How do you guys deal with those self declared experts?

Is LIV Cube on your radar? I suspect early adopters of that will have a good chance to remarket 'old' games.

 

To be fair if I had VR gear this kind of game would be among the more appealing concepts for me (though maybe as singleplayer instead of multiplayer). It makes perfect sense to be VR only and it would not work having a non-VR alternate mode. Especially not mixing those players in multiplayer.

Good point.

 

It would be pretty fun to try though,I actually think you can be pretty competitive against a mouse/keyboard player because it feels so natural to aim in VR its like the firearm becomes an extension of your arm, just like real world firearms feel like when you get used to them. atleast in Close quarter, on sniping distances you will not have a chance

At some point I will try to add a first person controller just to try it out

 

Maybe it's someone you know?

 

The game works pretty ok in mixed reality. Haven't seen that product before though, will check it out

 

Do you have actual concrete evidence of any game "standing out much more" because of mechanics in terms of sales/players or marketing news?

 

In this world quality does not equal sales my friend

 

I agree with you to an extent. But you didn't say quality. You said "standing out."

I'm not trying to pick on you, so if this seems that way I apologize. But from how things are actually going in terms of sales and in terms of journalism coverage, VR isn't standing out in any special way. It's important to recognize that--not to insist that VR is revolutionary so it's guaranteed to become huge eventually, or that things work uniquely for VR games compared to regular games, but to look at the cold hard facts of how VR is performing and consider that when planning your investment.

I'm kind of generalizing to VR in general in this post, rather than talking about the different kinds of VR games like you were initially (saying mechanics stand out more), but the same principle applies. It's easy to say something is true, but in the end the market decides, and it's foolhardy to ignore that.

 

Problem is most VR games dont utilize the power of VR mechanics at all. So its not strange the general public that dont even own a VR set yet dont know how F***ing awsome VR is when doen right, a desktop game just cant compete with that.

I'm not trying to patronize you, but you just dont know/understand/can grasp the power of what good executed VR can do

edit: And this is a BIG problem for VR devs

 

Okay. So what are these VR mechanics? And you're absolutely right that I'm not particularly familiar with the "power" of VR.

 

I think the above picture is a good hint. It's hard to explain how much different VR can be and you need to see it yourself. A youtube video or a written explanation does not do enough

In the context of FPS it can be a lot things like how you actually use your hands, what can you interact with and how.

 

When small indie devs want to build large games, it is important to take a long term approach. Small indie devs do not have enough man hours available to rapidly build a massive game. Similarly, small indie devs do not have enough money to do a large marketing push. All a small indie dev can do is release a game, get feedback, and then use that feedback to make better games in the future.

Small indie devs should think of each game release as a chance for valuable feedback. But that feedback should not be solely used to iterate the current game. Each game gets peak interest at launch. Very few games manage to get a successful second launch as new features are added. Therefore, the feedback and iteration cycle should involve new game releases instead of just improvements to the existing title.

I am definitely not saying give up on existing work, though. Always use your existing work as a foundation (or framework) for your next project. What is important is drawing the line at some point in each project for investing effort into the next game instead of the existing game.

Don't feel bad that you are in this situation. A lot of us go through this. I put a lot of time (4 years) into developing my current space game, and I am using feedback from that game to guide my design decisions for my next space game. I am re-using a lot of the code I developed as a framework in my next project.

 

I might be jaded, but when people talk like this, chances are good that they have succumbed to hype. It also doesn't help that most of the early adopters speak as though they are witnessing long time dreams finally becoming reality.

 

I kind of agree with Rockodyne here. These things should be able to be described with words. Everything can. And we're talking about mechanics, not something vague and indistinct like "immersion."

And I want to point out that "actually using your hands" is certainly not VR specific. That was the cornerstone of the Wii. Now it's easy to say "oh but it's so much better and different," but the fact is motion controls were being used years before the current VR push.

So. Can these VR-exclusive mechanics be described?

 

Maybe and of course depends of the person. For me personally I only remember few "massive" leaps in my own gaming history such as getting a Amiga 500 to replace C64 or 3DFX cards to greatly jack up the gfx and fps. Most of the time everything has been just small changes and nothing significant to remember. Oculus DK1 and DK2 were kinda ok but nothing to really remember as both caused nausea for me and there weren't that many great games or experiences.

However Vive and Rift were completely different things. It's just impossible for example to describe how it feels when you are flying over your home town in Google Earth VR in human scale or how scary Arizona sunshine was compared to any desktop horror game I've played, including Outlast. Even if the graphics took a step back of 5-10 years there's no way to get similar experience on a desktop setup even if you throw money to the salesman like no tomorrow.

 

Whats awesome about VR depends on the game and its genre. My own genre which is FPS its about good interaction with the items and the world, its about aiming down sights with great simulated optics, one eye looking through the optics, the other eye for situational awareness, something thats impossible in desktop games. The feel of getting good at bringing up the firearm and find the red dot in an instant. Or throwing a grenade through a window with perfect control over the arc (unlike most desktop grenade mechanics).

In other genres it can be just how great they have simulated stuff, like in The Lab were they have used the vibrator in the controller to mimic the feel of tighten the bow in their bow and arrow mini game (Its really truly magic how they simulated that). Or in Lone Echo how your hands interact naturally with the world, if you place the hand close a corner the hand grabs the corner so you can peek out.

 

I had a Wii too and also tried Razer Hydras and other stuff before VR controllers. Wii had the most content but it never got me as too impressive stuff. Maybe because there is a big difference if you are waiving them relative to some static screen versus using them like actual hands from your eye perspective. There is a massive difference also in accuracy and latency.

Ok, lets try to describe in more detail with some examples and with a genric FPS as a reference for the mechanics and gameplay.

First one is obvious as you have free aim and you have to hands. You can dual wield, blind fire anywhere, crouch at any height, shoot any direction at the same time such as left and right in a hallway when entering there from a doorway.

You don't reload by spamming the reload button but you actually use real clips and reloading. Your scopes and iron sights work just about like in real life and your magnification mode does not block you from seeing your surroundings. Your situational awareness is much better because of real environment distances and positional audio that is actually relative to you and not a screen you are looking at.

I could go on but it depends really about the game and other stuff.

edit: Everything is kinda tied to the keyword immersion which sums it up when thinking how things would behave. You don't press buttons but try do everything as close as you would in real life.

 

Real life is great, but I already get a lot of that during the day. Sometimes gaming is about having fun instead of trying to accurately mimic real life. And for the record, I actually do own an Oculus Rift with touch motion controllers, so I have at least some perspective on VR. Some VR stuff is really neat, but I would still rather play PUBG instead of playing a lifelike war game in VR.

 

It's about having mechanics and controls that feel natural to the user. Using a keyboard and a mouse to navigate and affect a three-dimensional environment isn't exactly difficult to learn (my niece and nephew were able to pick it up very quickly at the ages of 3-4) but you're still trying to work with a 3D environment using 2D controls.

Being able to walk up to a virtual object, move your hand out, and grab hold of it is far more natural than hitting "W" to get close and "E" to pick it up. Unfortunately where it starts to fall apart is that you have limited feedback from the virtual environment. You won't feel the texture of the object, you won't feel the weight of it, etc.

 

Yeah there will always be a split between desktop and VR depending of a game genre, game or just the player. I will never probably play any simulator type games (car, flight, space) on a desktop anymore. But for RTS games, even though I like Brass Tactics a lot I still prefer RTS games like Company of Heroes or etc. on a desktop, at least for now.

 

I agree that cockpit style simulators (car, flight, space) would very well in VR. Being able to look around with the Rift while flying a spaceship is very cool. The main challenge is the balance of the controls. Space simulators tend to offer a lot of controls. For example, Freespace 2 comes with a PDF that shows all of the default keyboard bindings, and there are a lot of keys being used. (nearly the entire keyboard)

Gamers can't effectively use a keyboard in VR, though. That leaves game designers with the far more limited game controller and joysticks, and those don't have enough buttons to directly replace every keybinding in something like Freespace 2. So a VR space simulator has to be designed with a far smaller list of buttons, and that is serious design constraint when developing a simulator.

 

The input should not be a problem especially if the game is made for VR. Nothing prevents of having a radial menus or in game buttons and toggles that you can use in your cockpit. For example some of the DCS world paid planes have all cockpit stuff intractable with motion controllers. For some other use cases like Elite dangerous there is Voice attack

 

It is a good tip. If you bite off more than you can chew, time to cut losses and bail.

In context of the question:
I don't really care about self-proclaimed experts, I have other things to worry about.

Regarding linked post on reddit, the dude has a point, but he concentrates on wrong aspect.

The important matter for me would be whether you're financially in green with this game. Either you're making profit from sales, or it is your hobby and you're funded through other means. It doesn't matter whether it has a "life" (albeit if it is a niche multiplayer game, it better have bots to play with), or not, as long as you're in green one way or another. If you're not in green, and not even in black, and the situation isn't improving, time to bail.

--edit--

On related note, steam has several never-ending undying zombie projects which never really improve, but don't die either, while developers somehow keep feeding more promises to community. One of the examples is project zomboid.

If a game ends up in zombie state, the best idea would be to put it down. I think there's a limited window to finish a game or an idea, and once the window is over, completing it will be incredibly difficult.

 

Of all the experts, I am the greatest. That is how I can safely ignore everything I hear.

 

I agree that a game that has been in early access since November 2013 should probably release, and the developers should probably set up their next project. But in all fairness to Project Zomboid, that game still has a decent following. According to SteamSpy, that game sold over 800,000 copies and currently has over 700 concurrent players. It still has enough people playing it to possibly justify some continued updating.

 

I forgot to answer this part, In VR at least for me quality means standing out. Because with a screen size of 110 degrees field of view (A gaming screen is maybe 30 at best). Because at those real life scales stuff needs detail, and I just dont mean gfx detail but mechanics detail. Like grabbing items. Compare these two screens first our game, we have carefully mapped the hand grip with the bolt action



Or no mapping at all


Also Im pretty sure you cant hold the weapon in the frontgrip while working the bolt action with your main hand, but that might have been fixed, haven't played this game in a very long time

 

I don't know what the second game is that you are comparing your game to. Did that other game have solid sales numbers?

 

In case anyone is itching for some more FUD on the VR front :-/

I haven't watched the whole thing yet. VR part seems to start at 37 minutes.

 

For it to have been a "fad" there would have had to have been "intense and widely shared enthusiasm". There was definitely intense enthusiasm with some developers but outside of them it always came across more as marketing trying to generate hype than an actual fad.

 

Yeah, kind of petty to hide the name. I suspect it was their "main competitor," the game Onward. The 24-hour peak for that game is 201 players. All time is 388, so it looks like they're doing a decent job of keeping momentum.

Edit - and according to SteamSpy, it has 100k+ owners, though there was a free weekend so that data isn't reliable. However, such numbers definitely mean it has great exposure.

Honestly, it looks like Virtual Warfighter stumbled out of the gate, and in such a niche field (VR AND multiplayer) it's been unable to gain much ground.

 

It is.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/496240/Onward/

Yes, that's definitely the conclusion my own research has led me to. Both games were released within days of each other.

There isn't a great deal of marketing information available for Virtual Warfighter but there are numerous articles covering Onward including the release of the game. It appears to have been much farther along than VW with multiple maps (VW apparently had ONE), multiple weapons (again VW apparently had ONE), and so on.

Regardless of the state of the games though Onward appears to have simply had way more marketing (or more precisely it had marketing period) with some of the earliest media articles covering it months in advance of the early access release and from the looks of it that never stopped. It's still receiving articles in the media.

Contrast this to VW which like I mentioned in an earlier post appears to have had zero marketing effort.

 

I didn't mean to comment on it being a "fad" or not, but there seemed to be a good deal of "fear, uncertainty and doubt" in the discussion, because vr hardware manufacturers are so reluctant to release sales numbers for it and no one really knows how its future is going to look like.

I want VR to be a success and see broader adoption. If they iron out the issues of the first 2 generations of consumer hardware and the power of the common gaming machines catches up, I believe there is still a chance it stays around for good and sees meaningful game releases for the plattform.

I just got out of bed and for a moment there I was really confused what a big German car manufacturer has to do with all of this ^^.

 

It has a following, but it is being "developed" at the speed of a dead snail.

There was an amazing post of frustrated player (apparently it has been deleted), who said something like "In the time I owned this game, I finished my education, underwent training overseas, became a recognized professional in my field, and this game still isn't done".

I consider the project dead. They had potential, and nice atmosphere, but they lost momentum, and they have been failing to implement features promised years ago.

Then we had amazing post mortem posted on unity forums last year:
http://poncho-game.com/?p=208

Where the team messed up at ever ysingle thing they could possibly do wrong.

Basically, getting emotionaly attached to your project clouds your judgement. Because of this it is necessary to look for situations where it is time to cut the losses and bail.

 

I think I've read that post. Every 1 or 2 years I check back and I'm always amazed how little the game changes in those timeframes. But I think they're pulling it into a direction that I won't enjoy anyway, so I don't really care if it's dead. I call it "the most depressing version of 'The Sims' ever made".

 

From the evidence I see, the OP had about as much credibility as an expert as the reddit commentator. It's not like the game is successful enough to speak for itself.

Normally when I get people complaining about my content I ignore it and try just get buried in the rest of the comments. But this is much harder to achieve when you only get 14 comments and half of them are complaining about the low player base.

The reddit commentator is onto something. Not enough people care about the game to make it a multiplayer success.

 

In my opinion, it's almost ridiculous to call it a fad, because the potential (or at least the hypothetical ultimate experience of VR) is so great. But (like AI) the problem is that it's very difficult to see how it will be useful unless it's very far developed. VR is basically a competition with reality, in a way that books and even flat-screen games don't really even try to do. Until it's really good, it's always going to be a little disgusting and disorientating. Even when you're not producing a realistic game, the 'uncanny valley' comes up in all sorts of ways, just in the basic interactions like head movement or handling objects.

I find it hard to imagine though how it will be possible to interface a person with a VR experience cleanly without hooking directly into their mind. Until that happens, walking and any kind of physical interaction will be difficult problems to overcome.

 

Not hard at all, when you know that those that actually play the game has things like this to say, why the F*** care about those who havent played the game

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/7mvfi8/virtual_warfighter_new_map_wip/drwz2tq/

 

VR is a fad because it'll be replaced by something better

 

Found a site that lists player counts for vr games:

http://vrlfg.net/

When I see those I sure am glad that I decided against jumping on VR gamedev when I was considering it a while ago.

 

Well, if the person who has not played the game took the time to comment about it, then it is likely the person at least considered the game and was possibly in the target market for the game.

 

Those concurrent player counts are not huge, but they are high enough to sustain an indie title. If even a few hundred people are concurrently playing a multiplayer game, then that will be several servers full. By contrast, if a game is hitting peaks of only 3 concurrent players, then there is basically no chance for the game to succeed as a multiplayer game.

 

MP in VR is not sustainable at the moment, thats why we are shifting focus to COOP.
We are writing bots from the ground up, with alot of focus on being able to flank,, regroup etc. if you have played the orginal F.E.A.R you know what I talk about. This is something the other shooters dont have

 

Potentially bad way to market your product?

When you say, "something the others don't have," I immediately want to fact check, which means I'll be spending a lot of time looking at other games.

Stick to positive things about your product. No need for comparison.

 

I'm not markering my game to game devs though

edit: we never mention the other games otherwise btw, its just bound to end bad for you if you try to compare your own game to other games towards the consumers. We instead use terms like, industry leading, etc

 

Why would the other shooters want bots? They have players.

 

They have bots

 

My point isn't that they have them. My point is that they don't need them. They have people willing to play their games.

 

They are not that bad for VR games and also those numbers are based only on Steam and public profiles so over half of the VR user base might not be counted (private profiles and Oculus+WMR platforms).

 

Actually they might be worse, that just means they have the game up and running, doesn't mean all those players are in a actual server

 

Just keep this in mind...