Graphics Advice for the non techie player

Greetings All!

I have been playing this game for quite some time, and I have learned a few things:

1. Make sure when you update your drivers, completely rid your hard drive of the old drivers and reboot before installing the new ones; driver sweeper is one program that works good, but I've found that running my registry cleaner makes doubly sure.

2. You either use the settings on the graphics driver or the game, not both.

3. Use the lowest settings in either case, and then "sneak up" until you get a good framerate and picture quality.

4. For those with lower end graphic cards, there is a program called mobility modder (google it), it has saved me from tossing a many computer out of the window, read and follow the instructions first (the tech support dept told me about that program btw).

5. When you are playing, turn off all other programs that are running down there by your clock, I personally only have my anti virus running while in game.

6. Remember Item #2? If you use the games graphics settings, avoid "ultra mode" at first.

7. New does not always mean better, sometimes you get better (or at least tolerable) performance with the driver you have, if properly configured.

8. Turn off all unnecessary windows services ( I actually googled that exact phrase and found excellent articles and tutorials), the reason being that some of those services may be robbing you of useful memory, which your graphics could be using.

9. Keep your computer cool and dust free.

10. Defrag hard drive ....twice in a row, use a defrag program other than the windows, I use auslogics, its free and pretty darn good, when the servers are down I run Ultimate Defrag 3 (its not free).

11. Now this point I discovered last night; for the past week I had been battling a major rubberbanding issue, so I did a wipe of CoH and the launcher, reinstalled both with my same driver, logged in the game early this morning and my rubberbanding had stopped!

....so far.

12. The tech support dept is very good, write them with your problems and follow their advice, they haven't let me down in 7 years.

Well, that's all I have learned about graphics, drivers and CoH, I hope some or all of this helps.

Very well stated and organized.

We may need to ask them to Sticky this post.

A couple addenda here

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Major Greetings All!

{12 Stepper} Hi The_Major!

Quote:

1. Make sure when you update your drivers, completely rid your hard drive of the old drivers and reboot before installing the new ones; driver sweeper is one program that works good, but I've found that running my registry cleaner makes doubly sure.

Good advice for the most part. However, in the recent past, with AMD cards, some issues were found in later driver revs. The only advice for that was to roll back to an earlier driver rev.

Quote:

2. You either use the settings on the graphics driver or the game, not both.

Honestly, I recommend letting the game handle it. This way I don't have to futz with the driver settings AND the game settings. What can I say, I'm lazy.

Quote:

3. Use the lowest settings in either case, and then "sneak up" until you get a good framerate and picture quality.

Actually, in this game, I'd say:

1. Set the resolution to what you want it to be.
2. Bounce to one of the graphically heavy zones so you can pull a worst-case scenario.
3. Depending on card
   1. With a low or midrange card, set it to recommended and watch your framerate. Tweak stuff up from there if you want it prettier. Tweak it down if your framerate is horrible.
   2. With a high-end gamer-oriented card, set it to Ultra mode then customize it from there. Both Je Saist and myself have graphics guides available to help you make a decision as to what to turn on and off.

Quote:

4. For those with lower end graphic cards, there is a program called mobility modder (google it), it has saved me from tossing a many computer out of the window, read and follow the instructions first (the tech support dept told me about that program btw).

I'm actually new to that app. Good find!

Quote:

5. When you are playing, turn off all other programs that are running down there by your clock, I personally only have my anti virus running while in game.

There are also tweaks that can be made to shut down background services as well.

Quote:

6. Remember Item #2? If you use the games graphics settings, avoid "ultra mode" at first.

Depends on the card really. If you have bought a high-end gaming card you're better off jumping off the deep end and swimming back to settings that are more in tune with your system.

Quote:

7. New does not always mean better, sometimes you get better (or at least tolerable) performance with the driver you have, if properly configured.

A(MD)MEN! You may want to consider merging this with #1 and fleshing out the description a bit more.

Quote:

8. Turn off all unnecessary windows services ( I actually googled that exact phrase and found excellent articles and tutorials), the reason being that some of those services may be robbing you of useful memory, which your graphics could be using.

This could be combined with 5.

Quote:

9. Keep your computer cool and dust free.

You may want to explain that they need to shut down, pop the side off the machine and gently blow it out with compressed air from a can. Also let them know that they don't want to be using the compressed air to spin the fans. They run the risk of damaging the bearings and snapping the blades.

[quote[10. Defrag hard drive ....twice in a row, use a defrag program other than the windows, I use auslogics, its free and pretty darn good, when the servers are down I run Ultimate Defrag 3 (its not free).[/quote]Depends on if you're using platter-based drives or Solid State disks. On an SSD, defragging gains you nothing.

Quote:

11. Now this point I discovered last night; for the past week I had been battling a major rubberbanding issue, so I did a wipe of CoH and the launcher, reinstalled both with my same driver, logged in the game early this morning and my rubberbanding had stopped!

Betting you were having file fragmentation issues. Or needed to run a repair check. On systems that aren't running SSDs (like my laptop), I use PerfectDisk and file-defrag the piggs directory in CoH. This cuts down on the amount of disk thrashing the game does looking for file parts.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

And since it wasn't stated anywhere, /showfps 1 will display the framerate on the right side along the top, near where the default location of the hit point bar/XP circle is. /showfps 0 shuts it off.

It is also in the keyboard settings so you can bind it to a key or two.

Sorry I was talking about setting it in the keyboard settings in options and not manually making a keybind for it. Both showfps and netgraph are in the last group of commands under keyboard settings (at least the last time I looked there).