Orbus VR Facelift/overhaul Update?

Update ideas that I believe would bring many people to play this game, and keep people that are here playing longer

This game is amazing but is lacking community involvement, Youtuber/media coverage, and a growing community.

  1. More appealing tutorial

The tutorial is kind of bland, hard to follow, and not streamlined. A tutorial should take place offline, and by yourself. Not in the open, next to many other beginners, and online. I believe there should be 2 types of tutorials. When you make a new character, it should give you an option for a class tutorial (for new players it is mandatory). It should ask you if you are new, and if so walk you through game mechanics, if not, skip to the class tutorial (new players are forced to go through this). The class tutorial is skippable for those that already have a character. Class tutorials teach you all you can do with the class, and how to use it with a group. Tutorials should have a voice walkthrough, and clear, UI, step by step instructions.

  1. In-game guilds/fellowship and guild activities

-Fellowships should have better internal member ranking, like
Apprentice

Guildsman

Journeyman

Master

Grandmaster

-Fellowship rankings/leaderboard for the most active guild, or the guild with the most awards/dungeons cleared, with various rewards for achieving this status

-Forts guilds can control as a reward, or as a victory in PVP/PVE
EX: Every Saturday at 1600gmt guilds can raid a fort controlled by the guild who won it from last week for 1 hour. Controlling the fort can give you bonuses, a “fountain of youth”, or maybe a temporary good set of armor.

  1. A new character art style and customization settings

-The floating body with the floating hands are outdated and makes people assume the game is not fully content-filled, and top of the line! I believe it is time for a change. I believe a full-body character with full-body tracking compatibility would attract the most attention from people/YouTubers on the internet.
(My weeb preference is going to be SAO style, but any new, up to date models are welcome)

-If we do get new models, KurtzPel style customization would be great.

  1. More trees, grasses, and land deformation.

-Artstyle is again great, but I think the landscape can be improved upon to make up greatly for the low detail.

  1. Drop prices from 39.99 to 19.99-29.99

-If people are skeptical of the game, a lower price would sure encourage more people to continue to play. (If the other changes are implemented well, I am sure you would not even have to have the demo, as people would flock to this game)

  1. Cleaner UI

-I have no other way of explaining it. It just seems like it could use some usability tweaks.

-Specifically, my experience with quest AI has been confusing, and not easy to manage, I am sure looking at ways to streamlining quest acceptance, and quest navigation would be good.

  1. Player chill areas
    -With the money you might earn, I would love to see an option to go to the bar, where you have the waiter bring you drinks, or you can discuss dungeon plans with a group. Maybe even a library, where you can read books written by the community (developer or mod approved) about certain things, like strategies.

  2. Official Game/community discord!
    -We need an official discord (website advertised) to hang out in, talk to developers, get easier to access update logs. There could be guild recruitment. There are many many possibilities, and the community leaders should take advantage of the easier ways to be in contact with their community.
    There is already an unofficial discord, but I believe if it was officialized that would be great.

  3. Monthly developer Q&A/Showcase videos
    -Keep the community informed and hyped!

  4. Let our more talented community members volunteer.
    -We have many talented members in OrbusVR. In an official discord or the forums, if the developers need help, an volunteer work page would be great. Some examples would be original character models, house models, voice acting, or animations.

Please suggest changes or express support for this subject! I will change this post based on all of your feedback as a community!

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Its almost as if Guardian Bart was an obvious tutorial NPC in an instanced area where you are always by yourself and gives you a tutorial for every basic starter class and things like harvesting. It was mandatory for everyone if you wanted to to the main story quests. Yes you could skip the tutorial by walking past the NPC but it would have been an easy fix.

Honestly don’t know why this old tutorial was updated and “improved” for reborn.

This was talked about from the devs with rankings inside of fellowships. The only thing that came of it was Officers way later.

Already exists in form of the Armory just without rewards.

Cool idea and would be great to give a reason to PVP in open world. The only problem is that as it stands not only would only the top 2 or 3 guilds ever really control a fort but the rewards in the example are pointless.

XP bonuses are pointless as XP is not hard to get at all. Temporary good sets of armor would be cool but again most likely only the top 2 or 3 guilds will have these forts and therefore the gear would be at best a sidegrade to their +4 or +5 gear. Dram is not a good reward either as its also very easy to get.

It would have to be something to save time or something to be convenient such as potion aging time being reduced.

It would attract people, however having to render arms and legs for every player would not be kind in terms of performance. This has also been something brought up time and time again, the devs know some players want this and it is not a new idea. Though I would prefer the devs not work on this and instead work on creating new end game content and fixing the many bugs.

It would be best to have this be an option to turn on if you want it that way only those who want to have to deal with slightly worse performance.

Weirdly enough this was the old game. The old map had more trees, grass, and land deformation. You had hilly areas, plains areas, more mountainous areas. That and the map was populated with trees, buildings, small towns, etc. There was so much more to look at and again they “Improved” it.

The problem with that is that VR is already so niche I doubt it would help out that much. I am not an expert on economics and do not claim to be but this does not seem like a good financial decision and I seriously doubt that this would happen.

I agree here, although this is more noticeable now as almost everything is in a UI menu at this point. In the old game if you got a quest it would go into your journal which you could open at any time separate from the menu. Why not just add a tab for the missions instead of having it in a menu?

There was an inn in the old game, no one really went there often but it did exist and these would be an awesome addition. A good thing to replace those Player Shops. I thought that when you get a market stall you would get one of the stores but I am not a dev so I would not know.

While it would be nice for it to be official it would not matter to much. Honestly it seems like it would be a waste of dev time at the current moment with that discord being moderated by the players.

Would be nice to know the progress on updates or to communicate the issues of the game to the devs directly.

Volunteering to work on the game has been talked about in the past by players. Paid work would most likely be a no go though as the company behind Orbus is a small one and therefore this would just not be likely.

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This is a HUGE one. For a VR MMO to really take off, it not only needs to be an MMO played in a VR headset; the mechanics need to take advantage of the unique experiences offered by VR. For the most part, Orbus does a great job of this (like with manually making potions, for example). But the UI is one aspect that’s notoriously lacking in this department.

I don’t necessarily know what the best alternative is - but pointing and clicking at a cluttered UI the way you would on a desktop just does not work. At the very least, the UI should give you less information at a time. Maybe a much larger character model on the left, with bigger equipment slots; and then a much bigger inventory on the right, showing less items at a time. Perhaps you could switch between a list view of the items with their names and descriptions next to them, and a grid view more like the current one but only with 12 or so items on screen at a time. The inventory should also have tabs to filter your view so you just see weapons, armor, consumables, etc. On a traditional desktop MMO, it’s not so bad to hover your mouse over each item to look for a specific one; but it’s very bad in VR, where pointing is already less precise than a mouse cursor, and it’s more difficult to see the details of a fine interface clearly. As a result, we need filter tools to streamline the inventory management process as much as possible.

Edit: thinking about this got me on a roll and I’m watching the beta gameplay video for Nostos. If I were the Orbus devs, I’d take as much as possible from the way they handle their interfaces - a big one being to attach the menu to your hand. Orbus already has its own very different style from Nostos, so I don’t think there’d be any problem with heavily borrowing from their design ideas, while adapting them to Orbus’ own style. As they say: “Good artists borrow, but great artists steal.”

This exactly - I’ve been hoping for this for a long time now. As mentioned above, VR inherently has some very unique capabilities, and another one is the social aspect.

Whereas in traditional MMOs, you more often always need a task to do, VR uses more of your body which means you need spaces in the game to breathe and take a break. After going through an especially difficult and stressful dungeon with some friends, a tavern would be a nice respite to hang out at. Likewise, yeah, it could be a good venue for making plans before setting out on an adventure. It’d be nice if there were some little minigames in there as well - maybe chess, dice poker, or another simple game that people could sit across from each other and play. If they really wanted to take this further, some game pieces could be collectible by playing the main game and that could add an additional motivation for Orbus. Aside from the main foci of the game, players could set up tournaments and fun stuff like that.

I also really like the idea of a library with strategy guides and more in-depth looks at the world of Orbus.

And as an additional idea, separate from the above, it might also improve the world to simply not drop new players in the main(/only?) city of the game. In MMOs, it’s exciting to start out in the boonies where you learn to play - and eventually work your way out to the main city, learning the ropes and gaining a sense of wonder and anticipation in the world on your way there. It would also help with information overload, as mechanics could be introduced little-by-little, rather than having everything available all at once in the main city.

I think the devs have been doing a great job so far, and I love how responsive they’ve been. I look forward to things continuing to progress!

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I like the idea of a tavern type place. I’d originally hoped that the guild hall would turn into something like that as well, but as of now it’s just a place to share mats with your guildies. If we do get another Lakewood inn type place, I’d love to see some additional perks to going there to motivate folks to socialize more. Something like active potions have their timers halted while you are in the tavern. Then maybe add some practice dummies too and folks can practice with and teach each other. The idea of the mini games is cool, but would be secondary to simply having a place like that at all.

The UI issue is very true. I do UI/UX for a living and one of the biggest rules is don’t assault your users with too much information at one time. When there is too much information, the human mind can suffer from something called decision paralysis. This is basically where there is so much to look at you don’t know where to start. It can be very off-putting for new users (read new players) especially. It is better to have more views with fewer options than to have less views with more options.

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