I may be wrong, but I think they completely discounted console updates (and probably will do so with PC too). Ellie in VR was something to behold though. Hours of fun.
Yeah, it was amazing. I still haven’t bought the expansion since I only play the game in VR and there was so much reason not to buy it for VR. They have fixed some of it, but even if the original game isn’t really ruined at all, it’s just tough to play now knowing the expansion is out there. So it kinda tainted the whole game even if technically nothing changed for me.
I still have no idea why they decided not to do VR for the on-foot stuff. I don’t know if it was just a cost cutting measure, or if there was some problem they couldn’t sort out. If it was for motion sickness reasons, like not being able to support teleport to move or something, they should probably know motion sickness susceptible people already couldn’t really play the rest of the game. There were some parts that worked ok, their VR demo was ok for most people, but alot of the actual game wasn’t. And even with all the motion sickness reduction options on, driving the SRV didn’t go well for any people I know with motion sickness issues. If it was motion controls they couldn’t support, we have plenty of games with face aim, sure it’s not ideal, but it’s still an upgrade from flat games.
The lack of VR support for in Odyssey, on top of numerous issues at launch, soured me on the whole thing. I know VR is a niche that did not take off so it likely did not make sense for them to prioritize it ; but Elite was the quintessential early killer app for VR, so it stings. Shame, I spent hundred of hours in Elite and would have liked to spend more.
I suppose PC VR can be said to have not really taken off, but there are over 50 million VR headset sales in general so far, that’s pretty good. VR in general is taking off just fine. And PC VR is mostly only suffering from the technical barrier of wireless streaming. Which is clearing up bit by bit, but could be solved with a wireless dongle instead of needing the user to properly configure their router. But newer routers are more and more being able to support VR streaming with their default settings.
While PCVR was mostly abandoned by the big gaming companies, there is still a ton of support from community modders. In the flat2VR community they are up to about 60% of all games working in VR now, about 30% with full motion controls too. So having a VR headset is still getting more and more popular, and being able to use it for PCVR is still getting more and more possible and popular, at some point it’ll come back to the focus of the actual gaming studios too. But for now they don’t have to cuz modders will just do it for free for them if they don’t.
It certainly sucked when VR switched to prioritizing stand alone over PCVR, but I think long-term it will get us to PCVR being mainstream sooner than we would have got there without a focus on the easy stuff first.
The early times of this wave of VR (which really started with the commercial launch of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive) were very exciting. Lots of “experiences” back then: sometimes mindblowing, often half-baked, always interesting. After a couple of years people realized there was no money in it and lots of them moved on.
7 years in, I’m pretty much over early access promising prototypes and flat screen games being modded to support VR. I want VR-native games-ass games of the caliber of Half-Life: Alyx, or Moss. I want VR support to be a standard feature of any new cockpit-based driving or flying game, not an afterthought. We are not getting the former, and slowly maybe getting there for the latter.
Elite Dangerous is the perfect illustration of this cycle: Frontier started supporting VR very early. My first VR experience was Elite Dangerous on a loaned Oculus DK1. It was mind-blowing ! It was also very very puke-inducing ! Then proper hardware came with the Rift and Vive, Elite had full VR support, and it was fucking great. And now, well VR support is still there, but it’s no longer first class, and slowly decaying.
I obviously don’t have a deep insight into FDev’s finances. But they have pretty openly said that Elite is a foundation of the company.
And yet, they have done everything they can to kill that. Cutting back on social media spending to more or less make every single Influencer say the game is dying. Turn updates into a trickle of “You know that thing that was added two years ago? They finally added enemy NPCs around it”. And even actively screw over the people who were dumb enough to buy the ten year pass by not even providing steam keys for the pre-ordered expansion (currently on two of ten or so?) to let people take advantage of Valve’s CDN.
It is genuinely baffling. Other devs are, if anything, focusing too much on keeping the bread and butter live game “live”. Whereas FDev seem to have decided that they can do whatever to E:D and the money will keep flowing… which might be true but…
Also, should be obvious but: Lapsed E:D fan who bought the lifetime pass like an idiot.
Just to elaborate on the community streams more. Most live games have their community managers (sometimes devs) do a weekly or monthly stream where they play the game, talk about what is coming, interact with the playerbase, etc. They are almost all puff pieces, but whatever. FDev reduced the frequency of those (I forget if by half or straight to quarterly) which was IMMEDIATELY fuel for “Frontier is sunsetting Elite”. And it isn’t like they fired the community managers. They just… do less streams.
Like 99% of people, I had 0 knowledge of this game before the flop announcement. It’s a shame because it looks up my alley…but if there’s annoying stuff like locked characters, it looks like I dodged a bullet.
The good news for me is that when I mentioned the situation to my friend, he said “oh it’s like XCOM” - so now I have a new game to play. I haven’t played XCOM because I thought it was Artemis, a spaceship bridge simulator.
Why would you rush out and buy a single player game on release these days? You’d have to be an idiot of the highest order. This isn’t 1996 where we had a handful of game releases a year.
Can we talk about Rock Paper Shotgun’s horrible dark pattern with cookies? It took me a couple of minutes to work out how to reject all cookies, and even then I’m not sure I did it correctly.
I thought there were laws about the number of clicks required to reject cookies?
It’s like these gaming companies have NO Q&A people at all. Build a lab with a bunch of varying levels of machines and see if the game is playable. It’s not really that difficult is it?
Yeah this was a messy one. But I used their default settings and it was jumping frames everywhere. Can’t really blame the consumers. Also, intro cutscene has been about 10-20 frames. I know a 2080 TI isn’t new but its not supremely ancient either.
My point being, the only thing I did was cap fps to 60. Their default settings did everything else. Also, the intro video plays before you can change any settings. How is it the consumer’s fault if even that is running terrible? Lol
I will say yesterday’s patch did wonders. Disable cross play if you haven’t. That seemed to be a huge problem. As soon as i enabled it to play with my cousin my fps dropped back down.
Non-Updated Drivers. Lords of the Fallen is powered by UE5, a high-end technology that requires the latest GPU drivers. We’ve observed that the majority of crashes result from outdated drivers.
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