor areas to "explore" is that you wind up replicating one of BG's most irritating aspects: lawnmowing the terrain. It detracts from the game's authenticity imo and unnecessarily vastly increases development time, effort, and need for more quality control.

It's better to leave it like they did: you already are simulating (realistically) vast areas of wilderness that are almost completely uninhabited thus uninteresting, but you're still including "encounter areas" that, while they can still be relatively large in size, are not attempting to model the world's entire landspace.

Incidentally, this is the way D&D and its clones are run. The DM can't and shouldn't try to have all outdoor areas detailed down to the last pine cone.

No-one reputable would be calling for Solasta and other RPGs to imitate the type of mindless wilderness exploration in which the player simply traverses every square in a "lawnmowing" fashion to trigger any hidden content on that square. I merely want a semblance of wilderness exploration rather than the original Solasta's method of having the player passively watch as the party follows a pre-determined path to a destination, with the possibility of random encounters but no other content. Dungeons & Dragons from the beginning recognized wilderness exploration as the counterpart to dungeon exploration with book three of the original D&D rules being titled "The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures" while page 5 of the first rulebook suggested the use of the Outdoor Survival board game by Avalon Hill as "recommended equipment" along with dice, graph paper, et cetera. This distinction and the importance of wilderness adventuring was emphasized in 1981 B/X Moldvay/Cook D&D where the Expert Set covered wilderness adventuring and again with the same structure for 1983 BECMI Mentzer D&D's Basic and Expert Set, while AD&D eventually had a Dungeoneer's Survival Guide and a Wilderness Survival Guide published in 1986 (at Gary Gygax's instigation, though he was ousted from TSR before their completion). Similarly, numerous classic D&D/AD&D adventure modules, starting with Gygax's D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth have wilderness exploration as a major element or even the main focus.

 

[Crispy]

Zed, I have no problem with wilderness exploration in an RPG. Of course not. But how do you propose to do that in an isometric computer RPG without resorting to how BG did it? Do you want some sort of slowly-moving radar-like thing scanning the area constantly with random wildlife encounters and actual areas of interest (a cave, a dungeon, etc.) in "secret" locations that you stumble upon? That's going to result in lawnmowing.

Please describe how you'd handle it, exactly.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Zed, I have no problem with wilderness exploration in an RPG. Of course not. But how do you propose to do that in an isometric computer RPG without resorting to how BG did it? Do you want some sort of slowly-moving radar-like thing scanning the area constantly with random wildlife encounters and actual areas of interest (a cave, a dungeon, etc.) in "secret" locations that you stumble upon? That's going to result in lawnmowing.

Please describe how you'd handle it, exactly.

Zed does have a point. Specific to Solasta, you can't exactly travel without having a destination picked. Solasta travel is pretty much picking a destination out of a list and you may find something on the way there, but there isn't a free roaming component to it, like strike out in a direction and see what you find.

 

[Crispy]

Sure, but think about what wilderness is. It's so vast, it's so full of absolute nothingness, that you can wander aimlessly for months before finding anything resembling civilization, a natural landmark, or anything of note whatsoever.

Solasta simulates this by only "allowing" you to visit locations that you already know about thus relieves you from the quite literally pointless exercise of experiencing every droll moment of trudging through utterly unnoteworthy terrain. By surprising you with occasional discoveries of sites and points of interest, it's giving you the most sensible method of maintaining the sense of space but without the ridiculous square map of uncover inch by inch.

If there's a better way to do it, I'm all ears.

Edit: I'd also like to hear the opinion of anyone who's ever DM'd a PnP campaign who was able to handle wilderness exploration in any other way.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

If there's a better way to do it, I'm all ears

I want to say Fallout, but arguably that counts as lawnmowing.
EDIT:
Honestly if I think of games where I enjoyed the overworld map exploration part it ends up being games where there are more entities than just your party- mount and blade, sea dogs et cetera. Maybe even realms of Arkania, but that's it.

 

[Crispy]

Fallout had POI and overland map travel. Not sure what you're talking about.