I will list problems which comes with every tier listed in poll (from my point of perceptive):
> No fantasy (if we talking about medieval setting, before guns became a thing)
- Setting restricted to "Historical accuracy only". This is a problem, because history of mankind is fucking mess, consisting from legends mashed with facts and sprinkled by propaganda. Wars, chaos during plague and hunger and censorship made many historical writings disappear or being rewritten to appease someone's agenda. Some regions just don't have suitable amount of documentation for creating historically accurate game.
- Since there no magic, you can play only as fighter or rogue and your weapon choice will be restricted by region where game set. Many weapons, used during conflicts of Middle Ages, was designed to be used in formations more than 10 men, so some weapons will be not viable for small party/lone pc.
- No monsters means only worthy opponent is humans and fighting people all the damn time can be VERY BORING sometimes.
- No unique loot for rogue to steal/for fighter to loot. I mean, yeah, you can become rich by selling another piece of gear from Milan, but armor and weapons progression stops very quickly. And some point even very patient players will skip looting corpses.
- No barbarians, if you would play as naked bodybuilder with two handed weapon - you catch arrow in knee and die in suffering from disease.
> Low fantasy (why the fuck OP bringing GOT as example, I have no idea)
Look, guys, I loved to watch movies about Conan the Barbarian when I was a kid ( I didn't knew at that time that there is a books about Conan and magazines, tho), but there exists some problem with low fantasy:
- If magic really rare I doubt that player will be allowed to create magician, so we again stuck with fighter, rogue and (some improvement) barbarians.
- Contradiction inside very setting: if some race (or monster) know that they have magic power, while humans not - what makes them sit far away instead of enslaving humans or killing them? Nobody will sit on their asses in distance when they can just prey on weak. At least in harsh setting, distant from "rainbow and friendship" setting.
- Sure, you can now fight with monsters, but before you will fight mostly humans without any surprises (like fireball in your face for example). Kinda makes things predictable.
- High chance for story to be turned into overused "Evul wizard vs good martial class" troupe, because creators of game will be wanting to cater to specific audience.
- Reactivity problem, because kinda annoying, when NPC pretend that magic is a legend, while your pc/party returning from battle with monster/evul wizard and can't even tell everybody that magic exist and monsters too.
> just like Tolkien fantasy (I don't call it "medium" fantasy because magic is still rare)
- So people know about magic and it's benefits, but still no ruler tried to create loyal school of magic by bribing/forcing few magicians to train other people to be magic users (and therefore increasing population of magicians from 0,01 to ->10%)? Sounds strange to me.
- People know about dangers of magic, but still not hostile to magicians and don't go on witch hunts? Even more strange.
- Different races in "just like Tolkien" setting means in majority cases that there will be elves again, fuck elves
- Overused "magic declining" troupe. Tolkien at least had decent reason for this, meanwhile many other writers used stupid "just cuz" excuse.
- There was already too many copies of Tolkien, just stop.
> "High fantasy" (in fact not that high, just copy of D&D)
- Retarded situation when shitload people know magic, but somehow monsters still isn't driven into extinction and village/city need somebody to do dirty work.
- For "High fantasy" many games have very limited magic system, designed by somebody with limited imagination and stereotype about magician as debuffer/dps and not guy who can walk on water, turning water into wine and creating other majestic miracles.
- Many "high fantasy" games fallen under dark influence of political agenda, in result instead of diverse cultures, architecture, clothing on different races we see almost identical cities where all races mashed together and speak on same tongue, wear same clothing and etc. You can't anymore say "Hey, this halfling town is nice" because all midgets forced to live in same houses as big races. you also can't use napalm on elf village, because you can hurt humans and midgets, which is sucks.
- World in stagnation, there no development, many thousands years may pass, but no improving of living conditions, fucking sucks.
Propblem of +1 or +2 sword being on every bandit leader is just shit design, if ofc bandit leader wasn't tough boss. This problem have nothing to do with fantasy, same shit can happen with every game.
Personally I want another game like Arcanum or Underrail, where magic and technology exist together (in balance or not, it's another question), but unfortunately inclined Hybrid setting isn't represented in poll. In my opinion "high fantasy" can be salvaged in magic department with enough creative mind and without "statement" about races.
Well, so I decided to vote for High Fantasy, for the sake of balance.