MunoValente

One thing I like about Pillars compared to InExile's nostalgia driven games, is that Obsidian has worked really hard to create a completely new setting and rule system, so while a lot of the old ideas are there, there is fair amount of fresh material as well; they really want to create a new, sustainable brand. Wasteland 2 seemed like pure nostaglia, Bard's Tale IV likely will be and Torment we'll see about, at least Numenera is a completely new setting as far as these types of games go, but by putting Torment in the title, it's nostalgia is clearly central to it's marketing.

Yeah, I think if you want a make larger scale RPG with a lot player freedom, something more like New Vegas or the original Fallout where it's more written to empower the player to make their story works better. Pillars kind of tries to strike a middle ground between that and an more focused games like Dragonfall or something like Torment and doesn't completely succeed at either. Pillars also suffers from the way it piles on exposition at times, several of the dialogues in the game remind me of the "Exposition Daemon" from Snow Crash if someone is familiar with that. Hopefully the sequels and expansions won't feel so pressured to pile on exposition now that the setting is a bit more established.

I really like Pillars, but I do think that Dragonfall does many of the common elements it shares with Pillars better, although it's much smaller, more focused and streamlined. Dragonfall is really good, especially character design and writing, I think it has the best companion crew in any game I've ever played. I highly recommend it at any RPG fan who hasn't played it. I'll probably replay Pillars more though, because it's bigger and there is a lot more I can do with the character creation.

Kana, Eder and Hiravias are fairly light hearted at times and I think the game gives you chance to role play your main character a bit lighter if you want. I think the towns, especially taverns are probably a little light on easier going characters though, but a lot of that I think is the lack of non essential characters throughout the world, due to time and budget constraints.

Exactly if you want to tank something that hits harder than armor can withstand, then you need make it miss. I'm fine with dragon being so strong than your armor is almost useless, it's a dragon. I'm fine with guns rendering plate armor obsolete, guns did make plate mail obsolete. The game is intended to be early modern fantasy setting, not medieval and part of that is beginning of a transition away from heavier armor.

You could also switch weapons. Maybe have two spell strikers and one that does something like Prone or Stun on critical, Starcaller has stunning and a spell strike.

The nostalgia works against them at times as well, many of the complaints about the game are around how it's not as a good as Baldur's Gate or Torment in some way or another. I didn't back it for nostalgia, I'm not really particularly attached to the IE games, other than Torment I didn't really play them until way after they came out, I was more into Fallout, Jagged Alliance and Arcanum during time the games were originally released. I know the game style is niche and will continue to be so, but because of things like digital distribution and crowd funding, smaller budget more niche games are much larger reality than they were just a few years ago and I think we'll see more and more of them.

No way, compare Fallout 3 to New Vegas, DT is way better in that situation. With DR in Fallout 3, raw DPS is all that matters, so you can use the same weapons in basically every situation, but in the New Vegas you need to balance DPS with armor peneration whether through raw damage or penetrating weapons and so you have more incentive to change weapons depending on the situation. Part of the problem right now with Pillars is that DPS and attack speed isn't very transparent, so it's hard to know when faster higher DPS weapon are worth it or not. It also seems like most enemies have fairly high DT, the fast weapons are often inferior more than they should be. There also seems to be a shortage with faster weapons with abilities like rending that help with DT.

There are plenty of reasons why they would launch it first on PC, not necessarily tied to how well it sold on consoles, either way it did well enough on consoles to where it would be really surprising if they didn't port it at some point.

It's really annoying at shops, I've gotten to the point that I only sell at crappy vendors that I don't shop as much otherwise, like the general goods vendor in the stronghold or some of the food shops. Some easier way of selling 100 xaurip spears/shields at once would be handy too, feel like I'm going to break my mouse button clearing those out sometimes.

If you have a problem with the graphics and don't like reading dialogue probably not. If you like the style, heavy dialogue, real time w/ pause combat like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, it's probably worth it. I think it's worth it and then some, but it's pretty niche.

The reason I like arms bearer is to put different slaying/elemental enchantments on different weapons. Room full of humans kith slaying/lightning, room full of ghosts spirit slaying/fire and then maybe something like beast/corrode for when you're in the wilds.

I've build my chanter as a full on tank, taking pretty much all the best defensive skills available and using the best, heaviest armor and shields and it's been pretty effective, the chants keep coming, even if they are slow otherwise and putting them frontline keeps them close to enemies for skills that need that, they are sort of a more interesting variations of a paladin. While I find this to be pretty effective I don't think it was necessarily the intent with how the class was designed, but they don't really seem to have enough abilities to be used effectively in other ways.

The main thing is to avoid the animal skills, most of them are bad, the only one I like is takedown, although I haven't tried master's call much, it might be ok, although stunning shots at 11 is likely much better. The ones that just boost pet damage are all weak though. The ones that boost the ranger like swift/vicious aim, marked prey, wounding shot, driving flight, stunning shot are all pretty good. The problem is that the animal skills take up a lot of your options, so the class probably isn't as flexible as it could be.

I guess one advantage of it could be that because the large accuracy bonus you skip any accuracy related talents and because you don't have weapon focus you could switch through weapons more freely. Seems like something I might try out on a hired adventurer and then give up on if I don't like it. You could take savage attack and still have more accuracy than an two-hander with a weapon focus.

One thing about the darkness in this game, is a lot of it is more related spirituality, family, parenting, the nature of existence and a lot less to degrading sexuality, torture and gore, which is often the focus of a lot of dark games or stories; so it's a dark game, but in a different way what some people might expect.

It's not like Witcher 3, despite it's larger budget and development time doesn't also have bugs and hasn't already released a few of it's own patches, with another coming out soon.

Hired adventurers make for great romantic partners, you can even include your significant other's favorite cosplay photo as portraits once you learn how to do custom portraits. The actual in game characters, not so much, although I could see how Eder and Aloth would have their charms; the female options are very limited though.

The AI obviously should be better if possible. Luring tactics are fine, but the enemies should be better equipped to handle them, luring one guy off when his buddies are clearly within shouting distance/line of sight should be something the game tries to avoid whenever possible.

I think small weapons as the offhand weapon getting bonus makes most sense. Maybe they could include things like main gauche or swordbreaker as offhand parry weapon. As I mentioned in the other thread hatchets don't really make a lot of sense to me as an off hand weapon giving a deflection bonus. Two rapiers seems like it would be really awkward.

For a ranged cipher it might be better to take marksman rather than a weapon focus. Then you could use whatever mix of bows, gun and implements you find laying around and setup different damage types and slaying enchantments in different weapon slots. You could also just completely skip marksman/focus and grab a bunch of the cipher and generic offensive talents.

You can always make your rogue a front liner, reckless assault lets them do some nasty front line damage or you alternatively you could try to pump their deflection instead and use riposte, although I've not had as much success with that, that is a build I feel like should exist, but needs work. I kind of like my traps guy as a front liner anyway, then you can set your formation up so they are always in front. Chanters would probably make be pretty good trap guy/tank. On the last part you sort of answer your own question, you say rangers are good against trash mobs, but weaker against bosses, but that using scrolls/gear for abilities is only good as against bosses, so sounds like one plays right into the other; and why not put points in lore? Not like there are many other good skills; a lot of backgrounds add lore as well. Abilities from gear like rotfinger gloves don't even need lore.

One thing that is effective with my current ranger is gave him three different weapons, an arquebus with kith slaying and lighting, an arbalest in beast slaying and corrode and hunting bow with spirit slaying and fire and its really helped a lot. I've also given him a few of pieces of gear that adds magic attacks like rotfinger gloves and amulet of summer solistice for when I want group attacks or something that doesn't require a reload. For the pet, I'm using a lion, the roar is useful especially near the start, the only skill I've added is takedown. Overall I'm pleased don't feel like this ranger is a liability, but some of the other rangers I've used aren't nearly as good.

I think rapiers should have the defense bonus that is on hatchets, then it would be the ideal weapon for the riposte talent, which seems like it should their natural use. Hatchets in turn should either have DR reduction, or be slash/crush, deflection on hatchets doesn't really make sense to me.

But it likely wouldn't have been at that state 10 days after release if they just sat on it for 10 more days, getting the game out allowed far more people to play it and find issues much faster a small QA team would have. I have no doubt the game will be in better shape 6 months after release than if they just waited and tested it internally for 6 more months. Several hundred thousand play testers is way better than a couple dozen.