With Halo being so popular, why aren't arena shooters?

Aesthet1c said:
Halo is one of the biggest console franchises available. Most of it's praise seems to be stemmed from it's multiplayer, which got me thinking..

Why haven't games like Unreal Tournament and Quake fared better this generation? Their gameplay style is basically a faster paced version of Halo. When you look at the core of both games, they are both very similar.

For a while I believed the argument that there just isn't a market for that kind of game anymore, with the rise in popularity of military shooters. If that were the case though, how has Halo become such the juggernaut that it is?
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See, this isn't true. Yeah, a lot of people love its MP, but its popularity has plenty to do with the campaign... whether its played in single player or cooperatively.

I love Unreal, but campaign hasn't been a factor since the expansions to Unreal 1. Halo is heavy on both campaign and MP.
 
pls save us lord 2gd

f29ec24beba30009.jpg
 
animlboogy said:
And there's nothing wrong with that, either. It's actually kind of genius if you think about it, considering how high the skill ceilings would get in every competitive game before like, 2007. They found a way to make head to head play accessible for more people. So more people can have more fun.

The problem I have is more that guys who play these games all day every day never take the training wheels off and go to a game with a higher skill ceiling. They just keep grinding their thumbs against CoD incessantly. So now the new challenge is getting shooters to get an equivalent to the allure that Dota has for MMO PvP players. Dota is the biggest thing around, so it's not like games with an enormous gulf in skill between new players, vets, and pros is a dead idea, it just hasn't caught up to the post-CoD FPS.
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We will see what happens. Hopefully they start to move on to something with a higher skill ceiling and we start to see higher quality fps titles.

The opposite could happen as well, and the lowest common denominator may just want to stay down there and have no desire to improve or expand. We may see another generation of complete garbage.
 
I wasn't trying to discredit the SP portion of Halo, I'm just pointing out at how popular the MP portion is.

Also, I know Halo isn't an arena shooter, but things like the game modes, the high concept sci-fi weapons, and the very arcade like gameplay, are similarities that both games share.
 
Grief.exe said:
We will see what happens. Hopefully they start to move on to something with a higher skill ceiling and we start to see higher quality fps titles.

The opposite could happen as well, and the lowest common denominator may just want to stay down there and have no desire to improve or expand. We may see another generation of complete garbage.
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The skill ceiling in something like DotA comes down to understanding the mechanics. But you could be capable of writing the strategy guide for an arena shooter and still get owned in the face all day because your reaction time isn't fast enough. Or because you can't move the mouse accurately enough. If anything, DotA's popularity is the reaction to multiplayer games demanding incredible twitch skills for high level play.
 
Haunted said:
Why did Shattered Horizon bomb?
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Didn't it require windows 7 back when a lot of people were still using XP?


Anyways arena shooters need to come back.. I am so tired of the slow ass Halos and CODs.

Also if there is gona be slow shooters then I want to see more tactical shooters like SWAT. The current samey stuff is lame..
 
I've never considered Halo a Arena Shooter.
Since Halo has always had a lot of space in the MP department to be what you wanted it to be. Playing on small maps such as lock out really felt like a Arena game. Playing levels like Blood Gulch felt almost like playing something similar to Battlefield when it started getting hectic.

Then again though my definition of Arena shooter is basically everything Quake 3.
Since to me stuff like Unreal when it started adding siege mode (Which was fun) stopped being an arena shooter in those modes.
 
Its not the speed that compares Halo to UT and Quake - its the crazy gameplay of people flying all over the place, wild weapons, high jumping, and far fetched scenarios. Straight up crazy Capture the Flag gameplay is rare to come by on consoles outside of Halo. In this sea of grounded realistic shooters, I wish there were more FPSs like Halo or Team Fortress Classic too.

The thing is, super fast FPSs, especially ones that are centered around crazy mechanics like rocket jumps, will never work on a controller. Thats why Halo goes in other directions gameplay wise - but still mimics the UT/Quake style crazy CTF style modes, and it works.
 
I blame Id!! They spent way too many resources on single campaigns and forgot what they were good at. Once quake died, arena shooters died. Unreal 3 got rid of my lighting gun so f them.
 
Warsaw and Sauerbraten seem to be quite popular. That one Sauerbraten total conversion with wall running and dodging was really rad, but I think it's dead. Sauerbraten is overall great and instagib matches and the invasion mode are a blast. Surprised to always see at least one full Venice Instagib server whenever I play online.

It's a damn shame that UT3 didn't quite hit the mark. I'm ambivalent toward it because while I prefer it to the majority of multiplayer shooters of this gen, I do not prefer it to previous entries; all in all, I'd rather play UT2K4. It's kind of a shame they left UT3 to die because I recall Epic saying they wanted to release a full-blown expansion pack to it. A UT4 directly following the legacy of UT3 probably won't be too successful either.

Epic should release something Unreal this generation, regular Unreal or Tournament, to revitalize the franchise. CliffyB talked about making a sequel to Unreal inspired by Skyrim, iirc. While I do not want that or honestly a faithful sequel to the original Unreal, the fact that they're still into Unreal is good. Unreal 2 has some sweet ideas, and in the hands of a good development team a derivation of it could be great. If Epic is too busy, Digital Extremes could do it.
 
Halo nailed console gamepad controls. Quake and UT don't translate as well to console, but that doesn't explain why there aren't more for PC.
 
Twitch shooters like Q3 just dont work well on console controllers. I had quake 3 arena for the DC, and I enjoyed the little 4 player matches.

But once I bought it for my PC, it was a whole new fucking game. All the wild ass crazy custom maps, shitloads of people in one game, and the pace!? Jesus Christ the pace, breakneck speed from spawn to gibs. Twitch shooters are straight up bottled adrenaline.
 
Teknopathetic said:
"UT3 is such an odd situation. It threw everything at the wall and sort of undermined the hardcore crowd. But that bad word of mouth seemed to keep away people (like me) who probably would have loved the game. If we got that exact game today, it would seem like a gift from God."


Especially during that dark era of 1-2 years when dedicated servers weren't quite guaranteed in an FPS for some reason.
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If UT3 had released this year it would have been extremely popular. It's timing was probably the most insane decision out of all.
 
Haunted said:
Why did Shattered Horizon bomb?
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- Win 7/Vista exclusive. It came out at a time where barely anyone had Windows 7 and noone touched Vista
- DX10/11 exclusive
- Gameplay wasn't satisfying
- Mixed and Average reviews
- Barely any content
- Multiplayer only game
- Unknown unproven developer known only for benchmark apps
- No advertising
- No people playing. You don't buy game because no one is playing, people stop playing because it's dead, so people don't buy it because noone is playing. It's a vicious cycle.
- Price may of being a factor (was 20bucks).
- Other better shooters on the market
 
"If UT3 had released this year it would have been extremely popular. It's timing was probably the most insane decision out of all."


Yep. Released (rather silently) right after COD4 blew open the whole modern military theme park FPS thing. Also, Halo 3 I believe?

Poor, poor timing.
 
Halo also has a rich and engaging universe of places, characters and history.

It's impossible to pin the popularity of the Halo franchise on any one thing.
 
ZombieSupaStar said:
Man I would love unreal tournament to come back on unreal engine 4 and be the artstyle of ut99/2004. Gears of Tournament just wasn't fun to look at, or play in.


ut99, instagib, facing worlds, cola wars, lava giant, RANDOM_LARGE_ROOM_MAP_v211

and a kick ass soundtrack (2004 had an even better soundtrack imo)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_0G6WPuss4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G9bmVWlevg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wls7k5fxwc
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dat ost. UT99 is still the king of arena shooters imo.

Also, this.
 
Well I cant speak for Quake, but I just wish PlayStation would have an arena-like MP, a 6 on 6 competitive MP a la Halo/COD/Quake instead of doing all these big, squad based shooters they do.

I think Halo's success isn't fundamentally different from COD4's in that you are a free bird of a player, not tied down by classes or team responsibilities, and you just have these great controls that end up with really cool instances when playing in such styled maps.

Uncharted 2 MP mimics that as MP game for Sony, but it's not even close to Halo's success
 
"Well I cant speak for Quake, but I just wish PlayStation would have an arena-like MP, a 6 on 6 competitive MP a la Halo/COD/Quake instead of doing all these big, squad based shooters they do."


There was kind of that game called Unreal Tournament 3.
 
Aesthet1c said:
Their gameplay style is basically a faster paced version of Halo.
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This.

You said it yourself.

Halo IMHO is a perfect combination of skill and tactics and hence reasonable noob friendly. The faster arena ones are a lot more skill based and less tactics and very inaccessible for new players or occasional tourists.
 
We're really stretching the definition of "arena shooter" in this thread.

And to say that faster-paced games are less tactical is madness. The speed of play if anything makes second-to-second tactical considerations even more meaningful. Quake at the highest levels is all tactics.

One of the reasons I hate the term "twitch shooter" is for its implication that it's all about pure aiming, when far more goes into it.
 
"And to say that faster-paced games are less tactical is madness. The speed of play if anything makes second-to-second tactical considerations even more meaningful. Quake at the highest levels is all tactics."

Correct. Slower is not more tactical.
 
Teknopathetic said:
"And to say that faster-paced games are less tactical is madness. The speed of play if anything makes second-to-second tactical considerations even more meaningful. Quake at the highest levels is all tactics."

Correct. Slower is not more tactical.
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What nonsense.

Slower *is* more tactical since your brain has a lot more time to consider the situation. You can't f*ck with physics lad.
 
Pandaman said:
Playing Quake in 2012?
Didn't know it had bots.
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www.quakelive.com

The game has plenty of players. I play it nearly every day, in fact.

NemesisPrime said:
What nonsense.

Slower *is* more tactical since your brain has a lot more time to consider the situation. You can't f*ck with physics lad.
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What? Do you have some sort of tactics-per-second counter? Maybe *your* brain needs more time to consider the situation, but high level Quake play clearly indicates that the pace of the game does not affect the amount of tactics involved. Quake is as much about accuracy and mechanical control as it is about positioning and item control. Faster gameplay just means that tactics must be executed more quickly and must be subject to more rapid development. Planning is less relevant; improvisation is more relevant.
 
I'd fucking love to see more arena shooters. Halo is my favorite franchise, and I'd love to get sucked into another arena FPS. With what's currently out there on consoles, nothing else interests me.
 
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