Justinian

It's inefficiencies and bottlenecks in code that cause performance issues - the fact that Pillars doesn't use anywhere near 100% CPU or GPU but still manages to run extremely poorly in certain situations in game. I have a lot of highly demanding games on my PC (and the one before it) and NONE of them run anywhere near as badly as Pillars does.

Because to this day, Pillars still runs like a garbage heap on the most powerful of computers and the recent footage of Pillars 2 looks like a stuttery mess as well. Obsidian either have subpar programmers or are terrible at utilising Unity.

I wouldn't say it's an issue per se. Obsidian have decided upon realism as the end goal for art direction, and while I don't think it's the most inspiring of decisions, the end result is adequate. There is no doubt that there was simply superior design and execution of art/backgrounds in many older infinity engine games however.

The portraits will enhance every single NPC interaction in the game. They also are done by artists which means it will have nothing to do with quest designers and won't impact number of quests. Besides, if I had a choice between enhancing every single NPC interaction in the game vs one or two extra quests I know which I would take.

It's a pretty widespread problem I think, and certainly having two computers above recommended spec run it particularly poorly supports that. Tyranny which uses the same engine seems to have performance problems on many setups as well, as a quick search online shows.

That statement doesn't instill confidence at all. It's just another way of saying "expect the same terrible performance".

That's strange. Can you initiate combat with bystander NPCs in Copperlane, throw a few persistent spell effects and see what happens to your frame rate? It would be even more embarrassing and bizzare if weaker PCs run this game better than more powerful hardware!

I see no mention of performance, only a new streaming system. I'm not talking about loading times but frame rate.

Running the first Pillars across two PCs that were well beyond the recommended specs, I got such poor performance in some areas like Copperlane and in combat that the game became an absolute chore to play. It's incredible that frame rate can drop into the 20s on an i7 6700/GTX 980Ti rig, and because of this I still haven't been able to drag myself through the first game (that I backed for over $250). I understand these performance issues are widespread (if not affecting everyone), and are due to limitations in Unity and/or the way the game is designed. The fact that Obsidian are building on the same engine for the sequel has me concerned enough that I will not back or purchase this game. It would be good to get some assurances from the devs that game performance will be GREATLY improved on Pillars 2 or at least acknowledge that performance was poor on the engine and they are doing something about it.

So I've been putting this game off since it came out because of terrible frame rate in various areas and during every combat encounter. When I pledged for this game it never crossed my mind that a 2.5D game would ever perform so poorly. After checking back every single patch to see if things have improved and seeing nothing, I'm at wits end. During the year or so the game has been out, I have upgraded my PC from a i5 2500k/HD 6950 to an i7 6700/GTX 980 Ti, and to my utter dismay, I saw almost negligible performance improvement. I was briefly relieved that Copperlane began running at 60fps right after the 3.0 patch, but after a little while playing, the performance dropped back to the usual crap (some kind of memory leak at work I'm sure). The thing is, I could probably tolerate certain areas running at 45fps, but the combat in this game routinely drags performance down to the 20s and 30s when spells go off, making the game a sluggish mess and nigh unplayable. I'm almost certain that others are suffering the same performance issues so why isn't anyone complaining here? Obsidian, are you just going to leave the game as is and completely ignore optimisation? Sure, the support you've given the game content wise is admirable but why hasn't something central like performance been paid any attention? As entitled as I may sound, I would like a dev response to clarify just what is going on, as I'm sick of waiting to play this game I pledged hundreds of dollars for and years looking forward to.

SSD does speed up the load times noticeably, but forget trying to build a PC around Pillars - you won't get smooth performance on even the highest end hardware. I'm running an i7 6700 and GTX 980 Ti and the game still drops frames like crazy. It's just an incredibly unoptimized game.

Same here. It's the game, not your hardware. I get a consistent 60fps without drops on Ultra settings on Witcher 3 with my rig and yet Pillars runs at 45fps in many places. It's the ONLY game on my machine that drops frames ever, and considering it's not at all demanding (the CPU and GPU are hardly being utilised), it's quite an embarrassment. i7 6700 8GB RAM GTX 980 Ti Strix Windows 10

The game is one of the worst optimised I've ever played. I'm getting 60 most of the time but whenever fancy spells go off or im in a larger area the framerate tanks into the 30s. Intel i5 2500k 3.6 Ghz 8 Gb RAM AMD Radeon HD 6950 2 Gb Highly doubtful you'll get anywhere near a decent experience with those specs. On my main desktop it's above 50 all the time. i5 4460 16gigs RAM nvidia 960 And that's quite a beefy PC for running a 2D style game wouldn't you agree? The fact that you don't even get a constant 60fps on that machine pretty much drives home the point.

The game is one of the worst optimised I've ever played. I'm getting 60 most of the time but whenever fancy spells go off or im in a larger area the framerate tanks into the 30s. Intel i5 2500k 3.6 Ghz 8 Gb RAM AMD Radeon HD 6950 2 Gb Highly doubtful you'll get anywhere near a decent experience with those specs.

Better visibility and readability in combat. Dramatic performance optimisations. Difficulty balance at higher levels.