rjshae

It's the same stuff they've presented before.

...caused by magic. WoT seemed to follow that theme. Somewhat.

Will reduced casting speed mean fewer spells per unit time, or just a lower likelihood of getting the drop on the opponent?

With good pathfinding, there's perhaps a law of diminishing returns at work which decides how much coding effort can be expended before the costs get too high. Maybe somebody should work on a genetic algorithm instead and train it up...

Okay, I'll play the devil's advocate: What's the fascination with Steampunk? I seems like a niche market with a relatively small but dedicated audience. Without heavy marketing, they game would have to be spectacularly good to attract gamers from outside this interest group. Otherwise, I suspect they'll be lucky just to break even.

I'd think just a general Scouting skill could cover foraging, outdoor navigation, hazard avoidance, tracking, and possibly animal skinning. It sounds like every class will have access to every skill.

You guys will harp on about anything and everything...

I would pay for a war boar mount...

You're talking about games that are more than a decade old. I'd be shocked if pathfinding isn't vastly improved. Even ToEE was better at it, although there they took the easy way out.

Parasitic Animat Not quite a life form, this is a suit of unfinished animat armor that was used as a punishment for enemy prisoners. The suit would draw upon the soul energy of the captives to animate itself and control the functions of the body. The benefit of this approach were that it was relatively easier to implement compared to the sacrifice required for a fully animated animat armor. The drawbacks are that the host body must be maintained through sustenance and rest, and the host could resist the actions to some degree, limiting the capabilities in combat. Once properly motivated, though, the combined suit and prisoner could make for an exceptional warrior. Obviously the wearers of such suits have long since died. However, on occasion a foolish treasure hunter happens upon a suit and boldly decides to try it on. Lacking a suitable master, the armor proceeds to fulfill its last orders... whatever they might be. This can make for an interesting dilemma should a party of adventurers come upon an imprisoned victim.

Time to play, "what happens next?"

Although it does have a 77% "yes" rate, this is only from the hard core fan base, that regularly come to the forums to check for updates. Only about 1,700 ppl voted here, while the initial kickstarter had 73,986 backers. Understood, but that doesn't negate my point. If the hard core fans didn't support it then it probably wouldn't fare too well. Per Lephys though, they may choose another approach.

They'll likely need the type of focus and attention that a Kickstarter can serve, unless there's a better method?

Hungry for more half-baked humor...

It's pretty obvious at this point that there is going to be a kickstarter; about the only reason they wouldn't is if the poll came back negative. I'll be interesting to see how well they do for a couple of reasons. The first is that nobody has really come back to kickstarter for a big double-scoop helping like this. The second is that they don't even have an example of live game play comparable to the first Wasteland 2 demo.

That... would be a false statement since it wasn't in AD&D. Personally I like penalties that are neutral tradeoffs rather than, say, allowing you to pick an extra goodie. Thus, you may have lost and arm and so be unable to wield a two-handed weapon, but your remaining arm has been strengthened through exclusive use giving you a bonus to melee strength effects.

I agree with you. But I'd like to also note that you can have high density across game time without having high density in space. That is, placing extra time-dependent events in a wilderness area can make it a richer experience and improve replayability while still providing a sense of openness. But you'd want to put most of those events in bottleneck-like locations so that the player is likely to run across them when traversing the map again. ...would be a fun easter egg. Maybe give them a bonus against gaze attacks.

It was a so-so film, but the spirit creatures in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within were quite scary. Just mere contact with them would yank out your spirit, and there wasn't a thing you could do about it.

Consider that the individual who built the dungeon was insane...

There's a trade off--familiar topics and titles attract players of previous games, whereas strange stuff usually takes a while to catch on and will probably not reap anywhere near as much profit. If nothing else, "wierd stuff" tends to scare off parents. Ideally then, a game will retain just enough of the familiar while treading on new ground and pushing the boundaries a little. Maybe start off with the familiar then move toward the unique?

Guns + fantasy ==> Princess Mononoke...

PoEt...

Just think of guns as an alchemist's fire sticks. As to whether this takes the game out of the high fantasy realm, well I guess I'm not too bothered by that.

That's how I read it. But really, he's not saying anything here. BG2 is freakishly massive. With the exception of maybe the Elder Scrolls, all games are going to be smaller than BG2 Well that's sad because BG2 wilderness and high level of quality is what it makes it a memorable game. I was hoping that with the increase of technologies and use of 2D we could make something bigger nowadays. What would it take, 10millions instead of 4 ? BG2 was also a sequel. The question for me is whether this game will be as large as BG. If PoE is successful, then perhaps PoE 2 will be comparable to BG2 in scope.