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Highguard's first big patch is here, and it seems to be geared mostly toward improving performance, a smart move considering that's one of the biggest pain points that's emerged since the controversial shooter's launch earlier this week.
Following a puzzling debut trailer at The Game Awards 2025 that really struggled to distinguish Highguard from the pile of dead live-service shooters rotting behind the curtains - not to mention warrant its position as the show's big closer - Wildlight's fairly generic-looking hero shooter launched this week to, you guessed it, pretty bad reviews and lackluster player counts. Naturally, folks have all sorts of gripes for different reasons, but one prevailing criticism - even from people enjoying the game generally - is that Highguard just doesn't run very well. And it seems Wildlight wasn't kidding when it said it was "listening to feedback," as the game's first patch is here and largely performance-shaped.
Per the official patch notes for Highguard version 1.0.4 and an accompanying press release, there's an expanse of new togglable graphics and video settings that should give you "better performance control." Specifically, Anisotropic Materials, Chromatic Aberration, and Bloom can now be toggled on and off as you see fit to optimize performance. There are also new DLSS presets and you can now opt to toggle off Global Illumination entirely. Wildlight says it's working on a way to allow for Motion Blur and Depth of Field to be disabled "safely," but that needs more testing.
Meanwhile, Wildlight says various bugs have been fixed, including one that "throttled laptop users to 60 FPS regardless of frame rate settings," and another that was preventing friends from seeing each other online. Overall, Wildlight assures "major crash fixes have reduced crashes by 90%, significantly improving stability" overall.
I'm hesitant to share my experience as it's completely anecdotal, but I became curious enough researching this story that I wanted to find out firsthand what all the fuss, positive and negative, was about. Purposefully putting Highguard through the wringer on my ancient RX 580 desktop instead of my newer, more powerful laptop, I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly it ran even with some settings juiced up beyond their defaults. As for the actual gameplay, I'll need a little more time to decide if Highguard deserves its "mostly negative" Steam rating, but after today's patch, my impressions are that it's actually very well-optimized.
I love Highguard's 2Fort-style sieges – when they actually happen
