The death of the Arena Shooter.

The first part isn't on youtube anymore, but I think it was better...

Either way... as this thread has said... there hasn't been a decent arena shooter since Quake3 / UT2004...

Would anyone want to see a source mod that sorta brought that feel back ?
 
God, watching those videos really makes me sad. :( Miss 200% speed Instagib ut 99/2k4 games.
 
God these videos are stirring up some nostalgia.. we used to play q2dm lithium at work after hours for hours... then I would go home and play ctf, get like 4 hours of sleep, come to work and do the same thing the next night.. and the next night sometimes.. I love the fast and furious action vs how slow you seem to move in most fps games now days.. which is a bit more realistic I reckon.. but part of the point of me gaming was to bust out of reality for a while. ;)
 
^ You said Lithium. That used to be basically the only mod I would ever play on Q2. I loved that damn mod. The four runes were great, damage, rapid fire, regen health, and the vampire rune. Quad + rapid fire + chain gun = good times, good times.

I miss those days so much. Brings a tear to my eye.
 
I was just thinking that!!! My favorite FPS and MOD OF ALL TIME! QUAKE 2! Never was much for q3a etc etc
 
Quake Live is pretty popular. Free / takes 3 seconds to get up to date and bam, you're jumping in games and complaining about getting annihilated!

seriously, play Quake Live if you like this stuff, there's no shortage of teams and no shortage of REALLY good players.

there's some quirks, but it's still very much so hardcore quake at its core. you're really only limited by your own skill, not stupid game mechanics.
 
Haha, no. Halo is nothing more than Counter Strike in the future with a sword.


Rocket launchers, Respawning behind your enemies, no accuracy loss while jumping/moving, not to mention 0g jumps.

Im leaning more towards the arena shooter side on this one.
 
This is another great match. The battle near the end where both were trading shots and nobody could frag the other guy for a very long time was very exciting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtA7ys2Mo8U
I also like this. I love gaming with commentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20gBhrVRkVo

Every time I watch those Quake 4 frag/competition vids, I Think to myself, "Man, Quake 4 looks awsome!" The pros make it seem very appealing and fun to play. Yet I've had nothing but displeasure in my very, very short time spent with Q4.

Rocket launchers, Respawning behind your enemies, no accuracy loss while jumping/moving, not to mention 0g jumps.
Im leaning more towards the arena shooter side on this one.
There is no way in hell Halo could be classified as an arena shooter! The speed is just way to slow, and it has that retarded floaty-ass jump bullshit. You can only jump like once every 5 seconds, because that's how long it takes for you to return to the ground, lol. It would need to have some strafe jumping/ dodge jumping aspect to be considered an arena shooter. Rocket launchers don't automatically make a game an arena shooter.
 
Rocket launchers, Respawning behind your enemies, no accuracy loss while jumping/moving, not to mention 0g jumps.

Im leaning more towards the arena shooter side on this one.

Arena shooters require movement and high game speed. Halo is unbearably slow and just involves walking around a map.

UT2004, even with vanilla DM, is an extremely fast-paced game with various movement possibilities. Dodging, double jump, wall dodge, dodge-jump, etc.

Not to toot my own horn here, but this video is an example of what I started off playing in UT2004: PIG and Zark. PIG (Psycho Insta-gib) is a modified version of IG. Faster rate of fire on the gun, faster translocator speed, low-ish gravity, high game speed and multidodge, which allowed an infinite number wall dodges. The version of zark we played had the same settings except you used a machine gun that wasn't instant kill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwUrW5VJ2uE (Please ignore the description, the guy only cared about PIG in UT, so that's where the comment came from. Also ignore how crappy the video is: I was quite young.)

So, to put Halo in the same genre of this game is absolutely laughable.

EDIT: I even have an issue calling TF2 an "arena" shooter, but that's more nitpicky than anything.
 
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^ You said Lithium. That used to be basically the only mod I would ever play on Q2. I loved that damn mod. The four runes were great, damage, rapid fire, regen health, and the vampire rune. Quad + rapid fire + chain gun = good times, good times.

I miss those days so much. Brings a tear to my eye.

lithium was by far one of the best game mods I have played period. it added the right amount of "extra" to make the game a lot more fun.. I could almost fly with the hook when we had it's speed set right.. there was a ctf level with a cavern connecting the two base sides, with water at the bottom but there was a path on the side also.. I used to swing down that mofo with the hook like I was tarzan.. so fun!

we also played some Generations... that mod was cool... the Rise of the Triad guy with his dual chain guns.. muahhahaha. ;)

edit:
I think there are two kinds of multiplayer FPS players. You've got the twitch players and the tactical shooter players. I am not the latter despite my affinity for firearms. :confused: Still given the lack of new twitch shooters I've had to get much better at the tactical shooters. Still nothing beats being able to load up my favorite twitch style shooters and going to town every now and again.

The tactical shooters can be fun too, you just have to "unlearn what you have learned."

yeah - I agree there is a good bit of unlearning involved to adjust to tactical type shooters.. I have found playing them in single player mode is very good practice for that also..
 
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Rocket launchers, Respawning behind your enemies, no accuracy loss while jumping/moving, not to mention 0g jumps.

Im leaning more towards the arena shooter side on this one.

auto aim in halo will not only guide your crosshair, but your actual shots as well. you can literally have your crosshair an entire character length off someone when you're in the jeep and your bullets will magically curve for the hit.

hilariously floaty and slow physics, no depth to battles, no timing any powerups, no real skill.


competitive console gaming is a joke, the game does half the work for you because of the little baby controller. if console / pc could coexist in the same game, i'm sure the best console players would be getting stomped by anyone remotely decent on pc.
actually this already happened in the dreamcast port of Q3... :)

the skill curve in any real arena style title is hilariously massive. back in ut2004 i came in 2nd in a tournament and got a t-shirt (vs a 5800fx or something at the time... the t-shirt was probably faster actually, so maybe i won???)

actually, recent games seem to be getting less and less involved with player skill. compare cod1 and 2 to the abortion that the series is now. cod was there first game where i actually played in a shoutcasted match where we were playing against a team expected to stomp us. i had a hilarious run near the end where i just left my team behind, snuck across the entire map, killed a ton of people, grabbed their flag, battled my way back and capped it. i was the only person on defense, so it was almost unguarded when i left.

i later killed the entire team twice over and the announcer made a comment on how gay i was playing. glorious stuff.


imagine that, a time when in cod, you actually had to shoot instead of just lobbing grenades and calling megahelicopters that obliterate teams in instants.
 
wow I really enjoyed those UT videos you guys posted, I wish I had been playing those games back then :(

I'd have been in heaven
 
competitive console gaming is a joke, the game does half the work for you because of the little baby controller. if console / pc could coexist in the same game, i'm sure the best console players would be getting stomped by anyone remotely decent on pc.
actually this already happened in the dreamcast port of Q3... :)

.

This argument has always come across as irrational. How is controller a "baby controller" when the mouse/keyboard setup is 100x easier and more efficient? You even support this point yourself by admitting the best pc players would curb stomp the console players because of the input device.

Doesn't that support that the keyboard/mouse are the "baby controllers" that give you that competitive edge and the console remotes are for pros because it's more difficult to use?

I'm sure I'll get fanboy flamed, but that argument never made sense to me.

And in b4 people start claiming PC gamers are just magically better at FPS than console players. Again, that doesn't make sense either.
 
This argument has always come across as irrational. How is controller a "baby controller" when the mouse/keyboard setup is 100x easier and more efficient? You even support this point yourself by admitting the best pc players would curb stomp the console players because of the input device.

Doesn't that support that the keyboard/mouse are the "baby controllers" that give you that competitive edge and the console remotes are for pros because it's more difficult to use?

I'm sure I'll get fanboy flamed, but that argument never made sense to me.

And in b4 people start claiming PC gamers are just magically better at FPS than console players. Again, that doesn't make sense either.

It's a good point, i've always lol'd at the idea.

Dual analog is nothing more than a handicap, that then must be made up for with auto-aim assistance. KB/M offers more options, bindings, things to go on, and is a more precise input device. So yeah, dual analog is much harder to play on, thusly making it the "less baby-sat" device to a degree, but only if the auto-aim features were taken out of console games.
 
The advent of modern realistic graphics capabilities marked the death of the genre. Doom 3 was the beginning, UT3 and Quake 4 the nails in the coffin. For some reason, fragging in a deathmatch shooter just isn't the same when everything is normal mapped and phong shaded.
 
The advent of modern realistic graphics capabilities marked the death of the genre. Doom 3 was the beginning, UT3 and Quake 4 the nails in the coffin. For some reason, fragging in a deathmatch shooter just isn't the same when everything is normal mapped and phong shaded.

That's not the real reason. The real reason were 2 terrible game launches.

But now that you brought it up, you got a good point :eek: It really isn't nearly as satisfying to play as with the older graphics!
 
I have U2k4, I bought it with the Unreal Pack for $13.50 on the Steam sale in Christmas 2009, I have yet to install it, correcting that now, it's gonna download on Steam while I sleep tonight

perhaps i'll give it a go

I'll probably get my ass killed untill I learn the maps well enough, but that gameplay footage made me drool.
 
That's not the real reason. The real reason were 2 terrible game launches.

But now that you brought it up, you got a good point :eek: It really isn't nearly as satisfying to play as with the older graphics!

I don't feel it is so much an inherent problem with the good graphics as it is something that gets in the way of the gameplay. The old games were designed with very blocky geometry, vertex lighting, no annoying particle or smoke effects, no bullshit camouflage. If you watch matches in modern games (CoD4 has a decent competitive scene) you'll notice that people tone the graphics WAAAY down to remove all of the kind of shit that I mentioned.

And it didn't help that the games that should have carried on the genre were terrible.
 
My personal favorite was Quake 2 Action Quake. I loved that mod played it sooooo much. Stealth shoes + handcannon was classic on the one real popular map I forget the name of where you had to go up a series of buildings and then left up some more to a corner of the map...could blow a guy across the map with that cannon lol.

Oddly I didn't like CS as much and its by the same guys.
 
They never made them work on consoles, and ID and EPIC dont want to spend millions on a PC only game.

There, your answer :)
 
Exact same thing happened with Quake 4. Everything (mostly?) eventually was fixed....just no one really cared by the time it happened. If your going to release a multi player centric sequel, fkn at least make sure it's as good as it's predecessor.

Q3 has a great feel to it, i can still log into quakelive and enjoy myself because of it.. Q4 does not.. thats why noone plays it, because they changed the core of what Q3 was.. so in my mind nothing is fixed with Q4.. it's just not fun to play
 
UT2K4 got about 80% of the time at our last lan party, the other 20% CoD4. There's just something about UT2K4 that's timeless and can't be matched ... one moment you're pwning, the next you're scratching your head saying WTF just hit me.

We had some pretty kick ass SOF2 games at one time also.
 
This argument has always come across as irrational. How is controller a "baby controller" when the mouse/keyboard setup is 100x easier and more efficient? You even support this point yourself by admitting the best pc players would curb stomp the console players because of the input device.

Doesn't that support that the keyboard/mouse are the "baby controllers" that give you that competitive edge and the console remotes are for pros because it's more difficult to use?

I'm sure I'll get fanboy flamed, but that argument never made sense to me.

And in b4 people start claiming PC gamers are just magically better at FPS than console players. Again, that doesn't make sense either.

it's more like trying to eat soup with a fork, it just doesn't make sense in comparison. a mouse works practically like a straight up link in regards to aim, yet a thumb stick is a far cry from that. more difficult to use? i'd say, but that's more because of the simple nature of the device, it just doesn't translate as well and thus it needs some form of compensation to make up for its deficiencies. there's hardly more skill involved in using it, even if it is more difficult, it's just that, more difficult. there is no whipping it across the pad or any true form of precision.

and yes, i would wager that PC gamers are better.


what console gamer actually tries to listen to sound to pinpoint where people are? nobody i've known has ever done that until they came across the shocking revelation of my owning of a headset and OH MY GOD, FOOTSTEPS. play a game of cod4 on the 360 then try again on the pc and the difference in playing styles will be immediately obvious.

people are generally more active in their movement, more aggressive in their play and more alert. when i built my buddy his computer, even he said that his playing style changed as a result, for the better no less.
 
As a long time q3 fan this kind of thing disappoints me. Its sad but arena shooters just aren't newb friendly. They need a really good ranking system combined with a match making system so that a new guy doesn't get stuck playing against someone whos been playing for years.
 
I think it partly has to do with the current drive in graphics. Arena shooters just don't feel as fun with state of the art graphics in my opinion. Arena shooters were spawned from technology that was available at the time and that's what made them fun. An exaggerated example I can give would be like playing Mario with Crysis like graphics, kinda loses the atmosphere.

That said, I did like the editing done in that Get Quaked 3 video posted earlier, especially the first part. :)
 
As a long time q3 fan this kind of thing disappoints me. Its sad but arena shooters just aren't newb friendly. They need a really good ranking system combined with a match making system so that a new guy doesn't get stuck playing against someone whos been playing for years.

quake live actually have a pretty good ranking and matching system...

i just wish more people played it.... *sigh* it seems even among old timers the arena shooter has lost much of its appeal
 
quake live actually have a pretty good ranking and matching system...

i just wish more people played it.... *sigh* it seems even among old timers the arena shooter has lost much of its appeal

Quake live suffers from no mod support. All it is just baseq3. Quake 3 was popular due to a having a strong mod community. ID killed that off with quake live and now all you hear on the ql forums is whine from people wanting more maps and the popular mods from q3.
 
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