I hope the 40 hours of gameplay would be cool if you could invest 100+ hours on the side, and with story expansions to act 10 I think Solasta: Crown of the Magister has everything a first-class RPG needs, what do you think as a player?
a 40 hr long RPG, is a very short RPG. That's more of a module, than a game.
There are AAA titles where you can finish the "campaign" in under 8 hours. I know RPGs are often a lot longer than 40 hours, but if that's just padding it's rarely a positive thing. A lot would have benefitted from being shorter.
With Solasta being made on a tight budget, poorly done padding to make the game longer would probably more detrimental to the reception of the game than beneficial. The attention needs to be on a solid story and mechanics before considering bulking it up with other material.
Please remember this is a shop of 17 folks building this game. Also if you kickstarted or purchased the EA in the title screen there is a selector that says which Campaign do you want to play. It seems clear this is their first run at content with the primary focus being the engine that will enable future story telling if they make enough money to do so.
So i am hoping they make good money and can continue down the road focusing more on content and less on platform and systems, although MP and DM mode systems would eventually be appreciated ;-)
Early Access: $39.99 rounded to $40
40 hours of content= $1 an hour. Sounds reasonable to me.
-Glimpse
40 hours is pretty much the sweet spot for me.
40 hours is good amount of time to enjoy the game and get fun.
Hope the team will be able to implement all planned features to make the game great, so sales will be good and we will get DLCs with new content like for example BG2: Throne of Baal.
You can try this game with a different party, you could enjoy totally different combat next playthrough.
But yeah, we will all welcome additional contents and DLCs or anything TA throws at us.
Plus, let's spread out this game as much as we can, so that TA sells a lot of copy = $$$, then they will invest to more contents.
40 hours isn't enormous, but it's a satisfying enough meal.
As someone pointed out above, "Crown of the Magister" is a "Campaign" and when you start the game you're asked which Campaign you want to play. So clearly they have plans for more content further down the line (at least some will be paid DLC I should imagine).
40h is perfect for me : i prefer 40h on a good and clear adventure than 120h of boring endless quest. Finishing DoS2 is one of my worst videogame remembering, after at least 30h of "please... end this...".
So 40h is a nice target and leave enough mysteries for other modules in the same universe.
I judge most game purchases on $/hour spent. If I can get a game to average out to $1/hour I'm pretty happy. Solasta looks like it will hit that with ease at it's price point. 40 hours of content in just one play through is pretty good. I haven't done multiple playthroughs of the EA but I know you can resolve multiple quests in different ways as well so there's definite replayability. I hope they have early choices affect the plot line as the game progresses.
40 hours is a good value for the price point and, considering that "Crown of the Magister" is the first "campaign", I would expect more campaigns to be released as DLC (US$10 - US$15 each?) in the future; assuming that the game is successful, of course. I would also expect that some future campaigns will be for higher-level characters hence the reason that you can level-up your character outside of a campaign; "Crown," for example, is for 1st level characters.
It kinda depends on the customers, multiple classes and play throughs would boost the 40 hours a lot. Also if we get modding and i see there are campaign modules at the start, maybe DLC etc who knows.
We could effectively have thousands of hours.
Crown the Wise, Harness the Talented and Cherish the Lucky.
40 hours of following through the main quest sounds fine to me. If travel is a bit expanded and we have more options to revisit some places with respawns we could extend this quite easily and then only be limited by the current level cap.
There is no DM mode or level designer, etc which is an enormous undertaking and not where the devs are focused.
Seeing that Campaign selector in the opening screen is a sneak peak at what we will be getting in the future if this game is successful. So don't look at this from a value perspective for the campaign length but look at this as the base game plus initial campaign and down the road possibly vast expansion with comprehensive different campaigns in the Solasta Universe. Also, there could be involvement from interested, talented modders who are familiar with Unity and game development who could work with Tactical Adventures to the mutual financial benefit of both as DLCs ,etc with their own authored campaigns and ideas that add-on to the world without being a hot mess that an open tools allowance can be. Neverwinter Nights 1 / 2 had some fantastic third party modules and campaigns but there were also a lot of cringe worthy chaff that was not worth even looking at.
I will happily pay for DLC if it means additional Professional work to expand on this system.