Unreal Tournament III = awesome

[Ghost_Rain]

Get my son a copy tomomrow and I have 2 friends buying it at the weeekend.

[Grisu]

If you take out the Gamespy stuff and the Ageia Physics driver:
It might be awesome. But in its current state its NOT.

[thinktank]

If you take out the Gamespy stuff and the Ageia Physics driver:
It might be awesome. But in its current state its NOT.

Great logic there...

[Qicmee]

thinktank,

That's like complaining about somebody's grammar or spelling. It's a downer for me.

I think Epic probably can't change those parts of their game interface for UT3, but my opinion is no better than anybody else's.

And there's always UT4-3D in two or three years.

[Grisu]

I'm deeply sorry for my spelling/grammar errors.

In my opinion rating a game as "awesome" (apart from all other aspects) indicates that there are only a few minor bugs left.

Visit the UT3 forums and see for yourself how many people have difficulties in running the game (even on high end systems).

[Premonition]

I just used fraps.. walked around at about 30 fps then saw shots and it dropped bad in the 15 range. I got a 256 ddr3 1650 video card. It handled bf2 and 2142 great with high player counts.

[fuzzbunny]

1st off anyone getting stuck in 2k4 ons and taking 2 or 3 mins to get back into the action needs to get in touch with their suicide bind.

first off, if you have to commit suicide in a game, then theres something wrong. Typically the only time i ever commit suicide in a game is because ive fallen through the level, or i have become stuck in/on the scenery.

im pretty sure it wasnt Epics idea for people to commit suicide and then wait for vehicles to respawn.

War is OK. It has potential to be great but the maps provided with the game are a real tactical void.

Now im not sure if you reached the point i made about double dodge jumping for 3-4 mins and then skipped the rest of my post, but i pointed out some excellent tactical aspects of ut3.

The custom maps we ended up playing in 2k4 ons had far more tactical and interesting play.

we havent played any custom maps for ut3 yet, thus this isnt a fair comparison. If you need reasons why ill post them at a later date.

Now im 100% sure that you skipped it since you didn't bring up anything i said about ut3's tactically aspects. Please reread my argument.

You could actually flank the other team with a well coordinated attack.

a flank is an attack on the sides of an opposing force.

this maneuver is not a ut2004 onslaught exclusive ability. It can be performed in any 3D video game, basically all you have to do is attack from a side that the enemy is not facing. Im pretty sure you can recreate that scenario in ut3.

In war all we get is constant spam at established and always open choke points and a linear node fight core to core.

First off, ut2004 suffered from the opposite of this problem, the mad node dash. Since there were so many ways to get to an enemy's core, there was no need to confront anyone. alot of the time people would completely bypass each other and perform the same link on opposite sides.

also ut3 is by no means linear, it puts great emphasis on different aspects of the map, not just the main node link. For instance, timed nodes, script nodes that make make your primary core more vulnerably to attack, nodes that are closer to a major choke point thus provide a better place to spawn, and more often then not, better vehicles.

the list goes on.

If you like spam its fine. I like spam but I also like tactical play. Variety for the win.

Once again, if you feel that ut3 has no variety, then you're mistaken. also flanking is a very basic military tactic and was poor support for the argument you were making.

and to add one more thing, i've noticed that you were trying to pimp out quake wars in one of the negative ut3 topics. imho that game was a shameless and poorly executed rip of battle field 2. If you feel that a discussion about some issues or disagreements about a newly released game is the perfect place to bring propaganda for a dead game. Then im not sure what to say.

I mean, there is a place for quake wars on cain's forum, it might not get very many post, but it is there.

[Fluffy]

I only mentioned quakewars where other people did. You may or may not like the game but it is doing a hell of a lot better than ut3 is. My personal games of choice atm are TF2 & UT3 but I do still play the odd quakewars game. Always being able to find a group of low pinging and populated servers when you want a game helps with that.

Sorry if I used the wrong word with flank but the point stands. You could outmanoeuvre the other team. Here all you do is hammer away at the same always open nodes that everyone now knows about or work a linear link chain on almost all of the maps. The stronger team in terms of individual players wins sooner or later and tactics don't come into it. Bigger maps with better link setups could change that. The only time I've seen a lesser team win was on day one when most of the players didn't understand what the unlinked nodes do. Since then every game has been a brute force win or stalemate untill overtime. No more tactical than primeval in 2k4.

Comparing to custom stuff is valid as epic had plenty of time to go and see what their last game evolved into and how well it was working. The community handed them a fixed game type and they ignored it.

I'm not a hater of this game. I play it and enjoy it for brief periods but think it could and should be so much better than it is.

P.S. tactical suicide to respawn elsewhere is a common tactic in other games too, including this one.

[BigTwinky]

Suicide can be an extremely quick way to get to a newly open spawn point to save travel time, pick up a newly spawned vehicle, defend your main node under attack.

Not that its a common occurance, but knowing when to respawn can sometimes be way more beneficial to your entire team.

[Fluffy]

Indeed. I 1st saw on mass use of it in iCTF in ut2k3 where people wouldnt even bother to close defend the flag. They would just push forward and suicide on mass to fall back and defend the flag if someone got through. Some clan players did this so much that epic brought in a suicide timer to limit how often you could do it.

For war I see it mostly being useful for the orb carriers and people who want to whore a particular vehicle as it allows you to bail an almost dead ride and fight on foot until the vehicle respawns and then go and get it.

[fuzzbunny]

alright the context in which im using suicide is different then yours, honestly i was rather perturbed at the lengthy distances between nodes in ut2004. it made it alot harder for the foot soldier and made it more vehicle base.. almost to the point where if you were not in a vehicle you were kind of screwed. now dont play the skill card, we have all killed someone in a tank with a flack cannon, relaying on sheer dodging skill and knowledge of terrain.

Suicide is a very viable tactic and yes its used in alot of video games for alot of reasons. I honestly didnt like the flow of ONS maps, if you did not have a vehicle then you could not get to the fight when you were needed, thus making battles more about transportation management then skill. I would go as far as to guess that if they did have hover boards and the ability to tow onto vehicles in ut2004, then maps those maps would of been alot more spammier.

i like ut3 because it seems like the vehicles and foot soldiers are more integrated. it seems like they were meant to be (although i do miss how far back mantas would be knocked if they were hit by shock rifles, but i hear they are adjusting that in the patch)

as for the maps, Epic probally went into development for ut3 as soon as they pushed the ECE out the door, and although i do think they took some hints from the community (because more often then not, theyll just buy them out or add them to their team :P) i agree with you in the fact that they should of stayed closer to ONS since making such a drastic change to the formula to fix problems with ONS turned the game into a hit or miss.

You either love the changes, or you dislike them. Thats perfectly fine, and in the future im sure people will make some amazing maps. alot of developers are relying on this and thats why they provide such excellent developing tools and community mod support. (look at valve and the wonder that is counter strike!)

As for hammering away at the node lines, i dont agree, alot of the maps require you to really split your forces. maybe not in the same way you need to split up in a multi rooted ONS map, but you need to spilt them up regardless. If you focus strictly on the node line then typically you miss out on some really nice tactical nodes that can make huge difference in the over all outcome.

Now we might not see Eye to eye on how "tactical" either of the iterations are thats fine, just dont say that a game is tactically void when its not what your use to, or what you want it to be! that might insight a flame riot :O

now i apologize for going off abit on your previous post. The reason i went off a little bit is because it wasn't a discussion! I posted my point of view on unreal tournament 3 and gave my reason why i thought it was tactical. You said it was not yet did not say what points you didn't agree with. if you dont think so, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, but if we want to get any progression you need to state why you thought my reason where not tactical!

[Fluffy]

I've got no problem with allowing faster, easier transport between nodes. The thing is though, that by it's nature makes the game more spammy and choked up meaning that alternate routes are even more important than they were in ons and we mostly dont have them. Those new special nodes are a great addition but on even teams players can get to them so quickly and drop an orb on them or shoot them and they just end up changing hands so often that they become kinda meaningless and you are back to which team does better at the slog across the linear link chain. Where they really come into there own ATM is where they can damage the core as at least it means a stronger team that can hold them as well as holding most of the other nodes can win quite fast without having to mess about keeping the final node up long enough to kill the core.

Imagine how much better this could all be with some more interesting links thrown into the mix and maybe even having some of those special nodes linked instead of always open. That doesn't have to mean huge maps with huge distances between nodes. Just a little more imagination in setting things up would be nice.

[Rand{CLR}]

Both sides have good points, but I would (respectfully) say this: don't let love of the game overwhelm the ability to see its flaws. This game is deeply flawed, and this is coming from someone who probably likes it as much as most, and has probably played it more than almost everyone here so far. However, the way the game is now, unless the patches come quick and address the biggest issues fast (and note that VOIP is NOT one of the things they're addressing in the first patch, at least yet), I won't be playing this game nearly as long as I played ONS.

The consolization of the game doesn't bother me that much except in how it sort of seems to directly affect the map design. Fully half of the Warfare maps are simply too small or flat out suck. Tank Crossing is too small by far, smaller than Primeval, which was about as small as a map that the developers should damn well know is going to be played by more people than the 8-12 design framework should get. Islander flat out SUCKS when you're on the side that doesn't have the vehicles. A couple others are similar. Torlan and Downtown are the best maps right now, and none of them approach the shear fun and brillance of Dria or Crossfire.

I'm much more in Fluffy's line of thinking regarding the strategic elements of the game. I hate, hate, hate linear thinking in this type of multiplayer FPS, and Warfare forces linear approaches far more often than it should. Fuzzbunny, you argue about splitting forces, but that only happens (aside from Torlan) on the countdown/timer node maps. It should happen on almost every map, but instead there is just one route to the core, and sometimes one "shortcut" to core damage.

We need a node editor or something. The open nodes don't do enough, because all they do is give you a few vehicles, which more often than not turn a lopsided loss into even more of a farce. Even though they nerfed the Goliath since ONS, if I get one, it takes A LOT to knock me out on half these maps. In a winning effort, I just unbalance the map even more. In a losing effort, the node design is such that I can't usually hop out to trigger the next node build, so I just delay the inevitable of 16 other guys coming after us.

The optional nodes do lead to some fun times. I've already had at least two times on Downtown where guys like Qicmee and Blackarrow have tried to stop me from getting the tank node back up, so it makes for great fights, 1 on 3 in some cases, which is just awesome for the on-foot experience. But far more often than not, that's not going to happen.

But in general, though I like the game, I definitely see the flaws. I really wish more people would play, but recognize that Epic did some things that helped shoot themselves in the foot. At a very, absolute minimum, they need to make a better server browser, get VOIP working, and give us some better maps--including some where airpower actually makes a difference. We're seriously lacking fun air-combat maps.

You may not have liked ONS's flow, but take those same-sized maps with the hoverboard option, and they get a whole lot better for travel time. Certainly a lot better than the consolized band-boxes of the maps Cain isn't running right now.

-Rand

EDIT for typos

[Rand{CLR}]

By the by, the Orb has a good bit more potential than is currently realized.

I wonder what happened to all of Epic's grand talk about multi-part mini-campaigns?

-Rand

[juneau]

Both sides have good points, but I would (respectfully) say this: don't let love of the game overwhelm the ability to see its flaws. This game is deeply flawed, and this is coming from someone who probably likes it as much as most, and has probably played it more than almost everyone here so far. However, the way the game is now, unless the patches come quick and address the biggest issues fast (and note that VOIP is NOT one of the things they're addressing in the first patch, at least yet), I won't be playing this game nearly as long as I played ONS.

The consolization of the game doesn't bother me that much except in how it sort of seems to directly affect the map design. Fully half of the Warfare maps are simply too small or flat out suck. Tank Crossing is too small by far, smaller than Primeval, which was about as small as a map that the developers should damn well know is going to be played by more people than the 8-12 design framework should get. Islander flat out SUCKS when you're on the side that doesn't have the vehicles. A couple others are similar. Torlan and Downtown are the best maps right now, and none of them approach the shear fun and brillance of Dria or Crossfire.

I'm much more in Fluffy's line of thinking regarding the strategic elements of the game. I hate, hate, hate linear thinking in this type of multiplayer FPS, and Warfare forces linear approaches far more often than it should. Fuzzbunny, you argue about splitting forces, but that only happens (aside from Torlan) on the countdown/timer node maps. It should happen on almost every map, but instead there is just one route to the core, and sometimes one "shortcut" to core damage.

We need a node editor or something. The open nodes don't do enough, because all they do is give you a few vehicles, which more often than not turn a lopsided loss into even more of a farce. Even though they nerfed the Goliath since ONS, if I get one, it takes A LOT to knock me out on half these maps. In a winning effort, I just unbalance the map even more. In a losing effort, the node design is such that I can't usually hop out to trigger the next node build, so I just delay the inevitable of 16 other guys coming after us.

The optional nodes do lead to some fun times. I've already had at least two times on Downtown where guys like Qicmee and Blackarrow have tried to stop me from getting the tank node back up, so it makes for great fights, 1 on 3 in some cases, which is just awesome for the on-foot experience. But far more often than not, that's not going to happen.

But in general, though I like the game, I definitely see the flaws. I really wish more people would play, but recognize that Epic did some things that helped shoot themselves in the foot. At a very, absolute minimum, they need to make a better server browser, get VOIP working, and give us some better maps--including some where airpower actually makes a difference. We're seriously lacking fun air-combat maps.

You may not have liked ONS's flow, but take those same-sized maps with the hoverboard option, and they get a whole lot better for travel time. Certainly a lot better than the consolized band-boxes of the maps Cain isn't running right now.

-Rand

EDIT for typos

+1 to everything you said Rand. If they get VOIP fixed, mixed in with some new custom maps (Hopefully someone will do Crossfire and Dria) This game will be as good, if not better than 2K4.

Look on the bright side.... at least there's no red bug.