I'd prefer searching servers by GREP mask or something, to filter out gametypes and map I dont want.
You try explaining grep to a frat boy
I'd prefer searching servers by GREP mask or something, to filter out gametypes and map I dont want.
Not only that, but UT3 is/was apparently the #3 game sold on D2D.
And yet UT3 still has very meager online numbers -- a few hundred at best (and that includes the entire world). Obviously this the game's fault, not a few people Interbutts' who care enough to get annoyed at the game's lack of worth.
With that I mean that the entire atmosphere that was characteristic to UT was gone because of the all-flash sports aspect in UT2. The gameplay felt so far away from UT due to the excessive movement that I find it hard to consider it a real UT sequel. Kevin Riepl clearly never understood anything about why the music in UT was great and made a soundtrack that absolutely does not fit the Unreal universe due to the mark that Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos left on the series' music.Makes no sense? It degraded..? Explain...
Sure there is. You see, unlike its descendents, UT actually displayed the total amount of players playing ANY gametype or mod in its own server browser. I am sure plenty of people have taken screenshots of their server browser from that timeframe - finding one is a bit harder. I have a lot of old screenies, unfortunately none from the browser. But assuming there are some out there, it's perfectly possible to verify, unless of course you are intent on believing it's a conspiracy.I have no idea if it did or not, and there is no way we can verify that.
I don't think you're getting it.. Screenshots from that timeframe almost certainly exist scattered around the net. Screenshots are files. Files have dates.But we can't go back to 2002 and look at the player counts.
With that I mean that the entire atmosphere that was characteristic to UT was gone because of the all-flash sports aspect in UT2. The gameplay felt so far away from UT due to the excessive movement that I find it hard to consider it a real UT sequel. Kevin Riepl clearly never understood anything about why the music in UT was great and made a soundtrack that absolutely does not fit the Unreal universe due to the mark that Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos left on the series' music.
The frustrations do not remain limited to the gameplay itself: the excessive movement caused, like we all know, the map scale to be ridiculously high. Whenever I tried to design levels for UT2, I'd start working on a map, put one of those basic test models in the map to make sure the scaling is "right", playtest the map only to discover I have to scale everything up about 1,5 times the size because otherwise it would be impossible to move around properly. I never finished a single UT2 map because of the frustrations that came along with this.
I am so glad Epic took a step away from the UT2 formula, because, as I explained here above, it was inferior to UT (and UT3, for that matter) in almost every possible way. Except maybe for the taunts, as of them were quite funny.
I've always wondered what percentage of the clan base still exists when comparing UT2K4 to UT3.
And on another note, I know that UT3 allows you to enter your clan name but are there stats that one can see on the top performing clans in a server?
I have a hunch the data exists also somewhere on the Internet archive. Here's an interesting stat, while not completely related:
At around the same time in UT2004's lifecycle, Onslaught had 1977 players (presumably counting bots). http://web.archive.org/web/20040610013620/archive.gamespy.com/stats/mods.asp?id=837&s=1 That's certainly a far cry from the measly number playing Warfare today, which, given that there are 400 people total online now, can't number more than around 100.
The game's stats did NOT yet count demo players, and the player count was at 4257, while the demo had an additional 757 players. (We do not even know if this was at peak hours or at one of the poorest). UT2003 still had 801 players, which seems to be a genuine number not including bots. UT at that time had 1909 players. Which doesn't seem to be much different from today at 1455, but again the peak hours would have to be compared for truly accurate results, and populated servers today are mostly running mods. I continue to seek vindication of my claim.
Last time I checked out UT2K4 ONS servers, most of the servers only had bots on them. At first glance it looking like there were lots of servers with players, but they were full of bots. All the ones with actual players on them were all playing Torlan over and over still.
Thats something that drives me up the wall. I like a viriaty in maps and mutators even gametypes. It would drive me up the wall to only play the same map over and over but I go looking for new and intesting maps and I find... Bots and lots of bots.
I am well aware of the situation today, but it was nothing like that in its first couple of years (and especially before the demo servers were integrated). I can hardly bother playing any of the games in their current state.Last time I checked out UT2K4 ONS servers, most of the servers only had bots on them. At first glance it looking like there were lots of servers with players, but they were full of bots. All the ones with actual players on them were all playing Torlan over and over still.
There may have been more populated retail servers, but the only interesting servers I ever found were demo servers (and that went for any gametype in UT2004).I am well aware of the situation today, but it was nothing like that in its first couple of years (and especially before the demo servers were integrated). I can hardly bother playing any of the games in their current state.
Thats something that drives me up the wall. I like a viriaty in maps and mutators even gametypes. It would drive me up the wall to only play the same map over and over but I go looking for new and intesting maps and I find... Bots and lots of bots.
I'm pretty sure they weren't. They merged their master servers about a year in.Demo servers were integrated with UT2004 from day one. And it really only took a few months for them to become the prevalent servers.
I find it interesting that when it comes to UT3 you defend it to the death, but when it comes to any older title which actually enjoyed a greater degree of success than UT3, you seem to be saying they sucked. UT2003 or UT2004 may not have been the games I asked for but even as rabid a UT fan as I was, I learned to appreciate them and actually got immense enjoyment out of ONS for a good 3 years and Assault for another. There were plenty of servers here in EU with good games full of good people. My clan had 2 ONS servers, 1 of which was completely vanilla ONS with custom maps, and customs got played a sh1t ton and almost always full from afternoon to early morning. There were lots of other servers like ours as well. I only played American pubs on the rare occasion but most of the time I dominated even the 32p servers by about 100 points - so I guess I can understand what you mean about "morons".. even so, it always seemed to me that there was far more selection state side and I did not find that demo servers became an issue until around 2006.There may have been more populated retail servers, but the only interesting servers I ever found were demo servers (and that went for any gametype in UT2004).
Of course there were others to play on, but half the time they were loaded down with mods or just had morons playing on them. This was just a carry over from UT2003 where the demo servers in that game were almost the only servers left by the time UT2004 demo came out.
MapMixer is great for mixing up maps, gametypes, mutators etc. Is MapMixer popular on servers among the lesser amount of players that play UT3 on-line; or is it too buggy?