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Really enjoying this so far. I feel like the grid system makes for much cleaner combat and positioning and I'm not sure the free movement of bg3 actually adds anything besides confusion. Also a big fan of missed spells flying past the target rather than hitting them but doing nothing! On the other hand, the character models. Someone needs to tell the devs that it's perfectly acceptable for dialog to be shown for an isometric perspective with portraits and if your models are the worst anyone has ever seen, it's probably a good idea to keep them away from the camera.
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Oct 24, 2020 12:51
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Can I be a Warlock in this game yet?
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Oct 24, 2020 13:18
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Whorelord posted:Can I be a Warlock in this game yet?
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Oct 24, 2020 13:22
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Chalks posted:Really enjoying this so far. I feel like the grid system makes for much cleaner combat and positioning and I'm not sure the free movement of bg3 actually adds anything besides confusion. Also a big fan of missed spells flying past the target rather than hitting them but doing nothing! The grid so a big deal to me. On top of making it feel more like tabletop, it also means I don't have to chart out every micrometer of movement just to make sure my characters don't take pointless damage because pathing decided the best thing to do was walk through some fire.
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Oct 24, 2020 14:26
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inthesto posted:The grid so a big deal to me. On top of making it feel more like tabletop, it also means I don't have to chart out every micrometer of movement just to make sure my characters don't take pointless damage because pathing decided the best thing to do was walk through some fire. Yeah, I've always found the amount of attention you have to pay to movement in these games rather irritating, but this game really highlights how needless it all is. I hope both games learn from each other as they progress though EA. Although we'll never get grid based movement in BG3, maybe there are some improvements to the clarity of what's happening that could be made, like a clear boundary around elements and around your character's "hitbox" so you know what counts as stepping on something and what doesn't.
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Oct 24, 2020 14:42
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Anyone having issues with screen going black constantly? I have to alt-tab to Windows and back every 10s or so. I've fiddled with graphics settings and nothing seems to fix this. I have a 1080 graphics card and fairly powerful rig, updated drivers. Dunno what the issue is but it's unplayable right now.
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Oct 25, 2020 03:54
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I love the in between of created characters and actual voiced companions this game has. It’s one of those ideas you wonder why nobody’s ever thought of it before. The tutorial being framed as your party telling stories as they meet is also pretty genius.
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Oct 25, 2020 14:35
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DrManiac posted:I love the in between of created characters and actual voiced companions this game has. It’s one of those ideas you wonder why nobody’s ever thought of it before. Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir did this. Your characters were all created, but would regularly get dialogue options unique to their race, class, and even deity in some cases.
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Oct 25, 2020 14:48
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Cythereal posted:Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir did this. Your characters were all created, but would regularly get dialogue options unique to their race, class, and even deity in some cases.
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Oct 25, 2020 15:56
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Wow the travel map seems like it accomplishes everything kingmaker’s map was trying to do way more elegantly.
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Oct 25, 2020 22:54
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DrManiac posted:I love the in between of created characters and actual voiced companions this game has. It’s one of those ideas you wonder why nobody’s ever thought of it before. Wizardry 8 is an overlooked masterpiece.
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Oct 25, 2020 23:49
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No multiplayer is a big disappoint. I understand with a small studio they had limited choices but still sucks. BG3 is so much more enjoyable as a co-op experience.
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Oct 26, 2020 02:26
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Grabbed this. Long thoughts: - You can tell these are former Amplitude devs as the UI is pretty similar to an Endless game. It's slick but also a bit generic especially for such a traditional high fantasy game. You'd expect something closer to Kingmaker instead of this almost scifi interface. The local map is just a shader trick but it looks cool. At the moment the UI does feel a little mouse heavy so hopefully more keyboard options are added/documented. - It feels good to be rolling a whole party again. The personality system is clever and makes your party feel less like puppets. The character generation is as close to PnP as I've seen. - These characters are really, really ugly. Like it's a decent looking game but it has some of the worst faces I've seen in years. Coming soon after BG3 is definitely not kind to it, but even without that comparison they are just bad. Like mid 00s ugly 3D like Dungeon Lords or something. They desperately need portraits and rely on those for dialogue. Like Kingmaker or Pillars have dramatically better looking people and those games still leaned on portraits. - The game seemingly lacks a way to speed up animations either globally or with a key held down. I really want that in a turn based game and it's something everyone should imitate that Kingmaker did perfectly in the official turn based mode. There are a lot of little pauses that add up to combat feeling somewhat sluggish. BG3 has dramatically better animations and yet feels a little snappier because of this sluggishness (though BG3 does need more animation options). I hope we get some tweaks here. - The voice acting and writing is solid so far. I'd kill for just plain old dialogue boxes with voice acting and not these awful models wiggling at each other though. I think that'd highlight their personality systems even better. The conversation system of having different characters jump in is great, but I don't think the 3D cut scenes are ever going to be anything but awkward. Kingmaker/Pillar's story book scenes would be right at home with their style and would've saved some budget. - Their 5e implementation feels solid, but I do worry there isn't enough build customization even with a full party. We'll see what they add over early access. Like BG3 I wouldn't mind a bigger party size too. - Easy jumping outside of combat is a godsend after the tedium of BG3's jumping - The tutorial is cute and clever but I definitely hope you can skip it on subsequent runs - The dice are so cool and are very well implemented - Hurrah for grids. I love to see a proper grid again and not the meters system. - The travel system is very clever and feels very PnP. I love the travel journal with all the flavor text in it. - The setting seems alright for a new property from a small studio with the heavy legacy of D&D all over it. Sounds a little like the Witcher world with the conjoining of the spheres. The story itself is pretty bland so far. I can't tell if they are leaning into low level D&D on the story or if this council of whatever stuff eventually makes you important. I think they could make a straight up broke adventurers making their way through the world charming enough with their resources and it'd fit the game. - You can really feel the game's small budget a lot. Wandering around a big, ugly, empty city is not a great experience (dungeons generally look fine though). I'm worried they are making too big of a sprawling game for their budget. Like smaller cities or just swapping for menu based (Darklands, Wizards and Warriors, etc) would feel smoother. The graphics may be improved over the remaining dev but I doubt it'll change too much. I'm betting its all bugs and more content from here with how intensive that can be on an rpg. - The graphics will get a bump from a polish pass though. You can tell they haven't even tweaked colors/color balanced. - Music is generic which is a shame because I was hoping they'd be using whatever composer worked on the Endless games. Those usually have pretty good music and I love having good music in an rpg. This could change though. Overall I was happy with my time in Solasta. I do think it feels a lot rougher than BG3 though neither game crashed or had serious bugs on my playthroughs. I also think their budget is spread awfully thin so I hope they focus it a bit more. I'd like to see them add more classes, build options, and crunchy rpg bits than go chasing an epic 100+ hour game like Kingmaker. Kingmaker ended up an amazing game but it took them an awfully long time to get there (far after launch) and their budget was way higher. Still, it feels like we have an absolute embarrassment of riches as a crpg fan. This, BG3, and the Kingmaker sequel all look to be great games with their own spin on crpg staples. I'm glad we have the high budget already rather polished and beautiful BG3, the grog all the feats madness of Kingmaker 2, and a fun looking indie effort with Solasta.
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Oct 26, 2020 05:46
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FuzzySlippers posted:Kingmaker ended up an amazing game[...]. I agree to all of your points until that point. It's funny how half the people love Kingmaker and the other half hate it (or maybe it's 70/30, I don't know). As for Solasta, I just hope they sell the initial game for a reasonable price (like 30/40€) with only a 15ish hours long campaign and the classes we have now. Then crank out DLCs to make extra money (more classes and/or sub-classes, more races, more campaigns) etc. It'd be consistent with the budget they have. Smaller, more regular content to get some money in. Maybe risk a larger investment with a proper large expansion pack or something. In my grand age of 37 now, I don't have time to play multiple 100 hours long games anymore. This occured to me while playing Deadfire earlier this year for like the 4th time. I have time for maybe two games like this a year now. I'd rather have smaller campaigns but more of them. If Deadfire's base game was shorter I'd be happy with it, in fact I think Obsidian's DLCs have been consistently better than the base game (which makes sense) so re-playing a smaller game more often but with more DLC each time is super appealing.
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Oct 26, 2020 10:55
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Kingmaker is way better if you’re willing to just mod out all the annoying poo poo. It’s turn based mod also makes the combat way more fun .
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Oct 26, 2020 11:15
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I think for Kingmaker it just comes down to personal preference, how "table-top-y" you want your game to be, etc. For instance I hate the world/traveling map, it's just a bad implementation of a concept that works fine on TT but is just annoying for a video game ; but for some people it's super great so 
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Oct 26, 2020 11:18
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Apparently this game is based off of some fantasy novel of the same or similar name? I saw someone mention it on either the Steam or official boards for the game but can't seem to find anything about it! I think BG3 definitely has the upper hand on this game in animations in combat in particular, after the fast snappy attack animations in that game it's definitely noticible how much longer even just doing a regular attack is in this game. For me most interesting thing about this though is that the devs seem intent on positioning this as the new NWN eventually, which I'd definitely be up for. There's already scope for multiple campaigns given before even starting a game from the looks of it, and the devs have already stated they're very open to modding.
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Oct 26, 2020 11:46
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I hope this game manages to find room for some more classes and races. The latter should be really easy to implement, and at the least sorcerer can't be too much extra work since wizard is already in there.
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Oct 26, 2020 12:54
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Furism posted:As for Solasta, I just hope they sell the initial game for a reasonable price (like 30/40€) with only a 15ish hours long campaign and the classes we have now. Then crank out DLCs to make extra money (more classes and/or sub-classes, more races, more campaigns) etc. It'd be consistent with the budget they have. Smaller, more regular content to get some money in. Maybe risk a larger investment with a proper large expansion pack or something. The current content is already longer than 15 hours and the real plot has only started so there's probably at least 30 more hours to it. inthesto posted:I hope this game manages to find room for some more classes and races. The latter should be really easy to implement, and at the least sorcerer can't be too much extra work since wizard is already in there. Sorcerer is going to be in the full game, yeah.
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Oct 26, 2020 13:03
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Kingmaker's problems for me have to do with the level of system mastery required to get the most enjoyment out of Pathfinder - but that seems to be why people like Pathfinder in the first place, for its depth and complexity. Not for me personally, but there are helpful build guides out there to get past this. The other parts of the game I find very good, though I didn't pick up the game until well after major bug fixing had happened. The engine is good, the UI I actually find excellent - they expose a very complex set of systems rather well, I think. The graphics are cheerful and fun, just like the game and characters. I hear the endgame is terribad but that's much further than I've gotten. Solasta's simpler underlying mechanics combined with what looks like a good UI that fully embraces its turn-based nature looks like a good combo - things like the game interjecting "would you like to use your shield spell to deflect this incoming attack?" are good steps forward for turn-based games as a whole I think. Agree with the shorter, 20-30 hours, with more DLCs approach and for the same reasons. Something like HZD in length and scope would be great. The UI and approach to exposing the systems via interjected interactions looks very cool at first glance. I hope they make the engine re-usable. It's a real pity that ToEE is the only game in that engine, hope a game like Solasta can license out their rules and engine implementation out for others to release content on. e: Meant the direct opposite of what I wrote in "Not for me personally, but there are helpful build guides out there to get past this." The complexity of Pathfinder is too much for me to want to master so I use build guides liberally and often literally to get past character generation and into the game itself. v1ld fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Oct 26, 2020 |
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Oct 26, 2020 14:56
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v1ld posted:Kingmaker's problems for me have to do with the level of system mastery required to get the most enjoyment out of Pathfinder - but that seems to be why people like Pathfinder in the first place, for its depth and complexity. Not for me personally, but there are helpful build guides out there to get past this. This is what gets me with that game. I played Pathfinder a lot, but just loading up character creation and remembering all the work to plan out a character demoralizes me.
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Oct 26, 2020 15:10
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v1ld posted:Kingmaker's problems for me have to do with the level of system mastery required to get the most enjoyment out of Pathfinder - but that seems to be why people like Pathfinder in the first place, for its depth and complexity. Not for me personally, but there are helpful build guides out there to get past this. It needed something as simple as the game not recognising me as the paladin of a specific order, when one of the party members starts complaining about that specific order and deity for me to drop the game. Sure, I'll just stand and let the NPC chew out the divine entity that powers my magic through faith. I know that content creators can't think of every single circumstance, but I'm extremely fickle with my games, and this was too obvious for me not to ignore - and it probably wouldn't be the last time it'd happen. Oh right, and since it takes place in a world where you can literally detect people's alignments, it was farcical that my character, a lawful good paladin, was doubted over the chaotic evil sorceror's spurious claims in the introduction zone.
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Oct 26, 2020 16:44
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I didn't like Kingmaker's story and characters, they felt a bit flat for the most part. Also lots of filler combat, repetitive trash mob fights over and over. The "boss" fights were a fun challenge usually, though. I only have like 5 hours into Solasta but I think the actual game mechanics are promising. The worst thing is the potato-head characters. The voice acting is pretty good, it's just a jarring mismatch with the lovely character models and animations. I hope they plan a huge upgrade in the models, otherwise they'd be better off just showing character portraits and dialogue text with voice-acting over the top like is in Kingmaker. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Oct 26, 2020 |
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Oct 26, 2020 18:05
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Fritz the Horse posted:Also lots of filler combat, repetitive trash mob fights over and over. This is what broke Kingmaker for me as well.
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Oct 26, 2020 18:50
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Deptfordx posted:This is what broke Kingmaker for me as well. I mean, I played MMOs for years so I'm not stranger to repetitive grinding. I'm just a working adult now and I don't have time or patience for that stuff anymore.
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Oct 26, 2020 19:11
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Even though I'd never played Pathfinder, I spent an unhealthy amount of time in 3.XE, so I figured I'd be able to navigate a knockoff pretty easily. I basically gave up at character creation, because there was so much minutia in character creation that was not in the game itself, and I got tired of having to navigate a wiki on my second monitor just to make a level 1 character.
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Oct 26, 2020 19:52
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inthesto posted:Even though I'd never played Pathfinder, I spent an unhealthy amount of time in 3.XE, so I figured I'd be able to navigate a knockoff pretty easily. Yeah, it was ridiculous. Gonna use this person's builds if/when I go back to Kingmaker: https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/roahins_main_character_builds/page1 Used their builds for companions when I played Kingmaker and they were good. Non-min-maxed and usable all the way through, not only after level 15 or something. They're also not doing optimized dips into various classes for specific skills which then requires high system mastery to play. v1ld fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Oct 26, 2020 |
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Oct 26, 2020 20:38
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THE BAR posted:It needed something as simple as the game not recognising me as the paladin of a specific order, when one of the party members starts complaining about that specific order and deity for me to drop the game. Also didn't help that most so-called "lawful good" options were actually written for a chaotic neutral barbarian high on bloodthirst. I... hated the game. For other reasons too. So mad the loving tutorial took longer than the refund window lasts.
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Oct 26, 2020 23:00
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Poil posted:Oh you freed him, well that was a neutral good action and not a lawful good action so your alignment shifts slightly and if you continue doing things like that you'll no longer be able to remain a paladin. It's especially stupid when paladins always have Good trumping over Lawful.
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Oct 26, 2020 23:23
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I kickstartered this a long time back, sounds likes its what I want a tactical combat RPG with light story. Will wait till it is finished though.
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Oct 26, 2020 23:31
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A good way to play Kingmaker is using the Bag of Tricks mod to unlock dialogue from alignment and you can freeze your alignment as you like. They definitely made some weird decisions with how they handled alignment. I think alignment is dumb even in the best of times, but it works very poorly in a crpg. I was glad to see BG3 seems to avoid the whole thing. Going back to Solasta, I do think the 4 character party is going to be pretty limiting for party builds. 5e characters don't have the breadth of 3.5e/Pathfinder so mostly each character has to fulfill their specific role. This is not necessarily a bad thing especially with a big party (D&D versions for Gold Box games were strict) or with a flexible dm in P&P. Solasta seems to be built expecting you to have the usual basic party (fighter, healer, thiefy type, and controller with damage) and an awful lot of D&D classes could be competing for just 1 spot with the rest filled with the obligatory options (like except in 4e you don't have a lot of healer options in basic D&D). So with those limitations I guess they could just focus on class kits rather than more classes. A wide variety of classes is pointless if most parties are gonna look the same, but at least with more kits we have room to tweak and can presumably do stuff like make a thiefy fighter. I feel 5 characters is the minimum party size for a game with strict class roles (4 or less was fine in D:OS with the crazy build breadth). Like the later M&M games had 4 character parties, but since the game wasn't really built expecting any particular class composition I never found it that limiting and the old party size in older M&M did feel a little much.
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Oct 27, 2020 00:36
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Healers are Bad in 5e though, you could easily fit both roguey type and "healer" (person who uses healing word) on a single slot if they added in Bard. Bards are loving ridiculous in 5e.
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Oct 27, 2020 01:56
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You can already do it by just sticking the lowlife background on a cleric. You'll miss out on expertise, but not much else.
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Oct 27, 2020 02:10
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Fritz the Horse posted:I mean, I played MMOs for years so I'm not stranger to repetitive grinding. I'm just a working adult now and I don't have time or patience for that stuff anymore. Yeah, grinding is fine in MMORPGs because at the end of the day it's what separates the top-tier guilds/players from the rest. There will always be people willing to put in more "work" to be the first to kill some end-of-extension boss. I remember grinding some BS rocks for hours and hours in EverQuest just to collect components to craft some (more BS) key to open a temple's gate or something while earning AA experience. I would never do it again because, yeah, life, but at the same time I don't regret it because we were the first guild to kill the big boss on our server and it feels good to complete anything difficult (especially if you're the first to). What I'm trying to say that grinding is fine in MMOs but nobody cares for it in a single-player game, just open the temple's gate without making me grind for it.
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Oct 27, 2020 09:55
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I think I finished the EA? I just completed the Dark Castle dungeon, my party just hit level 5. When I returned back to the main town my quests seem to have dead ended, I can't turn them in. There doesn't seem to be anything more to do, but no message saying "end of EA" either and I can't find on the forums or anywhere where it's supposed to end. The good: -I like the combat system and UI. It's clean and informative and pretty fun tactically. -The party dialogue system is really interesting, I wonder how they make that work. There are only three male and three female voice choices but they must have a ton of recorded dialogue each. You get some pretty believable party banter from whatever combination of voices you choose. The bad: -Potato face character models, they're terrible. -Rigidly linear gameplay without any sidequests or real characters being developed: 1) Get quest to go do a dungeon. 2) Travel to dungeon, maybe fight some random encounters on the way. 3) Complete dungeon. 4) Return to town, turn in quest and get new dungeon mission, selll/buy supplies. 5) Repeat. I've come across exactly two sidequests, one isn't finished and is just a teaser (old drunk Merton and the Scavengers) and the other is merely collecting a couple items along the way as you finish the Dark Castle dungeon. All the characters in town have like 2-3 lines of dialogue explaining who they are and what they do. There's no world-building or flavor there, all those characters do is serve as vendors and give you dungeon quests. -Inventory management is a nightmare. Maybe that'll get better once Scavengers are implemented. All told I'd say it's very skin and bones. It's ugly and there just isn't much meat on it. Hopefully they add in a lot more options for exploring the overworld instead of a linear dungeon 1 -> town -> dungeon 2 -> town -> dungeon 3 -> town progression. They also need a lot more side quests and actual characters in town and in the dungeons to flesh out the game world. The basic game systems are pretty decent, though. The UI is informative and clean and makes figuring out 5e pretty smooth.
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Nov 1, 2020 20:06
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Fritz the Horse posted:I think I finished the EA? I just completed the Dark Castle dungeon, my party just hit level 5. When I returned back to the main town my quests seem to have dead ended, I can't turn them in. There doesn't seem to be anything more to do, but no message saying "end of EA" either and I can't find on the forums or anywhere where it's supposed to end. Are you sure you finished that part? When I completed that quest, I got a pop-up when I tried to leave the map saying that was the end of EA.
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Nov 1, 2020 21:07
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Pussy Snorkel posted:Are you sure you finished that part? When I completed that quest, I got a pop-up when I tried to leave the map saying that was the end of EA. Hmm maybe a trigger didn't go off or something. Dark Castle spoilers: I made it through the puzzle maze which was pretty decent and fun. Managed to talk the ?vampire? lady out of fighting right before, I bet that's probably a tough fight. Also managed to talk the big boss out of a fight, he gave me the Necromancy gem and disappeared. That was late last night maybe it bugged or I missed something. In my quest journal it has "Gem Quest: The Dark Castle" grayed out under Completed Quests and the last (completed) objective is "Find the Master and the Gem: You have found the Master and acquired the Gem of Necromancy." I can leave the Bone Keep map no problem. The only quests active in my book are "Arwin Merton's Story" and "Angbi's Bones." I can go back to town but I can't turn the bones in to anyone or advance the Merton quest, there's nothing more I can do in town. It sounds like the EA is supposed to end but the trigger didn't fire or my game is bugged and it's letting me head back to town. I don't get any popups about the end of the EA. Anyway, sounds like I'm correct that I'm at the end of EA and my review stands. I think it has promise but the game needs a loooot more meat on its bones. It definitely will be interesting for people to make custom campaigns like NWN though. edit: some more googling yields some Reddit posts about how the ending of Dark Castle quest is a bit buggy. So yeah, any goons playing this, Dark Castle / Bone Keep is a decently big dungeon and when you're done with the big bad that's the end of the EA right now. You'll probably hit level 4 and 5 in that last dungeon. also it seems pretty clear that the main plot thing is going to be finding the eight gems that go in the titular Crown of the Magister, there are two you can get in EA right now. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Nov 1, 2020 |
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Nov 1, 2020 21:33
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I'd rather have solid gameplay with outdated plot sensibilities than insulting melodrama any day. Really hope the longevity's there to support this.
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Nov 1, 2020 21:41
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THE BAR posted:I'd rather have solid gameplay with outdated plot sensibilities than insulting melodrama any day. Really hope the longevity's there to support this. I'm guessing that people who love 5e are really going to dig this game. I don't play tabletop but I've played BG and NWN and am pretty familiar with DnD systems generally, I like Solasta's system. I don't necessarily need a melodramatic plot, what I would like is a lot more world-building. Right now there is just kind of the barest pretense to send you on dungeon crawls. I'd like some more side quests and characters to flesh out the setting and get players interested in the game world. edit: just as an example there are six factions you can gain favor with but I barely understand the motivations of each. You're not really playing politics with them, you just turn in items to get favor++ and unlock items at vendors. So one faction has all the scrolls, another a bunch of crafting recipes, etc. I can't remember which is which but Circle of Danatar and Tower of Knowledge I just mentally filed away as "scrolls faction to get spells my wizard needs" and "faction for crafting recipes." I mean I assume the dungeon crawling is the core gameplay they wanted to push out and test and the rest will be built on top of that. Right now the dungeon crawling is pretty decent, everything else is very sparse. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Nov 1, 2020 |
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Nov 1, 2020 21:47
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Oh no, I know what you mean - you want a good plot to follow the good gameplay. But most of the time, we don't get a good plot for RPGs; we get regurgitated trash about chosen ones and laser beams fired into the sky. So I'd rather developers play to their strengths than come up with another clichéd mess. Hoping for the best!
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Nov 1, 2020 22:06
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