rjshae

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.

The dungeon I'm not too concerned about, as long as it's fun. I'm sure the designers will make it interesting.

I'm not especially biased against platform ports, but I do think that is something they could explore after the game is released and they are pulling in new funding. It might even be better to outsource that activity to developers specialized in those platforms.

To me, mature themes means the character is looking at the world from a higher scope; stepping out of the urges of the moment and seeing the larger ramifications of his actions. This implies being less selfish, understanding the motivations of others, and planning ahead. Role-playing games are one of the best genres for portraying this because of the wider range of player choice. Themes such as sex, drugs, profanity, and violence are "adult" issues because society views these as hazards to the immature mind. They are a consequence of maturity, rather than a cause.

A highly synchron-ouched ritual....

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.