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@@BenBart30 Zero Caliber needs better gameplay. Also a weird glitch I had: I got my rank reset for some reason, and now I cant buy guns/edit my loadout for campaign.
@Wolf In a suit the reason why I said zero caliber is because how the graphics looked beautiful and amazing to now ultra graphics looks like you are playing on the quest 2 and now things like your hands also look horrible plus how long the update took to add this and it still sucks
This kinda thing upsets me about modern games. One update can kill it and send it to a point of no redemption. Sure, major updates can help a game with longevity, fixing issues and improving things in general, but when it kills a game like this it's just sad, especially if it was a regular visit with a dedicated team of friends
@@Limes_not_Lemons One update didn't kill it, though. The game was practically dead before hovering around 100 average concurrent players. Now there are thousands of players through cross-platform. Saying it's dead is pretty funny, when it's doing much better than it was before this update.
I really appreciate more attention given to this, being someone that used to play this game 24/7 and in competitive leagues. The devs of this game are absolutely terrible and please don't forget how they removed dual wielding because its not "tactically viable", if something's not tactically viable and im trying to win I won't use it. i absolutely hate when devs take out sandbox elements because they want a game to be played one way and one way only
dual weilding in onward would have been useless anyway as it has pretty good gun mechanics and the recoil would render it pointless. but i agree, it sucks to remove options. its a mil sim. irl if you want to pick up two guns you can (assuming they are not too heavy to lift) so in a mil sim you should be able to as well. even if as i say its not very useful.
@@socks2441 They really did that even though it has caused more issues like your gun just falling to the floor because you tried to pick up a grenade off the ground but accidentally picked up a gun because they can't program it to pick the closest object instead of just random ones within a range
I def recognize ur name, fr the devs were and are absolutely terrible when this update hit I thought how dumb could Dante be, but he managed to be that dumb.
because mobile gaming makes more than console and pc gaming combined, It was a good business move. there will always be fps games being made for PC that will be as good as this if not better, especially with A.I on the way and how easy it will be to build games.
@@puppetmurder Yeah because zuck has taken over the mobile vr space with basically a monopoly and the gov has let them do it... because who needs laws against monopolies when the guy gives you money for your political campaign right?
@@lolmao500 Tell me you know nothing about the VR industry with out telling me you know nothing about the VR industry lol. you know Metaverse by facebook isnt the only "Metaverse" right? you know there is so much vr coming to mobile THAT ISNT META facebook next year? right? You do know how many headsets are being made by mobile companies that aren't apart of meta or facebook yea? Did you forget about apple? they're way bigger than facebook/meta and they have their headset coming out next year too, so yes smart business move by these guys to dumb it down so they can reach more of the audiences.
Which i dont get. Why not cut down geometry and textures but leave the maps the same? They went too far with the parity, having the PC and Quest versions look completely different would be fine, but someone made different decision.
@@googleslocik PC and console gaming days are limited, IF it were your company and you were about to be paid big, pretty sure you would make the same decision, and heck now they may make another game just for PC, you never know the full story ;)
I remember when they first changed from v1.7 to v.18. I tried to get a refund through steam, as it was not what i paid for. So many things here were so frustrating. I loved the whole fact you could down enemies, yes, in ragdoll which IS a big deal as it adds immersion, but the fact you could loot the enemies and take their guns, ammo and grenades. All this was gone. Such a shame.
I did too. The fact steam didnt see that for what it was, a bait and switch scam no matter how you view it, and allowed us to refund really tainted my view on steams refund policy and how they enforce it. Shit like that should be a 100% exception. Including the fact at the time of the update, all screenshots and promo videos on the steam page were false advertisements. Just a lil treat there.
I bought the game before the 1.7 update while my VR headset was being shipped to me. When the headset arrived and I finally tried the game, they had already ruined the game w the 1.8 update. I tried getting a refund, as it was no longer the game I had paid for. Despite having a zero playtime, I was unable to refund the game as the two week refund period had passed. Steams refund policy seriously needs to have exceptions for weird situations like this
What was even wilder than just the change from 1.7 to 1.8 was that they had JUST upgraded the textures and added extra foliage on maps then took it all out to make it work for quest.
@Rin And.. Steam is supposed to know if game devs are gonna do something shitty behind closed doors..? They're humans. Valve devs can't see everything that is going to happen, unless it is fully obvious.
THANK YOU!! fiiiiinally!! somebody's actually talking about this! this used to be a fucking gold standard esport. look at what they've done. we've abandoned this game completely since they fucked this game up. it was HEARTBREAKING. this was the closest thing to the wet dream of arma in vr. this game was absolutely unbelievable like omfg the fucking quality ai and everything. it's painful remembering how incredible this game used to be.
@Epsilon But if its a game you're passionate about and paid money for you have the right to be pissed. just because you don't care doesn't mean others don't have to.
What Meta did to Onward is a microcosm and symbolic of what Meta has done to the VR industry as a whole. They've repeated this same pattern everywhere. They only care about increasing user count and seemingly couldn't care less about whether games are actually any fun. And then Meta wonders why it has so little user retention.
This game along with the Valve Index (got mine in wave one) is THE reason I got into VR. Within a few months I had over 200 hours played in it. After the quest version came out... I'm up to 280 hours played currently... Not sure what the math exactly works out to with the release of the quest version but... Definitely a STEEP decline.
Don't comment very often but you hit the nail here. Really upset at how they downgraded the game... A shame since I used to have fun doing coop against AI. Onward had a solid foundation to become the ARMA of VR and it was thrown away...
@@yupyup2347 So why even say that all old people do what he's saying, if you don't even know if he's old? I've said the same thing numerous times and I'm not even much into my 20s.
Except Superhot and I Expect You to Die. Those 2 games are god damn amazing as standalone. I've only had my quest 2 for a week but all other standalone games have disappointed me so far. Once I run through the rest and move to the PC VR I'll know for sure though
Man, now this is an old story, but still a worthy topic. I really hope the trend of "Questifying" games ends quickly. It always makes me chuckle when Quest 2 users always boast about how much higher resolutions their screen is, and the wireless features. But none of that matters when the game looks and runs like crap ;p
@@skelo9033 the games themselves aren't wireless? are you slow? the point is that the downgrade ruined the game for everyone else who was enjoying else. could've done it like pavlov and had two separate versions, but nope.
There's 20 million Quest users and also other companies like HTC/Pico investing in standalone headsets. It's not exactly Questifying anymore but more like catering to the mobile platform in general.
This was easily my most played VR game since it came out ... up until the quest downgrade. I've gone back ot it every now and again since but always uninstalled very quickly. So heartbreaking to see such a great game get nerfed so hard. I am still curious to see what they do with Onward 2, if the Quest 3 is going to be as big an upgrade as it's been touted to be.
it's been so long and it's still so damn heartbreaking cause this game was just absolutely magical. it was so much of so many thing we'd dreamed of for the vr market and they just burned it all to ashes.
@@Yuki-rh1ie The fact the the latest BIG update for onward has negative likes on steam is still testament to how burned people still are by it. In all this and with all the updates, the game still can;t compare to it at it's prime on PC.
the quest 3 is still not a pc. not an rtx 2070 or 3080 or 4090 it wont make much difference for the pc version. it will still suck because it will still be a quest port. and even though they just dropped quest 1 support for onward i am willing to be onward 2 will still have to support quest 2 for a few years even if its a quest 3 launch title. they need the playerbase. so onward 2 will have the exact same limitations as onward 1.
I think the Quest 3 will still fall massively short of even mid-range PC VR. I expect we STILL won't even get proper shadows on the characters in most Quest 3 games.
Don't you blame us. I bought a Quest 2 and I LOVE IT. Not our fault Meta and the game developers don't give a shit. Onward is NOT the only game this has happened to. The entire industry as a whole is bad.
Honestly the excuse to lower the graphics on PC was just a moronic decision entirely. They don't dumb down the PC version of CoD to match the console version of the game, they just lower the graphics quality on the consoles and let PC's max it out because they can handle it. Really should've just been the same with the Oculus version, have the graphics lowered on that specifically to be playable on that, and let PC keep the graphics settings they have.
@@Cazanu417 it's so behind that maybe adding some fucking bushes could make it run worse, so then they would have to remove bushes in pc too because its a disadvantage for pc
@@Cazanu417i agree with the original comment, but not yours. Its not sad if you consider that thanks to it, quest 2 was the first broadly adopted vr headset, because of the lower price tag. Sacrificed visuals for mass use, and in the early days of VR that we live in, massification counts way more than cutting edge tech.
11:15 agree on all other points. but i get to differ here. the ragdoll was still infinitely better than even the new fixed animations which look like cartoon characters imitating action movies when they die.
Old abandoned was my favorite map in the game because it was so big. And with the old COOP system where the bot would patrol the map. It was very fun to play. Especially at night where they would be running flashlights and you would see them an another mountain range with the flashlights and you would have a long range engagement. Literally the most fun I had in this game. But now I can never play it with my friends again since they removed 1.7.
This channel is my go to VR channel. I used to watch ThrillSeeker, but he's more of a Meta and VR chat guy at this point. Meta really ruins everything they touch.
you mean selloutseeker, but yea totally agree with you! I used to follow him too till he sold out! Virtual Insider has a good name, good attitude, is a humble guy (saw his video where he was stuck and didnt know what to do with youtube but hes on fire now!)
This game was so tight, it was filled with lots of people with real team work spirit. I could not count how many times complete strangers came to my rescue during an intense firefight, it really showed what VR could achieve. Then came the change, the graphics I don't mind, but the god awful AI completely ruined the game. Before it was an accomplishment to work together to kill 4 squads of tangos, especially if they have a heavy. Now it is a mindless gun fight, make some sounds and they will run to your gun barrel. I remember in a game hearing some kids bragging how many tangos he killed, that is when I decided this was not the game I played before and I have not played this game since. I do hope the developer will continue to iterate and develop it, but I doubt I will go back to it.
This is so sad. I got a vive during my first two years of college while I was living at home. Haven’t had time to come back to this game and now it looks like it’ll never be what I remember. I will however always give the original devs major credit for making one of the first real VR shooters and paving the way for others to come and succeed
You cant do that anymore, not officially. I had to roll back to the old version using the steam console and not sure if multiplayer works doing it that way.
The small details in the map and on the guns REALLY add to the atmosphere and immersion. It also makes the game look and feel more polished and professional. It sucks most of that has been completely jeopardized.
Meta have ruined the trajectory VR gaming had when we all bought into the ecosystem, and they don't care. They will muscle us all out of our hobby trying to funnel users into their pet product that literally nobody wants or asked for. We will never have good AI and physics in VR gaming now.
"We will never have good Ai and physics in VR gaming now." Do you truly believe that, that in 2123 we'll still be suffering the consequences of meta vr?
I don't exactly see it as the Quest creating the problem, it's more a problem with the way they handled the Quest version, you could have definitely made a single codebase version of Onward and still have the PC quality you wanted. 1.8 was when they started optimization but didn't tune the PC build to use PC specific assets or texture resolutions, and they more went for a middle ground that was definitely poorly done on both ends, it looks like basically its using the highest LODs of overly optimized and simplified models. (PC 1.8 could do something like a LOD0 before popping into LOD 1-3 at Quest LOD levels, Quest could only do LOD1-3) While not even using their PC specific materials or texture resolutions.
This game was the reason I bought VR in the first place. I remember playing when 1.8 was released (having no idea this was coming) and was just shocked at how shit it was all of a sudden. NPC spawns were awful, you couldn't loot enemy weapons anymore, certain maps also ran WORSE somehow than when you were on the 1.7 version, among other things. It's hugely upsetting to see what they did to this game. It will hold a special place in my heart, but I generally don't really give it much time anymore. There's other games that are more deserving of my time now.
i dont get why they didnt just make it so PCVR can re-enable the old version stuff and keep playing with quest 2 players, but keep the option to downgrad if they want a "fair fight"
Same reason people complain about console exclusives being ported to PC. They know full well that PC version will look a lot better, have mods coming out for it, likely get some PC specific changes and so on. It makes Sony for example, look bad. "Why can it look so good on a PC but look like dogshit on my playstation? I paid the same for it!" As people just do not understand hardware limitations very well
@@MonsterJuiced this is differentm the game was released first on pc but then ported to quest, so this is like stealing away the good graphics from PC players just so meta dont lose face
Because the Devs are bad, just look up Into the Radius VR, the PC version and Quest just differ in graphics but with the same content, it has nothing to do about looking bad in one of the plataforms
I bought this game about a month before the Quest update. It was so cool, I was on summer break and must have put the equivalent of a full work week into Onward. The Pvp was awesome and competitive, the pve community was cooperative and friendly. One month later the game updates and all of that was lost. It was so disappointing that I stopped playing.
1.7 was fucking AMAZING. I remember ducking in fear from the sound of rounds flying overhead. It was the most immersive vr game I could play at the time and the fact that it's gone genuinely saddens me.
I just can't believe they did this. Imagine playing MW2 one day, and the next day, Activision replaces the whole game with a port of COD: Mobile. This is literally what they did.
You could even see the actual bullets in some magazines which was useful as there's no hud. Population One also used to look like a next-gen game before they focused on Quest. Is there any way to go back to 1.7 after they disabled it?
meta is the tragedy of VR,cheap subsidised and more improtantly extremely weak phones pretending to be a gaming console in exchange for your data,it killed vr games as a whole,hopefully PSVR2 and PCVR might grow both together to have some of the pre quest games back.
I wouldn't be too harsh on the Quest 2. It introduced a lot of people to playing PCVR like me via the Quest 2 headset, including playing Onward 1.7 as the game was meant to be. Sure, they could have done a better job porting from PC to Quest 2. It was a horrendous job. Version 1.8 broke all kinds of stuff and now that's it 2023, they still haven't fixed the leg animations. I'd blame it more on Downpour Interactive overall, making promises on each SITREP announcements and failing each time with useless updates.
@Armis71 That would be great except for the fact that Quest users only have a 10% retention rate. That means 90% of the people that bought a Quest 2 don't actually use it anymore. I'm not even exaggerating.
I use my Q2 exclusively as a PCVR headset, which is a better experience than most dedicated PCVR headsets. Even the Index can't connect wirelessly to a PC without a $500 dollar attachment, which itself is more than an a Q2. I'll readily concede that Meta is horrible about user privacy and data collection, but the Q2 is a fantastic headset for people with PC's who don't want to spend too much more to get into PCVR. Wireless PCVR is simply too good to be true.
highly highly highly recommend tactical assault vr its coming to pcvr at the end of march and looks absolutely fantastic the dev is constantly listening to the community and implementing updates
I’ve always played Onward on quest and I’ve never seen the other versions. But I didn’t expect this, the game on 1.7 is soooooooo much better than it is on quest. The Details, Graphics, Shading, lighting, and guns are so much better on 1.7. But unfortunately, I can’t play on 1.7 because I don’t have a PC
When this update came out I remember people being so divided but it was genuinely sad to see a game fall from such heights and kill their entire game with a single update, and made such small efforts to bring it back. Even though you figure having version parity wouldn't be hard it both games were being built side by side but I guess the effort in making a good high quality product was just too much for them.
best part is, since i started playing (two years ago), you can literally observe decreasing amount of lobbies in this game. from 2 or 3 pages of uplink servers alone, we have 2 or 3 pages in general
The biggest thing for me was the gun shot sounds. The game has a setting you can change from "normal" to "realistic" and it makes the gun shots far louder than any other sound in the game. It adds a lot of intensity. Firing a gun in this game gave you that oh shit feeling like firing a gun in real life. Loud as fuck. How loud it was depends on what bullet is being fired. 9mm weapons were not as loud as a 5.56mm. The audio compounds, the more guns that are being fired the louder it gets. In 1.8 the gun shot audio was not just heavily compressed and terrible sounding, it was also far too quiet. It didn't feel like I was getting shot at anymore. The fear of getting shot was entirely gone and it started to feel more like playing call of duty or just any other shooter. At that point I felt like the game lost lost its identity. The uniquely terrifying experience you got playing this game was all but gone.
@@themarauder8006 the game had very few players. after the quest update yeah it had lots more, but look at it now, it's getting to a similar state and now even worse because they gave up basically their entire pcvr playerbase
I never knew they did this, I thought I was going crazy when I loaded up the game again almost a year later after I stopped playing VR games and noticed the game looked different
This is why Facebook is ruining the VR scene. Downgrading limiting innovation for the sake of making it run on their mobile devices. Truly a shame any games that fall to the money bags Meta.
Limitations often breed creativity and innovation. Look at most indie games that have less resources, but are still better then literally any AAA game. Edit:the games by From Software are one of the Few Exceptions, but the vast majority of are casualized shit.
@@josephkeen7224 And your point is? did you even watch the video? there's no innovation here just downgrades, what you're saying doesn't apply to this at all, you're honestly trying to defend the indefensible here. Indie games have less resources monetarily not technologically speaking, since today you have engines like Unreal, Unity, Source etc that you can use for cheap or even free, that stuff that you said only applied to games in the 90s and early 2000s, not today, if we have amazing technology to make incredible games, is stupid not to use it, or downgrade it for the sake of a crappy mobile chip, if what you said was true then most mobile games would be masterpieces lol.
You should make more documentary style videos about vr games, maybe how zenith was a major cash grab, theyve got like 10 million in their pockets, yet NEVER has had a actual big update since launch, level cap is still at 40, they added more dungeons and thats about it
I'm glad someone finally talks about this... I've never seen such a sad example of Devs killing their own game, other than literally shutting it down. The worst part about all of this, 1.7 is no longer available to be played. When 1.8+ dropped, you could still roll back to 1.7, the GOOD Onward. In late October they removed it because of their Backend being updated. Right... Sad because this game scratched a specific itch that I still come back to maybe once every few months. Just have to wait for Tactical Assault VR or Geronimo VR, and hope those Devs have brains larger than Onwards'. Though that shouldn't be too hard.
As a VRChat world maker who focuses on PC/Quest parity, this angers me. It's not that hard to change minute visuals without destroying the PC version. If they're using Unity, there are even tools made to automatically handle making all of these changes for them when switching build targets. My best guess is it only got this messed up because of Meta's performance guidelines.
@@CheeseburgerStreaming yeah bonelab was a hype train tbh... Still a lot of fun and especially now that the fusion multiplayer mod is out bonelab really feels like Gmod VR
after the release of bonelab and the detail that they pulled off on the quest version, i hope that shows downpour that quests arent as weak as they think.
The enemy models definitely aren’t as nice as Boneworks but it’s still really impressive for the hardware. I never noticed any slowdowns at all and it still looked great on the Quest.
I'm on a really heavy budget, so Quest 2 is pretty much my only option besides slowly building myself a rig and geting a PCVR set up. Sad to see this game go down like this, it shows so much promise.
@@virtualinsider no question about that, it was a lazy attempt to get parity quickly, and now they have to fix it, but I think they couldn’t delay the quest release to get it done the right way
well sure as hell is dead now,the bots were also FAR FAR more of a challenge compared to the average quest 2 standalone user wich is below the age of 8,the bots also didnt squeak n words.
Unlike a lot of other people I started on the quest and then got it on PC and went back to this older version and it's just objectively a better version and truly wish it never got changed in the first place.
It's very sad to see stuff like this happening to VR games. The exact same thing happened to BONELAB and it's very clear that the game was majorly downgraded just so that they could fit it on the quest 2.
Boneworks was a whole lot more passionate, but every company just sells out at some point. its an unfortunate time for VR. Meta just ruins EVERYTHING they touch. its so infuriating. At some point game devs are just gonna stop PCVR production completely and we won't have any choice but to switch to mobileVR
The good news is that onward is dropping Quest 1 support later this year. That means they can rollback some of the graphical downgrades, especially since the Quest 2 is getting a performance increase of around 20% all around That means you can re-add transparency and some of the additive effects. A secret is that if Onward just talked to people from VRChat, they would have been able to keep much of the high quality stuff. Even VRChat has spacial audio on Quest
Man this game used to be my all time favorite Vr game. I hyped this game up to my friends so much, only for it to downgrade and make my high praises look unwarranted. I seriously don't understand why game developers continue to sell their hard work to these giant cash grab companies. Embrace your art!
I remember in the early days, the ai used to be able to hear your voice!.. used to sneak up behind them like "yo!" They turn around and get sprayed.... Then in one it stopped working... Was guessing they were working on it and would bring it back better........ What tha hellllll happened? 🤷🏾♂️
@@AJ-po6up Mann.... I fell out of VR Harrrrrd! Rift CV1 and Quest 2.... Paper weights... Only VR experiences are put out.. hardly any actual GAMES with any sort of depth.... Deaaaad👎🏾☹️
they should have just made a separate game for quest, like with Pavlov. would have kept quest players happy for a bit and they wouldn't lose their major fanbase
I wish people would bring this up about this game more often. Unfortunately, it was probably extremely profitable for downpour, and Facebook's goal of milking as much money out of this game as they can couldn't be more obvious. As a game designer myself, it physically hurts watching these developers make these horrendous mistakes for a bit of money
The guy who created Onward recently stepped down from the company so seems he wasnt happy with the direction tha game and probably the other game they are working on was going.
It’s really weird because in games like BoneLab or Contractors lighting is very good even on the Quest 2 version. I know that the games are two different games on two different engines but there are plenty of vr shooters that look quite good. Don’t understand why Meta hasn’t listened to the community much about the graphical downgrades. Really loved this game before the Quest 2 release though and I still do love it…just miss those graphics man
Hi! Onward VR League player here! Ultimately even in league PCVR players have an advantage over Quest players due to resolution differences, the newest downgrades may have been influenced by league players and competitive players.
I thought something was weird when I played after that update and assumed I fucked up my settings couldn't figure out what it was until someone in game mentioned what it was.
I played this game in 2018 and I loved it. It used to look quite grainy and wasn't a good looking game, and I mistaken it for the newest version the game. I loved it and it was fun to play PVE. I didn't know the game looked that good at one point, and I wish it stayed the same because I never got to experience it.
I love how this studio slowly succumed to meta. First they removed all the details in the game for meta. They tried letting people play on the old version, but IG someone didn't like that and shut it down. In the end, meta took over their studio and now owns it.
Great video, but I had a bit of a chuckle when I heard you call the M1911, the “M1-911 pistol”. You say the “M” part exactly like you expect, and the “1911” as a year, because that’s exactly what it is, the year the pistol was adopted for military (the “m”) use.
In the beginning they probably leveraged a whole bunch of pre-made assets that weren't well optimized and it caused performance issues. I'm also wondering if they replaced some of those assets to reduce licensing costs. Meta probably stepped in and had them change all the assets with cheaply produced ones to have full ownership of them.
The opposite of this is the Zero Caliber devs. They ignored their PCVR version for like a year in favor of Quest, but when they came back to port the Quest content over, they decided to upgrade it instead of downgrade the existing PCVR content.
Honestly the best way of doing this is making a separate "Legacy" version of Onward for SteamVR that's just the 1.7 version untouched. Very similarly to The Isle Legacy/Evrima how you could just change from each version via the Steam beta menu.
They were 100% correct to do this though. Something like 70% of VR gamers are on the oculus quest platform. It doesn't make sense to continue developing two different games when one's playerbase absolutely dwarfs the other. PCVR is dying because not everyone has money for both a gaming PC and VR headset. Meta was smart to develop a standalone device. The devs did this because the PCVR version of onward was dead. It had no daily active players. So they decided to port the quest version to PC and enable crossplay so that you can actually PLAY the game. As I type this onward VR on steam has 67 players currently online. The alltime peak was about 1500 players. The quest likely AVERAGES 1500 players per day.
This is basically the one obvious example to keep pointing to when it come to other VR titles. Games that have basically taken a hit because developers are only really after a Quest release from a platform standpoint. Bonelabs is a recent example; was basically just Boneworks with slightly more, because they spent all their dev time making it work on Quest 2. The campaign suffered as a result.
I had hoped the Quest2 would revitalize the VR market, but the only things it has done is downgrading games or just flat out stealing them away from PC, and introducing the VR world to screaming kids in multiplayer.
Sad how Pavlov is closely following Onward, they are THIS close to completely ditching PCVR but don't because mods are literally the only thing keeping the game afloat. Hell, they removed the Workshop integration for their own "ingame" mod manager so Questies can have their heavily moderated TTT maps.
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Talk about zero caliber too because it gotten so worse(also will you make a vertigo 2 video)
I will look into it.
@@virtualinsider Please do
@@BenBart30
Zero Caliber needs better gameplay.
Also a weird glitch I had: I got my rank reset for some reason, and now I cant buy guns/edit my loadout for campaign.
@Wolf In a suit the reason why I said zero caliber is because how the graphics looked beautiful and amazing to now ultra graphics looks like you are playing on the quest 2 and now things like your hands also look horrible plus how long the update took to add this and it still sucks
Had a whole squad whole played this weekly. Then this update hit, none of us have been back since.
same. i played almost every week. i barely even use vr anymore. this was the only game that made vr click for me.
This kinda thing upsets me about modern games. One update can kill it and send it to a point of no redemption. Sure, major updates can help a game with longevity, fixing issues and improving things in general, but when it kills a game like this it's just sad, especially if it was a regular visit with a dedicated team of friends
The game is practically the same now…
@@Lil_Valor too little, too late
@@Limes_not_Lemons One update didn't kill it, though. The game was practically dead before hovering around 100 average concurrent players. Now there are thousands of players through cross-platform. Saying it's dead is pretty funny, when it's doing much better than it was before this update.
I really appreciate more attention given to this, being someone that used to play this game 24/7 and in competitive leagues. The devs of this game are absolutely terrible
and please don't forget how they removed dual wielding because its not "tactically viable", if something's not tactically viable and im trying to win I won't use it. i absolutely hate when devs take out sandbox elements because they want a game to be played one way and one way only
dual weilding in onward would have been useless anyway as it has pretty good gun mechanics and the recoil would render it pointless. but i agree, it sucks to remove options. its a mil sim. irl if you want to pick up two guns you can (assuming they are not too heavy to lift) so in a mil sim you should be able to as well. even if as i say its not very useful.
@@socks2441 They really did that even though it has caused more issues like your gun just falling to the floor because you tried to pick up a grenade off the ground but accidentally picked up a gun because they can't program it to pick the closest object instead of just random ones within a range
right like if its not tactically viable then let me die i if im duel wielding pistols in vr then i prolly dont even care about dying haha
@@titans2720 exactly bro let me rp as rambo for the 5 seconds i can stay alive
I def recognize ur name, fr the devs were and are absolutely terrible when this update hit I thought how dumb could Dante be, but he managed to be that dumb.
From gold to sh*t with just one patch.
The game had so much potential and threw it all away for MobileVR.
because mobile gaming makes more than console and pc gaming combined, It was a good business move. there will always be fps games being made for PC that will be as good as this if not better, especially with A.I on the way and how easy it will be to build games.
@@puppetmurder Yeah because zuck has taken over the mobile vr space with basically a monopoly and the gov has let them do it... because who needs laws against monopolies when the guy gives you money for your political campaign right?
@@lolmao500 Tell me you know nothing about the VR industry with out telling me you know nothing about the VR industry lol.
you know Metaverse by facebook isnt the only
"Metaverse" right?
you know there is so much vr coming to mobile THAT ISNT META facebook next year? right?
You do know how many headsets are being made by mobile companies that aren't apart of meta or facebook yea?
Did you forget about apple? they're way bigger than facebook/meta and they have their headset coming out next year too, so yes smart business move by these guys to dumb it down so they can reach more of the audiences.
Which i dont get.
Why not cut down geometry and textures but leave the maps the same?
They went too far with the parity, having the PC and Quest versions look completely different would be fine, but someone made different decision.
@@googleslocik PC and console gaming days are limited, IF it were your company and you were about to be paid big, pretty sure you would make the same decision, and heck now they may make another game just for PC, you never know the full story ;)
I remember when they first changed from v1.7 to v.18. I tried to get a refund through steam, as it was not what i paid for.
So many things here were so frustrating.
I loved the whole fact you could down enemies, yes, in ragdoll which IS a big deal as it adds immersion, but the fact you could loot the enemies and take their guns, ammo and grenades. All this was gone. Such a shame.
I did too. The fact steam didnt see that for what it was, a bait and switch scam no matter how you view it, and allowed us to refund really tainted my view on steams refund policy and how they enforce it. Shit like that should be a 100% exception. Including the fact at the time of the update, all screenshots and promo videos on the steam page were false advertisements. Just a lil treat there.
This was a thing? Sheesh. I’m sorry you had to go though that with this game, I’ve had it on the quest for a year and it’s so lacklustre it hurts.
I bought the game before the 1.7 update while my VR headset was being shipped to me. When the headset arrived and I finally tried the game, they had already ruined the game w the 1.8 update.
I tried getting a refund, as it was no longer the game I had paid for. Despite having a zero playtime, I was unable to refund the game as the two week refund period had passed. Steams refund policy seriously needs to have exceptions for weird situations like this
What was even wilder than just the change from 1.7 to 1.8 was that they had JUST upgraded the textures and added extra foliage on maps then took it all out to make it work for quest.
@Rin And.. Steam is supposed to know if game devs are gonna do something shitty behind closed doors..? They're humans. Valve devs can't see everything that is going to happen, unless it is fully obvious.
THANK YOU!! fiiiiinally!! somebody's actually talking about this! this used to be a fucking gold standard esport. look at what they've done. we've abandoned this game completely since they fucked this game up. it was HEARTBREAKING. this was the closest thing to the wet dream of arma in vr. this game was absolutely unbelievable like omfg the fucking quality ai and everything. it's painful remembering how incredible this game used to be.
@Epsilon But if its a game you're passionate about and paid money for you have the right to be pissed. just because you don't care doesn't mean others don't have to.
@Epsilon it’s a pretty massive difference
That sucks but "gold standard esport" is just flat oit delusional lol
Don't call it an eSport. It was fun and not infested with hyper monetization unlike eSports.
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive it was though? they did esports games on Onward back years ago
What Meta did to Onward is a microcosm and symbolic of what Meta has done to the VR industry as a whole. They've repeated this same pattern everywhere. They only care about increasing user count and seemingly couldn't care less about whether games are actually any fun. And then Meta wonders why it has so little user retention.
i mean theres a shit ton of players so id say they have a point
@@macvadda2318 steam charts say otherwise.
Don't worry bro, when I finish the VR game I'm working on, I promise I won't sell my soul to meta.
Bro it's just a graphical downgrade
@@noFate_games2 what's the game called
I had such high hopes for this game :(
This game along with the Valve Index (got mine in wave one) is THE reason I got into VR. Within a few months I had over 200 hours played in it. After the quest version came out... I'm up to 280 hours played currently... Not sure what the math exactly works out to with the release of the quest version but... Definitely a STEEP decline.
@@cwinter90 Yeah it's too bad :( They could have done SO much with this.
Same here
Yeah meta and the quest itself has ruined VR because fun PC VR games that are being ported to quest are getting downgraded
@@Game_Hunter47 I just got so frustrated with this game and the e lack of new guns to use so I switched to contractors. Best decision I ever made
Don't comment very often but you hit the nail here.
Really upset at how they downgraded the game...
A shame since I used to have fun doing coop against AI.
Onward had a solid foundation to become the ARMA of VR and it was thrown away...
Why do old people have to say they don’t comment often
@@yupyup2347 For all you know he could be 25.
@@SneedsterSpeedster for all we know he’s 6 and has cancer
@@yupyup2347 So why even say that all old people do what he's saying, if you don't even know if he's old? I've said the same thing numerous times and I'm not even much into my 20s.
@@yupyup2347 Better question, why are you acting like an edgy child?
Onward was the most incredible game to have ever existed, back in 1.7.
oh boi 1.8 ruined it sooo much. Thank you for shedding some light on this.
I can't escape you
as a quest user I can confirm this is what everything looks like in all vr quest games
Except Superhot and I Expect You to Die. Those 2 games are god damn amazing as standalone. I've only had my quest 2 for a week but all other standalone games have disappointed me so far. Once I run through the rest and move to the PC VR I'll know for sure though
pavlov is fairly good too
I feel this is the uprising for Virtual Insider keep it up
Thats your third donation. You are pretty much paying my bills at this point. You are a Legend.
@@virtualinsider I got you
@@virtualinsider im glad you said something😂alot of youtubers dont even like the donator commments
Legend
Man, now this is an old story, but still a worthy topic. I really hope the trend of "Questifying" games ends quickly. It always makes me chuckle when Quest 2 users always boast about how much higher resolutions their screen is, and the wireless features. But none of that matters when the game looks and runs like crap ;p
Not really. I’d rather have a wireless game that looks like shit than a good game that’s wired
You know Quest PCVR is a thing right? Virtual Desktop? Air Link?
@@skelo9033 the games themselves aren't wireless? are you slow?
the point is that the downgrade ruined the game for everyone else who was enjoying else. could've done it like pavlov and had two separate versions, but nope.
There's 20 million Quest users and also other companies like HTC/Pico investing in standalone headsets. It's not exactly Questifying anymore but more like catering to the mobile platform in general.
@@freestyler7117 i wonder what percentage of those users use their quest strictly for pcvr? it was afetall the cheapest way to get vr, pc or mobile.
This was easily my most played VR game since it came out ... up until the quest downgrade. I've gone back ot it every now and again since but always uninstalled very quickly. So heartbreaking to see such a great game get nerfed so hard. I am still curious to see what they do with Onward 2, if the Quest 3 is going to be as big an upgrade as it's been touted to be.
it's been so long and it's still so damn heartbreaking cause this game was just absolutely magical. it was so much of so many thing we'd dreamed of for the vr market and they just burned it all to ashes.
@@Yuki-rh1ie I agree. It was magical.
@@Yuki-rh1ie The fact the the latest BIG update for onward has negative likes on steam is still testament to how burned people still are by it. In all this and with all the updates, the game still can;t compare to it at it's prime on PC.
the quest 3 is still not a pc. not an rtx 2070 or 3080 or 4090 it wont make much difference for the pc version. it will still suck because it will still be a quest port. and even though they just dropped quest 1 support for onward i am willing to be onward 2 will still have to support quest 2 for a few years even if its a quest 3 launch title. they need the playerbase. so onward 2 will have the exact same limitations as onward 1.
I think the Quest 3 will still fall massively short of even mid-range PC VR. I expect we STILL won't even get proper shadows on the characters in most Quest 3 games.
As a new quest player, I am so sorry that our purchases killed this.
The only people that are to blame for this are the game developers, not the players.
Quest players didn't ask for onwards to be made like this. It's completely the fault of the devs.
@@Predatorxdd not really the game devs, they dont make the decisions
nah its not your fault. usually every company/person/youtuber sells out at some point. its sad
Don't you blame us. I bought a Quest 2 and I LOVE IT. Not our fault Meta and the game developers don't give a shit. Onward is NOT the only game this has happened to. The entire industry as a whole is bad.
Honestly the excuse to lower the graphics on PC was just a moronic decision entirely.
They don't dumb down the PC version of CoD to match the console version of the game, they just lower the graphics quality on the consoles and let PC's max it out because they can handle it.
Really should've just been the same with the Oculus version, have the graphics lowered on that specifically to be playable on that, and let PC keep the graphics settings they have.
quest 2 isnt even a console,its soo weak its like 15 years behind an affordable PC its actually sad.
@@Cazanu417 it's so behind that maybe adding some fucking bushes could make it run worse, so then they would have to remove bushes in pc too because its a disadvantage for pc
@@Cazanu417i agree with the original comment, but not yours. Its not sad if you consider that thanks to it, quest 2 was the first broadly adopted vr headset, because of the lower price tag. Sacrificed visuals for mass use, and in the early days of VR that we live in, massification counts way more than cutting edge tech.
@@Cazanu417
Quest 2 is a console
@bruhggers
Even then there's no excuse for downgrading player models, weapon models and textures
11:15 agree on all other points. but i get to differ here. the ragdoll was still infinitely better than even the new fixed animations which look like cartoon characters imitating action movies when they die.
Hard agree
Old abandoned was my favorite map in the game because it was so big. And with the old COOP system where the bot would patrol the map. It was very fun to play. Especially at night where they would be running flashlights and you would see them an another mountain range with the flashlights and you would have a long range engagement. Literally the most fun I had in this game. But now I can never play it with my friends again since they removed 1.7.
The 1.8 version looks like something made for half life 2 on release.
Same here that map was my favorite at night I really miss it
They removed the flash light beam. it used to just be client sidded, and now you cant see it at all.
@@obamacare4262 Just another thing to add to the list.
@@zackeryhardy9504 It still blinds you, so instead of being able to prepare for it, you just stare into a beam blinding you, that only costs 2 points
This channel is my go to VR channel. I used to watch ThrillSeeker, but he's more of a Meta and VR chat guy at this point. Meta really ruins everything they touch.
you mean selloutseeker, but yea totally agree with you! I used to follow him too till he sold out!
Virtual Insider has a good name, good attitude, is a humble guy (saw his video where he was stuck and didnt know what to do with youtube but hes on fire now!)
@@puppetmurder same exact situation here. none of his content is interesting anymore. just for quest kids.
@@socks2441 is not even that, he just shills whatever new product he's given.
@@puppetmurder moneyseeker lmao
I thought ThrillSeeker was a mix of quest and pcvr + other VR systems but I guess he does just mostly do QUest shit
This game was so tight, it was filled with lots of people with real team work spirit. I could not count how many times complete strangers came to my rescue during an intense firefight, it really showed what VR could achieve. Then came the change, the graphics I don't mind, but the god awful AI completely ruined the game. Before it was an accomplishment to work together to kill 4 squads of tangos, especially if they have a heavy. Now it is a mindless gun fight, make some sounds and they will run to your gun barrel. I remember in a game hearing some kids bragging how many tangos he killed, that is when I decided this was not the game I played before and I have not played this game since. I do hope the developer will continue to iterate and develop it, but I doubt I will go back to it.
This is so sad. I got a vive during my first two years of college while I was living at home. Haven’t had time to come back to this game and now it looks like it’ll never be what I remember.
I will however always give the original devs major credit for making one of the first real VR shooters and paving the way for others to come and succeed
Downgrade to 1.7, and join the discords. You'll be able to enjoy predowngraded onward with others who aren't questies
You cant do that anymore, not officially. I had to roll back to the old version using the steam console and not sure if multiplayer works doing it that way.
@@virtualinsider yeah, not 'officially' but you can still do it.
@@virtualinsider wait how did you use the console for it? i want to go back to 1.7 again. I hate how they removed it
@@julianjaimes197what discords and how can we still play it???
The small details in the map and on the guns REALLY add to the atmosphere and immersion. It also makes the game look and feel more polished and professional. It sucks most of that has been completely jeopardized.
Meta have ruined the trajectory VR gaming had when we all bought into the ecosystem, and they don't care. They will muscle us all out of our hobby trying to funnel users into their pet product that literally nobody wants or asked for.
We will never have good AI and physics in VR gaming now.
never is a strong word, not every game will join meta
Lots of hyperbole here
"We will never have good Ai and physics in VR gaming now."
Do you truly believe that, that in 2123 we'll still be suffering the consequences of meta vr?
Recognise a bit of hyperbole when you see it, people. Pedantry 100
@@thatbachus I won't. I'll be dead.
I don't exactly see it as the Quest creating the problem, it's more a problem with the way they handled the Quest version, you could have definitely made a single codebase version of Onward and still have the PC quality you wanted.
1.8 was when they started optimization but didn't tune the PC build to use PC specific assets or texture resolutions, and they more went for a middle ground that was definitely poorly done on both ends, it looks like basically its using the highest LODs of overly optimized and simplified models. (PC 1.8 could do something like a LOD0 before popping into LOD 1-3 at Quest LOD levels, Quest could only do LOD1-3) While not even using their PC specific materials or texture resolutions.
This game was the reason I bought VR in the first place. I remember playing when 1.8 was released (having no idea this was coming) and was just shocked at how shit it was all of a sudden. NPC spawns were awful, you couldn't loot enemy weapons anymore, certain maps also ran WORSE somehow than when you were on the 1.7 version, among other things.
It's hugely upsetting to see what they did to this game. It will hold a special place in my heart, but I generally don't really give it much time anymore. There's other games that are more deserving of my time now.
i dont get why they didnt just make it so PCVR can re-enable the old version stuff and keep playing with quest 2 players, but keep the option to downgrad if they want a "fair fight"
Same reason people complain about console exclusives being ported to PC. They know full well that PC version will look a lot better, have mods coming out for it, likely get some PC specific changes and so on. It makes Sony for example, look bad. "Why can it look so good on a PC but look like dogshit on my playstation? I paid the same for it!" As people just do not understand hardware limitations very well
@@MonsterJuiced this is differentm the game was released first on pc but then ported to quest, so this is like stealing away the good graphics from PC players just so meta dont lose face
@wingmanemu that's exactly it, so meta doesn't look bad
Because the Devs are bad, just look up Into the Radius VR, the PC version and Quest just differ in graphics but with the same content, it has nothing to do about looking bad in one of the plataforms
more work, means less money
I bought this game about a month before the Quest update. It was so cool, I was on summer break and must have put the equivalent of a full work week into Onward. The Pvp was awesome and competitive, the pve community was cooperative and friendly. One month later the game updates and all of that was lost. It was so disappointing that I stopped playing.
the pvp is kinda the same imo, but the pve is shit now
@@macvadda2318 pve is completely ruined now lol all of the players are a maximum of 10 years old
@@prolific6773 good thing idgaf about pve
This video hits close to home. I was so upset with the 1.8 update back in 2020. I haven’t played since then
1.7 was fucking AMAZING. I remember ducking in fear from the sound of rounds flying overhead. It was the most immersive vr game I could play at the time and the fact that it's gone genuinely saddens me.
One of the comments mentioned the devs SHOULD have abandoned the game after 1.7. I would agree .
I love how they had absolutely 0 reason to remove the 1.7 rollback and did it anyway. What a fall from grace.
"Not one, not two, not even eight, but four whole maps."
Yes.
I just can't believe they did this. Imagine playing MW2 one day, and the next day, Activision replaces the whole game with a port of COD: Mobile. This is literally what they did.
Him calling the M1911 the M one nine one one made me unnecessarily pissed
You could even see the actual bullets in some magazines which was useful as there's no hud. Population One also used to look like a next-gen game before they focused on Quest. Is there any way to go back to 1.7 after they disabled it?
@@jeimuzuriivu vr games cant be pirated. never seen any vr game cracked
@@xxxod they can
@@xxxod ANY game can and will be pirated eventually
@@xxxod they most definitely can be
@@xxxod never seen not meant never existed. Search harder
meta is the tragedy of VR,cheap subsidised and more improtantly extremely weak phones pretending to be a gaming console in exchange for your data,it killed vr games as a whole,hopefully PSVR2 and PCVR might grow both together to have some of the pre quest games back.
I wouldn't be too harsh on the Quest 2. It introduced a lot of people to playing PCVR like me via the Quest 2 headset, including playing Onward 1.7 as the game was meant to be. Sure, they could have done a better job porting from PC to Quest 2. It was a horrendous job. Version 1.8 broke all kinds of stuff and now that's it 2023, they still haven't fixed the leg animations. I'd blame it more on Downpour Interactive overall, making promises on each SITREP announcements and failing each time with useless updates.
@Armis71 That would be great except for the fact that Quest users only have a 10% retention rate. That means 90% of the people that bought a Quest 2 don't actually use it anymore. I'm not even exaggerating.
@@Armis71 Onward was ported to the Quest 1, which is even less powerful.
@@gyroninjamodder It really handicapped the game due to having to make it work on the Quest 1 and they couldn't go forward with it.
I use my Q2 exclusively as a PCVR headset, which is a better experience than most dedicated PCVR headsets. Even the Index can't connect wirelessly to a PC without a $500 dollar attachment, which itself is more than an a Q2.
I'll readily concede that Meta is horrible about user privacy and data collection, but the Q2 is a fantastic headset for people with PC's who don't want to spend too much more to get into PCVR. Wireless PCVR is simply too good to be true.
highly highly highly recommend tactical assault vr its coming to pcvr at the end of march and looks absolutely fantastic the dev is constantly listening to the community and implementing updates
What is it?
@@gomersimpson777ram tactical assault vr
I can't imagine how long it must have taken to compare three versions of a VR game in this way, your attention to detail is stellar.
Excellent comparison and coverage of this topic, thanks!
I’ve always played Onward on quest and I’ve never seen the other versions. But I didn’t expect this, the game on 1.7 is soooooooo much better than it is on quest. The Details, Graphics, Shading, lighting, and guns are so much better on 1.7. But unfortunately, I can’t play on 1.7 because I don’t have a PC
When this update came out I remember people being so divided but it was genuinely sad to see a game fall from such heights and kill their entire game with a single update, and made such small efforts to bring it back. Even though you figure having version parity wouldn't be hard it both games were being built side by side but I guess the effort in making a good high quality product was just too much for them.
best part is, since i started playing (two years ago), you can literally observe decreasing amount of lobbies in this game. from 2 or 3 pages of uplink servers alone, we have 2 or 3 pages in general
This video is really poppin' off! So glad you're still around, VI.
This is why the old community calls them "Downgrade Interactive"
The biggest thing for me was the gun shot sounds.
The game has a setting you can change from "normal" to "realistic" and it makes the gun shots far louder than any other sound in the game. It adds a lot of intensity. Firing a gun in this game gave you that oh shit feeling like firing a gun in real life. Loud as fuck.
How loud it was depends on what bullet is being fired. 9mm weapons were not as loud as a 5.56mm. The audio compounds, the more guns that are being fired the louder it gets.
In 1.8 the gun shot audio was not just heavily compressed and terrible sounding, it was also far too quiet. It didn't feel like I was getting shot at anymore. The fear of getting shot was entirely gone and it started to feel more like playing call of duty or just any other shooter. At that point I felt like the game lost lost its identity. The uniquely terrifying experience you got playing this game was all but gone.
Finally someone to call out this mobile VR bs! We want fully featured PC VR to return!
You can’t no more meta is the owner
Though the quest save the game I hear was almost dead
@@themarauder8006 no, the quest update ruined the game lol
@@themarauder8006 the game had very few players. after the quest update yeah it had lots more, but look at it now, it's getting to a similar state and now even worse because they gave up basically their entire pcvr playerbase
I never knew they did this, I thought I was going crazy when I loaded up the game again almost a year later after I stopped playing VR games and noticed the game looked different
This is why Facebook is ruining the VR scene. Downgrading limiting innovation for the sake of making it run on their mobile devices.
Truly a shame any games that fall to the money bags Meta.
They need new better mobile devices for sure
Limitations often breed creativity and innovation. Look at most indie games that have less resources, but are still better then literally any AAA game.
Edit:the games by From Software are one of the Few Exceptions, but the vast majority of are casualized shit.
@@josephkeen7224 And your point is? did you even watch the video? there's no innovation here just downgrades, what you're saying doesn't apply to this at all, you're honestly trying to defend the indefensible here.
Indie games have less resources monetarily not technologically speaking, since today you have engines like Unreal, Unity, Source etc that you can use for cheap or even free, that stuff that you said only applied to games in the 90s and early 2000s, not today, if we have amazing technology to make incredible games, is stupid not to use it, or downgrade it for the sake of a crappy mobile chip, if what you said was true then most mobile games would be masterpieces lol.
@@josephkeen7224 this made me think of ps2
This is why I have almost all the other shooters for PCVR but haven't gotten Onwards
I honestly can't wait for Ready or Not on VR.
why do you think this will be a thing? is there anything confirmed?
@@TimsFPVundROVfootage Modders are working on it and the Devs added the Unreal Engine's VR plugins for them to use.
yep there is more quality in the loading screen of ready or not,cant wait to play it in VR.
It being developed privately at the moment
look up geronimo
Never heard someone call a 1911 a “1-9-1-1” lol. That was pretty jarring. Also good use of Insurgency music
You should make more documentary style videos about vr games, maybe how zenith was a major cash grab, theyve got like 10 million in their pockets, yet NEVER has had a actual big update since launch, level cap is still at 40, they added more dungeons and thats about it
I'm glad someone finally talks about this... I've never seen such a sad example of Devs killing their own game, other than literally shutting it down. The worst part about all of this, 1.7 is no longer available to be played. When 1.8+ dropped, you could still roll back to 1.7, the GOOD Onward. In late October they removed it because of their Backend being updated. Right...
Sad because this game scratched a specific itch that I still come back to maybe once every few months. Just have to wait for Tactical Assault VR or Geronimo VR, and hope those Devs have brains larger than Onwards'. Though that shouldn't be too hard.
Yep looked better in 2016 than it does now due to meta
Playing Into the Radius has proven to me that the quest can handle detailing on weapons
As a VRChat world maker who focuses on PC/Quest parity, this angers me. It's not that hard to change minute visuals without destroying the PC version. If they're using Unity, there are even tools made to automatically handle making all of these changes for them when switching build targets.
My best guess is it only got this messed up because of Meta's performance guidelines.
Been playing onward since 2019, I was so mad when they released the quest update. The game was so perfect
I love that you used the arma theme in the beginning
you should do a boneworks vs bonelab comparison like this, I think slz did a great job at putting marrow and that stuff on the quest
i think boneworks was a lot more passionate than bonelab
@@CheeseburgerStreaming yeah bonelab was a hype train tbh... Still a lot of fun and especially now that the fusion multiplayer mod is out bonelab really feels like Gmod VR
2:57
"M one nine one one"
M nineteen eleven, it was adopted in the year 1911.
after the release of bonelab and the detail that they pulled off on the quest version, i hope that shows downpour that quests arent as weak as they think.
The enemy models definitely aren’t as nice as Boneworks but it’s still really impressive for the hardware. I never noticed any slowdowns at all and it still looked great on the Quest.
I'm on a really heavy budget, so Quest 2 is pretty much my only option besides slowly building myself a rig and geting a PCVR set up. Sad to see this game go down like this, it shows so much promise.
It’s sad, but I think the game would’ve died on pc if they split the player base
I agree but the way they did it with the massive changes wasnt the way to go
@@virtualinsider no question about that, it was a lazy attempt to get parity quickly, and now they have to fix it, but I think they couldn’t delay the quest release to get it done the right way
I mostly played against bots. dev said 'cheers for the money' and took my game off me.
well sure as hell is dead now,the bots were also FAR FAR more of a challenge compared to the average quest 2 standalone user wich is below the age of 8,the bots also didnt squeak n words.
Unlike a lot of other people I started on the quest and then got it on PC and went back to this older version and it's just objectively a better version and truly wish it never got changed in the first place.
It's very sad to see stuff like this happening to VR games. The exact same thing happened to BONELAB and it's very clear that the game was majorly downgraded just so that they could fit it on the quest 2.
Boneworks was a whole lot more passionate, but every company just sells out at some point. its an unfortunate time for VR. Meta just ruins EVERYTHING they touch. its so infuriating. At some point game devs are just gonna stop PCVR production completely and we won't have any choice but to switch to mobileVR
The good news is that onward is dropping Quest 1 support later this year.
That means they can rollback some of the graphical downgrades, especially since the Quest 2 is getting a performance increase of around 20% all around
That means you can re-add transparency and some of the additive effects. A secret is that if Onward just talked to people from VRChat, they would have been able to keep much of the high quality stuff. Even VRChat has spacial audio on Quest
Like a true brexit geezer he just said "M one nine one one" instead of M1911.
In all seriousness I love that you're talking about this
Man this game used to be my all time favorite Vr game. I hyped this game up to my friends so much, only for it to downgrade and make my high praises look unwarranted. I seriously don't understand why game developers continue to sell their hard work to these giant cash grab companies. Embrace your art!
need to pay the bills somehow
This isn't the only game that sold itself to quest, Pavlov hasn't seen a PC update in ages but Quest version I heard got at least a few updates.
They released a new update 2 months ago. Pretty sure it took that long cause they were moving to ue5
That and the fact that they where making a version for ps vr
@@aname8069they already did a month ago
I remember in the early days, the ai used to be able to hear your voice!.. used to sneak up behind them like "yo!" They turn around and get sprayed.... Then in one it stopped working... Was guessing they were working on it and would bring it back better........ What tha hellllll happened? 🤷🏾♂️
Meta and the Quest happened.
@@AJ-po6up Mann.... I fell out of VR Harrrrrd! Rift CV1 and Quest 2.... Paper weights... Only VR experiences are put out.. hardly any actual GAMES with any sort of depth.... Deaaaad👎🏾☹️
they should have just made a separate game for quest, like with Pavlov. would have kept quest players happy for a bit and they wouldn't lose their major fanbase
This type of downgrade happens to a lot of games during development. Think of all the high quality VR games we've lost because of the quest
I wish people would bring this up about this game more often. Unfortunately, it was probably extremely profitable for downpour, and Facebook's goal of milking as much money out of this game as they can couldn't be more obvious. As a game designer myself, it physically hurts watching these developers make these horrendous mistakes for a bit of money
The guy who created Onward recently stepped down from the company so seems he wasnt happy with the direction tha game and probably the other game they are working on was going.
@@virtualinsiderSounds about right, devs being bought by large corporate companies and immediately regretting the decision is an age old mistake lol
It’s really weird because in games like BoneLab or Contractors lighting is very good even on the Quest 2 version. I know that the games are two different games on two different engines but there are plenty of vr shooters that look quite good. Don’t understand why Meta hasn’t listened to the community much about the graphical downgrades. Really loved this game before the Quest 2 release though and I still do love it…just miss those graphics man
Yeah, it's not flawless but Bonelab looks pretty good on Quest 2, albeit obviously not quite as good as the PCVR version
Hi! Onward VR League player here! Ultimately even in league PCVR players have an advantage over Quest players due to resolution differences, the newest downgrades may have been influenced by league players and competitive players.
Also, I appreciate that the Pavlov Dev decided to go with a PC version separate from the Quest version which is called Pavlov Shack.
Your content scratches that that brain itch for niche, visual news in VR. And it's really high quality!
I thought something was weird when I played after that update and assumed I fucked up my settings couldn't figure out what it was until someone in game mentioned what it was.
I played this game in 2018 and I loved it. It used to look quite grainy and wasn't a good looking game, and I mistaken it for the newest version the game. I loved it and it was fun to play PVE. I didn't know the game looked that good at one point, and I wish it stayed the same because I never got to experience it.
I love how this studio slowly succumed to meta. First they removed all the details in the game for meta. They tried letting people play on the old version, but IG someone didn't like that and shut it down. In the end, meta took over their studio and now owns it.
2:57 im crying because you called it the m1 9-1-1.
I've been playing the newer version of Onward and I genuinely didn't realize that it had a superior version.
really nice video but i almost cried when you called a 1911 a "one nine one one"
Same
Great video, but I had a bit of a chuckle when I heard you call the M1911, the “M1-911 pistol”. You say the “M” part exactly like you expect, and the “1911” as a year, because that’s exactly what it is, the year the pistol was adopted for military (the “m”) use.
1:27
AK 5C got turned into a Fortnite prop
dabbin on Thanos, and chugging some chug jugg
I thought I went crazy when they took the ambient sounds away. I am "glad" to hear it wasn't me loosing it
0:03 *way* closer to Insurgency than Arma. Arma's main draw is massive maps with multiple fronts and combined arms warfare
In the beginning they probably leveraged a whole bunch of pre-made assets that weren't well optimized and it caused performance issues. I'm also wondering if they replaced some of those assets to reduce licensing costs. Meta probably stepped in and had them change all the assets with cheaply produced ones to have full ownership of them.
Good to see the channel is settling down again. Another quality video with great analysis. :-)
Some of the lighting elements of 1.10 looked more realistic but they certainly cut back.
The opposite of this is the Zero Caliber devs.
They ignored their PCVR version for like a year in favor of Quest, but when they came back to port the Quest content over, they decided to upgrade it instead of downgrade the existing PCVR content.
"M One Nine One One Pistol" really threw me off for a second lol
This is why all software needs to be open-source.
Honestly the best way of doing this is making a separate "Legacy" version of Onward for SteamVR that's just the 1.7 version untouched.
Very similarly to The Isle Legacy/Evrima how you could just change from each version via the Steam beta menu.
needed this video, I quit the game a while back and don't plan on returning anytime soon
They were 100% correct to do this though. Something like 70% of VR gamers are on the oculus quest platform. It doesn't make sense to continue developing two different games when one's playerbase absolutely dwarfs the other. PCVR is dying because not everyone has money for both a gaming PC and VR headset. Meta was smart to develop a standalone device. The devs did this because the PCVR version of onward was dead. It had no daily active players. So they decided to port the quest version to PC and enable crossplay so that you can actually PLAY the game. As I type this onward VR on steam has 67 players currently online. The alltime peak was about 1500 players. The quest likely AVERAGES 1500 players per day.
Seriously wish I was able to play before the big change, always thought the game could've looked better, and wow, it did.
This is basically the one obvious example to keep pointing to when it come to other VR titles. Games that have basically taken a hit because developers are only really after a Quest release from a platform standpoint. Bonelabs is a recent example; was basically just Boneworks with slightly more, because they spent all their dev time making it work on Quest 2. The campaign suffered as a result.
The different versions and patches are like console generations apart, that's crazy.
I had hoped the Quest2 would revitalize the VR market, but the only things it has done is downgrading games or just flat out stealing them away from PC, and introducing the VR world to screaming kids in multiplayer.
Sad how Pavlov is closely following Onward, they are THIS close to completely ditching PCVR but don't because mods are literally the only thing keeping the game afloat.
Hell, they removed the Workshop integration for their own "ingame" mod manager so Questies can have their heavily moderated TTT maps.
I feel like mods are the only thing keeping that game afloat for year. It would have been a very empty game without them
4:59 that one makes sense though because the fire would've gone out