Hello everyone,
We’ve been listening to the feedback on the PCVR 1.8 update we launched yesterday, and I understand the frustrations you’ve shared with us. The focus for the update was not only to facilitate the launch on Quest: we’ve also implemented an enormous amount of changes under the hood that will enable us to expand Onward going into the future.
In the end, we didn’t allow ourselves enough time to bring back the full immersive experience for PCVR: the current graphics in particular are a noticeable step down from what you were used to in 1.7. I apologize for not having communicated that clearly with you, or giving you the option to make a choice between 1.7 and 1.8 while we worked on solving these issues.
Going forward the first priority for 1.8 is to bring the graphics to a higher level, and sort out the other issues you’ve raised with us over the past day. We’ll be releasing a patch today with a couple of immediate changes to LODs, as well as a handful of bug fixes. In addition to today’s patch, we’ll open up a beta channel on Steam that will allow you to revert back to 1.7 if you want to continue playing that version. This will remain an option for the coming weeks, as we work to address the issues you’ve raised.
My team has been working extremely hard over the past couple of months to make this release happen, and I’m proud of the work they did. One of the things they really need right now is some time off to catch their breath. That means that after today’s patch most of Downpour will have a week off before returning to work. Trust me they’ve earned it.
When we’re back the focus will be to release frequent, incremental improvements, and I’ll talk to you guys more about that as soon as I can. Apart from graphical changes, we’ll also keep working on bringing back the maps that didn’t make it into 1.8 yet, as well as custom content.
Thanks for being passionate about Onward. Your support over the past four years made the game possible and I’m not about to forget that. Thank you.
-Dante