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[Solasta] 5e Tactical Adventures fully released on Steam and Gamepass
Goumindong
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The game is using the DnD 5e SRD and does so fairly faithfully. There are a few changes (some of which I disagree with, some of which have been rolled back and some of which are optional) and a probably a few bugs but i haven't had a chance to play the full release to have a proper assessment. Much more faithful to the rules than Baldurs Gate 3 as an example. The main thing to know about this is that this means there is zero content from the PHB that is not in the SRD. The majority of content has been created by Tactical Adventures specifically for this game.
For me the linear structure of the game is a big plus. Not only does it make it much harder to fail to figure out where you're going if you have a pause in play but it allows the game to produce a smooth difficulty curve with reasonable expectations of the level and resources that players will come into fights with. Some people may say this will make them feel railroaded by their DM but about halfway(?) through the EA for me and i did not have that feeling. So long as you buy into the conceit, that you're playing the party as a whole, then the idea of being railroaded falls away, after all, why are you here if not to beat up some goblins/do the quest?
Solasta is currently in FULL RELEASE on steam and on Xbox Gamepass where you can play the whole damned game and level up to 10.
Here, have a trailer:
https://youtu.be/pinqJ2jMh3sNeed more content pumped directly into your veins? Here is some to peruse
FAQ:
What Classes and Races are available?
Right now the Races are: Dwarf(Hill/Snow), Half-Elf, Human(no variant), Elf(High, Sylvan), Halfling (Island/Marsh) and the Classes are Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, Paladin, Ranger each with the SRD subclass and at least two extra homebrew subclasses. The Sorcerer is something that is planned as a free DLC and depending on success more classes/races may come later.
What is the party Size? Can i take more or less?
Party size is 4. And its fixed. You can take four and only four
What is the max level?
Right now level 10. This might be expanded in expansions if the game does well. 10 is roughly the limit of their story in terms of XP and allowing extra levels was a significant increase in development time due to animations and spell interactions.
How does death work?
If you die and cannot revive your character at the end of the fight you game over. Working in the concept of rolling another character felt weird to the developers. This can cause issues in places where characters cannot be recovered so know that when you start a game on certain difficulties getting knocked into the abyss might game over you(have not checked to see whether or not this is still in the game).
Are there premade characters? Do they have unique stories?
Yes but no. Each character has a set of affinities that determine their dialogue choices and speech in each conversation. There are currently four voice sets (2 male, 2 female) so each character can have a unique voice. And each affinity choice is recorded for each voice. This should keep dialogue in different playthroughs fresh without ballooning the complexity of the game. But there are no premade characters with unique stories. You play the party.
Is the game voiced?
Fully
Is the UI fucking banging?
Got damn the UI is fucking banging. It looks and runs a lot like the UI from Endless Legend and i could probably write a whole post about how much i love the UI (minus some quirks which i hope will get fixed during early access). Its got the best multi-character dialogue i have ever seen in any RPG ever. Its amazing. I edited this post to let people know the game was released and here i am espousing on how fucking great the UI is again.
Are the graphics fucking banging?
No. They are not. The game does not look bad, and i find it quite pretty, but don't expect it to blow you away in anything but art direction.
Will it having modding?
Yes... but. Its in Unity because that is the engine that the developers were most familiar with. And due to the budget being particularly small there is not enough resources to produce modding tools. So while the majority of the game should be open to modding it will not likely be as easy as something like BG3 is. Currently however there is a dungeon builder which lets people build their own dungeons. I haven't taken it for more than a spin so i don't know how deep it gets in terms of setting up tactics but it looks like you should be able to create your own adventures for the game.
Is there a Demo?
There was, it had character creation and a short four encounter dungeon. I have saved copy and asked the developers about whether or not its OK to distribute and i will update when they let me know. They didn't get back to me and the game is out in full now so it shouldn't be too hard to find gameplay videos to see if its the kind of thing you like
Goumindong on
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Non-spoiler image of my adventure log during travel. Reduced to about half resolution by imgur
The best part is how it handles party dialogue.
When you go into a conversation you have a shot/reverse shot as your party speaks to whomever you're talking to. When you have party dialogue choices the camera shows your entire party and the dialogue options that any party member can say are placed in a box below each character. Instead of using the characters name to show you who is speaking the game lets you rely on looking at the characters so its very clear and easy to know who is saying what
I really, really, reeeeeeeeeaaaalllyy hope someone from Larian plays this and realizes that you can have encounters that aren't rated "Deadly" that exist to wear down your resources, and accurately run 5e and have combat be tense and engaging
Also, do I need a feat to get weapon finesse or will it just work automatically with the appropriate weapon?
It works automatically if you have a weapon with the finesse property and your DEX is higher than your STR.
For those wondering how, in Character Creation, when rolling your stats, choose "Point Buy," and then the, uh ... "Choose stats"? checkbox. It allows you to "mimic a preexisting tabletop character," but what it really does is just give you infinite point-buy points.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Switch FC: SW-7588-7027-0113, Steam/PSN: Halfazedninja
Minor spoilers
As of yet this doesn't have a particular order. There are different sections but each section was added and each point was added as I came across them more or less (bugs at the end)
Before beginning i want to say that this may look like a long list of criticisms. And well it is, but i still quite like the product i have seen so far. I had an absolute blast with my time so far with the EA and will likely give it a few more goes with different combinations of characters. The EA has already made me happy with my purchase. But everything can be better and that is the point of EA.
Settings:
A)The "Apply" button kicks you out of settings and any selection of anything else prompts if you want to cancel settings. This just doesn't feel smooth. If you're going to force me to cancel when i back out of settings then i should be able to confirm any settings i want once i am sure that i want to make the choice without kicking me out. Maybe a third option that lets you save and exit?
Character Creation and Party Selection:
A) Humans need the variant option or at least a variant option. Letting players look at feats as they're in the character creation screen is nice since it lets players plan characters and this is a big advantage for the official variant option. The other reason is that in a computer game where a lot of the things about the game are tracked and as a result "ease" of the human choice in tracking the various features is lost. This occurs for Champion Fighters as well (they're SRD but could probably be replaced). I am just not sure the game needs a "default no complexity" option. The game is already going to have you be managing a group of four characters so picking the "no complexity" option is going to be particularly hard for players as it is since they will have to have four no-complexity options in order to achieve that. But the base class of four of the six are already functionally complex.
C) Equipment should be able to be chosen at the end of character creation. This lets players figure out their characters proficiencies and then decide what they want. In particular this can be valuable for clerics, which can start with a warhammer(?), but only if their a dwarf because this option is greyed out if you're not proficient. Except that all characters can gain martial weapon proficiency by taking the Lawgiver background. I am also of the opinion that starting equipment should be pretty variable, so being able to start a life cleric with chainmail is just kind of nice and a perk of picking the cleric with heavy armor. I know this isn't RAW but it kind of nice to exemplify the differences in starting proficiency. Either way we should allocate stats and background before choosing equipment.
D) Name seems to be unique on first name. As a result the random name generation will produce names that cannot be used. Either give pre-gens unique names or make the uniqueness of names an aspect of the full name rather than first in order to reduce this aspect.
E) Voice Choice should be highlighted and not default selected. I just made my first 4 characters and missed the voice choice. As a result both the women of party have the same voice. Its not the end of the world but i would bet people prefer the mixed option. Making sure the voices were more prominent would go a long way. Another option would be to have the voice selection separate from character and tied to the character slot. That is. When you start a game you put a character in slot 1, and then underneath you can choose their voice. This way you can use characters created by others or across multiple playthroughs without having to worry about having characters with the same voice
F) Character should be modifiable after they've been created. At the very least this should be down to voice/hair/etc selection. I just made my first 4 characters and totally forgot to set a unique voice to each one(see above!). Letting me go back and fix this/change names etc would go a long way to making character selection more smooth. It would also let you more easily track proficiencies since having a good set(or not having particular ones) seems like an ideal goal (as i am playing the party and not playing an individual)
G) Leveling up a character in the character seen is final and prevents that character from starting a new game. Let us freely modify the levels of characters so that we can character plan and either give us the option of having a character plan that stays with characters. We could level up a character to 6 in the character creator and then could select that character to start any campaign that had a level 6 or lower starting point so long as when options are selected is recorded.
H) Dwarves should not suffer penalties for not meeting armor strength requirements. Though armor strength requirements don't exist at the moment this might be something to add later. As it is right now medium armor is super good as a result of this. You pay almost nothing to put scalemale/halfplate/fullplate on all of your wizards.
I) When you select a party member the all/pregen/personal choice for selection is not saved throughout the process. Its possible we're mixing pregen/personal but this seems less unlikely. As a result you have to look through far too many characters(or delete the pregens) each time you want to start a party. Maybe even class/race filters so its easier to find all the characters we create?
Feats:
A) Feats are a bit thin. The Creeds in particular should be one feat (RAW you can only select the bonus save feat once) and kind of pads things. I am not sure the 5e design philosophy works with the way saves have been set up (This is a longer bounded accuracy conversation) but the idea is that its exceptionally hard to get more than 2 good saves.
C )Might Of the Iron Legion: Same problem as Manipulator. Lets you jump straight to heavy armor if you don't have it. I am less worried about this one for a couple of reasons. (mainly that its so easy to get medium or light armor proficiency). But if you added a variant human in you would have a weird synergy where a wizard could buy heavy armor for a feat at level 1.
D) Armor Master is not a good feat. In general "+1" feats aren't good. Its not that its not powerful; every +1 in DnD an increasing advantage. But it always feels like a raw upgrade people will be missing when they look at it and every +1 is an increasing advantage and so tickles the edges of bounded accuracy. This was a lesson learned in 4e, that if you allow people to maximize particular areas they're going to eventually unbalance encounter design. As an example lets take a full plate fighter with a shield, armored, and this feat. They have 20 AC. Now lets look at a wizard with 14 dex and mage armor. They have 15 AC. If you have an enemy that hits the fighter 50% of the time they hit the wizard 50% more while the fighter has 2x the HP. The bounded accuracy of character durability is such that threatening the fighter almost certainly pastes the wizard. If you want an enemy to be threatening to the wizard then the fighter is almost immortal. The more of these bonuses you have the harder it will be to create engaging encounters... Unless both take the feat. But everyone has to take all the +1's in order to keep encounter design proper then they're not bonuses anymore, their taxes. More unique advantages and disadvantages seem ideal.
E) More feats should give +1 stat unless they're pretty strong. Master Enchanter doesn't seem like a feat that players can reasonably take over +2 dex or +2 int. If it had +1 int on it you could even out int as you take it. This is especially true for the non-combat feats.
Character Actions:
A) Quick slots enable multiple inventory actions each round and allows you to don/doff a shield in less than a full round. Proper hand/action economy is fairly important to balancing the different equipment choices and class options. As an example by default it takes three inventory actions to swap from two shortswords to 1 bow. You must stow each shortsword and then draw the bow unless you drop the shortswords. Particularly with regards to ranged weapons this is important because closing to a ranged opponent is a critical strategic choice. Forcing them to eat their action disengaging, attack with disadvantage, or drop their ranged weapon, preventing them from easily using ranged again in the fight. I understand the need to want fast swaps for UI purposes but it totally wrecks the action economy structure for both players and enemies. And this is a computer game where tracking these sorts of things is easy.
Another example is two handed weapons. One of the big advantages of versatile weapons is that you can say, draw a torch, without putting your weapon away. So when you're fighting normally you can 2h and then when you need that light you can have that light. (and do things like dropping the torch on the ground and fight with two hands. A third example is shields and magic use! Spells with somatic components are supposed to be incompatable with the sword and board. You pay for +2 AC by not being easily able to cast spells. But right now i can just put my shield away with not even significant short term cost when my fighter wants to cast expeditious retreat.
Some of this is may be an issue with looting and RPG chores and i understand that... but those RPG chores should also be fixed.
D )You cannot place the same weapon in the alternate weapon config meaning that even if the above worked you would have to access your inventory every time you wanted to do it. Suppose i have a longsword in two hands on slot one and a longsword and dagger in slot two. That longsword cannot be the same longsword as in slot 1. To do this (even if it worked) you would need to carry around two longswords.
E) You are unable to pick up a single item off the ground. This prevents you from picking up thrown weapons you have already used in the fight without "looting all"
You are able to pick up a bunch of stuff off the ground for free with no action using the "loot all" button.
F)Taking cover can prevent you from engaging in melee on adjacent enemies around the corner due to being "unable to see" the enemies.
G) Pushing an object does not take an action. It should unless you're a thief rogue. Item interaction includes items in the environment. Not only does this deprecate thief rogues but it limits the value that item interactions can have in the non-tutorial section of the game.
H) Spells could benefit from more precise targeting options. Maybe we could center the spell on a box and then use the numpad or arrow keys (or wasdqe) with a forwrad/back/left/right/up/down to select the center box?. Particularly using the 4e targeting rules for thunderwave (which i am pretty sure is intended) would go a long way to making certain spells more reasonable to use. If you wanted to get finicky you could have a toggle that swaps between targeting the center of a square and targeting the corner of a square. This would get pretty close to including all reasonable spell areas a player would be likely to choose. If there are issues with spell range being effectively extended you could make squares half in/half out have advantage on any relevant save.
I) Spells which produce summons or other movable objects should maintain relative position when you select your party. This way you can keep a dancing lights 100 feet ahead of you as you move without having to reselect and move it each turn. Or if you get into two combats relatively close together you wont accidentally forget to bring your flaming sphere or spiritual weapon along for the 50 feet of walking you did.
Character Options/Stuffs
A) Goodberry does not mention that it can supplant rations. They also do not disappear in a day after you cast them. At least not during travel. They also have value! You can sell them for 10 gold/stack. It takes a long time but this is infinite gold if you rest at the inn for 10 gold.
C) Cure Wounds is needed to craft healing potions from an Herbalism Kit. It should not be. There are a number of reasons for this, from RAW 5e rules to providing ways for players to get healing without characters who can cast Cure Wounds. To making crafting less valuable/worthless for characters which aren't spellcasters. The primary purpose of being a herbalist is so that you can produce healing when you're not a cleric. Its may not be optimal to choose 4 fighters as your party, but if you do you should not be locked out of making health potions making it even harder.
D) It is too easy to achieve crafting proficiency by way of having a crafting associated skill. This makes tool proficiency a weak character option. You can get all four crafting skills by only being proficient in Medicine and Arcana as an example and this gives you both medicine (useful for reviving a teammate) and Arcana (useful for various skill checks)
F) Feather Fall should/could prevent the negative consequences of a missed jump during combat. Its not really RAW but neither are the consequences of missing a jump like that. This would be a nice interaction for an otherwise kind of eh spell. FF cannot effectively negate lethal falls or grant access to otherwise unreachable spaces due to the lack of lethal falls that aren't bottomless. So its had its uses limited anyway. Having the spell with this interaction would make those kind of jumps to platforms a lot more safe in combat.
G) Horde Breaker is incorrectly specified. It should not be "once, on each of your turns when you down an opponent" it should be "once on each of your turns when you make the attack action". Requiring you to down an enemy is a huge power reduction and kind of neuters one of the more fun Ranger options (indeed, my preferred). The thing about Horde Breaker is that the "within 5 feet" rule is pretty generous. Its not "adjacent", its "within 5 feet". What this means functionally is that a melee ranger should be able to use horde breaker on any two enemies that they would be able to be adjacent to at the same time, since a ranger takes up a 5 ft space. Forcing the ranger to down an enemy (but granting them extra space) really reduces the viability of this option. And its one of the things that makes non TWF melee rangers viable.
H) Wizards should not need recipes to scribe scrolls. This is a class feature of wizards that they can scribe scrolls they know. There are many times that the entire reason you take a spell as a wizard is so that you can craft the scroll. I don't need to cast jump every day but i don't want to have to find jump scrolls or a recipe in order to use it for non-combat stuffs and nor do i want to waste a known spell and slot on a spell i won't be using in combat. I am just going to use the scroll when i need it and then scribe another on the way to the next dungeon.
General Balance Stuffs:
A ) Darkvision giving disadvantage in dim light is probably bad. The main thing here is that it makes it much worse to carry light against enemies that are ranged that have dark vision. And this seems backwards. When you light a torch you remove the disadvantage an enemy has to hit you for being unlit, and because you are likely to go from "unlit to lit" you also remove disadvantage for enemies that don't have darkvision. And if they're ranged you likely don't even remove your disadvantage necause they're probably outside the range of your light.
Holding a torch isn't a terrible detriment all things considered in base 5e. If you think on the margin it moves you from being able to use a shield to not, or being able to use a two handed weapon or not. Which is +2 AC or +2 dmg (in general), good but not the end of the world. So making dim light give disadvantage means that darkvision characters still need to carry those torches. Which means there is simultaneously barely any advantage to having it and a huge disadvantage to actually lighting up your torch against ranged enemies.
I understand the wish to make people want to use torches. But i don't think this has positive value for the strategic or tactical decisions to the game.
C) For the same reason that +1 shields need to go +1 arrows need to go. That or the + needs to not stack with weapons. You don't use a tonne of arrows as it is but if i want to produce an enemy AC that is hard for one character to hit having another have extra + on top of that just makes it that much harder to do so. These two points are especially important if the game goes later than level 10 and into DLC. The reality of rolling d20's is that every additional + produces increasing strains on the bounded accuracy principle that is necessary to allow consistent encounter design.
D)To encourage people to use rather than sell potions/scrolls/ingredients it might be valuable to reduce their sell price/prevent them from selling them. I always forget to use potions and they either just sit in my inventory until i sell them. Making me unable to sell them would make me far more likely to use those resources available to me. This has some advantages in making it easier to balance the income in the game between parties, some of which would be eating up potions and some of which won't be. The parties that arent and can sell could catapult their advantage over those that are and so purchase more and more powerful equipment. Making them need to use even fewer resources.
Class Balance
A) Hunter's Mark is so integral to ranger effectiveness it should probably be impossible to fail concentration on it. I know this isn't RAW but the main reason that hunter's mark is a concentration spell as it isnt in the game anyway. That reason is that its very easy to acquire non-class spells via multi-classing. Stacking Hunter's Mark and Hex on a Warlock would be absurd. But with no magic initiate and no warlock(and no hex even if there is a warlock since Hex is non-SRD) and no multiclassing this probably isn't an issue.
C) Rangers, Paladins, and Fighters/Rogues with spellcasting abilities cannot use scrolls for which the spell is on their spell list/known. They should be able to. This is especially jarring since they can craft them if they have the proficiency. But cannot use them.
D) Shock Arcanist is way too strong. +1 die is a huge bonus for wizards who are already really good. This is espeically potent at lower levels with burning hands and magic missile (25% bonus dmg!) but its still very strong for spells like fireball. Its not quite as powerful as a sorcerers empower metamagic(for 3rd level spells and higher) but sorcerers pay heavily for empower in the amount of spells they can cast per day and other ways but its a lot stronger at lower levels.
Enemy AI
A) Unintelligent Enemies (and well any enemies, its exploitabl and will effectively stunlock enemies) will attempt to down unconscious party members instead of attacking those who are still attacking them. This isn't fun to play against even if it may be "optimal". But its also not optimal and is exploitable by the player. Who can take the revive action in order to make a PC unconscious in order to steal actions from enemies.
C) Enemies will sometimes go into areas of heavy obscurity like a fog cloud and then just "hide" there while flaming spheres kill them. This could have also been a 3d pathing issue
UI:
A) "Loot All" should have a hot key. There is a lot of stuff to loot and being able to loot stuff fast is always nice. Similarly if not covered later when looting individual items you should not have to drag each one to your inventory. A single click should do so.
C) You cannot pan the camera while highlighting objects. Highlighting objects is one of the key things you do so halting pan is pretty noticeable
D) Space pauses the game generally but skips dialogue. Maybe instead of pausing the game (have escape do that) space should skip to the end of any currently running animation?
E) Default select all should be alpha 5 or tilde/backquote. Its very weird having it far away from the other options since selecting characters is one of the common actions in the game
F) Divine Smite should maybe be a pre-attack option unless certain triggers are met. If you allow players to define these triggers you can more efficiently go through combats with multiple attacks given that you don't want to smite all the time. Most of the time that you smite its because of a few simple things that don't have to do with the attack roll. Either you crit and the value of double dice is just too valuable. Or you're going to smite regardless of whether or not you crit because its a particular enemy that needs to die right now. Letting us define triggers for these kinds of things can move combat along a bit quicker. Additionally/optionally accept/reject should have a hotkey so that you can more quikcly move through prompts when you know what they are.
G) The Journal and associated system does not pause the game. This is ideal in some situations but less so in others. If you're moving you can trigger cutscenes while in the journal. This brings you out of the journal for the cut scene. More ideal is that if there are no active orders the game pauses. If there are active orders the game does not. And if a cutscene happens the game pauses before and stats the scene when you leave the journal. This means that you don't get jarring transitions, you have as much time you peruse the information as you want, and you can look at stuff while your party moves.
H) Cut Scenes can move your party and don't always trigger at times where they make sense. In talking with the four people at caer lem i was teleported to the top of the tower from the bottom. This made me go all the way back down before looting the chest because i had not done that before talking to everyone.
I) Hot keys to select characters do not work when in the inventory/character panel. They should. This will make it easier to move things around in the event that this is not fixed by putting everyones inventory on the same screen/adding group inventory.
J) There is no way to cast spells as you travel. Goodberry makes supplies... but you cannot cast during travel to do so unless you get attacked. Mage armor is a spell you might want to have up for travel. But you cannot use it during travel because you cannot cast spells. The travel structure should have a way to define the spell slots we will generally use each day during travel and then prevent those from being available during whatever scenes happen during travel.
K) You may not take items out of an unconscious allies inventory. If they die and were holding your one revivfy scroll you auto-game over even though you should be able to take the scroll and revive them. If they're KO you should be able to loot them
L) Arcane Recovery does not have a method of choosing which slots to refill. It should
M) Contextual Camera Frequency does what? Zooms when you attack? Maybe make it zoom to attack when you crit/get crit or kill an enemy or kill a boss instead of randomly. Some method for zooming in on the dramatic moments. For me it always seemed to zoom in when my wizard missed an attack
N) You should be able to organize your inventory while in a store menu via the organize click, so as to make understanding what is in your inventory easier as you shop
O) It would be really nice to have some sort of ingredient inventory and junk inventory. A drop down menu on each could let you transfer things between normal inventory, ingredient, and junk (like, show a list on clicking that inventory and you can click left/right to move a quantity from each bag to the other). Then we can sell all the junk at once and have a list of our ingredients without it taking a bunch of inventory space. Full inventories when they're all pictures make it really hard to find invididual items. This is especially true as you loot things.
P) When an enemy attacks you it would be nice to see the AC of our character. Then we see roll vs AC rather than just the roll. Minor thing
Q) When a character dies and is not reviveable the game will immediately show a "load game" splash screen. This can prevent the player from understanding how a character died or many times even which character died. If you don't know what your mistake was its hard to correct that mistake in the future. As an example i think i had a character die from being pushed into a level transition boundary (a set of stairs you click on that takes you to another area through a door at the bottom of the stairs). But i didn't see it happen and i was at the splash screen so quick i had no clue and had to guess.
R) When consuming stacked items there should be an option to consume more than 1 at a time so long as you're not in combat. This is really nice for goodberries. I got a stack of 40 of these things and am about to look like a gerbil in a pie. But its a lot of clicking.
S) Allow us to turn off foraging et al in the travel options. Allow us to change speeds and settings during the travel. Sometimes we have plenty of rations and just want to use them. No need to kill dear we aren't going to eat
T) When an attack is made in a situation where advantage/disadvantage cancels each other out you're unable to see what the advantage/disadvantage reasons were in the combat log because there is no "with advantage" or "with disadvantage" text to hover over. This will lead you to thinking you had advantage, not bothering to check the whole thing, realizing you didn't and then not being able to see what to fix.
RPG Chores: I hate RPG chores
In general the game of the RPG is two things. Tactical Combat and dialogue trees. Everything else is just setting up so that i can do the tactical combat and dialogue trees. And, as a result, everything else is stuff that should be reduced in a game. If i have to go and run around town in order to acquire ingredients so that i can upgrade my armor so that i can do the tactical combat this is bad. This game is still very good to much better at reducing RPG chores than many other tacital RPG's. But that doesn't mean it cannot be better.
Sometimes these are things that happen in game during normal play. Things that just increase the number of clicks i have to do in order to do common tasks. Things like recasting buffs/preparing for fights. Again this game is really good about a bunch of these things (only one concentration spell means that the difference between buffed and unbuffed is minor!) but that doesn't mean it cannot be better.
A) Town is a unique loaction. This has some advantages but a disadvangate is that it makes me wait when i want to go visit vendors or quest givers and the like I have to walk my party there. This is reduces the amount of time i have playing the core game. For the most part, interacting with a town isn't "exploration" in the gameplay sense. Or, if it is, its only exploration once. At the least let me fast travel to all the vendors and chats. Each individual one and not the general area. I get that town is usually the first 3d space you make so you can prototype things and see how things work and have dialogues and such. But every time i am in town after the first i want to skip past all of the time between the things i am there to do.
C) NPC in town are highlighted on your map even if there is no meaningful dialogue options. Making it even more laborious to to town stuff
D) If i know a recpie and can purchase the materials and am in town. I should be given the option to pay gold directly to start crafting rather than go acquire the ingredients individually. In a DnD game i can just say "i go and buy the ingredients" and its one of the reasons that potions and scrolls et all that are craftable by more or less everyone have gold prices associated with them rather than a list of ingredients and the relative prices of those ingredients.
E) Gold should be looted automatically after a battle. All loot should be consolidated so that i don't have to run to each creatures corpse to loot them.
F) Caution should not make you move slow unless enemies are around. OR caution should not grant perception bonuses. Making me navigate the world slowly is a pain. Try not to do this unless it has a gameplay element (like stealth) involved because enemies are around. Otherwise it just makes me try to look at how the terrain is desinged for clues about whether or not traps could be present (nothing under that section? can't have a falling trap!). Its true that this can be used to scout. But this is a minor loss compared to saving me time and getting me into the tactical stuff faster.
G) When selling items you must sell items one character at a time. Its really common to load up the "gonna sell stuff" pane and then go to the next character to sell their stuff because its there and then lose all the choices for selling stuff you had done. Barring group inventory (Oh hey let me sell you on group inventory one more time)
H) You should be able to skip right to the store menu when talking with store NPC that no longer have new dialogue. Similarly character where you don't have new dialogue you can remove going into the talk scene.
I) If you have the spell guidance on a character, they're close, and you're not sneaking, every non-threatened(I.E. you're not in initiatve) action should get the bonus. Saves you from remembering (+2.5 is singificant!), saves you from a bunch of clicking. Is the optimal option. The reason for the "they're close" and "not sneaking" is so that if you want to try sneaking your rogue to a chest and don't want to fight whatever you have to sneak past you must pay for that in not getting your guidance because you're on the other side of the map and the cleric cannot be casting a spell and breaking stealth.
J) A character with the alchemy feat should not require potions be in their bag to identify them. We're playing the party, we would tell ourselves what potions are given that we have the feat to instantly identify them
Some extra things i liked, besides like... all of it.
There was a passing reference (i think) to PC's never remembering semi-important NPC names. "where was your scout" "you mean Daliat"(says the DM) "uhh yea, thats his name". I never remember names(as a player or DM) unless they're like a major NPC and really loved this interaction as a result
I really love the map showing you which things you've looted and what you missed/failed.
I think that the conversation mechanic in which it shows the character that is going to speak with their speach text under their character model is absolutely 100% the best implementation of party based single conversations i have ever seen in a video game and love it with all my heart and almost bought the game just because of this. Its that good. Its so simple and it works and i cannot believe that its not the norm in every game in which multiple people can be in the same conversation.
encounter design notes:
Pretty Good so for. Good use of learning structures etc. I don't have much to say here becaues its so good. I like to think that I am pretty good at encounter design and you've incorporated more or less all of the functionally important things that are necessary for progression in DnD and a video game while making the encounters interesting. There were a couple encounters that were kind of weird (the SPOILER underneath the tower doesn't have a lot of reason why they were there and it wasn't the huge throng we had seen outside) in terms of narrative but still good in terms of like everything else.
I am a little bit concerned that the tendency to have face to face conversations in cut scenes is going to make enemies with AoE abnormally strong. Especially if they get the initiative drop on you. Especially since you tend to talk to those big evil wizards because an end boss fight without an end boss spiel just isn't proper. The cut scene at the castle walls as an example could be done outside the castle with the party grouped up, pressed to the side of the castle, and looking around the corner yelling to the commander rather than having you walk into the center of all the arhcers/close enough to get blasted on turn 1 if he had a cone of cold. Additionally this kind of dynamic conversation allows a more dramatic telling of the story while letting you set up more interesting tactical set pieces.
Puzzle Design Notes:
Puzzles in which there is no failure state and in which there can be no switches aren't interesting. We need to be able to turn things on and off and or a system of resetting. The two major "puzzles" in the early access aren't puzzles. They're just things you click through in order to get to the exit. There is no way to fail it or way to figure it out. You just hold alt and click the next thing that lights up. And if it doesn't work you don't have to think about why it did not. Because you just have to select the other thing that is glowing. In general i think that the puzzle design is the weakest part of he game.
World Design Notes:
So the number four should be important in some way. There should be historical precedence as to why four is the number of adventurers and so on(Why four of us? "I don't know", says Caran, "Deputies have always been in groups of four for as long as i can remember"). Now maybe not everyone knows why but it should be there. A lot of this is because some of the "puzzles" revolve around having exactly four people to work the mechanisms. Which would be an interesting lock design if it had a reason for it. If there isn't it seems contrived. This is a pretty small thing (or maybe you are going to use it as meta-commentary) but i noticed it when going through the puzzles.
Bugs:
A) Feat "Should not be Displayed" clearly is displayed :P
B)There is a person in the ground outside the legacy council. You can see their speech bubble but not interact with them. I think this is the guy on the prominade who appears there after you walk that way and the bubble under the ground goes away
C) Something is causing speech bubbles to appear over inventory bags from defeated enemies. I only noticed this at Caer Lem with the goblins when i had climbed the hill
D) "Eat" for goodberries feeds someone else. and "feed someone" causes you to eat the berry(it also causes you to leave the inventory screen
E) Guiding Bolt's Advantage does not last until the end of the next turn as it ought to. It lasts until the end of the round.
F) Enemies with superior darkvision will not have disadvantage to attack against unlit allies. Superior darkvision extends the range of darkvision. It doesn't change how lighting works. I mean... unless its intended but is it?
G)Darkvison does not seem to have a range associated with it. If it does its not explained where that range is. Making those ranges explicit might go a long way to making torches and lights more valuable
H) Blinded Enemies can still make shove attacks. But they cannot attack normally? At least blinded allies cannot attack enemies. Since a shove does not have disadvantage from being blind its a bit of a weak workaround.
I) Color Spray lasts until the end of a creatures turn instead of a full round. (start of or end of the casters turn). The flavor text also says it lasts for a full minute when it should not
J) Moving out from inside a enemies square to besides them provokes AoO(?). Enemies can occupy your square when you're KO, leading to wonky things when you get revived
Enemies can occupy enemy squares when one of them is prone or unconscious. This leads to targeting issues but its RAW. Not sure how to handle it since otherwise downed characters can be used as roadblocks
K) Aborting the action when controlling a flaming sphere/dancing lights/spiritual weapon loses the action. You don't lose the bonus action but cannot control the object that turn. Might be fixable as sometimes when you lose your ability to move for some reason you can get it back messing with selection hotkeys (I.E. you've accidentally unselected
L) Some dialogue checks do not correctly recognize when a character has advantage and so will use another characters score that is higher in raw value but lower in probability
M) Many scrolls have the wrong spell associated with what you craft.
N) Item Duplication Bug: Pick something up from the ground and then press loot all. Not sure how i got it to do this as i could not replicated. But i very definitely did it once.
O) Surprised condition does not grant advantage. If it did not for some reason i don't know why.
P) SPOILER: Despite a BUNCH of light in the defend the council fight the enemies are unlit. I know it doesn't matter because all the rolls are narrative but its there
Q) Levitate seems to be granting enemies advantage on the save? combat text just says +1 levitate. This should not be happening. It happens every time.
R) Some(?) doors can only be opened from one direction. Causing your characters to climb over the wall in order to open the door from the other side
S)Some(?) Traps can only be disarmed from one direction. In non-linear segments this will your characters to walk over the trap and trigger it in order to attempt to disarm. At least they should jump over the trap that they already had seen if possible.
T) Doors/chests for which there is no conseuence to fail picking do not allow taking 10/passive action. They should.
U) Vampiric Touch requires a melee touch attack success and does not appear to be making one. No roll is shown for enemy vampiric touchs
V) Some book objects pop up "open/close this door" when starting interactions with them
W) It is possible to long rest in a "safe long rest area" where it is not possible to short rest because it is not safe
X) SPOILER: Lizaria of Grimhold does not appear until triggered by cutscene. Its possible to sneak into the room, engage the dark apprentices and zombies(and kill them) after which her cutscene will trigger. This respanws all the enemies you killed in the combat! If you attempt to engage her you have to fight those enemies again! Same thing happens outside with the captain of the guard
Y) SPOILER: Askha the Vampire is not subject to protection from good and evil. She should be. Neither do her minions seem to be and they are clearly undead.
Z) Hypersensitiviy to light does not seem to be effecting attack rolls (i think it should grant disadvantage) but is effecting dexterity saves. Not sure exactly how this one works out. Could be a bug, could be intentional
AA) Ranged Attacks will sometimes triger "enemy nearby" when there is no enemy nearby. Seems to be triggered by neutral or enemy "summons". Which i don't think count as allies normally.
AB) Shield does not last until the end of your next turn. It should.
AC )Flaming Spheres can float in the air. Flaming Sphere can be summoned in an opponets space, Flaming Sphere counts as an enemy for the purpose of "enemy nearby" checks for ranged attacks. Creatures who end their turn adjactent to a flaming shere when not in vision of the controlling player do not take damage at the end of the spheres turn. Effect seems ongoing as soon as the shpere is out of sight.
AD) Heavy Obscuration is producing an advantage effect on dexterity saves made my an "attacking" player. This should not happen. Being blinded only effects attack rolls (and if it did have an effect it should be the opposite. If you cannot see the explosion you should have disadvantage to the save not advantage.
AE) Target of Mage Armor must be unarmored. Makes it kind of a pain if you want to give your rogue a boost and don't want to give up their armor when you're resting.
AF) You can attune to a magic item during a short rest but not during a long rest. Should work for both. You only actually need 6 hours of "rest" during a long rest so you have 2 free hours to do whatever else you want.
AG) You cannot take reactions while prone (you should be able to cast shield et al at the least)
AH) When attempting to drop items onto the ground via dragging you will instead swap with items that are in your inventory and would be where the ground is in the scroll panel if it went that far.
AI) Ranged Attacks vs players who have cover from allies sometimes(?) does not properly count the bonus
AJ) 1/2 cover bonus should apply to all creatures within a line from an ally/enemy. It does not apply. This kind of thing is really important in balancing the +2 to attack from the ranged fighting style. Its kind of assumed that lots of enemies in the distance will have cover due to LOS.
AK) 8 or 9 Dexterity produces 15 AC from chainmail. It should still have 16 AC
AL)Crossbows do not require a bonus action to reload. They should. This is an important balance decision between crossbows and bows.
AM) Action Surge should let you cast a spell if a spell is available. It does not. Action surge is a full action with no restrictions.
AN) Jump Does not last 1 minute. Its possible to cast jump in order to reach particular chests and then not be able to get back because jump has worn off before you can do anything and either you're out of slots or you cast jump on an ally because it has a range of touch.
AO) SPOILER: If you're wearing the crown of the magister and full plate the crown is not visible due to the plates helmet overriding it.
AP) SPOILER: Its possible to fail and then game over the defend the council mission/dream. You have very little to no control over whether or not this happens
AQ) Tounges is not able to be cast. Aside: Comprehend Languages(which would be super interesting for certain things is not in the game, great ritual, would let us read crafting books we don't know as a ritual)
AR) I know i probably shouldn't have access to wall of fire but that is a weird interaction :P
AS) Might be randomness. But i have been surprised more times when moving slowly than normally or fast. Encounter rate/mile doesn't seem lower either. Hard to say with only anecdata but worth looking into
AT) Wand of Magic Missile/Staff of Fire does not seem to recharge at dawn. At least not when traveling
AU) "Spiritual Weapon rolls 15, critical hit!" ? I think this has something to do with unlit enemies?
AV) Random encounter random seeds seem to be the same/starting at the start of the seed. I have had the "Ghoul Squad" encounter three times and each time its had the exact same initiative rolls for every character in the encounter. Could be random but worth looking into
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Just one minor correction and a couple quick comments:
Shield is supposed to last until the beginning of your next turn, not the end.
Yeah, prone creatures are supposed to be able to take reactions normally, even attacks of opportunity. If they can't, shove/knockdown becomes the new and superior disengage.
Oof. I haven't gotten to spellcasting with my fighter yet, but that's a major issue for me right there.
I didn't play the demo to know if it's any better/different. But while I don't love it, it's not the worst camera ever. And a lot better than the one in BG3 that I spent the whole time fighting.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Honestly, given that you don't really seem to like 5E, I think you'd like this less than BG3. This is even more faithful to the rules and feels really close to playing a tabletop 5E session.
Though I guess you could try it out and refund it if it fails to work out for you.
If it's better than BG3's current camera, that's a massive improvement, because the demo's camera made BG3's look masterful.
Edit: This screenshot from the Steam page was in the demo as an area, and the multi-leveled stuff (that goes down a few layers further than even this screenshot) drove the demo camera absolutely insane.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
InigoMontoyaUsingThatWordMeme.jpg
:razz:
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Maximization depth is largely an illusion anyway. But this maybe isn’t a conversation for this thread (though like, I would definitely have it here)
Anyway I don’t recall mentioning this but the game does a bad job of telling you how light and darkvision work. It’s not normal 5e where darkvision is unhindered in total darkness for 60 feet. Instead dim light gives disadvantage to everyone so you must have light for your darkvision characters to operate
Cause right now using light makes you easier to hit but doesn’t effect your guys with darkvision until they’re in melee range. Which is counterproductive. At least using light isn’t bad in normal rules.
Dancing lights is the only truly effective light as a result. It lights up your enemies without lighting up you.
I mean, I'll still get BG3, since there's few enough of these games to be choosy. But this looks very slick and well made for a first time effort from a new studio.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
“I’m not drunk! ‘M jus ... slouchin’.”
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Had fun beating up on some goblins, though!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Oh well. I guess there's no immediate rush to figure out 5e.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2