Infinitron

The problem isn't stylized vs photorealistic. The problem is bad art direction. Granted, it may be easier to have good art direction with a stylized graphical style.

Very much this. I have literally never completed the prologue to IWD without at least a dozen reloads - if a single goblin or orc rolls higher than maybe 13 then that will one shot a wizard or thief, or a cleric if the enemy gets a good damage roll. A single critical hit will one-shot any level one character. There's nothing you can do tactically to prevent that, short of composing your party entirely of fighters and having each one run away after the first time they get hit (and hope you don't get critted). Baldur's Gate is about the same, except you don't get such large groups of enemies from the beginning so you only need to get lucky on a few rolls. This is not fun. Actually, I don't really like any mechanics where the difficulty is all luck-based. By the time you get to about level 3 then the difficulty level is about right - you need to use tactics in fights, but you're not dependent upon outrageous runs of good luck. In general, I think games should start out easier so you at least have a chance to learn the mechanics before you've died repeatedly, but then gradually get harder as they progress - in both the BG and IWD series the games got progressively easier as you progressed, which isn't ideal, though it does lead to the feeling of becoming more and more epic as you get through the game. (Torment was actually pretty much ideal, because if you played your cards right you could get a long way without any forced fights; getting out of the mortuary relied more on cunning than on being able to get good dice rolls. Alternatively you could always start a scrap if you really wanted to.) The solution is to make it easier to defend your weaker characters with stronger ones, I think. I like the concept of extremely weak supporting characters - it's part of the D&D tradition. Maybe the game can give you a high-level buddy to escort you during the first few hours.

The Infinity Engine games? Honestly, they were never all that hard or 'hardcore'. The Fallouts were a lot nastier to a new player, to say nothing of most early 90's or 80's RPGs.

I don't have a strong preference, but one thing that nobody mentions is a Baldur's Gate 1-style hybrid system - with both a large open world to explore map-by-map, combined with a clickable fast travel world map.

Actually, it might be worth it to reopen the $20 option on Paypal, since money on Paypal gets delivered immediately. You can't change your mind and reduce your pledge like on Kickstarter. Want a cheaper game? Fork over the cash NOW. An added bonus is that by pledging on Paypal, Kickstarter don't get their 10% cut.

Guns aren't steampunk. Steampunk = 18/19th century Firearms were around long before that.

Your initial assumption was correct. It's not the PS:T successor. This is Josh Sawyer's baby and it's more likely to be inspired by the cancelled Black Hound project.

IMO, the current method of just reading forums is in fact the best one. It adds a context of discussion to the desired feature that would be missing in a simple list of entries.

They're not going to use the original Infinity Engine.

lol this is a riot I don't intend to continue this discussion, but just one thing: Wrong about what? How is it wrong that I employed a catch-all term for the purpose of the discussion? Don't try to shock-and-awe people with superior knowledge that's completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. It's poor form.

I'm almost certain they're using a fork of Onyx with a different name.

Uh, what? Look, maybe in short range, under ideal conditions, a musket ball would put a hole in plate armor. But how likely was that to happen? The fact is that fighting men continued to wear plate well into the Renaissance period and beyond. Why would they do that if it wasn't effective? The "warm butter" simile is what I'm objecting to. It just wasn't that simple.

This is a myth. The projectiles of early firearms bounced off of plate armor. No, Sir, this is not a myth. I have a PhD in history, so believe me, I know what I'm writing. Even crossbow bolts and composite arrows pierced plate mail easily. lol credentialism Yes, it's a myth. It's true though that longbows were actually more powerful than early firearms.

This is a myth. The projectiles of early firearms bounced off of plate armor.

You don't even need a steampunk setting to have guns. Guns were around long, long before the Industrial Age. They were made in workshops by craftsmen. These werent "flintlocks", either. Flintlocks were high-tech compared to some of these early firearms.

Actually this is a myth - primitive firearms absolutely could not penetrate hardened plate armor. Also they didn't shoot bullets as we have today, they were more like little balls.

No cooldowns doesn't mean spamming. Infinity Engine games didn't have cooldowns. But didn't? Just because the cool down was 24 hours or however often you rested, doesn't make it any less limited. Resting isn't a cooldown. Resting recharges all of your abilities. A cooldown is per-ability. Resting is initiated by the player whenever he wants, giving him more control. Cooldowns are automatic. You can only rest when it's safe. Cooldowns happen in the middle of combat. In short, they are completely different.

No cooldowns doesn't mean spamming. Infinity Engine games didn't have cooldowns.

Since most "medieval fantasy" games actually have worlds that are more like early Renaissance Europe, the presence of primitive firearms makes perfect sense.

Where did you gather that from? I haven't heard anything like that. I think IWD and PS:T and MotB all used sleep-to-memorize. I don't think Black Isle or Obsidian has ever used a mana and/or rune system. Josh Sawyer said it on a forum. The SomethingAwful forums, I believe. http://forums.someth...9#post407551559 I've talked with Tim about this for a while and here's the thing: camping out in the wilderness and setting watches and getting ambushed by jackasses has a great classic AD&D feel to it, but it got pretty silly in games like IWD2. I'd like to build in reasonable mechanics that make you rest in the wilderness, but I don't want it to result in the sort of degenerate "rest after every fight" stuff we've faced in the past.

Amen. Let me recommend these articles by the brilliant Eric Schwarz. http://www.gamasutra...e_Cooldowns.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchwarz/20120506/169837/Cooldowns_FollowUp.php

In all fairness, I don't think DA2's problems had anything to do with the platform it was being developed for.

Another formation, more appropriate to medieval fantasy, is the schiltron or spear wall: The testudo formation would probably be overdoing it:

You're probably not a pack-rat like many/most RPG players are.

I've already said this on the Wasteland 2 forums. Probably the best way to prevent the player from acquiring massive amounts of gold is to to completely remove the option to sell items. The only gold you have is the gold you find. But this would be a controversial design decision.