KickStarter Solasta Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Lacrymas]

Myzzrym It's good that some of the issues are going to be looked at. "We" (i.e. voice over detractors) complain about voice acting because we know it's ridiculously expensive for little benefit, especially when it's not on the level of Kreia in KotOR2 for example. The actual gameplay could've been better without this included and that's what gets my (our?) panties in a twist. It's extremely obvious something, somewhere is too expensive for budget and it's affecting everything else around it. But oh well, nothing can really be done about it now. I don't have anything against the story, it's nerdy but I like it that way. As for whether I like the game or not, that's not so easy to answer because the frame/fundamentals are great (5E combat) but the content itself (mostly encounter design) is ...not so great. Like I said multiple times already, if you guys fix the encounter design, it's going to be a great combatfag game.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

I said it before but I'll reiterate here - Solasta is the baby of Mathieu Girard, our CEO. The guy's put his money, passion and time to create it from scratch, forming a new company to work on the project. As the Creative Director it is absolutely normal that he has his own vision of what the game should be, and he has his own likes and dislikes that even if we do not always share, we do have to respect. For instance, he wanted to move away from the "wall of text to read" dialogs that he doesn't really enjoy in modern cRPG, which is why we're trying out these dialog cutscenes instead. And again, I'm not saying that it's the right (or the wrong) choice - when it comes to things like this it's a matter of preference, and as the Creative Director he steers the ship.

Well, someone who dislikes reading and pushes for frequent cutscenes and omnipresent voice acting is probably the opposite of general Codex view of things, a harbinger of decline.

 

[V_K]

frequent cutscenes

Cutscenes in Solasta are many (unfortunate) things, but frequent they are not. From what little of EA I've played, they seemed fairly decently paced and concise. They're certainly not worse than PoE or DOS approaches requiring you to trudge through every NPC's longwinded life story to get to important bits. Granted, having them be short, rare and text-based would be preferable, but I'll take two out of three as well.

 

[Lacrymas]

They are quite frequent, though. The friend who I was playing with and I joked about how we can predict when a cutscene is going to happen because they are so frequent. I was like "cutscene in 3... 2... 1..." and I was almost never wrong, lol.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

frequent cutscenes

Cutscenes in Solasta are many (unfortunate) things, but frequent they are not. From what little of EA I've played, they seemed fairly decently paced and concise. They're certainly not worse than PoE or DOS approaches requiring you to trudge through every NPC's longwinded life story to get to important bits. Granted, having them be short, rare and text-based would be preferable, but I'll take two out of three as well.

You probably have a way higher tolerance for that, I cringed as soon as I saw the characters splayed there in that cutscene arrangement like bowling pins.

 

[V_K]

YMMV, but personally I found them a lot less bothersome in Solasta than in, say, Dragon Age, Twitcher or Dungeon of Naheulbeuk. Not to mention JRPGs.

 

[Whisper]

For instance, he wanted to move away from the "wall of text to read" dialogs that he doesn't really enjoy in modern cRPG

Modern crpgs have wall of texts to read? Which ones exactly?

example with the Lighting Rules where we made a deviation from the 5e ruleset, which was reverted with the most recent patch after massive community feedback.

There was also massive community feedback on food system, so i expect heavy nerf to it (or was it done already?)

It's a bit the same when you're talking about maps not being fully utilized - right now we haven't implemented any side quests yet, but you will be prompted to revisit some areas with new monsters being added and all..

Maybe add more secret places to visit/small loot caches/some notes etc.

but eh there's plenty of great games out there, so no big deal.

Not really. You get few such games per year, at most. You dont get games like Kingmaker or Legend of grimrock often, for sure.

 

[Whisper]

Well, someone who dislikes reading and pushes for frequent cutscenes and omnipresent voice acting is probably the opposite of general Codex view of things, a harbinger of decline.

Devs dont want this game to be niche game for 'experts'. And fail in sales. I can understand them. Hopefully they will find a way not to dumb down to casuals in effort to be good to everyone. You cant please everyone, sometimes you need to choose.

I respect honestly of Iron Tower studious or Spiderweb, they are targeting niche and they faithful to it, they are not doing their best to please broad masses in expanse of game quality. Much respect for honest and clear goals.

 

[NJClaw]

Modern crpgs have wall of texts to read? Which ones exactly?

All... all of them? Pillars of Eternity throws at you so much text that it is biologically impossible to play it without skipping at least half of it. Even Kingmaker has too much redundant text sometimes, but fortunately (?) a huge chunk of it is completely optional and inconsequential.

 

[Whisper]

All... all of them? Pillars of Eternity throws at you so much text that it is biologically impossible to play it without skipping at least half of it.

PoE released in the beggining of 2015. In few days we have 2021.

Define "modern".

Even Kingmaker has too much redundant text sometimes, but fortunately (?) a huge chunk of it is completely optional and inconsequential.

What is wrong with reading good quality text? We are taking role-plaing games here, not first person shooters

 

[Butter]

All... all of them? Pillars of Eternity throws at you so much text that it is biologically impossible to play it without skipping at least half of it.

PoE released in the beggining of 2015. In few days we have 2021.

Define "modern".

Even Kingmaker has too much redundant text sometimes, but fortunately (?) a huge chunk of it is completely optional and inconsequential.

What is wrong with reading good quality text? We are taking role-plaing games here, not first person shooters

Pretty much everyone over the age of 15 would consider a 6 year old game to still be modern. Also nice moving of the goalposts. "Modern games don't have walls of text. OK, well maybe Kingmaker does, but that doesn't count because it's good text!"

I'm going out on a limb and saying that even Underrail has too much text.

 

[NJClaw]

PoE released in the beggining of 2015. In few days we have 2021.

Define "modern".

Usually, I label with "modern" everything since the first big wave of kickstarted RPGs. You can clearly see the difference between the world of RPGs before and after Project Eternity.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

All... all of them? Pillars of Eternity throws at you so much text that it is biologically impossible to play it without skipping at least half of it.

PoE released in the beggining of 2015. In few days we have 2021.

Define "modern".

Even Kingmaker has too much redundant text sometimes, but fortunately (?) a huge chunk of it is completely optional and inconsequential.

What is wrong with reading good quality text? We are taking role-plaing games here, not first person shooters

Pretty much everyone over the age of 15 would consider a 6 year old game to still be modern. Also nice moving of the goalposts. "Modern games don't have walls of text. OK, well maybe Kingmaker does, but that doesn't count because it's good text!"

I'm going out on a limb and saying that even Underrail has too much text.

Underrail? It has the occasional lengthly description which I skip reading on replays, but mostly it's very much to the point rather on par with Jeff Vogel's games.

 

[Whisper]

I'm going out on a limb and saying that even Underrail has too much text.

Not sure if serious.

 

[Butter]

I'm going out on a limb and saying that even Underrail has too much text.

Not sure if serious.

What's your favorite part of Underrail? The dialogue or the combat?

 

[Whisper]

What's your favorite part of Underrail? The dialogue or the combat?

Exploration.

 

[The_Mask]

The hobo I have to kick away repeatedly.

 

[V_K]

What is wrong with reading good quality text?

Pacing.

 

[Crispy]

I may be enjoying this, even in its EA state, more than I did PF:KM. Certainly more than either of the PoE games.

Of particular interest to me is the methodical approach I'm taking in dungeon exploration. I love the lighting engine (as trivial of a thing as it is to admire) which is very impressive for what I assume to be a Unity title.

Excuse my ignorance, as I could easily look this up myself, but how long is the finished game supposed to be? Was there a character level cap quoted by the developers anywhere? My party's up to 5th level already and I'm working my way through the maze.

Warts and all, this is just an excellent little RPG. And the UI is fine, btw.

 

[Bara]

Excuse my ignorance, as I could easily look this up myself, but how long is the finished game supposed to be? Was there a character level cap quoted by the developers anywhere? My party's up to 5th level already and I'm working my way through the maze.

EA level cap ends at 6 on full release I believe level cap is either 10 or 12.

 

[NJClaw]

Excuse my ignorance, as I could easily look this up myself, but how long is the finished game supposed to be? Was there a character level cap quoted by the developers anywhere? My party's up to 5th level already and I'm working my way through the maze.

As Bara said, the level cap should be 10 at release. But, at least this summer, our good friend Myzzrym seemed optimistic about the possibility of increasing it in future modules:

Q09: Why is the level max 10 and not 20?
Myzzrym: It's simple really, time and budget. By going up to level 20 you increase the amount of spells we need to create (FX, coding...), features to implement, and also the increase in campaign length! Unless you want to be farming mobs mindlessly for hours on end, increasing level cap also means you need more quests, a longer story, etc etc... and that means in turn more writing, more voice acting - it's a never ending story. This is why Solasta: Crown of the Magister has a level 10 cap - but future modules may increase that cap to 15, or 20, who knows

Here you can find the full Q&A. But those might very well be just honeyed words to increase the hype. Still, the sole fact that they plan on working on additional modules makes me happy.

Keep in mind that, IIRC, the speed at which you level up right now is also fucked up, and it will probably be toned down before the official release.

 

[Ontopoly]

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU TOO FOLKS! Anyway jokes aside, everyone is entitled to their own opinions.

I know you're a developer so you have to pussy foot around issues as to not offend anybody who might potentially buy the game so I'll say it for you. Fuck off Lacrymas, you dumb bitch. The only reason you're here is because you got butt hurt at people thinking your coveted bg3 was out shined by some indie game. larian cultist clear cut. butt hurt. likes bad games. can't appreciate good shit. The combat encounter is more interesting than plenty of games, and you seem to be less forgiving of this game than others for some reason.

 

[Harthwain]

Also nice moving of the goalposts. "Modern games don't have walls of text. OK, well maybe Kingmaker does, but that doesn't count because it's good text!"

I'm going out on a limb and saying that even Underrail has too much text.

There is some truth in that though - Disco Elysium had a massive amount of text and it was great to go through all of it. I will also add that it's not just the question of quality, but also of format.

 

[fantadomat]

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU TOO FOLKS! Anyway jokes aside, everyone is entitled to their own opinions.

I know you're a developer so you have to pussy foot around issues as to not offend anybody who might potentially buy the game so I'll say it for you. Fuck off Lacrymas, you dumb bitch. The only reason you're here is because you got butt hurt at people thinking your coveted bg3 was out shined by some indie game. larian cultist clear cut. butt hurt. likes bad games. can't appreciate good shit. The combat encounter is more interesting than plenty of games, and you seem to be less forgiving of this game than others for some reason.

Ahhh there is 100% chance of solasta being a better game than BG3,that is a fact. Also doesn't mean that the game won't have problems lol.

Excuse my ignorance, as I could easily look this up myself, but how long is the finished game supposed to be? Was there a character level cap quoted by the developers anywhere? My party's up to 5th level already and I'm working my way through the maze.

EA level cap ends at 6 on full release I believe level cap is either 10 or 12.

Hmmm a no level cap/soft level cap would be better.

 

[Lacrymas]

The only reason you're here is because you got butt hurt at people thinking your coveted bg3 was out shined by some indie game.

You do realize Solasta and BG3 are essentially the same game with different content, right?