Solasta - Difficulty Settings

As someone who is playing it currently, Solasta is a little too easy, imo. Understand, I'm a fan of easy mode and I still think this. People who are good at AD&D combat might actually be bored. Most combats can be won w/o using spells or special abilities at all. In the case of this game, tweaking the difficulty will be popular.

However, a big reason I find the game easy is due to choosing to endlessly reroll till I get good scores. All of my party have an 18 in their rolls somewhere. A few have 20's in their primary stat. You can choose point buy and another where your highest roll is only 15. I think it's called averaged stats or something like that. If you choose either of those, your game will be harder. My Paladin with 19 strength and 20 Con will blow away a fighter with 15/12 in the same stats. However folks who claim to take these harder choice rolling methods still claim the game is quite easy overall. Dunno, I like the cheese!

Yeah, the dungeons didn't have enough combat encounters, for me, and I agree that all the things you kick over don't add much to the game. Especially since they can only be toggled like switches. They'd function well as shortcuts as you'd see in a souls-like game but are pointless in a game like this. If they could be kicked in any direction it might add a bit of sandbox style "physics based" puzzle solving, perhaps.

I also think you make a good point about the powerful stat rolls. I found the game extremely easy but I had decent rolls with a couple of 18s for everyone. I think rather than difficulty settings, because I also agree with carnifex it would be good to all be talking about the same game, people could just make the game more difficult by going with a low ability score party, 10 STR fighter, stuff like that.

You don't need to reroll anything, Solasta lets you edit the individual values if you wish, or use the standard array, or buy points. They decided to leave the freedom to the players to set the scores according to their gameplay preferences, that's actually the first "difficulty setting" that was in the game from day 1, sort of.

crpgnut said:

It's decent overall. I'm not a big fan of the "verticality" they brag about. To be honest, this is just a reason to make you take longer to complete a map. You'll walk to the ne corner and move a stone, crawl in the opening, climb a wall and walk a ledge to another pillar/stone/wall/etc. The map is small overall but it takes a long time to complete each because of a ton of backtracking; all within the same small map.

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To me it adds variety where other maps used to be flat, and tactical elements. I don't know how far you went in the game, but "verticality" as they call it, is not always about making the player jump and go through the next "story" of the same map. Sometimes it's to make it look like a maze, but the vertical dimension is often used to post snipers (goblins, for example) that are difficult to reach except by ranged attacks, or to set up ambushes. In the later locations, you can't even get to the high spots except by flying.

The puzzles are a bit naïve, for sure. I don't think they can offer any difficulty level on that Well, some were less obvious, we'll have to see how they look like in acts 2 & 3. I suppose the level designers must also learn their craft along.

If they put a difficulty level on the number and type of enemies (automatic or even manual), however, it could be interesting, especially if the player wants to start at a higher level. But the level is maximum 10, so I doubt we'll see that happening.

I don't think I like that you can reroll your stats on character creation for different results. I'd much prefer a point buy system that ensures all characters have an equal relative power and so the game's difficulty will be tailored for such, regardless of what difficulty level you enjoy playing.

It makes me think that maybe they intend the harder difficulty modes to be beaten by people who spend a certain amount of time tediously rerolling the stats to max out their chances, and that is not great design in my opinion.

I understand the luck and RNG of rolling stats can be part of DnD, though I've been playing DnD for about 18 years, and I can't remember the last time I rolled stats instead of using point buy or reaching an agreement with the DM, and I feel it would be better for a videogame to not have systems like having better characters just by wasting your time endlessly until you get a good roll.

As far as having the various character creation options; the game is single-player so an even playing field is meaningless. If the devs don't add the ability to edit the rolls, then people just download a cheat engine. Those who want an advantage will have one regardless of the actual game mechanics.

One thing that may be happening though: I finally rolled a point buy party and all of a sudden my combat rolls are much, much better. With my high stat parties I may not roll above a 10 for a to-hit roll in a whole battle. My point buy party hits just as often, if not more often, than my 18 Str/Dex members. This is hokey, but it may be coded to do that. Hard to say without digging deeper into the rolls than I care to do.

Tactical Adventures may be tweaking combat based on the power of the party and I'm okay with that. I still like playing with the 18 or higher stat characters

I'm never rolling, even though it's one of the tabletop options. I'm usually point-buying abilities too (like in NWN IIRC), or using the standard array then optimizing for the character.

They could go native and add the possibility to roll, then select the class depending on the result. I'm not sure many would like that though, is anyone still playing like that?

crpgnut said:

As far as having the various character creation options; the game is single-player so an even playing field is meaningless. If the devs don't add the ability to edit the rolls, then people just download a cheat engine. Those who want an advantage will have one regardless of the actual game mechanics.

One thing that may be happening though: I finally rolled a point buy party and all of a sudden my combat rolls are much, much better. With my high stat parties I may not roll above a 10 for a to-hit roll in a whole battle. My point buy party hits just as often, if not more often, than my 18 Str/Dex members. This is hokey, but it may be coded to do that. Hard to say without digging deeper into the rolls than I care to do.

Tactical Adventures may be tweaking combat based on the power of the party and I'm okay with that. I still like playing with the 18 or higher stat characters

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I do the same thing. I will spend hours rolling. Its a game in itself.

I always spent a decent amount of time rolling in the IE games (Icewind Dale took forever!), but, on Core Rules, those games were still a good challenge even if you had a few stats at 18.

Not sure which route I'll go for Solasta. I expect the game will be significantly different by the time it's released compared to when I played the first version of the EA.

The problems I have with difficulty settings is that it is extremely hard to do it good.

Up all enemy stats by 50%, yes sure, but it might make combats frustrating and boring instead of hard.

I think something like chess does it very well, put on a higher difficulty setting and the AI will be smarter.....

^ I agree. Right now it is pretty easy even on point buy but I've never tried the other option. It might feel great with standard rolls. The bigger difference is learning that ranged is king. It is a very good idea to have every party member be decent with a bow/xbow. It makes a massive difference in how healthy the mobs are when they reach you. Also dex seems to help with avoiding their missiles as well. You also need a ranged light spell to deal with darkness past 60' or so.

GothicGothicness said:

The problems I have with difficulty settings is that it is extremely hard to do it good.

Up all enemy stats by 50%, yes sure, but it might make combats frustrating and boring instead of hard.

I think something like chess does it very well, put on a higher difficulty setting and the AI will be smarter…..

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That's probably one reason why they have put different options, it needs tuning and feedback. Hopefully it will mature enough before the release.

An offset on the saving throws and attack/damage rolls is usually very effective to adjust the difficulty. But they've also put some variants to limit the actions the AI could use, which affects the style, that's nice.

Spawned items/monsters is also effective and should have been in, but it's more work to design the maps, and it cannot be changed "live".

The main issue with difficulty settings is that the more you have, the less likely each one is to be balanced in any meaningful way.

Which is why I always play on whatever is the default dev-recommended settings the first time I play any game. Because, hopefully, that's the setting which has had the most amount of development time dedicated to making it a non-lottery experience.

And, as @Carnifex; says, it's better in the long run if everyone is talking about the same game come reviews and feedback.

Hence I've always preferred the idea that we are supposed to complete the game in 'normal' difficulty first and then that unlocks 'harder' difficulties.

For difficulties lower than normal, sure, have an accessibility option for the whatever-impaired that caters to every possible human frailty, but I still don't think that should take development time away from the core experience, that should just be reducing the numbers of enemies and reducing their to-hit rolls and damage rolls, which is something you can do as an add-on to core rules without having to worry too much about balance.

lackblogger said:

The main issue with difficulty settings is that the more you have, the less likely each one is to be balanced in any meaningful way.

Which is why I always play on whatever is the default dev-recommended settings the first time I play any game. Because, hopefully, that's the setting which has had the most amount of development time dedicated to making it a non-lottery experience.

And, as @Carnifex; says, it's better in the long run if everyone is talking about the same game come reviews and feedback.

Hence I've always preferred the idea that we are supposed to complete the game in 'normal' difficulty first and then that unlocks 'harder' difficulties.

For difficulties lower than normal, sure, have an accessibility option for the whatever-impaired that caters to every possible human frailty, but I still don't think that should take development time away from the core experience, that should just be reducing the numbers of enemies and reducing their to-hit rolls and damage rolls, which is something you can do as an add-on to core rules without having to worry too much about balance.

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I tend to agree in general, and that would work for me.

The only issue I can think of is with locking harder difficulties in a game. The reason being that if you're someone who is already very familiar with the ruleset you may want to challenge yourself from the start.

lackblogger said:

The main issue with difficulty settings is that the more you have, the less likely each one is to be balanced in any meaningful way.

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Well, there are preset difficulties, so on the next update of the EA, it should still be fine for those who don't want to try and tune the experience. They can also be used for comparison, if that's necessary (it's usual to see multiple difficulty settings in games, and I've never heard it was a problem in that context).

IMO it's not a reason to deprive those who'd like to have those detailed options from having them… The development time for individual options is negligible, it takes more time to fine-tune a global option to a satisfactory result.

I'm sure we all agree those guys have shown they knew how to manage priorities so far, I doubt they sacrificed anything by adding a few buttons on the interface. There was a demand for that, and now that they've done it, it seems others are unhappy about it, so that's that - it's a design choice, and they can't make everyone happy.