Shroud: Highguard’s gameplay is strong but technical issues are holding it back

Former CS:GO pro-turned-streamer Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek said Highguard’s "vision is there" but the fantasy FPS is being hampered by poor performance, after playing the new Wildlight Entertainment shooter on stream, a clip spotted by Jake Lucky on Twitter. The game debuted to 97,000 players on Steam after closing out The Game Awards last year.

"The vision is there, the FPS is not," Shroud said during the stream, adding that "the game's gameplay is really good, it's just poor performance. That's the only thing that I would say is a little rough."

The article notes that live-service launches often face server and optimization issues when large numbers of players arrive at once. It adds that these types of problems can, and likely will, be ironed out in the coming weeks and months as developers find and address niggling issues in patches.

Wildlight has outlined a post-launch strategy intended to counteract the manufactured FOMO common in live-service titles, promising new episodes and additional features every two months, with each episode split into two parts. The team says they are "building a game that people want to come back to."

As Highguard continues to draw online criticism, it remains unclear whether the planned patches and the episodic roadmap will be enough to resolve the performance problems Shroud and other players have highlighted.

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