Support NeoGAF

[sono]

I have been playing the various versions of Unreal Tournament for many years. It is my go to fast paced multiplayer twitch gaming shooter. Frankly I have been playing it on and off for so long it is part of my gaming make up.

Despite being unfinished prelease, I enjoy playing Unreal Tournament 4 A LOT.

I have been real busy with work start of 2023, but to my dismay last weekend I went to run up UT4 and Epic Games launcher said I didnt own it now!. Then when I went it the store I found it has been pulled from Epic store (along with all previous versions!!)

If you have never played UT4 here ls a demo of some of the available maps:




However thanks to the awesome work from the community you can continue to play UT4. I set this up and it is working just fine. If you are not aware the details are here:



Hope this helps someone!


Please rethink this Epic!

 

[Syphon Filter]

That isn't ut 4 and it was never finished btw. You are better off playing ut99 or 2k4 through ip.

 

[Bloobs]

Ill never understand why the arena shooter died.

 

[Rentahamster]

Ill never understand why the arena shooter died.

Not casual friendly.

 

[Phase]

Not casual friendly.

Plus it's not monetization friendly, so the industry moved away from it (i.e. the whole arena setup, everyone starts equal and battles it out for advantages on the map).

 

[salva]

didn't this end up turning into Fortnite?

 

[Drew1440]

That isn't ut 4 and it was never finished btw. You are better off playing ut99 or 2k4 through ip.

Don't forget Unreal Champtionship 2 on the Xbox, which is supported on the Xbox One.

 

[ResilientBanana]

Not casual friendly.

Neither is Rainbow

 

[Complistic]

Ill never understand why the arena shooter died.

Arena shooters weren't designed around squeezing every penny out of their players.

 

[Spukc]

Ill never understand why the arena shooter died.

 

[Sojiro]

It saddens me immensely that Epic is likely going to just sit on Unreal and we won't see another. Even worse they seem hellbent on erasing UT 99 and 2K4 off the earth. Sure it's great UT3 went free, and it's not a bad game, but I much prefer the other two. Sadly Epic just wants to focus on their storefront and Fortnite, and UT has become a forgotten stepping stone to get Epic to where they are now. I don't think we will see another UT come out from them.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Ill never understand why the arena shooter died.

Ask Gen z and the streamers.... Seriously. They'd rather watch morons playing on twitch or youtube than play themselves and created the whole fortnite gaas bs. Well to be fair the publishers pushed for that and microtransactions but they accepted it as normal as it was normalized on their phones growing up so they are cool with it.

That crap made me stop playing multiplayer and phone games. If I wanted to be nickel and dimed I'd go to a legit old school arcade.

Also Like others have said:
They can only get one time sales from Arena shooters. Games where everyone starts on the same footing and there is no pay to play nah. Now I'm sure they could sell cosmetic /non game stuff, but that honestly would suck. Just charge for the product and make a good game like they used to do.

It really sucks as I loved quake 3 and especially ut99 /04... Didn't care for unreal tournament 3 with it's gears of war models.

 

[Platinumstorm]

Ill never understand why the arena shooter died.

Arena shooters were high skill level with no sort of "progression". MMOs seemed to kill them along with COD and Battlefield, which had progression.

 

[Elder Legend]

Ill never understand why the arena shooter died.

Because Battle Royales are far better. More accessible, more casual friendly and a lot easier to monetize.

 

[Griffon]

Ill never understand why the arena shooter died.

Except its not quite exactly dead: Overwatch is a pretty good inheritor of that gameplay style (direct lineage from TF2, which comes directly from Quake).
Whenever I have the frag itch, OW2 is really good for it.

 

[ozz ex machina]

Except its not quite exactly dead: Overwatch is a pretty good inheritor of that gameplay style (direct lineage from TF2, which comes directly from Quake).
Whenever I have the frag itch, OW2 is really good for it.

Sorry but overwatch is a complete shell of any good arena shooter. It doesn't scratch the same itch for me at all. Everything has been dumbed down mechanically. Play some OW then go onto TF2 lol. The difference is skill and mechanics required they may as well be different genres.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Arena shooters weren't designed around squeezing every penny out of their players.

Yup. Tim Sweeney is all about collecting as much money as possible. He doesn’t give a shit about games.

 

[ParaSeoul]

Made by the team that would have been on unreal tournament 4,it does have a lot of the same aspects though.

 

[ParaSeoul]

Not casual friendly.

Ill never understand why the arena shooter died.

Because every revival attempt is always half assed in some way can't figure out if it wants to be a traditional arena shooter or have modern elements from what's popular at the time. Quake champions had that problem and was also outsourced to an external team that didn't use Id tech and still has technical issues to this day.

 

[nkarafo]

Because Battle Royales are far better. More accessible, more casual friendly and a lot easier to monetize.

These things you mentioned that aren't a part of arena shooters makes them far better.

Because i'm not the publisher or a stock holder.

 

[Evil Smurf King]

Unreal Championship 2 are available on xbox via backcompatibility and it remains great! It's a boomer that it doesn't have online gameplay, but It's great anyway.

Good times...

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Because Battle Royales are far better. More accessible, more casual friendly and a lot easier to monetize.

Disagree with you there. Battle Royale games have way too much down time both in game and waiting around in lobbies. Arena shooters, you respawn and have a higher skill ceiling and usually don’t rely on some stupid meta load out that requires time to research.

With esports being such a big thing now, I’m honestly surprised that the arena shooter hasn’t made a come back. A good Quake MP would be huge I think now.

 

[cireza]

Unreal Championship 2 are available on xbox via backcompatibility and it remains great! It's a boomer that it doesn't have online gameplay, but It's great anyway.

Good times...

There is UT3 as well but it's only 30fps...

 

[AeonGaidenRaiden]

Not casual friendly.

I never understood this point. How are arena shooters any harder than hero shooters of today that just as much if not more require strategy, even more-so they have heroes with specific powers for specific situations. Anyone can jump in an arena shooter. Was there some psycho out there that can play the game in his sleep? Yes but so is also for Halo, Overwatch, Rainbow, Fortnite etc. Any game I just listed you cant just pick up and think you will dominate. If you play on higher tier yes you can expect competition...but to say arena shooters arent for casuals, sorry but all of us were filthy casuals back then and I was never in any tournament for Quake or UT but i loved playing the game and was both winning and losing, we all were. PC cafes were everywhere, everyone could play not only an arena shooter but we also learned to play Counter Strike.

 

[AeonGaidenRaiden]

Disagree with you there. Battle Royale games have way too much down time both in game and waiting around in lobbies. Arena shooters, you respawn and have a higher skill ceiling and usually don’t rely on some stupid meta load out that requires time to research.

With esports being such a big thing now, I’m honestly surprised that the arena shooter hasn’t made a come back. A good Quake MP would be huge I think now.

Agree on all points, As much as I enjoyed Warzone I just couldnt take anymore all the waiting till the lobby gets packed and god forbid you get shot down right from the start....keep waiting to see if your team gets enough cash. If not then you just waited for nothing and are now back to lobby screen to repeat everything. Arena shooters are just fast paced chaos with zero downtime. I wish if at least they wont make more, after Quake I wish they ported something like Q3 or UT99.

 

[Elder Legend]

Disagree with you there. Battle Royale games have way too much down time both in game and waiting around in lobbies. Arena shooters, you respawn and have a higher skill ceiling and usually don’t rely on some stupid meta load out that requires time to research.

With esports being such a big thing now, I’m honestly surprised that the arena shooter hasn’t made a come back. A good Quake MP would be huge I think now.

I get what you are saying when it comes to the lobbies, I'll agree there. My point is that BRs are basically the modern day arena shooters. Quake did get Quake Champions and that didn't really go anywhere and kind of bombed.

I loved UT2004 but I just don't think arena shooters have a place anymore. They're too hardcore for majority of the population. There was another game recently that was a mix of Halo and Portal. I believe it was called Splitgate.

It was quite popular and the disappeared off the face of this earth. You had to shoot through portals, jump around like a maniac and try to land headshots, it was the closest thing to an arena shooter but it was extremely high skill capped, therefore it just died off.

Closest thing we have to an arena shooter right now that's both casual enough and competitive is honestly Halo Infinite. Now it's not as fast as something like UT or Quake, but it does has that old-school PC arena feel to it in my opinion.

Also, I believe Hi-Rez studios tried resurrecting Tribes, but that didn't go anywhere either. It wasn't very good or popular.

Here are the games mentioned in the post for reference -

Quake Champions - https://quake.bethesda.net/en
Tribes Ascend - https://www.tribesuniverse.com/
Splitgate - https://www.splitgate.com/

 

[Muay Ninja]

Unreal Championship 2 are available on xbox via backcompatibility and it remains great! It's a boomer that it doesn't have online gameplay, but It's great anyway.

Good times...

I loved this game and Unreal Championship also.

I also loved Paragon which had an Unreal kind of vibe about it asthetically (RIP).

 

[Elder Legend]

I loved this game and Unreal Championship also.

I also loved Paragon which had an Unreal kind of vibe about it asthetically (RIP).

You can still play it - I believe some company took over the assets and it's called Paragon - Overprime.

 

[nikos]

Think I'm going to try this. I still play UT99 every now and then and I'm in a bunch of UT related discords that I've been neglecting. It's one of my favorite games ever.

Only play Instagib though, so hopefully there's a community for that. Wonder what happened to the UT3X release we were supposed to get a couple of months ago.

 

[MiguelItUp]

didn't this end up turning into Fortnite?

No, they were working on it while working on Fortnite/BR, but then they swept it under the rug to move everyone to Fortnite. Much like Paragon. I can't speak on Paragon, but UT deserved so much more. It's both sad and hilarious to see one of their OG original IPs treated in such a way, lol.

 

[Calling 911 Melts Beams]

epic told me i cant have this and im going to respect their wishes by never ever playing it

 

[Rentahamster]

I never understood this point. How are arena shooters any harder than hero shooters of today that just as much if not more require strategy, even more-so they have heroes with specific powers for specific situations. Anyone can jump in an arena shooter. Was there some psycho out there that can play the game in his sleep? Yes but so is also for Halo, Overwatch, Rainbow, Fortnite etc. Any game I just listed you cant just pick up and think you will dominate. If you play on higher tier yes you can expect competition...but to say arena shooters arent for casuals, sorry but all of us were filthy casuals back then and I was never in any tournament for Quake or UT but i loved playing the game and was both winning and losing, we all were. PC cafes were everywhere, everyone could play not only an arena shooter but we also learned to play Counter Strike.

It's not casual friendly because your performance is on you and you alone. You don't have a team to fall back on and blame if you lose. You don't have comeback mechanics to assist you when you're losing. You don't have progression mechanics to make up for your lack of skill. In arena shooters, if you die, it's very obvious that it's your own fault. Casuals don't like having that pointed out to them so bleakly.

This is why fighting games with a good story and single player mode sell better than fighting games with no story mode and strictly amazing 1v1 skill-based gameplay.