Why the low UT3 adoption?

[Fuzz]

I'm not even agreeing with myself, it's a rhetorical scarecrow. I'm not the one that use foul language around here. Make someone else put money in the swear box.

I have heard of you before, you take despicable delight out of playing against newbies online. You don't take into account that players become better over time, you just want the competition to be gone.

Quake Live is all about exploiting an almost deliberate glitch in the engine. Move while bounce, strafe and turn to gain momentum. Takes months of practice to nail that for most new players.

 

[lucifur]

I liked the game, I thought it was an improvement although I did not play it until all the patches came out.

What gave it bad karma for me was the fact it had to be run on XP, and I am not sure that the industry all together does things like that in a hallow attempt to artificially drive the technology market.

I rented a server and was forced to sign up with game spy as a preventive to the server being used as a client, I had to register both my home copy and the server with passwords, it made me feel like they were watching me from the living room.

Shane.

 

[DannyMeister]

I have heard of you before, you take despicable delight out of playing against newbies online. You don't take into account that players become better over time, you just want the competition to be gone.
.

Though he schools the newbies, I've never seen him be harsh or critical of someone that didn't deserve it. Instead I see him give encouragement or tips. He told me I just need to keep playing with players higher than my own skill (which is most people) if I want to improve.

Why is this useless thread still open?

 

[Fuzz]

You wont hear me argue with that Brizz, Gamespy is pants and it allways has been, not a single game has been made better by using that filth, and it has undoubtedly cost UT3 some players, if not directly because of it's annoyances, then as a final straw that made them ragequit the game.
And i don't think anyone is stoked about their handling of the MSUC either.

Like i said, using it was one of Epic's bigger mistakes, i don't think it made a single person out there happy, and yes, it is indicative of the lack of commitment that has dogged this game since before it's release, and ever since, and really, thats the real thing that killed UT3 for me, we probably have Midway to thank for the horrid launch the game got, but it was Epic who said "no we wont fix this and that, it's not a priority" in the months and years to come, lack of commitment, plain and simple.

But to say that Gamespy is the definitive reason for the game's problems is incorrect, as it has mainly been a thorn in the spine of the few people who actually played UT3 for any length of time, but as the server browser has made obvious, not nearly enough people ever did that, this very forum is chock full of people who own the game, but has never logged any significant amount of houers playing it (and yes i am one of them), most of us didn't even get a chance for Gamespy to annoy us, we where turned off by the game long before then.

There where, and still are so many other potential deal breakers in this game, it's little wonder it caught the express line to obscurity, and Epic has done nothing about that, they have released a few patches and a little bit of extra content, all amied at pleasing the few people who where still playing it, but they have done precious little to broaden the game's appeal, to bring back all thouse of us who where very unhappy with the game, instead they ignored us, banned us from their forums, and told us we where not a priority, and that may just be the biggest mistake they made with UT3, the game was allready short on players, and Epic did a bang up job alienating the rest of us who wheren't playing, well, no players = no game, and here we are.

And i'm not even talking about the people who had unreasonable demands (you know, "make it play like UT2004" or "Bring back the tournament", we all knew thouse things would never happen), most people had much more reasonable demands, they wanted stuff like the Instant Action menu brought up to speed, custom crosshairs, an option to turn off brightskins, piped weapon switching, the mouse wheel to adjust view in vehicals and so on, all things Epic could have done, that would only have had a positive effect on the game and it's player counts, but Epic just wasen't commited to making thease things happen, infact, it seems they just wheren't commited to make UT3 happen.

Some post are actually really good. Read this one.

 

[lucifur]

I thought I better add this more in depth explanation to my comments.

It reminds me of the beta verses the VCR, I think this kind of thing is probably a string of bad luck on EPICS part.

I like the game I had a private server for better than three months but I couldn't get any of my friends to play, they would say things like when I get in that big thing my computer bogs down to the point of unplayability, ect.

They all tried the demo version.

I said "well with the latest patch I have had no such problems", but to no avail, it probly is true that people are into instant gratification and if they don't get it they simply move on, I can remember spending hours reading the DOS manule just to play a simple game.

I have had the server for our group of friends "UT2004" for a year now and all I ever did was upload new maps from time to time, well I got on this forum to learn how to add mods and "Iron monky" is helping me figure it out, but when I told the guys there was a new mod on the server they were like yah great, well they did every thing short of calling me names to my face when they encountered the download time.

I said "What did you expect it to do just Zap onto your computer?"

I have lost one player to it it pissed him off so much.

Shane

 

[Grobut]

GameSpy is obviously not the only reason people don't play the game, but it is the first and probably largest mistake that was made. All the times GameSpy has gone down, the game has lost even more players that never end up coming back.

I'm going a bit into semantics here just for the sake of argument (yeah i'm bored), we agree fully that using GS was a huge mistake, and that it has cost the game active players, but, i'll argue that it was not the biggest mistake they made by any means, nor the first (i suspect they decided to abandon the Tournament theme long before they signed a deal with GameSpy, that was probably the first mistake).

So what do i base that on? well, considder this: Which is the greater evil, the backend that prevented a tiny playing community from fully enjoying the game? or all the other mistakes that made the playing community tiny in the first place? think about that for a moment..


You undoubtedly remember all the rage that was beeing expressed over UT3 here back in the day, hell you and i have duked it out on thease pages many a times, but think back, how often was GameSpy really brought up in arguments back then? not all that often compared to so much else, us "haters" who wheren't playing the game where much more concearned about many other things, and i can't really say i remember anyone around here saying that Gamespy was the reason they didn't want to play (it has been mentioned as a negative often, absolutely, but as the deciding factor in peoples dislike of UT3? i don't think i've ever seen that statet), it wasen't Gamespy that sparked all this controversy and all thouse frowny faces, UT3 lost all thouse players long before we had a chance to get really angry at Gamespy, other deal breakers had a much larger impact, Gamespy was just something people where nitpicking about.


If some miricle happened, and Epic releases a patch that fully removes Gamespy from UT3 tomorrow, would things really change in any significant way? i very much doubt that.

And had the game been released, exactly as it was, just without Gamespy integration, would that really have changed things in any big way? i think not, perhabs the few people who where playing UT3 would have held out a little longer, i suspect as much, but it really woulden't have made a bit of difference for all the people like me, who played a few days worth of the game and said "no, this is not good enough, i'm not playing this till they fix it", and it certainly woulden't have helped the players who just don't like the look and feel of the game.


It just wasen't Gamespy that decimatet UT3's potential fanbase, many other issues where far more instrumental in doing that, even the blasted HUD took far more flak on thease boards than Gamespy ever did, and thus, i argue that even without Gamespy, the controversy and lack of goodwill twords the game would have been the same, and UT3's small playing community would still have been decimated by the game's lack of polish and players over time. I don't think Gamespy's occational outages had that big an impact, i really don't think thouse outages where why people decided not to come back, it was just the final straw to them, it probably just made them quit a little faster.

As bad as Gamespy is, other games, other communities have delt with it and thrived, because the players where there and willing to play despite the Gamespy handicap (do you hear anyone saying "no i wont play Borderlands, because it uses Gamespy"?), UT3 could have done the same if people only had the goodwill twords the game, but not enough people ever did, and that, if anything, is what killed it.


UT3 just plain didn't have the appeal, and mind, i'm not talking about mass appeal, no UT ever had that, but UT3 only managed to appeal to a very small core of gamers within it's own potential fanbase, it just wasen't good enough, neither in build quality or scope, it only ever had the attention of that small group who felt it's gameplay was right on the money, and was willing to overlook it's shorcommings, for all the rest of us, it offered only heartache, as unlike UT2004, it offered nothing substantial to build on.
Truth be told i was never keen on UT2004's pure settings, but i was able to play and enjoy it from day one due to it's variety and selection of options, and muties where soon out in the wild adding even more enjoyment, but with UT3, well, it has taken modders this long just to fix the game, it's only now that MapMixer-3 is out the game is in a state where i would considder playing it, but too much time has passed, and the game still has many other problems, so i'd much rather just play L4D2 instead.

 

[lucifur]

Just a bit of trivia:

copied theis from my UT2004 config:

[IpDrv.UdpGamespyQuery]
MinNetVer=0
OldQueryPortNumber=7787
bRestartServerOnPortSwap=True
bDebugPortSwaps=True]

copied this from my UT config:

[UBrowserAll]
ListFactories[0]=UBrowser.UBrowserGSpyFact,MasterServerAddress=unreal.epicgames.com,MasterServerTCPPort=28900,Region=0,GameName=ut
ListFactories[1]=UBrowser.UBrowserGSpyFact,MasterServerAddress=master0.gamespy.com,MasterServerTCPPort=28900,Region=0,GameName=ut
bHidden=True
bFallbackFactories=True

Shane

 

[Sir_Brizz]

So what do i base that on? well, considder this: Which is the greater evil, the backend that prevented a tiny playing community from fully enjoying the game? or all the other mistakes that made the playing community tiny in the first place? think about that for a moment..

Well, what's worse? Not being able to play the game, or having minor problems with the gameplay? I think the online portion of the game just simply being broken in several aspects was the worst aspect of the game's launch and everything following it until 2.0 came out. How can you recommend a game to friends that isn't even functioning properly? 1.3 came out almost 12 months later and only then did custom content and the dedicated Linux server work properly, and I can only assume that the GameSpy integration contributed to this much more than its fair share.

If some miricle happened, and Epic releases a patch that fully removes Gamespy from UT3 tomorrow, would things really change in any significant way? i very much doubt that.

No, but, frankly, the damage was already done long before Epic released ANY patches. I'm not saying that GameSpy was the only problem the game had, but most of the things people have complained about with UT3 had more to do with personal preference over design decisions than the fact that things were actually horribly broken. Like the orb, for example. People complained that it broke gameplay, however that is a person preference of design. The orb wasn't broken itself.

And had the game been released, exactly as it was, just without Gamespy integration, would that really have changed things in any big way? i think not, perhabs the few people who where playing UT3 would have held out a little longer, i suspect as much, but it really woulden't have made a bit of difference for all the people like me, who played a few days worth of the game and said "no, this is not good enough, i'm not playing this till they fix it", and it certainly woulden't have helped the players who just don't like the look and feel of the game.

I really don't know the answer to that. What are some of the big problem the game had? All I can think of are online specific issues like the master servers being down or dedicated servers not working or the server list not functioning or not having a linux dedicated server for over a month or not having ANY online custom content support at launch, all things that can probably be traced back tot he Gamespy integration.

Obviously other things needed polishing, but I think most people knew that those things would be polished eventually. The online portion of the game being utterly broken for over a year was simply inexcusable for an online multiplayer game.

It just wasen't Gamespy that decimatet UT3's potential fanbase, many other issues where far more instrumental in doing that, even the blasted HUD took far more flak on thease boards than Gamespy ever did, and thus, i argue that even without Gamespy, the controversy and lack of goodwill twords the game would have been the same, and UT3's small playing community would still have been decimated by the game's lack of polish and players over time.

Personally, I think people just had things to vent about when other things weren't working. I really don't have a perfect memory of all the other crappy threads that have taken place on here, but, again, I think the main thing is that people wanted a game that was "their game". Unlike when UT came out, people didn't want to deal with Epic's game design, they wanted Epic to accept their game design and it pissed them off that it wasn't that way.

I've really tried to understand a lot of people's complaints about the game, but, personally, I don't find most complaints about how the game was designed as "valid". I disagree with some design decisions they made, but those aren't what ultimately led me to stop playing the game altogether.

I don't think Gamespy's occational outages had that big an impact, i really don't think thouse outages where why people decided not to come back, it was just the final straw to them, it probably just made them quit a little faster.

Well, I think when the game has over 1,000 players, the servers go out and when they come back on the count never goes above 300 that is probably good cause and effect. Maybe they were already looking for a reason to quit... but how long would they have waited if they could have even played the game? The majority of people gave up on the game before 2.0 even came out.

As bad as Gamespy is, other games, other communities have delt with it and thrived, because the players where there and willing to play despite the Gamespy handicap , UT3 could have done the same if people only had the goodwill twords the game, but not enough people ever did, and that, if anything, is what killed it.

Most of those games people deal with it because it is more transparent.

(do you hear anyone saying "no i wont play Borderlands, because it uses Gamespy"?)

Actually, yes. I keep playing Borderlands because the game is fun and you can play it without ever touching GameSpy. Basically untrue with UT3. There are probably lots of other reasons, but, to put it in perspective, UT3 left me with a horrible taste in my mouth at launch because of online issues (not even game issues). You can't rescue any game from a terrible launch. I've never seen a game launched bad, get patched, and then become a massively successful game, because it does not happen.

but too much time has passed, and the game still has many other problems, so i'd much rather just play L4D2 instead.

Frankly, I think UT3 is quite playable now, I just have no interest in playing it anymore. Maybe if lots of other people from BU played at FragBU I would actually make an effort to show up, but nobody does... whether through apathy or just because they have other games to play now.

Really your point is more poignant because there were other good games to play the day UT3 came out that weren't plagued with all the problems the game had. The launch didn't really catch anyone, it was in a bad state in lots of different aspects and all of them ultimately led to it's demise.

 

[Mozi]

 

[Northrawn]

Just a bit of trivia:

copied theis from my UT2004 config:

[IpDrv.UdpGamespyQuery]
MinNetVer=0
OldQueryPortNumber=7787
bRestartServerOnPortSwap=True
bDebugPortSwaps=True]

UT and UT2004 do not need Gamespy. They primary link up to (ut2004)masterserver.epicgames.com or so.

Do you need a Gamespy-ID for these games ?? No.

And you can set UplinktoGamespy to false in the ut2004 ini and it works fine.

 

[ArcheryGenious]

I liked the game, I thought it was an improvement although I did not play it until all the patches came out.

What gave it bad karma for me was the fact it had to be run on XP, and I am not sure that the industry all together does things like that in a hallow attempt to artificially drive the technology market.

I rented a server and was forced to sign up with game spy as a preventive to the server being used as a client, I had to register both my home copy and the server with passwords, it made me feel like they were watching me from the living room.

Shane.

It HAD to be run on XP?
It does work on Vista with the new patches doesn't it?

 

[Bi()ha2arD]

Another game Bi()ha2arD sucks at I suppose.

I don't suck at it. I just don't play it because I don't like the movement style of it. Also it looks like Quake 3 which is 10 years old.

 

[lucifur]

UT and UT2004 do not need Gamespy. They primary link up to (ut2004)masterserver.epicgames.com or so.

Do you need a Gamespy-ID for these games ?? No.

And you can set UplinktoGamespy to false in the ut2004 ini and it works fine.

That's exactly my point, game spy went from a server host assistant to a police watch dog, "big brother in your face" and it was nearly enough to turn me away completely.

 

[lucifur]

It HAD to be run on XP?
It does work on Vista with the new patches doesn't it?

I use windows 2000, I guess I ment XP and above.

Shane

 

[ArcheryGenious]

I use windows 2000, I guess I ment XP and above.

Shane

Oh right

 

[lucifur]

I was setting here thinking and something else that turns newbies away "without newbies there is no game eventually" is a few years ago I tried playing online and here in the middle of Nebraska my connection is not that great, so often times I would get banned for a low ping I guess.

Then secontly I am not that great a player, and I have played for years now but I am still a cluts, it seams like the online players are so critical, the the ones I ran into were more concered with wining than haveing a good time, I got baned from several servers for the only reason is at the time I was still learning the differant games and I figure I must have been running the wrong way or something I never did figure it out.

One of the only servers I found that were tolerant of me was "omnip ) (tents" and "bubas playhouse"but most seemed to have there own clik and I did not feel invited. Nothing runes an evening of gaming more than getting banned from a server, it makes you feel like dirt, I don't have a static IP and one time I tried to join a sever that I am pretty sure I never joined before but I was banned all ready from it too.


Now I am doing my own servers and taking the 3DBUZZ map learning thing, and I think the unreal engine will be around for along time, once I get good and professional I plan on going public and every body will be invited to play.

Lots of people here have been saying no good players online with UT3, "newbies" that tells me that there is room for UT3 to make a come back.

Shane

 

[Grobut]

Well, what's worse? Not being able to play the game, or having minor problems with the gameplay? I think the online portion of the game just simply being broken in several aspects was the worst aspect of the game's launch and everything following it until 2.0 came out. How can you recommend a game to friends that isn't even functioning properly? 1.3 came out almost 12 months later and only then did custom content and the dedicated Linux server work properly, and I can only assume that the GameSpy integration contributed to this much more than its fair share.

Whats worse than beeing unable to play the game for a few houers? or that nobody wants to play it anyway..

You can dismiss peoples conplaints about UT3 as "minor problems with the gameplay" all you want, but i ask you, what, if not the low player counts, finally gave UT3 the Coup de grâce? without all thouse players, you've got nothing.

No, but, frankly, the damage was already done long before Epic released ANY patches. I'm not saying that GameSpy was the only problem the game had, but most of the things people have complained about with UT3 had more to do with personal preference over design decisions than the fact that things were actually horribly broken. Like the orb, for example. People complained that it broke gameplay, however that is a person preference of design. The orb wasn't broken itself.

Sorry, but personal prefrence matters, the reality is that Epic, having been rather inconsistant with both the features and feel of UT's in the past, had gained a very varied following of fans who wanted different things from the game, that damage was allready done and there was no going back from there, and that is a reality Epic would have needed to deal with if UT3 was to have any chance, the UT community was just not big enough to exclude more players.

Instead they did the exact opposite, UT3 is streamlined up the wazoo compared to past versions, and as it dropped many options, it even further limited it's appeal, driving a wedge into an allready small community (and going multi-platform, that wedge was only made wider), leaving only a small core of players, like yourself, who was happy with it (excluding it's initial online problems), whilst the rest of us where given no incentive to play it.

In many ways, UT3 is a feature downgrade from past UT's, and this community just coulden't afford that, hell, UT3 practically took all the offliners out back and put a load of 00.Buck through their braincase, it cheesed off countless ONS fans by changing their game and not listening to the feedback they had, it left the CTF community with barely a leg to stand on (there where.. 6 maps at release?), it removed options like brightskins and FF amounts, gave people practically no way to personalize the game like they could in the past, and i could go on listing the many ways UT3 set about limiting it's appeal and excluding parts of it's fanbase like this, all packed in a monotonous GoW'ish look that starkly contrasts the colourfull and varied look of it's siblings, and taking a huge departure from the backstory that had served them so well, replacing it instead with one that was seen as a bad joke.

You can call thease changes "design choices" if you want to, personally, i call it "franchiside", and the real kick in the pants is not that they made some changes, it's that they left so many of their fans with no way to tweak it more to their liking, like past UT's allowed.

I really don't know the answer to that. What are some of the big problem the game had? All I can think of are online specific issues like the master servers being down or dedicated servers not working or the server list not functioning or not having a linux dedicated server for over a month or not having ANY online custom content support at launch, all things that can probably be traced back tot he Gamespy integration.

You can read above for many of them, but the simple fact is, after allmost a decade of UT, people just wheren't going to view UT3 as a stand-alone thing or something brand new or anything of the sort, they where going to compare it to UT's of the past, and UT3 just doesen't stack up well, it has fewer options, less variety to choose from, it's story sucked, mod support was totally broken and is still not quite good today, and just to add insult to injury, it was buggy and badly unpolished (do female players still make male grunts?).

That's just not how you make a sequal, that's how you kill a franchise.

Obviously other things needed polishing, but I think most people knew that those things would be polished eventually. The online portion of the game being utterly broken for over a year was simply inexcusable for an online multiplayer game.

Agreed, the broken online portion was inexcusable, but the polish you mentioned still hasen't happened, for instance, it has taken Mapmixer3 to give the Offliners all the tools they need to finally enjoy this game offline like they used to, Epic did bugger all and had no intention of doing anything, Offliners have Trix to thank for this not Epic.

UT3 has undoubtedly seen it's last patch, so where's that polish going to come from? who's going to fix the Manta jump exploit? who's going to solve the OpenAL crashes? etc etc..

Many of us saw this this comming a mile away, hence we gave up.

Personally, I think people just had things to vent about when other things weren't working. I really don't have a perfect memory of all the other crappy threads that have taken place on here, but, again, I think the main thing is that people wanted a game that was "their game". Unlike when UT came out, people didn't want to deal with Epic's game design, they wanted Epic to accept their game design and it pissed them off that it wasn't that way.

I've really tried to understand a lot of people's complaints about the game, but, personally, I don't find most complaints about how the game was designed as "valid". I disagree with some design decisions they made, but those aren't what ultimately led me to stop playing the game altogether.

You can view peoples gripes as "invalid" all you want, but the proof is in the pudding, Epic designed a game that only attracted a stable, world-wide community of no more than ~500 players past it's initial honeymoon period, a game that even you don't feel like playing anymore because you've got nobody to play with. So tell me, how exactly where thease complaints "invalid" if they stopped people from wanting to play? and was UT3 really made better by ignoring them, thus ensuring they infact did not play?

No players, no game, it's that simple, and with this small a community of players, you just can't say "you will play it our way and like it!", that path leads straight to failure, and so it has.

Epic absolutely should have listened to the "invalid" complaints, if they had, then maybe we'd be discussing our favorite UT3 mods and servers right now (as a lot more people might be playing the game), instead of disecting where it all went terribly wrong, but as it was, the game suffocated because there where never enough players to breathe life into it, and there's no two ways to spin it, the players wheren't there because they didn't want to play, and the few who did died of boredom because they had no playmates.

We've had this argument before, and back then you said the same thing, our arguments where invalid, thease where just design choices, and Epic shoulden't have to accomodate us, and UT3 would be just fine when the Titan Pack was released as it would bring all the players back. And i told you that if they didn't, the low player counts would only breed even lower player counts, that the Titan Pack would do no such thing, and that the game would die if it didn't get more players.. well what can i tell you Brizz, I WIN!


But it's a pretty damn hollow victory, i'll tell you that.

Well, I think when the game has over 1,000 players, the servers go out and when they come back on the count never goes above 300 that is probably good cause and effect. Maybe they were already looking for a reason to quit... but how long would they have waited if they could have even played the game? The majority of people gave up on the game before 2.0 even came out.

Correlation does not imply causation, when GS crapped out it was only for shorter periods of time, and it was hardly a dayli occurence, if people really wanted to play UT3, they still would have when it went back up, as indeed did that small core of die hard UT3 players, instead they left, and from that i can only summise UT3 just wasen't dear enough to them to deal with any problems.

UT3 was playable Online from day one, what it lacked was stuff like Server Admin features and a Linux server client, and the initial version of the server browser was annoying, sure, thease are things that make Online play easier and more pleasent, but it's not like the game could not be played at all, hell, i'd say Modern Warfare 2 is getting by right now with even less than UT3 had at it's launch, but that doesen't seem to stop people playing that game (i don't see the attraction, but there you have it).

Thease players where never going to stick around, if a minor hickup in hosthing services was all it took to scatter them, and they coulden't wait for a single patch, they where on their way out anyway.

 

[Sparty304]

UT99 is the best.

 

[Bi()ha2arD]

Lots of people here have been saying no good players online with UT3

Come to #mpukut3.warfare

 

[lucifur]

Come to #mpukut3.warfare

Ok will see, at the moment my XP machine is broken so it will be a few weeks probably before I am back up.

Shane.