UT3 a bit of a dissapointment

[TwwIX]

It's meh.
A mediocre shooter.
Gears of War turned out to be much better.
They should have put a bit more effort into this installment.

 

[soulslicer]

But who wants vehicular combat? It's the biggest scourge to blight online FPS gaming, and in a UT-style game it's justt terrible. :|

My ass, vehicular combat is really awesome. I just can't say anymore. Did you not enjoy those epic moments in ut2k4, when you ran side by side with a powerful leviathan, as it released it's volley of rockets, or fired it's powerful plasma beam, or the times when you were coming in with your mates with 3 tanks side by side, or the time an airstrike was announced and everyone rushed away from the power-node, or the time when a lone soldier could enter the base and destroy the power core epicly..or oh god the glory ut2k4 days. 1600 servers back then hell yeah!

 

[repiV]

My ass, vehicular combat is really awesome. I just can't say anymore. Did you not enjoy those epic moments in ut2k4, when you ran side by side with a powerful leviathan, as it released it's volley of rockets, or fired it's powerful plasma beam, or the times when you were coming in with your mates with 3 tanks side by side, or the time an airstrike was announced and everyone rushed away from the power-node, or the time when a lone soldier could enter the base and destroy the power core epicly..or oh god the glory ut2k4 days. 1600 servers back then hell yeah!

I don't play Onslaught, it's newbish.

TDM is where it's at.

 

[soulslicer]

Onslaught newbish? Onslaught was the reason why the game won GOTY. :|

 

[repiV]

Onslaught newbish? Onslaught was the reason why the game won GOTY. :|

Casual gamers make up the vast majority of the gaming population. The good competition games are not usually the ones with shitloads of players and awards.
Quake III is still the 1v1 game of choice at pro-gaming tournaments everywhere.

 

[Kyorisu]

TDM is bad. I can't stand it. Why have a team game where the only goal is to kill the enemy? Throw a bloody flag into the mix and it becomes a whole new game. Last tourney match I played we won 1-0 and it was bloody crazy. Pulled off a 5 man early rush and capped their flag and proceeded to defend for 14 minutes. Near the end the enemies best player tried to cap our flag on full health/armour and got smashed down within 5 seconds by 4 of our team chain link gunning. You could hear the screams from the other side of the hall. Sadly this weekends event is UT3 DM and I probably won't participate because UT3 runs like arse on my 7900GS. 5v5 TF2 should be fun though.

 

[repiV]

TDM is bad. I can't stand it. Why have a team game where the only goal is to kill the enemy? Throw a bloody flag into the mix and it becomes a whole new game. Last tourney match I played we won 1-0 and it was bloody crazy. Pulled off a 5 man early rush and capped their flag and proceeded to defend for 14 minutes. Near the end the enemies best player tried to cap our flag on full health/armour and got smashed down within 5 seconds by 4 of our team chain link gunning. You could hear the screams from the other side of the hall. Sadly this weekends event is UT3 DM and I probably won't participate because UT3 runs like arse on my 7900GS. 5v5 TF2 should be fun though.

TDM requires a hell of a lot more skill, teamwork and coordination than CTF does. It's about map control, item/weapon timing, coordinated attacks and staying alive.
I dunno about UT, but in Q3/Q4 weapons spawn only once every 30 seconds. If your team doesn't have its shit together, you'll get annihilated. Epic battles would always revolve around the Quad Damage spawn every two minutes, awesome. :>
It's much easier to play a decent game of CTF than it is to play a decent game of TDM. Losing a battle outright often gives the other team the opportunity to wipe you out countless times before you can recover, so if it's going badly you're better off running like hell and regrouping. Very little of it actually boils down to killing the enemy.

 

[Kyorisu]

Not my cup of tea at all sorry. Very little killing my arse if your against a group of cpl pros. Without a goal above killing your screwed against human aimbots. Throw in another goal and that issue is removed to the degree you can beat said human bots.

 

[repiV]

Not my cup of tea at all sorry. Very little killing my arse if your against a group of cpl pros. You could say the same thing about CTF but at least those maps are designed in a way a shit team with good tactics can wipe the floor with said cpl pros who are only good at aiming, coordinating grenades, money management and all that other CS shit.

A shit team with good tactics will get slaughtered much more by a good team in CTF than they would in TDM, because perfect teamwork is completely critical in TDM.
If you aren't extremely well coordinated, you'll never have any weapons and the other team will always have the armours, the megahealth and the quad. No matter how good your aim and movement, you'll never beat the team that's always tooled up.

 

[Kyorisu]

In UT the weapons stay, yes there's mega health but no quad that's double damage your thinking of. Against I really couldn't care about DM sure you stick together and work as a team but you can do that in any bloody game if you try. I'd rather work as a team to accomplish something other than purely killing. No matter how good your aim? Sorry but I have to call bullshit on that. The team with superior aim over the other will win purely because it's too easy for them to hold crucial map areas. It's not hard to have a stop watch going and monitoring when you should move from point to point collecting power ups.

A shit team with good tactics will get slaughtered much more by a good team in CTF than they would in TDM

I wouldn't put my money on that. My team beat the guys that constantly and I mean every single ****ing time win CSS at the lan I attend. They participated in the WCG and went to the USA and everything. We managed to beat them in a CTF match on double dammage, if it was TDM they would flatten us to a ****ing pulp. Their aim is crazy and we only won 1-0 in CTF because for whatever reason they only filed into our base one at a time and when they all rushed at once they slaughtered us to ****ing bits. Managed to respawn and translocate in front of their flag carrier and kill him alone to get the flag back.

 

[soulslicer]

It runs like arse on your 7900 GS? It runs fine at 1024*768 at hardware 4aa 4af with texture model detail at 80 percent on my 7800 GS lol.

 

[repiV]

In UT the weapons stay, yes there's mega health but no quad that's double damage your thinking of. Against I really couldn't care about DM sure you stick together and work as a team but you can do that in any bloody game if you try. I'd rather work as a team to accomplish something other than purely killing.

Weapons stay is a server side setting. They don't generally stay in competitive games.

That's fine, you don't have to like TDM. I'm just pointing out that it's the most skilful, challenging, competitive team game out there.

 

[Kyorisu]

No that would be CS, you loose. Otherwise everyone would be playing TDM which I don't see happening too often on the pub servers. I know not too many people play CTF tis why we only had 4 UT2k4 CTF teams and 15 CSS teams.

It runs like arse on your 7900 GS? It runs fine at 1024*768 at hardware 4aa 4af with texture model detail at 80 percent on my 7800 GS lol.

You didn't think about that did you? I have a 22" Widescreen and would rather not have the image stretched out. UT3 at 1680x1050 runs like arse.

 

[repiV]

No that would be CS, you loose.

CS? You've got to be kidding me.

 

[Kyorisu]

The player numbers agree with me. Just ask any cpl pro what they think is so great about CS. Anyway skill full? Please you'd have been better saying they require more tact which they don't. CS requires far more thinking and tactics than a TDM game.

 

[repiV]

The player numbers agree with me. Just ask any cpl pro what they think is so great about CS. Anyway skill full? Please you'd have been better saying they require more tact which they don't. CS requires far more thinking and tactics than a TDM game.

The player numbers are completely irrelevant.

There are many reasons that CS was/is so popular, and none of them have anything to do with it being skilful.

1. CS ran on any old crappy PC, Q3 etc. required a top-of-the-line rig, which was very expensive at the time, and the game also needed a degree of technical knowledge to properly configure
2. HL was a million-selling game in a time where PC games didn't sell millions - everyone already had it
3. CS is an easy game, it's very newbie-friendly
4. You have to be damn good to get any kills at all in Q3, it's a ruthless game and the level of play has always been much, much higher than the average - most people got scared off straight away, it had to be treated as a hobby
5. CS appeals to the mainstream, what with its setting and objectives and such
6. Competition-wise, it's much easier to learn how to play CS properly than it is to learn how to play TDM which has an almost vertical learning curve

Now, I played at a near-pro level for years. I know what I'm talking about. TDM involves infinitely more individual skill AND somewhat more team skill than CS.

 

[Kyorisu]

1. Irrelevant. Did you know you can pay people to put computers together? Holy crap.
2. Irrelevant. Certainly in the long run.
3. Irrelevant. Again see 2 you'd think in so many years a game being newb friendly or not wouldn't matter.
4. Bullshit.
5. Irrelevant. And killing people with the rail gun doesn't?
6. The learning curve is irrelevant as to get to the professional level requires the same amount of effort in the end. That said in the end CS requires far more tactical knowledge.

And you might notice I have not once mentioned Q3 TDM. I have mentioned Quake of course.

 

[repiV]

1. Irrelevant.
2. Irrelevant.
3. Irrelevant.
4. Bullshit.
5. Irrelevant.
6. The learning curve is irrelevant as to get to the professional level requires the same amount of effort in the end. That said in the end CS requires far more tactical knowledge.

None of my points are irrelevant in the slightest. Q3 never sold particularly well, it reached #4 in the sales charts. UT outsold it by a mile, HL by many miles. Yet Q3 still lives on whereas UT died years ago - that's the real indicator of a quality competition game.
System requirements were a massive barrier at the time aswell, Q3 was the first game to require a 3d card and even on a high-end PC it ran like shit. It was much more inaccessible to the masses than the system hog games of today are.
The level of skill in Quake games being far higher than any other is certainly NOT bullshit. You just have no idea what you're talking about.
The learning curve is very relevant as the harder it is, the less people stick with the game and the less players there eventually are. The same way Tribes has a near-vertical learning curve and never had a big community, but alongside Quake it was the most skilful and competitive game.
How can you possibly claim that CS requires far more tactical knowledge when you don't even understand the dynamics of TDM?

 

[Kyorisu]

Sorry I've been editing every post my fault for not thinking on my feet. Anyway I'm not talking about Quake whether or not you noticed. I've just been talking about TDM as a game mode is ANY GAME. Dynamics of TDM you're a funny man. I've leave you now as frankly I've lost interest in this topic. Claim victory if you want.

/Last edit.

It's such a shame I don't hear more about these awesome skill full TDM games. Game popularity aside there should still be a very active niche of players who love this style of play in Australia. Yet far as I can tell from GA, GS, IGN, etc game ladders this isn't the case there's just no real active community here or well anywhere as far as I can tell.

This trolling session has been brought to you by spam, it's ham in a can.

 

[Baserape>]

I win, the game belong to me.

 

[repiV]

Sorry I've been editing every post my fault for not thinking on my feet. Anyway I'm not talking about Quake whether or not you noticed. I've just been talking about TDM as a game mode is ANY GAME.

Ack, yo damn edits.
Quake is the most important TDM game, which is why I'm using it as an example. Even still, UT requires vastly more individual skill than CS, and TDM plays out in a similar way to Q3. It's just not as fast and there's somewhat less importance attached to securing particular weapons because the weapons in UT games are interchangable to a degree whereas Quake weapons all serve a completely unique purpose. In UT, if you don't have a rocket launcher it's no big deal, the flak cannon will do. Therefore the strategic importance of both the rocket launcher and the flak cannon on a map is significantly diluted.

The point is, TDM might look as though it's simple, but it's really not. Think of all the things you have to keep track of all at once:

- keep the team coordinated in a game where people respawn and spawn in random positions all over the map
- keep track of when all the important weapons and items are going to respawn and be in exactly the right place down to the exact second they reappear
- know when to attack and when to retreat, and make that decision very very quickly
- keep control of the important parts of the map at all costs
- regain your position without losing too much ground when the other team takes control of the map

Now, it might not require the most detailed strategies on earth, but it requires an exceptional level of teamwork to pull it off. It's a very dynamic game, and you have to constantly think on your feet and adapt to the ever-changing game situation. Make an error in judgement or combat and you won't lose a round and get a fresh go at it next time, you'll be 20 frags down by the time you recover from the mistake.
As for newbie-friendliness, the objectives in CS are obvious to all. The objectives in TDM are only obvious to experienced players, and they vary map by map - and you have to figure them out for yourself. Hence why most people think it's just about getting kills. And a bad team will get mercilessly slaughtered by a slightly better team in TDM in a way that just wouldn't happen in CS.
Staying alive is several times more important than getting a kill. Thus, tactical movement is vital.

Edit of my own to respond to your edit:

It's such a shame I don't hear more about these awesome skill full TDM games. Game popularity aside there should still be a very active niche of players who love this style of play in Australia. Yet far as I can tell from GA, GS, IGN, etc game ladders this isn't the case there's just no real active community here or well anywhere as far as I can tell.

Australia never did have a very active gaming community though, did it?
TDM, and indeed all Quake- or UT- styled TDM/CTF games have lost popularity in recent years because of the casual bias of the online gaming market these days.

 

[Kyorisu]

- keep the team coordinated in a game where people respawn and spawn in random positions all over the map
- keep track of when all the important weapons and items are going to respawn and be in exactly the right place down to the exact second they reappear
- know when to attack and when to retreat, and make that decision very very quickly
- keep control of the important parts of the map at all costs
- regain your position without losing too much ground when the other team takes control of the map

I'm going to humour you one last time.

1. Keeping a team coordinated in general is the same task. Knowing where your people are and where they are going.
2. Egg timer. Not a skill thing at all but a mental trick.
3. Uh the same can happen in CS, seconds are precious.
4. Happens in CS.
5. Regroup and kill the enemy...right happens in CS.

Two of the hardest things in CS comps are.

- Money management.
- Buy strats to counter what you can only think the enemy will do. You literally have to out wit your competitor at a human level and know exactly how they play their game.

Australia never did have a very active gaming community though, did it?

It does.

http://games.internode.on.net/ The game servers page is interesting but keep in mind right now it's 3am. Still a good 2-3K players daily on just the one network. Consider our pop count is around 20mill.
www.gamearena.com.au
www.gamespace.net.au
www.gamingsa.com
etc

 

[repiV]

I'm going to humour you one last time.

1. Keeping a team coordinated in general is the same task. Knowing where your people are and where they are going.

Not really. In CS, your team all spawns together and noone comes back to life. People are always dying in TDM so you have to be constantly keeping track of everyone and bringing them back to the right place without them getting caught short without weapons or backup.
Imagine you've got 2 people defending the railgun and 2 going for the megahealth - works fine so far. The enemy comes after the railgun and get fought off, but not before killing one defender and severely wounding the other. Now the team is in chaos - the lone remaining defender is weak and nearly useless, the other guy is in some random place on the map and needs to get back to SOMEWHERE, but where? Not the rail room - he's too weak, and so's his buddy. They'll have to figure out a plan of action to retake the rail room, because you can be sure the other team is coming after it in seconds. If you don't do exactly the right thing ASAP, the team is going to be at a disadvantage for a long time and quite possibly lose the game as a result of not taking decisive, correct action to recover their losses.
The critical element here is managing respawning assets - an element of the game completely absent from CS. How can you best get your team back on track, getting the correct balance of armament and preparation with speed? Get that balance wrong and you're ****ed.
Everything also happens much, much more quickly than in CS - you don't have time to sit and think about these things, or downtime between rounds either.

2. Egg timer. Not a skill thing at all but a mental trick.

It's a skill thing when you have to keep track of over half a dozen items at once, which spawn at different intervals and were taken at different times. Needs good communication and responsibility-sharing since no one person can possibly do all that work in their head. Not only keeping track of the items themselves, you also have to dynamically plan your strategy around the spawn times of the items.

3. Uh the same can happen in CS, seconds are precious.

Yeah, but there are less variables in CS.

4. Happens in CS.

The parts of the map that are important don't change constantly in CS.

5. Regroup and kill the enemy...right happens in CS.

It's much easier, for already mentioned reasons.

It does.

http://games.internode.on.net/ The game servers page is interesting but keep in mind right now it's 3am. Still a good 2-3K players daily on just the one network.
www.gamearena.com.au
www.gamespace.net.au
www.gamingsa.com
etc

Hm, I remember a few years ago people always had trouble finding games in Australia.

 

[Ennui]

What the hell was going on in this thread?

Revived because I wanted a UT3 thread but there were none.

Who else has it, who else likes it?

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

What the hell was going on in this thread?

Revived because I wanted a UT3 thread but there were none.

Who else has it, who else likes it?

I have it, but uninstalled due to terrible performance. I should try again with the official patch release, though.

impressions when I actually had the game working: Was a good bit of fun in the classic DM settings, not so much in the larger vehicle maps.

 

[Tagaziel]

I like the game. The art of individual maps makes me drool in pure bliss (Tranquility FTMFW), the bots are great, the graphics...

Tell me, how good will it run on an Intel Core Duo 1.73 GHz, 2 GB RAM and an nVidia 7900 while playing multiplayer?

Spoiler

1280x1024 with everything set to max.

 

[elrasho]

I like the game. The art of individual maps makes me drool in pure bliss (Tranquility FTMFW), the bots are great, the graphics...

Tell me, how good will it run on an Intel Core Duo 1.73 GHz, 2 GB RAM and an nVidia 7900 while playing multiplayer?

Spoiler

1280x1024 with everything set to max.

pretty sh1t

 

[Tagaziel]

I guess constant 40-50 FPS is pretty shitty.

 

[Ennui]

I'm running it on medium (which is gorgeous enough) at 1280x1024 with 2gb RAM, Athlon 64 x2 5600+, and a 7900GS. I haven't even tried max settings but I imagine they would run with >30 FPS. That's DX9 still obviously.

 

[Ennui]

TBH it feels more like UT99 than 2004 to me.

 

[repiV]

I don't think it's faster than UT2004 at all. It lacks dodge-jumping and there is a lot less air control. The whole experience feels rather soulless to me. And the shock combo is stupidly overpowered.

 

[99.vikram]

The player numbers are completely irrelevant.

There are many reasons that CS was/is so popular, and none of them have anything to do with it being skilful.

1. CS ran on any old crappy PC, Q3 etc. required a top-of-the-line rig, which was very expensive at the time, and the game also needed a degree of technical knowledge to properly configure
2. HL was a million-selling game in a time where PC games didn't sell millions - everyone already had it
3. CS is an easy game, it's very newbie-friendly
4. You have to be damn good to get any kills at all in Q3, it's a ruthless game and the level of play has always been much, much higher than the average - most people got scared off straight away, it had to be treated as a hobby
5. CS appeals to the mainstream, what with its setting and objectives and such
6. Competition-wise, it's much easier to learn how to play CS properly than it is to learn how to play TDM which has an almost vertical learning curve

Now, I played at a near-pro level for years. I know what I'm talking about. TDM involves infinitely more individual skill AND somewhat more team skill than CS.

Oh sweet god! Is the rest of the thread like this?

CS may not be a shining example of innovation or even a fun game to play, but for a team vs. team showdown, there's no better game. Not Quake 3, not UT, not TF2 and not ET: Quake Wars. Teams with better tactics win, period. If you can place people at the right positions, you can kill even the most experienced CPL player. This is not at all true of Quake where you are completely unbeatable if you time the special items and megahealths and have a godly aim. A single mistake by a single teammate is punished HEAVILY in CS, even in subsequent rounds through the economy system.

And it's the most newbie unfriendly game ever. I've been playing it (seriously) for a year or so, and I still can't beat the best clan in our hostel. No luck at all, only skill and practise (read: repetition) involved.

EDIT: Ohshitnewpage

 

[repiV]

Oh sweet god! Is the rest of the thread like this?

CS may not be a shining example of innovation or even a fun game to play, but for a team vs. team showdown, there's no better game. Not Quake 3, not UT, not TF2 and not ET: Quake Wars. Teams with better tactics win, period. If you can place people at the right positions, you can kill even the most experienced CPL player. This is not at all true of Quake where you are completely unbeatable if you time the special items and megahealths and have a godly aim. A single mistake by a single teammate is punished HEAVILY in CS, even in subsequent rounds through the economy system.

The fact that it purely comes down to teams with better tactics winning is a clear indicator that the game is severely lacking in skill, and proof that any idiot can play it.
Quake requires both team skill and individual skill in large doses, you have to have both.

And it's the most newbie unfriendly game ever. I've been playing it (seriously) for a year or so, and I still can't beat the best clan in our hostel. No luck at all, only skill and practise (read: repetition) involved.

Any idiot can jump on a CS server and get kills. Newbies don't play in clans.
Even decent players get slaughtered if they jump on a Quake server. Which means that comparitively very few people persevere with the game to the point they are good enough to play in a clan. Which is why games like CS are popular.

 

[Ennui]

Oh sweet god! Is the rest of the thread like this?

CS may not be a shining example of innovation or even a fun game to play, but for a team vs. team showdown, there's no better game. Not Quake 3, not UT, not TF2 and not ET: Quake Wars. Teams with better tactics win, period. If you can place people at the right positions, you can kill even the most experienced CPL player. This is not at all true of Quake where you are completely unbeatable if you time the special items and megahealths and have a godly aim. A single mistake by a single teammate is punished HEAVILY in CS, even in subsequent rounds through the economy system.

And it's the most newbie unfriendly game ever. I've been playing it (seriously) for a year or so, and I still can't beat the best clan in our hostel. No luck at all, only skill and practise (read: repetition) involved.

EDIT: Ohshitnewpage

This post is almost entirely incorrect.

 

[99.vikram]

Of course it's a slow game. I was just saying that no other game punishes you so much for the tiniest mistake. You're a virtual tank in Q3A or UT.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Counter-Strike, especially Source, is probably the easiest online shooter to play behind the Halo series. It's slow, almost painfully so at times . Games like Unreal Tournament make it feel like it's running in slow motion, and after playing Unreal, I can rack up kills very easily and quickly in Counter-Strike, even on clan servers. The "tactics" side of the game is about equivalent to all players staying near each other, not running into the line of fire like a headless chicken, and being able to aim in the right direction. It's incredibly elementary stuff that is learned quickly in any online shooter (or any single-player shooter with AI teammates). The popular maps are all incredibly simple - why do you think fy_iceworld is so popular? When's the last time you saw a map like de_chateau or de_tides being played? Yeah, didn't think so. It's dust, dust and de_dust, 24/7. Even maps like de_prodigy only tend to get played by the veterans.

Counter-Strike is a gateway game. It's fun with your friends for a while, it's easy to get into, and its low system requirements means that everyone can play it. The only maps that get played are the easy ones, and while you will see some others pop up from time to time, they usually disappear pretty quickly - voted off by the players themselves, no less. And eventually, everyone gets bored of it and either stops playing, decides to "go pro," or moves on to other games. I think for most people here, Counter-Strike is like some little piece of nostalgia of a simpler time: fun to go back to once in a while, but ultimately trite, boring, and aged. I know it is for me.

I never thought I'd be writing a post in defense of Counter-Strike, but here goes:

I agree with most all of what you said, but much like other "popular" FPS games CS can be picked up in a minute, but in order to play competitively there's actually quite a steep learning curve. I also disagree with your point of saying the game is "trite and boring", Counter-Strikes' simplicity and easy-come-easy-go gameplay style makes it one the few competitive FPS games that one can jump in a server, enjoy for a few minutes, and leave for work/school or whatever else it may be.

Playing CS at it's base level is quite simple, sure, but you can't deny that it's an entirely different game when played at it's most competitive pace. If you don't believe this, than I'm lead to believe you probably never have played Counter-Strike competitively. Just like the board game Othello's motto "A minute to learn, a lifetime to master" applies here and to many other 'simple' fps games. Just because complex maneuvers included in the Counter-Strike world aren't as obvious as shock combos, dodge jumping or rocket jumps doesn't mean they don't exist. As for your quips in regards to which maps are popular, that isn't really a problem if you find a server with maps that you find unique and interesting. It may seem like they don't exist, but trust me they do - it just takes some wading through the enormous server list to find what you like.

With that said, comparing deathmatch/TDM style games to CS in itself is as incredibly silly thing to do, it's like arguing what takes more skill baseball or basketball. Both require an enormous amount of coordination, reflexes and skill in their most competitive forms - but if you're just playing with friends or with folks you meet randomly, it's an entirely different set of rules and style of play.

 

[NeptuneUK]

But UT3 LOOKS the shit!
And that goes a long way when it comes to showing impressionable people how good your cheap gaming rig is!

 

[-Psy-]

Of course it's a slow game. I was just saying that no other game punishes you so much for the tiniest mistake. You're a virtual tank in Q3A or UT.

That's why I hate it. It's so unforgiving that I just can't see myself playing it anymore then I would TF2.

 

[Deleted member 56031]

I don't like CS either, the only people you see do really well in it are the obsessives.

 

[Acepilotf14]

CS is usually only really fun on Dust and custom maps. I'm going to get UT3, simply because I love the random killing frenzies. Wewt!