Not sure what the mouse trap is but i liked the one with the wind mill because if it gets in my way i can just quickly dodge it by flying up or down and i actually found it even more fun, but for example the giant rocks that crush you or the wind in the ruins were annoying because the only way to get through is stopping until they’re not on the way (in fact me and Kamina weren’t even able to go past the rocks until we found out you could stop).
Mouse trap is a maze experimental race near the Right side (when starting from the graveyard in highsteppe) of the wall around highsteppe (same side the door to the player house is on). Its a small maze that has multiple routes that you must figure out from underneath or above by plotting your course, then jumping in and completing it. My thought was to make a large one and have a platform nearby where one player could fly the dragon and another would coach them through the turns to take, maybe even make it a multistory type thing. So while one person was flying the other would be guiding them through all the turns by watching the other players dragon from the platform.
Thought it might be fun to tie some critical thinking and problem solving into dragon racing, but if the community wants it to be a more relaxed activity akin to fishing where its something to do in between dungeon runs or mob fights then we can go that route too and make more like the “Racing Ruins” course.
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What about having competitive multiplayer races happen at set time intervals for rewards? Say queue up by the sign, 4-8 people per instance, every 15/30 minutes maybe?
Be rewarded with dram or some sort of special currency per race for competing. Leave what’s already there for people who want to complete the quest, practice, or go for the leaderboard. I think there’s potential here with it, but it would be good to give more incentive to racing.
I could use the head gave alright although I agree it would be a good idea to implement other methods of control. Joystick would be good, and I imagine Xicor’s suggestion of reigns would feel better than head gaze as well.
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Have a lot of different types during the beta! But plz add longer go around options for timed blokades (like the rock).
The rat trap was not my favorit. Mostly because I diddent know about the breaks, you should add that to the instructions, and the constant walls where nasty at high speed.
When I did my first run and saw other dragons in the cours I instantly thought of multiplayer courses where you unlock doors and paths for each other! That would be awesome!
Also some on time clicking or so to boost speed slightly maybe? Or a booster that charges up by flying threw the stamina rings? Or just a path getting unlocked if you have enough rings?
Don’t get me wrong, let some be skippable.
Just group racing would also be fun!
You should add some golden rings or something as well that are not skippable to keep people rougly on track.
All in all, a nice add to the game.
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Maybe it’s all my dark souls/monhun, but I liked that you could die to stuff and have to repeat the run better prepared. It’s not like you have to refeed the dragon for additional attempts. Probably good to have a scattering of easier courses people can run and get dailies done and then harder, off the path, trails people can run just for fun and extra rewards (like jumping puzzles in GW2)
One complaint I felt running the courses is that somtimes I felt like I couldn’t ascend fast enough even 3-4 gates out. Usually took another run and keeping to the upper parts of the lead in rings.
I would like to see control be more involved and more of a factor in speed/time. Maybe the one suggestion of having your arms out for wings/steering.
I was also expecting a more breeding oriented dragon racing system where you would pit your AI dragon with all its breeding and training against other dragon trainers. I definitely wasn’t expecting a solo time trial ‘race’ with just a leaderboard.
That being said, I didn’t mind the locomotion. I was actually surprised that it wasn’t uncomfortable. I’m usually very adamant against this sort of locomotion but I thought it worked well. Aiming your head towards the rings actually felt like ducking through the rings yourself.
That being said, I really liked the idea of mounting your dragon and using reigns to control its flight.
Either way it does still need work. There are some tracks, like the one in the swamp, where it seems like there are rings that are out of reach. There’s a path that’s pretty far down below you that you really can’t reach unless you spiral down and eat more time than you’d save by getting the boosts. The dragon doesn’t feel maneuverable enough.
Tried the racing more and had again a lot of fun with it, there’s already some good competion for the best times (except for the firsts 2 tracks that were cheesed)!
Here’s my feedback of most tracks i spent a bunch of time in:
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Sky High: I liked the initial part where you go through the wooden spars (although they could be placed bettere because right now you only have to dodge one of them), the rise right after is cool too. The part i don’t like, as stated before, is the water right after that and the giant rock at the end that can mess up a good run just due to bad luck.
Bugs: The rings after the tubes seems to have a giant hitbox and you don’t even need to fly close to them to get stamina. The wall on the left of the water didn’t have an hitbox so you could skip by going straight through it. -
Swamp Smash: Here the RNG part are the 3 rocks, after that it’s pretty cool going through the tubes with many speed buffs, overall liked it.
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Swamp Monster: The fish on this track have an horrible hitbox, seems like when they are up they hit you REALLY far away (i even got hit by one that was barely on the bottom of my view, not even close to the dragon).
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Ruins: About 30% of the track can be skipped (unless you go straight to the end and skip 99% of it), i really loved the propellers on this track because, if you don’t just go slower, there is a little sequence of dodging fast.
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Mouse Trap: Very cool the idea of having 2 players coordinating to find the right path (although it was very easy to learn and solo it), it was a lot of fun! Also love that there is no RNG so it’s easier competing for the best times. (btw you hide this one really well, if you didn’t mention it earlier i wouldn’t even know it exists
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)As a suggestion for a new track, i would love to fly on a fast-paced track with a lot of non-moving obstacles that you need to dodge quickly and a lot of speed buffs to make it even more tough.
So far i enjoyed the dragon racing so much, looking forward to see more of it!
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I liked the Dragon racing too. As some gave said using your head feels unnatural. I’d like an option as well to be.alble to use the rift or vibe controller.
Awesome idea! Since I was unable to see other dragons yet I also wanted to ask if it would be possible to actually enter a spectator mode or just always seeing those dragons fly through the course.
Regarding the controls: I also have some issues with my neck if I play this for a few rounds. Maybe it would be best to offer different control schemes and just let the players choose in the settings? And for example at Sky High Race there is one ring that is just unreachable because you would need to rise way faster way higher then you actually can.
Also at the moment it is not clearly visible what is the reason for flying through the rings if they are not a speedboost. If there is something like a time penalty for missing a ring, it should be shown somewhere with red numbers near the time for example. If you just need to collect a given amount of rings to sucessfully complete the course, it should also be shown and counting up with “x/y rings”.
Overall, I like the concept very much and it is indeed very much fitting the game since it give a special use for your pet dragon. If there would later be genetic parameters on the dragons so they are better/worse in different things then others, then it would make breeding even more fun and relevant then it is now.
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So as of a few updates ago you should actually see the dragons of others flying through the course all the time now.
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I enjoyed the dragon flying tracks last night!
At the start of my first flight I thought it might cause sim sickness for me (and I expect it will for sensitive people; I know someone who owns Orbus who will never be able to try dragon racing) but it didn’t. I think that the dragon not being 1-to-1 controlled with the head’s movement helps mitigate moving the view too fast.
Vox Machinae’s headlook for aiming is the only other headlook control in VR that hasn’t made me sick.
Personal note: the last alpha test last year of Orbus was the first time I could handle smooth locomotion after over a year of playing in VR. I was so elated that I bought the beta right away just to ride that feeling. =) It has thus helped me get acclimated to smooth locomotion in other VR games & experiences, but I do still get sim sickness from some, so I’m the rare person who can easily experience both sides of locomotion concerns.
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I only saw 3 tracks last night: the starting one, the tree top one with purple butterflies, and the spiral around the mountain one not far from the spawn point.
The starting one was a good basic track to learn to control flight. That one necessary tight turn on the back side of the track teaches you that you should be thinking about your angles of approach to rings ahead.
The track being only 7 feet up was fun because you could stick your hands up in the air and wave in front of the rings to your approaching friend’s dragon. 
The tree track with purple butterflies was a good second track to introduce more bits. The butterflies give a good sense of scale
I love the dragon’s glide animation. It would be easy to only animate continuous flapping wings, but switching to a glide is very nice.
The sound made when you fly through a ring is pleasant to my ears. Since it’s a sound that will be heard over and over, thank you for not making annoying or too loud or heavy bass.
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ISSUES:
Your voice is localized when dragon flying. I couldn’t tell if it’s still locked to your avatar’s position or your dragon. In the spiral mountain track a friend & I started at different times and couldn’t hear each other half the time.
Also on that track, when you need to fly up at a sharp angle so as to not die hitting the cliff edge, it felt like you can’t fly at a sharp enough angle upwards. I ended up swinging a bit to the right (missing a ring) to get over that cliff edge. Once I realized I can miss rings without having to restart the race, I started doing it on the track intentionally to by pass obstacles – not to cheat (and I didn’t get a high score at all) but I thought this was the way to get around obstacles. I couldn’t figure out how to get past the blue wind part until I flew under it and then pulled up to get back on track, again missing a few rings.
Someone here mentioned being able to slow down? I didn’t see any instructions for controls at the first track, and quick presses of buttons didn’t give me any instant, obvious indication that they had an effect.
It would be really neat (and I have no expectations of this, no whiny entitlement here!) if anyone who logged into this beta test (and I assume there may future ones) and flew a track could get that same black dragon pet in the main game once Reborn officially launches. 
I get easily attached to my VR pets.
I second that but without the “and flew a track…” … there’s lots people who can’t complete even one track due to motion sickness (I tried the “cheating” way a couple times just turning around to the end thingie, but sorry my neck feels like breaking… not goin to happen) and still invest lots time to test so basically every tester could perhaps get something in the end who logged in - at any test weekend - for half an hour or so?
I think that’s actually intended, you’ll find some tracks where you can’t go through every ring and need to make a choice. The reset happens if you fly 10 seconds without getting rings.
You can slow down by touching the bottom of the trackpad
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Ah, cool. Thanks for the tips!
On Oculus its just the analogstick pulled down
I would really like to see a better indicator of when you’ve turned your head as much as you can to change directions. I knew about the dot stopping once you hit the limit before I started playing but still found myself moving way to the side trying to turn sharper. I gave myself a bit of motion sickness doing this too, and I’m one of those crazy people who can spin around constantly while moving forward with no issues. I suspect the problem is that once you turn your head to the side so far, you are no longer moving in the direction you’re facing, so the world starts moving sideways when you feel like you should be going forward.
I was thinking an easy fix for this could be to put a semi-transparent ring around the dot to show the limits very clearly.
A better fix would be that the dragon always follows your gaze 100% of the time, but will slow down or even stop if you try to turn too fast. Up to the current 30 degrees you could keep all your speed, but once you move beyond that your speed is reduced and if you go 90 or more you stop completely and have to be still for a moment before it starts going again. I can see the 3rd person camera causing trouble with this idea though so it’s not a perfect solution.
Ok… I would like to start by saying that, in my opinion, the Dragon Racing activity is a really cool and different idea that I think is intended, if I am not wrong, to address “down time” in game.
What I like:
The ability of being able to spectate the dragons flying through the course - creates a great way to place bets if it becomes a true racing game.
The idea that one could compete with others in time trials to make this a mini-game
The courses are simple and well designed
My thoughts on improving this mini-game:
- Change of perspective - Am I having an out of body experience when I feed my dragon? I feel that if I can use a giant potion, I should be able to use a shrinking potion to allows my character to ride the dragon from the same perspective that I am playing the main game. This might also solve my next two suggestions.
- Better connection to the main game - Personally I feel that the mini-game(s) are somewhat out of place. Could Dragon Racing serve a purpose in the main game other than to complete random flying missions given by Sicilus? Example- the Dragon courses allow our characters to ascend certain vertical areas quickly without the need to just walk there. Maybe bypassing irritating mobs? Think slalom skiing but on Dragons. The idea of times make sense in context, could take longer if one could not fly well, we could possibly fly courses in reverse for double the competition fun.
- Change how to steer the dragon - On a positive side, it is very easy to learn but not something that would help me sell the idea of this game to friends or family. I know this is not its intent, but to expand on what I mean I would not use the dragon racing mini-game, in its current form, to show off either the Orbus world or VR in general. I also got a little motion sickness, but not bad. Again, if our character shrank to the size our our dragons then we could steer using our hands gripping the dragon horns, which might also provide future things to be added like fire breathing or other visual effects.
I really think the Dragon Racing Mini-game is very well crafted and my ideas may be to much work or something way off course from the path the Dev’s intended. Over all my opinion is that this activity is better than what is available in OrbusVR and I am excited to see how the final product will work.
2 Likes
Yeah i also keep moving a bit after it stops just to make sure, perhaps the dot should be red if it reaches the limit.
After digesting the experience this weekend, I’m wondering if increasing the speed of the dragon’s flight speed would be good.
Dragon racing this weekend felt relaxing. That is actually a good thing, since not every game needs every gameplay element to be stressful! Stressful doesn’t automatically equal fun.
Just wondering if the dragons flew faster would it make it more engaging?
Or perhaps like Mario Kart there could be different speed settings for each track, with their own leaderboards per speed tier?
On the flip side, would faster flight speed be more likely to induce sim sickness? (I got the story quest disc mount this weekend in the live game, and it’s increased speed of smooth locomotion didn’t make me ill, but every person is different.)