Gaming companies' direction with FPS games

[Rujman]

What happens with games like UT2004?

Fast-paced DM-based FPSes with sophisticated movement aren't really popular anymore. The UT2004 community is shrinking by the day and it really sucks because I can safely say it was my favorite game of all time. After giving countless games a try, I haven't found a game that's grabbed my attention by the balls like UT2004 did.

-UT3 is dead.
-Epic's contractually bound to make another steaming pile with "Unreal" stamped on it by year's end, but that means nothing, especially since it's supposed to be an expansion (LOL!)
-I bought TF2 but I can't seem to get into it.
-I bought COD: WaW and it's fun but I can see it getting stale within the next few weeks/month just because it's slow and has simple movement.

It seems that the only hope for the niche genre that we've been enjoying the past few years is Quake Live, a flash-based, ad-supported remake of a game from 10 years ago. When it's put that way, that sounds pretty sad. Gaming companies seem to be going in a linear direction: either make it more realistic or make it more team-based, or both. They don't focus on the speed of the gameplay anymore, nor do they focus on movement.

I almost want to contact Valve and tell them that there's still a community that once enjoyed Quake/UT DM back in their heyday and since 2004, there hasn't been a game that has delivered that type of gameplay. Seeing as how Valve is basically the only gaming company that has yet to disappoint its fans, I wouldn't mind seeing the next UT-style game come from them. At least we wouldn't have to worry about a **** up.

Anyway, are there any games that I don't know of that might be of interest to a jaded UT2k4 player? Namely, something that's coming out soon, not something that's been released already.

(I know there really isn't anything, I just threw that question in there to add some sort of function to this thread so it doesn't appear to be a rant. Feel free to add your own opinions.)

 

[Balton]

valve not disappoint their fans? lol.

 

[Rujman]

Kinda a stretch with that point, but they've got a better track record than Epic for sure

 

[T2A`]

CoD4 is better than WaW. I thought it'd get old and be dumb when I first got into it but it has proven to be quite fun and I'm still playing it. It can (and should) be played very aggressively and run-and-gun.

I don't think such "retro" shooters will be coming back into the limelight any time soon. Gamers are used to things being handed to them now. Not spawning fully armed to the teeth and around all your teammates is seen as unfair, unbalanced, and unfun.

Since "retro" shooters are more or less based around pickups, until pickups come back into style there will be no more such shooters. People don't even like working to pick up health anymore; it has to regenerate. D:

 

[KaiserWarrior]

Fast-paced DM-based FPSes with sophisticated movement aren't really popular anymore
.
.
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niche genre

There's your answer. Gaming is an industry, and like any other industry it wishes to make money. Making niche games for a very small target demographic will not make money. It is unfortunate, but it is the way of things -- gamers no longer want tournament-style shooters, they want realistic milsims. In much the same way, nobody makes 2D platformer/shooters anymore, because they've gone out of style -- no matter how badass I might think a 2D game with high-res, high-framerate animation would be.

A lot of it is to do with immersion. The really big thing in the market right now is immersion, and tournament shooters simply can't do that. By their very nature they can't. Milsim-style games can do immersion in spades, when done correctly, and that's the present trend.

 

[Glider of chaos]

Another point: complex movement requires good aiming skills. And mouse+keyboard as well. But since every developer is aiming towards console market now... Well, it's bound to become unpopular.

 

[Fuzzle]

People are more into interesting objectives and "role" mechanics these days. Pure deathmatch with "one class fits all" is considered dumbed down and minimalistic.

Most of the people I know who didn't like UT3, are simply into the battlefield and TF2 thing these days where you have snipers, assault, recon, unlocks, levels, or whatever - and they consider them to be more "advanced" hence "better". I think this is what the majority of fps players think, as well.

 

[JaFO]

There's hope though.
2D platformers : Braid, get it, play it, and learn to hate it as it is ff-ing difficult ... it's old skool with a twist.

I therefor submit that it is possible to resurrect the 'fastpaced fps-arcade genre', provided someone finds the secret ingredient that makes it work and Left4dead may be the seed you're looking for.

And as for 'fastpaced' shooters not being possible due to the console being the 'main target' ... you really haven't played Left4dead, have you ?
You need to be superfast and have good aiming skills if you want to survive a horde-attack.

I really wonder what games Valve has made, because except for the fact that they're still trying to finish half-life 2 there releases have been 0. They've gone from developers to publishers. Epic otoh still have game-development as a core-business.

 

[Glider of chaos]

And as for 'fastpaced' shooters not being possible due to the console being the 'main target' ... you really haven't played Left4dead, have you ?
You need to be superfast and have good aiming skills if you want to survive a horde-attack.

I played it through the whole demo weekend and spent some time at my buddy's place who bought the game. I think PC crowd spends most of the time in advanced/expert modes while console guys are playing normal and may be easy.
I really don't think L4D is that fast paced. Yeh, zombies are fast but they are extremely fragile and you have your team to back you up. And you're always aware of special zombies due to the sounds they produce. Game rarely puts you in a situation where you need to make split second decisions (Unless you're in a bad team which means you will lose anyways).

From my experience you don't have to be a monster with zero reaction times and precise aiming to succeed.

 

[DarQraven]

Agree. L4D is nothing like the tournament shooters of old in terms of speed and difficulty.

1. You're not playing against other humans. If you are, they're special zombies that you can spot from a mile away. Humans will ALWAYS pose a greater challenge than AI, simply due to their creativity and unpredictability.

2. You were mostly free in your navigation of deathmatch maps: you could go for whichever item you preferred, you could take alternate routes, etc. In L4D there's only two routes: forward and back. You always know where the bad guys are going to come from and as such it's just a matter of keeping those areas covered.

3. You + 3 teammates, armed with crowd control weapons in a tight corridor VS. harmless zombies without ranged attacks.
Not quite the same as you, armed with whatever you picked up, VS. 6 other guys in a free for all.

I, too, miss the days of UT99, Q3 and such shooters. When I played those games, I felt challenged. I saw players lightyears ahead of me in terms of aim, experience, creativity and just plain awesomeness.
Modern games allow you to be good at teamwork, and that's about it. They don't challenge me in ways other than 'play ****loads, learn common tactics, counter common tactics'. The few times that there are players on the other team that deviate from these common patterns, chances are the rest of the team won't catch on and they'll fail miserably.

CoD4, as fun as it is, is very easy on the aim/movement side. Apart from that, one guy on his own is never going to be able to turn the tide, unlike UT, where one well-timed move by a TDM player could turn the match around.

-

I'm pretty sure the recent popularity of consoles has a part in this. Apart from UC1/2 (and even those were pretty different), I don't know many other fast-paced tournament shooters on a console, let alone those that actually work.
It's simply not the style of gameplay that a controller caters to.
The console style of FPS has been around since the N64/PS era, arguably earlier, and during this time console gamers have become so used to it, it'll be a tough job convincing them that actually those games are easy.
And let's be honest: nobody likes to be told/admit that the games that they 'grew up' with and love are actually noobified versions of a PC genre.

I don't see the tide turning anytime soon. The thing that needs to change though, is the modern trend where games offer NO challenge at all.
Examples: infinite respawn at full health a la bioshock, regen health (halo, cod, craptons of other games), auto-aim, etc.
They're simply effing up the reference frame for skill in younger gamers.

 

[shadow_dragon]

I think there's various problems with FPS games these days. It's possible for them to outdo themselves but currently non are really doing so.

Many are quarter to halfway there but, one of the main problems I think is that, these days, FPS games spend more time rendering a complex scene of graphics than it does on Ai or simulating a fun experience.

It's likely that the FPS market will need to become less competitive(as it has now already to be honest) before a new king of FPS can stroll in and show us all how it's done. A minor reinvention is what we need i think... It'd be ironic if Duke Nukem would be the one to do such a thing.

 

[Kantham]

Nowadays it's all about innovation and teamwork. It's one of the main thing that makes games like TF2 and L4D enjoyable. The traditional area shooter with "wepons!" is pretty much on sleep mode right now. Developers don't have a boner thinking about area shooters, they want to make something new in the FPS genre players have not experienced yet with the console-ish "Friend Features" to keep your friends close.

I don't think this is happening because people would not be interested in Area FPS. If UT3 would have been polished on it's release date maybe people would have showed a lot of interest. UT2004 is probably the best area shooter I've played online, it was clean, yet not simple but once you got the basics, you're in. This game was easy to like but hard for many people to learn.

On the other hand RL guns with the point and shoot thing is cake. But it's even easier to learn the environment/maps from a game like UT than it is with a game like COD4. But the movement and game complexity is much harder to learn in UT2004.

These non-god games are getting popular for all the casual gamers. But the experienced gamer out there would certainly want to check out the next "Quake" or "UT" if people talk so much about it. "I heard this game rocks..." needless to say, people did not recommend UT3, at all.

 

[Rambowjo]

Duke Nukem Forever might be our survivor.

 

[Mister_Prophet]

I think PC crowd spends most of the time in advanced/expert modes while console guys are playing normal and may be easy.

Every online L4D game I've seen or played on the X-Box has been on Expert or Advanced. Have you seen otherwise?

EDIT: And I would agree that L4D isn't faced paced. It's frantic, but that isn't exactly the same thing.

 

[NeoNite]

Remember the days of doom2, where you'd end a map with say 1 health point.. and enter the next level with the equal amount.
Oh, and those insanely fun berserk challenges. (Only make use of the primary weapons such a fists, chainsaw and maybe pistol.)
And firing up a random level, playing it from scratch (start with basic health, pistol and fists) and beating it. No wonder I can't let go of the old shooters, they're way too much fun.

But I can accept that times have changed. I just don't think it's reason enough to let go of my favourite oldies.

 

[-Jes-]

I reinstalled Tribes 1 yesterday...

TRIBES FRIGGIN' 1!!!

And grabbed Spoonbot too.

 

[DarkED]

See, this is why I quit playing multiplayer games. After a while they all start to run together, no game is different than any other game.

This is why I only play SP now. At least the different stories in SP games make them feel like different games.

 

[Grobut]

Whilst its certainly true that "old school arena shooters" don't enjoy the same popularity they once did, they are not dead by any means, just look at how many people still play Q3A, UT2k4 and UT, there's thousands for each, and what we really need is one genuinely good new game that can bring all thease players togeather under one roof.

Problem is there hasen't been one, UT2k4 wasen't it, Quake4 wasen't it, UT3 was not it, TF2 came clouse but was not it (and it only comes clouse to the arena feel, its not a propper arena shooter).

Show us an unmistakenly good arena shooter, that will run on a very wide range of hardware, and then lets see what happens..

 

[Kantham]

Duke Nukem Forever might be our survivor.

That "might" is written using the tiniest pencil on earth.

 

[TWD]

I think there's lots of changes coming this next year that will change the direction of the FPS market.

Some of these changes have already started to happen. I think that Left 4 Dead has shown everyone how well co op works in a FPS. There's been a lot of games in the past that passed up the co-op opportunity, or just did them half baked because they weren't seen as critical to the success of the game. I just don't think that's going to happen anymore. The more casual portion of the market IE the people that play BF1942 will start to move more towards this direction.

I also think that Quake Live is going to send shock waves through the industry. Not because it's going to be really good or anything like that. It's just that everyone is going to end up playing it because it will be free and extremely accessible. All the n00bs out there that never played Quake III will absolutely love it. Soon you'll see people that normally play maple story, and rune quest filter into Quake.

I think this will be further compounded when StarCraft comes out. Never before has a AAA title taken such great lengths to appeal to a competitive community. If StarCraft is sucessful, and appeals to a large audience (which I believe it will), it will send the message that competitive games work.

This will open up the door for games like UT to become sucessful again. Not only because people will just be more interested in it, but because developers will finally understand why their previous attempts in this genre have failed.

Edit:
On the speed of Left4Dead. Left4Dead is a very fast game. The big difference here is that it's hitscan weappons. Hence it's fast paced, but not an arcade shooter. I think Left4Dead shows that a serious shooter can still be popular without having to be all fluffed up. So what about arcade shooters? I still believe arcade shooters can become popular, as long as there is innovation, just like any other game. Arcade games that are carbon copies of UT2004 or older games simply won't do it, and that's the current problem.