My thought is that if Epic has any interest in continuing the UT franchise, they should keep council with some people in the community who have a thorough understanding of the series and how to strengthen it.. both in terms of bringing back some coherence to it design & storywise, as well as attracting a new player base. Epic obviously knows how to make games, but UT is a special thing with a history that dates back nearly to the beginning of true 3d first person shooters. So it means many things to many people. I am sure it does to Epic too, yet true greatness in any UT since the first has managed to elude them. I think that is because they know it primarily from a developer perspective that includes a lot of gameplay and character/level design philosophy, but lack a focused outside perspective.
The feedback they do get from the community gives them a lot of mixed messages. Which is obviously frustrating.
Here is an outline of what I think are the biggest issues which need to be addressed and would be seen as a "return to form" for Unreal Tournament.
1. Focus on the Tournament, not a war. Warfare was a good idea, with a poor story behind it. The necris could have been brought in, the vehicles introduced etc with a story that was more based on rivalries, factions being like gangs and so forth. UT was always more cyberpunk than "War of The Worlds". Pretend the stories of the last 3 games never happened. Start fresh from UT1 and rebuild a consistent story based on prisoners becoming fighters and it being broadcast, Xan, The Necris, the REAL cyborgs, and the Skaarj Hybrids. Other characters and races have come and gone and each have their fans. You WILL experience a few complaints if X character or Y race is not in the game. That is not what matters, what matters is that you are being true to what made UT the success it was originally, nothing else since then really matters because none of the games that followed were very popular. Some will argue that's only because "sci-fi isn't in anymore". I beg to differ.. it is a huge niche and a good game in that niche would be no less successful.
2. Don't throw away features, however small, that added to the identity and experience of UT. Sure, too much exploiting is a bad thing. But the ability to figure out tricks and learn complex moves is also what made it fun. Now we can't even dodge up ramps anymore. Sure, UT was more "grounded" but at the same time, it allowed for some pretty "Unreal" movement. I am starting to think that a lot of what gave the game so much replay value and fond memories for people, are things that the developers considered bugs that were never originally intended to be there.
3. Give us a UT game, not an engine demo with the name UT on it. Here is something I personally believe is very important when it comes to the design of a game such as UT. Visibility is of paramount importance. We don't want clutter, we don't care how "gritty and lived in" it looks. We don't want shades of brown, and pink decor when a base is supposed to be the RED team's. Of course, I am not saying don't use effects, just show some restraint with them. Look at Mass Effect, it used UE3, it's a space based game, it has customizeable characters, and ironically, I think it did certain things much more like UT should be than UT3 did...
4. UT has always been a PC gamer's game.. so design it like one. If you're going to say things like "they're our bread and butter" then don't insult us. It is never going to be the success for consoles that it has been on the PC, let alone a bigger one. PC gaming is not dying, nor will it. Smart companies like Valve are showing they believe this.. I like to believe Epic is smart enough to do the same.. There is a lot of bs moaning about piracy these days, but there are ways around this. And dollar signs should not be all that matter on the short term, because by looking at strategies to instead increase online player counts, it will create more income on the long term. Anyway, unless you are going to crossplatform the PS3/PC versions, which I personally think would be a great opportunity also... Just give us a new game for PC only, with a UI that configures all the settings we expect, proper command features, voice/ignore etc, a good HUD and scoreboard.. stuff like being able to hip thrust instead of performing a random taunt wouldn't hurt either.
5. Warfare is not ONS + AS, it is a bad replica of ONS with an orb. It is not (as) fun (as it should be). Warfare should incorporate unique objectives as originally described. It should not always need cores or an orb, but any combination of the above with AS, or even pure AS. Another thing is that the vehicle handling and some of the vehicles themselves are terrible now. The hellbender is the biggest example, it handles like a toilet car. I would go into more specific issues if I were not aware certain people would begin refuting it here, and I am not interested in having that sort of argument. The gist of it is, ONS and AS are the only things that kept UT2004 afloat as long as it did, and you destroyed them both in favor of something that isn't what you promised it should have been, or even as fun as either ONS or AS were.
(that's just a candy-cane in my av btw)
]... and its strongest points were added to ONS, turning it into WAR... If they had run out of time all that work would not have been trown away...