So, I saw that there was a new UT game in the works, and I admittedly got incredibly excited. I'm in the camp of players who played a lot of 99 as a kid, then some 2004, and got UT3, but didn't like the campaign. (The maps were pretty bad too, IMO, shoe-horning vehicles in CTF and non-team maps were also a pretty bad idea, IMO.) I've always wanted an experience similar to 2004's campaign, so when I saw that a new game was in the works, I got really excited.
And then, that excitement ate dirt after a few games. Here's my thoughts, for what it's worth. Yeah, yeah, I get that it's in alpha, but, man. Some decisions have made me uninstall this.
Rocket Launcher - It took me a few moments to re-learn how to use it, and I'm not at all happy with it. I wasn't normally a fan of the weapon in favor for the Flak Cannon, but I felt that all of the utility is gone from the weapon now. It ques up 3 rockets max (Which is expected) but there's no additional functionality. Is that is? Really? What happened to the grenades? What happened to rocket-grouping? I feel like the lock-on is the only thing special about it now, but even then I need to be queing up additional rockets for that to even work? I dunno man, this nerf was just plain too much, which brings me to...
Flak Cannon - Yeah! Now this is my jam!! But, as much as I love the Flak Cannon, this is absolutely insane. The cone is too tight, and there's too many projectiles in the single fire. Not to mention, the projectiles are moving pretty fast. The Flak Cannon, to me, was always the A-team gun deserving of the 9th slot, but with these buffs, it's the gun. The gun. It has no down-sides, the right click is still an indirect projectile with shards bouncing everywhere, and that's still pretty powerful. When considering the strengths and weakness of a shotgun type weapon, you need to consider the spread of the gun, the randomness of the projectiles, and how fast those projectiles go. In other UT games, the Flak Cannon's weakness was range. That's why we got the Minigun and the rocket launchers, but in UT4, Range isn't half of a problem as it used to be. For *****, I compared 99's Flak Cannon to this one, and this one is insane compared to 99's. Going back, 99's Flak Cannon felt unusable.
Minigun - I actually kind of like the right click of the new minigun, but I also feel that it's a sort of homage to the old Ripper's capability. The new Minigun also seems very slow to spool up. Is this on purpose? Is this part of testing?
Shock Rifle - I don't think anything changed with this. Which makes me pretty happy. Currently, however, it's vastly overshadowed by the Link Gun. I want it, baby, but it's a detriment to carry.
Link Gun - I see that over the years, UT has been playing with this gun a lot, and that's cool. That's alright. It's gone from plasma bolts, to linking and utility for it's war-game mode. The current iteration, however... Well, it seems pretty crazy. The individual bolts do a lot of damage, and the secondary fire always seems to get me with just a few light taps. I see we're getting adventurous with the overheat on it, but I really feel that this could be conveyed with an animation, instead of a bar. Maybe the gun itself could start to glow red, and then pop open to vent like the energy weapons from Halo: CE, causing that much needed break in it's constant firing. I also see that this wasn't well received by the community. Perhaps how this nerf to the weapon is conveyed needs a facelift. If overheat remains so unpopular, then halving the damage from it's attacks may be needed. It's gone from weaker weapons, to utility, and now it's a top-teir weapon. Something happened here.
Grenade launcher. - I didn't like this in 2004, and I really don't like this now. In it's current iteration, getting auto-swapped to this thing is a disaster. I'd prefer the enforcer over this, as it's firing arc is awful, it's damage is awful, and it's speed is worse. Having this as a primary weapon is such a detriment, I've been avoiding it.
No melee weapon. - Where's my hammer at?! No shield-gun? What happened to the Translocator? One thing I liked a lot from UT3 was how it looked, and quing up a game on one of the smaller maps with Slow-mo on deaths enabled. Yeah, sure, it's not competitive UT, but we also need to remember how stupid fun that is. The hammer also allowed us to jump pretty high at the cost of a significant amount of health, and I miss that utility from when we lacked the translocator. (FFA style matches.)
Game Modes - This is more of a suggestion, than a criticism. I'm liking how Blitz is working out, and Showdown is a neat game mode. I'm wondering if we can get a return to some of UT3's lesser known game modes too. Betrayal, Greed, and it's war mode was pretty cool. 3-point Domination and assault from 99 are game modes I miss, although Assault is a hard game mode to map for, and I understand if nobody wants to make maps for that. XD My main criticism on the team oriented modes is that we don't have any way of speeding around the map quickly. We had things like the hoverboard in previous iterations, and the translocator for 99, but with these missing, there's a lot of down-time post death, carrying the Link Gun and walking to the objective looking for weapons along the way. Though, for Blitz, this down-time may be needed for the defending team.
Maps - I haven't gone through a lot of them yet, but from what I've seen of the few maps there, and some of the dev-textured ones (Which is cool to see a map grow from it's early stages, BTW) we seem to really be going in the right direction. Okay... Don't get the hub-bub on Facing Worlds, but the white-test DM map is awesome, (Featured in this remix vid.) and the one you use for the Showdown tutorial are beautifully well done. This is what got me hyped for the game. Seeing the maps look and feel the way they do. This is what got me to download it. The maps feel great to jump, dodge, and bounce around in, and the walls allow for a lot of use for wall-jumping to trip up enemy players and bots. The two maps I've played for Blitz allow for a lot of choice for the attacking team, which is something that Overwatch missed on hard.
Mutators - Are these coming back? I liked a lot of the ones that came with UT3 stock.
I'm liking a lot that there's a new UT, and I really liked the enhanced graphics of UT3 and UT4. The models look wonderful. But you can't sell a game on graphics alone. Or, well... You can, but your player base won't stay. You need to consider the decisions you make throughout your game, because just a few moments before I decided to write these criticisms, I started looking around and I'm positively stunned by the excuses given for some of these changes. Yeah, I like to pretend I'm an old man of gaming too, Rah, Rah, Young punks, get off my lawn, back in my day, we didn't regenerate health, that's called a floppy-disc you dumb little ****, Etc, Etc, Blah, Blah... But... Your playerbase is not dumb.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ, your playerbase is not ****ing retarded.
When you introduce changes, or want to try to take things in a new direction, please, please do not insult your player-base. I know when you look around the world, it's easy to think we're all retarded here, but when you see the word Impact on something that looks like that, you know it's not a ranged weapon. Players will take some time to learn the intricacies is the weapons like we did back for 99, and for the players who can't, well... We live in a connected world now. I don't have to go to school to talk to my friends about what element beats what in Pokemon anymore. People are on discord. People are on Facebook, gamers like to talk about this stuff. We'll still have people loading maps alone with all weapons, trying out new weapon functionalities. We have Wikis, tutorials, and lots of resources for people wanting to learn. I know I'm not going to get a facelift of UT99. Those days are over, and I'm looking back with rose-tinted glasses, but I still want the new iteration of UT to be fun. I want it to be balanced, fair, and exciting. I want it to feel like the old 99 and 2004, and I want a tournament style campaign too, because that made it feel exciting. (Sorry, Loincloth, your campaign was a dull and miserable slog.)
Looking at what's been done, and how the game plays now, the criticisms and directions development took... This, really feels like another Culling. Terrible decision, after terrible decision from a team of developers that don't know what they're trying to make, or what they're doing. My suggestion is this... Find and download the original UT99 (It's free, or $10 on Steam.) and play for this weekend, or the next. Marathon it in the office, play together. Figure out how each weapon worked, because you guys seemed to of lost yourself quite a bit. I want UT4 to grow, I want it to be a success, so I can go to my friends with a cool lookin' game, and be like, "Yeah, I know it's fast paced, but it's good, trust me." and be able to be honest about it. I want the Rocket Launcher to be on par with the Flak Cannon, I want that sexual thrill you get when you frag another player. But UT4? I don't get any of that. I want to be part of the development, and I want to see this grow, but I'm really worried, we're too far gone now.
So, what's the point of sticking around?
And then, that excitement ate dirt after a few games. Here's my thoughts, for what it's worth. Yeah, yeah, I get that it's in alpha, but, man. Some decisions have made me uninstall this.
Rocket Launcher - It took me a few moments to re-learn how to use it, and I'm not at all happy with it. I wasn't normally a fan of the weapon in favor for the Flak Cannon, but I felt that all of the utility is gone from the weapon now. It ques up 3 rockets max (Which is expected) but there's no additional functionality. Is that is? Really? What happened to the grenades? What happened to rocket-grouping? I feel like the lock-on is the only thing special about it now, but even then I need to be queing up additional rockets for that to even work? I dunno man, this nerf was just plain too much, which brings me to...
Flak Cannon - Yeah! Now this is my jam!! But, as much as I love the Flak Cannon, this is absolutely insane. The cone is too tight, and there's too many projectiles in the single fire. Not to mention, the projectiles are moving pretty fast. The Flak Cannon, to me, was always the A-team gun deserving of the 9th slot, but with these buffs, it's the gun. The gun. It has no down-sides, the right click is still an indirect projectile with shards bouncing everywhere, and that's still pretty powerful. When considering the strengths and weakness of a shotgun type weapon, you need to consider the spread of the gun, the randomness of the projectiles, and how fast those projectiles go. In other UT games, the Flak Cannon's weakness was range. That's why we got the Minigun and the rocket launchers, but in UT4, Range isn't half of a problem as it used to be. For *****, I compared 99's Flak Cannon to this one, and this one is insane compared to 99's. Going back, 99's Flak Cannon felt unusable.
Minigun - I actually kind of like the right click of the new minigun, but I also feel that it's a sort of homage to the old Ripper's capability. The new Minigun also seems very slow to spool up. Is this on purpose? Is this part of testing?
Shock Rifle - I don't think anything changed with this. Which makes me pretty happy. Currently, however, it's vastly overshadowed by the Link Gun. I want it, baby, but it's a detriment to carry.
Link Gun - I see that over the years, UT has been playing with this gun a lot, and that's cool. That's alright. It's gone from plasma bolts, to linking and utility for it's war-game mode. The current iteration, however... Well, it seems pretty crazy. The individual bolts do a lot of damage, and the secondary fire always seems to get me with just a few light taps. I see we're getting adventurous with the overheat on it, but I really feel that this could be conveyed with an animation, instead of a bar. Maybe the gun itself could start to glow red, and then pop open to vent like the energy weapons from Halo: CE, causing that much needed break in it's constant firing. I also see that this wasn't well received by the community. Perhaps how this nerf to the weapon is conveyed needs a facelift. If overheat remains so unpopular, then halving the damage from it's attacks may be needed. It's gone from weaker weapons, to utility, and now it's a top-teir weapon. Something happened here.
Grenade launcher. - I didn't like this in 2004, and I really don't like this now. In it's current iteration, getting auto-swapped to this thing is a disaster. I'd prefer the enforcer over this, as it's firing arc is awful, it's damage is awful, and it's speed is worse. Having this as a primary weapon is such a detriment, I've been avoiding it.
No melee weapon. - Where's my hammer at?! No shield-gun? What happened to the Translocator? One thing I liked a lot from UT3 was how it looked, and quing up a game on one of the smaller maps with Slow-mo on deaths enabled. Yeah, sure, it's not competitive UT, but we also need to remember how stupid fun that is. The hammer also allowed us to jump pretty high at the cost of a significant amount of health, and I miss that utility from when we lacked the translocator. (FFA style matches.)
Game Modes - This is more of a suggestion, than a criticism. I'm liking how Blitz is working out, and Showdown is a neat game mode. I'm wondering if we can get a return to some of UT3's lesser known game modes too. Betrayal, Greed, and it's war mode was pretty cool. 3-point Domination and assault from 99 are game modes I miss, although Assault is a hard game mode to map for, and I understand if nobody wants to make maps for that. XD My main criticism on the team oriented modes is that we don't have any way of speeding around the map quickly. We had things like the hoverboard in previous iterations, and the translocator for 99, but with these missing, there's a lot of down-time post death, carrying the Link Gun and walking to the objective looking for weapons along the way. Though, for Blitz, this down-time may be needed for the defending team.
Maps - I haven't gone through a lot of them yet, but from what I've seen of the few maps there, and some of the dev-textured ones (Which is cool to see a map grow from it's early stages, BTW) we seem to really be going in the right direction. Okay... Don't get the hub-bub on Facing Worlds, but the white-test DM map is awesome, (Featured in this remix vid.) and the one you use for the Showdown tutorial are beautifully well done. This is what got me hyped for the game. Seeing the maps look and feel the way they do. This is what got me to download it. The maps feel great to jump, dodge, and bounce around in, and the walls allow for a lot of use for wall-jumping to trip up enemy players and bots. The two maps I've played for Blitz allow for a lot of choice for the attacking team, which is something that Overwatch missed on hard.
Mutators - Are these coming back? I liked a lot of the ones that came with UT3 stock.
I'm liking a lot that there's a new UT, and I really liked the enhanced graphics of UT3 and UT4. The models look wonderful. But you can't sell a game on graphics alone. Or, well... You can, but your player base won't stay. You need to consider the decisions you make throughout your game, because just a few moments before I decided to write these criticisms, I started looking around and I'm positively stunned by the excuses given for some of these changes. Yeah, I like to pretend I'm an old man of gaming too, Rah, Rah, Young punks, get off my lawn, back in my day, we didn't regenerate health, that's called a floppy-disc you dumb little ****, Etc, Etc, Blah, Blah... But... Your playerbase is not dumb.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ, your playerbase is not ****ing retarded.
When you introduce changes, or want to try to take things in a new direction, please, please do not insult your player-base. I know when you look around the world, it's easy to think we're all retarded here, but when you see the word Impact on something that looks like that, you know it's not a ranged weapon. Players will take some time to learn the intricacies is the weapons like we did back for 99, and for the players who can't, well... We live in a connected world now. I don't have to go to school to talk to my friends about what element beats what in Pokemon anymore. People are on discord. People are on Facebook, gamers like to talk about this stuff. We'll still have people loading maps alone with all weapons, trying out new weapon functionalities. We have Wikis, tutorials, and lots of resources for people wanting to learn. I know I'm not going to get a facelift of UT99. Those days are over, and I'm looking back with rose-tinted glasses, but I still want the new iteration of UT to be fun. I want it to be balanced, fair, and exciting. I want it to feel like the old 99 and 2004, and I want a tournament style campaign too, because that made it feel exciting. (Sorry, Loincloth, your campaign was a dull and miserable slog.)
Looking at what's been done, and how the game plays now, the criticisms and directions development took... This, really feels like another Culling. Terrible decision, after terrible decision from a team of developers that don't know what they're trying to make, or what they're doing. My suggestion is this... Find and download the original UT99 (It's free, or $10 on Steam.) and play for this weekend, or the next. Marathon it in the office, play together. Figure out how each weapon worked, because you guys seemed to of lost yourself quite a bit. I want UT4 to grow, I want it to be a success, so I can go to my friends with a cool lookin' game, and be like, "Yeah, I know it's fast paced, but it's good, trust me." and be able to be honest about it. I want the Rocket Launcher to be on par with the Flak Cannon, I want that sexual thrill you get when you frag another player. But UT4? I don't get any of that. I want to be part of the development, and I want to see this grow, but I'm really worried, we're too far gone now.
So, what's the point of sticking around?
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