Quake III Arena vs Unreal Tournament

[ReeseJamPiece]

A debate going way back to the 2000's.

I've played both of these games and both are pretty damn good.

They changed the multiplayer genre forever and if it wasn't for them chances are Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield etc wouldn't exist.

But trying to decide which is best is trying to decide the impossible.

So what do you think Doomworld? I know a lot of you here like these games a lot so I thought if anyone was to answer it'd be all of you.

[Gez]

I liked them both about as much, but if I have to choose just one, UT would be it: more interesting weapons (who doesn't love the shock rifle combo?), more varied gamemodes, the mutators, and the kickass soundtrack.

[Nevander]

I prefer UT99 myself. I can't really provide a solid reason why I like it more than Q3A. I guess I would say that I think the concept of tournament gameplay (single player) works better and makes more sense in the Unreal universe.  Where as in Q3A, you see Doomguy as a character along with some other characters which feel out of place to me. But don't misunderstand, by no means does this mean I find Q3A to be inferior.

 

And as Gez said, the weapons and soundtrack are way more interesting to me.

[Bauul]

Q3A: Team Arena was the best of both worlds.  I always thought it was a shame it never took off.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

As I've played it far more, I'm biased towards unreal tournament (2004 in my case however). Might give Quake III a try at some point though...

[Jello]

I've never cared for either really. When I saw Quake 3 at Shopko years and years ago, I was excited that there was a new Quake game coming out. Then I saw that it was neither a continuation of Quake 1, and wasn't even a continuation of Quake 2. It was a multiplayer game, and I've had zero interest in them since I started playing games. Unreal Tournament I was excited about when I saw it, but then I realized it wasn't a new Unreal single player campaign, but an online multiplayer version. Again, zero interest. I think Unreal Tournament was the better game as far as variety in weapons, but I still think both games set a bad precedent in killing off single player FPS games.

[[McD] James]

Quake 3 was the first Quake I ever played, and I loved it during its heyday. It was my first online FPS and the first FPS game I learned to play with a mouse and keyboard. So, I have a lot of nostalgia for Quake 3, but even still, Unreal Tournament is a much, much better game. I consider the original UT to be the best arena FPS game ever made.

[Avoozl]

I wouldn't really consider the first UT to be the best UT, I would consider UT2004 to be the best UT.

 

I much prefer Quake 3 Arena over the first UT.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Avoozl

[Doomkid]

I liked Quake 3 because it was easy to pick up coming from a background of Doom deathmatch. I have nothing against UT, I've just hardly played it. I haven't played Quake 3 all that much either but it's a really fun game.

[Count651]

For me its definitely Unreal 99 for the sheer variety of weapons and environments. I still play it regularly to this day with and without bots. Also the godlike soundtrack. And lets not forget those unforgettable taunts such as "Die, bitch".

[Spectre01]

UT 99 is far more interesting when it comes to offline or casual play. The weapons in particular are more fun to use due to having an alt-fire and various combos you can perform, like with the Shock Rifle. The campaign actually felt engaging for what is essentially bot games due to cool modes like Assault and more memorable visuals. Hard to beat stuff like Facing Worlds or Hyperblast for how cool the concept was. I found Q3 to be rather dry in comparison, but maybe it's the better hardcore eSports title. That's not my jam though as I played Counter-Strike as my online FPS of choice.

[amackert]

UT99 has a lot more variety overall, but Quake 3 Arena is a much more tightly nit, balanced deathmatch and 1v1 experience. They are both great. I prefer Q3A for competitive play. UT99 is better with groups of friends.

[Cynical]

Agreed with @amackert.  UT99's armor system is an absolute clusterfuck for duel, saved only by how quick the TTK can be making execution of a great shot an option for overcoming what is otherwise stupidly ironclad map control.  That said, for casual play, UT99's movement and weapons are much more "fun".

[ReaperAA]

Quote

Only because I still can't decide between the classic Quake vs Unreal Tournament battle.

 

Quote

Its okay. I can't decide between them either.

 

And thus it was only a matter of time before ReeseJamPiece would make another thread.

 

Personally, its a tie for me between UT99 and Quake 3.

 

On one hand, Quake 3 is much better than UT99 in terms of pure gameplay mechanics (better weapon balance, better item placement in maps, more fluid movement). This is a big reason why Quake 3 was vastly more popular than UT99 in the eSports scene. The game is easier to pick up compared to UT99 due to its simplicity, while also having a higher skill ceiling. The engine is also superior than that of UT99 in terms of features like having curves and better netcode. Quake 3 also benefits from complete source code release whereas in UT99's case, only the rendering part of the code was released I think.

 

However on the other hand, UT99 has much more fun weapons with altfires and more variety of options available when creating a match. Quake 3 didn't really introduce anything new to the table, whereas UT99 invented 2 new gamemodes called Assault and Domination (the latter of which found much popularity in modern shooters). The maps, while less balanced in terms of item placement, were much more creative in terms of layouts and atmosphere. The bots in UT99 also felt smarter than those of Q3A while also being customizable. The OST is also much much superior in UT99. The campaign is also more engaging (for a botmatch campaign that is). 

Edited November 12, 2019 by ReaperAA

[Avoozl]

Honestly I like both their soundtracks, they are differing styles and I don't think they should be compared with eachother.

[ReaperAA]

4 minutes ago, Avoozl said:

Honestly I like both their soundtracks, they are differing styles and I don't think they should be compared with eachother.

 

Ok I guess u r right. That one is probably just my personal opinion.

[Vermil]

I've always played a lot more UT99 than Quake 3, so I guess that makes me a casual DM'er.

[xvertigox]

They both have their strengths but when it comes to competitive play (namely duel but also ctf and tdm) q3 is far, far superior IMO.

 

I'd say q3 is basically the perfect duel game, the only thing it lacks is players (let's go diabolical!). I view it in a similar way to Doom - Doom is the perfect sp fps - it's distilled and purified greatness. By the same token q3 is pure afps glory - it's the mp side to the coin.

 

The movement is far superior even without factoring in cpm movement, there's a whole scene that revolves around how good it is (defrag).

 

If you need to compare the two all you'd have to look at is the rocket launchers, ut99's is slow and clunky where as q3's is crisp and punchy.

 

Now, if I had a lan with a lot of casual fps players I'd pick ut99 for the variety (esp with mutators).

 

It's worth me mentioning that I have the q3 rl and rg simple items tattooed on my wrist so yeah, I'd pick q3.

[Doomkid]

23 minutes ago, xvertigox said:

They both have their strengths but when it comes to competitive play (namely duel but also ctf and tdm) q3 is far, far superior IMO.

 

I'd say q3 is basically the perfect duel game, the only thing it lacks is players (let's go diabolical!). I view it in a similar way to Doom - Doom is the perfect sp fps - it's distilled and purified greatness. By the same token q3 is pure afps glory - it's the mp side to the coin.

This is always the impression I got. Quake 3 was like they took the core feeling of Doom / Quake deathmatch and pumped up to it's maximum (at the time). The movement and weapons all feel great. Everything is easy to understand right away, just like Doom. If I wasn't such a Doom addict, I'd have been getting my deathmatch fix from Q3 all these years I'm almost certain. Doom DM is so similar, especially with modern DM flags, so it scratches that itch for me.

[Egg Boy]

IMO Quake 3 plays far better than UT99, however, I feel that UT has a lot of creative and fun environments, not to mention mutators. Basically, Quake 3 is a better game from a competitive standpoint, but UT takes it in the casual department.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Egg Boy

[qdash]

Quake III Arena, of course!

[Octillion]

I'm just gonna drop this here.

 

 

 

This theme always made me think of Duke Nukem in the Red light district map at the you know which part for some reason.

[MFG38]

Both are great on their own merits. I was always more into Quake 3, though - probably because I was introduced to it before UT.

[seed]

They're both great games, but, I've not played much of Quake 3 to have a strong opinion about it.

 

Still, one thing I definitely prefer in Q3 over UT99 is the movement, it's more fluid, and I like the weapons more too.

[ReeseJamPiece]

11 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

And thus it was only a matter of time before ReeseJamPiece would make another thread.

 

Am I really that predictable or was that sarcasm?

[xvertigox]

This shoulda been a poll btw

[jupiter_ex]

back in that day I was all into the progress of graphics and engines in games, so QIII got me the moment I saw it. Id had achieved, through the careful use of some tricks, clever art design, positioned textures, and a very basic environment mapping, a game that visually looked ahead of its time. As such I REFUSED to play UT99 (the Unreal Engine in its first iteration had an easiness for depicting big open spaces, but a very low polycount) for years, while lots of friends kept recommending it to me.

 

It wasn't until many years later that I dared to try UT99 and found that it was endlessly more entertaining. While QIII was a good deathmatch, UT had amazingly fun gamemodes (also the voice samples "i need some backup!", "i'm under heavy attack!", "you be dead!").

I realized I had been neglectful idiot.

 

I'm not sure there's much comparison in the music department, beyond ones fondness of particular songs. UT99's soundtrack is mostly Amiga-formatted mods (very common in Unreal Engine 1 games. I guess the engine had native support for those instead of wavs. Who knows why!) while QIII had some well known musical names behind: half the OST is from Front Line Assembly themselves, and the other half is from buddy Sascha Dikiciyan a.k.a. Sonic Mayhem, fresh from QII

[amackert]

54 minutes ago, jupiter_ex said:

back in that day I was all into the progress of graphics and engines in games, so QIII got me the moment I saw it. Id had achieved, through the careful use of some tricks, clever art design, positioned textures, and a very basic environment mapping, a game that visually looked ahead of its time.

 

Quake III, like Doom and Quake, was cutting-edge for its time. I remember it bringing my 400mhz K6-2 and Voodoo 3 to their knees (this was a system that had played everything else just about fine up to that point). It wasn't until I was able to get a 1Ghz Pentium III rig in mid 2001 that I could finally play it the way it was meant to be, and much like I would in earlier polygonal FPS titles, I would jump into empty local multiplayer sessions on my own just to gawk at the visuals (does anyone still do this with newer games today where the technological leap between games and eras isn't as drastic?). The curved architecture, the multi-textured surfaces with tons of animations, the subtly waving/moving flags on the walls, the metallic texture work on the power-ups (especially the Quad Damage), it was amazing stuff when it came out. While a lot of it is obviously dated now, I think some of it has held up fairly gracefully over the years too. I suppose that's the power of quality map and visual design in general.

[wheresthebeef]

UT99 for CTF and Assault

 

Quake 3 for Deathmatch

[Master O]

On 11/12/2019 at 9:53 PM, jupiter_ex said:

It wasn't until many years later that I dared to try UT99 and found that it was endlessly more entertaining. While QIII was a good deathmatch, UT had amazingly fun gamemodes (also the voice samples "i need some backup!", "i'm under heavy attack!", "you be dead!").

I realized I had been neglectful idiot.

 

 

As a Quake III player, that's definitely the impression I got when I first played UT99.  Both games have great deathmatch, but UT99 has a lot more game modes.  ID Software tried to remedy that with Team Arena, but I don't think ID succeeded there.