Arena Shooters Are Dead

Ideally arena shooters in the gaming industry are dead but that is because of the severe lack of hardcore gamers these days due the the outrageously large gaming community of casual gamers. this was brought into play because of games like the call of duty franchise and there were arena shooter qualities to the halo series until reach came out drawing away from the arena shooter play style by giving everybody the choice to use abilities instead of fighting over these singular things that you would have fought over in multiplayer games and then got worse when they made sprint a permanent ability with the ability to choose your own guns at the beginning of the match which drew away from the original experience, but another reason you can say why the arena shooters lack a community is because the big creators of arena shooters have practically abandoned them for other games for profit like epic games replacing unreal with gears of war or id software disappearing off of the face of the earth and then returning with RAGE but it wasnt that great and didnt hold any similarities to what they were built on originally. I do however believe that one day they will make a comeback with a major title because there are people out there that want it and its obvious with games like nexuiz or warsow and the few other arena shooters that are built by fans. I love the arena shooter genre but it deserves way more respect and deserves another time in the spotlight.

bronzegriff09, it would be much appreciated if you would structure your thoughts before writing them down. Excessively long sentences with scarce punctuation are hard to understand, and not many people care to invest their time trying to get your point if you don't invest time to deliver it properly.

With that being said, you are probably right. Game designers tend to go for the big market of casual gamers, they try to please the masses by delivering easy success. This is where you can make the most money even with small margins simply due to the volume you sell. Hardcore arena gaming is a niche. Developing a PROPER arena shooter with enough gameplay depth would not be significantly less cost intensive than developing just another shooter for the masses, but you would have a far smaller target market. I doubt you could get the same return of investment from addressing the hardcore arena shooter market as if you'd invest in just another "blockbuster" kind of standard product. The masses will buy anything addressed at them if it's only new.

Hi there!
I am a Nexuiz "veteran" (2008-2010) and even though I've been following Xonotic since its inception, I didn't get into play it as intensely as I did with nexuiz... That due to RL putting gaming away. I've been quite disconnected from the project and the gaming.
Last week during a lunch we got to talk about gaming, and I came to miss my old arena gaming in Nexuiz and here...

Xonotic would be my main game if there was anyone online who wasn't playing minsta+hook. The NA duel and vanilla ctf scene was practically dead when I stopped playing(was playing on a POS netbook and I stopped because of the low FPS), but now I have built a new PC that can play most anything on high settings and all I see is minsta+hook across the board. Sure, a vanilla NA match pops up from time to time, but it's just not frequently enough to get my fix and the practice that I definitely need.

I've done a few games in a couple of days and I agree. Nowadays all the populated servers are Minsta or Overkill. I remember the days when there were always a couple of (almost) vanilla CTF servers, full all the time (that was 2009).
I am still a bit puzzled by it, and even asked around the vehicle server. Minsta/Overkill are the defacto gamemodes, no vanilla to be found.

I certainly can see the community fragmented a bit and it would be great if more people played it casually. Forking coincided with me moving on in RL and I drifted away.

Being a business student I am interested in the market thing.

Ppl who learned Q3 back in the 90's are unreachable for younger players who were too young to play Q3 when it was still played. They have been raised on Halo/CS/COD. What they have learned in those games doesn't apply to Quake3-based games. they are not specially difficult - but they have devoted hard core player base which play for over 14 years now (1999 when Q3 was released). And imagine now 14 years old quaker VS 15 years old guy/gal playing QuakeLive or other derivative games.

I was about 14 when I got nexuiz in '08. I did put some effort as the game was quite promising to me, being a broke teen.

However, the fast paced "quirks" of the game might put off a sizeable quantity of newcomers. I'll have a try introducing some friends to the game, but I can guess they won't get the grips of it.

And indeed the gameplay is demanding. I thank the reflexes and aim I got through these games.

BTW, on the Dev side no complaints at all; The game has taken quite a few leaps and feels more solid to what earlier versions and Nexuiz were. Also, sorry for the nostalgia loaded post, I just wanted to jump in and I will play a little more once I have more time.

I'll try to stick around! (4 years... damn)

Hi there!

I think lot of the Xonotic CTF maps might not be good for vanilla CTF where I would expect larger maps with lots of places to hide and allow for team work. Where ever I see Vanilla voted in on SMB CTF servers, because the maps are so mall it becomes a bullet spam fest.

Also welcome I saw you playing on the Drive Mofo server.

Hi. I'm called node357 usually. I played Nexuiz. And Doom. I'm not altogether stable, so feel free to disregard this thread.

Arena shooters look dead. There are a handful of them floating around, each with a small die-hard community. They like and are accustomed to the movement style and weapons of each. They don't change games, even though their games lack players.

It occurred to me tonight that a single game could draw the entire small arena shooter community by adopting their features. A game doing this would probably lose much of its identity, but cause a unity of the remaining arena shooter fans.

Xonotic could be the one to do it. Adding the action button from Warsow. This pretty much duplicates the dodging double-tap from UT. The weapons and balance seem to resemble Quake already without tweaking. OA, same story as Quake since it's basically Quake without "assets".

I assumed the ill-fated retail Nexuiz would fail because I saw UT3 fail, despite its technical excellence. There was a lot of money backing UT3, and probably retail Nexuiz, too. Money isn't a factor. The majority of gamers seem more comfortable with slower FPS games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, and the aging Counter-Strike. I was too until I hit my stride with Nexuiz, but even then, my lack of experience prevented me forever from becoming a revered player (not to mention my personality disorders, ahem).

There's no catching up to pro players with experience. Time does it all. No one is catching up, and no one will be satisfied with their progress when the pros are already 10 steps ahead. I believe Xonotic's best hope is not to avertise to the turtle gaming community, but to the remaining existing arena FPS fans. I was unique in wanting to play a game that was too fast and demanding for me, but it's apparent that most modern gamers are not willing to lose all the time and not willing to recondition themselves for faster, simpler games.

I suggest Xonotic include the major features of the other most popular arena shoooters, not so much for the sake of Xonotic itself, but for the survival of the entire genre. I'm sure the Xonotic developers would understand this proposal better than I, since I'm not a programmer or game developer, but I'm sure my idea will make some sense. Arena FPS games are not popular anymore, and any hope for the genre lies in the decisions of those who have the power to keep it alive. I, personally, would like to see at least one of the existing arena shooters have enough of a community to facilititate a busy server at any time. I hope Xonotic can be the game where that happens.

Hi, I saw your thread a few days back and wanted to add some of my comments:

Arena shooters are dead for two main reasons;

1. Not enough appeal. Most gamers are casual gamers now, especially on the PC and here in America. Most PC gamers are playing DOTA2/LoL casually or playing minecraft(which I find rather fun ). Casual games draw more of a market for gamers now, multiplayer wise.

2. Skill gap. Although xonotic does have a casual side to it, it still has a large skill gap for beginner players, as do most arena shooters do. Like I stated above, most American players prefer casual shooters or games and don't want to take a few days to learn how to play arena shooters correctly. Call of duty and Quake/UT have very large skill gap differences, call of duty can be played by anyone, arena shooters can't.

As a heavy UT3 player the past few years, I've seen many newbie players complain the game sucks because it's too hard and I've been accused of aimbotting or hacking because I'm too good. Well, this proves the skill gap is too large.

Anyhow, UT3 did have a lot of money backing it up and had alot of hype if I recall, but the development was rushed and had resulted in a poor release, resulting in kind of a failed game. ut3 is the most perfected gameplay for arena shooters I think, and has the best game play especially for duel. If epic games waited to release until 2009, the game would have had alot more successful outcomes. Today, mutators can be used to perfect UT3 gameplay. If you don't believe me, check out my galaxy servers in UT3. That's the way UT3 should be played.

All in all I do agree arena shooters are dead. Maybe someday the demand will rise again, or maybe Cliffy B's new arena shooter will create some Demand for the genre.

It's not just a skill gap, but a skill gap that players generally don't care to bridge. In S4 League, I won 90% of the 6v6 CTF-like ("TD") games I played. If I can win 90% of my games, that means that the 11 other players hardly affect the outcome. That's a huge skill gap. But S4 was popular anyway (until its publisher tried to milk it for money).

In Xonotic, the skill gap is in exploiting a specific odd behavior of the physics engine. I don't want to learn how to bunny hop. It's not interesting to me. Feedback is sparse - "Am I doing things properly? Which direction should I turn exactly?" So learning is also difficult.

GunZ is very similar to arena shooters in that winning requires learning how to exploit some game-specific glitches. GunZ is (was?) popular. But GunZ has (had?) a big userbase, so you can compete with fellow beginners. Also, you can tell when you're exploiting glitches correctly, so you can improve. A comparable feature in Xonotic would be a direction arrow - "point here to bunnyhop correctly". Actually, that's probably a good idea for beginners.

Xonotic is a niche game, for people who appreciate the funny physics engine. I doubt most people would be happy if it was taken away. You could have a mode with a "patched" physics engine, but what then? Jumping and walking are boring - you'd need some other movement techniques to appeal to the non-casuals, like the movement systems in S4 or GunZ (or Warsow, but theirs is primitive). Then, we're talking about something entirely different.

Seriously who cares, its just a video game, learn it, play it if not find another one that you'll like. Having deep thoughts about it wont help you get batter at the game play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVkAkkTmEZE

Seriously who cares, its just a video game, learn it, play it if not find another one that you'll like. Having deep thoughts about it wont help you get batter at the game play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVkAkkTmEZE

Are you saying people should leave if they find Xonotic too quirky? Is it that unimportant to you?

This is not deep thoughts to get better at gameplay, but rather to make gameplay itself better and make the game more attractive. Do you not care about that?

It's not just a skill gap, but a skill gap that players generally don't care to bridge.

and yet there are people playing xonotic every day to try to, or have already bridged, that skill gap. you shouldn't attribute your opinion to everybody. Those who have not learned can easily learn by asking or observing, instead of making ill-informed forum posts about how they are too lazy to try.

In Xonotic, the skill gap is in exploiting a specific odd behavior of the physics engine.

Incorrect; the skill gap is much much wider than you poorly estimate it to be. Map knowledge, positioning, aim, sounds, item times, weapon knowledge, quantifying situations, and more as well as advanced movement contributes to the skill gap.

I don't want to learn how to bunny hop.
It's not interesting to me. Feedback is sparse - "Am I doing things properly? Which direction should I turn exactly?" So learning is also difficult.

Bunnyhopping is an innate part of the game in the same way dribbling is part of football. It is not technically neccesary, but you must do it. Feedback is not scarce if you actually try to find it. Arena shooters like xonotic are not going to hand things to you, but they will provide the resources for you to learn yourself. I agree that it could be easier to showcase to people who are unfamiliar with the system, but that's it. If you don't like it, then find a new game.

GunZ is very similar to arena shooters in that winning requires learning how to exploit some game-specific glitches. GunZ is (was?) popular. But GunZ has (had?) a big userbase, so you can compete with fellow beginners. Also, you can tell when you're exploiting glitches correctly, so you can improve.

If you can't tell from the fact your speed increases massively when you bunnyhop that you've exploited a physics glitch or at least found a reliable movement technique to go faster, then seek medical help

Xonotic is a niche game, for people who appreciate the funny physics engine. I doubt most people would be happy if it was taken away.

incorrect, it is much more then just the physics, it characterizes a small genre in FPS which has existed for years and years and years. The physics are part of what it is, not what it is as a whole. People would not be happy if they took it away in the same way that if they took away the titans in titanfall, people would not be happy.

S4 or GunZ (or Warsow, but theirs is primitive). Then, we're talking about something entirely different.

HAHAHA

I think these arguments could have been provided in a more constructive way, but I agree to its essence.

Most of your post is misinterpretations, and the rest is false.

It's not just a skill gap, but a skill gap that players generally don't care to bridge.

and yet there are people playing xonotic every day to try to, or have already bridged, that skill gap. you shouldn't attribute your opinion to everybody. Those who have not learned can easily learn by asking or observing, instead of making ill-informed forum posts about how they are too lazy to try.

You can claim whatever you want, but playerbase stats exist.

In Xonotic, the skill gap is in exploiting a specific odd behavior of the physics engine.

Incorrect; the skill gap is much much wider than you poorly estimate it to be. Map knowledge, positioning, aim, sounds, item times, weapon knowledge, quantifying situations, and more as well as advanced movement contributes to the skill gap.

Those other aspects are easily bridgable, and a non-issue. Other successful shooters often have the same aspects. In S4, my entire skill gap came exactly from those things (except aim, because I couldn't aim).

I don't want to learn how to bunny hop.
It's not interesting to me. Feedback is sparse - "Am I doing things properly? Which direction should I turn exactly?" So learning is also difficult.

Bunnyhopping is an innate part of the game in the same way dribbling is part of football. It is not technically neccesary, but you must do it. Feedback is not scarce if you actually try to find it. Arena shooters like xonotic are not going to hand things to you, but they will provide the resources for you to learn yourself. I agree that it could be easier to showcase to people who are unfamiliar with the system, but that's it. If you don't like it, then find a new game.

That's not what I said at all. I already knew about those resources. I know how bunnyhopping works, and how the physics engine works (mostly). But I have no desire to spend time trying to determine whether I went faster this time or that time, and whether it was because I turned too much or too little, etc.

GunZ is very similar to arena shooters in that winning requires learning how to exploit some game-specific glitches. GunZ is (was?) popular. But GunZ has (had?) a big userbase, so you can compete with fellow beginners. Also, you can tell when you're exploiting glitches correctly, so you can improve.

If you can't tell from the fact your speed increases massively when you bunnyhop that you've exploited a physics glitch or at least found a reliable movement technique to go faster, then seek medical help

A blatant misrepresentation.

S4 or GunZ (or Warsow, but theirs is primitive). Then, we're talking about something entirely different.

HAHAHA

You think that warsow's movement is anything but useless without bunnyhopping? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGse8Z5ODkQ
Nothing even remotely at that level is possible.

You can claim whatever you want, but playerbase stats exist.

I certainly can, but that wasn't a claim, it was fact - and i am aware of xonstat. it's existence proves nothing in your argument, if you are going to try and use something as a counter at least try to get actual data from it that is believable, not just a rhetorical query.

Those other aspects are easily bridgable, and a non-issue. Other successful shooters often have the same aspects.

Wrong, every player is different. i, myself, find it hard to concentrate and clear my head while playing, while i have great aim; you might be the opposite. How you feel does not represent everyone else. when you make absolute statements like that, you wrongly assume the authority to do so.

That's not what I said at all. I already knew about those resources. I know how bunnyhopping works, and how the physics engine works (mostly). But I have no desire to spend time trying to determine whether I went faster this time or that time, and whether it was because I turned too much or too little, etc.

oh, so it's just you not learning a mechanic of a game and then complaining that everyone else should replace or get rid of the mechanic because you claim others don't like it like you? nice

A blatant misrepresentation.

nope. that's exactly what bunnyhopping is, my point stands.

You think that warsow's movement is anything but useless without bunnyhopping? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGse8Z5ODkQ
Nothing even remotely at that level is possible.

HAHAHA
(before you ask, that's strafejumping, not bunnyhopping, hun; and that's what warsow players do; their movement system is based on cpma which is even more intricate and fast.
even more ironically, in your quest to find games with movement systems in which don't revolve around bunnyhopping, you referenced one which mainly uses an even more advanced form of it, and a parkouring move to simply augment it. nice)

Ok, at this point your entire post is a combination of nonsense and continued misrepresentations about what I said, so I am done here. I only have limited time to waste on buffoons.

le ragequit

That was completely unnecessary. Please apply some self-moderation.

le ragequit

That was completely unnecessary. Please apply some self-moderation.

i'm sorry mister bougo i was just so offended at being called a buffoon i will remove the offensive post

That's perfectly fine, and I should call out Manifold for calling you a buffoon as well.

Welp.

(didn't actually read this thread)

I just played this http://uberstrike.cmune.com/Play, its horrible, pay to win, primitive thing but its quite lively. So arena shooters are not as dead as it seems, even though its all crap level games. Its interesting how even P2W POS can be funny if its fast enough.

I think that if a game can be win only if you pay for it and who pays more scores higher, it's not a game, its a fraud!

I couldn't look at myself in the mirror, if I would have faked a game success like this... not mentioning the feeling of getting cheated for money.

(didn't actually read this thread)

I just played this http://uberstrike.cmune.com/Play, its horrible, pay to win, primitive thing but its quite lively. So arena shooters are not as dead as it seems, even though its all crap level games. Its interesting how even P2W POS can be funny if its fast enough.

Yeah, i tried it too, it is shit and also very populated and the reason is because it is advertised and mostly played as a Facebook app.

One reason makes me believe that arena shooters are dead:

Look at remaining UT and Q3 servers, the most popular aren't the regular CTF or DM servers, but servers with MODs, gameplay elements that weren't planned by the original creators of the game. If I remember it right, there was a time in which UT had over 5k servers. Now there are fewer than 800 servers worldwide and most of them are empty for most of the time.

In 2000 there were fewer games and fewer broadband connections. Now, 10 years later, we have broadband everywhere, fiber optics is cheaper, mobile market, social networks and thousands of games competing in every style niche. And the console market is bigger than the PC market.

But I still prefer DM, CTF, TDM, over CS, BF or COD. And I'm still unable to reproduce circle jump, strafe jump and aim while mid air. I see the videos, but I just can't. Race servers or Bunnytrack in UT, most of the time I see me and the other players failing so many times over and over that at some point we quit.

One reason makes me believe that arena shooters are dead:

Look at remaining UT and Q3 servers, the most popular aren't the regular CTF or DM servers, but servers with MODs, gameplay elements that weren't planned by the original creators of the game. If I remember it right, there was a time in which UT had over 5k servers. Now there are fewer than 800 servers worldwide and most of them are empty for most of the time.

UT and Q3 are over 10-15 years old, if they still had populated servers it would be a miracle, so that's not a realistic thing to judge arena shooters by at all

One reason makes me believe that arena shooters are dead:

Look at remaining UT and Q3 servers, the most popular aren't the regular CTF or DM servers, but servers with MODs, gameplay elements that weren't planned by the original creators of the game. If I remember it right, there was a time in which UT had over 5k servers. Now there are fewer than 800 servers worldwide and most of them are empty for most of the time.

UT and Q3 are over 10-15 years old, if they still had populated servers it would be a miracle, so that's not a realistic thing to judge arena shooters by at all

The point that I was trying to make is: there were other games that came after UT and Q3. Quake IV, UT2004, UT3, Doom 3, F.E.A.R. Combat, Jedi Knight Outcast and Academy, Pariah, Warpath, Red Faction, etc. Some were made free from the start, others not. But they've never reached the kind of popularity of having 5 thousand servers and a thousand players during day or night. During its peak, UT had thousands of crap maps and crap mods. A decade later, UT3 doesn't have as many maps and mods as UT1 once had.

Apart from real world war themed games, there are now the massive online genre and the browser based games. But then, I didn't play any of those (War rock, Combat Arms, Quake live etc).