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From gold to sh*t with just one patch. The game had so much potential and threw it all away for MobileVR.

Had a whole squad whole played this weekly. Then this update hit, none of us have been back since.

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

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.

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.

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.

as a quest user I can confirm this is what everything looks like in all vr quest games

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...

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 had such high hopes for this game :(

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

As a new quest player, I am so sorry that our purchases killed this.

I feel this is the uprising for Virtual Insider keep it up

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.

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 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.

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.

"Not one, not two, not even eight, but four whole maps." Yes.

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.

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

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.

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.

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"

I love how they had absolutely 0 reason to remove the 1.7 rollback and did it anyway. What a fall from grace.

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?

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.

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.

This is why the old community calls them "Downgrade Interactive"

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.

This video hits close to home. I was so upset with the 1.8 update back in 2020. I haven’t played since then

This is the content I subscribed for :) glad you decided to come back

Excellent comparison and coverage of this topic, thanks!

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

Good to see the channel is settling down again. Another quality video with great analysis. :-)

2:57 "M one nine one one" M nineteen eleven, it was adopted in the year 1911.

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.

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.

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

Your content scratches that that brain itch for niche, visual news in VR. And it's really high quality!

I honestly can't wait for Ready or Not on VR.

Finally someone to call out this mobile VR bs! We want fully featured PC VR to return!

This video is really poppin' off! So glad you're still around, VI.

Never heard someone call a 1911 a “1-9-1-1” lol. That was pretty jarring. Also good use of Insurgency music

Yep looked better in 2016 than it does now due to meta

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

Very glad to have you back, awesome video!

This is why I have almost all the other shooters for PCVR but haven't gotten Onwards

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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? 🤷🏾‍♂️

I love that you used the arma theme in the beginning

It’s sad, but I think the game would’ve died on pc if they split the player base

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.

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

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.

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.

Meta threw away a diamond just to make a sapphire

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!

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

1:27 AK 5C got turned into a Fortnite prop dabbin on Thanos, and chugging some chug jugg

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.

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

"M One Nine One One Pistol" really threw me off for a second lol

Been playing onward since 2019, I was so mad when they released the quest update. The game was so perfect

I was thinking of playing but now I remember how many invisible people there are in multiplayer so I can only play coop for any fun, and then I realize how many times I have to reset my guardian because I can't get through a doorway. On Quest when I bought the game, they had many of the features mentioned, I didn't notice some of the sound changes mentioned

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.

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.

Great analysis. Very well done.

I thought I went crazy when they took the ambient sounds away. I am "glad" to hear it wasn't me loosing it

2:57 im crying because you called it the m1 9-1-1.

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.

really nice video but i almost cried when you called a 1911 a "one nine one one"

I really loved this game back in the day damn. Remember watching thelonelyviper playing it too

Also, I appreciate that the Pavlov Dev decided to go with a PC version separate from the Quest version which is called Pavlov Shack.

This is why all software needs to be open-source.

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.

1:40 WHAT THE HELL IS EVEN THAT?! THE BLOODY LETTUCE LAUNCHER?!?!

I've been playing the newer version of Onward and I genuinely didn't realize that it had a superior version.

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.

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.

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

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

Seriously wish I was able to play before the big change, always thought the game could've looked better, and wow, it did.

The different versions and patches are like console generations apart, that's crazy.

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

LMFAO DID HE JUST CALL IT THE M 1 9 1 1 INSTEAD OF THE M1911 HAHAH WTF

Nice video mate

I played this game at a friends house once and man was it fun and seeing it in this state now makes me sad that i wont be able to play the real deal

I thought you going on about the maps was Skyrim vr for a second 😂

Awesome video once again!