Why does this game keep getting horribly worse with every update?
Because ut until now (this version/this versions development) has been an arena fps and Epic are now creating an “arena fps inspired shooter”, which sounds something blizzard would have said about overwatch. Epic are no longer making Unreal Tournament because they are no longer making an arena fps.
Our goal is for Blitz to become the primary 5v5 game mode for Unreal Tournament. We want to retain some of the core ideas of what make Arena Shooters fun, while at the same time modernizing aspects of the game that may be stuck in “legacy land” for no particularly strong reason. Source
So it has come to the point where they are no longer making ut. They are making a game that is potentially inspired by ut but is not an arena fps. Sounds a bit like this. If Epic had stated that they want to retain the arena fps core and modernise other aspects that would have been fine, however they want to keep some core ideas that make arena shooters fun. An example from overwatch. Widowmaker has a grapple, which is obviously inspired by quake 2 CTF and kept the core “idea” of the grapple. The grapple in q2 is fun and it is retained in a manner that makes it fun still, while essentially making it nothing like grapple in q2 at all. Given the hardon epic have for ow this is a direction that is reasonable to expect. The new LG is (or was) an almost direct rip of the ana gun – which is sad because it is such a garbage and uninspired weapon.
Unreal Tournament is an arena shooter, if these aspects are removed it is no longer unreal tournament. Things that make a game an arena shooter in my mind are – weapons, movement, lack of classes, fast respawns and pickups. These do not always apply, as CA/TAM have rounds and no pickups yet would not make a game not-arena fps. Weapons is a fairly broad concept but if you compare ut/quake to cs/cod one gets the point fairly quickly.
Maybe Epic are confused as to what constitutes an arenafps – perhaps Sid purely thinks of arenafps = gametype. You know.. there is an arena, there are pickups, etc. Deathmatch. If that is the case.. fine, but at the same time it is difficult to imagine Epic making that particular “mistake”.
The truth is they are making changes to core arenafps principals in order to make flagrun “better”. By the time they are finished the only thing ut about the new ut will be the name. It is not overly surprising that epic have gone the overwatch way. Their history is riddled with changes and copying other franchises without understanding – and luck. The Unreal franchise started as a magic carpet clone which then went on to become an FPS, probably due to iDs success with doom. From here there are amazing choices like shipping ut99 on “hardcore” instead of “normal” – basically a % modifier to many aspects of the game. It is hard to imagine that the game was designed with this in mind – create base game, apply across the board %s to make things faster and you are done? Is that next level design or straight up butchery. Likewise fast switch in 2k3, obviously taken from q3 with no understanding turned the game into shock primary -> lg -> shock primary -> lg, simply because the weapon switch negated the reload. This was addressed in 2k4, however why it was implemented in the first place boggles the mind – Epic don’t understand and given the complete lack of direction in the ut4 project this is unlikely to have changed.
Look at history.
Unreal – trash multiplayer, abysmal map list.
UT99 – decent multiplayer which is essentially a “fixed” version of Unreal with new gametypes
2k3 – trash multiplayer, abysmal map list.
2k4 – decent, the issues from 2k3 are addressed and the game is better. This is also because of more maps.
UT3 – trash multiplayer
UT3 never had a followup title. Epic iterated on their first two “titles” by releasing, polishing and re-releasing. This is not to say
Work on a game that is called Unreal Tournament started that day. Epic have announced that it is no longer an arena fps so it is no longer ut.
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