Epic commitment to UT3

[Sir_Brizz]

I never had any real complaints about UT2004 when it came out. I don't have any real complaints about CoD4, HL2, SupCom, the Orange Box, or any game I've gotten recently. I had plenty about UT3. If you can honestly say UT2004 had as many problems as UT3, demo and otherwise, then I feel sorry for you. It must be great to flip-flop your positions so easily whenever it's convenient for you. You should vote for McCain.

I can honestly say that UT2004 had as many problems as UT3 in completely different areas. The problem is that UT3's problems are in the most noticeable places like the server browser or the inability to join certain servers because of ridiculous bugs dealing with custom content.

As far as the election goes, I don't know who I'll vote for. Once again we are back to McCrap and crap and crap.

The bottom line is no one plays this game and no one will ever play it, so all of this is a waste of time.

And I still contend that the game (at peak) has as many players as UT2004 has had for last year or more. Server issues and custom content problems are what is keeping people away right now. On the official servers list people are always saying they can keep their server full while it is up because it has this custom content crash all the time.

It also doesn't help that Gamespy has gone down more in the last three months than the UT2004 master server did the whole time the game was out.

 

[Vitamin-Carrot]

Why did they go with gamespy in the first place ?

gs has always been crap in my opinion i always clicked no when installing a game that it came with.

I miss the all seeing eye before yahoo bought it

 

[Wunderbar_007]

Speaking of gamespy, what's the deal with the ACTUAL number of online players? Gamespy stats show one number (never over 1000), game-monitor shows another number (usually slightly higher number than gamespy has) and then I read someone from EPIC (don't remember where, when or who) said the actual number is close to 2000 players. Just curious what the actual deal is.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

The Epic person is probably talking about people logged in to Gamespy, not necessarily playing online.

The Gamespy numbers are probably people in servers.

The Game-Monitor numbers probably count rocks, trees, flags, teams, and a number of other things as part of the player count.

 

[FuLLBLeeD]

And I still contend that the game (at peak) has as many players as UT2004 has had for last year or more. Server issues and custom content problems are what is keeping people away right now. On the official servers list people are always saying they can keep their server full while it is up because it has this custom content crash all the time.

It also doesn't help that Gamespy has gone down more in the last three months than the UT2004 master server did the whole time the game was out.

No, it doesn't. Where are you getting your numbers?

 

[Wunderbar_007]

The Game-Monitor numbers probably count rocks, trees, flags, teams, and a number of other things as part of the player count.

HAhaha!! Thx for clearing it up Too bad though, I usually glance at the game monitor numbers and have always assumed they are the real deal. Looks like we have even less players than I thought

 

[Vitamin-Carrot]

Rocks and Trees as opposition ... now that’s my kind of hazardous environment

 

[FuLLBLeeD]

Game Monitor IS accurate.

 

[T2A`]

Is not! If it were that'd be detrimental to Brizz's case! Therefore it cannot be!

 

[Vitamin-Carrot]

What!!! you saying its possible that the trees and rocks are actually harmless?

 

[Trynant]

everything turns into a T2A versus Brizz thread

What!!! you saying its possible that the trees and rocks are actually harmless?

The trees. They're lurking everywhere. Waiting for the one day when they can take over earth! They're slowly sinking their roots into the soil of our freedom. Trees are a bunch of commies.

What's this thread about again?

 

[Vitamin-Carrot]

The trees. They're lurking everywhere. Waiting for the one day when they can take over earth! They're slowly sinking their roots into the soil of our freedom. Trees are a bunch of commies.

What's this thread about again?

Something about bunnies if a recall correctly

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Game Monitor IS accurate.

I've already given extensive proof as to why Game Monitor's numbers are extremely inflated. In UT2004 it counts teams as players, I ran the numbers and at least 25% of the players it reports for UT2004 are Red Team and Blue Team.

There is more, but I cba to go over it all again. Suffice it to say, Game Monitor is about as far from accurate as you can get, doing even worse than frikkin Gamespy.

 

[DGUnreal]

No offense meant to anyone in my post, take it as light-hearted discussion.
I'm not an angry guy.

Valid, because people will compare sequels to its predecessors and don't gives a rat's arse about things like that. If a dev is making a sequel they better make sure it's better then the last one before they try to sell it.

Reality check please...

By your statement then every completely new version of software should have all of the features of its predecessor plus new features and no bugs.
So likewise every new automobile should have all of the features of previous automobiles plus new features and with better performance (and still cost the same). Every new house should have all of the amenities of previous ones plus more and with better eco (and still cost the same).

Add to this list the sequels on movies, books, other games and software, etc. ...

It's nice in theory but that's not the way things work in the real world.

The GUI that seems to be the pet-whine of choice now was simply a design decision by Epic that turned out not to be favorable among the PC community. And Epic has already posted that they are aware of it, some changes have been made, and hopefully more are coming.

Tell me how not having Spectate or Gore Level settings is making the game "unplayable"? If the vehicles didn't drive or the weapons didn't shoot or I couldn't pick a map to play, then I would agree.
And other than empty servers I have never once had any issue connecting or using the server browser on any of my systems in the studio that have UT3 installed onto.

And FYI many of the UT2004 options are not required any more which is why they are not on the UT3 settings.
For example, who here needs to switch it back to 16-bit color because you are running an old card like a Voodoo-5 or are getting poor 24-bit performance and want to see only 16-bit? Show of hands please.
Or who needs to toggle Trilinear Filtering, or Coronas, or turn on/off Weapon Bob, or set it to low Gore Level because you are under 5 years old, ...



Anyone with half a brain can easily see that 99.9% of the claims are either unfounded or highly exaggerated (and I do have half a brain, so I know for sure ).

So you think it's better to let the franchise die in silence then try to put some pressure on Epic to fix it?

How exactly is all of the new threads regarding "UT3 sux" putting pressure on Epic?

What it has done I'm sure is drive away a percentage of people who would have otherwise purchased or played the game. So in doing this the people who are starting these threads have become self-defeating and are hurting the community and the game.

Epic already knows and has already heard all of this... months ago... a thousand times already...

Mark has already posted that he has heard the community regarding these things, or did everyone miss that?

Server issues and custom content problems are what is keeping people away right now.

Custom content is a big issue even for game stability. A lot of gamers are running into issues with their UT3 simply because they have installed hacked content put out by people in the community who do not know how to use the engine. The people running into these issues are of course blaming the game and Epic, when the fault lies in the hacking the person releasing the content has done.

Why did they go with gamespy in the first place ?

Don't quote me, but going by what I've seen in the dev area I would guess in order to release the engine in a more timely manner without having to devote their own programmer time to develop a similar system. Same reason why UE3 has so much other third-party code linked in, from PhysX to SpeedTree, etc.

Creating an engine for five platforms is a massive amount of work, so portions of it will be built on and with other existing code or licensed libraries written by third parties.

Why re-invent the wheel...

 

[T2A`]

I've already given extensive proof as to why Game Monitor's numbers are extremely inflated. In UT2004 it counts teams as players, I ran the numbers and at least 25% of the players it reports for UT2004 are Red Team and Blue Team.

There is more, but I cba to go over it all again. Suffice it to say, Game Monitor is about as far from accurate as you can get, doing even worse than frikkin Gamespy.

What numbers did you run, exactly? Surely you noticed that GM only reports Red/Blue Team for TAM games, right? Rather than 25% extra players, it's more like 25 at best.

I just checked the top 30 populated UT2004 servers on GM. Guess how many extra players I counted...

Ten. Six bots and two each of Red Team and Blue Team. Out of those 30 with the most players in them, 277 players in total, I only saw ten things that shouldn't have been reported. That's 3.6%. And that's for all of them. For actual "Red/Blue Team" it's only 1.4%, not 25%.

You might want to check those numbers again, Sir_Bias. D:

 

[213]

Why re-invent the wheel...

ah but Gamespy and Agea's physics hyjinx aren't wheels. They're more like cinder-blocks, with kickstands on them. I wish this game had some wheels attached to it.

 

[Grobut]

And I still contend that the game (at peak) has as many players as UT2004 has had for last year or more.

I don't see why that should be considdered a good thing though, very few online games thease days last for more than 2 years, after that amount of time most people will grow bored of it and look for something new, UT2004 did actually hang on longer than most games like it, but the last year or so it was definately on its way out, and it was hard to find populated servers with a comfortable ping.

UT3 is in its first 5-6 months, this should be the prime of its life! the first 6 months is usually where online games have the most people playing it, so the fact that player counts can be compared to a game that was on its way out, and long since past its prime, doesen't seem like something we should be happy about.. more so because it would seem things will only gets worse from here.

 

[MonsOlympus]

Maybe things will actually pickup, as you said people get bored of games so they might come over to UT3 later not having played it much. Certainly a possibility as long as something better doesnt come along in that time.

 

[siRtobey]

You know, I start believing, UT3's failure isn't all Epics fault. As we all know, FPS games aren't as popular, as they once were. Well, there are still enough players around. But as there has been said before, we have something like a "paris hilton generation"... People are chaning in games too. Most players I know are tired of trying to catch up to better players, the enthusiasm somehow is gone. Most people just don't have the will anymore, to practice etc. ...
And I'm sure all of you agree, that learning CS or CoD4 is much easier as learning UT or Quake.

So, I think, Epic has done things wrong (too much ;( ) but we have to search elsewhere too, and the character of the newer generation (excluding me, I'm young, yes, but I'v got the will to learn difficult things, like UT ) is IMO one of the reasons too.

I keep repeating myself. I don't blame Epic for SELLING UT, but I only see a chance for FPS games to become big and important again in giving them away for free and making money elsewhere than in stores...
I hope id will succeed with Quake Live, although I'll probably stay with UT, because if QLive doesn't succeed, it IMO looks really bad for FPS games in the near future...

P.S. sorry for always coming to the same conclusion, but it fits so well

 

[Grobut]

Maybe things will actually pickup, as you said people get bored of games so they might come over to UT3 later not having played it much. Certainly a possibility as long as something better doesnt come along in that time.

Ofcourse there is allways some of that going on, but its a small trickle of people coming and going, not the tidalwave we need.

The only way to turn the tides would be doing something very big (UT3.5 style big), and very public (advertice!), coupled with a re-release of some kind, prefably with a new and much better demo, that's the sort of thing people will notice, a bunch of smaller patches and bonus packs getting released over a long period of time wont draw much if any attention.


It could be done in many ways, all of them having pro's and con's, and they have all been discussed to death in the past, but i really think that this is the sort of thing that must happen if UT3 is to have a future.