UT2007, the competitive side

[legacy-SubZeroGTS]

my suggestions (you guys say you read forums, and i figure these are the best bet aside from INA, and i doubt you read prounreal) so UT2K7 is enjoyable at even a high level of competition...

in addition to making the game less broken towards hitscan weapons, i would suggest analyzing the movement system...

Quake's biggest draw is still QuakeWorld's strafe jumping/momentum system (thus the CPMA/OSP mods which will soon take over for Quake 4)...this involves a complex movement system which allows players to outrun each other in effect, and on a more fundamental level, affect how they use the weapons and aim with them. this is NOT present in Unreal Tournament games, but i think you might already have the ingredients for something different.

UT99 had a similar flow/pace to vanilla Quake 3, and the sharp dodges spiced things up.

with UT2004, the big problem became scale...scale of models to maps to movements...a dodge is easily several body lengths, and jumps/double jumps are more than a body height (thus the 'bounciness'). on top of the broken shock primary and lightning gun. momentum is non-existant, and so is flow. you basically move from island to island when you're moving around. and guns that push you back are even doubly worse than their quake-counterparts where someone can fight and build momentum back up again after being knocked out of their movement (the lightning gun in quake comparable to say the link gun in UT, and the shock primary's push-back coinciding exactly with its rate-of-fire making it inordinarily easy to juggle people with shock primary if you have a good ping).

you guys know all that...well, seeing that early E3 video where the run speed is moved up, and the projectile weapons all seem to travel faster (you guys are moving in a good direction), things look good.

but why stop there? i'm not arguing you add momentum quake-style, i'm saying look over your movement system in UC2, particularly the unlimited wall dodges, and perhaps incorporate that in some form into UT2007.

it requires maybe 2 minutes to code? a few days to test? the work comes in designing maps that keep that movement system in mind and flow well.

Duelling or 1v1 Deathmatch, which is getting really huge, could benefit in UT from a movement system like this, and more z-axis oriented maps with chimney jumps and other ways to take advantage of fighting across multiple levels. right now its boring as hell to watch a UT2004 duel compared to a Painkiller or Quake duel...

the key thing is, dodging from wall to wall allows you to take shortcuts, and cut people off or run them down (again emphasizing the importance of maps that incorporate this idea into every crevice). something impossible in UT2004 because everyone can only move at the same speed. but its a unique system, not like quake at all, and appealing in its own right. (AND MUCH EASIER TO LEARN for new people, heh)

of course it has to be balanced with the action of team gametypes like CTF, TDM (where UT has the potential to gain great strides in, competitively) and those larger 6+ player maps.

speaking of maps, pleeeease design maps so they are more fair :( UT2004 shipped with awesome looking maps that were unplayable competitively cuz of stupid things like shock/lightning (two most powerful weapons in the game at high competitive levels of play) right next to each other, or the keg and 100 shield being too close, etc. etc....be as original/unique as you want, go against formula or whatever, but keep in mind if you encourage clans in UT2007, they will start playing for ranking (either on your own system or 3rd party ladders), and as soon as that starts, teams will start using traditional deathmatch strategies (which will ALWAYS work in any game that has player spawns and weapon/ammo/power pickups) like controlling pickups, weapons and cutting the other team off at spawns. so as soon as those teams start playing organized matches, half your maps become unplayable if you have a 100 shield next to the 50 shield next to the keg, on top of the hitscan guns and the other side of the map devoted only to the biorifle or something crazy like that.

btw, i am a fan of all deathmatch games. i play UT, Quake, & Painkiller, and IMHO UT's guns and environment/teamplay are its biggest draws while movement=skill are the biggest draws for me in the Quake/PK games.

besides, you guys already beat Quake when it came to the popular FPS among average gamers, do you want to stay with that or try to woo the hardcore gamers as well? iD's already thrown the gauntlet, IMHO, when they dissed your use of vehicles and said Quake 4 is going to be purely skill-based.

[legacy-SubZeroGTS]

oh yeah 1 more thing.

i got a lot of my friends (casual console gamers) interested in UT2004 (they stopped playing PC after UT99) again by installing the CPL Mouse Fix registry-tweak to help get rid of mouse acceleration.

by default on a windows xp machine, a stock install of UT2K4 has HORRIBLE mouse responsiveness. NOBODY likes acceleration, even average users, when its that insane.

to top it off, there's huge conflicts with game apis, windows mouse settings, and directinput and other stuff, and most games end up with weird acceleration...i think you guys should make it so Unreal Engine 3.0 takes mouse input RAW and does any modifications to it in-engine so you could disable said modifications easily from an in-game menu.

that alone would win over many people who play the game on a 'first feel, first buy' basis.

[legacy-Kronon]

Some good points, and I am all for making the game more competitive, but it can't be done on the expense of new players like it was in UT2003 (and to some extent UT2004).

Epic has to find a way that enables new players to have fun, while at the same time provide a very skillbased and hard-to-master game (and that it easier said than done, I know).

/Kronon

[legacy-Crunchy_Nacho]

Interesting post, SubZero.

[legacy-187-Lostsoul]

I have actually found UT to have great mouse support. W/ the exception of AS-Mothership. AS for maps. I'm not pro DM or even semi-pro DM but i find that most of them are well balanced. The ones that aren't, are usually modded for ladder and/or tournament play. I will tryr to get one of my DMers in here to talk to me about that stuff more. I have never played the other games on a compedetive level before, so i'm not sure how there momentum stuff works. But from the sounds of, it seems like it's a mod? Is it or is it built in?

PS

I have watched some of the Check6 matches. I find them very fun to watch. Also seen my clanmate play in 1v1's, seen Stryfe play, Gimix and some of the pro Euros's. I find them all to be entertaining. Not as entertaining as an AS match, but still good.

[legacy-Nosnos]

Interesting posts and I agree to some but not others ^^ First of all I dont think that the movement is the reason for UT-duells having a tendency to being boring. A UT-duell between two offensive players is a lot more interesting than a PK-duell imo. But you dont see offensive players that often since it's easier and more effective to play an extremly defensive game. Looks like Epic have noticed this and removed the shieldgun which makes it way to easy to run away. It just isnt worth chasing after players since they will run around a corner with the shield drawn and fire a shockcombo or two... it would be suicide ^^

So I dont think adding quakelike or other more extreme moves would help things much, eventhough I personally probably would have liked it... if anything it would make the playerbase smaller...

Really agree about the maps though... out of all the DM-maps that came with UT2004 only about a handful have good enough flow and balance to suit competitive play... it's not only important for the competitive players though... "everyone" like maps that have good flow, you just need to look at the maps that are most played, pretty much all of them are maps that are played by competitive players which means that casual gamers like them as well... The thing I dont understand is that Epic shows with the maps the release with their demos (Antalus, Asbestos for UT2003 and Rankin for UT2004) that they really know what maps are good and what makes them good... Still they insist on including a bunch of maps that are not near as good as those maps... I guess they have some sort of logic behind it but I do hope they will do it differently for UT2007 and only include maps that brings out the best the game has to offer in terms of both gameplay and eyecandy, not just eyecandy

[legacy-DagnyTaggart]

I hope they can go back to the original UT '99 style of movement. It was easy to move around and people could focus on shooting and trying to outsmart their opponents, as opposed to doing Super Mario quadruple jumps. That's one of the biggest complaints I hear. Anyone who wants to play a jumping game is welcome to find a jumping game. UT '99, in contrast, was a bloodsport.

As someone else once put it, one of the secrets to UT '99 was "a moment to learn, a lifetime to master".

I really hope that Epic will focus a lot of attention on Capture the Flag, which was probably the best game type for UT '99.

[legacy-187-Lostsoul]

AS is the best game type for UT99.

[legacy-SubZeroGTS]

well nosnos, we are biased cuz we are UT players, but for the majority of the non-playing spectators of CPL matches, Painkiller or Quake are more entertaining to watch than Unreal Tournament. just hang out at places like esreality.com or gotfrag.com or w/e.

and i didn't suggest quake momentum, i was hoping they could take the wall-dodging feature and expand it like it was in Unreal Championship 2 (xbox), and build maps based around that. UC2 had some very nice vertical maps with opportunities for sweet jumps to move from place to place or cut people off, while still being relatively easy to pull off and quick.

here's a video i made of multi-dodging (coded by Wormbo) in UT2004:

http://subzero.mine.nu/files/warmitupkris.avi

that would be a chimney jump in UC2, except there its much faster and easier...it shouldn't be TOO easy, just easy enough to be of practical usage in actual fights.

you can also jump with the flak secondary for some nice height but it takes just a little too much health off to make it worth it...if they fixed that, it'd be cool for reaching places where a shield gun or impact hammer is just too much power for (and waste of time in fights to whip it out), and still isn't 'rocket jumping' like quake but has a UT flavor :)

[legacy-SubZeroGTS]

the quake momentum stuff was in QuakeWorld (or Quake 1), and was nerfed in Quake 2/3, but modders brought it back and called it CPM, challenge pro-mode. OSP/CPMA (the two mods which use the movement) are pretty much the standard competitive mods for Quake...if they are coded for Quake 4, you won't find any tournaments NOT using them, so it'd be silly of Epic to compare its game to vanilla Quake 4.

[legacy-w1ngz3r0]

with UT2004, the big problem became scale...scale of models to maps to movements...a dodge is easily several body lengths, and jumps/double jumps are more than a body height (thus the 'bounciness'). on top of the broken shock primary and lightning gun. momentum is non-existant, and so is flow. you basically move from island to island when you're moving around. and guns that push you back are even doubly worse than their quake-counterparts where someone can fight and build momentum back up again after being knocked out of their movement (the lightning gun in quake comparable to say the link gun in UT, and the shock primary's push-back coinciding exactly with its rate-of-fire making it inordinarily easy to juggle people with shock primary if you have a good ping).

speaking of maps, pleeeease design maps so they are more fair :( UT2004 shipped with awesome looking maps that were unplayable competitively cuz of stupid things like shock/lightning (two most powerful weapons in the game at high competitive levels of play) right next to each other, or the keg and 100 shield being too close, etc. etc....be as original/unique as you want, go against formula or whatever, but keep in mind if you encourage clans in UT2007, they will start playing for ranking (either on your own system or 3rd party ladders), and as soon as that starts, teams will start using traditional deathmatch strategies (which will ALWAYS work in any game that has player spawns and weapon/ammo/power pickups) like controlling pickups, weapons and cutting the other team off at spawns. so as soon as those teams start playing organized matches, half your maps become unplayable if you have a 100 shield next to the 50 shield next to the keg, on top of the hitscan guns and the other side of the map devoted only to the biorifle or something crazy like that.


But you dont see offensive players that often since it's easier and more effective to play an extremly defensive game. Looks like Epic have noticed this and removed the shieldgun which makes it way to easy to run away. It just isnt worth chasing after players since they will run around a corner with the shield drawn and fire a shockcombo or two... it would be suicide ^^

So I dont think adding quakelike or other more extreme moves would help things much, eventhough I personally probably would have liked it... if anything it would make the playerbase smaller...

Really agree about the maps though... out of all the DM-maps that came with UT2004 only about a handful have good enough flow and balance to suit competitive play... it's not only important for the competitive players though... "everyone" like maps that have good flow, you just need to look at the maps that are most played, pretty much all of them are maps that are played by competitive players which means that casual gamers like them as well... The thing I dont understand is that Epic shows with the maps the release with their demos (Antalus, Asbestos for UT2003 and Rankin for UT2004) that they really know what maps are good and what makes them good... Still they insist on including a bunch of maps that are not near as good as those maps... I guess they have some sort of logic behind it but I do hope they will do it differently for UT2007 and only include maps that brings out the best the game has to offer in terms of both gameplay and eyecandy, not just eyecandy



I hope they can go back to the original UT '99 style of movement. It was easy to move around and people could focus on shooting and trying to outsmart their opponents, as opposed to doing Super Mario quadruple jumps. That's one of the biggest complaints I hear. Anyone who wants to play a jumping game is welcome to find a jumping game. UT '99, in contrast, was a bloodsport.

As someone else once put it, one of the secrets to UT '99 was "a moment to learn, a lifetime to master".

Just quoted the things i agreed with in this thread, and people should read them and give their input so we have more ut players realize the damn problems and see what things should really be changed.

[legacy-Kronon]

The shieldgun is a tricky issue though. For duelling, its definitely better without it, especially for spectators (I have seen games between top players on Antalus ending 1-0 after overtime) :)

But for TDM, the shieldgun helps to make the game less streaky. Even if you have an awful bad start weapon, you can atleast stay alive a little longer with the SG and hopefully grab a decent weapon before being fragged. The SG also helps making 1-on-1 less streaky, but to much lesser extent.

I think UT2004 is a pretty good competitive game as it is for the ones who play, but not for spectating. And definitely not for new players, where the movement system makes the learning curve so steep that they usually give up before reaching the competitive level.

Think about it: how many of the current top-players are new UT2004 players? There are one or two, but most players have been around since atleast UT2003 and even since UT99. If Epic does not make it possible to new players to become good, there soon wont be a competitive community.

With this in mind, I feel that the steep learning curve in combination with general streakiness is the most important issues for Epic to solve to make the game good for competitions.

And when you think about it, UT99 did not have any of these issues, and as a result a strong competitive community emerged from it, despite the problems with weapon balance and spamminess.

[legacy-Crunchy_Nacho]

By 'streaky' are you referring to how often people can go on long killing sprees? I just want to make sure I understand what you are saying.

I definetly understand how UT99 had a lower movement learning curve, but what causes it to be less streaky? Could you please explain?

[legacy-Kronon]

Yes, streaky is how often one player/team gets maplock and a lot of frags with few deaths. Some parts of the game increases or decreases how streaky a game is. For example, the shield-gun make the game less streaky because its harder to kill a newly spawned player.

Strong weapons also makes the game less streaky. Its always easier to get 2 lucky headshots than 3 for example. On the other hand, adrenaline makes the game more streaky since the one in control will get most pills and will be able to increase his health and armor when he needs.

Even with the shieldgun, UT2004 is more streaky than UT99 because of the weaker weapons and the adrenaline. For 1-on-1, I would say they are about equally streaky, but with much more frags in UT99.

[legacy-187-Lostsoul]

It's why you always see complete shut outs in TDM games. 100-50, 200-90. That is why i like TAM, most games go to 10-9, 10-8. More suspense and no need to worry about map control, just pure frag skills.

[legacy-Nosnos]

It's why you always see complete shut outs in TDM games. 100-50, 200-90. That is why i like TAM, most games go to 10-9, 10-8. More suspense and no need to worry about map control, just pure frag skills.

Which is why a lot of people don't like it... but I see your point, it's easier to get the feeling of "being good" when you play TAM or ClanArena, since it pretty much like CS (apart from the planting of the bomb etc)... And TDM-games can be extremly exciting, just look at the EuroCup, lots of extremly tight games that goes to overtime and five maps... Would be better without adreneline though, the you would at least be able to get a decent amount of kills even if you are being slaughtered...

[legacy-SubZeroGTS]

definitely, most of the TDM community wants to get rid of adrenaline but they're too lazy to change competitive rules this late in the game.

[legacy-A_Grunt]

I hope they can go back to the original UT '99 style of movement. It was easy to move around and people could focus on shooting and trying to outsmart their opponents, as opposed to doing Super Mario quadruple jumps. That's one of the biggest complaints I hear. Anyone who wants to play a jumping game is welcome to find a jumping game. UT '99, in contrast, was a bloodsport.


Yes, the "clay pigeon" thing in UT2003 and UT2004 really irritated the hell out of me. Is this a FPS or a platformer?

UCII has a lot of verticle movement in it, but it fits much better with the weapon set in that game and using a controller.



As someone else once put it, one of the secrets to UT '99 was "a moment to learn, a lifetime to master".


This was the secret to Halo:CE success as well.

A Grunt

[legacy-A_Grunt]

Yes, streaky is how often one player/team gets maplock and a lot of frags with few deaths. Some parts of the game increases or decreases how streaky a game is. For example, the shield-gun make the game less streaky because its harder to kill a newly spawned player.


UCII has many good features that decrease streakyness. One of them is the ability to pick your two starting weapons, so you don't have the "baby seal spawn" that makes vanilla slayer Halo/Halo 2 a sick spawn camping joke.

A Grunt

[legacy-Crunchy_Nacho]

True, it seems like giving players some defensive ability at spawn helps make a game less streaky. It's part of the reason Halo 2 can sometimes be streakier than Halo 1, despite having a much lower learning curve.

I'm guessing that this is part of the reason the TAM mod spawns you in with all the weapons.

Of course, I'm not saying that it would be a good idea to spawn players with every weapon in the game in vanilla UT07. Map control should still be a factor.

Oh, and just in case anyone has forgotten ... invisible pogo sticks can be irratating.

[legacy-wartex]

[/quote]

UCII has many good features that decrease streakyness. One of them is the ability to pick your two starting weapons, so you don't have the "baby seal spawn" that makes vanilla slayer Halo/Halo 2 a sick spawn camping joke.

A Grunt[/quote]

So does Half-life 2 DM, giving the player a submachine gun right off from the start, even if HL2dm is'nt a pro game, it makes it more fun and easy to pick-up. I hope epic will keep this in mind. However, the starting weapon have to have it's drawbacks or else players will be using it all the time instead of picking up new weapons.

hmm entrust this to Epic, I will..

[legacy-Crunchy_Nacho]

In HL2:DM, I always thought that the gravity gun is the main thing that gave newly spawned player a chance. When used properly it's a one-hit kill weapon and can be used as a grenade launcher. However, it isn't so overpowering that players will regularly pass by other powerful weapons.

The SMG helps a bit, and is more useful than a Halo 2 SMG. Although that's probably due to the lack of DW that cuts the value of DWable weapons in half. But it's really the gravity gun that enables you to be dangerous off of spawn.

Combine that with the fact that in HL2:DM, almost any weapon can kill in shot/under 2 seconds when used properly.

Rocket launcher = instant kill
Crossbow = instant kill
Magnum headshot = instant kill
Shotgun headshot at close range = instant kill
SMG grenade followed by regular fire = very fast kill
gravity gun = instant kill
Combine rifle's secondary = instant kill

Anyways, creating a balance between 'you're extremely well-armed upon spawn, map control means nothing' (TAM) and 'you're a defensless baby upon spawn. The first thing you see will kill you, unless it's another baby. Map control is everything' (vanilla Halo 2) probably isn't easy. But I'm sure Epic could pull it off.

Of course with objective gametypes, map control is a factor regardless of weapons. Which is why conquest's weapon lockers work okay for that mode.

[legacy-A_Grunt]

So does Half-life 2 DM, giving the player a submachine gun right off from the start, even if HL2dm is'nt a pro game, it makes it more fun and easy to pick-up. I hope epic will keep this in mind. However, the starting weapon have to have it's drawbacks or else players will be using it all the time instead of picking up new weapons.

hmm entrust this to Epic, I will..

The SMG in Half Life 2 you can at least hurt people that are more than 5 feet away from you.

UCII I never feel helpless when I spawn like I do in vanilla slayer Halo. UT 2004 was almost as bad except for the shield gun.

A Grunt

[legacy-Crunchy_Nacho]

UT2K4 wasn't even close to as bad.

UT2004 had auto-respawn for weapons and better overall weapon balance. UT2K4 also gives a few seconds of invincibilty upon spawning in.

[legacy-Bishop_Gantry]

UCII has many good features that decrease streakyness. One of them is the ability to pick your two starting weapons, so you don't have the "baby seal spawn" that makes vanilla slayer Halo/Halo 2 a sick spawn camping joke.

A Grunt[/quote]

So does Half-life 2 DM, giving the player a submachine gun right off from the start, even if HL2dm is'nt a pro game, it makes it more fun and easy to pick-up. I hope epic will keep this in mind. However, the starting weapon have to have it's drawbacks or else players will be using it all the time instead of picking up new weapons.

hmm entrust this to Epic, I will.. [/quote]

The UT assault rifle dosent have unlimited ammo so even if it actually was worth using youd still be forced to pick up more ammo for it sooner or later or find other weapons to use, its the sheer ammount of drawbacks slapped onto the Ar that makes it useless...

Its low damage coupled with its even poorer accuracy even when Dual makes it useless against pretty much everything including other freshly spawned players so primary fire fails in its purpouse thus its useless...

A note on Ar grenades thanks to all the variables such as variable distance, variable speed, variable arch, player movment when firing, bouncing grenades makes it more into a lottery when firing nades there are simply to many variables involved to skillfully use the Ar nades with repeated efficency, to booth you have enemy player movment and lag aswell to account for when using it

[legacy-A_Grunt]

Yup, the UT2004 AR pretty much sucks.

[legacy-w1ngz3r0]

And TDM-games can be extremly exciting, just look at the EuroCup, lots of extremly tight games that goes to overtime and five maps... Would be better without adreneline though, the you would at least be able to get a decent amount of kills even if you are being slaughtered...

i'm hoping to get competitiveunreal.com tournaments to be somewhat of a role model of the 'no adrenalines' change, same as with 'no vials' for 1v1. We already finished with the 1v1 no vials tourney, very successful with talented players easily adapting to the changes, some good demos up too. bracket page

we are on irc.enterthegame.com #competitive.unreal :)

[legacy-Nosnos]

what's the reason for not having vials in 1on1?

[legacy-187-Lostsoul]

I guess so u can't get over 100 health? Sounds dumb to me, but what ever floats your boat i guess.

[legacy-SubZeroGTS]

other deathmatch games have had no vials (like Painkiller, or Unreal 1)...what it basically does in UT2004 is make games closer since whoever has map control HAS to have armor, and can't stack up via vials...so whoever wins fights for the armor will win the map...its also easier to corner people as they try to restock on health.

LostSoul: besides making games closer and more competitive at higher tier of players, it helps out people like you and me when we play someone who would wreck us like 40-0 because now you can hurt them since they will have armor, but not 199 health.

[legacy-187-Lostsoul]

No, i suck at DM, they would rape me. i would have a better chance at them w/ AM.