I enjoy your posts Grobut, I mean that sincerely.
And i yours, even when we dont agree
I don't agree, because...
Thease are just examples though, the thing is, UT3 lacks countless features that we where used to and that we want, if we had to list them all in every post, they would read like a printers self test pages, they would be huge walls of text, so people tend to go with examples instead, and say "this is the sort of thing thats missing", and others will jump on it and say "yeah not having that really sucks", and thus, one single gripe gets pareded around for a week or so before someone mentions the next one, and then that one gets paraded around etc etc.
Its never one single feature like the lack of Demorec thats the real issue, thats just a very small example of the bigger picture.
Some of thease things are definately the result of immature tech, but i'd say most of them are not, my example with the crosshairs for instance is a good example of something that is absolutely possible with this tech, but never made it into the game because they rushed the release, and there's many more, like why can't we disable bright skins, a checkbox in the menu would do that, i could come up with examples all day, and the list of things that are left out due to time constraints will be alot longer than the list of things that comes down to immature tech.
But as I stated, those....
I am certianly not about to say anything bad about the Unreal engine, i love that thing, a delightfull scamp it is!
So the early versions....
The thing is, the average Joe is not going to care about any of this, ever, he is not a modder, and he is certainly not a freelance developer, he is a gamer, and all he see's are the games, and when he see's things that worked better in his old games and doesen't work in his new one, he will get angry.
He's the guy you have to build games for, because he is Joe Everybody, he is your cunsumer base.
Thats why i would have preferred they held off the release of UT3, till such a time that it would wow Joe Everybody.
We went through this with 2K3 and now with UT3, it should be clear to everyone by now that thease games are not going to be successes, and we have seen how a bad title like that hurts the community, the fanbase, the consumers, its not a good buisness strategy.
Fire up UnrealEd 3 again sometime....
Ofcourse you would, who woulden't? but ultimately, it will all be for nought if you dont build a good game around this tech.
Why do you think Half-Life had such a huge modding scene? its certainly not because that engine was the pinnacle of engine development, nor was it the most user freindly to work with, but it was a good game that was hugely popular, and had a huge user base.
You need a good game to build a good modding community, the tech alone is just not enough.
Regarding custom crosshairs....
The crosshairs alone would not have been a problem, but add another 50 things to the mix, spanding just about every aspect of the game, and you have a game that feels shoddy and rushed.
As i said at the top of this post, its never about that one specific issue that gets paraded around the community as an example, its that issue plus its many freinds!
You just can't build a game that is technically good anymore, people wont play it, you need the trims and the toppings too, because countless games have been released with all the trims and toppings for a long time now, we know games can be that good, and we have decided that if a game should be worth 50 bux and our time it must be that good or we'll just play it competitor that has what we want.
Thats the market now, and you can adapt or die.
You look too one sided at this issue, from the perspective of a modder and dev, you get lost in the tech, you need to also look at it as a gamer, a gamer that thease days has plenty of choice when it comes to games to play, the gamer doesen't care about the tech, all he cares about is that it looks good and does what he wants it to do, or what he feels it needs to do.
Granted as I've already said, another six months....
Brizz see's things his way, i see them my way, and whilst from his perspective the game gets an unfair rep, because he still has fun with it, from my perspective the game is shoddy and rushed, and has subpar gameplay due to small maps with all too linear play, and the portion of the game i wish to play (IA) is wholly broken, i am not having fun at all.
That is why from my perspective, thease things are infact a big issue, i know modders can make maps and mutators that would make me enjoy this game, but it will all be for nought if the game is still so rushed that i cannot get rid of the bright skins (i really truely hate them!), and can't do things like adding custom bots to both red and blue team, and select what team i'm on, i need thease things to enjoy the game, and thus they are very important to me.
There is no universal truth here, since the UT community is as diverse as it is, no one opinion really describes how we all feel about this game.
I don't know what it is like where you are at....
Actually, here in Denmark cars are taxed with between 100 and 300% depending on size and class, untill they have driven so many miles they become tax free, so like many other Danes i drive an old 1992 vintage wreck, a Saab 900, and it does not have a cup holder.
But if i spend the insane amount of dosh a brand new car would run me, you'd better belive it would need to have a friggen cup holder!
I'm not arguing that at all....
I dont think 6 months would have been enough either, 12 perhabs.
But I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth....
A gift horse is a horse that talks, the saying is basically stating "if you see a talking horse, dont look it in the mouth, because you will find out its fake and loose all wonderment"
Anyway, there is certainly many more reasons for UT3's unpopularity than just the missing features, that is a given, but they certainly dont help the matter, if you find the gameplay iffy AND the game feels slapped togeather at the last minute.. well thats just double jeopardy 'innit?
Besides, for some of us thease features are not really optional at all, and here im thinking about the offline crowd like myself, this part of the game is just so lacking it hurts, it is missing elements that are vital for its enjoyment.
UT3's IA is as bad as playing with bots in CS:S, you can basically just select a number of them and a map and then go play it, and the bots will roam around like lemmings with aimbots, its not worth playing.
Most of it is the tech. UT3 is...
Obviously i am oversimplifying when talking about "game" versus "tech", at the core its all code run on an engine that is just more code, and under that its all 1's and 0's, but talking about it like that will be allmost impossible, then we'd be having a discussion that would look like it belonged on the UDN
When talking "game" i mean all the assets that are build ontop of the engine, the UI, the maps, the models, all of that.
And here we find a very long list of items that could certainly have been build ontop of this engine, we could spend houers talking about the UI alone
The thing i am getting at here is, things like the hitching graphics and frames, and lag are issues that most people will fully expect to get patched, to some degree atleast, they are referred to as bugs and everyone knows there will be some in a new game.
But the other missing features are percived differently, they are not looked at as bugs, but as beeing unfinished/unpolished, they are things that, people look at them and say "this could have been done, nay, it SHOULD have been done! this is just shoddy and rushed", and that creates a very negative impression of the game, more so than "oops, i guess this bug slipped by them".
I never once stated that all is well.
....
Well like i said, not all of the missing features are optional for the games enjoyment, atleast not for many of us, some of them are downright game breakers to some of us.
But the big issue here is that games very seldomly survive a botched release, even if they do get good followup development in form of patches and bonus/expansion packs, the damage will more often than not allready have been done, and people will have abandoned it and cast their love on something else.
Thus i really feel Epic should rethink their current release strategy, i think it os doing alot of damage to this franchise.
In the example of many UT2004 gamers....
Yeah i know, making UT2Kx depart so much from the UT gameplay was probably a mistake that will haunt and split this community for a very long time, its like they have 2 sepperate games under the same name.. but that damage is done, there's not much we can do about that.
But all hope is not lost here, with a solid UT3 there would be no reason why a 2Kx gameplay mod/mutator could not be popular with the 2Kx crowd, but pulling them into UT3 is going to be very hard indeed if both the stock gameplay departs from what they want, and the game feels shoddy and unfinished compared to 2K4.
That is my angle here, there is much that could be done with UT3, if the game just felt polished and fully featured, compleated, then i really think alot more people would be willing to tough it out, and develop mods for it that makes it play like they want, or wait for such mods to be released, but as it is, with both gameplay that does not appeal to alot of people, and a look and functionallity that feels half done and rushed, people are not going to have much goodwill at all if they are not die hard fans of its stock gameplay to start with, they will move on to other games.
You see what i am getting at here?
If someone left the game community...
Eh, i've covered this, its not about that one feature, its about that one feature and its many freinds having a big old tea party on your HDD
Don't get me wrong, I'm not...
Well thats just human nature, people here, including thouse who are not happy with UT3, are here because they are fans of UT, of the franchise, and when you are fan of something and you see it all going wrong.. well, emotions can run wild and things will be said that might just be a bit over the top.. a bit.. rash.
Epic is in a rather unique position, beeing able to license out what's probably the most popular game engine right now, i think UE3 adoptation probably rivals the popularity of the old Quake engine back in the day, there is money to be made there.
So i'd think they could afford to make a good game using the engine themselves, and not settle for one with half the toppings missing, even if it would mean paying some freelancers to make some assets for them, or a outsourcing a few bits so they can meet deadlines, or hold off a release untill its ready to go gold, though admittedly, i am not their accountant, i dont know what their budget looks like.
Besides, having a good frachise pays for itself, if you have a fanbase of X amount of people that will buy your games just because its called "UT", thats an asset! and you should want to hang on to that asset, and you do that by releasing good games, and i think even the most devout fans of UT3 will have to admit that UT3 probably did not help this franchise, just taking one look at all the controversy it has sparked certainly seems to indicate that.
My feelings towards the UT3....
I wont lie to you, i too dont like what i see, but that goes for all gaming, games have become a "use and throw away" sort of thing now, and gamers mentality has changed, i dont know what to tell you except.. its a brave new world
I wish we could go back to how things where durring the late 90's and early 00's, but that might never happen, except maybe on an indie level.
I think what will happen is....
I hope you are wrong, because i dont really care for gaming on a console, but i fear you are right
It's already been more than six since...
Well to be fair, its been over six months where most of their resources have probably been tied up in developing the Xbox version, i'd think more would have happened with the PC version in 6 months with more manpower dedicated to it, but my stance is that 6 months would probably not have been sufficient aswell.
Though talking about "every concievable fix" might just be a tad over the top
I don't see that happening. A lot of...
Ahh, but then we come back to what i said earlier, about how i feel that if the game just felt more polished and compleated, i feel the modding scene would be much better able to fill in the gaps.
Its absolutely true that a big patch that fixes all the annoying little leaks and holes wont magically bring back people over night, but its a start, a good start, and i think it would take that to form a solid foundation for the sort of modding that can pull people back in.
And holy Batarang Batman! this post turned out to be HUGE!