Greetings!
First time poster -- I've been reading the forum all weekend and am impressed by the knowledge here. Hoping for some guidance. I purchased CoH: Going Rogue on Steam, on Friday, because I'd always been curious. I've had a wildly mixed experience, technically.
My rig is a Mac Mini bought in January: Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz, L2 Cache: 3 MB, 2 GB, NVIDIA GeForce 320M w/ 256 MB VRAM. Monitor is an Acer S231HL, Resolution: 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz, Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (if that helps). I realize that's pretty low-end for this game but it seems like it should meet the minimums and exceed a couple.
I am experiencing two main issues. Sometimes the screen will go black, as the game launches and the monitor will alert that there is "no signal." Usually, the signal comes back but the screen image will break up into "snow" or "static" and become unintelligible. I tried launching the game several times on Friday and couldn't get through character creation.
Saturday, I researched. I decided to make sure every other application was off, while trying to launch. I checked Activity Monitor to make sure no big background processes were running. I read that you could run the whole process without Steam, so I only used the NCLauncher. I tried Safe Mode, with no improvement. I figured if I could get through character creation, I could go to Menu > Options and check the graphics settings.
I found CuppaManga's great guides and started to go through applicable steps. When I got to the advice that I should trash my Preferences folder and restart, success! I still got the snow a a few times and had to force the client to quit a couple of times, but I got through creation, went to Options and set most settings to minimum. I ended up playing a couple of hours and having fun.
Today, I tried to play again, to be greeted by the snow issue, even worse than before. Even though I had almost always been able to get to the first "Loading" screen but even that was failing. I tried trashing Preferences. I restarted. I tried downloading the client from the website to make sure I had the newest one. I checked the client and OS for updates. I ran Disk Utility on my machine. I got the City of Heroes Test client and ran that. I sometimes get as far as the Login screen, but the picture breaks up before I get any further. I have mixed frequent trashing of Preferences and restarts into this process.
Anyway, it's late and I'm throwing my hands up for tonight. I really enjoyed the game and would really like to play again. I'm probably missing something obvious and could use another perspective. Thanks, in advance!