Multiplayer VR Shooters

[Joshua the Writer]

Do you think only VR shooter games would become popular and more common eventually? And will they be practical? I think, yeah, they would become popular, but not to the extent of those played on keyboard and mouse / gamepad.

First of all, there is reloading guns to worry about. There are thousands of different firearms designed over the years, and all of them have to have ammo fed into them. Most people who make VR games with guns in them have players reload the weapons manually (much like one would do IRL). This could be a bit of a struggle with players that aren't very familiar with firearms, but will be easy for those who are decently familiar with guns. The skill gap would be wide, but eventually those unfamiliar with guns will memorize how to reload their weapons of choice.

This person does know how to properly reload the guns, but he is obviously intentionally doing it wrong on purpose.

There is also the fact that not many people have a VR headset, or a computer that can run VR games well. VR games require more graphics card power due to needing to draw the scene twice (once for each eye), and they need to do that so that the player has a field of view of 180 degrees (although some games do have the option to either reduce the FOV or have an FOV of 180 by default).

What are your thoughts on the practicality of online VR shooters? The only well-known PvP VR shooter game is Pavlov VR. The other highly popular VR Shooter is Horseshoes, Hotdogs, and Hand Grenades (H3VR for short), but that one is single player only. H3VR showcases the possibilities of guns and shooting mechanics in VR very well (there is even a game mode where you can shoot hot dog soldiers in close quarters environments while capturing objectives).

I don't see why not online VR games would become popular, but I don't see them becoming as popular as non-VR shooters.

 

[Misery]

The simple fact of the tech to do all of this being quite pricey is honestly the real reason why this concept isnt more popular.

Think about it, VR is actually way more accessible than traditional gaming controls (be they controller or keyboard). I can take someone who doesnt do gaming at all and does little in the way of computers, jam the headset on them and hand them the... er... hand things, and off they go, with little trouble, so long as I warn them about the whole "dont try to slide around, just teleport, here's how to do it" thing.

But it's so bloody expensive. My current PC is specifically built to be able to handle VR at absolute max settings no matter what (and other things) and it was some $4000 in cost. And then the headset was another 500, I think? Also bought a third sensor with that. And then the games.

Not to mention the other big hurdle alot of people have, which is space. I had to move my entire PC setup into the basement, couldnt have it in my room anymore if I wanted to do VR. You need quite a big blank space set aside JUST for VR in order for it to truly work. AND, you need somewhere to put a rear sensor (if you're using VR of the sort that uses sensors like that, which most do). When I see people doing this on Youtube, it seems that many actually have an entire room JUST for this sort of thing.

As far as the actual gameplay elements, something like reloading guns isnt a big deal. Most games absolutely do not try to do it realistically at all. Provided they even require reloading, which plenty dont. The only one I can think of out of the games I've played that makes it a bit complicated is Duck Season, which only uses a shotgun of some sort, which must be manually fed. But like many things in VR it's pretty intuitive and the game distinctly shows you exactly how to do it, and how to hold the gun. As a rule the one and only thing that truly matters in most of these games is ability to aim. Other aspects of the weapons are just handled by the program itself.

The big gameplay problem is actually movement. A ton of players cant handle it. And just teleporting all over the place wont work in a VR shooter, not really.

As for me personally, I dont do multiplayer, because screw it, I hate everyone. And Oculus in particular is about to have some big trouble with that anyway, after the snotrags that run the company decided to link up with Facebook (after they made a very public and very direct promise that they would never do that). Currently, if you want to do multiplayer AT ALL in any game whatsoever, you MUST have a Facebook account linked to your Oculus account. With all of the cybersnooping that this implies. And of course Facebook gets aggressive about finding and frying fake accounts, so you cant really just do that. So Oculus users are having extra trouble doing anything multiplayer.

 

[Joshua the Writer]

The big gameplay problem is actually movement. A ton of players cant handle it. And just teleporting all over the place wont work in a VR shooter, not really.

As for me personally, I dont do multiplayer, because screw it, I hate everyone. And Oculus in particular is about to have some big trouble with that anyway, after the snotrags that run the company decided to link up with Facebook (after they made a very public and very direct promise that they would never do that). Currently, if you want to do multiplayer AT ALL in any game whatsoever, you MUST have a Facebook account linked to your Oculus account. With all of the cybersnooping that this implies. And of course Facebook gets aggressive about finding and frying fake accounts, so you cant really just do that. So Oculus users are having extra trouble doing anything multiplayer.

I wonder if when full-dive VR becomes a reality, that the movement wouldn't be as much as an issue. I mean, you are basically sleeping while playing, since the headset would basically redirect your nervous system into it by basically scanning signals. Or at least I think that was how it was done in SAO.

And, yeah. I hate the 100,000,000 accounts you need to be a PC gamer that loves online play. It's just stupid. I just want everything on my Steam account, and that's it.

 

[Misery]

I wonder if when full-dive VR becomes a reality, that the movement wouldn't be as much as an issue. I mean, you are basically sleeping while playing, since the headset would basically redirect your nervous system into it by basically scanning signals. Or at least I think that was how it was done in SAO.

And, yeah. I hate the 100,000,000 accounts you need to be a PC gamer that loves online play. It's just stupid. I just want everything on my Steam account, and that's it.

Eh, it's not the number of accounts that bother people, it's the fact that it gives one of these greedy companies yet another day to harvest data and use it to do really irritating things (not to mention violating privacy even more). Which is exactly why Facebook wants that move.

That being said, Steam pulls this sort of crap too. They're just way, way more subtle about it. Not to mention having other screwball issues. The real trick is to find ways to block the harvesting before doing anything with accounts in general.