Maybe, but a lot of people also played Quake 4 before they realized it was terrible
I think a lot of old Q3A players desperately wanted it to be good, and stuck around longer than the game deserved.. ofcourse, we could say something similar about UT3
UT/Q3 where neither the first nor the only arena shooters, we can trace them all the way back to the 2½D graphics days, just to name an example i played a whole bunch, lets just point to Blood's MP portion, "Bloodbath", that was pure arena shooter all the way.
I define "fast paced" as movement speed, the rate at which you move around, and TF2, having its roots in Quake, moves plenty fast, it is certainly no tactical shooter, it is much clouser related to Quake for obvious reasons.
Map design is also an important factor, obviously, the term "Arena shooter" stems from how typical DM maps where created in thease classic titles afterall, and i think you'd have to agree that TF2's maps aren't all that dissimilar to CTF maps we have seen in UT, 2Forts versus FacingWorlds comes to mind, both classic maps in the UT and TF series.
If you want to define it as "how often you get into a fight" instead, then TF2 is not as fast paced, but certainly not far from what a classic CTF match is like on a larger map (and it's definately comparable to older Arena shooters).
As for balance, this i don't considder a defining part of the genre, ofcourse a good game should have an overall balance, but even UT (or perhabs i should refrance the UC series as a better example) have played around with stuff like "species statistics", i don't think all players need to have the exact same abillities for it to be an Arena Shooter, we could also look at Tribes whilst we're at it.
If you just mean "they both emphasize teamplay", I guess I'd agree, but then you could also lump Halo in there and I don't think you'd call that an arena shooter either
Obviously i don't mean that, if we define it that loosely, then even tactical shooters would be included, thouse are team based too, and that's just an absurd connection to make.. OFP the Arena Shooter! yeah.. no..
Nor would i call Halo an Arena Shooter, for obvious reasons.
The TF series, however, sprung from Quake, infact it was nothing more than a further development of the early CTF gametypes that where created for that game, basically its that with classes, it is certainly a more specialized gametype, i guess you could say the same of "Jailbreak" and similar, and as its theme has been refined over the years it has become more so, but regardless, i can still play TF2 and see the obvious roots with the origional Quake mod.
