Hey there

Well, I bought Vanguard about 7 or 8 months ago and hardly played it as it ran like crap on my computer. Since then I have upgraded (albeit the processor isn't a big advantage in my system) and was wondering how well it would run now with all of the recent updates and performance fixes I have read about. My specs are:

Athlon X64 3200+ (2.00GHz rated at 3.20GHz, 512KB Cache)

2GB DDR Ram (I usually have about 1.5/1.6GB free when running my system as other processes take up some of the memory)

Radeon HD3850 256MB (PCI-E)

What graphics settings would I be looking at to run it with a good framerate? Low/Med/High/Max? Also, another question is that I heard that game had a very in-depth crafting system and diplomacy, how is that these days? Is it still in-depth and a fun and interesting aspect of the game or has SOE ruined it now?

Thanks for your help and time.

I'd say you would want to start with it running in medium.  The weak point in your system will be your cpu and some graphics options have a bigger hit on the cpu then others.  From medium you will want to play with it.  I'd guess you could probably crank up the textures since your graphics card is good.,  But then again what is good fps?  that varies person to person. 

Also there will still be some hitching as you can see from many posts.  The good news is they will be doing something in the next patch gu5 that is supposed to greatly release hitching.

Crafting hasn't changed much.  I think they increased the xp and basically fixed bugs it is still largely the same.  they have added recipes and changed how recipes get added to make it a bit easier to aquire recipes.  The crafting game is still an independent game meaning you can be a crafter and never leave your forge.  So people think it is one huge grind and I guess it is if you don't like crafting.  But some people that love crafting love the system.  It does require more thought and can be frustrating and I'd say it is definitely more on par with adventuring then any other game.

Diplomacy has some great quests and lots of lore but it still the most incomplete sphere.  It is complete in that you can level it upto 50 but not complete in terms of activities the old deve aurspex used to talk about...

I usually think 25FPS and higher is a decent framerate, anything less is usually unplayable to a large degree. So I'm looking to be getting 25FPS or more with Vanguard. Also, it's good to know that crafting and diplomacy are still important aspects of the game and I am interested to see how in-depth they are and what they are like.

You should have no problem getting 25fps

I tried it after the last performance increase and saw little to no improvement I have pretty much an equivalent system to yours except a slighter faster and dual core CPU AMD 64 X2 4400+ and I get low teens FPS in cities... and it didn't seem to matter what my graphical settings were at. It's been my main reason to avoid the game, and there are some graphical glitches which I'm not sure are due to my vid card or just an update cause it didn't used to do it.

Beware: this game will steal your soul and eat your babies.

i'm also thinking of resubbing. so i took the buddy key of my retail and created a new account to have a look. now, after 30 hours and 15gb of downloading its still not ready. so who thinks, i'll be still patient? me not. thats unacceptable. the freaking launch pad is damn slow and it stops the download from time to time. no improvement here since beta. looks like a good start to get veterans back to the game...

Originally posted by daryosh

i'm also thinking of resubbing. so i took the buddy key of my retail and created a new account to have a look. now, after 30 hours and 15gb of downloading its still not ready. so who thinks, i'll be still patient? me not. thats unacceptable. the freaking launch pad is damn slow and it stops the download from time to time. no improvement here since beta. looks like a good start to get veterans back to the game...

If you don't have the CDs left find a link to the old compressed images, here or at te official forums.

I played VG at launch, left after a couple months, then returned about a year later. The difference was noticeable but for me, not worth playing again for the longterm. Crafting takes forever (but then again so does adventuring, but there's more action in adventuring), and Diplomacy is incomplete, as previously noted. It's a cool and innovative way of doing diplomacy, to be sure, but no one plays an MMO for its diplomacy. Maybe if being a high level diplomat actually did anything in the game it would be useful. Maybe you could talk that orc out of killing you and your friends instead of just fighting him. Maybe you could become a ruler of some distant tribe of Amazonian women. Nope. Nothing. It's just something else to sink time into and level up. No real benefits to it.