rjshae

I'm going to disagree with this statement. I think there are a lot of people demanding RPG's with a great story and I would point to the amount of highly funded kickstarters that promised just this as evidence. You can even look to the mainstream games such as Bioshock and Mass Effect and their success to see how popular a good story can be (or Mass Effect 3's ending for how disappointed people can get when their story expectations are not met). I do agree publishers are too focused on the next-Gen graphics and games that can bring in hundreds of millions in revenue. I think if a publisher opened a department willing to create lower budget (5-10 million dollar) rpg games that are well polished they could have a really popular (and lower risk) arm of business. It would also allow them to have a side of their business that could create new brands with minimal risk instead of always having to expand on existing brands. If you look at the sales figures for 2013, people are mainly drawn to action-adventure console games with lots of eye candy. Financially it makes sense for gaming companies to be focusing their bigger efforts there. But there is always room for niche markets.

Do we know if they are going to implement cover? I'd heard a rumor that they weren't...

Sorry, but... I can honestly say, none of the above would get me to fork over another contribution. But others might. Some things I'd like to see: Greater creature diversity (more types, models, and variants). Detailed weather effects including an overhead view panel. An explorable overland map. Ambient events (social birds, small animal behavior and reaction, people responding to weather). Behavior scheduling. More detailed reactivity by prominent NPCs. Water travel with ship-to-ship combat.

Right, well that's similar to penalizing the use of a particular weapon for not being at or above the "required" strength. Maybe a better wording would be "optimum strength" or "cap strength": the level at which strength bonuses no longer continue to increase, with the base weapon damage adjusted as needed to balance it out. If the designers wanted to use an indirect element of "intellect" to damage, they could use it to adjust the average percentage of Health damage taken based on the Stamina damage inflicted. The burly PC could do a lot of stamina damage, but if your character is as dumb as a brick then he's mostly damaging the non-vital parts.

Picturing the class quest for a society of flaggelants....

That's true within a certain range, but the force applied by muscles doesn't continue to scale in a linear fashion. They can only contract or expand so fast, so you can't just apply a huge amount of acceleration to an extremely small object. I.e. the benefits of strength to the application are primarily in the range below the maximum contraction velocity--objects on the heavier end of the possible range. Light weapons shouldn't see much of a benefit from greater strength.

Edgy. What exactly is your problem with Slavs? Bester must be European. Everybody there hates somebody...

You've now got four mental and two physical stats, with Perception being mainly mental. Personally I like having physical strength being represented by its own stat--removing it seems unintuitive.

So... an alternative history dystopian dying Earth sci-fi fantasy with horror aspects. But no cyberpunk or "all is lost" elements.

Maybe Spirit rather than Might? I.e. reflective of the power of your soul as communicated through your body.

I'm interpreting the "rest vs. cooldown" as a consequence of improved proficiency with the spells. I.e. as you gain in level, rest requirements become cooldown requirements. In that sense it seems fairly intuitive. But yes, they'll obviously need to balance it, along with all of the other combat elements.

I'd have mixed feelings about using a single stat in that manner because the list represents different technologies. But I'd probably be okay with using different pairs of stats in a rock-paper-scissors fashion. E.g. melee damage from Might & Intellect, bow damage from Intellect & Dexterity, wand damage from Dexterity & Resolve, spell damage from Resolve & Might.

Hindered vision is great for generating suspense. Darkness, thick fog, rain, and heavy snow all make you a little more wary of what lies ahead. Throwing in environmental penalties just contributes to the fear factor because you're less able to deal with the potential hazards.

If they did then the question would be "why didn't you kickstart this instead of PoE?" and "won't this take focus away from/ be too similar to PoE?" from a lot of people. They'd already get some people who will not back again due to not having a completed product from the first ks, and they already have the most popular fantasy subset covered. If they were to do a Skyrim type open world thingy in fantasy chances are it would be set in the PoE world anyway. Whiners gonna whine. If the concept is any good, it'll get supported anyway.

I presume Fantasy isn't there because P(o)E is itself fantasy and it would be a bit odd to kickstart another fantasy game given that, unless it were a sequel- and that was ruled out as a KS, iirc. It's... a bit odd? No, they would just need to choose something a little different that would inspire donations. Fantasy would work perfectly fine for that. It's the broadest of all genres.

I'd skip the supernatural and just use supertech. AI computers, nanotech, robots, GMOs, cloned extinct beasts, cyborgs, aliens, time traveling disaster, micro big bang inflation, asteroid/comet impact, run-away evolving computer virus, attack from a parallel universe (Fringe), a world war, massive EMP, ... the list is endless.

The thing is that, at least in our real-life history, the overwhelming majority of weapons were made for the average soldier. Heavy weapons that only a very strong person could use were almost never used in battle. "Massive" axes and swords never really existed, except for ceremonial purposes. (Bows are really the only exception to that, they were made with a wide range of draw weights.) It's a fantasy setting and there are humanoid creatures of many different sizes and capabilities. Hence, your historical analogy don't apply.

I think it would work out okay if every weapon had a strength requirement, with an increasing penalty for being below that strength (be it in speed or attack proficiency). Stronger characters would migrate toward heavier weapons that only they can readily wield, effectively resulting in greater damage. This is reflected in the typical burly fighter imagery where they wield massive axes, swords or clubs.

I agree that Strength affects melee damage, but so does knowing where to hit and having the ability to hit it. A quick fighter with a rapier can kill you just as dead as a burly fighter with a great axe. The latter would seem to have an advantage in blowing through heavy armor but do poorly at hitting a nimble opponent, whereas the former would probably do better against a wider range of foes, but particularly against those wearing light or no armor. As long as the system reflects that, then it will probably work out statistically.

How much for just the lens flare? Very nice, but... show me a high quality ocean surf simulation and then I'll be impressed.

From reading through this, I am wondering whether Strength impacts the type of weapons you can use? If a high Strength is required to wield a massive weapon with ease, then that would be an indirect benefit to the damage. Having a high Strength with a small weapon like a dagger shouldn't be as beneficial as it is implemented in D&D.

I'm not following your logic. If you, say, use Kickstarter to finance games that then sells like hot cakes and makes a profit, how is that a problem sustaining a business model? Magazines use subscriptions (and advertisements) to fund their publications and, as a business model, it worked fine for many decades.

A comparison that actually demonstrates nothing since Ivan Drago is highly skilled in the art of boxing whereas Einstein was not.

Have a great holiday and thanks for all the cool updates and presentations!!!

Thus far I've backed PoE, Wasteland 2, T:ToN, and D:OS--all (more-or-less) party-based CRPGs. I like a lot of what I've read in their updates, but then I'm not an overly critical person. (My biggest disappointment by far was that the Wasteland 2 developers decided not to use hexes for combat. ) I would have backed Shadowrun Returns if I'd got in on time. However, now that it's out I'm waiting until it has sufficient content to enjoy for an extended period of play (and is well patched).