What happened to the promised Steampunkiness, Crate?

Somewhere in Asterkarn Valley… killing aetherials I stumbled upon a busted tank like vehicle. I thought to myself “Crate made that model just to exist for that location” and it hit me “but there is no steampunkiness almost anywhere in this game!”
I searched my head for other steampunky examples that exist in GD - the 2h guns and pistols and that rare aetherial boss mech on several legs that has a green flamethrower… and that was it. The Pylon like boss mech is more high fantasy than steampunk.
No structures, no rudimentary vehicles, or tools that exist in the visitable world.
I am saying all that because I have a beef with Crate about not including bows in this game because they said the world is more steampunky and it wouldn’t make sense if there were.
So where is the advertised steampunk in the game Crate? You got the coming inquisitor a flamethrower skill, but it would’ve been better if there were actual flamethrowers as short-mid range ranged weapons that are equipable. No primitive gatling guns that fire very fast, but do little damage (for balance purposes), no mortar like weapon that fires slower than 2h gun but your normal attack causes a small blast wave, no magic/tech hybrid guns that fire a continuous ray of energy/magic. All of those would make ranged combat a lot more diverse and interesting, and the ranged combat now is the most boring compared to the magic and melee based ones.
As for the world there is no location on the map that is a city like landmark that is steampunky in any shape or form. Not even ruins of that nature.
I am all for exploring the aetherial and eldritch realms, but those are far away from the promised steampunk elements of the world.
So in which expansion will you prove that bows were unnecessary for the game? Cause it doesn’t seem to be in this one and ranged combat isn’t getting more impressive with the addition of a short range fire version of the Aether ray. Flamethrowers, mortars and magic-tech hybrid weapons for melee/ranged/magic do out value bows by a lot.
So add them!

Uhh, steampunk is literally the opposite of what we aim for, as handed down by divine mandate from the highest reaches of Crate.

Bows aren’t happening because they will require their own custom animation set for Male and Female, so really 2 animation sets. That is a crap-ton of work for no actual gameplay gain beyond aesthetic. For reference, we have one animator on staff, and we already end up outsourcing at times so he doesn’t shrivel up and die under the constant demand of new monsters/skills/equipment/environment assets.

I don’t think steampunk was ever promised to begin with… can you link to where Crate said so ?

What Crate said was ‘Victorian era fantasy world’ and that we pretty much do have

They specifically said the game wasn’t going to have any steampunk stuff

Offtopic
I had a good laugh, “so he doesn’t shrivel up and die” :stuck_out_tongue:

Because the Inquisitor is based solely on the purpose of using her pocket flame thrower, and that’s it… Damn… Have all those dev streams showing all those neat skills been a dream all along? :eek:

I can’t really point you to a direction since it was from the beta days, but there were topics on steampunkiness and the reasons why bows won’t make it to the game and while I know of the reason you gave here it was the other reason - more steampunk Grim Dawn world that stood out back then.
But this isn’t me wanting bows - this is me wanting more diverse representation of weapon types. Guns, pistols and crossbows, are okay, but they all feel the same when you use them. The gameplay changes only a little by your choice. Not to mention the need for more ranged orientated masteries that are for actual ranged builds not just a pistol in one hand, tome in another and go be looking like a hipster mage that doesn’t use attacks.
I am thankful you answered and know it’s too late to sway you, but the thing you speak of, that is taking the most of work is what I was asking for. :slight_smile: If you only made a mortar with slower attack speed, it wouldn’t be a gameplay innovation, but when you add a blast wave on impact that is applied through the skill you are using it would make a world of difference when you choose your build, same goes for the flamethrower and others as long as the way you attack and the effect of the it are different than the normal 2h gun and pistol.
I didn’t know you only had one person doing all of this work! Wow when you don’t overwork him you definitely should make him the happiest he can be. :slight_smile: But when you hire one more guy I’ll be back wanting more animations for a variety of new weapons. :wink:

Pocket flamethrower okay, but is it’s casting animation any different than the normal casting animation? If it didn’t have a flamethrower in the name it could be any fire spell with a similar effect. Just giving something a cool name doesn’t change it’s execution in game. But I have not watched the dev streams so you tell me - when you cast it, does your weapon disappear from your hands just like when you cast something in the current version of the game?
An actual visible flamethrower with bottles of fuel on the back of the char would be cooler than a pocket flamethrower, that is pocket, because it makes it easier to explain where is the physical proof that you are using a flamethrower and not a fire spell.
Hoping the variety would come in the form of some non pet Necro caster builds for me. :slight_smile:

I can assure you I never said the game was going to be steampunky, since I personally am not a fan of steampunk. Maybe it’s just not often done right - what turns me off is the random gears, pipes, etc, randomly slapped onto everything, where often it makes no functional sense.

It is, however, a Victorian era time period, with really more like a smattering of influences, borrowed across colonial to WW1 time periods. Bows had fallen out of common use by then. Of course, we didn’t really exclude bows just because it didn’t fit into our time period - it’s a fictional world and we already don’t strictly follow any real-world chronology. As Zantai said, a big reason I chose to forgo bows was the extra animation and item-art work but I also just didn’t really feel compelled to add them. So, it was a combination of saving time, while also building the fictional world as I wanted it.

I’d just made an ARPG with bows but no guns or crossbows. I wanted GD to feel less high-fantasy / medieval and thought it would be cool to stick with just guns and crossbows, for a change of pace. I think that better fit the type of world I was trying to create.

In terms of variation in ranged weapon feel / mechanics, I think we could have had more of that without bows and bows wouldn’t really add that much to it. We don’t mainly because we just didn’t have the capability to spend time creating different nuanced mechanics for different classes of ranged weapons / the pre-existing system didn’t really support that. You have to keep in mind, GD grew from very humble beginnings. If I’d known from the start that I was going to get all the funding and developers we ended up with, I’d have designed certain aspects of the game differently. Starting our with no funding and just myself and Rhis full-time, I had to plan small.

That said, I still wouldn’t have added bows. :wink:
Maybe we can work on some more varied gun / crossbow mechanics if we do GD2 though.

Say, will you/are you guys planning on maybe adding different weapon types in the future? Or (please) expand the amount of weapon slots for modders?

To read more of medierra’s thoughts on this, follow the following links (thanks to eisprinzessin for making this trivial for me :wink: )

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showpost.php?p=48592&postcount=3