3 ms·

With the failure of Quake champs, unreal tournament 4, and diabotical in the past decade, I don't think we can blame the developers for not trying hard enough.

With the failure of Quake champs, unreal tournament 4, and diabotical in the past decade, I don't think we can blame the developers for not trying hard enough. All three were great games (regardless of how nit-picky the players might be), and all three failed at attracting and maintaining new players.

baal80spam 2mo ago
> all three failed at attracting and maintaining new players This means that they not necessarily were all that great.
- moomin 2mo ago
  Only in the rather reductive sense of “the vast majority of gamers are into other genres now”.
- acron0 2mo ago
  It can also mean the market has shifted which is more the case imo.
- madewithdrama 2mo ago
  They were great examples of what an arena shooter should be. Smooth movement, balanced weapons, well designed maps. The people who had experience with arena shooters liked them. Most new players did not want to get rekt for months on end while they learned the basics, however.
  - TulliusCicero 2mo ago
    > Most new players did not want to get rekt for months on end while they learned the basics, however. If that's the new player experience, you done fucked up. Making sure new players actually have fun is a critical part of the game's design. You can't just rely on "...and then new players will have to spend 50-60 hours getting demolished before they start having a good time." Easing that transition could mean different things -- a campaign, skirmish mode vs bots, full-on PvE co-op mode, automatching that actually works, whatever -- but you do need something effective.
    - crummy 2mo ago
      Splitgate matched new players with bots for the first few hours. It meant I had fun (then eventually I levelled up enough, matched with players, got stomped, and never picked it up again…)
      - wmil 2mo ago
        Marvel Rivals quietly matched your team up with bots if you lost twice in a row. I think that was a good system.
        doublerabbit 2mo ago
        Overwatch too, but it got boring after a while and their matchmaking was atrocious.
        TulliusCicero 2mo ago
        Exhaustive list of team-based PvP games where people don't complain about matchmaking:
    - MindSpunk 2mo ago
      That's largely what matchmaking aims to solve, assuming you have enough players you can get a reasonably balanced match to drop people into. Bots can teach basics, but many of these games rely on abusing game mechanics in ways the developers didn't think of in development so it's impossible to teach. Or things are physically difficult to pull off. Movement shooters especially have this problem because a core part of the game is abusing the movement system and abilities to out maneuver other players. You can explain the how, but executing it all automatically is a real skill that requires practice. I adore Titanfall 2. I sunk hundreds of hours into it. It's really something else when you get the movement down, it all happens so fast you can't think about it you just have to do it. There's no way to teach that with a tutorial, it's muscle memory and perseverance. Titanfall 2 has all of these things, campaign, skirmish with bots and PvE, but the skill floor and ceiling is still brutal. Whether it failed or not is a question of how long you expected the game to last, but it still succumbed to the same fate. The more experienced players pulled the ladder up behind them and the matchmaker didn't have enough players to give everyone a fair match.
- ColdStream 2mo ago
  Popularity and quality are two very different things. There are many brilliant games that simply didn't get much attention simply because of luck or attention got dragged somewhere else.
mikepurvis 2mo ago
I think games that are heavily reliant on online pvp are just always going to struggle with being more niche appeal. Matchmaking is hard to do well and consistently, and managing the skill/progression curve is hard— there's gotta be things in there to master, but also new players will never join if they're just getting stomped every game because they can never catch up. This tension has arguably been a contributing factor in the collapse of the ARC Raiders playerbase, with a huge population who joined primarily to shoot and loot the robots eventually confronting the realities of a pvpve game, and peacing out for good after getting shot in the back or ambushed too many times.
- ColdStream 2mo ago
  Not just that but I believe that even those folk that have these huge hits don't really understand how they managed to do it. There just seems to be so much luck involved on top of a great product. You can have a brilliant game and still fail because it doesn't get picked up in just the right way. Sort of like how Nintendo had the Wii, a huge hit but then almost immediately started to flounder for growth ideas as they didn't understand why it worked so well.
ThrowawayR2 2mo ago
Unreal Tournament 4 didn't get a chance to fail because it was never a real release. UT4 was a free tech demo for Unreal Engine 4 that never got completed because Fortnite started taking off at that time and developers were deallocated from it. And UT3 was definitely not a great game by anyone's measure.
- chupasaurus 2mo ago
  The people behind UT were reallocated to make Battle Royale mode for Fortnite which is the reason of the take off, not vice versa.
- madewithdrama 2mo ago
  It was never officially released, but it was on the front page of epic launcher for years, even after fortnite took off. The online experience was fairly complete and enjoyable (for people with experience) for ctf, duel, tdm, and team arena master. But yeah, epic didn't support it as much as they could have.
  - doublerabbit 2mo ago
    Eh, "boomer shooters" died along side with Halo and LAN parties. Minecraft was the final nail in the coffin. The knack and knowledge of hosting a dedicated server required skills. If you could one click button host a Quake 3 Arena server or UT, there would still be sort of a crowd. But not only that, if you were new: servers got toxic with the same grumpy players knowing every single trick in the map to one-shot kill you with a rail gun. It got frustrating playing the same bloody map each map change. "Oh yay, it's cs_office again" /s The whole genre got stale and never has been successfully reignited. As Discord to TeamSpeak; same misfortune. Fortnite killed Team Fortress, Overwatch killed Halo and Minecraft was the new digital lego. None of them required such a skill to play or host the game. It was refreshing for it's time. Not forgetting it was the upcoming of a new crowd of folk and as generations go, the old cards topple. Who hosted an BBS when the internet came to be? IRC today is pretty much stuck in dinosaur country and XMPP/Jabber never got a product which then was further nailed shut by Google & Co. It was epic fun for the era but it had a death bed waiting.
0x1ch 2mo ago
Twitch shooters are niche in the first place, and it has an even more niche player base that isn't majority American. I think it's a hard sell when 90% of the diehard community built their skill on Quake Live, which comparatively takes far less resources than Champions or UE4. Bethesda then switched the F2P status of Champs and Live, which was not a popular move.
ZuLuuuuuu 2mo ago
Don't forget Reflex Arena!
- sitzkrieg 2mo ago
  while it’s the cpma 3.0 i always wanted its also bolstering 0 players and worth forgetting
quasigod 2mo ago
[dead]
Krutonium 2mo ago
I was gung ho to play Quake Champions, then the monetized the shit out of it and I fucked off. UT4 was a tech demo.

baal80spam 2mo ago

> all three failed at attracting and maintaining new players This means that they not necessarily were all that great.

moomin 2mo ago
Only in the rather reductive sense of “the vast majority of gamers are into other genres now”.
acron0 2mo ago
It can also mean the market has shifted which is more the case imo.
madewithdrama 2mo ago
They were great examples of what an arena shooter should be. Smooth movement, balanced weapons, well designed maps. The people who had experience with arena shooters liked them. Most new players did not want to get rekt for months on end while they learned the basics, however.
- TulliusCicero 2mo ago
  > Most new players did not want to get rekt for months on end while they learned the basics, however. If that's the new player experience, you done fucked up. Making sure new players actually have fun is a critical part of the game's design. You can't just rely on "...and then new players will have to spend 50-60 hours getting demolished before they start having a good time." Easing that transition could mean different things -- a campaign, skirmish mode vs bots, full-on PvE co-op mode, automatching that actually works, whatever -- but you do need something effective.
  - crummy 2mo ago
    Splitgate matched new players with bots for the first few hours. It meant I had fun (then eventually I levelled up enough, matched with players, got stomped, and never picked it up again…)
    - wmil 2mo ago
      Marvel Rivals quietly matched your team up with bots if you lost twice in a row. I think that was a good system.
      - doublerabbit 2mo ago
        Overwatch too, but it got boring after a while and their matchmaking was atrocious.
        TulliusCicero 2mo ago
        Exhaustive list of team-based PvP games where people don't complain about matchmaking:
  - MindSpunk 2mo ago
    That's largely what matchmaking aims to solve, assuming you have enough players you can get a reasonably balanced match to drop people into. Bots can teach basics, but many of these games rely on abusing game mechanics in ways the developers didn't think of in development so it's impossible to teach. Or things are physically difficult to pull off. Movement shooters especially have this problem because a core part of the game is abusing the movement system and abilities to out maneuver other players. You can explain the how, but executing it all automatically is a real skill that requires practice. I adore Titanfall 2. I sunk hundreds of hours into it. It's really something else when you get the movement down, it all happens so fast you can't think about it you just have to do it. There's no way to teach that with a tutorial, it's muscle memory and perseverance. Titanfall 2 has all of these things, campaign, skirmish with bots and PvE, but the skill floor and ceiling is still brutal. Whether it failed or not is a question of how long you expected the game to last, but it still succumbed to the same fate. The more experienced players pulled the ladder up behind them and the matchmaker didn't have enough players to give everyone a fair match.
ColdStream 2mo ago
Popularity and quality are two very different things. There are many brilliant games that simply didn't get much attention simply because of luck or attention got dragged somewhere else.

mikepurvis 2mo ago

I think games that are heavily reliant on online pvp are just always going to struggle with being more niche appeal. Matchmaking is hard to do well and consistently, and managing the skill/progression curve is hard— there's gotta be things in there to master, but also new players will never join if they're just getting stomped every game because they can never catch up. This tension has arguably been a contributing factor in the collapse of the ARC Raiders playerbase, with a huge population who joined primarily to shoot and loot the robots eventually confronting the realities of a pvpve game, and peacing out for good after getting shot in the back or ambushed too many times.

ColdStream 2mo ago
Not just that but I believe that even those folk that have these huge hits don't really understand how they managed to do it. There just seems to be so much luck involved on top of a great product. You can have a brilliant game and still fail because it doesn't get picked up in just the right way. Sort of like how Nintendo had the Wii, a huge hit but then almost immediately started to flounder for growth ideas as they didn't understand why it worked so well.

ThrowawayR2 2mo ago

Unreal Tournament 4 didn't get a chance to fail because it was never a real release. UT4 was a free tech demo for Unreal Engine 4 that never got completed because Fortnite started taking off at that time and developers were deallocated from it. And UT3 was definitely not a great game by anyone's measure.

chupasaurus 2mo ago
The people behind UT were reallocated to make Battle Royale mode for Fortnite which is the reason of the take off, not vice versa.
madewithdrama 2mo ago
It was never officially released, but it was on the front page of epic launcher for years, even after fortnite took off. The online experience was fairly complete and enjoyable (for people with experience) for ctf, duel, tdm, and team arena master. But yeah, epic didn't support it as much as they could have.
- doublerabbit 2mo ago
  Eh, "boomer shooters" died along side with Halo and LAN parties. Minecraft was the final nail in the coffin. The knack and knowledge of hosting a dedicated server required skills. If you could one click button host a Quake 3 Arena server or UT, there would still be sort of a crowd. But not only that, if you were new: servers got toxic with the same grumpy players knowing every single trick in the map to one-shot kill you with a rail gun. It got frustrating playing the same bloody map each map change. "Oh yay, it's cs_office again" /s The whole genre got stale and never has been successfully reignited. As Discord to TeamSpeak; same misfortune. Fortnite killed Team Fortress, Overwatch killed Halo and Minecraft was the new digital lego. None of them required such a skill to play or host the game. It was refreshing for it's time. Not forgetting it was the upcoming of a new crowd of folk and as generations go, the old cards topple. Who hosted an BBS when the internet came to be? IRC today is pretty much stuck in dinosaur country and XMPP/Jabber never got a product which then was further nailed shut by Google & Co. It was epic fun for the era but it had a death bed waiting.

0x1ch 2mo ago

Twitch shooters are niche in the first place, and it has an even more niche player base that isn't majority American. I think it's a hard sell when 90% of the diehard community built their skill on Quake Live, which comparatively takes far less resources than Champions or UE4. Bethesda then switched the F2P status of Champs and Live, which was not a popular move.

ZuLuuuuuu 2mo ago

Don't forget Reflex Arena!

sitzkrieg 2mo ago
while it’s the cpma 3.0 i always wanted its also bolstering 0 players and worth forgetting

quasigod 2mo ago

[dead]

Krutonium 2mo ago

I was gung ho to play Quake Champions, then the monetized the shit out of it and I fucked off. UT4 was a tech demo.