It IS fun....

[Sir_Brizz]

It rose for longer than a week.

But, frankly, TF2 was a functional product when it was released and it has had lots of patches that were not primarily bug fixing patches.

UT3 was horribly broken at release and it took almost a year for just the issues with loading custom content on a dedicated server to be "completely" fixed. It also had a severe case of identity crisis.

If there is one thing UT3 proves it is that you can't recover from the worst launch of all time.

 

[Firefly]

it is a shame because its a really fun game now and most people have left.

 

[DannyMeister]

I play in populated servers all the time and have a blast. So I sorta guess it's a shame... it's a shame other people aren't having as much fun as I am. But I really don't need to see the player counts rise (just don't want it to fall) and more patches. Sure, having both those things would be nice but UT3 is already the most fun game online that I'm currently playing.

 

[WHIPperSNAPper]

Seeing the logo in my avatar, Quake 3 Arena would most likely be another one that people would go back to...but that was because I didn't know how much better the Unreal franchise was back then, I've always followed id's games from 1995 until 2002 or so, as well as Apogee/3D Realms. It wasn't until UT2003 came out that I jumped on board Epic's bandwagon. Don't ask me why I originally went with Carmack over CliffyB, but...as of a few years ago, I did learn my lesson.

I never played Quake 3 but I respect it as having been a successful arena-style FPS with custom content. I don't understand why Id decided to abandon the Quake Arena franchise and never attempted to produce a true sequel.

 

[randomreduction]

They tried. But people sticked with q3.

 

[WedgeBob]

Heh...maybe Carmack decided to hold up the white flag and conceded to Epic?
Of course, id did back third-party developers with using their IPs in Enemy Territory, such as Wolfenstein and Quake Wars, but those failed miserably.

 

[WHIPperSNAPper]

They tried. But people sticked with q3.

What was the name of the sequel?

 

[cUnNiNg_StUnTs]

I never played Quake 3 but I respect it as having been a successful arena-style FPS with custom content. I don't understand why Id decided to abandon the Quake Arena franchise and never attempted to produce a true sequel.

Because Carmack saw how people mip mapped their graphics when he was watching the tournaments at Quakecon and this lead him to believe that pro gamers didn't need any better graphics because they would tune them out so they could get 200FPS.

I could give you a link but you'd have to listen to the entire keynote speech from the following year at Quakecon. So graphically and Tournament wise he believed at the time that simply upgraded the graphics and slapping out another pur on line only game would be a fruitless effort.

So thank all the MIP mappers and "console" hackers (by console I mean the thing you get when you edit variables after pressing the ( ~ ) tilde key in Q3A or by editing the q3config.cfg config file to change the settings.

It was around 2004 or 2005 when some one asked him about the multi-player that was going to be in DOOM3 or Quake4. Sorry I can't link you strait to it but I remember it like it was yesterday. It made me want to stomp some mip mapper into the ground.

If you don't know what I mean here's a screen shot of how people (so called Pro's) were playing Q3A.

Higher LOD vs. Low Level of Detail and mip map

So he thought Q3A was more than the Professional Gaming Community would ever need, and therefore didn't have plans to sequel it.

 

[Hideinlight]

Because Carmack saw how people mip mapped their graphics when he was watching the tournaments at Quakecon and this lead him to believe that pro gamers didn't need any better graphics because they would tune them out so they could get 200FPS.

I could give you a link but you'd have to listen to the entire keynote speech from the following year at Quakecon. So graphically and Tournament wise he believed at the time that simply upgraded the graphics and slapping out another pur on line only game would be a fruitless effort.

So thank all the MIP mappers and "console" hackers (by console I mean the thing you get when you edit variables after pressing the ( ~ ) tilde key in Q3A or by editing the q3config.cfg config file to change the settings.

It was around 2004 or 2005 when some one asked him about the multi-player that was going to be in DOOM3 or Quake4. Sorry I can't link you strait to it but I remember it like it was yesterday. It made me want to stomp some mip mapper into the ground.

If you don't know what I mean here's a screen shot of how people (so called Pro's) were playing Q3A.

Higher LOD vs. Low Level of Detail and mip map

So he thought Q3A was more than the Professional Gaming Community would ever need, and therefore didn't have plans to sequel it.

True that. Oh and that second url just caused my eyes to bleed. Maybe that's the problem?
All the pro players went blind...

 

[WedgeBob]

Hehe...no question, the first link is the far better one, more detailed, and definitely more worth playing around. The second one almost looks like a Quake 1 map.

 

[JohnDoe641]

Hehe...no question, the first link is the far better one, more detailed, and definitely more worth playing around. The second one almost looks like a Quake 1 map.

When you're playing to win money or prizes, you do whatever is necessary to focus only on the enemy at hand. You even have an option to make the pickups simple icons instead of the actual ammo packs in stock Quake3, you don't even need CPM for that. I never mip mapped my texture settings but when I was playing clans like X6, xeno, P*S, Pure in 2k3/2k4, who were all clans that could easily compete for money in those events, you tend to do the same that they do. In 2k3/2k4 I had my textures set to the lowest possible settings and before UTComp was released, it really made the players pop out and easy to hit. And it doesn't make you blind, just a lot more reliable with hitscan.

Eventually I stopped being ultra-ultra competitive and played to play the game and I have since played with all settings maxed. In a game like UT3 where hit-scan isn't dominant like 2k4, it doesn't matter at all. 2k4 and UT3 now have UTComp so mip map/LOD tweaks are irrelevant anyway unless your computer is a massive POS.

*The biggest problem is that people who aren't in that "scene" of players usually won't get it, never will, and nothing anyone says will change that. So it's always useless to argue over. <--- disclaimer of no arguing and prevention of thread derailment

 

[Lostsoul]

I agree with JD.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

I think lowering your settings is dumb from a more philosophical standpoint, but I understand why some people do it (and have done some "tweaking" myself in the past).

 

[DeathBooger]

Not fun anymore, need Bulletstorm.

 

[WHIPperSNAPper]

Because Carmack saw how people mip mapped their graphics when he was watching the tournaments at Quakecon and this lead him to believe that pro gamers didn't need any better graphics because they would tune them out so they could get 200FPS.

Thanks for the explanation. I guess he failed to realize that a great many non-pro gamers also enjoy online multiplayer FPS. Also, the large benefit of a fresh title is that it brings new people into the game, increasing player counts.

 

[Northrawn]

...the large downside of a fresh title is that it splits the playerbase between more titles.*

Had to fix that. You mixed up something.



*) Which is extremely problematic for games with a smaller userbase than COD or CS.

 

[WedgeBob]

Probably one reason why Quake 3 Arena didn't need sequels in terms of multiplayer games, yet UT did. I mean, Epic was trying to perfect the game by releasing a totally different game all the time, Q3A was self-sufficient, because Carmack put it in the hands of the modding community, and he even patched it up a few times until about 5 years ago before Quake 4 was released. On top of that, iD just put too much faith in the Enemy Territory project that Splash Damage was doing, that they thought that would suffice for online multiplay, but the Enemy Territory franchise definitely did disappoint, tho.

 

[cUnNiNg_StUnTs]

God I hope that doesn't happen with Brink. Which is their new title at Splash Damage

 

[Kyllian]

If there is one thing UT3 proves it is that you can't recover from the worst launch of all time.

Section 8 is a prime example.
Buggy as hell release on a holiday weekend so there was noone in the office to fix launch-day bugs
No editor, no mod support, tied to GfWL, servers were limited to certain GSPs, slow patches because of GfWL, etc, etc killed it off within 6 months

Section8 was a great game, lots of fun, but the week after the launch did more damage than the rest of the issues

In 2k3/2k4 I had my textures set to the lowest possible settings and before UTComp was released, it really made the players pop out and easy to hit. And it doesn't make you blind, just a lot more reliable with hitscan.

About all I ever do is reduce texture/world details then have playermodel detail boosted

 

[DD]

it is a shame because its a really fun game now and most people have left.

I left last November to play MW2. I occasionally pop in but there are so few people playing that it is not really worth it.

MW2 was fun, but there is so much hacking and cheating going on that it sucks the life out of the game. In UT2k4 and UT3 I never encountered cheaters. Only ran across a handful way back in UT99.