how too get more pll in ut3

[Poker]

heh, what a sadly entertaining thread. A topic reflecting a concern ostensibly shared by everyone: how to get more players into UT3. And yet for every ounce of solution, we're graced with pounds of smugness, condescension, aggression both passive and overt—not to mention an artfully arranged veil of s all about ... no daggers in those, surely.

 

[Kazimira]

heh, what a sadly entertaining thread. A topic reflecting a concern ostensibly shared by everyone: how to get more players into UT3. And yet for every ounce of solution, we're graced with pounds of smugness, condescension, aggression both passive and overt—not to mention an artfully arranged veil of s all about ... no daggers in those, surely.

It seems no one can agree to dissagree. When people do thay can work out hwo to keep everyone happy at once.

The only thing I can think of to do that is to give people alot of choice and let them choose.

 

[silentlykiller]

well all we can do is play the game learn too life with the bugs like i do
or not and hope the expansion will chang some thing too get pll back or not

 

[Bersy]

heh, what a sadly entertaining thread. A topic reflecting a concern ostensibly shared by everyone: how to get more players into UT3. And yet for every ounce of solution, we're graced with pounds of smugness, condescension, aggression both passive and overt—not to mention an artfully arranged veil of s all about ... no daggers in those, surely.

astute observation there.

 

[JEnepas]

heh, what a sadly entertaining thread. A topic reflecting a concern ostensibly shared by everyone: how to get more players into UT3. And yet for every ounce of solution, we're graced with pounds of smugness, condescension, aggression both passive and overt—not to mention an artfully arranged veil of s all about ... no daggers in those, surely.

This may be true , but we should be glad Wartourist posts here at all

only joking. WarTourist = good man

 

[Kazimira]

Yeah he is a good guy.

 

[Wander]

Yeah, sometimes I'm really astonished that he still has sufficient patience to come back again and again to defend UT3 and Epic against the, um, sceptical part of these forums .

 

[WHIPperSNAPper]

I'll let the guys know to stop production on the expansion. Thanks for making the call .

Hal, time for a new News item: Lruce Bee Sticks A Fork In UT3!

Quite frankly, if the expansion isn't going to be a stand alone game that gives it the UT 2003--->2004 treatment then I can't understand why they're wasting their time. Could there really be enough console players out there who'd be willing to pay for the expansion to make it worthwhile?

I assume that they have the facts and figures and know something about the market for a UT3 expansion that we don't.

 

[WHIPperSNAPper]

UT99 and UT2004 fans went back to their favourite games because of the UI? Right ...

Gameplay and ambience didn't matter, this is an UI specialist community after all

Did you see what the game was like upon it's release? If you had bought the game when it was released back in mid-November of 2007 you would have discovered a barely functional server browser that wouldn't even allow you to add Favorites and the ability to add Favorites wasn't fixed for about two or three months after the game's release.

Furthermore--why shouldn't the UT3 user interface and server browser be as good as or better than the UT 2004 user interface and server browser? Just why should anyone tolerate anything less than that? If you bought a 2009 Lexus and discovered that its features were far inferior to your 2008 Lexus would by you be happy?

I agree with you that the UI and server browser are NOT the primary reason why no one plays this game online. (The online multiplayer player counts don't lie, btw...they're telling us something.) The washed out grungy Gears of War type look makes it a little more difficult to see IMHO and the game has a couple game play issues. The end result is that UT 2004's Onslaught is more fun than UT3 and UT99 Capture-the-Flag is either more fun or at least equal to UT3's CTF game.

UT3 was a step backwards in many ways:

• Horrible and far inferior user interface and server browser
• Gamespy issues
• Far fewer game types (needs Assault, Invasion, UT99 Domination, and Bombing Run)
• Some critical game play issues
• Inability to keybind taunts and communication comments
• Very limited selection of player skins
• Difficulty customizing graphics options

People point out the inferiority of the User Interface and Server Browser (as they were at the game's release) because they symbolize and encapsulate just about everything else that's wrong with the game (unpolished, consolized). It wasn't merely the UI and server browser but rather a totality of numerous factors.

Some of the game play issues:

• The vehicle that lays the spider mine pods that cannot be destroyed in Warfare needs to be completely removed from the game along with the dumb mines and pods.
• No first person view for vehicles.
• No "turn off orb" easy-to-use mutator (as far as I know).
• Inability to throw weapons and pick up a new one.
• Limited translocator throws for game types that use it.
• Inability to have communication comments set as keybinds ("cover me", "Enemy flag carrier is here"--location, etc.)

Please stop making excuses for UT3--there's no excuse for producing a product that is inferior to the previous product when you've already demonstrated that you have the knowledge and ability to produce the higher quality product.

Oh...and by the way...the online multiplayer counts don't lie...they're telling us something about UT3.

 

[UBerserker]

The end result is that UT 2004's Onslaught is more fun than UT3

I am not going to argue with you and your annoying style of posting, but UT3 did the opposite to me in this case here. Much more entertaining.

 

[WHIPperSNAPper]

And now what we are witnessing is probably the most out of character situation for the UT community: people are sticking around this time.

I don't know what changed between these previous releases and now, but in previous games when people didn't like it, they stopped playing it and went somewhere else.

I suspect that what happened is that instead of completely losing interest in the UT series and moving on to other and better games (which might have happened with UT99 and UT 2004), the people who are complaining still maintain an interest in the UT series because they still play UT99 and/or UT 2004. People who bought UT3 who'd never played or had an allegiance to UT99 and UT 2004 probably did just what you suggested--they pitched it aside and moved on.

The state of UT3 is partially of our own making as well. Who wants to play a game that is not only whined about on the official forums like crazy, but that EVERY SINGLE THREAD ABOUT THE GAME on the largest fan site for that game is ALSO whined about?

Oh, give me a break. Which came first, the whining or the game issues? The reason UT3 has such low online player counts has nothing to do with whining on the forums. Do you really think that people care about crap posted on forums enough to keep them from playing a game that they really enjoy? I don't buy it. Just because a huge amount of people say that a game sucks won't keep you from playing it if it strikes a chord with you.

And before anyone chimes in with "casual gamers don't read forums", you're wrong. Casual gamers READ forums, they just don't participate in them. The only people who commonly don't read forums are the people that are never going to play the game online, and even a great deal of them do for information/downloads for mods and such.

I'm really not convinced of this. I think there are a lot of folks out there who will never bother to look for a discussion forum nor even to wonder whether there might be a webpage at http://www.<gamename>.com. I see this in Sins of a Solar Empire where people will come into the Ironclad Online chat lobby and start asking questions that could have been easily answered by searching for posts at the game's discussion forums.

But I do think it's silly to label a game as a failure because of a poll of people who mostly played and enjoyed UT2004.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. My judgment of the game is based on my perceptions of it and its online player counts, the later of which seems pretty straightforward and objective.

 

[WHIPperSNAPper]

OK everyone what do you guys actualy want to happen to UT3 and the UT series future? By bitching about the games we are all just throwing negativaty at the hole situation.

Here is what I'm hoping for:

A UT4 or UT 2011 game will be produced. It should probably be renamed to the yearly naming convention since the UT3 name has a negative aura around it.

The basic game play and movement feel of UT3 will be preserved with various game play issues that I've mentioned previously in other posts being addressed.

The game will be designed first and foremost as a PC online multiplayer game without any compromises in that regard.

The User Interface and Server Browser will be highly polished and at least as good as or better than the final, polished UT 2004 user interface and server browser and they will be 100% bug free at release. The game will also include an improve UT 2004 IRC browser.

The basic game types will be: DM, CTF, Onslaught, Assault, UT99 style Domination, Invasion, and Bombing Run. Also, the game would include simple variations of those core gametypes--TDM, vCTF, Warfare (Onslaught with orb), Assault Racing, etc.

Players will be able to do just about anything they could do in UT99 and/or UT 2004 in terms of adjusting and tweaking graphics settings and options and having keybinds for taunts and communication, etc.

A number of excellent UT99 style skins will be produced.

The best taunts from all of the UT games will be ported over or re-voiced assuming that doing so is compatible with intellectual property and contractual issues.

On release the game will fully support Linux and especially Linux server hosting. Server administration and Webadmin will be polished.

The game will be almost completely decoupled from Gamespy other than perhaps using Gamespy in the unobtrusive way that the UT99 and UT 2004 server browsers did.

The game will numerically balance teams (as UT99 and UT 2004 did, unlike UT3) unless the server admin turns it off.

An excellent Map Vote menu will be included (as good as or better than what UT 2004 currently has).

For server admins who do not want to use Map Vote, the game will have a feature that allows server admins to choose what maps will play or can be played based on the number of people who finished playing the last map, so, for example, if only 10 people were on the server the large maps can be skipped and vice versa.

 

[Benfica]

...

Brilliant post, however it's replying to stuff that I'm NOT claiming.

What I'm claiming is:
1) UT2004 players went back due to gameplay. UT99 sticked to UT99, didn't go back because of the UI. UT3 enthusiasts coming from all origins including UT99 dropped it due to a lot of the stuff that you mentioned, including the UI.
2) The UI was not "the" reason, there are multiple.
3) I'm pointing out problems on gameplay and ambience but you are implying I blindly defending UT3 or whatever
4) Then point me where I'm against an improvement of the UI! The UI must be revamped, UWindows would be much better, BUT the community keeps insisting that it must be like UWindows. It doesn't. UWindows is Microsoft Windows application style, i.e. menu bar-> drop down menus -> MDI windows. You can do stuff better these days, look at other games and even the Office 2007 ribbon! The latter may not apply but that's beyond the point, what matters is that the UI becomes much better. What's more, with the short-sightedness of asking for the opposite of what you(generally speaking) have now, (i.e. asking for an UI that happens to be unusable on the console), you are forcing a large fork in development, duplication of effort and a worse final result.

edit: WHIPperSNAPper, I reread your post carefully and we tend to agree on a few things after all. Nevermind...

 

[WHIPperSNAPper]

There's really no hope left is there?

For everyone's sake, if you don't like the game, MOVE ON.

Well, most of the people who went back to UT99 or UT 2004 are now pretty comfortable with their perception that UT3 is a failure.

I guess I can't speak as to why such people continue to have any interest in posting about UT3 if they've given up on it, but I can speak for myself. There is a possibility that a UT4 or a UT 2011 could be produced and if it is--I want Epic to be aware of what I think was wrong with UT3 and how UT4/2011 could be better. Do you find that irrational?

 

[WHIPperSNAPper]

Technically that's all they need. After a certain time frame you can't return a game in the US, the company already has your money and that's all that matters. :/

After a certain time frame...say after you walk out of the store with it?

It's worse than that now because as games are beginning to require people to register them online with an e-mail address and password, it's becoming difficult to sell used games that you'd don't like, so in that sense it's even harder to do that kind of a partial "return".

 

[Grobut]

2) The UI was not "the" reason, there are multiple.

This we can only agree on, i've been saying just that since day one, its no one thing, it is many, sometimes even little things, that when all combined has made a raging river of "do not want!".

But there is one big thing about the UI that has not done UT3 any favours, the unhandy deisgn and interactions of it is something most people could probably ignore on its own, if it where just that, i don't think the UI would ever have been such an issue.. where it really hurts the game is the utter lack of options and features, past UT's where games that you could tinker with and tweak to your liking, be it what crosshairs you wanted, how long you wanted spawn protection enabled, if you wanted Brightskins or not, big or small weapon models, there was a wealth of things we could play around with so, pretty much anyone could enjoy UT or UT2004 (or at the very least with a mod enabled if nothing else), but UT3 is cloused shut, it is a game that, you either love it exactly the way it is, or you're out of luck, because there's practically nothing you can tweak or tinker with, and modders would have to totally re-create a whole new UI for that to be changed, an enormous task, its basically making a TC mod but with none of the glory, and its no wonder that nobody has done it (or atleast finished what they started).

All we have left then is trying to make mutators that adds thease things back to the game, a very imperfect solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place..

Making a game that allready had nieche appeal, even more limited in its target audience may very well have been the single biggest problem with UT3.


You know, i didn't like UT2004, not its stock out of the box gameplay, but it is still on my HDD, and will undoubtedly remain there for years to come, simply because it was so polished, such a good modplatform, and so open, everything i didn't like about it i have long since changed, and it kicks arse for me now.. i wish i could say the same for UT3, had it just had the same basic "openness" of past UT's, i would long since have found ways to enjoy the game, but alas, it was not so..

 

[Nereid]

I am replying to post #171.

I'd just like to point out that comparing the amount of content (maps, gametypes, models) in UT3 to UT2004 is pretty stupid, since UT2004 is really two games' worth (building on top of UT2003). If you want a fairer comparison, compare with UT2003, which had half the maps, fewer player models, and no Onslaught, Assault, VCTF, Invasion, and so on. UT2003 and UT3 have the same number of gametypes (if you count VCTF as a gametype), and a similar number of maps. UT3 has a bunch more vehicles as well.

By the way, there is a No Orbs mutator in stock UT3. Limited translocator charges has been around since UT2003 (although in UT3 the limitation is a bit more noticeable, and then there's the stupid delay before you can translocate).

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Oh, give me a break. Which came first, the whining or the game issues? The reason UT3 has such low online player counts has nothing to do with whining on the forums. Do you really think that people care about crap posted on forums enough to keep them from playing a game that they really enjoy? I don't buy it. Just because a huge amount of people say that a game sucks won't keep you from playing it if it strikes a chord with you.

Yes, I do.

If anyone is on the fence about a game purchase in today's community environment, what are they going to do? They are going to read about it online. Game site reviews, game forums, comments on videos on streaming video sites, etc. They want to know if it is worth buying.

A quick trip round the intertubes on various game trailers, forum threads and comments on review sites tells all the story anyone needs to know. The vast majority of people are not praising the game in any way.

Obviously the game came out first, if not there would be nothing to whine about. But what is the whining accomplishing right now? I daresay it's accomplishing less than nothing, in other words it is turning away people who would generally have an interest in a game like UT3.

As I said, people are reading these things to determine if they should even bother buying the game. The majority of them probably never tried the demo nor followed any of the pre-release fervor at all, but what they are met with from every side of the internet is hate and disgust for absolutely every aspect of the game.

I think it's silly to assume this doesn't affect the number of players who neither bought the game nor play it online.

I'm really not convinced of this. I think there are a lot of folks out there who will never bother to look for a discussion forum nor even to wonder whether there might be a webpage at http://www.<gamename>.com. I see this in Sins of a Solar Empire where people will come into the Ironclad Online chat lobby and start asking questions that could have been easily answered by searching for posts at the game's discussion forums.

Then, in my estimation, you are being extremely shortsighted.

People know how to use Google these days, and they are going to google around a bit if a game seems to interest them but they are not sure about it. That googling is going to lead them to the Epic Forums, here, game sites who reviewed the game and they are going to get a predisposition about the game that is not very favorable.

Also, if a game has a chat lobby, why wouldn't you go there asking for help? The chances of finding info in a timely manner are much better there, plus there is a ton of convenience.

 

[shoptroll]

If anyone is on the fence about a game purchase in today's community environment, what are they going to do? They are going to read about it online. Game site reviews, game forums, comments on videos on streaming video sites, etc. They want to know if it is worth buying.

... and this is precisely why bombing Amazon's users ratings with 1-stars for Spore over DRM was such a big deal a few months ago.

 

[T2A`]

... and this is precisely why bombing Amazon's users ratings with 1-stars for Spore over DRM was such a big deal a few months ago.

No, it wasn't.

Spore was still the #2 best-selling PC game this holiday season. Pretty much any search you do about Spore reviews or user experiences will be negative. It's fairly easy to see that whining on the Interbutts doesn't affect Joe Blow in any way, shape, or form.

Not only that, but UT3 is/was apparently the #3 game sold on D2D.

And yet UT3 still has very meager online numbers -- a few hundred at best (and that includes the entire world). Obviously this the game's fault, not a few people Interbutts' who care enough to get annoyed at the game's lack of worth.

Point goes to Whippersnapper.