Epic are now concentrating primarily on consoles, and the PC is "the PC is kind of the secondary part of what we’re doing"
Old News, Ever since GoW's success UT and the PC have been second tier with Epic's primary focus and skills on the Console Platforms. It's only a matter of time before they completely do the switch to consoles. Ut3 is just the first ported game we will see from Epic, more to come.
To liven things up a little, Ofcourse ever since GoW started Epic's Veteran team has been working on GoW/2 while UT3 is stuck with the less skilled more Rookie like Employees, with glances from the Vets from time to time to see how their doing. It's a no wonder why Epic has been hiring the past 3 months, simply because they have been doing some firing as well. Nope I'm wrong.
I was watching the UT3 credits, and they happen to show portraits of the employees, so I kept watching from beginning to end. 4/5 Employees were wearing Gears of War hats in the credits, its like " are you kidding me ? " great support for UT guys.
Anyhow, I've been enjoying UT3 getting my rank up on the top 50 but recently I'm realizing how much of a spam fest this game really is. Theres 2 populated servers in DM ( UMG and Unreal Warzone ) in which it is normally populated with 10-16 players. All day long there are 4 maps voted, Rising Sun,
Biohazard, Deck, and Fearless. 10-16 players on Rising Sun, Biohazard, or Fearless.
3/4 of those maps are nothing but players running around with the Impact hammer, rockets flying left and right, flak balls going off in oodles all in one area constantly. It's come to the point where it really doesn't take much skill to win anymore. This is the direction Epic wanted to take UT3 though, more close combat orientated, but with half of the UT3 DM maps it doesn't work out to well. There isn't much that really separates an Advanced player and a Skilled player anymore besides timing armor.
I know that with larger maps this wouldn't be as much of a problem, but when players vote for the same cramped spam fest maps over and over again like they do, it becomes a problem, and makes ut2k4 seem like a breath of fresh air. Having no advanced dodging for these maps like Biohazard doesn't help either.
4/5 players will be excessively using Rockets, Flak, Flying Shock balls, and the
Mini which really contributes to the constant spam bath in cramped maps. With no advanced dodging in store like I said it really turns it into a whoever shoots first gets the kill.