Historical Question

[Kazimira]

Hehe yup oh NeoNite I found a mention of you on a Monsterhunt map just now.

[Scuzzbuster]

Originally Posted by hal

The Unreal community was quite tiny by the time UT rolled around. There were maybe a handful of RealCTF, Infiltration, and DM servers. UT2003 was probably on par with the one now, though UT was still a more recent game (than it is today) and thus people just went back to playing it until UT2004 was released.

So - Unreal community -> smaller than UT3
UT2003 community -> probably on par with UT3

Ehh, I disagree with Hal's assessment. UT2003's community was considerably larger at the time of 2k4's release than UT3s is now, though it's hard to really judge because of the bot counting situation in 2KX, for a vanilla deathmatcher, there were tons more populated UT2003 servers in early 2004 than UT3 has today, and plain old deathmatch is always the most active mod in any Unreal game. I would say that the CTF community (pub community at least) was insubstantial from the start in every game released after the original UT.

[hal]

I'm old. Give me a break

[Forgetful]

In all honesty if the expansion does really fix things I will probably take some initiative and map build.

[Scuzzbuster]

Originally Posted by hal

I'm old. Give me a break

Hal, you're destructive force in the community and you must be stopped

But I guess we'd have to post our bulls__t somewhere else then.

[Beelzebud (Satanas)]

Originally Posted by shoptroll

You do know that retail Unreal had probably the worst netcode (especially when you realize that Tribes came out right around the same time) out of any FPS ever made. Half (overexaggeration here) the reason UT was made in the first place was so they could revamp the netcode and provide a solid online experience.

What is amazing is that back in those days you would regularly see Tim Sweeny pop in to servers to talk to people about how the experience was, asking admins for log files etc.

I remember the night UT launched I was server hopping checking out the game types and I saw CliffyB in about 5 different servers asking people how lag was like. I specifically remember responding to him something along the lines of "I'm on dialup and it seems much better than Unreal was", and cliff saying something like "Thank god, now I can sleep tonight!"

Ahhhhh the good old days. Gone but not forgotten.

[Forgetful]

It was cool when Epic Mega Games used to care about putting out a solid product for us PC users. Those days are over.

We can still play gears of war 1 though! Yay, I think?

[XeroWolf]

Ah yes the good old days. We used play UT via LAN at computer center after school. Playing CTF with those guys and girls was some of the best times I ever had.
I will truly miss watching the Nali War Cow bullets the way it did.

[FuLLBLeeD]

Originally Posted by T2A`

The sad thing is the netcode has only been getting worse with age. Since UT2003 the netcode quality and feel has been on a fairly steady decline. UT2003's was the most solid and accurate (though compared to other games it still wasn't good); in UT2004 they started fudging things in order to make bandwidth room for vehakals. I don't know what they did with UT3's but it's clearly the worst.

I can only hope they revamp the netcode for the expansion, because terrible netcode can make a good game not fun to play. D:

So are you admitting that despite being a failure UT3 has redeeming qualities in the gameplay?

[XeroWolf]

Originally Posted by FuLLBLeeD

So are you admitting that despite being a failure UT3 has redeeming qualities in the gameplay?

I don't mean to butt in here but of course it does. It's just sometimes hard to see under all the bloom.

[Dark Pulse]

Originally Posted by Beelzebud (Satanas)

Ahhhhh the good old days. Gone but not forgotten.

What that was was the exception, not the rule. Not even Blizzard asks how people like the new WoW expansion, or Valve asks people how they liked Left 4 Dead.

Quit using what was done as a way to snub Epic. They were a smallish company then; they are a big-name player now. Corporate policy changed. Just because you don't see them in servers asking "how's our game?" doesn't mean they're an inferior company.

Frankly, if they did that now, I'd think it was actually kind of childish.

[Sir_Brizz]

Originally Posted by Scuzzbuster

Ehh, I disagree with Hal's assessment. UT2003's community was considerably larger at the time of 2k4's release than UT3s is now, though it's hard to really judge because of the bot counting situation in 2KX, for a vanilla deathmatcher, there were tons more populated UT2003 servers in early 2004 than UT3 has today, and plain old deathmatch is always the most active mod in any Unreal game. I would say that the CTF community (pub community at least) was insubstantial from the start in every game released after the original UT.

I disagree. Almost all of the populated servers in UT2003 during the summer of 2003 and later were demo servers, instagib or otherwise modded. In fact, by the time UT2004 came out, it was nearly impossible to find a relatively vanilla pub that was not a demo server in any gametype including DM.

I think if UT3 had demo->retail support like the last two games it would be doing as well or better than both of them ever were in terms of real players.

[T2A`]

Keep dreaming. It's cute.

[Sir_Brizz]

Oooookay.....

[Beelzebud (Satanas)]

Originally Posted by Dark Pulse

What that was was the exception, not the rule. Not even Blizzard asks how people like the new WoW expansion, or Valve asks people how they liked Left 4 Dead.

Quit using what was done as a way to snub Epic. They were a smallish company then; they are a big-name player now. Corporate policy changed. Just because you don't see them in servers asking "how's our game?" doesn't mean they're an inferior company.

Frankly, if they did that now, I'd think it was actually kind of childish.

You just can't help yourself can you? You read a whole lot into what I wrote that wasn't there. You are the textbook definition of fanboy. So according to you, even talking about how Epic was 10 years ago is "subbing" them? I didn't say one negative thing in that post, as I was genuinely walking down memory lane.

Blizzard has a forum set up where paid staff spend there day answering questions, talking about class balance, etc. Valve has a blog set up for Team Fortress 2 where they ask for input from the fans about new features for the class updates. Neither one of those companies simply bans people for bringing up issues or asking questions. I mean, I didn't actually mention Blizzard or Valve in my post, but you did, so I feel like pointing out those facts is now fair game.

Forget it. Like I said, you're a pathetic fanboy, and if a short walk down memory lane offends you, or makes it seem like I'm "snubbing" Epic, then so be it. I'll remember to keep my thoughts to myself from now on, as I had been for the past few months.

[JaFO]

Blizzard also makes millions a month from subscription-fees ... with that kind of money anyone could hire enough people to maintain a forum like that.
Epic simply never was and never will be as big.

In all honesty if the expansion does really fix things ...

Keep on dreaming.
The expansion won't 'fix' anything, because the community (or what's left of it) would rather focus on the tiny flaws and make a mountain out of ant-droppings ...
Just look at UT3 ffs.
There's plenty of morons that say it sucks simply because the GUI (which is 5% of the entire package) is not perfect.

[FuLLBLeeD]

Originally Posted by JaFO

Blizzard also makes millions a month from subscription-fees ... with that kind of money anyone could hire enough people to maintain a forum like that.
Epic simply never was and never will be as big.


Keep on dreaming.
The expansion won't 'fix' anything, because the community (or what's left of it) would rather focus on the tiny flaws and make a mountain out of ant-droppings ...
Just look at UT3 ffs.
There's plenty of morons that say it sucks simply because the GUI (which is 5% of the entire package) is not perfect.

Yeah its completely unreasonable to not play UT3 because of the huge list of problems it has and because there are plenty of other better alternatives.

[JaFO]

There is no huge list of problems.
At best it is a large wish-list for people that demand the impossible without having to pay for anything.

And as for there being 'better alternatives' ... I think you should simply admit that your tastes in games have changed. I know mine have, but that doesn't stop UT3 from being a good game.

(Besides ... you haven't seen real buglists ... )

[GreatEmerald]

When companies actually care to talk to people, it's always a very nice feeling. Strange that Epic doesn't do that as often - even WarTourist is rare... Compare it to Legend Entertainment - they no longer exist, yet some developers drop a line in our Unreal II forums from time to time.

[Sir_Brizz]

Originally Posted by FuLLBLeeD

Yeah its completely unreasonable to not play UT3 because of the huge list of problems it has and because there are plenty of other better alternatives.

I think his point really is that people are happy to blame one unimportant feature for a game's failure rather than that it has a umber of lacking features that contributed to it.

And aside from all of that, UT3 (as you've admitted previously) is a good game under the surface. I don't think they need a lot of the features people are asking for, as long as a great deal of polish goes into the features that are actually there but awful.