KickStarter Solasta: Crown of the Magister Thread - now with Palace of Ice sequel DLC

[Fedora Master]

 

[Artyoan]

A lengthy video TA made here on twitch as a sendoff regarding Solasta: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1882162702

There was a portion about why the faces turned out to be the way they did at 2:22:12 in the vid. Short story shorter: Whatever tool they made to make faces was assumed to be okay, in practice it was not. Too late to fix the tool.

I gave my survey feedback. Basically said to make a similar game but better foundation and focus on a dungeon maker and modding. I hope they don't go the direction of making one custom hero with a dev set party. Even if their improvements are leaps and bounds better than Solasta is, I prefer full party creation. Better to lean into the differences for the sake of a niche than to compete on a level in which you will be outgunned. No idea what they have in mind but my best guess is Solasta 2, similar structure, almost a soft-reboot, with improvements across the board. If they do lean into custom content, I don't know how they intend on monetizing it all.

 

[Nortar]

A lengthy video TA made here on twitch as a sendoff regarding Solasta: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1882162702

I'm not going to watch the whole 4 hours of it, but curious if they told about player contests to design weapons and armor, one of which I won with the Brightwall shield.

 

[Orud]

There was a portion about why the faces turned out to be the way they did at 2:22:12 in the vid. Short story shorter: Whatever tool they made to make faces was assumed to be okay, in practice it was not. Too late to fix the tool.

I wouldn't be surprised that it's facial animation related. All their faces have a very similarly potato shape, and their cinematic focus placed a lot of stress on good (and many) facial animations.

An example of this are tools to automate lip movement based on sound. It's possible that their chosen tool didn't have an easy way to setup multiple facial structures, so that's why they had to make a common potato shape that allowed every face to use the same rigging. The alternative probably meant that faces looked like they were melting while talking.

 

[Fedora Master]

There was a portion about why the faces turned out to be the way they did at 2:22:12 in the vid. Short story shorter: Whatever tool they made to make faces was assumed to be okay, in practice it was not. Too late to fix the tool.

Could've just said that instead of going "NO WE INTENDED THE FACED TO LOOK LIKE THAT HONEST!!!"

 

[Artyoan]

A lengthy video TA made here on twitch as a sendoff regarding Solasta: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1882162702

I'm not going to watch the whole 4 hours of it, but curious if they told about player contests to design weapons and armor, one of which I won with the Brightwall shield.

I haven't seen all of it yet either. Though I'll check because they do go over chronological order of events from pre-release to finish. I did see your name in the credits after Palace of Ice though. Immortalized.

 

[Nortar]

A lengthy video TA made here on twitch as a sendoff regarding Solasta: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1882162702

I'm not going to watch the whole 4 hours of it, but curious if they told about player contests to design weapons and armor, one of which I won with the Brightwall shield.

I haven't seen all of it yet either. Though I'll check because they do go over chronological order of events from pre-release to finish. I did see your name in the credits after Palace of Ice though. Immortalized.

Oh, that's nice. Thanks for the info, I'll check it out next time I run Solasta.

 

[DemonKing]

Finished Palace of Ice yesterday.

For a sequel I'd like to see:

* No more item attunement - it adds nothing to the game and it's just a pain for the player.
* For a fairly linear game mark your quest locations better or otherwise make it obvious where you have to go. I had to look up a guide for one quest because it wasn't clear where the hell I was supposed to meet the NPC who triggers it (turns out I had to walk past a tavern on one side of the map with nothing else of interest on it).
* If you must have random encounters let's have a bit more variety so I don't have to beat a bunch of mountain druids and their polar bears half a dozen times while walking between adventure sites. Non-consequential or repeated turn-based battles don't treat the player's time with respect.
* Not a big fan of the Concentration mechanic for spells, particularly as it's not always clear which spells require it or not.
* No more Soraks - sick of beating these up after two games. The random one thrown in during the final boss battle was particularly egregious.
* Don't lock races/classes behind paywalls (unless they're added in with a large campaign style DLC as a bonus).
* Putting resources into crafting a cool sounding object only to find out the final product is less than stellar - let us know what exactly we'll be creating before we start.
* Something to indicate recipes we already know before we pick them up cluttering our inventory with them would be nice.

 

[Orud]

Concentration is a core mechanic of 5th edition, and I'll take it over 3.xE's buffing/debuffing marathon. Although another alternative is simply to remove most buffing/debuffing spells.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

find out the final product is less than stellar -

Pretty sure the properties get previewed somewhere.

 

[DemonKing]

Concentration is a core mechanic of 5th edition, and I'll take it over 3.xE's buffing/debuffing marathon. Although another alternative is simply to remove most buffing/debuffing spells.

Yeah it just doesn't seem very consistent - like if you cast Earthquake all of a sudden your flying spell disappears but a fireball is fine?

 

[gurugeorge]

Concentration is a core mechanic of 5th edition, and I'll take it over 3.xE's buffing/debuffing marathon. Although another alternative is simply to remove most buffing/debuffing spells.

Yeah it just doesn't seem very consistent - like if you cast Earthquake all of a sudden your flying spell disappears but a fireball is fine?

I think the logic is that if something is sustained over time it requires concentration - an earthquake takes some time, whereas a fireball is fire-and-forget.

I'm still a bit on the fence re. concentration. I get the point of it, and more than once I've made a decision to drop one concentration spell and use another one, which I presume is WAI. But the limitation of only one concentration spell is just a bit too fun-spoiling, and I think too many fun spells have become concentration spells.

On the other hand, you'd be opening up a can of worms if the player could learn to hold more than one concentration spell at a time via various means of wizardly growth.

 

[Alienman]

I hope they make something X-com like for their next game. I wouldn't mind them using the same engine. Maybe fantasy X-com with some light RPG mechanics.

 

[lukaszek]

find out the final product is less than stellar -

Pretty sure the properties get previewed somewhere.

yeah, from my memory: in crafting screen if you hover over item picture, somewhere in top right?

I dont recall anything good craftable in palace of ice though, more like they just dumped all the recipes from previous games

 

[Orud]

I think the logic is that if something is sustained over time it requires concentration - an earthquake takes some time, whereas a fireball is fire-and-forget.

I'm still a bit on the fence re. concentration. I get the point of it, and more than once I've made a decision to drop one concentration spell and use another one, which I presume is WAI. But the limitation of only one concentration spell is just a bit too fun-spoiling, and I think too many fun spells have become concentration spells.

On the other hand, you'd be opening up a can of worms if the player could learn to hold more than one concentration spell at a time via various means of wizardly growth.

That's why I'm more of a fan of outright removing certain spells from 3.xE games. All the ability boosting spells? Remove them. Other buffs? Don't make them stack.

If a spellcaster wants to pop-off his spellslots, I'm fine if they want to do it. The problem is more with the ease of regaining lost spell slots in most video games (via rest spam), causing the issue of limited spellslots to often be isolated to each fight separately. Once the spell-slot recovery issue is balanced, and further control is warranted over a spell-caster's abilities, tweaking of available spellslots should be the preferable next approach.

But I'll still take concentration over ever again having to cast 'Bull's Strength', 'Bear's Endurance' and 'Cat's Grace' after each rest.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Concentration is a core mechanic of 5th edition, and I'll take it over 3.xE's buffing/debuffing marathon. Although another alternative is simply to remove most buffing/debuffing spells.

NWN (2002) improved this by having "Resist Elements", which was a welcome and prudent choice. They got redundant at higher levels (Resist/Protect/Energy Buffer) due to scaling limitations, which is something that 5E has generally done a good job of eliminating. 5E overreacted with concentration requirement. It could be easily improved by allowing the caster to maintain concentration on the number of spells or levels of spells equal to their proficiency bonus and modifier. Such changes are questionable though, as the game then starts to become something else.

 

[Jarmaro]

About to play Solasta, should I use this mod pack?: https://www.nexusmods.com/solastacrownofthemagister/mods/225
It seems to add a lot of variety to races and classes, although I don't know how much it impacts balance.

 

[Artyoan]

About to play Solasta, should I use this mod pack?: https://www.nexusmods.com/solastacrownofthemagister/mods/225
It seems to add a lot of variety to races and classes, although I don't know how much it impacts balance.

Yes. Though you might play through one campaign without it first. It adds an enormous amount of extra functionality. Some of it will be overpowered but you can pick and choose what you want to enable.

 

[Jarmaro]

Been playing for an hour. Holy shit the jank is unreal. The cut and jerky voice lines, you can feel seams at every point. Not to mention the game tries so hard to make the personality traits important that the result is an incoherent mess.

Edit: I have never before seen so much tone shifts within one conversation. Is this game purely gameplay focused and the story/character/dialogues are an afterthought? I thought it's a DnD RPG wannabe. Am I wrong?

 

[Artyoan]

Been playing for an hour. Holy shit the jank is unreal. The cut and jerky voice lines, you can feel seams at every point. Not to mention the game tries so hard to make the personality traits important that the result is an incoherent mess.

Edit: I have never before seen so much tone shifts within one conversation. Is this game purely gameplay focused and the story/character/dialogues are an afterthought? I thought it's a DnD RPG wannabe. Am I wrong?

Jank is set to maximum. Embrace the weirdness. The combat makes it worth it, and you get custom campaigns from the workshop that might be more focused as to storytelling and dialogue, just without the voice work.

 

[Abu Antar]

Been playing for an hour. Holy shit the jank is unreal. The cut and jerky voice lines, you can feel seams at every point. Not to mention the game tries so hard to make the personality traits important that the result is an incoherent mess.

Edit: I have never before seen so much tone shifts within one conversation. Is this game purely gameplay focused and the story/character/dialogues are an afterthought? I thought it's a DnD RPG wannabe. Am I wrong?

Voice acting had me silently laugh many times.

 

[Fedora Master]

Been playing for an hour. Holy shit the jank is unreal. The cut and jerky voice lines, you can feel seams at every point. Not to mention the game tries so hard to make the personality traits important that the result is an incoherent mess.

Edit: I have never before seen so much tone shifts within one conversation. Is this game purely gameplay focused and the story/character/dialogues are an afterthought? I thought it's a DnD RPG wannabe. Am I wrong?

Jank is set to maximum. Embrace the weirdness. The combat makes it worth it, and you get custom campaigns from the workshop that might be more focused as to storytelling and dialogue, just without the voice work.

No it doesn't. 5E is not a good system.

 

[gurugeorge]

I think the logic is that if something is sustained over time it requires concentration - an earthquake takes some time, whereas a fireball is fire-and-forget.

I'm still a bit on the fence re. concentration. I get the point of it, and more than once I've made a decision to drop one concentration spell and use another one, which I presume is WAI. But the limitation of only one concentration spell is just a bit too fun-spoiling, and I think too many fun spells have become concentration spells.

On the other hand, you'd be opening up a can of worms if the player could learn to hold more than one concentration spell at a time via various means of wizardly growth.

That's why I'm more of a fan of outright removing certain spells from 3.xE games. All the ability boosting spells? Remove them. Other buffs? Don't make them stack.

If a spellcaster wants to pop-off his spellslots, I'm fine if they want to do it. The problem is more with the ease of regaining lost spell slots in most video games (via rest spam), causing the issue of limited spellslots to often be isolated to each fight separately. Once the spell-slot recovery issue is balanced, and further control is warranted over a spell-caster's abilities, tweaking of available spellslots should be the preferable next approach.

But I'll still take concentration over ever again having to cast 'Bull's Strength', 'Bear's Endurance' and 'Cat's Grace' after each rest.

I've never really had a problem with all that, and tbh I've never seen why it bothers other people. 1hr, 10m, 1m per level, 1 round per level, it's all good as far as I'm concerned, you just apply them as needed. If you were to lose out on attribute buffs like that, you'd be losing out on a good deal of magic "flavour" to these games.

Designated rest areas is the key to the rest spam problem, I think, TA's instincts were sound on that (though they were maybe a wee bit too generous with them - not a lot, and not all the time, but a bit in some places).

Something that I haven't seen implemented, but maybe it has and someone knowledgeable would know, would be to honour the intent behind Vancian magic (that the higher level spells are mind-bending and difficult to keep in memory) and have a sort of "madness" meter, the threshold of which rises with level. Thus: you can memorize as many spells as you want, but above a certain threshold (with a rising percentage beyond that threshold, and the threshold rising by level) you risk going mad (could be something like, risking falling into some negative mental condition after a certain time, or simply going unconscious, or spells backfiring, etc.). So it's your choice whether to stuff your mind with spells beyond the level of some cantrips (which should actually be as useful as a basic attack in any other class) and a few higher-level spells. Do you risk going mad at some inopportune moment with a 5% chance (not really that bad of a risk) to get more spells memorized? 10%? 15% (now that's getting dodgy), etc.

 

[cretin]

Ive been getting back into this, although I'll probably end up dropping it for BG3, just waiting for Tortuga's download servers to not be swamped by cretins.

Games in a lot better state than when I first played it. I actually find myself getting into it and despite the obviousness of the low budget everywhere, it has a charm that grows on you. The combat is of course, excellent as everyone has poined out, perhaps the games *only* strong point.

It occurs to me that what Solasta really functions as is as a modern replacement for the gold box games. The cinematic presentation baffles me, its such a waste of resources/money that could've gone into hiring actual artists to give their game a visual identity.

 

[Artyoan]

Been playing for an hour. Holy shit the jank is unreal. The cut and jerky voice lines, you can feel seams at every point. Not to mention the game tries so hard to make the personality traits important that the result is an incoherent mess.

Edit: I have never before seen so much tone shifts within one conversation. Is this game purely gameplay focused and the story/character/dialogues are an afterthought? I thought it's a DnD RPG wannabe. Am I wrong?

Jank is set to maximum. Embrace the weirdness. The combat makes it worth it, and you get custom campaigns from the workshop that might be more focused as to storytelling and dialogue, just without the voice work.

No it doesn't. 5E is not a good system.

I don't personally care about 5E. The combat is still great.