Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 vs Solasta

Also worth adding, the graphics argument has been observed to have one measurable effect, maybe two: it probably has a greater effect on increasing sales over everything else. Much of humanity is quite shallow, and yeah, the primary goal of a game is to sell, after all.

The arguable second effect is that a lot of franchises sacrificed quite a bit in the gameplay department for chasing the graphics specter. One only needs to see the vast graveyard of RPG franchises that outright died at the turn of the century, for their outright refusal to either chase the holy graphics ideal, the publishers chose to sacrifice them in favor of other franchises that they thought would adapt to the HD era better, or botched the gameplay so much that they alienated too much of the fanbase while chasing the specter of graphics. And of the ones that made it through, the studios have somehow ended up in a complete dev hell state afterwards, approaching further projects with seeming existential dread. See: Bioware, Bethesda, and CDPR.

It feels like the only developer that has actually escaped from that unfortunate cycle is Capcom, starting with Monster Hunter World and then realizing that gameplay should take priority over graphics with everything else they've released since. And they seem set for life in the graphics department with their RE Engine.

At least enough people know better now to expand their horizons a bit, so that enough of a market for other concepts exists for even remakes of older games like Live-A-Live to be taken seriously now. But we're still going to see Game Journalist-level takes for anything that doesn't conform until the end of time.

...

In other news, what the hell is Square Enix doing towards the end of the year, releasing so many games so close to each other. What the fresh hell?

Had Larian been committed to implementing the RAW from the beginning, they would have updated their engine first'

If anyone on the team said "We can't do that", than the project manager should have said "Then it's time to expand our team".

It takes way more time, effort, and money to do things the sloppy way than it does to buck up and stay the course (set your goals and just make it happen).


They would not have come under fire like they have either.


Moot now...Its spit and polish time.

Not true at all. I played all the MH games going back to MH1. The monsters have not really changed without the addition of maybe 1-2 moves over the last 15 years. Most of the games have just improved graphics. All the new games are much easier then all the old ones. They are also heavily simplified, so not really true.

The point I was making was that the Capcom of today managed to fully transition into the high graphics era and basically found their stride, though they initially had to go through the same problems as many of the other studios attempting the same. Every other major studio is seemingly still struggling to climb out from all the stories of dev hell we keep seeing. Although it also helps that their RE Engine has basically solved all their issues in the graphics/performance department too.

What you mentioned seems to be far closer to being deliberate design decisions and subjective opinion rather than a focus on graphics very obviously taking away from resources in other areas of development. Monster Hunter is not typically a series that likes to shake things up too much, and I would know because I play Monster Hunter too.

So...by this you acknowledge that graphics doesn't make better games? Sure, it might help improve sales. But if the gameplay is bad, it doesn't matter how shiny it is. You can, proven by Mythbusters, in fact polish a turd to shine, but, it's still gonna be a turd :P
Now, I'm not saying BG3 is a turd, it's not bad. But since your argument was that BG3's undeniable better visuals per automatic made it better than Solasta...

I also played the MH games since the very first and guess what? I happen to think the franchise has never been in a better place. Most of the streamlining Capcom did removed tedious time sinks rather than actual complexity.

Case in point, the removal of Hot/Cold Drinks in Rise, which were about as interesting as BG3's current supplies to long rest system.

For the uninitiated, certain regions in prior MH games had constant health drain due to extreme environmental conditions (mostly deserts, volcanoes, and areas with blizzards). Your primary way of dealing with them was to bring said drinks, which was basically 1 button to cancel out the health drain for 10 minutes. You would usually have to go out of your way to collect herbs or mushrooms to craft them, but they were abundant and you'd probably have hundreds of them after a few hours.

I was thinking more of little things like "Extracting plants taking a 6-seconds animation rather than being instant" or "mining having to go through multiple seconds of repeated gesture rather than just one single short animation".
I didn't think hot and cold were so terrible to deal with, honestly.

That too, what with how Rise basically let you extract three sets of ores with one pickaxe swing while you had to watch the animation play out 3 times in World beforehand.

Though I also had a friend the other day complain that while Rise streamlined stuff like gathering from ores and bone piles, for whatever reason monster carving still forces you to sit there for 20-something seconds.

Maybe longer if you see that Vespoid suddenly coming at you in the middle of all that.

I strongly agree on the amount of garbage loot we have to contend with. Definitely a holdover from the DOS series.

So I got solasta at 60% off, played about 10 hours- solasta is worse in every single way. Here is what I don’t like about it.

1) I have to manually react to attacks, because I do not know if an attack done against me will do 2 or 20 dmg, manually reacting to it just makes it feel worse. If it was auto, I would not be annoyed as much. As I have to do it way to often.

2) piss poor graphics make gameplay nauseating.

3) most classes are missing, yes I can add them with mods. But if I have to mod the game to make it good. That is a major F.

4) the voice acting is abysmal. 4 aVA’s done by what collage kids who got paid with free food? I never heard it done so poorly.

5) roll dependency can completely ruin the game. Unlike DOS or Bg3 where you can compensate for RNG with abusing environment

6) lack of quests to lvl up, and lvl cap of 12.



The two can’t be compared. Solasta is closer to the quality of a 5K$ school project done by someone in second year of collage era amateur. Boring. And by the book. Home brew is what makes games more fun. I did not think I appreciated Larians home brew as much as I did until I played something so boring and dry.

Wow. This may take my vote for “worst post in the entire thread so far”.
And not for a lack of competition.

I like how some of the things are just factually incorrect or nonsensical comparisons.

3.) Most classes are not missing. If you're only talking about the base game, then I believe Solasta has 7 out of the 12 PHB classes--cleric, fighter, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, wizard (maybe I'm wrong about one of them, but that's still 6/12). And if you include the DLC (and 5e's Artificer), then Solasta has 9/13 classes.
--Many of the subclasses in official 5e materials are missing, but this is because TA didn't get the full 5e license. Thus, they had to create their own subclasses, and I think there are actually *more* subclasses in Solasta than there are in the PHB

5.) Roll dependency??? I mean, yes...? It's a D&D 5e game. Also, you can just go into settings and give yourself +10 to all rolls and enemies a -10 to saving throws, negating "roll dependency."

6.) BG3 will also have a level cap, probably of 12, and EA currently has a level cap of 4. So not sure how you're claiming that Solasta is worse...?

Also, practically all of the subclasses, feats, and the entire WORLD SETTING in Solasta is homebrew given that they don't have the full 5e license so saying that "Solasta is worse than BG3 because it has less homebrew" is...an interesting claim.

#5 he means that if the attack misses in BG3, you have Larian cheese to still ensure you can be effective that turn.

You use your full action to make a failed attack or spell, you can still potentially shove someone with a bonus action for maybe even more than the attack.

You shoot an elemental arrow and miss? Well, you still create a surface and generate some damage.

Abusing the environment is one way to put it and that is why Larian is balancing towards players with this mindset. They fear too many people will get frustrated with 5e and missing whole adding nothing for numerous turns in a row.

An opinion is fine, even if you disagree with it. Take notes from Mrfuji and Gaymer to at least be helpful and explain why you disagree, rather than just being a dick.

Last time I suspended you, I promised you that next time would be longer. Yet I don't think it warrants 30 days. So take this warning instead, and if you remain being pointlessly dickish again in the indefinite future, make it 3 months. K?

Which is superfrustrating, because if you disagree with basic principles of the system, why do you take the licence to adapt it?

It's not like Larian is wrong - they created D:OS which has little to no RNG and it's good. But you can't take two fundamentally opposing systems and merge them like that into something succesful. In a roll based game, guaranteed sources of damange are always super powerful and need to be used sparingly otherwise they break the RNG side of the game. See XCOMs where bypassing RPG in the late game trivilizes the experience - Firaxis even created new enemy and mission type in WotC to discourage people from relying on granadeers at least everyonce in a while.

Solasta is a better game, not because 5e D&D is better then Larian's design philosophy, but because Solasta knows what it is, while BG3 remains a mess of conflicting ideas and designs. If people want to play BG3 but dont want to deal with combat - fine, there are difficulty options for that. Or take the licence and just use your D:OS system and completely say screw it. But don't make a dog's breakfast out of a system to try to make two different combat systems at once.

+1

@AusarViled:
Dice rolling is a fundamental part of DnD (or any other table top game)
You can succeed or fail. Good stats and buffs increase your chances but nothing is certain.
You say BG3 is good because abusing the environment can make you ignore dice rolls. (shove and throw anything, sneaking as mini game to avoid vision cones, and so on).
I say it shows only that Larian knows little about DnD.

I think that if you use the DnD licence you should use DnD rules.
In terms of using DnD rules, Solasta is the better game.
I am not talking about graphics or story.

1. I assume you're refering to the "Shield" spell? In BG3, under the current reaction system, it would be far worse because it's use would be automated and you wouldn't be able to decide whether to use it on a goblin, who'll generally do very little damage, or an ogre. Of course BG3 lacks the Shield spell at the moment, so that point is moot anyway.

2. That is in the eye of the beholder... while I agree that the characters look horrible, I like their environments. Monsters are generally ok as well, as is most equipment though admittedly some armors look as bad as the characters.

3. As others already mentioned, they operate under the OGL rather than the full 5e license and in addition are small indie studio operating under a tight budget. The classes they had at launch, while not necessarily the classes I wanted, were sufficient for varied parties. I may not like that I have to buy DLCs to get the classes I want, but at least I know I'm supporting a small indie team rather than feed some large studio (looking at you Bethesda and your endless DLCs...)

4. I'd have prefered no voice acting in general, but I didn't consider it as bad as you do. Certainly not great, but serviceable and not too annoying.

5. Not sure what you expected to be honest... it is D&D after all. It is expected that you use support/control spells and/or consumables in many encounters, rather than just relying on damage or cheesing fights like it's often the case in BG3

6. While I wouldn't have minded a few more sidequests, the available quests are enough to keep your level appropriate to the area.
Since BG3 will most likely cap your level at 12-14, I guess you won't be happy with BG3 either.


I could say the same about BG3...

This is the part that struck me as well. If I ever play BG3, as things stand now, I would be forced to mod the game heavily in order to justify playing it (whereas I see no need for any mods for Solasta).

I'm going to play the game unmodded first to give it a fair shot. And after I complete, I'll see...