What direction do you want the next UT game to go?

[UnrealGrrl]

Reading from front to back these many posts from everyone the general feel is for something different. Something fresh, fun, arcade-ish and appealing from the Deathmatchers to the Team/Goal oriented players. The single thing I'd ask EPIC for is to give the world a polished retail version of XMP. Ok so it's not brand new but... It was only DL'd and not really marketed, much like Old Counter Strike. Imagine if it hit, XMP... Full fledged and gleaming, on retail shelves round the world!? With how many players loved the original for it being so underground, any Game Developing Company NOT interested in retailing it to the masses should go make PONG for cell phones...

Anyway, some things people want from their shiny new UT game are:

Class Oriented without having 8 of them... XMP (3 distinct classes)

Intract with the environment... XMP ('Using' objects to obtain Deploys, Energy, Locked doors and more)

Fantastic Movement... XMP (If you've played it and can Concussion jump or Super Wall jump you know what's up)

Killer shootouts and dynamic play... XMP (Known for the most brutal and tasty skilled shootouts evar)

Maps made for the Movement... XMP (Too many to list!)

Arena/Arcade/Team play... XMP (Depending on map)

Great graphics lookin killer on average PCs... XMP (Depending on version but frame rates were always high)

Weapons of all new sorts... XMP (Burst pistol, Smoke grenades, Fire grenades, Concussion grenades throwing players and vehicles around, Shotguns breathing fire, Auto/Rocket turrets... Simply excellent)

I still play regularly and map for UTXMP/U3 and want to work with an experienced UnrealScripter for Mutators etc. Just made my first U3 Mutator XD anyway... XMP was and still IS the single best online shooter I've ever known. If someone retails a killer version I swear I'm gettin it tattooed across my shoulders...

~Vive La XMP~
Get UTXMP from: http://www.free-monkey.com/main/utxmp_download.php (UT2k4 required )

no no no no no ... those are only the things ppl want who dont play UT anymore... those are things that people who want to play an entirely different game want. the people who play UT through UT3 are not looking for a class system to take over UT (never have been) and are not looking for a bunch of new weapons, (UTs weapons are fine and dandy and great even). yaknow even the very scientific results to this poll show that.

UT/XMP was a cool mod and had great potential but its no way a replacement for UT, its a different game. A very cool one, but a very different one.

the one thing thats entirely different that might make UT more fun and would definitely add more players is something that consoles have and we dont. Social Networking through achievements, persistent goals, real working stats that mean something and more player interaction. UT3 got a lil consolitis in the wrong places like the UI. The gameplay and look/feel of UT3 is better than ever, but the Interest Level was not maintained like it could have been. forget about the unfinished state it was released in, to maintain interest these days, especially in MP, you need more than just a goodlooking game with good gameplay.

and weapon balance is fine...

and yes, having an announcer that actually meant something in an arena based FPS would be SuperDuper coolness!!

 

[T2A`]

You obviously never played HL2DM on a high enough level to understand. I'll leave it at that.

Ah, the esoteric elitist approach. Classy.

The (insane) accuracy of hitscan-based weapons was the cause of the weapon-imbalance. The UT2k4-fix was an attempt at providing a solution.

No and no. Your logic is broken.

The map size and (very) long view distances are the sole cause of UT2003/4's issues. Flak and rockets are decent weapons; the problem is that 90% of the time you're too far away from the guy you're shooting at for them to be a viable option. If view distances are constantly several thousand units long and projectile weapons are only effective at, say, 1000 units max, obviously there's going to be a problem when hitscan can cover 17000 units instantly.

Vector rounding is NOT a part of gameplay balance, and it occurs on ALL shots for ALL weapons. They did it to conserve network bandwidth in order to allow for large player counts and all the vehakals they might be using. It wasn't the only thing they did in this vein either. If you'd ever played a serious 1v1 you'd probably be aware that it's very common for your enemies to go "black" or "under the radar" as far as sound and rendering goes. They will often stop making sound and they will often not be rendered until they're completely in view from rounding a corner.

It still does not explain how you think anyone can add "tightness of the map" and "length of time between shots" to 'improve' the hitscan-balance (or lack thereof).

Are you trying to troll me or are you just dense? The very nature of the sniper and shock have them being very accurate, long-distance weapons. The way you balance them is by tuning variables like damage and rate of fire (and ammo and momentum transfer as FB said). Another variable that plays into this is player movement speed. Faster targets are harder to hit.

As I said above, the reason hitscan is so overpowered in UT2003/4 is due to how poorly the maps are made. They are far too wide open to compensate for the silly movement, so no other weapons have a chance to shine. If you took UT2003's hitscan and netcode and put them in UT3's maps, hitscan would be less powerful thanare in UT2003 because the maps are tigheter overall.

Making them inaccurate is NOT a solution; it effectively turns the game into a "realistic" shooter like CoD where you have literally not control over the final flight path of any particular round.

While you could the latter part of your wish there's no way anyone can even do the former. Especially when given that on terrain-based maps there is no 'thightess' and the hitscan-weapons would be superior to anything else.

This is why no terrain-based DM maps are good in UT2003/4. Antalus is the only one I've seen that is decent, but it's still extremely biased towards hitscan.

 

[pinnacle]

JaFO is Dark Pulse

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Ppl r2pr04dis....

 

[FuLLBLeeD]

Ah, the esoteric elitist approach. Classy.

No and no. Your logic is broken.

The map size and (very) long view distances are the sole cause of UT2003/4's issues. Flak and rockets are decent weapons; the problem is that 90% of the time you're too far away from the guy you're shooting at for them to be a viable option. If view distances are constantly several thousand units long and projectile weapons are only effective at, say, 1000 units max, obviously there's going to be a problem when hitscan can cover 17000 units instantly.

Vector rounding is NOT a part of gameplay balance, and it occurs on ALL shots for ALL weapons. They did it to conserve network bandwidth in order to allow for large player counts and all the vehakals they might be using. It wasn't the only thing they did in this vein either. If you'd ever played a serious 1v1 you'd probably be aware that it's very common for your enemies to go "black" or "under the radar" as far as sound and rendering goes. They will often stop making sound and they will often not be rendered until they're completely in view from rounding a corner.

Are you trying to troll me or are you just dense? The very nature of the sniper and shock have them being very accurate, long-distance weapons. The way you balance them is by tuning variables like damage and rate of fire (and ammo and momentum transfer as FB said). Another variable that plays into this is player movement speed. Faster targets are harder to hit.

As I said above, the reason hitscan is so overpowered in UT2003/4 is due to how poorly the maps are made. They are far too wide open to compensate for the silly movement, so no other weapons have a chance to shine. If you took UT2003's hitscan and netcode and put them in UT3's maps, hitscan would be less powerful thanare in UT2003 because the maps are tigheter overall.

Making them inaccurate is NOT a solution; it effectively turns the game into a "realistic" shooter like CoD where you have literally not control over the final flight path of any particular round.

This is why no terrain-based DM maps are good in UT2003/4. Antalus is the only one I've seen that is decent, but it's still extremely biased towards hitscan.

T2A nails it as usual. UT2k4 might of actually been a good game if all the maps hadn't favored hitscan so much.

UT3 got the weapon balance nailed. Of course they screwed everything else up.

 

[JaFO]

...
The map size and (very) long view distances are the sole cause of UT2003/4's issues. Flak and rockets are decent weapons; the problem is that 90% of the time you're too far away from the guy you're shooting at for them to be a viable option. If view distances are constantly several thousand units long and projectile weapons are only effective at, say, 1000 units max, obviously there's going to be a problem when hitscan can cover 17000 units instantly.

Possible solutions :
= eliminate hit-scan by forcing those weapons to fire 'real' projectiles instead
= limit the distance so the hitscan-weapons don't have that insane range

Vector rounding is NOT a part of gameplay balance, and it occurs on ALL shots for ALL weapons.

So everyone is affected equally ... sounds reasonable to me.

They did it to conserve network bandwidth in order to allow for large player counts

If it conserves bandwidth then it also has positive influence on players with 'bad' connections as it would allow for a greater chance of their packages to arrive ...

....

If you'd ever played a serious 1v1 you'd probably be aware that it's very common for your enemies to go "black" or "under the radar" as far as sound and rendering goes. They will often stop making sound and they will often not be rendered until they're completely in view from rounding a corner.

Given that UT never officially supported 1v1 gametypes this is not an issue.

Are you trying to troll me or are you just dense?

(coming from the guy that still can't spell "vehicles" correctly ... )

You still haven't explained how a weapon is going to react to the 'tightness of maps' in a real environment.
Even if you did manage that it would result in a weapon with extremely inconsistent behaviour as the location and speed of the player would determine how much damage and accuracy the weapon is capable of.

The very nature of the sniper and shock have them being very accurate, long-distance weapons. The way you balance them is by tuning variables like damage and rate of fire (and ammo and momentum transfer as FB said). Another variable that plays into this is player movement speed. Faster targets are harder to hit.

Faster targets are harder to hit for everyone, including the projectile-based weapons. As such it would make hitscan even more dominant ...

... If you took UT2003's hitscan and netcode and put them in UT3's maps, hitscan would be less powerful thanare in UT2003 because the maps are tigheter overall.

the default maps may be, but the user-made maps don't have those features.
As such the balance achieved would be lost and the game would become hitscan-dominant once again.

Making them inaccurate is NOT a solution; it effectively turns the game into a "realistic" shooter like CoD where you have literally not control over the final flight path of any particular round.

You do have control ... by not moving you become extremely accurate.
It comes at the cost of making yourself an easy target, but that is part of the balance in games like that.

 

[-AEnubis-]

I didn't say a word about HL2DM, because I never played it.

I also think custom maps will kinda screw over relying on maps to balance weapons. Weapons should have inherent advantages because of terrain, and mapping, those advantages just shouldn't be as strong as they are, and or they should swap what weapon is advantageous when the terrain changes as opposed to them being even in indoor maps, and scans out right owning out door maps.

Which is kinda how I felt 2kx was. Even in close quarters, shock tape and a 20 ping was viable against rockets.

It really only had a little to do with the maps IMO, and more to do with the numbers. Numbers referring to momentum transfer, damage, ROF, and ammo.

 

[7yph0on]

no no no no no ... those are only the things ppl want who dont play UT anymore... those are things that people who want to play an entirely different game want.

Yes, yes.. YES!! lol The list is about things that make games FUN. Helloooo Everything listed is or was available in a UT version at some time so don't pretend that those aren't wants from UT players. I took individual requests from different posts here and made the easy connection. Unreal Tournament 3 isn't what we're talking about but a Next Generation. A one time game perhaps. Something FUN for people to rally to. Wan't to play the same thing on a newer engine? Why when there's plenty of old UT versions out there!

So none of our UT players went bonkers for WoW for the different characters? Ok... UT seriously needs to evolve. Spawn, grab a weapon and frag? No difference from last time? Boring...

 

[pinnacle]

Possible solutions :
= eliminate hit-scan by forcing those weapons to fire 'real' projectiles instead
= limit the distance so the hitscan-weapons don't have that insane range


So everyone is affected equally ... sounds reasonable to me.


If it conserves bandwidth then it also has positive influence on players with 'bad' connections as it would allow for a greater chance of their packages to arrive ...


Given that UT never officially supported 1v1 gametypes this is not an issue.


(coming from the guy that still can't spell "vehicles" correctly ... )

You still haven't explained how a weapon is going to react to the 'tightness of maps' in a real environment.
Even if you did manage that it would result in a weapon with extremely inconsistent behaviour as the location and speed of the player would determine how much damage and accuracy the weapon is capable of.


Faster targets are harder to hit for everyone, including the projectile-based weapons. As such it would make hitscan even more dominant ...


the default maps may be, but the user-made maps don't have those features.
As such the balance achieved would be lost and the game would become hitscan-dominant once again.


You do have control ... by not moving you become extremely accurate.
It comes at the cost of making yourself an easy target, but that is part of the balance in games like that.

What if the game was coded so that 10% of your shots randomly don't come out of your gun at all. It affects everyone equally therefore does it sound reasonable to you?

Also in this day and age of broadband internet, online 56k players are few and far between. The limitation these days isn't the connection of the players rather the connection of the server. My brother (hardcore old-skool FPS player) and I were talking about this just the other day... he said the best solution to controlling server bandwidth usage is to have a netcode that scales from low playercounts like 1v1 to large playercounts like WAR by increasing accuracy for the former and decreasing it for the latter. That way you get the best of both worlds. I'm reminded of this quote:

"The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak."

Same thing applies here. Why should 1v1 players have to suffer reduced accuracy because of what happens in WAR?

Also I guess given that half the DM maps in UT2004 had a '1on1' prefix and there's an official 'Duel' gametype in UT3, it's hard to argue that Epic doesn't support 1v1 at all... can I have a hit of what you're smoking?

In an ideal FPS, our shots would go where we aimed them. There's no point in attempting to convince anyone otherwise because it's a self-defeating argument... if you really think random fire cones and bullet spray are necessary 'balance' features you should be Dark Pulsing your thoughts on counterstrike forums instead.

 

[Defeat]

the default maps may be, but the user-made maps don't have those features.
As such the balance achieved would be lost and the game would become hitscan-dominant once again.

wat, fail. He's talking about putting the netcode and hitscan into the game, you can't put the netcode into the maps :s

Given that UT never officially supported 1v1 gametypes this is not an issue.

1v1 is a subset of DM, there are maps with 1v1 prefixes in the 2k4 map pool. And since this means it affects DM games then it is a problem.

 

[T2A`]

JaFO has officially made it onto my troll list. No one's that dumb for real.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Oh wait, where's the emote for "big surprise"...

 

[FuLLBLeeD]

Possible solutions :
= eliminate hit-scan by forcing those weapons to fire 'real' projectiles instead
= limit the distance so the hitscan-weapons don't have that insane range


So everyone is affected equally ... sounds reasonable to me.


If it conserves bandwidth then it also has positive influence on players with 'bad' connections as it would allow for a greater chance of their packages to arrive ...


Given that UT never officially supported 1v1 gametypes this is not an issue.


(coming from the guy that still can't spell "vehicles" correctly ... )

You still haven't explained how a weapon is going to react to the 'tightness of maps' in a real environment.
Even if you did manage that it would result in a weapon with extremely inconsistent behaviour as the location and speed of the player would determine how much damage and accuracy the weapon is capable of.


Faster targets are harder to hit for everyone, including the projectile-based weapons. As such it would make hitscan even more dominant ...


the default maps may be, but the user-made maps don't have those features.
As such the balance achieved would be lost and the game would become hitscan-dominant once again.


You do have control ... by not moving you become extremely accurate.
It comes at the cost of making yourself an easy target, but that is part of the balance in games like that.

Dude please tell me you're kidding.

 

[Soggy_Popcorn]

Possible solutions :
= eliminate hit-scan by forcing those weapons to fire 'real' projectiles instead
= limit the distance so the hitscan-weapons don't have that insane range


So everyone is affected equally ... sounds reasonable to me.


If it conserves bandwidth then it also has positive influence on players with 'bad' connections as it would allow for a greater chance of their packages to arrive ...


Given that UT never officially supported 1v1 gametypes this is not an issue.


(coming from the guy that still can't spell "vehicles" correctly ... )

You still haven't explained how a weapon is going to react to the 'tightness of maps' in a real environment.
Even if you did manage that it would result in a weapon with extremely inconsistent behaviour as the location and speed of the player would determine how much damage and accuracy the weapon is capable of.


Faster targets are harder to hit for everyone, including the projectile-based weapons. As such it would make hitscan even more dominant ...


the default maps may be, but the user-made maps don't have those features.
As such the balance achieved would be lost and the game would become hitscan-dominant once again.


You do have control ... by not moving you become extremely accurate.
It comes at the cost of making yourself an easy target, but that is part of the balance in games like that.

Oh my god. T2A's not suggesting that the weapons adapt their balance in real-time to the world conditions. He's saying (correctly) that the weapon balance needs to be in tune BEFORE-HAND with the map balance.

UT2kx: Powerful hitscan + long-range maps.

UT3: Powerful spam (rox&flack) + cramped maps.

Do you see the problem here?

Also, the vector-rounding is a problem because, even if you should have hit someone, sometimes you don't, since the vector of your shot was rounded, and you miss.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

UT2kx: Powerful hitscan + long-range maps.

UT3: Powerful spam (rox&flack) + cramped maps.

Do you see the problem here?

No, it looks like the same problem. The only difference is, in the latter case having pinpoint aim from across the map doesn't effect whether you will actually get ANY kills at all.

 

[Skaxis]

I will only chime in once since you have all heard me on this before...

The more I think about the details of what game types I have seen the more I realize that XMP has MOST all of them in spades.

XMP = Deathmatch
XMP = CTF & VCTF
XMP = Onslaught
XMP = Last man Standing (when it goes into overtime - if it does)
XMP = Class Based
XMP = Team Oriented w/Strategic payoffs
XMP = Absolutely addicting if you have ever been on a full server
XMP = Resource acquisition & managment as a requirement for winning
XMP = Movement baby! LITERALLY no other game competes (whatsoever)
XMP = Freedom to play the game the way YOU want.
XMP = NO WAITING for action - you can spawn when you want at different deploy points
XMP = Futuristic/Fantastic (not so realistic that you might have dreams of gunning people down at gas stations through their station wagon doors lol)

___________________ add it all up_____________________

XMP = The ideal winner in game-types deserving the finest attention for most excellent next generation development.

Frankly it is all gametypes rolled into one. When you play it you can literally choose what game you decide you are playing and play it that way. Your team mates might have different ideas about what you should be doing but that is always true anyway.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

You could say the same thing about Warfare

I love XMP but it can't be all things to all people. Part of the reason it never gained wide success is that only specific strategies will actually contribute to your team winning.

I like XMP and would love to see it come back in one form or another in the future of Unreal, however I don't think you can say it encompasses every gametype and offers everything to everyone.

 

[Emmet Otter]

The more I think about the details of what game types I have seen the more I realize that XMP has MOST all of them in spades.

XMP = Deathmatch
XMP = CTF & VCTF
XMP = Onslaught
XMP = Last man Standing (when it goes into overtime - if it does)
XMP = Class Based
XMP = Team Oriented w/Strategic payoffs
XMP = Absolutely addicting if you have ever been on a full server
XMP = Resource acquisition & managment as a requirement for winning
XMP = Movement baby! LITERALLY no other game competes (whatsoever)
XMP = Freedom to play the game the way YOU want.
XMP = NO WAITING for action - you can spawn when you want at different deploy points
XMP = Futuristic/Fantastic (not so realistic that you might have dreams of gunning people down at gas stations through their station wagon doors lol)

___________________ add it all up_____________________

XMP = The ideal winner in game-types deserving the finest attention for most excellent next generation development.

Frankly it is all gametypes rolled into one. When you play it you can literally choose what game you decide you are playing and play it that way. Your team mates might have different ideas about what you should be doing but that is always true anyway.

This man speaketh teh truth muh fuh!! This sh!t is down yo!! Aint no one can touch this!!

 

[Bishop F Gantry]

Unreal 3 would be pretty God-damned awesome if Epic did it up properly (co-op ftmfw) and hyped the hell out of it like they did with GoW. Then, once they'd captured the attention of millions, they could start pimping a multiplayer-only variation. It could be like 1998/1999 all over again.

Thats what made it go donwhill in the first place, cutting of half the playerbase...

It's called XMP. And it failed. Twice.

XMP failed because it wasent shipped with Unreal2, it was radically diffrent from U2 and essentially it was Tribes lite. Really they could have made XMP vanilla DM/CTF and it would have been recived just as poorly.

 

[7yph0on]

T2a... Bishop...

Failed? twice?? In XMPs prime, the only other mod that had such a following was Counter Strike. XMP was never retailed to the masses like CS S or other main games. If anyone would make it retail, they'd make BANK. XMP is a game that was before its time... 'Nuff said