What would revive the UT franchise?

[Benfica]

That, and also Epic was trying to go back to the roots with UT3 by combining UT99 with UT2k4.

However that's not what they did. They mixed UT99, GoW, a "serious" game for pwners that are afraid to play a game for fun, and a console UI. How does any of this cater for UT2004 players? The Necris toys and an 0rb, is that it?

Indeed. Epic should focus on making UT a better team game, because it is severely lacking in that area in every way and the team game modes were one of the biggest draws of the original. Additionally, having classes and upgrades is not a bad thing. Make it that way by default and have tournament modes that are not like that.

Brizz, I hope you had an happy new year. I'm afraid you just went a bit too far on the bottle.

 

[madspacemarinemustdie]

Benfica is right. UT3 was nothing for UT2K4 players. Is.

Warfare is an inaccessible version of Onslaught. Also with the orb, hoverboard and all the weapons & vehicles that don't act at all like in 2K4, there is little reason for the UT2K4 -players to play UT3.

A .txt-file with all differences listed in for every weapon & verhicle & core gameplay from 2K4 would be a kByte big.
Not that it matters. </whine>

 

[UBerserker]

The Necris toys and an 0rb, is that it?

Those made me actually enjoy Warfare unlike Onslaught, even if it wasn't playable and fun enough to make me think that adding vehicles in the UT series was a good idea to start with. But that's why there are other gameplay modes like godly DM so I don't care that much.

Additionally, having classes and upgrades is not a bad thing.

As a mutator a la UT2k4. If you mean by default then I think you had a cool night

 

[madspacemarinemustdie]

Hm... One UT99 class, an UT2K4 class, an Unreal class...

 

[Benfica]

Oh, I believe that Brizz means is that he must upgrade his PC, and to take classes in order to learn how to play. That's not a bad thing, I agree

 

[Mardok]

Course list for this semester:
UT-101: Double Jump
UT-150: Dodging
UT-205: Shock Combo
UT-301: Dodging-Shock Combo
UT-401: Self-study on pwning

 

[Hideinlight]

Spend twice as much on marketing than in the development of the game itself like MW2 which irronically cost about the same as UT3 on release.

Activision spend 100 million dollars on marketing and 50 million dollars on the development.

Kinda starting to think popularity of a game is directly proportional to marketing and accessability.

UT3 had neither...
Took me 6 months to find out how to host a game and it took just over a year for the performace of the game to become acceptable on my 8800gt.

I enjoyed the gameplay though with about 5 others in my country. The other either had technical issues with the game and moved ovedr to COD4/TF2 out of frustration

or just plainly preferred UT2004 and UT99

These were suppose to be the core players that would be able to greet new players. Instead new players go to the forums and QQ.

 

[Bi()ha2arD]

UT needs, leveling, matchmaking, socializing and other neato stuff

Matchmaking ala CoD without servers? No, please not.

 

[Benfica]

It's not that we made the wrong decisions here or there. The whole idea just doesn't work. We've been trying to create the mother of all competitive FPS games, and it's just not possible. There's no such thing. The only way that this series can ever be successful is by bringing real innovation to the series. Yet our own rigid ideas of what UT is supposed to be prevents us from doing so. The only way this series can move forward is to throw all of our aspirations out the window and start from scratch. That is why I now believe that the Unreal franchise needs to move on without UT.

I disagree with the part in bold. A very good competitive fps is NOT such that a learning curve where people having fun casually, is incompatible with the ones that want something else. The problem (skillwise) with UT3 is that instead of having very good players beating other very good players with talent and experience, you have newbies beaten by Joe Sixpacks from the other team, and getting crap from their own.
I'd say that the only rigid idea is believing that there isn't a way besides being mutually exclusive

Matchmaking ala CoD without servers? No, please not.

No, that's not it. UT3 was in fact supposed to have a lobby and matchmaking, but nowhere did they say that it would get rid of dedicated servers

 

[Hideinlight]

Matchmaking ala CoD without servers? No, please not.

No reason why you cannot have both. Something like Heroes of Newerth is aiming for is perfect for pc gaming.

You get official servers hosted by them which you can use to host your own games. Matchmaking will be made available on these but it will not be forced.

On release they will release the server software which will allow users to host their own unofficial servers giving users the power to host their own creations.


In other words you can play the vanilla game on officialy hosted map hack free servers that are available to everyone without abusive controlling admins.

You can use the matchmaking system to find players of a suitable skill level to play with if you want to. You actually have a choice.

Or you can host your own dedicated server with your own rules and regulations and mods.

The near perfect system for online gaming. You actually have choice...

 

[Bi()ha2arD]

I disagree with the part in bold. A very good competitive fps is NOT such that a learning curve where people having fun casually, is incompatible with the ones that want something else. The problem (skillwise) with UT3 is that instead of having very good players beating other very good players with talent and experience, you have newbies beaten by Joe Sixpacks from the other team, and getting crap from their own.
I'd say that the only rigid idea is believing that there isn't a way besides being mutually exclusive

The problem is there is (at least in warfare) only one or 2 servers populated so the skilled players HAVE to play on those when there are no pickup games. They easily turn around the whole game, unbalance teams and are bored as hell while playing but they have no choice. Because there are no "skilled players only" servers out there. Pickups are the only thing where skilled players can play with skilled players.

 

[Grobut]

They should have done something completely different with UT3. They should have targeted a completely different audience with something brand new rather than trying to bring back the old community by trying to refine the old games.

UT3 did try to grab more players, why do you think it's Multi-platform and has a very GoW inspired visual style, and even features a War instead of the Tournament? i definately think Epic was trying to appeal to the GoW fanbase, which has many players.. it just didn't work, but instead cost the game many UT fans who didn't like this new direction.

Drastically changing a franchise to broaden it's appeal allmost never works, it usually just cheeses off the game's origional fanbase, and fails to create a new one as the games usually feel hamfisted in their design, trying to change something into something else rarely makes for a good and consistant univers.
They would be much better off just starting a new franchise instead.

 

[TWD]

I disagree with the part in bold. A very good competitive fps is NOT such that a learning curve where people having fun casually, is incompatible with the ones that want something else. The problem (skillwise) with UT3 is that instead of having very good players beating other very good players with talent and experience, you have newbies beaten by Joe Sixpacks from the other team, and getting crap from their own.
I'd say that the only rigid idea is believing that there isn't a way besides being mutually exclusive

No, that's not it. UT3 was in fact supposed to have a lobby and matchmaking, but nowhere did they say that it would get rid of dedicated servers

My comments have absolutely nothing to do with player skill gaps. I have always, and continue to maintain, that skill gaps are only a problem with small player bases. Once you're over 4-6 thousand players at any given time it ceases to be an issue.

To explain myself further I'd like to segway for a moment and address the comments about TF2. It is absolutely a fast paced game, and the moving speed is only slightly slower than UT/Quake. I wouldn't consider it an "arcade shooter", but that doesn't make it any less relevant to the question at hand. The important part is that they target the exact same set of players. Where do you think everybody went after the UT/Quake heydays? The moved over to the team shooters that were doing something totally different instead of just refining the same elements. They went from game to game starting with CounterStrike, then to Wolfenstein, BattleField 1942, Left4Dead, and Call of Duty.

People still like those arcade elements, they just find them in different games. The problem isn't that people don't like arcade games, it's just that the genre hasn't made any new developments worth talking about. The only thing that came even close was Onslaught (which ironically enough is the only thing that's done marginally well since UT99), but even that was a little late when you think about Battlefield and so forth.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

TF2 simply isn't as fast as UT is. Maybe if you play the Scout class, but then you have other issues in comparison since the weapons aren't similar (the small set of weapons for each class kind of defeats the point of it being "fast paced").

This isn't saying anything bad about TF2, it's just not the same style of game as UT. So what?

People moved on to different games for lots of reasons, but I'd say that they, in general, liked the more relaxed atmosphere of other types of shooters over Quake and Unreal. Counter-Strike, for example, moves MUCH slower than either of those games, and hundreds of thousands of people play it at any given time.

Low barrier to entry + lots of players + slower gameplay = better.

 

[DeusIX]

Cult following = Superior

 

[Grobut]

TF2 simply isn't as fast as UT is.

No, but who ever said that was a requirement to call something "fast paced"? the extremes are never good yard sticks, a Ferrari F430 might not be as fast as the Ferrari F1 car, but nobody in their right mind would considder it slow.

UT and Quake are the extremes, not the rule, they are hyper fast, but that doesen't make the likes of TF2 slow, that is a fast game, just not an extreme one.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

It's not fast though. The gameplay progression is SLOW. How else do you define a fast paced game? The classes limit you in nearly every aspect, so unless you're claiming it is "fast paced" compared to, say, Counter Strike (which almost all games are), how are you determining that it is fast paced at all?

To me, "fast paced shooters" is a sub-genre of shooters that Quake and UT fall into. TF2 isn't something I would put into that genre. To me, it's like comparing a Honda Civic hatchback to a Corvette. No matter what you do, you can't make them equals.

 

[SPIDEYUT2K7]

Is not dead because we play the game very often, i do this every day with my friends, so for us is NOT DEAD!

 

[HedgeMaster]

A few days ago I hadenought time (and processing power) to give a long play to UT3. I found out it's really fast and not that bad at all. Then I joined my favourite UT2004 deatchmatch server - it is just so much better!

 

[Northrawn]

Is not dead because we play the game very often, i do this every day with my friends, so for us is NOT DEAD!

Necrophiliacs....