brindle88

Without mods like Ascension and Tactics BG2 was very easy. Most fights could be beaten by simply auto-attacking, with a few requiring spell defence removal. The first act of PoE is, in my opinion, definitely harder than BG2, though I agree it becomes pretty easy after that. The first few levels of BG1 are probably harder, but only because low level AD&D is super wonky. Yeah maybe you are right. I was probably consumed by the startling originality, the rich story line, the great items to collect and the awesome spells to use and failed to notice it was easy. Hint, hint obsidian for pillars 2

I honestly don't no if you are joking or not

There you go. Zenbane likes sword coast legends. My point is proven.

Yup. From what I read the reason it scored a ton of bad reviews was simply buyers who don't do their homework and went in with inflated or unrealistic expectations. They thought they were buying Baldur's Gate 3, what they were buying was more like Neverwinter Nights 1. A par to weak single player story where the majority of the games focus was actually on multiplayer and custom made adventures. If you are a little kid, a computer game nerd and are entertained by roller skating monkeys you will like sword coast legends ( that is not directed at you btw)

Some people like rangers I'm not arguing that. My points are that you don t need a ranger to be effective with ranged weapons and even if you do have a ranger there is not a noticeable enough difference with there ranged capabilities compared to other classes that use a ranged weapon. Eg there abilities selection upon level up are way to underpowered. My other point is that rangers are weaker then all spell casters. This is an easy conclusion to come to for this reason: If you want a ranger you get: - to use any ranged weapon including stormcaller - better accuracy ( not a huge amount more) - 4-5 abilities to choose from upon level up that are even worth selecting and about 3 of them don't come untill the end of the game If you want a caster you get: - any ranged weapon including stormcaller (cipher) - if you pump perception you Will basically have the same starting accuracy as a ranger. - an entire repertoire of spells - I'll say that again, an entire repertoire of spells - sorry I'll say that again, an entire repertoire of spells. Now you can be a ranger if you want and fire your ranged weapon with slightly better accuracy for slightly more damage and other people can be a caster and use there ranged weapon for slightly less damage and slightly less accuracy and have an entire repertoire of spells as well. Pillars casters are basically the baldurs gate equivalent of multi class fighter/ Mages without the spell penalty

Well you are part of the 1%. No seriously it released as a complete flop, even the games producer came out apologised for the poor quality of it. And I was being serious about you being part of the 1%. Legends rated on metacritic as one of the worst releases of the year. Legends was target audience was little kids. It reminded me off games I used to play on my Nintendo when I was six.

I honestly think that obsidian will have to reinvent the wheel when they do pillars 2. Think about it, if they want to hit higher levels (above 16 after wm pt2) say they will aim for up to level 30, it will be a hell of a mess. All the abilities to choose from at those high levels I don't think will work well at all with the current game mechanics. It will be a patch nerf/ nuke fest for about 10 years after it is released. Actually the more I think about they may not even do a sequal.

Try a party with six ciphers with firearms spamming amplified wave then you will see the meaning off stupidly easy. I haven't played bg2 in a while now but I Definatley don't remember thinking it was incredibly easy after playing it. There was more tactics involved in bg2 and I think there game mechanics synergysed better. The ADAD 2nd edition rules worked really will with the infinity engine.

He also counted way too many expansion sales and forgot out of those 750 000, 80 000 are backers. Baldurs gate and bg2 are still selling copies 14 years after they where released. Pillars won't be that succesful but will continue to sell well over a long period of time. I think my estimates where conservative for the main copy and the expansion. I'm not an expert on such things though but they have sold nearly 600k in only six months. RPGs usually have a long shelf life. It's a niche market for sure and since there isn't a over saturated amount of games out there dedicated RPG fans are willing to pick up an older titles just to get their next RPG fix. Yeah I no. The baldurs gate enhanced additions are probably selling more titles then the new forgotten realms game sword coast legends. Has anyone played legends? It is a complete joke. I deleted it after playing it for less then 1 hour.

You mentioned that durance was to busy casting then to use the arquebus. If you have 2 tanks and four casters with arquebus's you don't even need to cast for 90% of encounters you can win with just firing arquebus's, yes even on POTD. Try it seriously try it, it is frickin stupid how effective casters are at using firearms. If you play a game like this and roll spell casters and don't even need to use there spells then something is seriously wrong.

He also counted way too many expansion sales and forgot out of those 750 000, 80 000 are backers. Baldurs gate and bg2 are still selling copies 14 years after they where released. Pillars won't be that succesful but will continue to sell well over a long period of time. I think my estimates where conservative for the main copy and the expansion. I'm not an expert on such things though but they have sold nearly 600k in only six months.

30%? Really ? I would have thought around 10% would be more realistic, even less.

I agree with this. People seem to forget baldurs gate 2 was a sequel. It had an engine the devs were familiar with to be built on. Also, Shadowrun Returns was a pretty mediocre affair, but I think Dragonfall and Hong Kong are great games. I think obsidian can really do something great with a sequel while using the Unity engine and tools they have built. I just crunched some numbers. If they sell 750,000 copies of pillars (they have already sold nearly 600,000) thats around $27,000,000 they would have grossed, plus say sell 400,000 of the expansions that's another $14,000,000. That's a gross of over 40 mil. And it only cost them 4 mil to make. Sorry it cost us 4 mil haha

It is a crowd funded game remember. They did it with a budget of 4 million. They have created something pretty good here but there is ALOT of room for improvement. I would say obsidian now this. With the profits they have made from this and if they crowd fund again pillars 2 may get a budget of 10 million plus. Then you will see possible an epic game in proportion with bg2.

As I am absolutely certain this viewpoint of mine will be hotly contested, I have studied this thoroughly and have tested all the different variables involving both sides of this argument: My argument is: You don't really notice a significant difference with the ranged specialist classes In this game using ranged weapons (eg ranger) vs a spellcaster using a ranged weapon (eg cipher, preist, wizard, druid) and as an overall analysis when you look at the entire capabilities of the spellcaster with a ranged weapon vs a ranger with a ranged weapon the ranger is vastly inferior in comparison because the spellcasters can cast spells. To conclude there is a huge power difference between a ranger and a spellcaster. I personally think the rangers need a huge buff (still after all there recent buffs with patches) they simply have no abilities to choose from upon level up that differentiate them significantly from other classes using ranged weapons. I also think that spell casters should not be able to use ranged weapons like firearms or bows (like in baldurs gate). When you have a look at the 2 comparisons - any class can use any ranged weapon - a rangers accuracy is higher but you still will consistently hit often enough with ranged casters especially if you pump perception The argument I'm am going to be presented with to counter my point is I'm sure: a ranger gets stunning shots, twinned arrows and can use storm caller...............and I counter this by saying................but a caster has a whole repertoire of spells and can still use the ranged weapon effectively. This is why I don't use rangers. I wish they where better as I enjoy ranged classes but in pillars they really do suck.

What?

Wait, you would use a cipher without charm or dominate? I never needed to use them. Combat even on POTD is unbelievably easy. If you have 2 tanks and four casters armed with arquebus's you generally won't even need to cast any spells. My typical party consisted of Fighter Fighter Cipher - arquebus Mage - arquebus Priest - arquebus Druid - arquebus Combat was insanely easy. Casters shouldn't be able to use fire arms or bows like fighters and rangers do (like you can't in baldurs gate). 90% of fights you just position your tanks maybe cast 1 spell (wave) then peg everything off with you firearms, pathetic I reckon. Makes ranged classes like rangers completely pointless when a caster can do the same almost as good.

I will bet my left testicle that you buy POE2 gairnulf. You trawl these forums like a Japanese whaling vessel, you clearly have a strong interest in pillars and enjoy the game. You wouldn't be here if you weren't interested in it.

Yeah shame on you obsidian for taking away the 500+ hours of my life that I have spent playing pillars. You all deserve to be hanged in the gallows of raedrics keep.

Yeah I suppose that's one way of looking at it and that kind of makes up for why wave is so good. Wizards have a whole range of good spells where as ciphers have about 5 haha, so it makes sense for them to have the wave as they don't have much else to choose from.

Yeah I agree 100% with your post. There is amplified wave and that chain confusion spell that ciphers have wreak havok. Echo and mind lance are ok and fun to use. These spells and there low level mind blades ( the chain blade spell) where pretty much the only spells I ever used for a cipher. I used the pretty much the same tactics as you. I fired off a shot straight away with an arquebus with the cipher, positioned my tanks and waited for all the enemies to congregate around them then spammed wave close to those tanks. You will be able to do this on about 90% of the fights it's is only on boss type fights or when you encounter rare enemies where you have to change your tactics. Imagine giving this kind of power to your character in baldurs gate 2. No seriously think about that, imagine if your fighter/ mage in bg2 could simply fire off a massive wave that knocked everything down and damaged them at the same time. You are like a god where you click your fingers and everything dies. AWESOME! Lol

What? What? What? What? And what? You have just dribbled 5 different bullet points that are all complete lies. The damage is huge for 6th level spell, you can hit the nearly the entire screen with its radius so if you hit 20 people for 30 damage that's 600 damage dealt Targets fortitude rather then deflection and that's bad? Umm ok...... Needs four shots to recover focus? Dude are you playing the same game as us? Read above posts from me and other members, will need one shot with arquebus.

Dude put points in perception. I thought I was going blind when I read posts on this thread from people telling you to not worry about perception. You will need resolve as well as you will be frontline. I personally think fighters are underrated and are right up there with the best. Stats for my fighters typically have something like this (I'm guessing here) Might 15 Con 7-9 (never drop con below 7 on any character especially on POTD) Dex 15 Perc 15 Int 3 Resolve 18

I'm not a big fan of blunders. I found them useful at the start of the game but as the game progressed (on POTD) just about every enemy I encountered had a minimum dr of 12. Blunders become obsolete half way through the game, and to make them half viable you need to waste talent points on abilities like penetrating shot and even after taking penetrating shot and using lead splitter still no where as good as an enchanted arquebus. Put a suit of plate armour on one of your characters and fire leadsplitter at it, will do nothing.

I made serious use of it on POTD, I let it rip in just about every fight. Even though ciphers gain need to gain focus they can make better use of spells then wizards as they don't need to rest. You should be able to gain enough focus from one shot of an highly enchanted arquebus to set it off. Trick is to aim for low dr targets eg fodder. Fire arquebus, amplified wave, arquebus, wave = you win Oh and then you get to do it again the next fight