Would you buy an arena shooter (Q3A, UT) in 2025?

I've wanted a Free for all deathmatch game to play against my friends online for AGES, so I'd probably get it and also get it for my friends as well
 
most people don't even know what an Arena Shooter is these days... which is sad.
you'll see people refer to shooters with loadouts as Arena Shooters, which is the exact opposite of an Arena Shooter... like, the main trait of the genre is that there are no loadouts...

Halo Infinite could have been great but they fucked it up.

Splitgate was great, but died due to server issues and never recovered... now they made a sequel that isn't an Arena Shooter anymore and is just a slog to play. (they turned it into Halo 4 essentially)

Quake was turned into a fucking hero shooter and is basically dead too...

it's sad
 
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UT is my favourite game series of all time.

So many years playing UT, UT2003/04, UT3 and UT4 pre-alpha.

But UT (and Quake) are awful on controllers. I have the x360 versions of UT3 and Quake Arena Arcade for reference.

Games of that speed need a mouse and keyboard!
 
vaibhavpisal said:
Not overly keen on it.

I would be ok with new Halo.

Or if id soft made a new Quake with SP and multi components, that I would get.
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I'm honestly hoping that's the plan. Once they wanna take a break with DOOM, they'll revisit a proper Lovecraftian Quake game complete with a campaign + multiplayer. I mean... they HAVE to. At least I really want them to. 🥺
 
Not my game, not a fun time for me, so no. Never really liked them, just played them with friends but the gameplay is so shallow and meaningless to my brain that I can never enjoy it.

There are actually very few fps games I can stomach nowadays. D2 still has great gameplay but I haven't played in over a year. My next fps game will probably be either metroid prime 4, the new doom, or borderlands 4. Notice that in each of those cases we will also have other things to focus on like story, puzzles, funny dialog. Bland FPS gameplay by itself in modern day is not particularly immersive or fun to me. Multiplayer adds another level of suck.
 
phant0m said:
Gamers crave progression and unlocks now, which arena shooters are the antithesis of.
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That kind of thing could most certainly be incorporated as long as it feels and flows well. Quake Champions actually did it pretty decently, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.
 
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phant0m said:
Gamers crave progression and unlocks now, which arena shooters are the antithesis of.
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It's not just that, because the last Quake and Halo Infinite MP tried to do some of this and both also failed.

Arena shooters are in a weird spot where they don't adapt, they die, and if they do adapt, they die. CoD being one of the few anomalies because it's too big to fail.

Modern shooter fans prefer things to be more like fighting games. Round 1, Round 2, etc. than 10 min-straight killcount fests. And…I kind of get it. Rounds give the person a chance to make a comeback and you get a bit of downtime in between rounds to reset if you're tilting. Arena shooters won't give this chance as it keeps going until the person who's spiraling has a devastating loss.
 
Why would I? No developer is going to provide long-term support for a game like that. Features like map editors, dedicated servers and mod tools that used to be standard on PC died when consoles became the default platform for shooters, so having the players do it instead isn't an option either.
 
I would totally be down for some unreal tournament but not sure about quake. I played a bit of each back in the day but UT definitely had a much bigger place in my heart
 
How complicated could a game like Q3 be to develop?

Forgetting about any AI for the bots, it's mostly "just" nailing the shooting and level design, no? :unsure:
 
No. The F2P model has disproportionately affected the shooter genre. The sub genre isn't really important at this stage. The only ones that don't have to play ball are CoD and BF.

For strictly PvP games, you need to convince players who are interested that the playerbase will be big enough to sustain 24/7 action and not struggle to matchmake. And the reality is trying to persuade players to leave behind Fortnite or other games they've farmed cosmetics and rewards in is beyond hard.

Having said that I would love to see the modernised equivalent of UT2K4.
 
A new Unreal Tournament is pretty much at the top of my wishlist.

UT99 is still one of the best FPS games.

Still disappointed over UT4 being canceled.
 
March Climber said:
It's not just that, because the last Quake and Halo Infinite MP tried to do some of this and both also failed.

Arena shooters are in a weird spot where they don't adapt, they die, and if they do adapt, they die. CoD being one of the few anomalies because it's too big to fail.

Modern shooter fans prefer things to be more like fighting games. Round 1, Round 2, etc. than 10 min-straight killcount fests. And…I kind of get it. Rounds give the person a chance to make a comeback and you get a bit of downtime in between rounds to reset if you're tilting. Arena shooters won't give this chance as it keeps going until the person who's spiraling has a devastating loss.
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I don't think that's entirely true. I mean, Halo Infinite did really well for awhile, and people loved a lot about it. But there are other mismanaged reasons that caused it to fail. So much of it revolved around missing and expected content, and just overall expectations not being met. I mean Quake Champions has been on life support for years at this point, but they're still adding SOME content. It just feels like too little way too late.

I firmly believe there is a place where a new AAA arena shooter could release and do well. But the genre has to evolve and incorporate new mechanics that would be enticing and fun. "Fast and frenetic gameplay" is only going to do so much, the game needs more than that. I still feel like we're in a weird place in gaming in general, especially for FPS games and multiplayer games. There are SO many that do almost the exact same thing, and not enough have variation to make them stand out. I miss unique abilities, unique mechanics, unique weapons, a unique universe, etc. things that really make a game stand out just by looking at it.
 
There was an attempt to bring back Unreal Tournament like 10 years ago. It was accessible by downloading the UE4 development kit, and was a work in progress. But there was so little interest in it, that Epic cancelled it all together. They allowed modders to contribute maps and player models. The last Unreal Tournament game that I actually enjoyed was UT2004, and even then, I mostly stuck to onslaught, which I thought was the best mode in the game.

New modes were being added all the time. The game was in a pre-alpha state, so the graphics were not complete.

Epic were hoping that it would have drawn more interest. But as soon as Fortnite became popular, they quietly shut down the servers and canned the project in 2023. By then, the last legitimate update was like, from 2019, and most of the servers were ghost towns that were populated by AI bots. Would Epic try and revive this on UE5? I'm not sure. They are mostly focused on Fortnite and other projects.

 
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MiguelItUp said:
I firmly believe there is a place where a new AAA arena shooter could release and do well. But the genre has to evolve and incorporate new mechanics that would be enticing and fun. "Fast and frenetic gameplay" is only going to do so much, the game needs more than that. I still feel like we're in a weird place in gaming in general, especially for FPS games and multiplayer games. There are SO many that do almost the exact same thing, and not enough have variation to make them stand out. I miss unique abilities, unique mechanics, unique weapons, a unique universe, etc. things that really make a game stand out just by looking at it.
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I think this theoretical place where an arena shooter does good in today's market, is if it is already using an existing/popular I.P. to grab the people who like arena shooters in the first place.
 
March Climber said:
I think this theoretical place where an arena shooter does good in today's market, is if it is already using an existing/popular I.P. to grab the people who like arena shooters in the first place.
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Couldn't agree more. It's why I'm still bummed at id for just dropping it with DOOM Eternal and The Dark Ages, especially when DOOM invented deathmatch. It feels so odd to me to just.... not include it at all. Yes, I understand change and evolution. But inventing deathmatch was pretty damn huge, lol.

I'd like to think that Quake will be one of the future releases they'll drop, and I'd certainly hope they'd revisit multiplayer and make it substantial.
 
Who remembers this quake3 video, is was short in spectator mode,.there was a story to it, the characters were voiced and I think they were capturing the flag. Pretty sure sarge was in it.

Cant for the life of me remember the title.
 
If they were as good as the mentioned masterpieces? For sure, and I'm not even an MP gamer. I agree about the thoughts about fps games as well, I even made a similar thread about this in the past
DryvBy said:
A friend and I were discussing this seeing how Marathon looks like another shooter that is going to be DOA within a few months after launch. The discussion was about how the FPS genre feels like that era of RTS before RTS died off or how graphic adventures died. The FPS is one of my favorite genres and the only thing that seems lo last is Call of Duty, which is so goofy and stupid to me now that I want something new. (I do recommend Trepang2 and Prodeus outside of the upcoming DOOM if you want to shoot things again).

Most modern FPS arena type shooters die quickly and I think it's because they're made by people who don't like guns, and it shows. They don't like over the top violence and gibs. They don't like fun. Arena shooters are twitchy competitive shooters and I don't know if this is just lost on people now, or if they need the carrot (skins, progress bars and rankings, etc). Or if they just don't make them like they used to. So GAF, if they made a shooter that was similar to Q3A and UT, would you buy and play it? I'm talking

- loaded down with maps
- lots of gameplay modes that put f4a or team vs team
- no microtransactions
- mods from simple maps to full scale total conversion mods
- OP weapons that you need to hunt for and patrol
- blood and guts
- crazy weapons
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I gave unreal tournament 3 a good go. When I played there were only like 3 active servers lol. The game modes just sucked compared to UT 2024.

2024 was insanely good.

Any fans still running servers for it?
 
If it had good art direction and, most importantly, wasn't developed with Unreal Engine 5 - meaning it would have the chance of looking DIFFERENT and not like 99% of other shooters out there - then YES, assuming it didn't have shit like micro transactions and what not.
 
I still have my original copies of UT99 and UT2004. I never purchased UT2003, because I remember being unimpressed by the demo, and the fact that the the game launched in an incomplete state. basically almost all of the features found in UT2004 were planned for UT2003, but could not make it into the final release. I always found it interesting that the boxed copy of UT2004 that I have was published by Midway. But I purchased that online. UT99 was a game I purchased from a local computer store back in like 2000. Never owned UT3.

Sp74ZCf.jpeg
 
The only reason I'm not still playing the original Unreal Tournament is because it hates my computer.

If they would issue a solid, working re-release of that game, I'd buy it right now. But they won't, because, well, Epic really wants you to play Fortnite.
 
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