Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Solasta

I bought it, it's ok for indie game.

It's pretty basic and there are a few things I personally like such as character conversations with all characters being involved and some mechanical goodness like auto-jumps and navigation convenience as a whole.

But that's where it ends IMO. I know RAW purists are fawning about these mid-combat popups for reactions, smite and what not, but for me it got old pretty fast. I hope Larian will continue with their way of doing things and won't be swayed by some RAW purists that want to turn combat into constant fiddling with popups, just because it's what the holy scripture says.

After all smooth gameplay and a good story is what I want, not constantly fighting the UI nightmare just so some people who want it all by the book to the last letter can be happy. The last thing I personally want is to have to close thousands of popups over single playthrough of BG3. I'd rather have Larian create some configurable reactions system that you can setup once and it will do the trick 90% of the time (and maybe even allow to import the list from other players who optimize it), as opposed to that popups nightmare from earlier days of the Internet.

This will be a game for millions of players, not some snobby D&D elite club. I think it's ok to have your actions do a bit more and reactions do a bit less, if that's what will make it better as a video game.

First I agree that Solasta looks promising and is more 5e compliant and that is interesting in itself.

But then I feel you get a little bite in you, there is nothing we have that either can change more over time than the other. That said, I feel BG3 has the ability to change more based on two things: Team Size and they are the one's that strayed and Solasta hasn't and are probably much closer to their final mechanic since they haven't.

Larian is just 1 days work of making it much more 5e compliant which they had internally. If a modder can do it in short order they can do it even quicker.

The question isn't if they can. It's if they will.

I want to be optimistic, but I'm somewhat worried. They've stated long ago that they want BG3 to be a proper D&D game, a proper BG game and that they've significantly toned down surfaces. If this forum is to be believed, that's not what happened.

They said they took the easy road in their interviews throughout the pre-EA marketing period.

I don't have a link immediately handy, but there are several interviews where Swen and others say they went with the DOS model because "it's what [they] know". They openly decided not to take risks with their own formula of RPG. They also said in the same interviews that the decision to go after the BG IP was because BG had more name recognition, and that they could use that to show more people "their own formula of RPG" ... meaning they never intended to do anything but copy/pasta DOS and graft 5e wherever it could fit.

Solasta may only be SRD, and the team small, but at least they had the guts to build a 5e game.

I like the way group dialogue is done in that game and how it all has voice over. I hope BG3 can use that for an example.

I will probably give Solasta a try. I don't care if BG3 is strict or not when it comes to the rules, but after watching Solasta, that game:

1. looks smooth and accurate in its party management/pathing/order
2. spells look amazing and much better compared to what I'm seeing in BG3. They are a bit longer on the animation and slower on the timings which makes me appreciate looking at the spell so much more.

I'm loving BG3 but Larian seriously needs to take some notes for the above 2 points.

Imo Larian tries to make BG3 to be too many games, they try to satisfy fans in this order: DOS fans -> DND fans -> BG fans. I can understand market determines where the game goes, but i'm not appreciate that they try to mix DOS and dnd together.

If this is true, then there's no hope for BG3. I want no part in such a heinous bait and switch. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how early access plays out to see how serious they are about making either a D&D game or a BG game. So far, I'm not convinced.

I am only checking out Solasta because I have pretty much exhausted all my current interests in this game. The story of this game is great and I love exploring all the D&D stuff that I rarely saw in adventure modules (I think I saw Druegar once in the past 6 months of Adventure League modules). I am not a purist by any means, I started playing pencil and paper DND for the first time several months ago and just went really hard on it (Daddywarbux discord server for anyone that may play there). I dont consider myself an expert in D&D, I loved the planescape: Torment game more than the BG or NWN games.

I will put more time in on different classes once they setup multiplayer and tweak the classes that are already in game. You cant even really use Mage Hand yet... and the Arcane Trickster's mage hand does absolutely nothing that it is supposed to do from 5e. Once they make some improvements, Ill come back and check em. However they can only pump out patches so fast and I seriously doubt we will see patches that add content or tweak the spells for a long time... hopefully they fix Magehand so that it can carry stuff, (and so that Arcane trickster can use it to pick locks/pockets nad disarm traps).

I really started playing 5E to get hyped for this game. I am probably going to enjoy whichever game gives me the most character customization options because thats what I really loved about DND, the flexibility in character builds are vast. If one game has multiclass and the other does not, it will be an easy choice for me... a good story only has so much replay value... custom builds pickup where the story leaves off

Hmm, we really need links for the interviews with those statements. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but considering the way you formulate it, had the same sentences been written by an official spokesperson, the PR/Media Manager would had gotten a severe headache as that can come off as near fraudulent behavior and if it's true, is not the way it should have been laid bare for the public. So I kinda need to watch/read the source/s myself so I can draw my own conclussions.

If anything the way spells look and feel (so far) is one of the strongest suits of BG3.

OP only exists at this point to be as contrarian as possible, but at least they've dropped that whole innocent "I'm just sayin' guys..." subtlety when they were trying to instill doubt in others in their first few posts.

Solasta isn't bad by any means, but it's relatively devoid of anything but minor story elements and combat. Outside of 5e rules and the standard fantasy tropes, it's not meant to be a comprehensive, deep experience.
But of course, OP is fully aware of that. They've just been chomping at the bit for something even remotely similar to BG3 to stroll along to plant their flag in support of it.

Looking forward to seeing you regurgitate this "hot take" all over again once Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen releases so that you can really stick it to Larian again.

BG3 could use more visual dice rolls in combat like Solasta. That's all I would really ask for.

I know some "dice roll" here and there may add flavor, but I'm definitely NOT a fan of the idea.
One of the advantages of a videogame over a tabletop is precisely that you could hide that level of abstraction under the hood and let the visuals (models, animations, effects, etc) do the talk about what's going on.