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Vanguard Beta 5, My Experiance
Gooney
Member Posts: 194
I received a beta key from my friend earlier this week. Ive been testing since then not 24/7 but during my normal play session times, so a couple hours a night. I and my friends are currently playing on the PVP Server in the European Beta 5.
I chose first a Kurash Warrior, but after dieing 10 times in a row without killing one single mob I logged out. I assumed that the incredible inability for a level 1 character to kill a level one mob must have been to do with a balance pass that was simply not complete yet. It seems that this was the case as the next day saw vast improvments in solo viability at very low level. During the time playing I logged 6 bug reports, none having to do with performance. Performance was for all intents and purposes horrible, I did not know the framerate command at that time so I can only guess. I had settings set to "Balanced", everything else was default. Result, just about unplayable game.
The next night I created a Dark Elf Psionicist. As I said, survivability went up dramatically with that days patch. Performance in the Dark Elf area was very poor at "balanced" settings. I then modified the vgclient.ini according to the "Morts" post. Improvement was noticeable but not good, still only in the region of 15 fps dropping to 2 or 3 if there was any signifcant structures around. During the play session I completed a number of noobie quests, reporting 2 bugs for various quest glitches. Lag was noticible from time to time and seems to be closely tied to client performance.
Day 3. Starting fresh with my new and improved vgclient settings I continued with my psionicist, this day I discovered my trainer and grabbed the spells I was missing. Very intriguing possibilities presented themselves, I like the class. I should mention that we are a small group of RL friends all in the beta, we are all "veteran" gamers, all played a variety of MMOs cutting our MMO teeth on UO and EQ1. We are all in our 30s, and all IT sector professionals (Techs, Programmers, design Engineers). I purchase by far the most new titles of our little group, on average 2 new every month for the last 14 years (since college). I say this just to give an idea of what my machine can handle normally. The only 2 titles I purchased in the last year that had a problem were Company of Heroes and Oblivion; at that time I had an NVIDIA 6600GT Video card, since my ATI purchase I havent had any problems running those two games. We have all been reporting bugs since begining in the beta, I am the last to join the beta, the others have a bit of a head start on me.
Anyway, the others had all started in another part of the continent and we decided that I would join them that day. After a long and perilous journey and several deaths for all involved we finally linked up. I being the lowest level, was far too low to gain any XP from our journey. Never the less I tagged along in a dungeon (some big boat full of undead and gargoyles). System performance was absolutly horrible, again the highest FPS I attained at any point was 20, average outside about 14, in the dungeon about 5. Absolutly terrible performance, I did report a couple more bugs, but in the end I logged out feeling frustrated.
I should describe my machine.
Intel P4 2.4GHZ
1.5GB RAM
ATI 1950Pro 256MB AGP <-- Performs like a champ on everything I have except VG.
IDE HD
I am well aware that this machine is not "state of the Art" but it isnt terrible either, its good enough for every other game I own. (which is a lot). I picked the 1950Pro because it only cost a couple hundred dollars (2000 SEK) and because it will be the last AGP card I buy as this Motherboard is nearing the end of its useful life and will be replaced later this year probably.
I had by far the worst performance of our group, factual play feel went from "laggy" to "unplayable".
After last nights session I decided to just log into WoW and create a BE Pally just for giggles. I was absolutly floored by the difference in performance of the two titles. The intro flyby of Silvermoon nooby area was flawless, this I should add with all graphics settings at thier highest. I do not mention this to put down VG, more as a compare and contrast of two titles on the exact same hardware.
I will say now that 10% performance increase isnt going to be enough by a long shot. VG in its present form is absolutly unacceptable on anything less than a "latest and greatest" machine. Very very few gamers have the hardware to run this baby in anthing like the glory its settings will allow.
I was looking forward to Vanguard, it seems to be the MMO with the complexity that I want. Having said that, I will say right now, that unless significant performance improvements are made this game is going to tank harder than DDO. My experiance with the game so far other than the horrid performance have been very interesting. However, just moving into a built up area, not even a city, but one with a few tents and npcs reduces my framerates to that of a slide show, this is literally I am not exaggerating. I will not Pay to play a game with this type of performance even if I think the actual "game" is good or even "great".
Take this how you will, I did give it an honest open minded try. And BTW yes it is completely possible to like BOTH VG and WoW, or VG, WOW, EQ, EQ2, AO, SWG (ok a stretch
) and anyother title you can think of.
Having said all of this for me the BETA is done, I will not be participating more its too frustrating.
-Gooney
I chose first a Kurash Warrior, but after dieing 10 times in a row without killing one single mob I logged out. I assumed that the incredible inability for a level 1 character to kill a level one mob must have been to do with a balance pass that was simply not complete yet. It seems that this was the case as the next day saw vast improvments in solo viability at very low level. During the time playing I logged 6 bug reports, none having to do with performance. Performance was for all intents and purposes horrible, I did not know the framerate command at that time so I can only guess. I had settings set to "Balanced", everything else was default. Result, just about unplayable game.
The next night I created a Dark Elf Psionicist. As I said, survivability went up dramatically with that days patch. Performance in the Dark Elf area was very poor at "balanced" settings. I then modified the vgclient.ini according to the "Morts" post. Improvement was noticeable but not good, still only in the region of 15 fps dropping to 2 or 3 if there was any signifcant structures around. During the play session I completed a number of noobie quests, reporting 2 bugs for various quest glitches. Lag was noticible from time to time and seems to be closely tied to client performance.
Day 3. Starting fresh with my new and improved vgclient settings I continued with my psionicist, this day I discovered my trainer and grabbed the spells I was missing. Very intriguing possibilities presented themselves, I like the class. I should mention that we are a small group of RL friends all in the beta, we are all "veteran" gamers, all played a variety of MMOs cutting our MMO teeth on UO and EQ1. We are all in our 30s, and all IT sector professionals (Techs, Programmers, design Engineers). I purchase by far the most new titles of our little group, on average 2 new every month for the last 14 years (since college). I say this just to give an idea of what my machine can handle normally. The only 2 titles I purchased in the last year that had a problem were Company of Heroes and Oblivion; at that time I had an NVIDIA 6600GT Video card, since my ATI purchase I havent had any problems running those two games. We have all been reporting bugs since begining in the beta, I am the last to join the beta, the others have a bit of a head start on me.
Anyway, the others had all started in another part of the continent and we decided that I would join them that day. After a long and perilous journey and several deaths for all involved we finally linked up. I being the lowest level, was far too low to gain any XP from our journey. Never the less I tagged along in a dungeon (some big boat full of undead and gargoyles). System performance was absolutly horrible, again the highest FPS I attained at any point was 20, average outside about 14, in the dungeon about 5. Absolutly terrible performance, I did report a couple more bugs, but in the end I logged out feeling frustrated.
I should describe my machine.
Intel P4 2.4GHZ
1.5GB RAM
ATI 1950Pro 256MB AGP <-- Performs like a champ on everything I have except VG.
IDE HD
I am well aware that this machine is not "state of the Art" but it isnt terrible either, its good enough for every other game I own. (which is a lot). I picked the 1950Pro because it only cost a couple hundred dollars (2000 SEK) and because it will be the last AGP card I buy as this Motherboard is nearing the end of its useful life and will be replaced later this year probably.
I had by far the worst performance of our group, factual play feel went from "laggy" to "unplayable".
After last nights session I decided to just log into WoW and create a BE Pally just for giggles. I was absolutly floored by the difference in performance of the two titles. The intro flyby of Silvermoon nooby area was flawless, this I should add with all graphics settings at thier highest. I do not mention this to put down VG, more as a compare and contrast of two titles on the exact same hardware.
I will say now that 10% performance increase isnt going to be enough by a long shot. VG in its present form is absolutly unacceptable on anything less than a "latest and greatest" machine. Very very few gamers have the hardware to run this baby in anthing like the glory its settings will allow.
I was looking forward to Vanguard, it seems to be the MMO with the complexity that I want. Having said that, I will say right now, that unless significant performance improvements are made this game is going to tank harder than DDO. My experiance with the game so far other than the horrid performance have been very interesting. However, just moving into a built up area, not even a city, but one with a few tents and npcs reduces my framerates to that of a slide show, this is literally I am not exaggerating. I will not Pay to play a game with this type of performance even if I think the actual "game" is good or even "great".
Take this how you will, I did give it an honest open minded try. And BTW yes it is completely possible to like BOTH VG and WoW, or VG, WOW, EQ, EQ2, AO, SWG (ok a stretch
) and anyother title you can think of. Having said all of this for me the BETA is done, I will not be participating more its too frustrating.
-Gooney
Comments
Can I have your key then?
But so far the internet lag was the big killer for me. Even with 300 ping (at the best) other people in my group are moving clunky , poping in and out of existance. Appearing far away from me, suddenly....or even fighting invisible monsters.
This really puted me off.
Combined with , lack of content (in my oppinion) , Graphic that varies from excelent to horrible , and yes system requirements.
It is really not at all what i was hoping for....
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Many people will update their comps for Vista but thats about half a year away, so where does VG find customers? Most are playing WOW, many are waiting for Conan, G&H, LOTRO and Spellborn.
This performance issue can very well kill VG.
-doro
I said it few times before. I hoped Vanguard will be much more on "optimized" side.
The situation right now is quite a mistake. Why?
In my oppinion there are graphic landmarks set by the games, when and for what - to upgrade PC
Todays landmark is still held by TES OBLIVION. People that run it well , do not see any point in ubgrading their system.
Next such landmark will be "CRYSIS" and Vista DX10. It is what I and many other are waiting for.
Vanguard falls in between. It is to performance heavy for "Oblivion" gen , and will not look good enough for "Crysis" gen
AOC will surely ask for good hardware. But judging for screenshots and vids - it will surely have what to show for.
In time AOC comes out and you upgrade hardware for it. Vanguard would look very dated.
So , there is a big problem.
VG is in real limbo. Not there or there....
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
The OP doesn't seem to realize that this is a NEW game, still in beta (read: optimizations still being done), and his system is above minimum but below recommended specs.
I also don't take much stock in that he only tried the game for 3 days and experienced only the newbie (read: under lvl 10) content.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
High end pc requirements must not necessarily kill sales. Best example: Wing Commander 1. Though I guess that was before "time" of most users here?
Also, until now all mmorpgs had a bumpy start, some more or less. Regarding fun or none fun, I respect all opinions, as for my own and some close friends, well my guild is having a blast in vanguard.
Brad himself has stated that at release they may be able to get another 10% FPS and that was a maybe. LoTRO is based on the same engine as DDO and that is pretty scalable as far as old machines goes. I don't really put much stock in a game that is is not fun in the first ten levels. What would make you think it is fun the next ten or the next 20? Games should be fun from the beginning and the idea of having to grind to the fun part is old hat. First impressions are usualy the most lasting, if the first bite of a steak is tough, chances are the rest will be also.
Anyway Ratrap nailed it, the game does not give enough visuals for the buck. I have a upper end machine and although I could get the graphics to an acceptable frame rate at the highest settings the textures and animations in particular were very very poor. Things looked good at a distance but up close they were really not very pretty at all considering the hardware it took to get there.
I miss DAoC
6 months ago when I started playing EQ2 almost no one was able to play at max settings (people were frustrated on all the forums).
Today its fine; this was 6 months ago ... when was EQ2 released ?
EQ2 vs WOW
We all remember it. And everyone that played both game knows that in terms of quality they are equals (i would even say EQ2 is better)
but because of performance isues at release date
today they stand like this
WOW = 8 million subscribers ( atleast so they say )
EQ2 = Few struglling servers
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
A good point, six months to a year from now may I plan to upgrade to vista and dx10 after they get the bugs out and the prices on the vid cards down to around 300 USD.. Then maybe the game will be worth picking up. That would also give them time to get the game into a shape where it would be worth 15 a month. However by that time LoTRO, AoC, and PoBS will be released and Warhammer will be right around the corner and Vanguard will no longer be new and shiny.
Once again I have to agree with the poster above. EQII was the better game in my opinion. However everyone does not have the disposable income to go out and drop a lot of money to upgrade or build a new machine just for gaming. The games that are really planning for the future will be able to be played on a 3 year old Dell at their release. I would not have believerd that myself at EQII and WoWs release but Blizzard proved me wrong.
I miss DAoC
EQ2 vs WOW
We all remember it. And everyone that played both game knows that in terms of quality they are equals (i would even say EQ2 is better)
but because of performance isues at release date
today they stand like this
WOW = 8 million subscribers ( atleast so they say )
EQ2 = Few struglling servers
There are a multitude of reasons why a mmorpg can fail or be a success. Pinpointing it down to just performance issue is bold.
Otherwise from a revert perspective, games which had a better performance released during the same time as Wow or EQ2 should have been a hit. KALOnline, Vendetta online, Legend of Mir 3 etc
___________
I'm neither a fanboi nor a hater..nothing is perfect...neither are games.
EQ2 vs WOW
We all remember it. And everyone that played both game knows that in terms of quality they are equals (i would even say EQ2 is better)
but because of performance isues at release date
today they stand like this
WOW = 8 million subscribers ( atleast so they say )
EQ2 = Few struglling servers
There are a multitude of reasons why a mmorpg can fail or be a success. Pinpointing it down to just performance issue is bold.
Otherwise from a revert perspective, games which had a better performance released during the same time as Wow or EQ2 should have been a hit. KALOnline, Vendetta online, Legend of Mir 3 etc
___________
I'm neither a fanboi nor a hater..nothing is perfect...neither are games.
I don't think the performance was the sole issue however you can't argue that the college guy, young newlywed, or teenager working for minimum wage generally is not going to buy a game he cannot run on his or her current machine when there are other games that are just as good if not better that will. And face it that is the biggest target market for games.I miss DAoC
Average wise on High setting, I get around 20fps in the wilderness (sometimes as much as 30fps) and 14-18 fps in dungeons (sometimes a lot more), some places like Khal it goes down to 8fps but largely over 10fps in cities.
I may add the game is very playable at 14-18fps in a dungeon.
Performance recently has gone down, as they are messing with the servers, there has recently been some intrastructure changes and performance has gone back up (to be expected in a beta).
I have an nvidia 7800 GS AGP, whilst a fairly new card, I think the reason why my fps is lower than expected, is because I have an old processor.
They recently upped all the 2 dot mobs in strength and lowered the xp gain, only to tweak it again in both areas, which would explain why you were having trouble. Since this is still a beta, I would rather they do this now than release.
Realistically you should try travelling to join other friends around 8th level, it doesn't take long to get there and all the dungeons start around that level.
As said previously, they are expecting a 10% increase, which on my system is about 2-3fps, not great but I welcome it.
The biggest problem with performance on Vanguard is the hitching (loading from Hard Disk).
I would try the game on Lowest setting and start adding settings to get the right balance. Volumetic clouds and lighting effects will slow down the performance, turn them off.
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve
Yes I am fully aware that it is a beta, which of course explains my habit of reporting bugs, and indeed the title of the post.
And pray tell, how many days does one have to play in order to form an opinion or, baring that make an observation? I think that my 20 years of computer gaming is enough of an experiance base to form an reasonably well informed opinion, dont you?
I was very upfront about the amount of time I invested, on what I did and what I experianced, that may or may not be enough for you, but it is more than enough for me. If the game was in a better optimized state (AS IT SHOULD BE FOR THE FINAL BETA IMO) I would be delighted to perform more beta testing for Sigil. However, as the game in its current state is not realistically or enjoyably playable on my current rig I refuse to perform a service for them for free. Which isnt at all unreasonable from my point of view, after all my time is valuable to me, is yours not valuable for you?
I do hope and expect that performance problems related to the servers and infrastructure will improve once the game goes live, I also hope that some code optimizations take place, although I am not optimistic enough to actually belive some magic switch will be thrown and suddenly everything will work. Quite the contrary I am fairly certain that the launch will be a near disaster, and that Sigil and SOE both will have an uphill battle until the game begins to approach the realativly polished state of say...EQ2. The problem with that is that it will likely take some months to accomplish, during which time my group of friends will have abandoned the game for something else. Which will be a shame.
-Gooney
Really, people are having completely insane expectations of how much the game can change in 12 days. Granted it is in beta ,
but think. If they will not implement everything now, then when will they? That is what beta is all about! Test everything before you release, and possibly it makes a great mess on servers, or destroys somebodys PC.
But thats ok , i was also "hopeful" - i just have to much common sence, and played games for 25 years ... so i know better
Still , i am glad Vanguard have so many fans that are ready to embrace it as it is. They are zealots of this game , and Vanguard will
need it not to sink at the release. And this would be a shame...
My only doubt now, is - Vanguard will be playable as it sopposed to be , in maybe 6 months. But will Sigil manage to make Vanguard - good enough to compete with AOC and WAR - because in 6 months , this new boys will be on the block.
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
My experience is much the same as the OP's. My computer is going into its second year of existence, and though I still think of it as top-of-the-line (it was stupidly expensive when I bought it, I splurged), its already ancient compared to newer models. It does not handle Vanguard at all. I've turned the settings down as far as I comfortably can while still being able to see what it is I'm supposed to be fighting. I grouped with a friend last night to try some duoing action, and it was indeed unplayable. He was rubberbanding all around me, and I was lucky to get off a single spell on whatever his target was, it was usually invisible to me, or appearing 2000m away for a moment. Its making me regret leaving EQ2, something I can't believe I would ever admit to. But my friends are here, being all excited because its from the creator of EQ1, a game they were huge fans of. And so I keep trying it.
I've slowly been getting through all the races and professions, and so far it seems that unless your particular class is broken by the lastest patch (yesterday it was necromancer), they are all pretty much the same. Race matters none at all as far as I can tell, except to seperate you from your friends upon starting, by placing you in a racially-themed sub-area with its own flavor of newbie quests, all pretty much alike. By the 3rd character I had mostly quit reading them, just clicking through them to accept the quest and close the dialouge box. Classes are indeed fairly interchangable so far, and yes I will admit I have not played any of them into the high levels yet, so I will say my observations only apply to the beggining level range. Its like someone said, you just press the same 2-3 hotkeys over and over, the only really 'tactic' I have to employ is to make sure I do not catch agro from a 2nd mob, which usually leads to death, unless I have a fear or mez type spell I can cast in time. Take for example the necromancer. He has some interesting spells. One is a debuff, that would surely give an edge in combat. But given its casting time, and the 'downtime' it lays down on my other spells after casting it, I can cast his bone-spear nuke twice or more in the same period of time, and so it never makes sense to use it.
But that's just nit-picky stuff compared to the crux of my problem which is, as I say, that the game simply will not run on my current system. It'd be nice if I could afford a new system every year, but I can't, and I suspect most gamers are in the same situation. This "but its still just beta, don't you know that?" excuse will only carry so far, and given that the game is less that two weeks from release, I don't see how there is any thing they can do in that timeframe to make it substantially easier for me to run. Maybe they will surprise me, but it seems to me they are spending most of their time frantically debugging quests and (still!) rebalancing professions. I remain disappointed, mostly because I have a feeling my friends are going to stay with it, and I have little desire to remain with them in Vanguard.
Post from the offical Vanguard forums.
I would like to start off with why we made this change. For a long time we have been trying out the idea that players should be able to max out or hit their cap in multiple attributes. We have finally decided this just doesnt accomplish what we want and dramatically diminishes the potential significance of items. As an item-centric game this was not acceptable to us.
The change to caps means that now someone will only be able to reach the soft cap of 18 under the most extreme conditions. So extreme that it will likely not be possible at release. There is now breathing room for increases in player power (which is important to us).
Attribute growth and racial attributes:
Attribute allocation works basically the same as it always has. However, we do have new racial attribute growth coming in a patch. This accounts for the value of 6 in Jerriths post earlier.
All characters start with attributes based on their class. Attribute growth is controlled by race (when the new racial attributes go in the class will no longer be a factor). The attribute pool is still 20 points per level starting at level 10.
For those of you familiar with the attribute growth in Vanguard there is two primary components. Attribute caps from race and automatic allocation from race. It is important to understand that the caps from your race dont have a direct relationship to the old cap of 11 points per level or the new soft cap of 18 points per level. The race caps on attribute reflect how many points can go into the attribute per level.
What does this do? With the cap of 11 it means that you reach your maximum with less gear, earlier. In some ways this is a bonus and in others it is a penalty. With the harder to reach soft cap of 18 these racial bonuses carry more weight. We want them to be a more significant choice.
The second part of the equation is automatic allocation. All characters in the world of Vanguard earn a global pool of 20 point per level as a mentioned earlier. Of this global pool every attribute always gains 1 point when you level. This leaves 14 points for customization. In concert with the racial caps points are usually automatically allocated to fill in the cap bonus for the race. For example, in the old racial bonuses a Halfing had a dexterity cap bonus of 2 points per level. They also had 2 points per level automatically allocated to dexterity. This allows races to grown in their own special ways while still giving players room to customize most of their attribute growth.
For the new attribute cap bonuses we are intending:
STR CON DEX VIT WIS INT
BarbarianQalia 2 1 0 0 1 0
BarbarianThestra 2 1 0 0 1 0
Dwarf 0 3 0 0 1 0
ElfDark 0 0 1 0 1 2
ElfHigh 0 0 0 0 3 1
ElfWood 0 0 2 2 0 0
Gnome 0 1 0 1 0 2
Goblin 0 0 1 0 0 3
HalfElf 0 0 2 1 1 0
HalfGiant 3 1 0 0 0 0
Halfling 0 0 3 0 1 0
HumanKojan 1 1 1 1 1 1
HumanMordebi 1 1 1 1 1 1
HumanQalia 1 1 1 1 1 1
HumanThestra 1 1 1 1 1 1
Kurashasa 0 1 0 0 1 2
Orc 2 0 0 2 0 0
Raki 0 0 2 2 0 0
Vulmane 0 1 1 0 2 0
The attribute cap in pointer per level can be found by adding 5 to the value in the above table.
The new automatic allocation and customization points we are intending:
STR CON DEX VIT WIS INT Points to Spend
BarbarianQalia 2 1 0 0 1 0 10
BarbarianThestra 2 1 0 0 1 0 10
Dwarf 0 3 0 0 1 0 10
ElfDark 0 0 1 0 1 2 10
ElfHigh 0 0 0 0 3 1 10
ElfWood 0 0 2 2 0 0 10
Gnome 0 1 0 1 0 2 10
Goblin 0 0 1 0 0 3 10
HalfElf 0 0 2 1 1 0 10
HalfGiant 3 1 0 0 0 0 10
Halfling 0 0 3 0 1 0 10
HumanKojan 0 0 0 0 0 0 14
HumanMordebi 0 0 0 0 0 0 14
HumanQalia 0 0 0 0 0 0 14
HumanThestra 0 0 0 0 0 0 14
Kurashasa 0 1 0 0 1 2 10
Orc 2 0 0 2 0 0 10
Raki 0 0 2 2 0 0 10
Vulmane 0 1 1 0 2 0 10
You may spend points in an attribute until you have reached your racial cap.
Buffs:
The next portion of player attributes comes from buffs. The portion coming from buffs has not been altered. They will continue to be a very significant reward that is basically free and in many cases a bonus to be in a group with others.
Items:
Items now have the potential to do more. Players have more flexibility with the items they want to use. We thought that allowing items to relatively quickly bring players to their caps would make them want to diversify (max more than one attribute). This worked well for some people. However for others it was forced. Many people would get a new item that buffed their favorite attribute and it wouldnt feel much of an effect because they had already hit their intended max on that particular attribute.
Players now have the option of taking a more extreme route and focuses on one or two attributes. However, the cost in other areas of trying to max out a single attribute is high. We feel that the rewards granted for every class across multiple attributes will mean the best players will have some diversification. Ultimately, this more open ended approach will give us each more control as we play.
Several people have voiced some concern regarding changes in the current state of their character. Many people had their character maxed out in multiple ways at level 40. Fortunately, you are no longer maxed out. However, the bonuses you get from high attribute points to things like damage have not remained exactly the same.
Along with increasing the intended cap for attributes we have made a soft cap the standard if one does reach it. We have also increased the amount of contribution attributes can have across the board. Of course, this makes sense since there is a lot more ground that can be covered. The attribute bonus increase factors are based on the previous contribution of the attribute and the desired contribute of the attribute. In most cases this will not leave you with the exact same bonus that you had prior to the changes.
Not everything has been rescaled yet but will be in the next few days as we prepare for release. For example, the maximum size for energy pools has not changed. So in this area people will likely feel like they have significantly less energy than previously. All of the combat attribute contributions were adjusted with the cap changes patch.
Please remember we are doing a lot of intense balance work now as well. Adjusting things like damage, mitigation and evasion is a big part of that. We will be continuing these types of changes we wrap up the pre-release class and archetype balancing and get our solo and group combat experience nailed down.
Thanks everyone for all of your dedication as beta testers. By pushing the limits of Vanguard you have been a huge factor in making the game as great as it has become. These dramatic improvements are just one example of that process. Please continue pushing us as beta comes to a close and we get ready to go live.
__________________
David Forrest
Senior Programmer
Sigil Games Online, Inc
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve
Some of you people must have gotten your pc into a sorry state or be running so much crap in the background every thing crawls. My current system is an ati x800xtpe with an Amd 64 4000+ 2 gig of memory and I run vanguard at highest quality 1280 X 1024, I still have shadows, bump mapping, and detailed ground textures, all running at 35 - 40 fps away from cities and populated areas, dropping to about 25 30 in the afore mentioned areas. All you need do is adjust the clipping plane which by default is set further than the horizon for most areas, drop the number of lights to about six, reduce the range at which complex trees, grass is drawn, and every thing is golden. Vanguard makes extensive use of 2.0 shaders and bump mapping which on higher settings is applied to all the ground details as far as the eye can see, structure's, boulders etc. Apply some common sense and it is easy to get the game running at acceptable frame rates, de fragging your hard drives might not be a bad idea either.
The first thing the technically inept start blaming is the software rather than their own systems or lack of understanding, this is not an fps game where frame rate in excess of 70 fps are required for smooth gaming. Yes, it can be demanding on systems that try to run a pile of crap in the background, with msn, skype and god knows what else all adding to higher network latency. Systems with higher network latency (above 300) will notice a stuttering effect because of the way the engine handles timing and pre caching. Get a better net connection or stop downloading porn and other crap using bittorent, regular torrent users can suffer multiple requests for weeks after downloading popular files dragging latency down with it.
My Colour Is Vomit green, I puke on the tards with stupid colour sigs. My symbol is ,,!, O ,!,, My enemies are any prat with a colour sig, a meaningless personality test, or a pointless list of games and classes.
Regards Hexcaliber
Another handy fps/performance tip, is turn off sound.
Makes quite a difference.
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve
that would make sense if everything crawled. I get appx the 25- 30 FPS in crowded areas and a bit more in the countryside. EQII at maximum settings with the shadows tweaked down just a bit and I can get 40 to 45 in crowds and 65- 70 in the open. Fear, Half life II, and Oblivion all run fine. AnotherMMORPG I am betaing at the moment I can get 50- 60 FPS in ultra high graphics with the AA set at 2x and with AA @ 4x I run 40- 50. Not only that but every one of those games is far superior in texture quality and animations.I miss DAoC
..or should I just wait for WarhammerOnline?
Thanks.
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I never had less than 300 latency. And almost 90% of times it was over 800 even 1000.
( Not because i was downloading anything. I think problem is server location or something... )
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Otherwise, Warhammer is looking sweet.