An Honest, Open Discussion about Onward on the Quest

[M1SF0RTUNE]

I wanna start this by saying I hope we can have a civil discussion in this board. I'd like to think we all love Onward very much enough to get mad for having the experience downgraded, and we all love VR and hope for a bright future. That said, I wanna preface this discussion with my setup and Onward experience:

I've owned an HTC Vive for about 3 years, and Onward was one of my first purchases alongside Pavlov. I poured over a hundred hours and plenty of sore legs playing the game, I fell in love with the community, design, and passion of one man trying to bring his dream game to life. The pace and feel of the game more than outweighed the simplistic graphics from the Early Access build I poured all that time into. I've played plenty of great PC experiences on my Vive (including arguably superior experiences like HL:A and Contractors to a degree), and it got me to love VR so much that I wanted to try other headsets like my dad's Oculus Rift, the PS VR, and yes, including my recently acquired Oculus Quest last Christmas. It's also safe to say that Onward is my personal favorite VR game of all time.

My personal opinion caters to wanting the best for VR in general; I want to see it grow as a platform, I want to see more high-end developers create big new experiences, and I want to see publishers fund those developers to make cool new things. The catch is that they need enough of a consumer base to at bare minimum make their money back for the expensive cost, and PC VR is still in a high barrier price of entry because not only do you need to drop over $1000 for a machine capable of running it, but another $400 for the VR headset itself at the minimum (unless you buy from a third party seller but that's beside the point).

I think if we all sincerely love VR enough, we want more people to try it out, buy their own headsets, buy these great games, and support the industry so that they can keep making more great experiences for everyone to love. And we're just starting to see something affordable like the Rift S... and of course... the topic of this thread: The Oculus Quest.

After owning a Quest I personally believe it's the future of VR right now. It's in an affordable price bracket to rival a dedicated gaming console like a PS4 or Xbox One, it requires next to no setup to play anywhere, has a solid library with plenty of cross-purchases between it and the Oculus Rift, and it can be used as a PC VR headset thanks to Oculus Link with only a few minor downgrades (I've played Half-Life Alyx 3 times, 1 run including a playthrough via the Oculus Quest and I found it just as good as the Vive experience in many ways).

Now let's discuss Onward. I genuinely believe Dante and his team saw this potential about the Quest, saw the possibility of introducing Onward to more players around the world, showing them how serious and multiplayer-capable a standalone headset can be, and wanted to connect the world through his dream game. I genuinely believe he also wants to grow his company and continue to make Onward better by getting it into the hands of more people. Remember, Downpour could've spent their time making the next great game, but they kept working to expand and improve Onward at no charge to the customers, no price increases, and with the kind of open transparency and feedback that AAA developers have long abandoned. Not to mention they even put the previous patch back in as a Beta to play while they work at getting the game in a better place. This isn't the first time this happened either, as the long and grueling process to get us to 1.7 was a great big series of updates, trials, and tribulations too. No AAA game companies do this. Remember Warcraft III Reforged?

That's not to say the patch couldn't have been better managed, or the community told in advance that this change was going to be happening but would only be temporary. There probably could've been a separate build for the Quest that may have required an entire rework that made cross-play impossible, but having an open door for VR fans to all play together was clearly important to Dante and Downpour, and I think that's the right move for bringing VR to a much better place in the long run.

So that's my two cents, but just to have a TL;DR:

I love VR, and I want more games. To get more games, we need VR adopters, and one of the easiest ways to enter VR is the Oculus Quest. More customers means more people to buy games, meaning more developers and publishers putting money in to create them (and make bigger, better ones). I think the Quest is the best all-round headset (as a Vive and PSVR owner), and I think Onward with cross-play compatability on the Quest isn't just good for the Quest itself, but for VR gaming on the whole. And while I think there was a mis-step in management for 1.8, the problems are not permanent and are not worth getting so furiously angry about. The files, graphics, maps, and everything else still exist in the Developers' hard drives and database, Dante put out a statement to let us know what's going on at Downpour and the state of the game, and they even offered a 1.7 rollback to play in the meantime.

That all said, I'd like to turn the buck over to you, Onward community. Why should or shouldn't we support the Quest, the Quest version of Onward, and if you like, what's your opinion on what grows VR as a medium? Let me know if you played the Quest version or own a Quest and what your thoughts are as well.

[pLayC]

been here since the oculus dk1 days playing small tech demos.... when oculus sold to facebook i was like ummm strange but ok.... then went all oculus founders with palmer luckey fired i lost all hope in facebook VR and well...enough said....heres your 2nd proof """OWARND""", will not suport lizards and his minions trying to monopolies the markit buying up everthing

[M1SF0RTUNE]

I found this discussion video shortly after my post that aptly supplements some of the stuff regarding 1.8 that I’m also talking about, and I invite you guys to give it a look: https://youtu.be/Qi1DTUmI--o

[AZ]

You make good points but I would like to offer some counter points. Half Life Alyx sold 680,000 copies according to google, at $50 that's $34million. That is a PCVR game, how did they do that? on brand name recognition. They got that recognition by continually releasing quality products, something Downpour did the complete opposite of. I would be extremely hesitant about any other offerings from this company, especially if it's a EA game. This company alienated their ENTIRE player base in the name of money (greed?) clearly it's about the money, not the passion to make a game.

Also many of those people bought an entire VR set up for that one game.

[M1SF0RTUNE]

AZ původně napsal:

You make good points but I would like to offer some counter points. Half Life Alyx sold 680,000 copies according to google, at $50 that's $34million. That is a PCVR game, how did they do that? on brand name recognition. They got that recognition by continually releasing quality products, something Downpour did the complete opposite of. I would be extremely hesitant about any other offerings from this company, especially if it's a EA game. This company alienated their ENTIRE player base in the name of money (greed?) clearly it's about the money, not the passion to make a game.

A fair counter argument, so let’s say this: HL:A had brand recognition, yes, but it also had a massive marketing budget, a massive tech budget, a huge, experienced team including in-house QA and bug testing, other game properties that are giving them revenue to put into the game, and plenty of design inspiration to draw from with other VR shooters including Onward. They also attached it to Index sales, which was a huge part of the marketing push. Finally, Steam is owned by Valve, so HL:A is first party and all the revenue goes back to them.

Downpour had none of that. It started with one guy that made an Early Access that caught on like wildfire, no experience, no money to start with, no marketing team, no established games to copy from, and with next to no other resources while still only getting a cut of the $25 price tag for selling on Oculus or Steam. Trying to compare the two is a woefully unfair comparison and expectation to put on a fledgling company on their first and only game.

Lastly, Dante loves his game, or he wouldn’t have gone so far out of his way to make it on his own and grow it. But he needs to pay bills, eat, drive, keep the electricity on to power his PC to develop the game and internet to ship the new builds out. All his money he makes to do that and keep supporting the game come from first time purchases and that’s it. One person buys his game, he might get to keep $20 at best from it and that’s his meal for the day. And sure that person can keep playing but until he finds a new customer, he doesn’t get any more meals to eat, and he has a staff he has to pay now.

Short of changing his revenue stream and expanding his staff exponentially, to keep the $25 one-and-done purchase model requires having to go to successful and accessible (not to mention attractive) platforms like the Quest just to survive.

[M1SF0RTUNE]

On a side note...

AZ původně napsal:

...They got that recognition by continually releasing quality products...

...That’s missing half the story too. They haven’t released a Half-Life game since 2007. Their last major game before DOTA 2 (which wasn’t originally their franchise) was Portal 2 in 2011. Since then they were floating on TF2, CS:GO and DOTA 2 microtransactions on top of cuts they take from every game sold on Steam. Remember Artifact? That flopped incredibly hard, and they brought in the guy who designed Magic: The Gathering to help make it. That’s to say nothing of the dead support for L4D and Portal 2.

Half-Life and Portal are their only original IP’s they didn’t hire or acquire from somebody else, and even Portal was based off a college project (Narbacular Drop) and the students who made it were hired to make Portal.

That was a tangent I know, but the point is they had a starved HL fan base, many of them are pissed Alyx is VR only, and they’ve had a slow to nonexistent track record of releasing in-house games.

[AZ]

alright, I admit, the Half Life comparison was a rushed apples to oranges type thing. I think where I was going with that was if Downpour continually updated and made the PCVR version better, they could have had a better "brand recognition". But as it was, since I've owned Onward, the updates have been few and lackluster. A comment was made here about bringing in new players, continually updating the game is one way IMO.

[M1SF0RTUNE]

AZ původně napsal:

alright, I admit, the Half Life comparison was a rushed apples to oranges type thing. I think where I was going with that was if Downpour continually updated and made the PCVR version better, they could have had a better "brand recognition". But as it was, since I've owned Onward, the updates have been few and lackluster. A comment was made here about bringing in new players, continually updating the game is one way IMO.

Fair enough, and plenty of updates can spur new customers to come play that buy the headset, but it’s still a challenge making updates when PCVR adopters aren’t coming in anywhere near as quick as a platform like the Quest. It wouldn’t surprise me if before 1.8, Onward was only selling 2-3 copies a week. Plus they have to compete with Pavlov and Contractors to stay relevant.

Point is though, we the current fans aren’t doing anything else to pay for his living, any licensing fees with Unity, or expand his staff other than spread word of mouth and hope somebody drops $1500+ for a good VR-ready PC and at minimum an Oculus Rift S, so it’s a limited team at his disposal and he’s putting out large, significant releases if they ultimately benefit the game in some form or another. Nobody likes working their asses off on a big new update just for no new sales to come in and starve because of it.

If he changed his pricing model so that his current players could support him with little development cost, that could have a positive change to his update schedule but that’s a tough bullet to bite.

One other thing to note is that while I agree he could’ve come out ahead of time to talk about the under-the-hood changes in detail to give us some warning what was happening, I feel he’s doing what’s best for the game’s health, sustainability, and development pipeline in the long run even if we’re not seeing that at all right now in the short term.

One universal version of the game and maps is more manageable and economical than two completely separate, isolated versions to tweak and balance individually and optimize content for independently. Huge companies like Blizzard or Ubisoft have money and staff to be able to develop for those different platforms, but Dante and Downpour don’t.

[Emily Howard]

But take a look at Blizzard. In the long run you need both: quality and money. Blizzard was once a company that made games you absolutely knew you could blindly buy and have a lot of fun with them as long as you don't dislike the genre. The negative climax of Blizzard was when they announced Diablo as a mobile game after so many years without a noticable sign of life from Diablo. When they finally announced Diablo 4, people aren't that excited anymore, especially not after seeing what it's planned for the game. It probably won't be a bad game per se but money decisions (not to forget Blizzard is part of Vivendi which became part of Activision, who are (in)famous for thousands of Call of Dutys every single year) led to a downfall of one of the most popular developers (bosses refused the development of a second D3 addon because they assumed it wouldn't be profitable enough). WoW also lost a lot of popularity. The base game and the first few expansions were a total success but with later expansions and updates, the quality couldn't be kept.

Coming back to Onward we had a great game so far. Surely, it has room for improvements but when VR newcomers asked what games are worth buying, Onward was always on the list. So at least as long as people join VR, there would be people who can buy Onward. I can only assume, but Downpour must need a lot on money to internally justify the opinion to massively reduce the overall quality of Onward to appease Oculus. And in the end it is "easier" to become a traitor to the playerbase than to be unable to release the game no matter what to fulfill a contract with a company: even though the bought product isn't the product anymore that has been (and even still IS being) advertised in a very negative way, we cannot refund the game, already knowing that even with the promised improvements we won't get the same quality again. This is what people say at other developers: they don't care because they already have our money. We can consider us lucky that Pavlov didn't went the same path (so far).
One group of players weren't mentioned so far in the last days: the competitive scene or eSport in general. There are already people who stop playing Onward because the new circumstances made it impossible to keep playing because so many aspects have been downgraded that it doesn't make sense anymore to keep playing Onward. When I look at the changes in Suburbia alone, I can understand why they think so.

I personally hope, the Quest won't be the future of VR gaming. That would mean, VR loses its potential. The future of VR gaming would dependent on one company that decides, when VR is being allowed to be one step closer to the holo deck we probably dream of. And we start with smartphone specs. We know we don't need 1060s and better cards to be able to use VR but most people don't have the 90s in mind, playing VR with horrible graphics that could be worth of a Playstation 2.

Downpour shows three things: becoming dependent on a company like Oculus can be dangerous to us all, never being sure to see games being crippled. Secondly, from the idea that we will see enhancements as time goes on with better games and better VR headsets, we need to prepare that progress will be slowed down or halted as long as possible to milk every coin out of the customer. Thirdly, competitive games where Oculus set a foot in, won't look great when these games should be crossplay.

I'm worried that this incident won't be just a single case but the first one in a dangerous development in VR, especially because only the former customers are the only losers here. Downpour has new fans on the Quest (maybe even more than before), sold a lot of new copies and got money from Oculus, Oculus got a great new dev team, money and satisfied customers and customers a great new game.

[Revelene]

I just recently got back into VR and was absolutely disappointed at the state of this game. I honestly thought there was something wrong with my new Index.

I tried playing version 1.7 but no one is playing. :(

This new Onward will basically be dead to me, unless they fix everything they messed up in the next update.

[Awesome!]

I absolutely agree with this! That's why I think that every game on console and PC should also be reduced to mobile style graphics and gameplay so that crossplay can be enabled across all platforms. Rainbow Six, COD, BF, The Hunt, etc, every game needs to be crossplay with the largest gaming platform in the world: mobile gaming! It's the future and we really don't need fancy graphics beyond Roblox or advanced gameplay. In fact, we should toss out our PCs and consoles for mobile devices exclusively since that's where the biggest audience is already.


/s

[RiftDude]

Awesome! původně napsal:

I absolutely agree with this! That's why I think that every game on console and PC should also be reduced to mobile style graphics and gameplay so that crossplay can be enabled across all platforms. Rainbow Six, COD, BF, The Hunt, etc, every game needs to be crossplay with the largest gaming platform in the world: mobile gaming! It's the future and we really don't need fancy graphics beyond Roblox or advanced gameplay. In fact, we should toss out our PCs and consoles for mobile devices exclusively since that's where the biggest audience is already.


/s

Amen brother , send this to all heretics who defend 1.8 .
This is what they fight for .

[M1SF0RTUNE]

I appreciate your write-up Emily, so here’s my counter point.

Remember No Man’s Sky? That was a game that had so much hype and misleading marketing only to come out as a shoddy product, completely missing features, horrible presentation, no multiplayer, and numerous other faults. Instead of abandoning the game and moving on after having taken so much money from the get go, they stuck with the game and improved it to make it close if not better than the original vision in many ways.

How about Final Fantasy 14? That game shipped to horrendous reviews; horrible and outdated game design choices, shoddy technical stability, copy-pasted level design, and so much more. It not only completely retooled and revamped itself but it came back stronger than ever and is absolutely killing WoW right now because they took a tremendous risk to reboot a failed game. This was even after they set an initial technical limit on themselves with releasing a PS3 version while it was at the end of their lifespan, not because the market was rife for it but because fulfilling the initial promise of a PS3 version was important to them.

Finally let’s look at Beat Saber. It was a humble little Indie game originally sold for about $10, but grew in popularity very quickly. Did people react harshly when Facebook bought them out? Yep, but now it’s got a lot more songs, features, and continues to support mods in spite of the naysaying. Did it also jump to the Quest with downgraded visuals and even some audio quality? You can bet that it did, but yet it’s still the same experience to play that it was from the outset and now it can be played anywhere. You can even still put custom songs in the Quest version too! Should we be lambasting them too for putting it on the Quest? What about other first party Oculus games like Robo Recall or Dead & Buried II? Or third parties like Moss, I Expect You To Die or Phantom: Covert Ops? What about the work-in-progress versions of Pavlov and Contractors for the Quest? Should we tell them to stop making Quest ports and tell their companies to stop making money from it too? They have worse graphics and compressed audio, so surely they deserve to be treated harshly too, right?

Now I acknowledge the situation is also different since this case involves changing the main game to line it up with the Quest version. I also recognize this is a multiplayer game and not just a singleplayer game like some of the examples I listed, which requires extra consideration of factors like balancing and the content of a playerbase. As I stated before, they should’ve told us beforehand what they were doing and given the community a chance to react. That could’ve been handled miles better, of course.

That being said, we’re getting overwhelmingly angry over visuals and audio. The core game still plays the same from the weapon handling to the design of the levels. This isn’t an impossible fix either, you guys. They still have the textures and assets, they still have the weapon sounds, they still have the old code, and they still have the same team that brought us 1.7. These can be added back in now that the engine has been updated, and can be made in a way not just to scale to the Quest, but lower-end VR-ready PC’s as well. Optimization is important too in the technical department.

So yeah, if full-blown AAA games like NMS and FF14 can make huge, successful comebacks, and if Onward can go through hurdles of patches that didn’t work as intended while still offering rollbacks until they get them in a better spot and still come out swinging, I have every reason to believe they’ll get Onward back on track. If you don’t trust their desire to explore a new platform and market, then trust their desire to get new customers to make money by restoring the game to do so.

[M1SF0RTUNE]

Awesome! původně napsal:

I absolutely agree with this! That's why I think that every game on console and PC should also be reduced to mobile style graphics and gameplay so that crossplay can be enabled across all platforms. Rainbow Six, COD, BF, The Hunt, etc, every game needs to be crossplay with the largest gaming platform in the world: mobile gaming! It's the future and we really don't need fancy graphics beyond Roblox or advanced gameplay. In fact, we should toss out our PCs and consoles for mobile devices exclusively since that's where the biggest audience is already.


/s

As much as I’m not into the sarcasm, I’m glad you brought that up. Star Trek Bridge Crew. Yeah, anybody remember that? It’s a multiplayer game with cross-play to not just the PC VR, but also the PS4 AND the Quest, yet nobody’s having Ubisoft’s head over it. Why is that? And the PC version still looks like the original presentation too. Weird, isn’t it? =P

How about VR Chat? It’s a stupidly popular chat program but they made a Quest version too and it plays with existing PC VR. Not to mention Rec Room and Bigscreen do too. (Heck, you can even play Rec Room on your phone without any kind of VR too). Should we torch them too in the process?

[Kyrii]

VR was always about creating and relishing experiences with your friends. This update honestly, not so much the update itself as much as the backlash is what makes it so heart breaking.

[M1SF0RTUNE]

Kyrii původně napsal:

VR was always about creating and relishing experiences with your friends. This update honestly, not so much the update itself as much as the backlash is what makes it so heart breaking.

I agree wholeheartedly. Onward was a really welcoming and friendly community, so it saddens me to see it get this spiteful, or even entitled or elitist in some cases.