Wishlist for Next UT

Vedanth Salian · Apr 4, 2005

Since the new UT is focussed on gameplay rather than graphics, I have some suggestions to make. But sometimes these suggestions might be wrong, so i dont know it might help.

1) Epic must have a different weapon balance for each gametrype. Im saying this because in UT2004, the shield gun was balanced in ffs but way too powerful in 1vs1. The weapon ammo for all weapons was way too high in 1vs1 while I dont know in TDM & DM. The link was weak compared to minigun in 1vs1 but in TDM it could combine with other link guns & could be powerful. The weapon fire rate was quite balanced in 1vs1 but in Assault due to the spammy nature of weapons I couldnt just see anything as there were just ammos of guns going from here to there. I think it is visually disturbing in Assault. Even in Assault everyone were using Shield to move through, it is damn boring. How can the same weapons & movement be balanced in the all gametypes where skill levels are different?

2) Epic must set a decent player numer in respective gametypes. In Assault there were 14vs14 team matches which are just crazy. In a map if the player count are more, then due to quick rate of fire of UT2004 weapons (spammy as we call) the gameplay suffers as people will just spam & spam & it gonna be frustrating for new players. The thing is lower the player count or lower the rate of fire or lower the ammos.

3) We want some demos & tutorials in the official game itself beforehand. Im saying this because I was not a big fan of UT2004 as before I was playing a lot of UT. I was just running and shooting with 1 gun so I used to not enjoy it. It was a different situation in UT as even with 1 gun you could frag people. But after watching a professional match demo between Gitzz & Lotus (ESWC 2003 Compressed) I was astonished to see there were so many moves I didnt know at all. I didnt even know there was a Double Damage on the top. Walljumping, Elevator jumping, Dodgejump, Quick Weapon Switches, trickjumps, it was just awesome. I then understood the application of these tricks & from then onwards I didnt even touch UT. Now I learnt using single keys for a particular weapon etc. Now even dodgejumping & navigating through a map is so enjoyable. If I hadnt seen the demo then I would have shelved UT200x series a long time ago. So assuming all the new players will be like me I think Epic must add demos, tutorials, some small custom challenges like getting from one place to another in a set time, reaching a difficult place using the available trickjumps etc. This is to make even learning the game a lot fun for new players. I you dont include there is a possibility that all your hard work might be washed.

4) We need a detailed ABC guide on how to play on the internet for new players. I found it very frustrating to know the online paces etc. I searched various sources to get it done.

5) Make a system where noobs can play with noobs & hardcore with hardcores. When a noob playes online he just get owned & he shelves the game. That is where CS wins. After playing a game of CS even a noob thinks he is skillful enough to be the best.

6) Do your best to ban online cheating.

7) Dont bring the UT sniper rifle with its firing rate. LG gone is bit bad but Epic is up to do something. Why Stinger when its Sec mode is same as Flak prim mode. Minigun was good & fun. But as I said you know better. What we want is balanced weapons.

8) No more visually disturbing gameplay. Flak shards too long, Heap of smoke when ROX & Flak shell lands, a new player gets turned off when he doesnt know what the heck is happening.

9) Make it an entertaining product. Not just add the modes & sell it off. Dont make it like UT2003. Make it like UT2004. Polished game really makes the difference. Options for community etc.

10) We want stunning music, ambience & sound effects. We need sounds that can get an award, that can beat every other title out there.

So what do you think? If there is substance in these words do give your comments or if it is wrong please correct it? What Epic is doing by cutting out gametypes, adding big Conquest is a great job. Its better to please casual gamers & make a heck lot of money, than please us hardcore players. I know its sad but its better Epic have enough funds to make great games in the future. See what happened to UT2004 which tried to please hardcore gamers. UT2004 is a gem of a game but all gems dont shine. Lets help Epic with what we can do afterall there are great. They know
things a lot better. I just want a solid UT2.

Stilz · Apr 4, 2005

some very good suggestions. the minigun in my opinion needed to be toned down or replaced. i'll bet that the tridium will come back as a new and improved great weapon and it wont be like flak.

i totally agree with your take on the shield. it should absorb about 50% of what it does now(in all gametypes). if you get it pointed in the exact direction that fire is coming from it absorbs all of it and you take 0 damage.

now i dont really wanna get started on the sniper rifle discussion, but i am sad to see the lg idea go to waste. its a great weapon and rof and damage are perfect. dont get me wrong, id love the sniper gun if it had the same damage and rof as the lg did(without the annoying and pointless steam enigine coming out of it).

leafo · Apr 4, 2005

I think they need to switch back to the techno-trance music from original UT. I didnt like the new rock style they seem to use now. All the maps had a flow to them in ut, there was so much ambience, and like you said sound played a major part.

{TD}orgasmix · Apr 4, 2005

i agree with leafo, techno is perfect music to go around fragging people. I wished Epic could prevent people from spawn killing. But i would rather have Epic find a way to deter cheaters from even attempting to cheap...all a cheater has to do is change his/her tag name and return to the server. there should be more consequences against cheaters.

Stilz · Apr 4, 2005

I dont even know anyone that plays with music on. if you wanna hear what your opponent is doing you better have it off.

JaFO · Apr 4, 2005

// 1) different balance for each gametype ?
That's got to be the absolute worst idea ever invented.
How can anyone learn to play the game if in gametype X the weapon Y can frag a player in 3 shots and in another gametype 4 ?
I think mappers should simply stop filling their maps with every weapon in the arsenal.
So no sniperrifles, unless the map has decent sniper-positions.

// 2) players per map ?
Epic had them set to decent numbers. The problem was/is that idiotic server-admins would pick 4-player limit maps on a 16-player server (and vice versa).
Only thing that Epic can do is allow the servers do dynamically limit the playercounts ie : if it's a 16-player server and a 4-player map appears then the server simply dumps players until the map-limit is reached.

// 3) demo's & tutorials
definitely. And it shouldn't be limited to videos or in-game movies either.
They've got to be interactive.

// 4) how to play on the internet ???
*eh* why ?
It's never been more complicated then selecting a server and hittng 'play'.
What's there to learn that you haven't already seen in (3) ?
There always will be stupid people that insist on playing a game on-line before they've touched the manual or tried the tutorials ...

// 5)
They've listed that kind of match-making service.
Any on-line game that had such feature shows that there are *beepers* that simply will create a new on-line persona so they can continue to frag newbies.
Add to that that it is good for your skills if you can practice against 'better' opponents once in a while.

// 8) visually disturbing detail ?
I'm afraid you're going to be dissappointed. This is UE3, not Quake 1 where every single particle counted. You're going to be forced to learn how to separate a 3000-polygon player from the million-polygon background. I'd suggest you stick to UT99 if that kind of stuff is too difficult to handle in UT2kx already.

// 9) music
the problem is that everyone has a different taste in music.
I hate anything that sounds like trance/house or whatever it's called.
So I hope 'Envy' will feature a decent mix of as many styles of music as possible.

// Stilz :
If the sound/music-settings are decent then it is possible to hear the music and still locate your opponent. So it is not impossible ...

FireCrack · Apr 4, 2005

JaFO said:
I think mappers should simply stop filling their maps with every weapon in the arsenal.

YES! This is what i've always been saying, not every map needs every weapon, i personaly dislike maps with every weapon, ofcourse this doesnt mean to only toss 1 or 2 guns in each map but keep it within practicality.

JaFO said:
ie : if it's a 16-player server and a 4-player map appears then the server simply dumps players until the map-limit is reached.

Probably not the best way to go about this for obvious reasons. Best to just skip over maps that the server cannot currently accomidate.

UberBone · Apr 4, 2005

ahem ... Skaarj Hybrid.

If I repeat it over and over it may happen

Vedanth Salian · Apr 5, 2005

Reply to jafo

1) I didnt mean like make X weapon too powerful in one gametype & too weak in other gametype. I just meant the subtle changes for example shield. In UT2004 all weapons are fun to play.but in 1vs1 due to the long shield it removes a big part of a great experience. Its doesnot zero the experience but it would be lot better if there was something like the shield regenerates only if it is a active weapon in 1vs1. I know its a crazy idea to reinvent the wheel in all gametypes but sometimes there may be some small changes that can hinder your gaming experience in that particular gametype. As you said to reduce the minigun damage but if you do it you make the link a lot stronger in team games & balanced in ffs & 1vs1. Do you get it.

2) I didnt mean cut out the effects, but I meant to tone it down.

As I said before Im not a great gameplay changer, but sometimes it might hit the nail.

NiteX · Apr 5, 2005

I just want more new weapons that we have never seen before. The same weapons being redone over and over is getting very dull. I'm not saying get rid of all the old weapons because it wouldnt be UT without some of them. More and better special effects with the weapons. The explosion with the rocket launcher wasnt nearly big enough or powerful enough. Also, better weapon sounds with more bass to them. Some of them felt very unpowered.

carmatic · Apr 5, 2005

Vedanth Salian said:
the shield gun was balanced in ffs but way too powerful in 1vs1.

As you said to reduce the minigun damage but if you do it you make the link a lot stronger in team games & balanced in ffs & 1vs1

i think that the nature of the game needs to change to be something abit more tactical, like make instant deaths less common... also, i think that it is alot more enjoyable to be in a free-for-all where you die quite often from alot of other players, than to be killed again and again by one single guy who is too good to be killed... maybe one day there will be a kind of mutator, where if someone begins to lead by a certain number of kills, they turn into a kind of 'mutant' , but with opposite effects as the mutant gametype we know now, like the move slower, shoot slower, get coloured brightly, maybe all other players get a translocator , which teleports the 'mutant' around instead of themselves

reintroducing the stinger from unreal 1 is kinda cool i guess, it adds originality to the weapons , its different to the flak canon because it doesnt bounce off surfaces... it was a pretty crappy gun to use in unreal 1, lets see how it changes in the new UT... but what about the Ripper , where you could steer the projectile in mid air just by turning while you held down the secondary fire, and it bounces off surfaces like 4 times and you can cut off peoples heads like that...

Tournament0 · Apr 6, 2005

Stilz said:
I dont even know anyone that plays with music on. if you wanna hear what your opponent is doing you better have it off.

Maybe Epic will somehow change this.
:hmm:

edhe · Apr 6, 2005

The mutant idea would be silly, and needless if Epic manage to manage a ranked system that guides (& limits) people to playing on servers that are on even ground with their skill level.

Also, good players shouldn't be punished ingame for being good. If they're that good in a pub game that they godlike the whole server then the rankings should be adjusted after the game(s) and the difference between that person's rank and othe previous players should be so great that he's not allowed back onto that server.

That idea does sound harsh too, but then hopefully a clutch of other servers will open up for that person, who'll go off and play people more of his skill level, leaving the lesser skilled people going 'he was good, wish i could play like that, now if i can use what i saw him doing i could win' ... maybe.

SealClubber · Apr 6, 2005

The more like UT, the better. Its really the only way I personally think that the community will be as great as it was with the first Unreal Tournament.

edhe · Apr 7, 2005

That's a false positive.

UT was the first Online Oriented FPS game, designed exclusively for arena play and generated the community that is so strong today.

The great times of UT were not only because it was a good game, but because it was first and new. Envy will have to break a lot of moulds to be *that* successful.

carmatic · Apr 7, 2005

yeah a 'ranking' system would be nice, but that will seriously chop up the server community into skill levels, and maybe servers can be configured like bots, i.e. if your ingame stats (hits vs misses etc) or your gameplay style (movement pattern, dodges, aiming pattern, weapon usage,etc) matches more closely to a bot skill level, from novice to godlike or whatever, then there is a server out there who will suit you and people who got grouped into the same skill level... this is an "absolute" measure, as compared to the "relative" measure of looking at the players scores and stuff.... both have their ups and downs...

like for the "relative" measure, how many more kills do you need over other people to jump to the next level? will it either be a big shocking jump , with a few 'tiers' of servers, or will it be easing gradually to a level thats slightly harder than the one your in, and thus grating the UT server scene into fine little pieces...

or for the "absolute" measure, how are you supposed to program bots that behave exactly like humans? what happens if the bots are not realistic and people with genuinely different skill levels get bunched together...and maybe getting the computer to try and guess the players skill level is going to be cpu-hungry, inefficient, and a bad idea overall... well maybe something simpler like the ratings in utstats should be used to filter out players and make it so that the games will have a similar amount of kills etc

edhe · Apr 7, 2005

You're thinking too smallscale here.

'Guessing' would not happen. Statistical ranking should be used (one that's better than the current system) with metrics for how people perform vs other people.

Server skill levels would be optional and with optional variations on the spread of skill, in an idea that think would work, so the server could be on, off, set for certain skillgroups or open to all with dynamic ranking dependant on those in it - and with that you could have a setting in your own client saying whether you give a **** about skill guidance or not.

But statistics would have to be far more advanced than the current - we're not talking about kills vs others only, but a variety of things that i explained in another thread - teamwork quotients and general efficiency/aggression. These kind of stats would seriously boost clan recruitment also (as long as the online DB works, and works well for searching).

(maybe if you have stats like that you could start 'managing' a clan, matching player values to positions, swapping those that would fit better etc... imagine a system where you could actually get traded in to a team that suits you better

)

iron12 · Apr 7, 2005

SealClubber said:
The more like UT, the better. Its really the only way I personally think that the community will be as great as it was with the first Unreal Tournament.

I agree.

ON my wish list

I would like to see a remake of pressure. Make it extra cool. Make them blow up real good.

I would like to see the ripper return.

I know I'm going to get flames for this but I like the way the UT99 rocket launcher was.

neilthecellist · Apr 7, 2005

I KINDA liked the UT99 rocket launcher, how it could house 6 rockets....

But I was satisfied in the end with the UT2k4 rocket launcher.

Bot_40 · Apr 7, 2005

UT rl was nice but 6 rockets = too many. 3 is better. But the dual use (rockets vs pipe bombs) was very nice, just what you need for tricky situations when you just know someone is coming round the corner.

I must say I am VERY concerned about the canister gun or whatever it is going to be. The absolute worst thing epic could do imo is make primary fire fire whatever, and secondry fire change ammo type (which is what I expect they are thinking - they are trying to cram grenades+spidermines+googun into 1 weapon?). When I'm in the middle of a 1on1 battle with someone shooting me in the face I certainly don't have time to be flicking through 5 ammo types then missing the one I want by accident. I want a weapon with 2 basic fire modes, a primary fire that works one way, and a secondary fire which works another.

Wishlist for Next UT

New Member

New Member

spoiled toothpaste

orgasmic

New Member

bugs are features too ...

New Member

Your paperz are not in Order!!

New Member

Unreal Junky

New Member

Tournament0

Guest

..dadhe..

Not biased

..dadhe..

New Member

..dadhe..

New Member

Renegade.

Go in drains