Next Gen Unreal Tournament - PC Exclusive, 100% free

This was a great week . First we got announcement of Killing Floor 2 , which will be studios biggest game to date (Thanks to great sales of Killing Floor and Red Orchestra 2) and now we got THIS , a true Unreal Tournament game for core fans .

W

Knowing what modders are capable of I'm expecting a ton of stuff that we never seen in UE before. This is a dream come true where we get a new UE the way we want it to be.

Consolities Cry*

Knowing the UR they will make good use of the Unreal Engine we seen time and time again what modders ca do when giving full access to a game source code

I see lots of problems with this idea, but hopefully it turns out well.

I suppose I'm most worried that Epic will release a barebones Unreal game and every single mod will compete to be played because the base game isn't enough. Since nobody will agree, it will fracture the player base into tiny numbers that will hurt the long term prospects of the game. I don't want to see standard weapons behind a paywall. If the community starts building the game to make a great game, then we could get something special. If the community builds something solely to make money and preserve their idealistic view of UT, then we have problems.

You need a UE4 subscriptions to even make mods to sell so only certain people in the entire community would even get a cent. This is not something where you will see real money out of for a long time. The modders who will play a huge role in making this game are passionate fans of the series.

The final version of the game will be released when the community see it fit as a complete playable game like any other quality retail game release. Epic does not call all the shots and they already know what there going work on first that people loved about UR.

Nothings free these days, there will be a catch.

The only thing that's going be not free are mods sold by modders and that if they choose to sell them because they give them out for free

They'll embrace TF2 model.

developed with community = fail. the blockheaded fanbase will try to keep this as oldschool as possible, wich will result in UT3 happening all over again. not enough new and dead on arrival. it's not the 90's anymore.

i'm looking forward to it, but i'm not expecting much.

they are already rich dude. they don't need funding they can fund it themselves. It's an investment into UE4.

UT3 was oldschool?

yeah thats news to me, UT3 was pretty lame. I want 2k4 again

Now I get how most F2P games use microtransactions to help supplement development costs. Which is fine so long as it's balanced, as in NO withholding vital story elements or high end gear behind a pay wall. Path of Exile is a great example of how this is done right.

And while what UT is doing is great for the gamers, I wonder how they can pull it off this way with no revenue return at all? I do like fair models for the player, and no I don't lose sleep over company profits (or lack thereof), but still this does leave some unanswered questions.

No Microtransactions or F2P shit? Wow that is good

it will probably just be cosmetics like in POE.

They didn't say there wouldn't be ads. Plus all those mods can only be made by subscribing to the engine tools for $20 a month and obviously Epic gets a cut from each mod sale..

What do you expect out of a modern day arena shooter besides modern graphics?

So only 20 bucks a month for UE4 and you can help them build this game?

sounds like it..really good deal

I gotta subscript to this sometime in this future would love to models for the game

About time we got the king of twitch shooters back.

Knowing modders they are going to push UE4 to the limit look at skyrim and what they did to make it look stunning. And its only 20 bucks a month to use the engine that is a steal.

Modders actually fixed Skyrim, hell modders fix all of Bestheda's games.

Yea that to lol Since Epic is letting modders develop the game we are in for surprise what they might cook up for the game.

such valid points you have there. wait... you can't actually name any reasons, just "lame". how was UT3 not oldschoold? what did 2k4 do different besides some vehicles? i can tell you, nothing.

why was 2k4 better then? because it was able to amaze in it's time, unlike UT3 wich was basicly the same game graphically updated. it didn't impress anyone anymore. UT3 died because it was too oldschool.

how do you improve an arena shooter then? i don't f*** know. i'd be doing it if i knew, but one things for sure; fanbase will never allow new innovations. i don't understand why those fans don't just play 2k4. imo, they shouldn't waste a second on a remake, but instead try something new, even if there's risk it doesn't work so well. we will always have 2k4 anyway.

e: actually, Quake Wars did improve the typical arena shooter. it was technically broken, yes, but it had many great ideas.

here is to more good news

The original composers of Unreal and Unreal Tournament will return to Epic’s upcoming remake

What aint broken does not need fixin .

For once UT3 was a slower paced than UT2k4 and for a twitch shooter that is a deal breaker right there. Also setting up Lan games and skirmish matches with bots is down right limited and i will say even frustrating and frankly bot A.I. took a nose dive compared to 2004 ( and that is not just UT problem for some reason alot of new games A.I. is worst compared to older games ) . I gotta give it to UT3 about level design though is on par if not better than UT2k4 and as always mod support is great. UT3 was a good i will even say great game is just that UT2004 was the better one

well there are propably just a handful of players that would actually still buy an oldschool arena shooter. that's what i think is exactly Epic's problem with the Unreal IP, and the reason why it has been just sitting idle; they can only make an oldschool shooter if they don't want to face the fan-rage, but if they do it, it will only sell like 15 copies.

i personally liked the slower pace (yes, i know, blasphemy) because it made the maps more relevant. no use having detailed semi-large maps when you can bunny-hop accross it in 2 seconds. i didn't play bot matches so i don't really have insight on that.

I still think there is a good market for arena shooters and i think Epic's approach in this new UT is a good one that will spark arena shooter interest once again . Its just that it does not need to be big budget with lots of cutscenes and a forced story ( like UT3 did ). Heck i found UT3 a great game but its taking its self seriously with those cutscenes and that embarrassing story ( really there is no reason to be there ) .

As for the pace of the game to each his own i guess but it seems most people enjoyed the faster pace of UT2004 ( hence why some of the complaints about UT3 ). Besides this is not battlefield and going into battle the faster you can imo is a plus

Original composers are returning for this latest Unreal Tournament game , another great news . Old school PC shooters are really coming back and this is something that we wanted for years .

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/unreal-tournament-original-unrealunreal-tournament-music-composers-to-return/

Though risky from a business stand point, I still love the concept and I hope it succeeds.

It has to contend with the casualness of the industry, bought in by shovelware and gimmicks.
I hope it does well and will bring back the old hardcore FPS shooter arenas back on the map.

The fact that it is a PC exclusive already makes it better than UT3. It seems that it is time to buy a new PC.

Arena shooters were only popular bitd because CoD and BF weren't around yet. If there was a big demand for arena shooters, Epic would be on UT 6 at this point and it would be a big budget $60 game.

@AdobeArtist: they are making money off unreal engine. This game is to increase the user base of UE4. Look at it as an investment. Epic has tons of cash so production costs don't mean much to them. I'd this does what they hope and greatly increase the user base of UE4 they will more than make their money back.

Would play / 10

BF and COD existed when games like Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004 were released. Epic moved on to making another IP.

The Halo games can be considered arena shooters.

Space sims coming back and now old school arena shooters? :')

How is it free when they spent money developing it...?

I'm baffled. Apart from that, great news. I like UT.

And UT 2003 and 2004 weren't popular. Both games had under 1,000 players after a few months. By 2006, UT 2004 had one U.S. deathmatch server that was regularly populated and it was the demo server that allowed owners of the game and demo players to play together. UT 3 was dead within 2 months. I remember UT 3 sold a mere 30k copies in the first 2 weeks.

What new IP did they move onto? Gears came out before UT 3. There's no other reason there hasn't been a new UT in over 6 years but poor sales.

Halo doesn't have much in common with UT and Quake. Halo has very slow movement, there's no movement tricks to learn, you spawn with powerful weapons, correct me if I'm wrong but Halo is now completely regen health and has no armor pickups either. Halo has much more in common with BF and CoD than UT and Quake.

"Using the data collected from Xfire users, as of June 21st 2008, UT2004 is ranked 50th in the list of most played PC games in the world; with a combined total of over 250,000 minutes played per day by a total of over 2,500 Xfire users. On 21st March 2004, soon after release, UT2004's ranked peaked at 3rd place."

There was still over a 1000 people playing it in 2008 at times

http://liandri.beyondunreal.com/Unreal_Tournament_2004

Yes they focus working on their Gear of War IP which was based of a cancelled game back in 2002

A lot of people consider Halo 3 and the previous ones arena shooter now if its Halo 4 and Reach than they moved away from that element.

And it's PC exclusive.

Even better.

50th? Is that supposed to be good? UT 2004's player base dropped incredibly quickly.

CoD 4 is currently the number 1 xfire game. Yet it's nowhere near the most played pc game, not even remotely close. In other words, xfire means little.

Gamemonitor.com shows CoD 2 alone has more players than all the UT's combined. BF 1942 has twice as many players as UT 2004, plus it's highly likely that UT 2004 numbers include bots.

They focus on Gears yet a year later they release UT 3?

UT 3 sales were abysmal, why would they make another UT when they don't sell? Notice how there's no Quake 5 either. The demand for arena shooters isn't there.

None of the Halo's play anything like Quake and UT.

Wasn't UT3 supposed to be released in 2006 but got delayed a year?

Thread some up why Halo could be consider a arena shooter because of the traits it shares with the others unless you have your own definition of what a arena shooter is.

https://forums.halowaypoint.com/yaf_postst117020_What-is-an-Arena-shooter.aspx

I would not classify COD and Battlefield and Halo as casual or gimmick games.
If anything, they are holding the flame torch for FPS games and keeping it in the masses.
Otherwise we would have more cartoon kiddy casual games that sell a lot more than these games. From motion games to app based games, its going to be hard for new gamers to settle in with an intensive game as this arena shooters unless they are familiar with it.
UT3, I did like it but it did bad in sales, it did not have the COD/Halo factor.

Gamers point of view, heck yeah! Business point of you, heck no!

Either way it shows that Epic could have continued with both franchises if UT 3 was successful.

The biggest differentiating factors with Quake and UT are the fact that you spawn with incredibly weak weapons, high speed, powerups and movement systems. Halo has slow movement, you spawn with powerful guns, there's no movement tricks and no powerups to time. Seriously, Halo has more in common with the early Cod's than Quake and UT.

They are more casual gamer friendly. Look at Quake Live, you spawn with a machine gun that needs about 10x the amount of hits to get a kill than the weakest BF, Halo and CoD guns. Plus the default movement in Quake is much faster so it's harder to aim.

What exactly is the set requirement for a game to be considered an actual arena shooter when their are differences and similarity which was point out in a thread between franchises. When multiple people can classify what an arena shooter based on their own classification.

Can twitch shooters be even made with multiplatform in mind? Because the genre isn't even possible on consoles due to controller.

It pretty much has to be PC focus with shoddy console ports years later.

Let's try and keep quote chains down. It's incredibly disruptive.