1 year 6 months later... Why did UT2k3 fail and UT2k4 succeed?

[Sir_Brizz]

This is just in general guys. I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything.

http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=114004&page=1&pp=30

I don't know how many of you remember this thread from so long ago really at all. I've been, over the past few days, scanning the Internet for my nicknames and real names trying to clean up any outstanding personal information that might be findable, and I found this thread somehow.

What I'm interested to know is: now that you have seen Ut2k3 fall off the face of the Earth, UT2k4 generally succeed as a sequel to UT, and the acceptance of HL2 and CS:S, what do you think ultimately caused the failure of UT2k3?

Was it the maps? The gameplay? The models??

After reading the linked thread I am becoming more and more convinced that the influence the Pro community had over Epic during UT2k3's life was the major contributing factor to it's ultimate demise. After a short time it just didn't speak to new players at all, and ultimately took the short drop in a southern stock. Another thing I think killed it is that it had pretty high system requirements at the time, considering that (IMO) most of the general community is playing on a computer they don't own (parents, internet cafe, gaming center) and there hadn't been a big push for new hardware until the Radeon 9800Pro came out.

What do you think caused it's ultimate demise, and why?

 

[Raffi_B]

People thought it was going to be a sequel to UT, and it wasn't. Too many people were let down by false expectations.

Also, I think it was a fairly rough idea to pass the game from DE to Epic. I mean, from the early UT2003 videos it looked like DE had a very focused, defined idea of what their game was going to be. Epic had another idea, however. When they combined these two ideas, they just didn't mix.

One more thing: the maps themselves weren't bad, but they didn't match the gameplay style. Having static meshes everywhere didn't exactly make for easy use of dodge jumping and the translocator. Look at CTF-Geothermal for example. The map was made with theme in mind, instead of gameplay. If you take a look at the really early version of the map, it actually looked really really cool. It was all dark, the water was green, and the overall atmosphere actually made me feel like I was in a geothermal energy station. Unfortunately, when Epic got their hands on the map, everything went downhill. This is also the case with Compressed, Gael, and Antalus, among many. I'm not saying Epic isn't good at making maps, I'm just saying that DE and Epic had conflicting ideas on what they wanted the game to be.

 

[m&ms]

I wouldn't have any clue. I found ut2k4 to be ut2k3's equal with a few extra gametypes I really don't like and a lot of maps I really don't like.

 

[BooGiTyBoY]

1) I have not accepted HL2 and CS:S at all... I think it's the worst new game to be hyped in years. If it was the same game without the Half-Life name and didn't have Gordon Freeman, I think the majority of others would share my opinion.

2) Don't know what others think but 2k3 just didn't have the feel or fun factor that UT or 2k4 did/does. I was a hardcore UT fan but when 2k3 came out I just didn't play it much. It got boring real quick. I think the majority of my playtime in it was Invasion and that's cuz I was a big fan of a certain mod for UT which let you "hunt" unreal 1 monsters. Can't remember what it was called though...
It also felt horribly unbalanced.

Oh and alot of what Raffi said too

Just my opinions

 

[Sir_Brizz]

1) I have not accepted HL2 and CS:S at all... I think it's the worst new game to be hyped in years. If it was the same game without the Half-Life name and didn't have Gordon Freeman, I think the majority of others would share my opinion.

I should explain what I mean by this I guess.

I'm only talkig about the (generic) shift of players from HL1->HL2 mods and gametypes over the past couple months. And by that I mean how their communities have invariably become split from those that CAN play one or the other and not thosewho want to.

 

[Dead_Hood]

I think one of the reasons that CS:S is having so much success is because it is, for the most part, exactly the same as the first CS. Most of the maps are ported, with marginally better graphics (aside from the water which looks great), so CS:S is just a rehash of an old game with updated graphics and a better physics engine. There is virtually no learning curve, and people go through as if nothing really happened.

With UT2k3, and to an extent 2k4, the game is vastly different. Sure, the core elements are there (dodging, etc.) but so much of the game is different that people had to re-learn how to play. I think most people just wanted the old unreal with better graphics, and instead they got an entirely different game all together. So what is it that makes 2k4 such a success? Onslaught. I firmly believe that without ONS, 2k4 would share the same fate as 2k3, or more than likely, 2k4 wouldn't exist.

 

[I_LoveToKill]

I think the skill ceiling was to high, fast weapon switching required lots of practice, new players didn't stand a chance, the way the whole armor system worked made it so that players that knew how to time had a massive advantage and was impossible to kill, and again new players didnt stand a chance, then there was the redicously easy telefragging, It was my 3rd best weapon with the highest number of frags and It could realy tick some people of and make them leave the game when they had gotten telefragged 50 times in a single game by a bunch of clan players.

I loved ut2003 and I still think it was a way better game for the old default gametypes dm/tdm/ctf.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

I think one of the reasons that CS:S is having so much success is because it is, for the most part, exactly the same as the first CS. Most of the maps are ported, with marginally better graphics (aside from the water which looks great), so CS:S is just a rehash of an old game with updated graphics and a better physics engine. There is virtually no learning curve, and people go through as if nothing really happened.

I agree. Which is why I don't like CS, it's just as much based on knowing the crappy ballistics as CS was and it makes the skill gap even larger than Ut2k3 did, IMO.

I think the skill ceiling was to high, fast weapon switching required lots of practice, new players didn't stand a chance, the way the whole armor system worked made it so that players that knew how to time had a massive advantage and was impossible to kill, and again new players didnt stand a chance, then there was the redicously easy telefragging, It was my 3rd best weapon with the highest number of frags and It could realy tick some people of and make them leave the game when they had gotten telefragged 50 times in a single game by a bunch of clan players.

Don't you feel, like I mentioned above, that there are other game out there where the skill gap is larger even if the skill ceiling is somewhat lower? It always seemed to me that anyone that stuck out 2k3 for a couple weeks/months would get the hang of it and start to enjoy it. I noticed with CS that you really have to stick with it consistently or you start to fall behind where everyone else is. For example, I used to play CS almost non-stop for a while when 1.3 came out and I always hung with the "big dogs"...got invited to clans, got accused of cheating on a daily basis, etc. But after I quit playing for a few months I had to relearn everything all over again. With 2k3 and 2k4 it seems like it's more like riding a bike, second nature once you get the hang of it.

 

[Old Gil]

1) I have not accepted HL2 and CS:S at all... I think it's the worst new game to be hyped in years. If it was the same game without the Half-Life name and didn't have Gordon Freeman, I think the majority of others would share my opinion.

dude, i LOVE HL2, its an awsome game

and i cant really comment on the 2k3/2k4 part of the topic, because i have never played 2k3, but id imagine dead_hood is right, ONS is BY FAR the most played gametype, and 2k3 had no vehicular combat, and in the time when the online world was dominated by battlefield 1942, games without vehicle combat were sort of shuned

 

[Israphel]

I think the skill ceiling was to high, fast weapon switching required lots of practice, new players didn't stand a chance,

I never bought UT2k3 for this reason.
I'd been into console games, and when I moved over into gaming on my computer, I was mainly playing stuff like MoH and BF:1942. I played UT2k3 at a mates house, who put it on to show me the graphics. I couldn't believe how hard it was, other games I'd played didn't have anything like as steeper learning curve....so I never bothered buying it.

I was relatively indifferent when UT2k4 came out for the same reason, but it was released at a time when I was getting really bored of WW2 games, and I'd been disappointed with Halo online...then someone emailed me a link for the demo (I wasn't really part of any community back then and didn't even know that the demo had come out...I firmly believe that there are huge numbers of players who are like this) and I downloaded it and was intruiged by Onslaught because of the vehicles. I still thought it was really hard to get into though, I don't think I've ever played a game where I've been killed as much and had NO IDEA how I was killed or who killed me. I liked Onslaught enough to buy the game (which in itself was hard cos I live in Portugal and use a Mac and it seemed to take ages for the Mac version to be released in Europe, then I had to get it sent over from the UK). I played it and bit by bit it grew on me....and at the time there were no other games coming out at the time to distract my attention. After a couple of months it really really clicked...now no other game comes close.

Would I have felt this way if I'd had the time to spend with UT2k3?....I don't know. I bought UT2k4 to play Onslaught..it has a less steep learning curve than other game types...and through that I've got into stuff like TDM and AS. But without ONS I don't know if I'd have bought it, and i doubt I'd have had the patience to put up with it taking months and months to even be able to compete online.

Onslaught was a master-stroke. So many people bought it because of that gametype...maybe not the people who already owned UT2k3, but a lot of newer players did. Without ONS, I really don't know if it would have been any more popular than UT2k3...when you look the online stats, the number of people playing Onslaught is around the same as the next 4 most popular gametypes COMBINED.

I'm not saying that I don't like the other gametypes, I think they're brilliant. But they are VERY hard for new players to get into....and Onslaught offered people an accessible way into the game.

 

[Capt.Toilet]

Ask me how come the game failed, i cant give you a definitive answer. But like others above me, the learning curve was just too high to deal with. When i bought 2k3, the first few months were pretty sweet, i was a mid range player and was having a blast online. A few patches later, a few borked weapons here and there(especially the mini), and people generally getting better and better, i faded away from 2k3. For one like above, it was the way the shield was handled. Having the shield act as a secondary health was one of the biggest goof ups someone could come up with.

Second blow to me was the whole boost dodging fiasco. I for one could not get the hang of it and this left me behind in the skill gap, thus leaving me to get owned every game.

The final blow was fast weapon switching. SR/LG/SR was the name of the game in most of the matches i played, and because i wasnt a fast learner, again the game took the back seat.

Eventually i only played the thing once a week, and that was only on special occasions. When 2k4 came out, it felt like old school UT to me and i immediatly caught on. Yeah it felt the same with the dodges and such, but for some reason i caught on quicker.

 

[JohnDoe641]

IMHO 2k3 failed simply because it was not UT with better graphics, which the majority of people were expecting. That wasn't the only factor, it was the extremely deep learning curve (I've been playing UT since 99 and Unreal since 98) but even for someone like me who played the games competitively, I found it to be slightly intimidating at first. Once I was able to adapt to the weapons and the new movement I really enjoyed it. But all of that came with lots of practice and time spent figuring out stuff. A lot of people don't have those patience and just want to run and gun. In 2k3 you could not do that without be completely SOwned by a decent player. 2k4 isn't as hard as 2k3 was imho, it's still a tough game to master, but 2k3 was much much more intense.

 

[hal]

You guys have pretty much nailed it so there's not much to say.

I will comment on Raffi's mention of Geothermal though. Having played the map at Digital Extremes, I can tell you that it was one of the last maps finished and it changed A LOT from the build that I played and the version that was released just a few months later. So much so that I really didn't recognize the map at first.

I think that it was pretty bold of Digital Extremes to try to enhance the gameplay of a successor to such an immensely popular game like UT. I liked most of what they were doing and I'm completely hooked on the movement now. But as someone already mentioned... the two different visions for the game just didn't mix and it ended up taking one whole game to iron some of it out. Other things, such as player scale, won't be ironed out until they release a totally new game.

 

[{MåçE}]

im not sure if you can say that ut2k4 truly succeeded though. it was better than ut2k4, i agree, but i dont think it was as big of a success as it could have been.

just one example to look at is how CPL chose PK over ut2k4 for the world tour.. the main reason for them picking PK is that the developers were more dedicated to making the game fit for a world tour. it seemed like epic just didnt care about their game..

then there was the bonus pack.. it only added onslaught content, which is fine if you play onlsaught, but there are still a lot of people who dont play onslaught. and even then, the features it added just didnt seem as refined as the stock vehicles and maps.. the new vehicles felt awkward and like they didnt fit in the game. i think if they had maybe spent a little more time on the bonus pack, and added more variety to it, it could have been a much bigger success.

overall it just seemed like epic doesnt care as much about their games as other developers do, especially when it comes to competitive playing. epic whitelisted santa hat mutators for the holidays, but blacklist UTcomp.. idk, just seemed like ut2k4 had a lot more potential. look at some of the most active games.. CS 1.6 / CS:S, CoD, WC3.. i think ut2k4 is just as good of a game as those, but those games just did a better job of fixing their games and keeping the community happy/alive. WC3 gets balance patches quite often, usually taking feedback from their communities when doing so.. in CS, CPL/CAL actually work with them to make official maps made for competition... CoD released the UO expansion, and though i havent played it, i've talked to people who didnt like CoD, but loved CoD:UO. in ut2k4, it seemed like it often took epic at least 2 or 3 or 4 patches to fix problems the community had been addressing for quite some time.. many things were not even fixed at all.

 

[hal]

I will agree that some fixes didn't happen as quickly as they should have (or at all), but I think you're overestimating a few things:

1) CPL/PK - didn't really do much for the PK community and I doubt it would have done much for UT2004's. I know for a fact that the CPL and Epic wanted to work with together but the timing was off. You can read posts by Angel and Mark Rein stating as much.

2) Bonus pack - kind of a wash. What do you expect? Most people are playing ONS - by a long shot. There are plenty of good user made CTF and DM maps and enough acceptable official ones that any gametype that was going to take off WOULD take off. You can't pin that down on them and I don't think it would have made a significant difference. Who knows what the future holds.....

3) Isn't UTComp geared more towards competitive play? It wouldn't make any difference whether or not it was white listed - because if you're in a league you're not going to need Epic to hold your hand to find those servers.

In the end, it all boils down to this. UT2004 is the most popular game of its kind and the UT series is about the most played series of its kind. Everything dominating the top of the board is a totally different type of game and there's nothing Epic could have done to change that, short of replacing RocketLaunchers with Panzerfausts.

 

[T2A`]

I'm a late-comer to the scene (aka n00b), so I started with UT2003 in June of that year. I will tell you this, though: I stopped playing it completely about a month later. I did, luckily, "rediscover" it a few months after that, but I never played online. Not because of extremely 1773 players kicking my ass, but because every time I tried to play online I ended up in a huge group of other n00bs double-jumping around Gael like they were good. Not fun. Boost dodging? Didn't know what that was until UT2004. Bad player scale? Gameplay mechanics? Knew nothing of the sort. My technical knowledge of the game at any scale was very limited.

Which brings me to why I bought UT2004: Onslaught. I don't play it now; hell, I don't even really like it. But that's why I got it. The reason this game didn't get shelved like UT2003 was because I finally found my way to the community. Without it and Onslaught, I'm sure the game wouldn't be very popular at all. Insite got me learning what made a map good, what gameplay flow was, as well as teaching me a whole lot about UnrealEd. FragBU (hasn't even been a full five months yet, surprisingly) has taught me a whoooole lot of stuff about how to actually play in a very short period of time. So, thanks to you guys here at BU and Insite for being cool and stuff, because otherwise I probably wouldn't still be playing this game. :tup:

 

[-AEnubis-]

I remember that thread...

Haven't had a long drawn out thread like that in a while... that brings back some memories.

3) Isn't UTComp geared more towards competitive play? It wouldn't make any difference whether or not it was white listed - because if you're in a league you're not going to need Epic to hold your hand to find those servers.

As well, for the opposite reasons, if you aren't adept enough at this game to uncheck the standard servers only box, and not accidentally stumble into a bunch of crazy muts, then you prolly don't belong on a competative server running UT comp. I think it's more of a favor, then a hinderance.

Boog, you were talking about "Tally Ho", and I thought that game was pretty cool. I liked some aspects of it better then current INV.

There really are like 2 totally different views on this though, and I suppose I can only speak for one, but I think the whole ONS appeal really only affected and grabbed the newcomers to the series. Any of us 4-5 year vets, who religiously played U1 or UT online got both games, because they were Unreal, ONS or not (at least I know I did).

Bearing that in mind, despite liking a lot of the changes, and standing by Epic's descisions most of the way, I think 2k3 just tried intoducing too many changes too quickly, and 2k4's greater success was attributed to many things, that can be classified mostly as "steps back". Most of the noticeable changes, as far as I can tell, from 2k3-2k4 really feel like steps back towards the way UT was.
Maps got slightly more gameplay oriented for the DM scene, the loc was buffed for the ctf scene, the weapon switching was moved somewhere between UT and 2k3 times, the effects of the new movement were nerfed, the SG was even nerfed a little, we were given a slightly more UT like SR, and even some of the projetile speeds were moved back closer to the way they were in UT among a few other things.

If noticed, I think the next "sequel" will do more of it. I wouldn't be suprised if the double jump was lost, and not missed, adrenaline 86'd, the scale returned, the walking speed re-increased, and some of the weapons tweaked to re-accomodate those 2 things.

Then if they focus more of their efforts on quality maps for the many quality game types they already have, they really won't need another flagship idea to sell it.

My theory on system specs in that thread I think still holds very true as well. Think about it, the minimum requirements from 2k3-2k4 hardly moved anywhere, but the hardware very much did... Think of what you were running then and now... I know I upgraded a ton (inadvertantly), and this game is much smoother for me then 2k3 was.

 

[LooseCannon]

I came late to UT, never having played Unreal. I only played UT on LANs with 4 - 6 friends, every 6wks or so. Weekend 18hr sessions with lots of beer and pizza. UT was the only FPS we played. It ran well enough on some very dodgey old kit, which meant you could use your friend 'old' PC for the weekend if yours was 'between boots'. By that time UT GOTY was GBP£9.99, so everyone had a copy, even if they only played at the LAN drink-a-thons.

I didn't play online because I never considered it.

Hence, UT was cheap, easy, fun and everyone had it.

I bought UT2k3 within weeks of its release. Even at that time it was heavily discounted, which in hindsight was due to lack of demand. None of my LAN friends bought it. None. We played the demo a few times, but always went back to UT. I don't remember even trying to convince anyone to buy UT2k3.

The only improvement we noted was the graphics. But we wanted fun, challenge and competition, none of which related to for example, blades of grass or swaying trees. Also, only the guy with the monster PC could run with all effects on high. We didn't need or want UT2k4.

Hence again, UT was cheap, easy, fun and everyone had it.

So why did I and my LAN mates BUY UT2k4? Why not stick with UT? For us, in no particular order:
1. Onslaught caught our imaginations,
2. By the time UT2k4 arrived, everyone's PC could run it at reasonable settings, and
3. UT was an old game, so we felt like a change.

So why do we still PLAY UT2k4 and haven't returned to UT like we did with UT2k3? Again, in no particular order:
1. Most of us are online, the UK having started to get dsl at reasonable prices,
2. The DM and CTF gameplay transition from UT to UT2k4 went fairly unnoticed with our low standard of play,
3. UT by now has an old game feel, even though it's still good fun, and
4. I found BeyondUnreal when trying to get my head around UT2k3.

In conclusion, I think the timing of UT2k3 was critical. UT was still The Game and relevent PC performance at that time was inadequate to create enough 'wow' from the graphics. And the final push for a successful launch was Onslaught getting all the NEW players online.

Games development and publication are so very, very expensive and risky!

Final thought, slightly OT. Maybe without UT2k3 breaking the ground rules of UT and preparing the community, then UT2k4 would have failed as well?

 

[Taleweaver]

The reason was simple for me: my computer couldn't handle UT2003 at that time. By the time I saved up enough money, UT2004 was already announced to be shipped with all the stuff UT2003 came with. Not really a great way to promote UT2003, IMO

This could be a good general reason as well: UT2003 was pretty tough on CPU back then, and the fact that it was a completely different game than UT99 didn't encourage people to upgrade. A good year later, the 'standard pc' is more powerfull and more likely to handle UT2004, which has about the same requirements as ut2003.
Oh, and it has to be mentioned that UT2004 has vehicles

Final thought, slightly OT. Maybe without UT2k3 breaking the ground rules of UT and preparing the community, then UT2k4 would have failed as well?

Very likely, indeed. With UT2003 on the shells and on the servers and forums, it gave the developers a good idea of what was wrong and what was right about it, which is clearly used in the creation of UT2004.

 

[{MåçE}]

3) Isn't UTComp geared more towards competitive play? It wouldn't make any difference whether or not it was white listed - because if you're in a league you're not going to need Epic to hold your hand to find those servers.

the advantage of having UTcomp whitelisted is not so that competitive players can find their servers.. they usually have a few favorites and just go to those whenever they want, i agree. the problem is, its hard to get new players into the competitive community by playing in their servers and whatnot because these UTcomp servers are hidden as "non standard" between these quad jump 80% speed instagib servers and redeemer arena RPG servers ( k so those examples are a little extreme )

very rarely did new players find their way into the competitive community.. part of the problem was the extreme skill gap... but part of the problem was also that new players didnt often get a chance to find UTcomp servers.

aenubis, im not sure one's knowledge of the game's menus or anything like that relates to their skill in the game. that would be like saying that if somebody isnt adept enough to unlock the xan skin from their ini files, they shouldnt be playing in a competitive server.. heck i dont even know how to do that. i know you change something to false, but thats about it.. idk what file or anything. trying to relate somebody's knowledge of things besides the actual gameplay to their skill in the actual gameplay is kind of wasteful, and i dont think it holds true in most cases. and i have also played in a handful of UTcomp servers that were far from competitive.. their might be one or two good players on it once and a while, but otherwise it was just like a regular casual server, but with UTcomp on. the players werent complete noobs though, and they knew who the competitive players were.. who the top clans were, where the best IRC channels and websitse were.. it was a good server for bridging the gap from casual players to competitive players.

many players might not even know what UTcomp is, and hence, not bother searching around for a server with it on.. they might be perfectly content playing the game as it is.. but then one day, they stumble across a UTcomp server and think to themselves "hey whats this mutator? i really like it.. it takes away stupid elements like stealth and makes the game more enjoyable for me, in my opinion!". then they become even more interested in the game.. start playing the game more, especially on UTcomp servers.. then they start meeting competitive players and then maybe joining a clan. then this person tells all of his friends to get the game (he might have done that even if he hadnt discovered UTcomp), but this time he gets them hooked on UTcomp and competitive playing too.. then they all join clans and boom, there are even more UT2k4 players playing. the difference is that i think since these imaginary people are now competitive players in clans and whatnot, they will most likely be more dedicated to the game and want to play it for longer, whereas the casual players will drift from game to game and eventually abandon ut2k4. thats sorta what happened to me.. i had never heard of UTcomp, heck i had never even played online video games really. i had just gotten broadband and became interested in gaming. i somehow ended up on the factory, and even though at first i got pwnt, the challenge intrigued me and that became pretty much the only server i ever played on, and that is how i became interested in the competitive community.


but this isnt a discussion about UTcomp, so lets not make it that way. my point is not that UTcomp would have kept the game alive... my point is just that the communities in the game became so divided. UTcomp is not the only example.. ONS vs DM for example... NW vs IG.. low grav IG vs reg grav IG.. ut2k4 mods vs ut2k4 itself. ut2k4 just had so much in it, and the communities for them became so divided. if you combined all those players from all those different mods and muts, then you would have a pretty sweet community.. but instead of getting a sweet community, we got a bunch of "sort of sweet" communities

i think epic should have made ut2k4 all about CTF and DM and those original gametypes.. these fast paced arena style shooters.. ONS just didnt feel like unreal. it felt like battlefield with a flak cannon and slightly smaller maps. i think ONS could have been a cool gametype, and if anything, they could have made it an entirely separate game, and just gone crazy with it, rather than restricting the gametype in attempts to make it fit into ut2k4 as a gametype. they could have made more maps, more vehicles maybe.. taken elements from tribes and XMP and put those into the game.. it seemed like onslaught was held back by the fact that it had to be ut2k4-ish. but the problem was, it didnt realy feel ut2k4-ish, so the whole point of trying to hold it back and keep it ut2k4-ish was a waste, hence why i say they could have maken it an entirely separate game and done really cool stuff with it. IMO, ut2k4 wasnt really a groundbreaking game, and an onslaught-based game prolly would have been one.


/random rant lol. i think the game is too divided, and that is its problem.