Call of Duty: Vanguard - Change These Settings First For The Best Possible Experience

Call of Duty: Vanguard is pretty massive. Right out of the box, you have an expansive multiplayer mode, a story campaign, and the next iteration of Warzone, Call of Duty’s take on the battle royale genre. And there are unique settings for each and every facet of the game. For this article, we’re going to focus on two of the modes we’ve been getting the most mileage out of — Multiplayer and Zombies.

Before starting to play, you’ll absolutely want to go through your settings. Certain settings, like the new On-Demand Texture Streaming feature, can wreck your latency and you might not even know what this feature is, or why its downloading stuff while you’re trying to shoot bad guys. There are other features too — like the brand new Blind Fire tactic that you can permanently disable, or find new methods for mounting your weapon when creeping around corners. These are the settings we just had to change right away.

More Call of Duty: Vanguard guides:

Everything You Need To Know About Zombies | Der Anfang Map Guide

Turn OFF On-Demand Texture Streaming

For any version of the game on SSD, you’ll find this setting at the bottom of the Graphics tab. On-Demand Texture Streaming is a weird feature designed to lessen the load on your SSD by downloading high-quality textures to your hard disk while you play.

You can find optional installed content and DLC in the Account & Network tab in the Settings menu. From here, you can delete or reinstall content.

Select this option and toggle to OFF to stop it. This is completely unnecessary and only drains your bandwidth. If you’re planning to play this game a lot, just download the HD textures and turn this streaming feature off.

Weapon Mount Activation & Exit

NOTE: To change Weapon Mounting and other gameplay controls, select Controller / Keyboard & Mouse, then tab over to the Gameplay sub-tab.

Weapon Mounting returns from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Just like in that game, you can mount your weapon for very careful corner shots or when entering doors by pressing ADS+Melee. But, Vanguard includes an alternate method. Double-Tap ADS can also be used to activate Weapon Mounting. This is all personal preference, but I find this alternate method faster and easier to pull off in hectic combat.

You can also TURN OFF weapon mounting entirely from this selection.

Blind Fire

Blind Fire is another feature you might not even know exists. While hiding behind an object, your gun will raise up — indicating that you’re behind cover. Using ADS will pop you out of cover to shoot automatically.

In Vanguard, you can now blindfire. By taking cover, and shooting without using ADS, you’ll fire your gun blinding around cover without exposing your head. You can disable this feature in the Gameplay Controls menu, but I recommend leaving it on. This is just a behavior we’re trained not to do in every other Call of Duty game, so its easy to miss.

Automatic Tactical Sprint

Tactical Sprint returns in Vanguard, and now you can use Automatic Tactical Sprint — normally this setting is off. This puts your character into an automatic tactical sprint (a double-speed sprint) whenever you move forward. You’ll move around a lot faster, but you won’t be able to react as quickly if you’re caught mid-sprint.

This setting can be very useful for certain characters. You can sprint around knifing people from behind, or just escape a bad situation. As long as you’re crouched or prone, you will not automatically activate sprint. It will also not cancel reload animations or exit ADS.

Field of View

The Field of View slider allows you to change your in-game view in Multiplayer / Zombies, giving you a wider view of your surroundings. The game is set to default 80 FOV — but if you want to experiment, try pushing up to 100 FOV.

120 FOV is the limit, and what is used most often by twitch-happy shooter veterans. Just be aware that this may affect your FPS or cause graphical artifacts.

Turn OFF Motion Blur

In the settings find Motion Blur in the Graphics tab. Motion Blur may look realistic, but it just makes me feel sick after too much multiplayer. You can turn off both World Motion Blur and Weapon Motion Blur. These effects are great for the singleplayer story, but the less distracting effects, the better in Multiplayer / Zombies.

Turn OFF Crossplay If You’re On Console

Crossplay is useful for fast matchmaking — but this is Call of Duty we’re talking about. If you’re on console, there’s literally no reason to play with PC players. Find this setting in the Account & Network tab.