Played against the top players in both UT3 and UT2004. And honestly that wasn't the experience. UT2k4 is overly hitscan dominated ,I agree totally. But it was more a case of the other weapons being underpowered and useless against hitscan. UT3's RL and Link are far more potent at mid range. And that tweak would have been enough . If anything, the Stinger and splash damage area of the rox in Ut3 make those overpowered, so it's a difficult balance.
The reason RL and practically every other weapon is "underpowered" in UT2k4 is precisely because of the movement. The movement is what makes it hitscan friendly, and not only is that true, but the "nerfing" of the movement from UT2003 -> UT2004 made it even more hitscan friendly. Basically the game is a hitscanners paradise.
In UT3, you can basically spam whatever and eventually kill someone. This is never true in UT2k4 and never will be. Immediately the barrier to entry is significantly higher. UT3 has far better weapon balance overall than any previous entry in UT (yes, even UT, because it was tuned to 100+ pings). Could it be tweaked? Probably. But it's far better than anything else.
Indeed. And that's my point really. It's been patched into pretty good shape over the years and was even relaunched as UT3 black ( the less said about the console targeted Titan addition the better). But it still didn't catch on, suggesting a more fundamental rethink may be needed.
I'm positive that is not accurate at all. People don't watch games for patches that fix their problems with a game. If a game doesn't give them what they want how they want it the first time they play it, they move on. There is not a shortage of awesome games available right now, so a UT game needs to be excellent on release or it will suffer the same fate as UT3 did.
Add in all the other major/minor misses in the game and you just have a bag full of failures ranging anywhere from almost to utter and people who just give up on your game rather than try to suffer through it. Heck, the Gamespy functionality alone makes the game almost insufferable, and that is before you even get to the menu!
Some claim they should just launch a UT4 which borrows the UT3 gameplay ; basically a patched up version of UT3 without missing features, using the latest UE build. However, UT3's relative failure to hold on to players compared to older UTs is real and can't all be put down to its state at release .
Between the poor performance of the game on average rigs in 2007, the absolutely dark and dismal look of every map, and several other issues, I don't really feel like that is far off. If you've played the UT Demo contained in UDK, you see what the game could have been like (and, honestly, that demo is easily a better game than UT3 is even after all the patching). What are the big changes? Lightmass for lighting so generally brighter levels, excellent performance on fairly old computers, no Gamespy....
I'm not saying a one to one translation is a good idea. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But the game didn't get a fair shake and, for most people, it literally had nothing to do with the gameplay.
