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Steam Next Fest AMA Recap

Alright!

It’s finally time to get around answering your queries from the Steam Next Fest AMA event. Get ready for us to go over a list of 30+ questions, as we will be answering each and every single one of them - and this time with directors from each department stepping in!

Directors when they receive my mail with 32 questions to answer.

[h2]Steam Next Fest AMA[/h2]

Will critical hits / misses have any special visual effects on the dice roll on screen? What about the damage dice rolls resulting from a Critical hit? (from LJ the Brave) Mathieu (CEO): This is an interesting suggestion! Depending on the time we have at hand (which isn’t a lot), it might be a little time consuming to create new VFX for that but we could try to look at better UI feedback, camera shakes and the like.

Will Solasta 2 have a higher difficulty, with more/unique enemies or with more/unique abilities, comparable to the changes of honour mode in BG3? (from Bloody Val) Karim (CTO): We plan on having customizable difficulty settings so that you can fine tune your experience to your liking, similar to Solasta I. If all goes according to plan, this should in turn impact the ruleset and basic AI behaviour. Regarding unique abilities like Legendary Actions, they represent quite a large time investment to implement so we believe everyone should get to enjoy them regardless of difficulty.

Are there any internal discussions or plans to develop a sourcebook for use as a setting for a tabletop/VTT D&D 5e Solasta II campaign? (from DiceWrangler) Emile (Com. Lead): We are indeed considering it. We already released a Campaign Sourcebook for Solasta I (available on Modiphius’ website), so we’d love to publish another one for Solasta II. That being said, creating a Sourcebook is very time consuming - and as you know, we’re already very busy developing a video game. We’ll probably take a more serious look at the question when we get closer to the 1.0 release!

Will there be a supporter pack for solasta 2 as well? (from Liza) Emile (Com. Lead): It’s very likely going to exist, yes! As a reminder, the Supporter Pack only exists for people who want to give us a little extra to help the studio - it is absolutely not interesting in terms of value, so don’t feel like you’re missing out if you don’t get it.

Will there be an option to make our party characters silent (no voice acting) so we can RP our own voice? (from Vollen_sl) Mathieu (CEO): This is not planned for now, but I suppose we could add that as an option in the settings. Note that even though it should be an easy thing to do, right now our planning schedules are packed to the brim with important features so even a feature being easy doesn’t mean that it will automatically be added!

Will any of the longer-lived NPCs from COTM, Lost Valley or Palace of Ice make an appearance in this new continent and in the new time period? (from SirRupt) Xavier (Game Dir.): No, even though it’s still the same world and era, we wanted to bring our players to new faraway lands. While there will be mentions of events from Solasta I, there will not be any returning characters.

Are mounts gonna be a target for an expansion or dlc? (from Fenixy) Mathieu (CEO): This is unfortunately something we can’t commit to, as it would be a very costly feature to add. That said, one of our programmers managed to fuse a character to a crab while working on something completely unrelated, so I guess technically crab mounts did exist for a brief moment in Solasta 2.

Will Flying be just as easy as in Solasta I? (from Ressque) Karim (CTO): We are hoping we can make flying as smooth and intuitive as it was in Solasta 1, but with a new engine comes a new set of constraints. Just know that we love how flying worked back then, so we hope we can still replicate this as accurately as possible. That said, as long as it’s not implemented we don’t want to promise anything!

Will you guys follow BG3’s implementation of the ruleset / features for the development of Solasta II? (from Ryan Rinaldhi) Emile (Com. Lead): No, although Baldur’s Gate 3 is a fantastic game that many of us have spent countless hours in, Solasta has always based its ruleset on the SRD of D&D 5e. Note that it’s likely that some features will end up similar due to both games originating from the D&D ruleset.

Will Solasta II be optimised for older hardware, and I am screwed and need to upgrade from my GTX 980? (from Itomon) Karim (CTO): We will do our best to have a quality setting working for older hardware, but I fear a GTX980 will be out of our target minimum configuration (doesn’t mean it won’t work, but it means we can’t promise it will).

Will we see the return of custom difficulty sliders? (from Sigismund) Karim (CTO): As stated above in Bloody Val’s question, yes! We aim to have custom difficulty sliders / options just like in Solasta 1.

Are karmic dice going to be back and on by default? (from Princeps08) Emile (Com. Lead): Yes, something we’ve noted during the Early Access of Solasta 1 and looking up at other tactical games is that most players have a very skewed perception of probabilities, heavily favouring remembering bad streaks of luck over everything else.

For example did you know that in XCOM 2 Veteran difficulty, hit chances are multiplied by x1.1 behind the scene? So when the game shows you 50% chance to hit, in reality you have a 55% chance to hit. And if you miss, your next shot has a hidden flat +10 bonus which stacks until you land a hit (as long as your base chance to hit is over 50%). And even with all that (and more!), XCOM2 has a reputation of being hard!

There are plenty of other examples of games helping the player without telling them to make sure they don’t get too frustrated with RNG. Our take on this was the Karmic Dice setting, though we made the decision of allowing players to turn it off instead of hiding it in the code.

Can we romance the boss? She looks badass (from Papiko) Emile (Com. Lead): Unfortunately that’s not planned for now!

Do we need to play the first game to understand this one? (from Dead) Emile (Com. Lead): No, Solasta 1 takes place in the same world but it’s not directly related to the story of Solasta 2.

Is the Unstable Nexus from the demo something we can expect in the future Dungeon Maker? (from Agathys) Mathieu (CEO): That could be interesting, and who knows we might even have different nexus types in the long run. Note that the one in the demo had some complex scripting to destroy stone platforms, so I’m not sure it would be simple to replicate in a Dungeon Maker (though I have seen crazy stuff in community developed Solasta 1 campaigns). Also as a reminder, we can’t promise a Dungeon Maker yet, we still have to scope that feature!

Are there plans to eventually bring the level cap all the way to 20? (from LittleFadeleaf) Emile (Com. Lead): Not right now no, we want to avoid planning too far into the future and focus on finishing Solasta II first. That said, even with DLCs level 20 cap would probably not be something we’d go for. As I explained in a previous article, good high level adventures in D&D are incredibly challenging to run - on Tabletop your party would be zooming around with teleportation and would have enough power to raze entire countries and challenge gods, putting a lot of strain on the DM to adjust and improv’ accordingly. In a video game the options are predetermined, making it potentially frustrating for players - lore wise they have near infinite powers, but the game dictates that they can only do A, B or C.

Seeing so many steam threads asking for language localization, have you considered which will be implemented? (from LJ_the_brave) Pierre (Marketing Dir.): We’re super thrilled to hear how excited our community is to play Solasta II in their native language. Audio language will be in English only, but texts will be adapted to different languages. Localisation is an important topic for us and for a game such as Solasta II, because it supports our narrative and the gameplay, but also because of the sheer volume of texts (dialogs & answers branching, banters, cutscenes, adventure logs, item description, menus, etc.) that we’re expecting for the final game. Once we have a better understanding of the cost/time/resource we can invest, we’ll probably start working on a first batch of languages that should mirror the ones from the first game, and then expand to new languages depending on community (roaring) requests and opportunities.

Will the Dragonborn get a visual overhaul in Solasta II? (from Delta) Thierry (Art Dir.): Yes, in fact when we started Solasta II we’ve done research and experiments on each species. We’re still iterating on the Dragonborn at the moment, which is why there weren’t any in the Steam Next Fest demo.

Any chance for QWERTZ keyboard layout? (from Gildoriel) Mathieu (CEO): The plan is to have remappable key bindings!

Will the next demo/update come with character customization or a deeper look into classes and subclasses? (from H) Emile (Com. Lead): We will share more information about character creation and class / subclasses in upcoming articles before Early Access starts, however we do not plan to update the demo (or make a new one) because it would be a huge time investment! Time that wouldn’t be spent working on the final game…

Will Siklas be playable as a race for PCs? (from Pomellow) Eleonore (Production Dir.): This was not in our plans, but seeing how much the community loved Jabori we’ll consider it. One thing is that in terms of narrative, it would potentially cause some issues - though I’m being told elaborating more would be a spoiler! So… not a No, but not a Yes either for now!

Will we be able to customize the PCs personality? (from Pomellow) Emile (Com. Lead): Yes, we plan to allow you to select personalities during character creation, similar to Solasta 1 (although to a lesser extent). You will have less choices to choose from, but each personality should have more impact in-game.

Is free weapon switching something you intend to keep? (from Pomellow) Mathieu (CEO): For now we don’t plan to change it as it makes it easier to use and removes the frustrating “oops I switched but I apparently don’t have line of sight and now I’m stuck with a bow in my hand instead of my trusty sword and shield”. We understand it’s less faithful to the ruleset so let us know if it’s something you disagree with. Note that it’d be difficult to make this a toggleable option setting as it does have an impact on how some stuff work behind-the-scenes.

What are the Devs’ take on 5e 2024 Dual Wielding? (from NoWokLurker) Xavier (Game Dir.): This is a tricky question because the 2024 rules about light properties, weapon masteries (Nick) and the dual wielder feat make it quite complicated. There are those who would rule that a level 1 fighter with Dual Wielder and 2 light weapons including one with the Nick weapon would make 2 attacks with their main action (light + nick) and then an additional one with their bonus action (Dual Wielder) - while others consider that the convoluted wording of Dual Wielder simply means you’re able to make your second attack with a non-light weapon, and that it shouldn’t stack with light.

In any case, we haven’t decided yet on if we’ll be using the 2014 or 2024 ruleset for now.

Could we get enemy AI that frees its fellow enemies from control spells, like hypnotic pattern? (from Artyoan) Karim (CTO): I would love to have more interesting AI behaviors like that, which I hope we’ll have enough time to add. If you remember, you could see in the demo one Kobold running to get reinforcement instead of fighting - that’s an example of more exotic AI behaviours that we’d want to have.

Do you plan to use Epic Online Services for the eventual multiplayer for S2? (from Frost CA) Karim (CTO): Yes, that’s the plan for now - though as far as we know, you won’t need an Epic account to play multiplayer.

Will you add the function that lets you move the party by opening the map and clicking on a location? (from BlackguardRogue) Emile (Com. Lead): Yes, that’s planned.

Since the story in the Demo is not how the main campaign starts, will you use metrics for popular choices to determine what the canon events are? (from Fawz) Emile (Com. Lead): Technically none of the events in the demo are canon, as you are sort of playing a version of the main game’s party. In terms of timeline, the demo story would probably be happening somewhere during the early-mid campaign. Although remember, it was a standalone adventure so these events won’t happen in the final game - think of it as an alternative timeline (where the party got TPK’d…)

Will there be upgrades to enemy AI compared to S1? While S1's AI is decent, even supposedly intelligent enemies give you too many attacks of opportunity. They rarely target your casters if you move a little bit out of the way. Enemies often cast too many cantrips, etc. I'd love a hardcore AI mode. (from Blackguard) Karim (CTO): AI is heavily dependent on creature type and designer will. While we want to have smart tactical AI, our main objective (as it is for some dungeon masters) is to make the fights fun while still challenging the heroes. We will try to balance things so that the AI is and feels smart, but still leaves openings for players to use to not pigeonhole them into that one optimal strategy to reach victory. That being said, we do plan on having the merciless AI make a comeback, and if time allows it would showcase more of the behavior you describe!

Will we be getting hand crossbows? (from Sigismund) Eleonore (Production Dir.): Not currently planned, but depending on if it’s highly requested by the community we could consider adding it in future updates or DLCs.

I was testing a few things and it looks like if you save before a combat round your next roll is locked in. Will it be possible to randomize it? (from Ankou) Emile (Com. Lead): Yes, that’s the plan. The option setting was just not implemented in time for the demo.

When is a console version expected to be released? (from Ephemerant) Pierre (Marketing Dir.): For the moment, we’re focusing on the PC experience first. That said, you’ve probably already noticed that the camera, the controls and even the UI are now better adapted for the gamepad. This is an important step for us to anticipate a future console release, and identify where we can implement common solutions vs. console-only features. At the moment, we are exploring our options for console adaptation, so it's a bit early to give you a precise date; but we can already say that Early Access will be PC only. Once the content of the game becomes more and more complete and we’re nearing 1.0, the decision on when to release on console will become clearer to us.

Will this game be complete after early access or is the plan to again hold back content to sell as DLC? (from MonoPegasus22) Emile (Com. Lead): So, there’s sometimes a misconception from players who joined later after Solasta 1’s release that we are “holding out content to sell as DLC” - which honestly, is understandable if you didn’t know about our initial promise. Why does Solasta, a game claiming to be based on D&D, not have all 12 official classes included in the 1.0?

The answer is very simple - budget. Solasta started as a game promising FOUR classes: Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue. Through our Kickstarter we pushed through 2 other classes - Paladin, Ranger. At the end of the day, we delivered on everything we promised during Early Access - and more! Level 12 max cap instead of 10, a complete campaign, 7 classes by adding Sorcerers for free, a Dungeon Maker for players to create their own adventures and later, even Multiplayer for everyone (with DLC sharing!).

So, why couldn’t we simply add the other classes for free? Again, the answer is just “money”. As a company we can either just release 1.0 and move to our next game, leaving Solasta 1 as a game with 7 classes - or try to add the remaining ones (and higher level cap) through DLCs to pay for everyone’s salary. And as you all know, we did the latter!

Long story short, Solasta 2 will be complete after early access just like Solasta 1 was complete after early access. Just make sure you carefully read what our promises are so that you know what to expect from the 1.0 release, we are very transparent on what we can or cannot do.

Are quests going to be time-limited on the rest mechanic or can we play the game at our own pace? (from EE Eternal) Xavier (Game Dir.) In general we don’t want to put time pressure on the players. There might be one or two key moment where we might think about using time pressure, but we want to avoid at all costs players to play hours before realizing they’re now penalized for having been “too slow”

Why does the character switch from wielding sword and shield to wielding the sword 2-handed when attacking? (from Morghy) Emile (Com. Lead): Very simple, that’s because we did not have the attack animation for sword and shield in time for the demo so it used the two-handed sword attack animation instead.

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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