Introducing the OrbusVR Demo

Hey everyone,

Today we’re rolling out a new OrbusVR Demo on Steam. This demo allows anyone to play the game for free until Level 10 on all eight classes. Note that in addition to the level cap, demo users cannot trade with other players or use the Auction House.

It’s our hope that this will allow folks who have been on the fence about the game to get in and try it out, so if you have any friends that you have been wanting to play with, feel free to let them know about the demo so they can check it out.

After playing the demo, the full game can be purchased, and you can pick right back up where you left off to continue your journey toward max level. Note that the demo is on the Steam store but works with SteamVR (including Vive and Index) and Oculus Rift headsets. If you choose to purchase on the Oculus store after trying the demo, you can still continue from where you left off.

We’ve also put together a new quick-start guide video to help introduce new players to the game, which you can view here:

I did also want to re-iterate that we will continue to enforce the Code of Conduct in-game, and there will be less leniency on violations for demo users, so please report people if you see folks who are taking advantage of the free version to cause problems for the community.

We’re excited to see what effect the demo has on the game and we look forward to welcoming a lot of new folks to the world of Orbus!

13 Likes
  1. Will there be a marker signifying a demo player? I imagine we will be asked a LOT why X or Y doesn’t work for someone (like trading or the auction house)
  2. The video is jarring in some spots (particularly as you switch activities before the Minotaur is shown)
  3. Will demo players receive a soft cap on level (with stored xp beyond) or hard cap where additional events or missions will do no good?
  4. Do you intend to add this as a banner or is it being posted to your website?
  5. Some activities pretty much always require participation from players above level 10, such as the dungeon queue. Will they be able to join those, and is there any thought to handling that additional influx of new players on the queue?
  6. Have you addressed the muting, or determined what is causing muting to fail? It seems to me that having more players is going to drive up the need for muting.
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Now even more important with an influx of free/trial players:

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Lol, just turn on PvP and suicide drop.

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Or defeat other lowbies in PvP

Demo players shouldn’t have the ability to enable overworld PvP. Would hate for these potential consumers to be turned away from the game because a max level player has a trigger finger… thats just my opinion of course.

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Hmmm…we could definitely make it so that you can’t pick up PvP loot (other than your own dropped stuff) as a demo player. We’ll discuss that. I think it’s more likely a demo player would get killed by a veteran than it is they will be able to sneak around and suicide drop their stuff, though.

We have very clear notices that appear when you try and do those things (e.g. “You cannot trade with other players because you are on a Demo account.”), but other than that there is no additional marker currently other than the sprout for all new players.

It is actually a soft cap and in theory the XP is stored up, to be spent if they purchase the game. It’s not guaranteed to work that way forever which is why we’re just saying “play til Level 10” in the announcements and stuff, but that’s how it works currently.

We’ve posted it to the blog, Reddit, an announcement on Steam, etc. We may promote it permanently on the website more as well, just waiting to see how it goes in terms of response/how it’s used.

There are currently no restrictions on the dungeon queue for player level…if we added that in the future it would affect them the same.

It’s on our list for this sprint. I agree that it’s an issue that needs to be addressed ASAP. We’ve tried several times in the past and it hasn’t fixed it, though, so I’m not really sure what the root cause is.

Would output logs from when it happens help? If so I’ll save them from now on

Will the demo also be coming out onto oculus rift/quest store?

@Riley_D you do need to have some ID marker thing for demo players, we ran in to some racist A hole (did report him) with a sprout Icon and I think from the way it is currently it may cause issues with other sprouts getting associated with that for new players, I know that demo player are the ones that want to try the game.
honestly the addition of a demo is grate, I also do like helping the players out ant teaching them the basics, but we need a way of knowing if the people who do act in a way that can severely affect the reputation of the game and its community. my recommendation is add the word demo above the players name this way we can know who is new and who is trying out the game.
I know a lot of nice players who normally go out of there way to help the new players and I think that if we can tell if there a demo player we can give them a grate experience with the game.

sorry for making this a text wall.

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Okay, we can look into adding a different-style symbol. Also we’ll look into that report, thanks.

I don’t think the Rift store does demos (and since the version on Steam supports the Rift SDK natively, I don’t think there would be a need for it specifically). As for Quest, we are working on that and seeing if it is possible.

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I really would love to see a Demo on the Oculus Quest Store.
I know something like “Beta invitations” are possible on the Store, was just invited to test a Beta Version of SculptrVR (which is pretty cool btw.).

The person has to be invited to those and not more of a demo in which anyone can try it out.

Put demo players in a fellowship named “DEMO”?

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There is an achivement called “Dungeon ready” when level 8 is reached. I don’t know if that is ok or maybe just a remnant of the pre-reborn versión.

I think it’s the latter… level 10 would make more sense for this achievement, since you are no longer below the mobs of at least 2 dungeons.

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ill be watching the DAU numbers as always… I am very intrigued.

Also, why no demo for quest users?

You have 0 presence on the quest store search (I tried; i have to manually type in the game name).

cheers,

We are considering doing a demo for Quest but it requires more than just our willingness to do it. Likewise with the store presence, we have zero control over that. Trust me, if it were up to us we’d be plastered on the front page of the store permanently :slight_smile: