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Unreal Tournament

SoloCamo

SoloCamo

Member
Just posting for the love of the series and my absolute hate towards what Epic has done to it. But genuine concern and question, why did they kill the series that put them on the map?

UT99 / UT2004 are absolutely stellar games (and quite frankly so are 2003 and UT3) and when Epic killed the new UT that was in alpha but still tons of fun I just couldn't comprehend it, especially removing all the UT games from purchase as well? This is literally why I only use the Epic store to bleed them on free games, I will literally buy the same game on steam and not use Epic to play it.

JqHm4mb2qhQ9Om9B.jpg
 
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SoloCamo said:
Just posting for the love of the series and my absolute hate towards what Epic has done to it. But genuine concern and question, why did they kill the series that put them on the map?
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They got busy with Gears in the mid 2000s, and are now managing a huge money printing machine with Fortnite.

Not sure that leaves a lot of room for UT. After how Halo Infinite died, there's probably even less appetite for it now.
 
I played a lot of Unreal Tournament in school. We had it installed on the Tech Lab and a lot of us would get together at lunch and play it in the library, literally launching the game from those computers on a network connection in the library. We did get run out of there a few times because we are taking up all of the computers playing Deathmatch but most of the time it was no problem.
 
I used to play the UT games as well as Quake to warm up for competitive clan matches for the other games I played online. Those fast as fuck twitch shooters trained my brain so that once I stepped into other slow moving titles it was like a had the ability to pause time!
 
Unreal Tournament in the COD era felt unusual, obviously you were a big shot having the Sega Dreamcast hooked up to online and battling others in the world. Today unreal tournament could have a presence, I mean no one sale Doom 2016, Eternal, Dark Ages coming.
 
Modern audiences want "progression" rather than to learn to play games. Arena shooters are nearly impossible to balance. The pace and movement alone bewilder modern audiences used to ADS, scopes, and other mechanics that slow down better players. Simple lane-based maps with clear choke points that offer a steady stream of meta "progress" are easier to design and equalize.

Id love for UT to make a comeback in some form. I still play it with my friends and family along with Q3A.
 
they were working on an unreal game but sadly stopped due to fornite popularity. i still play ut 999 from time to time, its never gets old so im fine with playing that forever.
 
had good times with ut99. used to piston jump facing worlds

it's hilarious that modern shooters have standardized wall hacks
 
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Had the red box UT special edition. Great game. Looks like I got in late playing the game as I played probably around 2001 or 2002 when I got it. Oddly it was the only PC game I played online back then.

Those were the days. Give yourself a player name, pick a server, pray the ping time was good... that ping counter was BS half the time.

I was always dogshit on that big jumping map where you launch from pad to pad. It was reddish and everyone was spamming rockets.
 
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Love Unreal Tournament, first game that made me bug my parents to get an actual gaming PC for the first time.

I'd say they killed the series because:
  • Arena shooters are very fast-paced higher skill floor shooters, harder to scale to the masses.
  • Their design is built around map control with pickups, not progression systems and abilities to stay stickier like COD-era stuff (Quake Champions tried to do this, didn't work imo)
  • Team-based modes at that game speed would be hard to follow for good esports viewing.
  • Unreal Tournament 3 went with a busier not very attractive art style that made it harder to parse things, and had fewer novel game modes or systems to move the sub-genre forward.
Biggest underlying reason: arena shooters that had the best life-cycles like previous UT games relied heavily on FREE user-generated mod content to keep people playing...content not built to be monetized by the dev. Epic abandoned their last UT attempt once Fortnite was blowing up, and they're trying to make Fortnite crack monetizing user-generated content because only Roblox has done truly successfully.
 
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SoloCamo said:
Just posting for the love of the series and my absolute hate towards what Epic has done to it. But genuine concern and question, why did they kill the series that put them on the map?

UT99 / UT2004 are absolutely stellar games (and quite frankly so are 2003 and UT3) and when Epic killed the new UT that was in alpha but still tons of fun I just couldn't comprehend it, especially removing all the UT games from purchase as well? This is literally why I only use the Epic store to bleed them on free games, I will literally buy the same game on steam and not use Epic to play it.

JqHm4mb2qhQ9Om9B.jpg
Click to expand...
God, I can't even tell you just how many hours of capture the flag I played on that map alone!
 
I miss this era, I have a time capsule PC for 90s and early aughts pc games. I don't use it often but when I do, such an amazing little escape. Loved the secondary fire modes, even though I was more quake 3, UT was also such a blast.
 
Ironman_Bad said:
Anyone lucky enough to have a GeForce256 or ATI rage in 1999 and playing UT was like playing in the future it was an insane time to be a PC gamer
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Yes, the first GeForce felt like a massive leap forward, combined with the games that came out shortly after it. I also was able to use the card for quite a while before having to upgrade again, to me that was the time when the endless upgrade cycles became a little longer.
 
No reason to put work effort into a game when Fortnite requires minimal effort and brings in so much money.

They were working on a new UT a few years back but decided to scrap it.
 
I remember playing UT99 when it was new it was fun but I got tired of it very quickly

UT3 on the other hand is CRACK in video game form I had to force myself to stop playing
against freaking bots over and over just two years ago after playing since 2007

We are basically in a Sonic CD "Bad Future" level of a world right now so it tracks that they no longer make such fun games
 
UT99 was magic, there was nothing cooler back then.The music, the maps, the vibe, it was just cool. I've always been a fan of electronic music, and it's hard to describe, but the way Doom felt metal, unreal tournament felt electronic. UT99 is one of those games I wish I could play for the first time again.

 
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SoloCamo said:
Just posting for the love of the series and my absolute hate towards what Epic has done to it. But genuine concern and question, why did they kill the series that put them on the map?

UT99 / UT2004 are absolutely stellar games (and quite frankly so are 2003 and UT3) and when Epic killed the new UT that was in alpha but still tons of fun I just couldn't comprehend it, especially removing all the UT games from purchase as well? This is literally why I only use the Epic store to bleed them on free games, I will literally buy the same game on steam and not use Epic to play it.

JqHm4mb2qhQ9Om9B.jpg
Click to expand...

I can hear this image.

 
bender said:
Arena shooters of their ilk just can sustain a large enough modern audience, sadly.
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Annoying really. Arena shooters are the best competitive online games in my opinion. The days of Quake 3, Unreal Tournament and Halo 2 are totally unmatched when it comes to online gaming in my opinion. Really learning the maps, movement and understanding weapon spawns and timings was critical to winning.
 
bender said:
Arena shooters of their ilk just can sustain a large enough modern audience, sadly.
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Arena shooters could benefit from a competitive single player focused experience like Devil Daggers and Hyper Demon:



If the player pool is small it can be beneficial to compete against other players via leaderboards or something similar.
 
Lucifers Beard said:
Annoying really. Arena shooters are the best competitive online games in my opinion. The days of Quake 3, Unreal Tournament and Halo 2 are totally unmatched when it comes to online gaming in my opinion. Really learning the maps, movement and understanding weapon spawns and timings was critical to winning.
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I mean, CS2 / Valorant ect. are just modern iterations in team deathmatch of it, they are not that different in the skills you have to aquire / use / memorize, but my (our?) generation has the habit that everything new is somehow inferior to what has come before.
 
bender said:
Tribes
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Tribes 2 was the reason my schooling took a turn for the worse haha. Every spare moment was on that game. Remember the in-game chat, forums, clan pages and shit? Was epic.

Edit - still have the soundtrack CD and the t-shirt hanging in the wardrobe from preordering it
 
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John Bilbo said:
Arena shooters could benefit from a competitive single player focused experience like Devil Daggers and Hyper Demon:



If the player pool is small it can be beneficial to compete against other players via leaderboards or something similar.
Click to expand...

They have a new game coming out soonish.
 
If you think about it. I don't think current Epic is capable or even willing to give a chance to Unreal. Instead what they did is to stop selling the game so they no longer are obligated to support it and let people download it for free while allowing the community to support it.

They even have the links in their website to donwload the games:

This is way better for me than some companies refusing to fix their games and still sell them full price, while holding the ip hostage and dmcaing the community trying to fix their games.

The only thing left for them is to actually release the source code of the games so then we see unreal ported to every device ever existed from now to the future.
 
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I still play from time to time, online servers still exist but require you to amend the master server (games ini file) to play. Unreal Championship was pretty good on the original Xbox and still has a few players on Insignia.
 
Lorianus said:
I mean, CS2 / Valorant ect. are just modern iterations in team deathmatch of it, they are not that different in the skills you have to aquire / use / memorize, but my (our?) generation has the habit that everything new is somehow inferior to what has come before.
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I get what you're saying but those games are loadout/class based and so in my opinion are not arena shooters. I'm talking about all players being on an even playing field having to find weapons and power ups on the map with no class based skills or special movements. These types of games are basically dead now, but I can't help but feel there must still be audience for them

Theres nothing more satisfying to me than having a great killing spree with a badass announcer shouting things like 'Dominating!' or 'Triple Kill!!'. Those types of games with persistent servers really built up a high level of competitiveness between players and were just so much fucking fun.
 
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