Please hire a narrative designer

[Majestic Twelve]

This is general feedback but that's the most glaring hole I've seen.

First the good: great bones. Choosing to go in hard on 5E is a great call. The general fidelity of the graphics is good too. It's not pushing the boundaries of what's possible but a game like this doesn't need to. Effects look nice for what's there as well. I think your engine team is doing good work.

Now the bad: I'm not sure who's acting as your GM/campaign designer but please either get them an outside assistant or hire a more senior one. What's there makes me think they're too friendly with the rest of the team as the story, narrative structure, naming of things, the style of writing and so on, is super green.

I know this is early access but this is giving me serious first draft vibes. Whatever your creative process, it needs to be more adversarial. "New Empire" is a joke of a name, tbh. I'm not trying to be a rude ass, but you gotta admit that's the kind of thing you'd expect to see with your 16 yo gaming buddies and not something out of a commercial product.

Roughly, and I know this is constrained by budget, but you'd want a writer for the world itself/a lore master since you're doing a custom setting, one for each "style" of PC character (not sure if this would be more background dependent or class archetype), and one for the story itself. Then if you can swing it, you want one more for each major faction. This is to ensure a freshness of voice and style no matter where you go.

In an open world, if you give whole cities to just one person, as an example, then it all feels the same. And the game so far feels like there's one, maybe 2, writers tops. What you're shooting for needs a solid narrative. There is a charm to the on-the-nose banter but too much of it gets hammy. Plus with the voice acting sounding like it's coming out of an NLP app, it gets really old super fast.

There are a couple more points of feedback like why on god's green earth did you restrict the number of inventory slots AND do a weighted encumbrance system? Stuff like that makes no sense, but I'm hopeful they'll work themselves out as development progresses.

Cheers

[Echo]

What is it about this game that attracts such pompous criticism?

[Herr der Chillkröten]

Made once the mistake to let my players name the capital of our campaign world.

Will never forget the glorious New Oldtown.

[Phenian]

That kind of talent and numbers doesn't come cheap.

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by Echoic:

What is it about this game that attracts such pompous criticism?

Need to hire this person. Gotta fire that person.

Fix this, correct that.

Can you get me a coffee? Two creams. One sugar.

Thanks.

Oh, and while you're at it, can you redo the UI. Just make it less sucky.

Thanks.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

You're right.

The combat is good, the environmental art is great, everything else is amateurish.

[Harrais]

Tbh I quite like the writing, the bantering between player generated characters is a super interesting, the whole system of your entire party talking it is great too.

As for things like "New Empire" and other super cliche fantasy tropes, I like it, SOME cliche is good to pass information fast and easy. This is not Forgotten Realms that I have 20 years reading about, this is a new setting, and I appreciate some cliches to set the basics.

[Pacman.€.5ev3n]

I love my fighter character, lawful evil, voice 2, dwarf. Everything he says is perfect. Characters are very well done, including some of the contacts. So .... no complaints, and this is from someone who usually skips all game text in 90% of the games, cause "generic", "filler", bla-bla, romance, bla-bla. Solasta is fine, really. I'm actually interested in my characters for a change.

[Ogre Beautiful]

I like this game because it feels like a classic adventuring romp, whereas all other games are about half-dragon demi-godess superspecial princesses and their edgy "look at me"-plots.

Adventurers doing adventuring and talking about adventuring rather than what special children they are is a nice change of pace.

[Space Dog]

I also felt like the writing is the weak link so far. Maybe it's written in French and then translated?

Names like "Greenmage" sound more like concepts than actual names from the lore.

Writing is what makes up for the lack of a big budget in a CRPG so I hope this gets a lot of attention.

Another thing I'm wondering about is the choice to create 3D dialogue cutscenes when you don't have a big budget and a huge team. Surely you could achieve a higher level of quality with 2D art here? Because the concept art I've seen is AMAZING. The 3D rendered characters in close ups not so much.

And fully voiced dialogue of 4 player made characers with only a few voices to choose from? I'd rather leave the voices up to player imagination if you can't customize enough. That said, none of the characters I made sounded too weird.

[NixAhmose]

Originally posted by Echoic:

What is it about this game that attracts such pompous criticism?

I feel like its just more of really unfortunate timing in regards to this coming out so soon after BG3's launch. Regardless of what you think about either game, BG3 is setting the bar and expectations for dnd game story really high in both presentation and options. So its not surprising that there will be a lot of unfair comparrisons between this game and BG3.
I just hope that most people are willing to give this game some slack since what the dev team has been able to do with such little manpower and budget is really impressive, and even does a few things better than the much more massive BG3.

[Danjal]

While I think that the tone could've been better - the general gist I agree with. If you want some top-end writer that might cost. But there's plenty of writing talent out there that can do better and that can lead to a more cohesive and less amateurish consistency.

That said, it's equally viable that some of the writing is currently placeholder while the devs are focusing on some of the actual game design and development aspects.

Regardless of which is the case, getting some decent writing can be one of the cheaper ways to really improve the feel and vibe of a game. While is also something that can be done separately from a lot of the other aspects where your core staff would be focusing their attention.

Right now, a lot of the writing does seem like what you'd get from a group of teens playing together and spitballing names and lore. And getting someone on board to help with that could be a very cost-effective way to improve the general impression your game makes on the wider audience out there. While it won't require entire overhauls to mechanics, engine, assets or anything else taxing like that.

----

On top of that, by fleshing out some of the lore and making it more cohesive you're automatically opening up options for potential (sub-)race and (sub-)class options down the line that fit well into the world.

[Kscoutb]

Originally posted by h.g.arrais:

Tbh I quite like the writing, the bantering between player generated characters is a super interesting, the whole system of your entire party talking it is great too.

As for things like "New Empire" and other super cliche fantasy tropes, I like it, SOME cliche is good to pass information fast and easy. This is not Forgotten Realms that I have 20 years reading about, this is a new setting, and I appreciate some cliches to set the basics.

The biggest issue I'm having is so far (Lvl 3) is the voice acting, lip syncing and character models are rather terrible. I enjoy the multiple characters having lines in a conversation but the Oath scene in particular was jarring and ridiculous. The oaths, the random bits of speech that didnt seem to be in context or related to what was said previously. Granted I am HOPING TO GOD that the voice acting being rough is a sign that they plan on re-writing most of it and hiring quality voice actors. I also attribute the rather crummy character (model) creation to early access.

[<PяØTi£F>]

I entirely agree with OP, this writing is "super green". Voice acting is really a placeholder as well. I'll finish the game for the decent crpg gameplay, but I want a true story !

P.S. : I'm currently available for a remote narrative designer job.

[THAC0]

Personaly think the GM / Story / World design is realy good, Alot of ppl have different arguements as to what makes a good GM
some declare a good GM should be one whos strict
some say someone whos super flexible
some say creativity

To me I say a good GM / DM is someone who generaly understand something and goes with that something and is somewhat strict / flexible,

Honestly I say this games Writing and such is better then BG3 where they attempt to give Dramatic reveal to things that was figured out ages ago and there version of Evil is to make Nazi ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ out of everyone Bleh that game needs work in that department bad

Yeah the Voice acting and the Graphics are not the greatest thing out there, Not terrible but not great

[Blackmage]

As a DM myself, plausibility is #1 for me.

I think it's a little silly the four members of this team just happen to meet up in a tavern, and the guy they're looking for just happens to notice them, and he just happens to trust them enough to give them lawful authority as deputies.
I think it's very forced.

If this were my game, I would probably have simply hired each adventurer as adventurers. Not deputize them, hire them. It solves the "why are we here?" problem entirely.

But this is not to say the way TA has gone about their story thus far is 'bad.' The adventure is simply being railroaded, and that is just one way of telling a story. It's not bad, it's simply not everyone's favorite. Sometimes even I, as a DM, have to railroad my players a little bit. Otherwise, they'd pillage the forests dry of deer and boar rather than battle a hydra and solve riddles.

Regarding, "why [...] did you restrict the number of inventory slots AND do a weighted encumbrance system?" I will fully defend the devs and remind you this is a video game based on 5e D&D. 5e uses inventory slots for balancing issues, because it would be stupid to try to wear 3 helmets.
And while each DM is free to run their home game as they please, for a video game, the devs have to make decisions that will ideally function best for the largest target audience. Encumbrance is the 'in-between,' between standard weight capacity and volume inventory.