Ugh... the Sound FX

[36 bald fat lives with parents]

I just ran through the entire arsenal. I cannot believe there is any valid reason why the sounds needed to be reduced to this. Even if the Quest 2 had some kind of audio limitations, why couldn't the previous sounds have been optimized? It is pretty close to unplayable like this, at least for me.

This more or less reduces the experience to a bugs bunny cartoon. Might as well play the sound of bowling pins falling when you shoot the bad guys too.

I don't like getting super critical of the devs or anything, but this is a f*ck up. There are way too many of us between steam and the discord channels that would have gladly consulted you on sounds for free. Why replace the entire sound library without hearing from people who practically live on the range?

While we're at it, what's with that giant white geometric block that replaced the muzzle flare? Quest can't handle a sprite with transparencies?

I love the game and all, and there are a lot of good things that came out in 2.0, but I don't think I can put any real time in Onward until these are fixed. They really are that bad.

[chefsaltyballs(69)]

is there not different audio options within the game for better sounds?

[36 bald fat lives with parents]

Originally posted by chefsaltyballs(69):

is there not different audio options within the game for better sounds?

I poked around but found nothing. I had wondered if anything would be different by actually starting a server and turning off cross play. I doubt it though.

[Gloom]

I just gave version 2.0 a try and completely agree with your sentiment. I can not overstate what a huge disappointment the audio overhaul is, it's baffling how anyone could even conceive this would be an improvement. I can only imagine they somehow lost the license to the previous audio library or it was too expensive to renew.

I must admit the map re-imagines look great and most of the other quality of life upgrades are excellent. I even feel, given some time, I could have looked past the ridiculous new character skins but the current audio is just unbearable.

I've been playing on and off for about 8 years now. The initial post 1.7 downgrade never bothered me to the same extent as many other users here, but 2.0 really seems to have killed it for me.

[Tenko]

Go play something else with better sound then! Huh...theres nothing under Mc Doesnt Exist...

[36 bald fat lives with parents]

Originally posted by Tenko:

Go play something else with better sound then! Huh...theres nothing under Mc Doesnt Exist...

STFU

[K77]

The new sound fx : "pat pat pat...pit pit pit" ! Onward is dead. Accept it !

[36 bald fat lives with parents]

Originally posted by K77:

The new sound fx : "pat pat pat...pit pit pit" ! Onward is dead. Accept it !

I dont think anyone's particularly denying that. I got 8 years out of it. I'm not disappointed in the overall experience. If they fix the sounds, then I will come back. Till then, I'm just going to do something else with my time.

[K77]

Originally posted by 36 bald fat lives with parents:

Originally posted by K77:

The new sound fx : "pat pat pat...pit pit pit" ! Onward is dead. Accept it !

I dont think anyone's particularly denying that. I got 8 years out of it. I'm not disappointed in the overall experience. If they fix the sounds, then I will come back. Till then, I'm just going to do something else with my time.

I think you'll agree with me that the quality of the game depends on the CPU and GPU performance of the Quest. Meta has optimized Onward for the Quest. Meta has never and will never optimize the game for the PC, we have to get away from that dream. And yes, the game will be better with the Quest 4, 5, 6....the more powerful the future Quest headsets will be, the better the game will be because the developers will have more leeway. But now comes the bad news: it will probably be another 5 or 6 years before the Quest 6 comes out, which could bring us back to 1.7 because of its processing power. So, have fun waiting!

[36 bald fat lives with parents]

Originally posted by K77:

I think you'll agree with me that the quality of the game depends on the CPU and GPU performance of the Quest. Meta has optimized Onward for the Quest. Meta has never and will never optimize the game for the PC, we have to get away from that dream. And yes, the game will be better with the Quest 4, 5, 6....the more powerful the future Quest headsets will be, the better the game will be because the developers will have more leeway. But now comes the bad news: it will probably be another 5 or 6 years before the Quest 6 comes out, which could bring us back to 1.7 because of its processing power. So, have fun waiting!

For sure, K. I was here the whole wrath of Q1 rollout and just sank my opinion of Meta with this ridiculous baseline and pretty much abandoning PCVR. But I knew Q1 would only be the baseline until they deprecate that, which Meta is fairly quick to do. It's all about the power of the lowest viable product. Currently that's Q2.

At this point I doubt there will be a Q4 for a while since attention shifted to AI. They didn't pull the plug yet, but Tenko and I are pretty much just waiting for them to drop that news so we can uselessly bicker about it. If Q4 ever comes out, then I bet they will cease support for Q2 and we just might see things come back. But honestly, do I trust them to do that? Nah. It's been so long since anyone could play 1.7 that I think they are just going to act like it never existed. We will probably never see a better version of Onward unless Meta decides to bank roll Onward 2. I'm not even confident about that much.

We'll see though. Either the VR landscape will come back into attention or Meta will decide 60+ Billion is too much to hemorrhage and announce game over. I have no problem waiting. I'm old. We don't care about time like them younglings do.

[K77]

Originally posted by 36 bald fat lives with parents:

Originally posted by K77:

I think you'll agree with me that the quality of the game depends on the CPU and GPU performance of the Quest. Meta has optimized Onward for the Quest. Meta has never and will never optimize the game for the PC, we have to get away from that dream. And yes, the game will be better with the Quest 4, 5, 6....the more powerful the future Quest headsets will be, the better the game will be because the developers will have more leeway. But now comes the bad news: it will probably be another 5 or 6 years before the Quest 6 comes out, which could bring us back to 1.7 because of its processing power. So, have fun waiting!

For sure, K. I was here the whole wrath of Q1 rollout and just sank my opinion of Meta with this ridiculous baseline and pretty much abandoning PCVR. But I knew Q1 would only be the baseline until they deprecate that, which Meta is fairly quick to do. It's all about the power of the lowest viable product. Currently that's Q2.

At this point I doubt there will be a Q4 for a while since attention shifted to AI. They didn't pull the plug yet, but Tenko and I are pretty much just waiting for them to drop that news so we can uselessly bicker about it. If Q4 ever comes out, then I bet they will cease support for Q2 and we just might see things come back. But honestly, do I trust them to do that? Nah. It's been so long since anyone could play 1.7 that I think they are just going to act like it never existed. We will probably never see a better version of Onward unless Meta decides to bank roll Onward 2. I'm not even confident about that much.

We'll see though. Either the VR landscape will come back into attention or Meta will decide 60+ Billion is too much to hemorrhage and announce game over. I have no problem waiting. I'm old. We don't care about time like them younglings do.

Onward and the other games aren't complex. The problem is that VR is a niche, and it's also very expensive. If that changes with the Valve Index 2, and we get enough power for little money with the next graphics card series (2026 RTX 6000), then nothing will stand in the way of VR. Game studios would then be happy to develop games for VR because it would be profitable. Believe me, that's how it will happen. VR is far too powerful! If you've ever put VR glasses on a kid and they've played Onward or something similar, after that Counter-Strike will seem like a board game to them.

Conclusion: Better VR headsets, faster graphics cards! VR should explode in 2030 with the RTX 8000 series. An RTX 8060 should then have at least the performance of an RTX 5090, which would be affordable for everyone.