Epic commitment to UT3

[Draco73]

this is for all of those people who are curious as to why people complain about the UT3 UI so much, or for those people who continue to say "aww well its not THAT bad" well i figured i would run through the 2 games ONLY IN THE OPTIONS SECTION. from there i counted all the optoins UT3 gives us within the UI, then i fired up 2k4, and counted all the options 2k4 gives us through the UI...and like i said, his is ONLY in the options tab, and it came out to roughly this (i may be off by a few, but roughly this is the count)

UT3 = 47 total options that can be changed or adjusted (not including individual key binds)
UT2k4 = 200-300 total options that can be changed or adjusted (I started to loose count after so much, also not counting individual key binds)

idk about you, but that is an INSANE difference, it is very very significant, and it is one of the main reasons for many of us who are familer with the unreal series to wonder, how the hell do you go from 200-300, all the way down to roughly 50?

then i thought to my self, you know what, a picture says a thousand words, so i screen shot all the tabs, put them side by side so you get a visual of how they match up and here they are. take note of how many tabs in UT3 only have 3, 4, or 5 options on the whole page, where as the 2k4 counterpart has an entire page full of options to changes.



and don't look at the visuals, it doesn't matter if you like the blue, or red better, but purely look at the options available to us from one game to the other, thats the problem at hand.

and if there was a way to just copy and paste one of the previous UI in the UT3 game, i am quite sure it would make a lot of people happy lol

 

[DGUnreal]

99% of gamers out there will never see a forum because they just don't care enough. Forums have zero or nearly zero effect overall.

Wrong. Every average and hardcore gamer both on PCs and consoles that I personally know of including myself always check out the forums and reviews before buying. The only games that will be sold without checking this out will be the ones that mommy bought you for xmas or for children or impulse buyers. And forum lurkers still count...
I would be willing to bet somewhere around 25% forums, 25% reviews, 25% w.o.m., 25% impulse/mommy. Give or take 5 or 10%...

In the state it was in upon release it had no chance of competing with the Orange Box, CoD4, Crysis, or anything else that came out at the same time.

Wrong. Go to the forums for those games and see the number of people complaining of crashes, bugs and issues that they are also having. I was quite amused when I was last on the Crysis forums looking at all of the complaint posts (I have Crysis, uninstalled it after about 20 minutes though). This isn't just a UT3 thing, IMHO it is mostly this current "paris hilton generation" of whiney spoiled brats between 10 and 25.
IMHO the reason wasn't because of any bugs or "early release", it was because of the game type. Those people who bought COD,Cry,etc. instead of UT3 didn't install UT3 to see that it had some issues, so you can't state that it was the bugs. They bought COD,Cry,etc. instead because the game type appealed to them more.
A large percentage of the gamers I know left the UT series after playing UT2004 for a little while because of its floatey hit-scan game play, and moved onto other games. So UT3 would have to do a lot to the game play to draw them back. See my first point below.

There are many issues, each of which has contributed its own small amount...
- The UT/Doom game play style isn't as popular anymore, so for those considering only one or two games, UT3 was probably not in the cut, which is why COD, Cry, etc. out-sold it during the holidays.
- The majority of the game industry in on consoles now (and also see #1).
- Most in-coming gamers are a decade younger than the UT99'ers and are spoiled brats.
- The buggy beta that was released.
- The whiners in the forums.
- The higher system requirements to get full-out UT3 compared to UT200x.
- The issues getting servers set up and people onto them at the start.
... and on and on ...

All of this ruckus with UT3 is nothing new, just go to the BU pages on UT200x's release and we see almost the exact same stuff back then. After a year most of the whiners will have moved onto their next complaint-target and the community will start to settle down. It can't be soon enough for me. And those people who are mapping will continue creating maps for the game.


Regarding the interface, the blood swipe has an animated blurred 3D map behind it (the grey swirly bit). Launch the game on an SM2 video card and you can see it without the blur (you can probably edit the ini's or the menu map to do the same). I believe it is the blurred area in the UTFrontEnd map, I didn't look that far.
IMHO the UI is fine, it's a bit more like what you would see on a console when compared to other games like Crysis, BF2142, ET:QW, etc., but it is still ok, and I doubt it is a large reason for player discontent. Other than the few whiners on the forums, I haven't heard any complaints from actual gamers I know who are playing UT3.

this is for all of those people who are curious as to why people complain about the UT3 UI so much ...

Invalid comparison.
Patched UT2004 has a different set of options/interface. The plain UT200x has fewer options than patched.

 

[Entr0p1cLqd]

...In the state it was in upon release it had no chance of competing with the Orange Box, CoD4, Crysis, or anything else that came out at the same time...

While I don't necessarily agree with all of your points here, I will agree that the Orange Box was infinitely more polished (and incredible value for money) than UT3 on release (haven't got round to getting any of the others so can't comment on those). Heck, just joining an on-line server with the initial retail release was a PITA.

However, my point still stands I think. Any PC gamer with half-a-brain is going to check out the forums, they'll see the complaints, and simply walk away never to be seen again. They won't register or anything.

But hey ... once I've changed ISP and have an Internet connection that actually works, I'll be on-line a lot more so the player count will go up by 1 on Friday nights (and possibly Saturday nights).

All I think we can say is that the size of the UT3 player-base on-line isn't what we hoped it would be. The reasons for that are pretty moot. Hopefully Epic will have learned (learnt?) their lesson and be a bit more stubborn with the publisher in the future.

 

[Vitamin-Carrot]

THATS IT

CHRISTMASS IS CANCELLED!

 

[Anisotonic]

commitment?

what commitment? to me, the game might as well not even be out yet.

the surround sound doesn't even work!! I have a hard time figuring out how else to put it.

the game is not presentable right now. I don't show it to people who come here. I have a state of the art, many-a-grand computer and I have to showcase it with working, complete and stable software, like for example Crysis.

and Grobut, believe it or not, but they DID release the bonus cars a few days ago, for 10$, but no new patch though, so I won't bother with it. what a ripoff!

 

[virgo47]

Comparing UT3 with the rest of the field when it came out... I don't think T2A is so wrong on this one. One thing is that whining is always present for every game, but I had no problem with any of these games (like crashing), but I had problem to "use" UT3 in basic scenarios like "go online" or "add friend". Of course it worked... somehow (now it works better but we're talking about "upon release" state). I never tried to go online with Crisis, I tried it with TF2. I don't miss Favorites in TF2 because I play it very rarely as a casual gamer - but it is there! With copy&paste of course.

Talking about online numbers is rather useless, we all know that TF2 is better in this - although that's vicious circle in case of UT3.

I agree with all issues DG mentioned. Rants on forums doesn't help. However buggy beta would have been OK - IF major problems had been fixed later. I still think that UT3 at the start was either neglected by Epic (which doesn't seem intended) or its power was overestimated.

For Epic UT3 is success (probably because of sales on consoles), although it's hardly success on PC in terms of ppl playing online. For many ppl in community UT3 failed mostly because of aspects around the game itself. Like UI, feeling that Epic is not going to fix things (Epic helped this a lot with many unlucky statements) and for many ppl this simply twisted spiral of a bad mood that is hard to beat. But this is not failure of community, it's not caused by forum whinners. There are much more whinners than it was necessary. I never felt like one and now I'm partially on their side. I don't like it but in current shape I don't like UT3 situation enought to be positive again.

 

[Vitamin-Carrot]

Comparing UT3 with the rest of the field when it came out... I don't think T2A is so wrong on this one. One thing is that whining is always present for every game, but I had no problem with any of these games (like crashing), but I had problem to "use" UT3 in basic scenarios like "go online" or "add friend". Of course it worked... somehow (now it works better but we're talking about "upon release" state). I never tried to go online with Crisis, I tried it with TF2. I don't miss Favorites in TF2 because I play it very rarely as a casual gamer - but it is there! With copy&paste of course.

Talking about online numbers is rather useless, we all know that TF2 is better in this - although that's vicious circle in case of UT3.

I agree with all issues DG mentioned. Rants on forums doesn't help. However buggy beta would have been OK - IF major problems had been fixed later. I still think that UT3 at the start was either neglected by Epic (which doesn't seem intended) or its power was overestimated.

For Epic UT3 is success (probably because of sales on consoles), although it's hardly success on PC in terms of ppl playing online. For many ppl in community UT3 failed mostly because of aspects around the game itself. Like UI, feeling that Epic is not going to fix things (Epic helped this a lot with many unlucky statements) and for many ppl this simply twisted spiral of a bad mood that is hard to beat. But this is not failure of community, it's not caused by forum whinners. There are much more whinners than it was necessary. I never felt like one and now I'm partially on their side. I don't like it but in current shape I don't like UT3 situation enought to be positive again.

You just need a hug ....


Well with everything that has been said ... you have identfied what seems to be the most common issue that gamers have witht he game so why not take it upon your selves to correct said issue ... and dont give me that bollocks about "why should we when its epics issue in the first place" pfft to that ...

Unreal Touranament 3 Community Edition ... it could be a simple UI mod and maybe some custom content i.e maps, models or something ... Im sure Epic wouldnt mind that much would they? BY THE GAMERS FOR THE GAMERS ...

 

[Grobut]

Wrong. Every average and hardcore gamer both on PCs and consoles that I personally know of including myself always check out the forums and reviews before buying.

Do a little research, and you will find that this has been studied many times by the gaming industry, and the findings have allways been the same, for any given game, only around 10% of its players will ever set foot on forums.

That means the vast, vast majority of gamers do not frequent forums.

Invalid comparison.
Patched UT2004 has a different set of options/interface. The plain UT200x has fewer options than patched.

Not invalid, UT2k4 launched with allmost that many options, and certainly many, many more than UT3 did, it doesen't really matter if the numbers we should be comparing is something like 175 versus 50, that is a huge difference there either way.
Besides that, patched UT2k4 is exactly what UT3 had to live up to! i dont know anyone who wanted UT3 to ship with less, do you?

Ofcourse the more level headed of us knew there would be fewer maps, player models, and other assets like that, because 2k4 was 2 games in one, but the menu? who amongst you saw that comming to this degree? or the server browser? or the Instant action options? i feared a few things might be missing, but never this much!

and Grobut, believe it or not, but they DID release the bonus cars a few days ago, for 10$, but no new patch though, so I won't bother with it. what a ripoff!

Seriously? well thats 10 bucks they wont see untill they finally patch the game!

 

[FuLLBLeeD]

Fanboyism and UI aside, I'd like to know what can be done to get the player counts over 400. I mean, thats just pathetic, I can't even find a freaking game.

I don't care if I'm beating a dead horse, I'm pissed UT is dead and want something done about it.

 

[hal]

Do a little research, and you will find that this has been studied many times by the gaming industry, and the findings have allways been the same, for any given game, only around 10% of its players will ever set foot on forums.

That means the vast, vast majority of gamers do not frequent forums.

I'd like to see that study, particularly where it relates to high-end online-centric PC games.

 

[Grobut]

I'd like to see that study, particularly where it relates to high-end online-centric PC games.

Google it, i belive several studies have been made on the subject.

 

[Vitamin-Carrot]

Fanboyism and UI aside, I'd like to know what can be done to get the player counts over 400. I mean, thats just pathetic, I can't even find a freaking game.

I don't care if I'm beating a dead horse, I'm pissed UT is dead and want something done about it.

Yes you have said it over and over and over and over again ...
Have you not tried any of the suggestions previously stated to aid your current state of unhappiness?
Maybe you could host a competition and as the prize give away copies of UT3 or ask your ISP to host a UT3 server for you and your friends?
Have a UT3 LAN to encourage other people to play it?
Hire the Goodyear blimp to drop free copies of UT3 on the unsuspecting public in your area (this one would be recommended to be done on national helmet day)

 

[T2A`]

I'd like to see that study, particularly where it relates to high-end online-centric PC games.

It's just illogical. I've never, ever set foot on a game's forum before purchase and I'm what you might call a "hardcore" gamer. Why should anyone else's opinion dictate what I do? Especially when it's probably just a bunch of random noobs bitching about random worthless crap anyhow. In fact, I think I've only ever joined three forums after buying a game, BuF being one of them.

What I do is I let the demo of a potential purchase tell me what I should buy. Or the full ver... ahem! Yeah, just the demo. If the demo sucks, I don't buy. Simple as that. Except in the case of UT3, with which I mistakingly veered from that path because I once had faith in Epic.

I think we can all agree UT3's demo was balls. Not enough content, broken to hell, stupid bugs and issues. Example? I couldn't connect to any server with the demo. Ever. I guaran-damn-tee you that pile-of-turd demo hurt the game's sales far worse than any forum ranting. I'm willing to bet money it's by an exponential factor too. Forums are generally for people who are already fans, after all.

You know, if forum ranting were a guy named Steve, I bet Steve would dream nightly with all his heart that he could have some effect on something. Anything! Too bad Steve will never have such an effect. What a failure Steve is!

 

[GGA_Nate]

I'm gonna have to agree with you about the demo. I really think it has hurt UT3's sales more than anything. The gamespy login automatically alienates a lot of people, and then the content itself is less than inspiring. They didn't even include a warfare map, which was a major gaffe in my opinion. I think most people, after playing the demo, concluded "same ****, different engine." Epic also claimed that it was a beta release and then never released another demo.
Unlike you, T2A', I like UT3. But I agree that the demo hurt sales, especially when you consider how competitive the pc first person shooter market is. Crysis, The Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Quake Wars...UT3 should've had an awesome demo to make stand out.

 

[MonsOlympus]

this is for all of those people who are curious as to why people complain about the UT3 UI so much, or for those people who continue to say "aww well its not THAT bad" well i figured i would run through the 2 games ONLY IN THE OPTIONS SECTION. from there i counted all the optoins UT3 gives us within the UI, then i fired up 2k4, and counted all the options 2k4 gives us through the UI...and like i said, his is ONLY in the options tab, and it came out to roughly this (i may be off by a few, but roughly this is the count)

You know though, more options isnt always a good thing! I have run through each and in each instance there are menu screens which are like wtf why is this even here.

For eg the Input screens, if you ask me UT3's is a hell of alot better because there isnt a zillion options for all this junk I wont even use. The same can be said for alot of HUD options in 2k4 but Im willing to conceed UT3 could use acouple more. Im not overly fussed about crosshairs, atleast now I can scale them which is the main thing and I think by default they are transparent anyways. So again more options just means more time in the menu.

The character selection type screens in both are equally dreadful, 2k4 has this horrid duplication thing going but UT3 basically has nothing there... Then again its basically the same nothing copied over from 2k4's game menu which Im glad got dumped.

Also to note, while UT3 doesnt have as many graphics options some of those are in the advanced section where you only show half vs the whole of the other one.

I tried moving the UI discussion to a more appropriate thread on page 1, but people must have things their way: http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=175046

 

[hal]

It's just illogical. I've never, ever set foot on a game's forum before purchase and I'm what you might call a "hardcore" gamer. Why should anyone else's opinion dictate what I do? Especially when it's probably just a bunch of random noobs bitching about random worthless crap anyhow. In fact, I think I've only ever joined three forums after buying a game, BuF being one of them.

Not just a "game's forum". I'm talking about the discussion about games that takes place on general gaming sites like Slashdot, ShackNews, etc. I find it hard to believe that only 1 in 10 people that purchase a high-end online-centric game have never discussed it nor seen it discussed in a forum of any kind. What about people that use forums and discuss a game with those that don't?

I also realize that you, and I, and Grobut are all employing anecdotal evidence.

 

[Draco73]

You know though, more options isnt always a good thing! I have run through each and in each instance there are menu screens which are like wtf why is this even here.

For eg the Input screens, if you ask me UT3's is a hell of alot better because there isnt a zillion options for all this junk I wont even use. The same can be said for alot of HUD options in 2k4 but Im willing to conceed UT3 could use acouple more. Im not overly fussed about crosshairs, atleast now I can scale them which is the main thing and I think by default they are transparent anyways. So again more options just means more time in the menu.

The character selection type screens in both are equally dreadful, 2k4 has this horrid duplication thing going but UT3 basically has nothing there... Then again its basically the same nothing copied over from 2k4's game menu which Im glad got dumped.

Also to note, while UT3 doesnt have as many graphics options some of those are in the advanced section where you only show half vs the whole of the other one.

I tried moving the UI discussion to a more appropriate thread on page 1, but people must have things their way: http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=175046

you know thats a pretty selfish response to what i wrote. Your basically saying just because you don't use specific features or options, screw everyone else that uses them because well "there pretty useless to you". I mean sure, if you don't use them, then no biggie, just don't look at them or use them. but I can tell you i have literally used almost every single option within the 2k4 menu and I have set them all up exactly how i want them and like them. I DO USE ALL of them in the 2k4 menu. it is also quite obvious that i am not the only one who appreciates and uses all the options that was available in the 2k4 menu due to the simple fact of how many people are complaining about the UT3 UI. there wouldn't be so many people complaining if everyone didn't use all of those "useless features".

and i might go post over in that other thread as well.

 

[hilo_]

It's just illogical. I've never, ever set foot on a game's forum before purchase and I'm what you might call a "hardcore" gamer. Why should anyone else's opinion dictate what I do? Especially when it's probably just a bunch of random noobs bitching about random worthless crap anyhow. In fact, I think I've only ever joined three forums after buying a game, BuF being one of them.

What I do is I let the demo of a potential purchase tell me what I should buy. Or the full ver... ahem! Yeah, just the demo. If the demo sucks, I don't buy. Simple as that. Except in the case of UT3, with which I mistakingly veered from that path because I once had faith in Epic.

I think we can all agree UT3's demo was balls. Not enough content, broken to hell, stupid bugs and issues. Example? I couldn't connect to any server with the demo. Ever. I guaran-damn-tee you that pile-of-turd demo hurt the game's sales far worse than any forum ranting. I'm willing to bet money it's by an exponential factor too. Forums are generally for people who are already fans, after all.

You know, if forum ranting were a guy named Steve, I bet Steve would dream nightly with all his heart that he could have some effect on something. Anything! Too bad Steve will never have such an effect. What a failure Steve is!

Great post.

If Epic wants to help raise UT3 player counts, they should fix the UI, polish the game a little, and release a new demo. I doubt it will happen though :/

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Great post.

If Epic wants to help raise UT3 player counts, they should fix the UI, polish the game a little, and release a new demo. I doubt it will happen though :/

I can't disagree that those things would help, no matter to what degree, but I think we'll see a new UT before it gets much farther.

I would also like to see this "less than 10% of gamers talk about games online before they purchase them" study. That sounds more illogical to me

 

[MonsOlympus]

Those types of things are all based on avg's anyways, its easy enough to get the results you want by targeting a specific demographic.