EQ2 impressions: Help me make it work.
My buddy sent me copies of his DVD's for EQ 2, and let me borrow his account to try EQ2. EQ2 tech support suggested he do this when he called them up to request a trial account key - thinking it came with the collector's edition he purchased.
I have a barton 2500 w/1 Gig of ram and an ATI 9600 pro. Latest drivers.
I've installed the game and began playing. The game defaulted to performance settings in terms of video. The beginning bit where your on the boat ... awful framerates - single digits. Wasn't impressed by the 'bloom' effect either.
As soon as you put ashore, just outside the walls of noobville, - I saw a marked improvement in the framerate. 'Ok' I thought, 'maybe the water around the ship was largely to blame for the poor framerate'. Though why designers would choose to make such a poor first impression - I don't know.
I took my first quest to fight a goblin. As I walk through the Isle of Refuge framerate seemed ok except for a few brief sputters. Then I step outside the walls to the goblin grounds and suddenly we're back to 2-4 FPS. Chug Chug Chug. It sort of got better after a few seconds. Don't think it ever approached 30 fps though.
I then turned off the 'bloom' in options and restarted the game. It still looked to have 'bloom' going on - textures looked blurry from afar - people look blurry. Maybe I need glasses. Framerates were still intollerable.
I then set the game to high-performance settings and restarted.
Then I went into this tower and took a quest which brought me into the basement of the tower - an 'instanced area' I believe. Nobody else around. A tiny room - with very little in it. Its dark. Blurry. Letterboxed. 10-15 FPS on average!!!
If the game looked like HL2 or FarCry and ran this bad I'd be somewhat understanding. You don't need great framerates to play a non FPS 3d game; mid to high teens will suffice - I know I endured it in Morrowind.
There aren't a lot of people on my server either.
Anyone else here playing this game on similar hardware as me? Anything special you did to make it run and look decent?
It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive. - Jawaharlal Nehru
Here is a screenshot with somewhat improved visuals - it just happens to be of a guy fighting a shark on land.
It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive. - Jawaharlal Nehru
well, looking at your screenshot I can tell that you still have some of the settings too high if you are having performance problems.
Even after you hit high performance, you can still change some individual setting sincluding water ones.
For me, the game is more important then the graphics being super pretty so i have alot of stuff turned down.
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There''s a good post about settings and performance on the EQ2 forums here is the link.
PSN ID: Stric9
Thanks Stric9 - thats a pretty helpful guide. I''ve now got the game running pretty decent - high 20''s generally. Doesn''t look as good as a lot of other games still - but definitely far more playable now.
It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive. - Jawaharlal Nehru
As far as the guy fighting a shark on land. EQ 2 has a locked combat system. If you start a fight and then try to run, the critter will try to chase you down for a bit. Most give up and some don''t. This guy tried to run out of the water to escape the shark and the shark followed.
Yea, it looks goofy, but if it didn''t happen, you''d have a bunch of people exploiting it.
Yeah if sharks did not follow on land we see nothing but mages lining the banks of water blasting away with no risk at all.
I had the same problems with EQ2 graphics and I have a slightly beefier computer than yours. I got rid of the blurry ''bloom'' effect you are talking by jacking the settings up but the game ran like a complete dog and I had to wratchet the settings back down. I was not impressed at all with the EQ2 engine.
Yeah if sharks did not follow on land we see nothing but mages lining the banks of water blasting away with no risk at all.
LOL!
It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive. - Jawaharlal Nehru
Why not disallow targetting stuff underwater unless your also underwater. As soon as you move out, your lock is lost. Or don''t have attackable creatures under water which aren''t able to come up on land also. Or just let the ranged attack capable ''toons attack away - leave the creature in the water - its just a noob zone. There are better solutions.
It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive. - Jawaharlal Nehru
I have a less powerful system than you, and in any area that gives me chop, i use the scroll wheel to move into first person mode, this usually adds about 5fps. Other than that the game is barely accetable to me and Feb (and new computer) can not get here soon enough.
Posting on the boards is easy. The trick is to kick someone's ass the first day, or become someone's bitch. Chiggie Von Richthofen on how to transition from lurker to poster.
I started playing the game with a amd2800 1 gig of ram and an ATI 9600 pro card so very similar set up. I went into performance tab of the settings and just selected high performance and the game ran basically fine for me and to me looked decent.
The ''10'' in the top right corner is the current frame-rate.
It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive. - Jawaharlal Nehru
I do not know what to tell you if you tried just using the pre determined setting by selectin high performance.
My PC was only a bit beefer than yours and ran at high performance setting well and I thought did not look too bad.
Do you run a lot of crap in the background that could be slowing your PC?
I am sure you done this but if not close down everything else you are running and see if it runs ok. Also maybe scan the tech support forum on the offical boards to see if anybody has posted similiar problems.
This is the arbitrary: do you have all of the updated video drivers (the ones recommended on SoE''s site) AND updated your DirectX (pretty sure SoE required that you do this on install anyway).
My system is actually worse than yours: AMD 1700+, 1 gb PC 2700, Geforce FX 5700U and it runs seamlessly on high performance default settings on my machine.
What kind of stuff are you running in the background with EQ2 up? If you are getting lousy framerates then that''s because EQ is probably having to do a lot of paging to Main Memory and your Hard Drive. When was the last time you defragged your hard drive? Is there something else sitting in memory that is taking a big chunk of your memory?
When I was running the client with only 512 mb of memory I think I got around 10 to 20 fps. Since your PC probably benchmarks around 50 to 60% faster than mine between video card and processor speed, I would suggest that this has something to do with your system configuration.
Aside.
A lot of people are complaining about EQ2''s graphics and I don''t think they realize that the engine wasn''t built for today''s computers. In fact, if you maximize the graphics settings, the game will tell you: ""there is no hardware to date that can run at these settings"" They did a very similar thing with the first EverQuest, and I think it''s a great move. Two or three years from now when other companies are investing time/money that could be put elsewhere into a new graphics engine, EQ2''s will still be top notch. I was playing on my brother''s computer last weekend, he has a pretty beefy system (Pentium IV, Couple gigs of ram, nice video card) and plays with the video settings just above normal. It''s pretty impressive when I''m running through antonica on my horse and with each step the grass parts, as I look behind I can see where I''ve run through the high grass as it is still slightly matted down.
The game''s pretty, most of our systems aren''t is the only problem.
Hi, I'm the new guy.
GO BENGALS.
Not sure what is recommended on SoE''s site, but I have the latest released drivers from ATI (v4.11).
HD defrags every night. Had a few things in the background - nothing significant except Firefox. I don''t run many taskbar apps.
I don''t really buy into this theory. There are too many better looking games running far smoother. Also, my experience has been that older 3d games which ran poorly to begin with, still run poorly (but with some improvement) a year later on better hardware. Where better games just get atonishingly smooth and responsive. Morrowind didn''t get much better going from my Athlon 1900/geforce 4200Ti to a barton 2500/ATI 9600 Pro - but other games significantly improved.
I began playing with other EQ2 settings. Lowering the geometry sliders seemed to make the biggest difference in increasing the framerate with no real noticible difference visually. The game now runs fairly steady in the high teens to low 20''s at 1280x1024. The higher resolution makes a big difference on the textures and overall image sharpness. Its now ''playable'' I guess. Not particularly enjoyable however.
Stunning water refelections. Wish I could turn those off - wonder how much performance I''d gain. The ''bloom'' effect seems gone now - which is nice. For a game ''tomorrow'' - where are the AA and AF options?
It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive. - Jawaharlal Nehru