Why Is The Original Unreal Not As Well Known As The Unreal Tournament Series And Quake??

[A Nobody]

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

Im so glad @Endless posted the magazine pic - That's literally the first thing i think of whenever i hear Unreal. That, and the ubiquitious ''It melted PC's back then'' (which it did.)

 

It also would not be a Strife Commando thread without some inane baffling that some things are as they are, albeit these things are known for the past 20+ years or so.

 

But i digress. It wouldn't be a TSC thread if my pompous ass isn't in it :P
 

1. Most people know about Unreal. Its not a wildly obscure game
2. Most people also know it was made by Epic Games since it pretty much cemented Epic Games as a developer (Jazz Jackrabbit, ZZT and Jill in the Jungle were previous titles to this)
3. Back in the day Unreal was the hottest thing since wet rocks. But then there was also Half-Life, and Turok. Two wildly different games that also further advanced the genre. Unreal's open spaces are quite reminiscent of Turok's level designs.

Its like asking why Quake 2 was not as popular as Quake 3. Except its also a wildly popular title.

 

Your question would be more valid if you were asking why Deathmatch Classic never got as popular as the titles you mention.

UT (and Quake 3) arrived at the right place at the right time. Internet connections were getting faster. Graphics advancements followed up quickly. Multiplayer became more than just deathmatch (And was going to get a massive boost with Counter-Strike in 1999). UT and Q3 arrived with advanced 3D engines, timeless level designs and fast paced action. Subsequent clones never were as successful.

 

Its why people still play these titles, 20 years on - Their gameplay is so incredibly polished, you don't want anything else.

 

See this is what i don't get. You make these threads and ask these questions to start off a discussion, but when someone replies with an indepth rebuttal, you do the equivalent of knodding without opinionating anything further.

Like, why? Why ask a question and then forfeit any more indepth participation?

Fortunatley we still have UT3. Which, i have to say, is pretty effin solid as an UT game aswell.

Crysis 3 was definitely more layered and allowed for more kinds of approaches - Though still quite limited compared to the first one. Visually damning though and its bizarre how it has yet to see a PS4/XBO/PS5/XSX release yet. On PS360, it looks incredible, PC even more so.

Not again. Come on, I haven't said anything stupid this time.

[Pirx]

5 hours ago, seed said:

 

This is pretty much how Epic died as a game developer for me, for good. I STILL can't fucking believe they canned the UT reboot (at least, I recall it was going to be a reboot of sorts), their highly relevant franchise for gaming history, and very competent games able to stand on their own feet, for that trash. Beyond pathetic in my book. Traded their legacy for the temporal popularity of a game that will be remembered for nothing.

 

 

 

a big shame that is.

[Bauul]

I think a lot of it is just down the longevity of the series.  Quake was followed by three sequels, and id Software remains to this day a powerhouse of producing id Software-style FPS games.  Quake is all tied into the same history that gave us Doom, Wolfenstein (and Rage to a lesser extent).  

 

Unreal was great, but it's not part of the same long-lasting series of games.  The direct sequel left very little impression (even though personally I rather enjoyed it), and Unreal Tournament was seen more of a spin-off (while Quake 3 is interestingly seen more as a sequel).  Epic themselves went on to be known more for a variety of genres and their engine hardware, and these days more people would associate Unreal with an engine name than a game series.

 

7 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Unreal Tournament was first? I didn't know that. I thought Quake 3 came first. So Epic Games made the arena shooter genre. Was Quake 3 considered inferior or better to some?

 

 

To say "Epic made the arena shooter genre" isn't accurate at all.  By today's standards, Doom was the first arena shooter through virtue of its deathmatch mode.  If we're talking dedicate deathmatch games, UT and Quake 3 came out within 2 weeks of each other, so it's fair to say both id Software and Epic popularized the genre at that time.

 

In terms of which was more popular, my impression is it's generally accepted that the pure second-by-second gunplay of Quake 3 was slightly better than UT's, but UT had a vastly wider array of game-modes, settings and mutators.  It essentially invented things like Domination (the stable mode of modern FPSs like Battlefield and Overwatch) and asymmetrical objective based modes.  But for the pure deathmatch side of things, Q3 was just that bit tighter and more balanced.

[Kokoro Hane]

Whilst the original Unreal may not be talked about as much as its UT spinoff, I wouldn't say it's not as well known. I was actually surprised how many people on Doomworld know it (very pleasantly surprised). It was a game that showed off the power of the original Unreal engine, its graphics (though now dated) still is not bad on the eyes (the game's layout and atmosphere still have me in awe, I also just really like how water looks), and it has one of my favorite game OSTs of all time! I think why UT is more popular is because of multiplayer maybe? But Unreal had botmatch, which is basically prototype Unreal Tournament. So I'm not really sure how to answer that question... UT would have more fast paced action, whilst Unreal (which DOES have a lot of action) also has a lot of atmosphere, exploration, and even a little puzzle solving. 

 

Either way, Unreal is a classic, and not a forgotten one. It's still pretty despite its dated graphics, and remains my personal #1 video game of all time. Despite its age, you had to have a really nice card at the time to play it. I remember when I first played it (I think the game was already 2-4 years old by that time) the beginning movie was choppy and it took SO LONG to load a map (the bigger the map, the longer it took). Luckily gameplay wasn't bad, but man that load time... I still remember finally being able to play it on a computer that loaded maps quickly and the opening not choppy, I was super happy hahaha. Nowadays, even standard laptops can play it but still nice to look at.

[Dark Pulse]

4 hours ago, Kokoro Hane said:

Either way, Unreal is a classic, and not a forgotten one. It's still pretty despite its dated graphics, and remains my personal #1 video game of all time. Despite its age, you had to have a really nice card at the time to play it. I remember when I first played it (I think the game was already 2-4 years old by that time) the beginning movie was choppy and it took SO LONG to load a map (the bigger the map, the longer it took). Luckily gameplay wasn't bad, but man that load time... I still remember finally being able to play it on a computer that loaded maps quickly and the opening not choppy, I was super happy hahaha. Nowadays, even standard laptops can play it but still nice to look at.

Can only imagine the Sunspire must've taken FOREVER to load for you. :P

 

I'd say it really has to boil down to what a lot of people said in this thread: Right place, right time, with a solid competitor that would inevitably be a battle of a long-time champion versus a hot up-and-comer. Q3 had the better graphics, but UT99 ran on more systems and had far more diverse gameplay. So good even the consoles wanted them (and got them).

 

Unreal II, FWIW, wasn't a bad game - it just wasn't an UNREAL game. A few token references (Krall weapons and Skaarj do not an Unreal make) isn't exactly enough. Name it anything else and it would've been okay. Ne'ban was underrated though, and I did like that third mission on the living planet where you go down into it, and by the time you come back up, fountains of gore and bile are spewing from its pores. And it had the absolutely CRIMINALLY underrated U2XMP, which way, way, WAY more people should've gotten a chance to experience. (Though a pretty faithful conversion was made for UT2k4.)

 

The one thing that's really kept Unreal (and to an extent, UT99) lesser known though, is simple: The engines remain closed-source. Only so many improvements can be made, but some of the critical engine-side code (for example, the engines really don't like framerates above 120 FPS or so) could only be fixed with a proper engine rework. Tim Sweeney has said in the past that it might be possible to get Unreal Engine 1 opensourced, but of course, that was A) five years ago and B) pre-Fortnite, so forget that. (Also note UE2/3 opensource will never happen - too much middleware baked into the engine itself.)

 

Tim, man... the community will clean it up. Trust me. Put it out there as-is, warts and all. If it don't frigging compile, there are people who will MAKE it compile. They'll teach it to be happy. They'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

 

As-is, I really feel like the only way the engines will be sourced will be if it's reverse-engineered. (Of course, there are those leaked sources for Unreal and UT99 that totally don't exist at all, but hey.) And I hope to god someone does it soon, because it's a miracle these games still run on a modern OS AT ALL.

[Murdoch]

Unreal, much like Quake, is a good but flawed game in my opinion. It needed a bit more polish and refinement, and some editing. Too often it felt like it was spinning it's wheels. Too much map bloat and tedium in places. I remember little of the game save the first few maps. Compare it to my favourite map set for it called illhaven. A much tighter and focused experience.  That author understood the game perfectly leveraged that knowledge very well.

 

I was heavy into onslaught in ut2004. Most of the players moved to ut3... and quickly moved back. Something was just off about it. They tweaked the gameplay too much and a lot of it was grey and dull to look at.

[Dark Pulse]

6 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

I was heavy into onslaught in ut2004. Most of the players moved to ut3... and quickly moved back. Something was just off about it. They tweaked the gameplay too much and a lot of it was grey and dull to look at.

Really? Once UT3 came around and it wasn't the pure hitscan lovefest that 2k4 was, I never looked back at 2k4 save for a few times. Of course, then Midway had to fuck it by forcing the devs to use GameSpy *AND* rush the game out like six months early to try to cover their own hemorrhaging losses, but hey.

 

Plus the Orb actually solved one of Onslaught's really big problems - the stalemate where a team just turtled up and defended a single CP. An orb to bust that could change that bitch in a heartbeat.

[Murdoch]

1 hour ago, Dark Pulse said:

Really? Once UT3 came around and it wasn't the pure hitscan lovefest that 2k4 was, I never looked back at 2k4 save for a few times. Of course, then Midway had to fuck it by forcing the devs to use GameSpy *AND* rush the game out like six months early to try to cover their own hemorrhaging losses, but hey.

 

Plus the Orb actually solved one of Onslaught's really big problems - the stalemate where a team just turtled up and defended a single CP. An orb to bust that could change that bitch in a heartbeat.

 

Ah yes the orb. That was actually a useful idea. I forgot about that. But yeah, in the NZ/Australia Onslaught community at least, it tanked hard. I cannot think of a single regular who deserted 2k4 in favour of it. Some persisted for a time but in the end most seemed to gravitate back. I think regular DM was popular for a time on UT3.

[holaareola]

11 hours ago, Kokoro Hane said:

But Unreal had botmatch, which is basically prototype Unreal Tournament. So I'm not really sure how to answer that question...

Only tangentially related, but it popped to mind reading your post: Unreal's AI was written by Steven Polge, hired by Epic on the strength of his Reaper Bot mod for Quake. One of the first FPS player-parity AI opponents I believe.

 

Very cool for a hobbyist to cross over to pro in a frontier area like AI at that time.

[ScreechingBoner]

6 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Unreal, much like Quake, is a good but flawed game in my opinion. It needed a bit more polish and refinement, and some editing. Too often it felt like it was spinning it's wheels. Too much map bloat and tedium in places.

This is exactly why I couldn't finish my playthrough of Unreal, too many levels around the mid-game were too big for their own good, really couldn't be bothered to drag myself through that slog.

[Kokoro Hane]

@Dark Pulse Oh the Sunspire, my favorite level.... but yeah that took quite long to load back in the day lol. 

 

Also here's to hoping Unreal 1 becomes opensourced, because man, that'd be AWESOME!

[ReaperAA]

10 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

The one thing that's really kept Unreal (and to an extent, UT99) lesser known though, is simple: The engines remain closed-source. Only so many improvements can be made, but some of the critical engine-side code (for example, the engines really don't like framerates above 120 FPS or so) could only be fixed with a proper engine rework. Tim Sweeney has said in the past that it might be possible to get Unreal Engine 1 opensourced, but of course, that was A) five years ago and B) pre-Fortnite, so forget that. (Also note UE2/3 opensource will never happen - too much middleware baked into the engine itself.)

 

Tim, man... the community will clean it up. Trust me. Put it out there as-is, warts and all. If it don't frigging compile, there are people who will MAKE it compile. They'll teach it to be happy. They'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

 

Correct me if I am wrong. While the code of Unreal/UT99 has not been open sourced, Epic has provided the code to some key members of the Oldunreal community for maintenance.

 

This is how Unreal's patch 227 and UT99's patch 469 came to be.

[A Nobody]

Which Unreal Tournament game is considered the best and why?

[Dark Pulse]

9 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Ah yes the orb. That was actually a useful idea. I forgot about that. But yeah, in the NZ/Australia Onslaught community at least, it tanked hard. I cannot think of a single regular who deserted 2k4 in favour of it. Some persisted for a time but in the end most seemed to gravitate back. I think regular DM was popular for a time on UT3.

Ah. I'm a North American player here, and while 2k4 remained strong for awhile (longer than UT3 did, anyway), for the years where I was really playing them, I didn't have too much trouble finding Warfare games.

 

4 hours ago, Kokoro Hane said:

@Dark Pulse Oh the Sunspire, my favorite level.... but yeah that took quite long to load back in the day lol. 

 

Also here's to hoping Unreal 1 becomes opensourced, because man, that'd be AWESOME!

The Sunspire was impressive as hell for sure, but I'd say my favorite chunk of the levels would have to be the Terraniux set. SkyTown is a close second.

 

And fuck Chizra. That map always made me lost.

 

3 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Correct me if I am wrong. While the code of Unreal/UT99 has not been open sourced, Epic has provided the code to some key members of the Oldunreal community for maintenance.

 

This is how Unreal's patch 227 and UT99's patch 469 came to be.

I didn't even know about that UT99 Patch 469. I'm familiar with OldUnreal though, of course.

 

I mean, that's a step in the right direction, but... why all the secrecy? Why lock it out to only a handful of people?

 

To me, this is just the UTPG situation all over again - great while it lasts, then those people disappear, and we're right back to square one. To me, that's a huge problem. The public headers can only get you so far.

 

No developer keeps their project going forever, after all. Interests wane, life happens. Not everybody is going to develop the same thing for 20 years like Dwarf Fortress, and even that will eventually reach an endpoint with "death of the developers."

Edited December 4, 2020 by Dark Pulse

[Dark Pulse]

(Apologies for the double-postage)

[Redneckerz]

6 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Which Unreal Tournament game is considered the best and why?

The original.

 

Toss between 2004 and 3 on second place, 2003 imo last.

 

If you played the original, you would know why.

[Nekr0s1s]

On 12/3/2020 at 5:00 PM, Redneckerz said:

Its why people still play these titles, 20 years on - Their gameplay is so incredibly polished, you don't want anything else.

 

also, everyone can make their own dedicated servers and call some buddies to join. you're not at the developer's mercy with regards to shutting down servers.

[LexiMax]

On 12/3/2020 at 1:12 PM, seed said:

This is pretty much how Epic died as a game developer for me, for good. I STILL can't fucking believe they canned the UT reboot (at least, I recall it was going to be a reboot of sorts), their highly relevant franchise for gaming history, and very competent games able to stand on their own feet, for that trash. Beyond pathetic in my book.

 

Here's the uncomfortable truth.  Arena Shooters - at least in the way they existed in the late 90's and early 2000's - are dead and I don't think they're coming back.

 

There have been numerous attempts at a revivals over the years.  Unreal Tournament 3 wasn't successful.  Quake 4 wasn't successful.  Quake Live lasted for a while but never became the sensation needed to sustain it long term.  None of the free indie arena shooters that exited in the 2000's ever broke out beyond a small fan-base.  None of the indie arena shooters that existed more recently like the commercial Nexuiz, Toxikk, and Reflex ever managed to retain a large community.  Halo (which is an arena shooter, I am not taking questions at this time) was torched by Halo 4, but even Halo 5 didn't bring large amounts of players back.  Even the return of the king in Quake Champions never really managed to find its footing.

 

I have heard various excuses for why each one of these failed in isolation.  But when you have such a long string of failures to launch - I think you have to seriously reconsider if the foundations of the genre are solid.  The arena shooter formula is merely the formula that just so happened to fall out of the game design of Doom and Quake, which was designed for the single-player experiences of the day.  Put a bunch of weapons and random player spawns in an arena with item respawn timers and see what happens.  It might've been fun for us back in the day because of the novelty of playing games online, but if you are designing a multiplayer shooter holistically from scratch, I don't think you would make many of the same choices that Arena Shooters made.  I think you would end up with something more like Overwatch or Rainbow Six: Siege or Apex Legends.

 

Granted, I am ready to be wrong on this.  But here's how I see it.  They gave games like Warsow and Xonotic and Quake Live away in the 2000's and they never gained a huge following.  Meanwhile, Fortnite was released for free and it's probably one of the most played games out there.  That to me speaks volumes about Arena Shooters, and I think Epic made the right play on abandoning UT.  And speaking of Fortnite...

 

Quote

Traded their legacy for the temporal popularity of a game that will be remembered for nothing.

 

I'm sorry, this is just silly.  You might not enjoy the game (I certainly don't care for it), but Fortnite is at the very least going to be remembered fondly by the significant population that played it, and has a very real chance to be a gaming cultural touchstone like Minecraft.

Edited December 5, 2020 by AlexMax

[[McD] James]

Yeah, I don't see Fortnite going anywhere any time soon. I don't have any interest in ever playing it myself, but I think it's fair to say that it's established itself as being a lot more than just another trend. 

[A Nobody]

Unreal Tournament 4 shouldn't have been abandoned.

 

Do multiplayer modes like GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, Turok (original series, not the reboot), and such count as arena shooters?

[seed]

47 minutes ago, Ajora said:

Yeah, I don't see Fortnite going anywhere any time soon. I don't have any interest in ever playing it myself, but I think it's fair to say that it's established itself as being a lot more than just another trend. 

 

This is something only time will tell, I'm honestly not sure it's not one. As it was with other games that came before, once the next big thing comes out people will move to it and forget the old. Trends, without something important standing behind them, are simply forgotten once the next thing arrives.

 

1 hour ago, AlexMax said:

I'm sorry, this is just silly.  You might not enjoy the game (I certainly don't care for it), but Fortnite is at the very least going to be remembered fondly by the significant population that played it, and has a very real chance to be a gaming cultural touchstone like Minecraft.

 

Perhaps, but Minecraft at least will be remembered for more than "that one game that kickstarted the Battle Royale genre". I honestly don't see what's so fascinating about it, so perhaps it's just a "me" problem because I genuinely don't get it at all.

 

There's also another issue: I am certainly not trying to hide the fact that I'm very biased against Fortnite, extremely silly as it may come off at times, and it's true thatcmuch of it is coming from UT's cancellation which left a strong shit taste in my mouth, especially when considering its alleged troubled development (by the looks of it, it never really had a chance to begin with) but be that as it may.

 

I am not saying that these types of games are probably no longer able to take on the new market like they once were, but I still think they would have had their own place if the developers/publishers tried harder and brought more innovations to the genre at the same time, if you don't bring anything new to the table to revitalize the old, then it's doomed from the start. The marketing and advertising also strikes me as a lot weaker than that of those new shooters. Maybe they would have not been all the rage all over again, I also highly doubt that since the landscape changed too much since then, but still. I think the effort was just... insufficient if you will.

 

The target demographic could also be taken into account here, because let's be honest, most of Fortnite's population is certainly not the type to open themselves to such titles unless they're really desperate to join a group they most definitely don't belong to.

Edited December 5, 2020 by seed

[LexiMax]

31 minutes ago, seed said:

I am not saying that these types of games are probably no longer able to take on the new market like they once were, but I still think they would have had their own place if the developers/publishers tried harder and brought more innovations to the genre at the same time, if you don't bring anything new to the table to revitalize the old, then it's doomed from the start.

 

I agree, you have to bring something new to the table and innovoate.  Game developers agreed too.  And that's why Arena Shooters aren't around anymore, because the more you innovate, the more you realize those old Arena Shooter trappings don't make much sense or are just plain not fun for most people.

 

Halo's controller-friendly slow movement system.  CS's economy instead of picking up weapons randomly strewn around the level.  Actual objectives to focus your attention on in pretty much every newer game.  Destructible levels in Battlefield and Rainbow Six.  Halo's vehicles that were implemented in a way that feels holistic instead of tacked-on.  Destiny allowing you to bring any of the dozens of weapons you've unlocked from the RPG progression system into PvP.  Overwatch's character abilities.  Even Call of Duty's kill-streak system was an innovation, despite it being infuriating and a bad idea.

[ReaperAA]

I was extremely angry when UT4 was cancelled and it's dev team was pulled to work on Fortnite. But as much as I hate to admit it (being that I am huge fan of UT myself), AlexMax is probably right. From a strictly profit earning point of view, Epic made the right call focusing on Fortnite over UT as arena Shooters are just not profitable right now.

 

Quake Live was the last semi-mainstream Arena FPS (mainstream as in having some ESport scene). Now that many of the players have left it, even Quake Live is barely living.

 

A part of the reason why arena shooters are not as popular (and would likely never be mainstream again) is that the majority of players like instant gratification which is achieved via stuff like perks, XPs, easy learning curve, new cool features and more.

 

Arena Shooters, especially the "Quake-likes", are the antithesis of such design. Not to mention that these arena shooters usually have hardcore playerbase which makes it very difficult for newbies to enter. They also don't work well on controllers/gamepads so console players will almost certainly not play these games.

[seed]

35 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

I was extremely angry when UT4 was cancelled and it's dev team was pulled to work on Fortnite. But as much as I hate to admit it (being that I am huge fan of UT myself), AlexMax is probably right. From a strictly profit earning point of view, Epic made the right call focusing on Fortnite over UT as arena Shooters are just not profitable right now.

 

Quake Live was the last semi-mainstream Arena FPS (mainstream as in having some ESport scene). Now that many of the players have left it, even Quake Live is barely living.

 

A part of the reason why arena shooters are not as popular (and would likely never be mainstream again) is that the majority of players like instant gratification which is achieved via stuff like perks, XPs, easy learning curve, new cool features and more.

 

Arena Shooters, especially the "Quake-likes", are the antithesis of such design. Not to mention that these arena shooters usually have hardcore playerbase which makes it very difficult for newbies to enter. They also don't work well on controllers/gamepads so console players will almost certainly not player these games.

 

Which is exactly what bothered me so much about the whole ordeal. They let profitability dictate the course of action, which for a corporation makes sense I suppose, but I still believe that there was likely going to be a place for both games. Besides, they also had the resources to pull it off, but instead dropped UT for good.

 

I don't really agree on the points you've mentioned though. Easy learning curve? No, these games only look more simple in some regards, but if anything they are quite steeper than arena shooters. There was plenty of learning in them, but to get the most out of them, no, these new games take a lot more effort and time to learn. Getting Brutally Deceased in them is just as common if not even more so than it was in the other games, especially not with all the hypercompetitive players around, I've had enough of that to last me five lifetimes, no sarcasm. And also had a more pleasant environment, nowadays it's all a cesspit. Harder to play with a controller? This applies to all FPSes though, they were no different.

 

All things considered, none of these aspects sound like instant gratification to me, rather the polar opposite actually, though some of them are independent from the actual game, such as the environment, it's not the 2000s anymore. Firing up the game and joining a random server for a simple match sounds much closer to that ideal to me.

[ReaperAA]

50 minutes ago, seed said:

Easy learning curve? No, these games only look more simple in some regards, but if anything they are quite steeper than arena shooters. There was plenty of learning in them, but to get the most out of them, no, these new games take a lot more effort and time to learn.

 

OK, maybe I didn't word it correctly. But what I meant is that there is a sharp learning climb in the arena shooters. In arena shooters, even a very small different between skill level of 2 players (like in a 1 vs 1 match) would result in a huge score difference of something like a 1-10 or 2-15 (kills to death ratio) etc. Whereas in most modern FPS games, a small skill gap would result in a smaller score difference.

 

Also while arena shooters may seem easier on the surface, mastering them is much harder imho. Item/armor timing, tricky movement skills like strafejumping or circle jumping, strong map knowledge, good aim and trying to read your opponent's mind are all necessary here. See this video of Quake Live match:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkDjsBiO58

 

1 hour ago, seed said:

Harder to play with a controller? This applies to all FPSes though, they were no different.

 

Agree to disagree here. Arena FPS games are much harder on consoles compared to modern FPS games. It is extremely difficult to do advanced movement like strafejumping using a controller. Also managing/switching between 2 weapons is much easier than cycling through multiple weapons. Pretty much why Halo's 2 weapon system got popular.

 

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy arena shooters more than the modern/military shooter. But I can see why most players don't enjoy them.

 

1 hour ago, seed said:

Firing up the game and joining a random server for a simple match sounds much closer to that ideal to me.

 

This I agree with. I miss those days when anyone could create their own servers.

[A Nobody]

2 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

I was extremely angry when UT4 was cancelled and it's dev team was pulled to work on Fortnite. But as much as I hate to admit it (being that I am huge fan of UT myself), AlexMax is probably right. From a strictly profit earning point of view, Epic made the right call focusing on Fortnite over UT as arena Shooters are just not profitable right now.

 

Quake Live was the last semi-mainstream Arena FPS (mainstream as in having some ESport scene). Now that many of the players have left it, even Quake Live is barely living.

 

A part of the reason why arena shooters are not as popular (and would likely never be mainstream again) is that the majority of players like instant gratification which is achieved via stuff like perks, XPs, easy learning curve, new cool features and more.

 

Arena Shooters, especially the "Quake-likes", are the antithesis of such design. Not to mention that these arena shooters usually have hardcore playerbase which makes it very difficult for newbies to enter. They also don't work well on controllers/gamepads so console players will almost certainly not play these games.

I play Quake 3 on console, and arena shooters work well on console. Turok Rage Wars is an arena fps. For god's sake, arena shooters already worked on consoles! Unreal Tournament 3 is an example. Timesplitters proved it too before. Having multiple weapons is better than 2. Halo was a PC game at first, so the whole mentality of it being slower because of the controller is stupid.

[THEBaratusII]

I never understood what was all the rage in Fortnite to be honest. I seen it as a large-scale "Last Man Standing mode with a mixture of Minecraft" and I felt like Epic went downhill for me when they canned (or put on hold) UT4.

 

As for the first Unreal, it is a great classic and still remembered, but I also considered the deathmatch being not as popular as UT's deathmatch. Other than that the singleplayer and the coop games are really great. I honestly wished Unreal got the same love as Half-Life to be honest.

[Spectre01]

48 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

Halo was a PC game at first, so the whole mentality of it being slower because of the controller is stupid.

Everything about Halo feels like it's made for consoles with controllers in mind. From the slow and floaty movement to the crappy accuracy and spread on a lot of the weapons. Playing Halo on PC when the first port came out really highlighted how inferior the gameplay felt compared to PC-focused shooters. Also, much easier than on console.

[LexiMax]

5 hours ago, seed said:

Which is exactly what bothered me so much about the whole ordeal. They let profitability dictate the course of action, which for a corporation makes sense I suppose, but I still believe that there was likely going to be a place for both games. Besides, they also had the resources to pull it off, but instead dropped UT for good. 

 

Epic has more money than they know what to do with at this point, not only because of Fortnite but because of Unreal engine.  If they wanted to make Unreal Tournament as a side thing, they easily could.  The fact that they dropped the project tells me that their opposition to the project had nothing to do with the dollars and cents of it, and more to do that they thought making another arena shooter wasn't a productive use of their time.

 

EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot about Splitgate, add that to the pile.

Edited December 6, 2020 by AlexMax

[A Nobody]

 

2 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Everything about Halo feels like it's made for consoles with controllers in mind. From the slow and floaty movement to the crappy accuracy and spread on a lot of the weapons. Playing Halo on PC when the first port came out really highlighted how inferior the gameplay felt compared to PC-focused shooters. Also, much easier than on console.

It was in development for Mac before moving to the Xbox. Timesplitters, released before Halo, was very fast paced, let you hold a lot of guns, had bots, and more. Aiming is very good in the TS series. Aren't there slow shooters released on PC?