Comprehensive List of UT3's problems -- not bashing, just attempting to make a list

SirTahngarth said:

You're missing the point. WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO WRITE THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS TO DO MORE EASILY SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE DONE IN THE USER INTERFACE. Said applications were written due to Epics faliure to make something that should be easy, easy.

Hope caps lock spells it out for you.

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Shouting doesn't help ...
It still doesn't explain how a 3rd party app that has the same automated and simplified settings as UT3 changes anything.

UT 3 : "(world) detail 1 - 5"
BradG's Tweaker : "best performance - max graphics" ... it's even less tweakable in this aspect compared to Epic's GUI.


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What happened to Chaos?

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the same thing that kills 99% of all mods : lack of programmers to do the really hard work.

On that note, two thumbs up for whoever scripted Prometheus.

Fuzz said:

On that note, two thumbs up for whoever scripted Prometheus.

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Angel Mapper, of course

One of my biggest problems with the game is that it felt completely laggy, both on and offline. I bought a new PC a new mouse and tweaked the inis but I was never able to fix it. Aiming in this game feels completely off, offline duds, mouse acceleration/lag. The ammount of tweaks I had to do to get it playable are not the tweaks most people would do to get their game to run like it should.

I can only speak for my self, but I can life with a crap UI and even a crappy server browser. I dont mind to much about the gameplay its solid. BUT the game should be made a fast fluid and fun online multiplayer game and EPIC should work on those aspects(funny isnt it), laggy gameplay/feel with max fps and max optimisation is the last thing this expantion needs and it drove me to hate an otherwise great game.

Im interested if others feel the same way and had the same problems with the game I had. I just hope it gets fixed next time around.

killalot0 said:

One of my biggest problems with the game is that it felt completely laggy, both on and offline. I bought a new PC a new mouse and tweaked the inis but I was never able to fix it. Aiming in this game feels completely off, offline duds, mouse acceleration/lag. The ammount of tweaks I had to do to get it playable are not the tweaks most people would do to get their game to run like it should.

I can only speak for my self, but I can life with a crap UI and even a crappy server browser. I dont mind to much about the gameplay its solid. BUT the game should be made a fast fluid and fun online multiplayer game and EPIC should work on those aspects(funny isnt it), laggy gameplay/feel with max fps and max optimisation is the last thing this expantion needs and it drove me to hate an otherwise great game.

Im interested if others feel the same way and had the same problems with the game I had. I just hope it gets fixed next time around.

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The issue is that the game is a console port. It would be nice if they could just recode the aiming/netcode for the PC.

UBerserker said:

Probably the best option. Never liked JB here.

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Me either, it was rather boring and I didn't play it much nor even tried all the maps of the UT JB. The voice was annoying also I remember.

It still doesn't explain how a 3rd party app that has the same automated and simplified settings as UT3 changes anything.

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umm..... huh?
The whole point of said 3rd party apps is they let you configure things that UT3 doesn't without editing ini files. The whole point is to make configuring certain settings less painful. but they would be LEAST painful if they were simply configurable ingame.

Are you just intentionally ignoring the point, or what?
/former ut2k4 player used to detailed configuration settings goes to play UT3, finds only a few settings and cant tailor he game to his perferences.
/user goes to edit ini files, an annoying and time consuming task, to get the game set up to his preferences.
/user finds 3rd party application that gives him handy checkboxes and sliders to edit the ini files for him making an annoying task slightly easier.
/user wishes these checkboxes and sliders were in the actual game, so that neitehr of the above steps are needed.

I dont understand why you can't grasp that these 3rd party aps do change something- they make life a little easier for those who would like to change settings that they are used to being able to change in game. Which, by the way, doesn't take away from the fact that said options should have been configureable ingame, and I dont understand why you would be opposed to such a thing.

Me either, it was rather boring and I didn't play it much nor even tried all the maps of the UT JB. The voice was annoying also I remember.

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UT2004 JB has multiple voices for you to choose from. Not sure what's "boring" about it, unless you find team deathmatch boring, in which case why are you playing a game centered around stuff like this?

Perhaps you should try the 2k4 version if you havent, as it made great strides over the UT99 version.

FuLLBLeeD said:

The issue is that the game is a console port. It would be nice if they could just recode the aiming/netcode for the PC.

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QFT

What the hell were epic thinking when they put a half-assed aiming system in a first person shooter aimed at competitive gamers?

Jailbreak is far from being normal team dm. Besides I prefer normal dm over team dm, team dm counts as one of the least played for me. But still it's ok on it's own.
Jailbreak is just a boring gametype for me (the whole idea of it-it's better to play hide and seek than that) and better not point me to the ut2004 version, because I think ut2004 is still the weakest UT in terms of how it's presented and how it's played. But I have it installed (even I installed the jailbreak mod), so maybe I will try, but I doubt it will be that good.

I have not read every post yet but...

• The ability to have the map size determine the BOT count in single player skirmishes like UT2004 does
• Bring back UT2004 style lightning gun or have mutator to replace other weapons with it

PS well done list so far

Most folks know me as a decent UT/UT2004 modeller. So I speak with some experience in Unreal gaming, having followed the franchise from regular Unreal. And I have to say, I get the same feeling from UT3 that I did from UT2003. Namely, that it's just not fun.

Before anyone flames, let me add the caveats. It's extremely well-made and a lot of work and effort obviously went into it. It looks dynamite. But that's the thing. Fun is an intangible. A game can have dynamite sound, dynamite action, all the bells and whistles you could ask for. And yet sometimes you can play that game and it just isn't fun.

I felt nothing new when playing it - even after getting the collectors tin edition. It was UT2004 - with less game types, but with normal mapping. To me, not the best of trade-offs. In return for the normalmapping and extra physics capability, I had to give up lots of things, namely:
1) fast load times - the criticism about having to 'load' the menu because it's a 3D map is well made. I'd rather jump right into the menu and start making choices than have to 'wait' for it to load just so I can have a blurry 3D map sliding around in the background.
2) The UI is terrible. Face it - it's terrible! If it was made to please the console people, then it serves as a stark reminder of why I hate console games. Having to jump from screen to screen to screen simply to find nothing that I can REALLY customize is like being led by PT Barnum through a promising maze to 'see the egress' only to find myself outside the circus.
3) Custom character creation. Alas - UT2004 was just so much easier and BETTER. You could bring in all kinds of creatures, but now we 'have' to glue them to the UT3 bipeds or we get nothing. So all we can do is make some different KINDS of bipeds - we can't make raptors or junkyard mechs or anything really cool like we used to. We're stuck in space-marine purgatory with no hope of escape.
4) Support from EPIC. I would like to have participated in the Make Something Unreal Contest, like I did last time. But Epic has been very slow in providing support to the user community, especially in the matter of player model making. The files they supplied will not work in Max8, and that's what I've got. Why they can't make Max8 version of the skeletons we're supposed to use as the templates is beyond me, but for whatever reason they just won't do it. I've sent several emails and made many forum requests, but none of them help the poor folks with slightly older versions of 3Dmax. So I've had to sit this contest out. Not to mention that the Tutorial DVDs that came in the collector box seem to only care about the map mapers. The player model makers are left out in the cold.

I could go on, but right now those are my major peeves. I played UT2004 all the time, even off line in bot matches, because I could customize my team and make my own bots with their own names and everything. Not anymore. It takes so long to navigate the UT3 menus, and the directory file structure is so convoluted that it's just not worth it.

As it stands, I'm gearing up to remove UT3 from my hard drive and reinstall UT2004 - unless someone can help me find Max8 versions of the UT3 skeletons so I might try my own hand in modeling a custom character....?

Finally a decent scoreboard that really shows ALL the players and the spectators, showing kills/death for all gamemodes and flag captures/returns/touches and so on for the other gamemodes.

Tabbed interface, works way better than anything else ever thought.

Balance the weapons and the vehicles, seriously. The time it takes me to fire 3 rockets, is more than the time that takes someone to kill me twice with a stinger.

LOUDER vehicles, i really wanna hear that manta/viper coming before it runs me over, not after it does.

Eliminate the distance limit of Goliath's main weapon.

Scrollable views for vehicles, BUT limited so that it doesn't give players an unfair advantage from a higher ground.

I still believe that the tank is FAR TOO WEAK when it comes to hp/defense points, it really feels like a manta with a bigger case instead of a BIG MEAN BAD ASS HEAVY TANK WHATEVER THINGY

So far, that's all i have to say, and of course, that's only my most humble opinion

Gotta agree with StraTooS regarding the tank. It's been nerfed too heavily in UT3, especially the machine guns fired by the passenger.

brdempsey69 said:

Gotta agree with StraTooS regarding the tank. It's been nerfed too heavily in UT3, especially the machine guns fired by the passenger.

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The machine gun was only nerfed in the demo- They made it mich stronger and much more accurate. I can usually shoot and hit a raptor or cicada halfway across the map.

StraTooS said:

Finally a decent scoreboard that really shows ALL the players and the spectators, showing kills/death for all gamemodes and flag captures/returns/touches and so on for the other gamemodes.

Tabbed interface, works way better than anything else ever thought.

Balance the weapons and the vehicles, seriously. The time it takes me to fire 3 rockets, is more than the time that takes someone to kill me twice with a stinger.

LOUDER vehicles, i really wanna hear that manta/viper coming before it runs me over, not after it does.

Eliminate the distance limit of Goliath's main weapon.

Scrollable views for vehicles, BUT limited so that it doesn't give players an unfair advantage from a higher ground.

I still believe that the tank is FAR TOO WEAK when it comes to hp/defense points, it really feels like a manta with a bigger case instead of a BIG MEAN BAD ASS HEAVY TANK WHATEVER THINGY

So far, that's all i have to say, and of course, that's only my most humble opinion

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Vehicles have been ****ty since they were introduced. Either completely revamp them or drop them completely. The new Necris vehicles are good in concept, but takes an already unbalanced game (Manta and shock rifle > everything else) and just screws it up even more.

Vehicles should have an advantage over infantry. In 2k4 you would fly a Raptor up in the sky and it would be dead in 4 seconds. Very few FPS have done vehicles right, UT isn't one of them.

FuLLBLeeD said:

Vehicles have been ****ty since they were introduced. Either completely revamp them or drop them completely. The new Necris vehicles are good in concept, but takes an already unbalanced game (Manta and shock rifle > everything else) and just screws it up even more.

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Already unbalanced game? Shock rifle hitscan dominance was ut2004. This is UT3. The weapons are perfectly balanced.

FuLLBLeeD said:

Vehicles should have an advantage over infantry. In 2k4 you would fly a Raptor up in the sky and it would be dead in 4 seconds. Very few FPS have done vehicles right, UT isn't one of them.

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Uuuuh the vehicles in ut3 do have an advantage over infantry.
(vs infantry)
Scorpion: Unless he has an avril, hes dead. The grenades kill him or he gets chopped by the blades. The blades being in the front of the scorp make them much harder to avoid.

Hellbender: Cmon the driver gets the shock ball launcher. footsoldier doesn't stand a chance against the combos.

Tank/Paladin/Darkwalker/Nemesis: Need not explain

Raptor/Cicada/Fury: Footsoldiers only stand a chance if they have s shock (which is harder to use) , stinger, or avril.

Manta/Viper: Unless the footsoldier has a Flak or Avril, their done.

But you say the Manta is overpowered. this isn't the demo when we were all noobs! If your in a tank aim under the manta before it reaches you. If your on the ground pull out a Flak cannon. I think the Flak actually pushes the manta backwards if you shoot it in the front. Everything else...scorpion, hellbender, raptor, all have major advantage over the manta.

Now the Necris vehicles they are somewhat more powerful than the Axon counterparts but the vehicles as a whole are not terribly messed up and are leap over UT2004's.

brdempsey69 said:

Gotta agree with StraTooS regarding the tank. It's been nerfed too heavily in UT3, especially the machine guns fired by the passenger.

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Thirded. This drove me nuts at the beginning, especially once people discovered the Hellbender turret could sit at the back of the bridge on Suspense and the tank couldn't hit it at all, allowing the Hellbender to blast it with impunity. Or as a compromise, once the shot goes so far, have it arc into the ground as opposed to just blowing up. Machine gun turret was improved in Patch 1.1, so that isn't much of an issue.

FuLLBLeeD said:

Vehicles have been ****ty since they were introduced. Either completely revamp them or drop them completely. The new Necris vehicles are good in concept, but takes an already unbalanced game (Manta and shock rifle > everything else) and just screws it up even more.

Vehicles should have an advantage over infantry. In 2k4 you would fly a Raptor up in the sky and it would be dead in 4 seconds. Very few FPS have done vehicles right, UT isn't one of them.

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As was said, Shock Rifle dominance was 2k4. Shock whores can still exist in UT3, but generally they're combo whores, not beam rapists.

Also, I've had no problems taking down mantas or vipers on foot with non-traditional weapons. I've smacked them out with rockets, and I blew their vehicles up with Stingers. Even Bio can work in a pinch if your prediction and timing are good. Does that mean Infantry is too powerful? No. Most people, when pressured by a Manta driver and without AVRiLs are dead; vehicles tend to have the advantage, pure and simple. Agreed with their general overpowering compared to the Axon vehicles though.

One problem I'd like to add that hasn't been mentioned yet... Rockets and Grenades don't fire when you're killed. They used to, and I'd probably have gotten quite a few more kills if they did. Bio does... why not rockets?

Just to add something that hasn't been said... I think you should be able to grab the Belt and armor pieces when you have them already... at least in Duel gametype...