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Originally Posted by GM4Him
Ok fine. Admittedly, I haven't finished Solasta, but up to level 6, things have been going [pretty darn well. I have been challenged but not overly so.
Well, the truly mean fights aren't all that frequent, but they are there - mostly (in fact, exclusively, as you have no opportunity to abuse stealth or properly position the party) the ones that trigger upon the end of a cutscene:

Such as Aksha and the defilers that attack you when you half-complete the puzzle in the Fortress of the Shield. The final fight in the new Wanderer quest is pretty tough as well, having a shock arcanist in the back flinging fireballs and whatnot at the party while there's a tough frontline to chew through. And Zhoron.

Most Sorak fights after the one in the Crown room and all the way up until the very end are trivial to average in difficulty. The Pilgrim and Zealot beetles (dunno what whoever named them that was thinking) are probably the toughest "normal" enemies to deal with, plus large groups of elementals can be pretty annoying too as they have a lot of health.

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Solasta plays incredibly well compared to BG3. It shows that accurately ported 5e does work really well for a CRPG. Better than Larian's homebrew.

But unfortunately it's held back by the lower production value, sluggish animations that grow increasingly frustrating and especially the poor writing. The plot and lore in Solasta aren't great. But the dialogue especially is so cringe that I kind of lost interest at level 6. The environments are gorgeous.

If Solasta had better writing and voice acting and a camera that would stay in the overhead view rather than reveal the shortcomings of the character models up close, it would be an all around amazing game. But it's a mixed bag as it is. Still, Larian could take some pointers in staying more true to 5e.

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Originally Posted by 1varangian
Solasta plays incredibly well compared to BG3. It shows that accurately ported 5e does work really well for a CRPG. Better than Larian's homebrew.

But unfortunately it's held back by the lower production value, sluggish animations that grow increasingly frustrating and especially the poor writing. The plot and lore in Solasta aren't great. But the dialogue especially is so cringe that I kind of lost interest at level 6. The environments are gorgeous.

If Solasta had better writing and voice acting and a camera that would stay in the overhead view rather than reveal the shortcomings of the character models up close, it would be an all around amazing game. But it's a mixed bag as it is. Still, Larian could take some pointers in staying more true to 5e.
The gameplay in Solasta is so good that it distracted me from the bad dialogue, to the point that I walk around looking for random encounters. To me at least fun is the most important factor in a game, and in terms of fun, Solasta beats current BG3 by a long margin.

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Originally Posted by 1varangian
Solasta plays incredibly well compared to BG3. It shows that accurately ported 5e does work really well for a CRPG. Better than Larian's homebrew.

But unfortunately it's held back by the lower production value, sluggish animations that grow increasingly frustrating and especially the poor writing. The plot and lore in Solasta aren't great. But the dialogue especially is so cringe that I kind of lost interest at level 6. The environments are gorgeous.

If Solasta had better writing and voice acting and a camera that would stay in the overhead view rather than reveal the shortcomings of the character models up close, it would be an all around amazing game. But it's a mixed bag as it is. Still, Larian could take some pointers in staying more true to 5e.

Heck yeah!

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I played through Solasta once. It's not a terrible game, but it's also not a sandbox game in the style of Larian's BG3. My experience and observations are that they took the ruleset of 5E and did an honestly good job of porting that in, and then didn't provide any leeway for players to do anything creative. Finally I am not in agreement that it deserves to be called an RPG as none of your decisions matter in the slightest bit. You are glued to those story rails and they are going to bring you inexorably to a single outcome without any deviation.

In many ways Solasta is almost the total opposite of an actual TT D&D experience. Players who enjoy a rigid ruleset will appreciate it, but creative players will find it stifling.

Finally I am honestly not in agreement that there can be a comparison between these two games. Compare Solasta to WOTR - that makes sense, they are both single player games. BG3 is in a whole other category of super ambitious games that come along once in a decade.


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Originally Posted by Blackheifer
I played through Solasta once. It's not a terrible game, but it's also not a sandbox game in the style of Larian's BG3. My experience and observations are that they took the ruleset of 5E and did an honestly good job of porting that in, and then didn't provide any leeway for players to do anything creative. Finally I am not in agreement that it deserves to be called an RPG as none of your decisions matter in the slightest bit. You are glued to those story rails and they are going to bring you inexorably to a single outcome without any deviation.

In many ways Solasta is almost the total opposite of an actual TT D&D experience. Players who enjoy a rigid ruleset will appreciate it, but creative players will find it stifling.

Finally I am honestly not in agreement that there can be a comparison between these two games. Compare Solasta to WOTR - that makes sense, they are both single player games. BG3 is in a whole other category of super ambitious games that come along once in a decade.
Agree with pretty much everything here.

Funnily enough, it's the Larian "creativity" specifically that puts the 5e purists off the most. Personally, with how much 5e lacks in comparison to 3.5e, I'd take the sandboxy approach to it over strict adherence. There's more than enough combat in RPGs as it is for a game to effectively be little more than an engine for one. Seeing skills in Solasta marked as "unused in the campaign" as I was creating characters really lowered my expectations, and it hasn't really gone above that bar throughout, unfortunately.

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Nah, what puts me off most isn't Larian's creativity. It's deviating so extremely from FR lore, D&D rules, etc.

I love Larian's creativity. I think BG3 is awesome. Do I think it would GREATLY benefit from more true 5e rules and monster stats? Absolutely.

Right now, what we have isn't D&D. It's Items R Us. You don't have proper class distinctions, proper monster abilities and stats and behaviors, and items are king. As long as I have plenty of potions, scrolls that everyone can use, throwing bulbs of brine, and salamis, I can slay minotaurs and spectators and my level 1s can kill a cambion with a flaming sword and 120+ HP. Phase spiders play Misty Step Infinity, teleporting across huge distances and spitting poison, and even if I'm a fighter at level 1, I can easily rez someone from the dead or heal with a scroll or by throwing a potion, and even though I might get a -1 or -2 to my Medicine skill I can easily not only stabilize a party member, I can bring them back into a fight.

I can jump 30 feet across the battlefield over people's heads, shove people as a Bonus and then slash them or vice versa, and let's not forget that if you shove someone just right, you can actually throw them 300+ feet off a cliff. Did it. Swear to God, and so did the Drow I was fighting.

That is what bugs me. Not their creativity. D&D is balanced. BG3 is not, and the homebrew completely strips key elements of D&D down and makes them almost pointless.

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Originally Posted by GM4Him
Nah, what puts me off most isn't Larian's creativity. It's deviating so extremely from FR lore, D&D rules, etc.

I love Larian's creativity. I think BG3 is awesome. Do I think it would GREATLY benefit from more true 5e rules and monster stats? Absolutely.

Right now, what we have isn't D&D. It's Items R Us. You don't have proper class distinctions, proper monster abilities and stats and behaviors, and items are king. As long as I have plenty of potions, scrolls that everyone can use, throwing bulbs of brine, and salamis, I can slay minotaurs and spectators and my level 1s can kill a cambion with a flaming sword and 120+ HP. Phase spiders play Misty Step Infinity, teleporting across huge distances and spitting poison, and even if I'm a fighter at level 1, I can easily rez someone from the dead or heal with a scroll or by throwing a potion, and even though I might get a -1 or -2 to my Medicine skill I can easily not only stabilize a party member, I can bring them back into a fight.

I can jump 30 feet across the battlefield over people's heads, shove people as a Bonus and then slash them or vice versa, and let's not forget that if you shove someone just right, you can actually throw them 300+ feet off a cliff. Did it. Swear to God, and so did the Drow I was fighting.

That is what bugs me. Not their creativity. D&D is balanced. BG3 is not, and the homebrew completely strips key elements of D&D down and makes them almost pointless.


100% agree.

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Originally Posted by GM4Him
Nah, what puts me off most isn't Larian's creativity. It's deviating so extremely from FR lore, D&D rules, etc.

I love Larian's creativity. I think BG3 is awesome. Do I think it would GREATLY benefit from more true 5e rules and monster stats? Absolutely.

Right now, what we have isn't D&D. It's Items R Us. You don't have proper class distinctions, proper monster abilities and stats and behaviors, and items are king. As long as I have plenty of potions, scrolls that everyone can use, throwing bulbs of brine, and salamis, I can slay minotaurs and spectators and my level 1s can kill a cambion with a flaming sword and 120+ HP. Phase spiders play Misty Step Infinity, teleporting across huge distances and spitting poison, and even if I'm a fighter at level 1, I can easily rez someone from the dead or heal with a scroll or by throwing a potion, and even though I might get a -1 or -2 to my Medicine skill I can easily not only stabilize a party member, I can bring them back into a fight.

I can jump 30 feet across the battlefield over people's heads, shove people as a Bonus and then slash them or vice versa, and let's not forget that if you shove someone just right, you can actually throw them 300+ feet off a cliff. Did it. Swear to God, and so did the Drow I was fighting.

That is what bugs me. Not their creativity. D&D is balanced. BG3 is not, and the homebrew completely strips key elements of D&D down and makes them almost pointless.
Also accurate. Though I'd argue that 5e is not exactly well-balanced, with how you can, for example, multiclass as a monk and a barbarian (something you weren't allowed to do before because of alignment restrictions) and get ridiculous naked AC, or how the rogue basically can use sneak attack without any real setup behind it (you used to need flanking/enemy incapacitation for it to work, and now it's an ally near the enemy/advantage). The advantage/disadvantage system also bugs me greatly, personally, as it dumbs down all the attack vs. AC / spell DC vs. saves calculations to the luck of the roll rather than proper preparation.

The concentration mechanic is also an iffy one - with Solasta being a great example in that department. As a druid, do I want to maintain a Moonbean/Flaming Sphere to do tons of extra damage, or have barkskin, which is rendered null by having a decent armor and Dexterity (although I suspect that Solasta doesn't implement it right, because shouldn't it actually stack with armor?)? As a cleric, would I rather add a measly 1d4 to the allies' rolls, or have something like Spirit Guardians active? Why would having Flight on basically limit my wizard/sorcerer to being a damage-dealing turret? It really narrows one's options down, in my opinion. I understand why it's there (to prevent having 10+ spells active at once, leading to Pathfinderesque bloat), but there already were mechanics in place to differentiate bonus types so that you have to know what you're casting and whether or not it'll apply in the first place. I guess today's "target audience" has to be as broad as possible, but I liked my numbers and complexity.

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[quote=<Redacted>[/quote]
Well, with wildshaping being almost useless in Solasta it's little wonder that the spell meant for comboing it with is also not exactly a good option.

Making a staple rule of the system "optional" is not a particularly good excuse for not addressing the issues that it introduces. Same goes for doing away with alignment as a meaningful mechanic, making good and evil clerics virtually identical if they have the same domain, and making paladins overpowered (at least at levels < 11) to compensate for them no longer being anti-evil specialists.

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Originally Posted by <Redacted>
<Redacted>
Multiclassing is supposed to balance itself out by you losing access to higher-level features you'd get if you went pure. The idea behind the prestige classes in 3/3.5e was that they were a trade-off of what you'd get if you were to go with a single-class for something equally good, while multi-classing haphazardly would do more harm than good.

Monks, barbarians, and warlocks having ridiculously powerful low-level features encouraging dipping wouldn't be a problem if you got them later down the line, or if multiclassing had more restrictions (e.g., alignment, or the old experience penalty from multiclassing into non-favourite classes) than just ability gating which can be easily bypassed when people get a lucky roll for abilities instead of doing point buy. If our level cap in BG3 is 12 (as it is now in Solasta), then going for the 11 + 1 or 9 + 3 combinations of class levels kinda comes naturally. It'd be a different story if we could go all the way up to 20, as there are actually powerful features there for most classes, unlike the olden days where it was more of a thing for the spellcasters and monks to concern themselves with.

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Originally Posted by <Redacted>
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
I played through Solasta once. It's not a terrible game, but it's also not a sandbox game in the style of Larian's BG3. My experience and observations are that they took the ruleset of 5E and did an honestly good job of porting that in, and then didn't provide any leeway for players to do anything creative. Finally I am not in agreement that it deserves to be called an RPG as none of your decisions matter in the slightest bit. You are glued to those story rails and they are going to bring you inexorably to a single outcome without any deviation.

In many ways Solasta is almost the total opposite of an actual TT D&D experience. Players who enjoy a rigid ruleset will appreciate it, but creative players will find it stifling.

Finally I am honestly not in agreement that there can be a comparison between these two games. Compare Solasta to WOTR - that makes sense, they are both single player games. BG3 is in a whole other category of super ambitious games that come along once in a decade.

<Redacted>


Ok, that IS interesting. I had written it off because lack of multiplayer is such a huge deal to my groups. You go out there and look at all the RPG's out there and 90% of them are single player but the market really wants multiplayer games in this time of Covid.

Likely I will wait until it has native support - but really this is exactly the kind of thing I want for BG3, a platform that people can build Modules for and run groups in.

Have they talked about the timeline for the Multiplayer release of solasta 1.0? Do they have plans for a DM mode? What kind of features?

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Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Ok, that IS interesting. I had written it off because lack of multiplayer is such a huge deal to my groups. You go out there and look at all the RPG's out there and 90% of them are single player but the market really wants multiplayer games in this time of Covid.

Likely I will wait until it has native support - but really this is exactly the kind of thing I want for BG3, a platform that people can build Modules for and run groups in.

Have they talked about the timeline for the Multiplayer release of solasta 1.0? Do they have plans for a DM mode? What kind of features?
Just guessing here, but it's likely to be just custom dungeons. If they get to the scale of the NWN modules one day, it'd be badass, but for now it's just a kill-and-loot romp with maybe some lore and character barks here and there, or simple puzzles.

As far as release date or any further info on the game's future, the last update was the Druid & Barbarian DLC, and nothing has been said regarding multiplayer there.

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Originally Posted by GM4Him
Nah, what puts me off most isn't Larian's creativity. It's deviating so extremely from FR lore, D&D rules, etc.

I love Larian's creativity. I think BG3 is awesome. Do I think it would GREATLY benefit from more true 5e rules and monster stats? Absolutely.

Right now, what we have isn't D&D. It's Items R Us. You don't have proper class distinctions, proper monster abilities and stats and behaviors, and items are king. As long as I have plenty of potions, scrolls that everyone can use, throwing bulbs of brine, and salamis, I can slay minotaurs and spectators and my level 1s can kill a cambion with a flaming sword and 120+ HP. Phase spiders play Misty Step Infinity, teleporting across huge distances and spitting poison, and even if I'm a fighter at level 1, I can easily rez someone from the dead or heal with a scroll or by throwing a potion, and even though I might get a -1 or -2 to my Medicine skill I can easily not only stabilize a party member, I can bring them back into a fight.

I can jump 30 feet across the battlefield over people's heads, shove people as a Bonus and then slash them or vice versa, and let's not forget that if you shove someone just right, you can actually throw them 300+ feet off a cliff. Did it. Swear to God, and so did the Drow I was fighting.

That is what bugs me. Not their creativity. D&D is balanced. BG3 is not, and the homebrew completely strips key elements of D&D down and makes them almost pointless.
Hear, hear.

I came here to play D&D. Them declaring that D&D needs all these Larianisms to be fun is absolutely false, even a bit arrogant.

If these "fun" changes are needed for mainstreaming the game for commercial success (I'm not convinced they are, but I could be wrong of course) there should still be a Core D&D difficulty setting and the game should be based on that first and foremost. Any "fun" additions or changes should be designed on top of that so they could be turned off easily.

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Originally Posted by Blackheifer
I played through Solasta once. It's not a terrible game, but it's also not a sandbox game in the style of Larian's BG3.

What's "sandbox" mean to you? There's nothing sandboxy about BG3 as I'd define it.


Originally Posted by Brainer
Also accurate. Though I'd argue that 5e is not exactly well-balanced, with how you can, for example, multiclass as a monk and a barbarian (something you weren't allowed to do before because of alignment restrictions) and get ridiculous naked AC

Side point, but you can't combine Monk and Barb unarmoured AC formula. You have to use either one.


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Originally Posted by Dexai
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
I played through Solasta once. It's not a terrible game, but it's also not a sandbox game in the style of Larian's BG3.

What's "sandbox" mean to you? There's nothing sandboxy about BG3 as I'd define it.

Well first, how would you define it then?

The official definition is simply non-linear gameplay where you are not forced to follow any particular narrative structure. Skyrim was a sandbox for example. I don't think I ever actually completed the official main story quest in that game actually.

I was playing a game of BG3 earlier today and we decided we were going to just mine crystals in the Underdark and wander around instead of going for any particular objectives. We ran into various monster controlled territories that we felt impeded our mining operations and so worked to liberate those resource areas - also someone mentioned it would be cool to be able to fish in the Ebonlake and it would allow us to expand our business interests. Is there room for more mechanics that allow for sandbox play? Sure. But it's definitely there. Can't wait to see it with the crafting system in place!


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I would define BG3 as open world, but not sandbox. A sandbox game requires sandbox gameplay, which BG3 lacks. Sure, it's less linear than Solasta (which is literally a one-track railroad as far as I've seen). Going around "mining" crystals in the open world isn't any more sandboxy than going around "mining" pots for rupies in an old Zelda game.

Compare with say, the Witcher games. The first two are pseudo-open, half-linear games but not very sandboxy. In Witcher 3, which I still would not define as a fully sandbox game, they increased the sandbox elements to a level where you could actually roam around and be somewhat of a witcher doing witcher stuff, if you wanted to. In comparison, BG3 is more akin to the first two games. And you could run around and pick flowers (ie, mine) all you wanted in those games too, and even use those flowers to craft things. But it's not really sandbox gameplay, is it?

You yourself mention Skyrim as an example, which yeah, that barely passes the bar for a sandbox dungeon delving game I guess. But isn't the major differences between that and BG3 self-explicit? Skyrim is more open world, more built to just take off in a random direction and find something to do, less linear in its presentation (but actually more linear in it's quest structure, because Beth can't write nonlinearly for shit -- just watch me go off on a tirade about the Windhelm murder mystery quest here, I'll do it, I'm warning you).

For BG3 to be sandbox there'd have to be some kind of sandbox gameplay or interactions, but there's not. I'd compare to the GTA games -- all of them are open world, yet none of them are as much sandbox as San Andreas, where you interact with the open world in a more sandboxy manner.

Which kinda leads me into what "sandboxy" means: to me, the core of the sandbox concept is a player-driven, non-structured gameplay loop, where goals are either set by the player themself or emergent from the gameplay itself. BG3, as a heavily plot driven game, dies not meet these criteria. As I see it, BG3 is no more sandbox than the original two BG games were, which are (while, again, kinda non-linear) decidedly not sandbox games.


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Originally Posted by Danielbda
Originally Posted by 1varangian
Solasta plays incredibly well compared to BG3. It shows that accurately ported 5e does work really well for a CRPG. Better than Larian's homebrew.

But unfortunately it's held back by the lower production value, sluggish animations that grow increasingly frustrating and especially the poor writing. The plot and lore in Solasta aren't great. But the dialogue especially is so cringe that I kind of lost interest at level 6. The environments are gorgeous.

If Solasta had better writing and voice acting and a camera that would stay in the overhead view rather than reveal the shortcomings of the character models up close, it would be an all around amazing game. But it's a mixed bag as it is. Still, Larian could take some pointers in staying more true to 5e.
The gameplay in Solasta is so good that it distracted me from the bad dialogue, to the point that I walk around looking for random encounters. To me at least fun is the most important factor in a game, and in terms of fun, Solasta beats current BG3 by a long margin.
Completely agree with you both.

Solasta is not a fancy game. It is very much lacking in all the areas you would logically expect it to be lacking in given the size of its budget. So I do not hold the game accountable for any of that, because it would unreasonable to expect anything more from the game given that budget. But it is very much a fun and enjoyable game to play, where playing it makes me feel that my very limited and very valuable game-playing time has been well-spent. And that is the bottom line.

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Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Originally Posted by Dexai
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
I played through Solasta once. It's not a terrible game, but it's also not a sandbox game in the style of Larian's BG3.

What's "sandbox" mean to you? There's nothing sandboxy about BG3 as I'd define it.

Well first, how would you define it then?

The official definition is simply non-linear gameplay where you are not forced to follow any particular narrative structure. Skyrim was a sandbox for example. I don't think I ever actually completed the official main story quest in that game actually.

I was playing a game of BG3 earlier today and we decided we were going to just mine crystals in the Underdark and wander around instead of going for any particular objectives. We ran into various monster controlled territories that we felt impeded our mining operations and so worked to liberate those resource areas - also someone mentioned it would be cool to be able to fish in the Ebonlake and it would allow us to expand our business interests. Is there room for more mechanics that allow for sandbox play? Sure. But it's definitely there. Can't wait to see it with the crafting system in place!
That's a strange remark given that Larian has at least hinted that previous sections of BG3 will become unavailable after furthter progression... just like in DOS. In Solasta you can go back to previous areas and do sidequests, which is more freedom than what is to be expected in the full BG3 release. So I really don't think that each act in BG3 being a single large map can be used to promote superiority, since the original BG games have similar design to Solasta with several small maps.

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Solasta is getting a big update with a new campaign (levels 1-12, supposed focus on non-linearity, factions, and player choice this time around), an extra subclass for every available class, and the multiplayer on April 14th. The multiplayer will apparently support both the campaigns and the custom dungeons - though I am not sure how well it'll work with how they scripted most conversations and some fights (there'll be a lot of unprompted triggering of things if the players act without constant communication).

As for the new campaign, I was kinda hoping to get a "sequel" to the main one, and it still could be that, but with a new party rather than the old one? I guess it spares them the trouble of having to implement high levels. Still, with BG3 still cooking in relative obscurity for another year, it's something to look forward to. The campaign's structure, lack of choice, and an abrupt ending were some of the bigger letdowns in Solasta, so getting a new one where those problems are allegedly getting addressed is at least somewhat encouraging.

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