First of all, is this in the right sub forum? I hope it is.

I didn't get into the competitive scene of games until a few years from now, so I don't know how things were in the WCG times, but I decided to give a try on Quake Live recently, and I realized how similar it is to Unreal Tournament, so it got wondering if UT99 ever had a competitive scene like quake does.

Is it because of the lack of movement mechanics? Can't it be compensated by a bigger ammount of weapons + alt fire in UT?

yokohama

United States1116 Posts

September 24 2013 06:32 GMT

Here is a blog from a few years ago you can check out, he was one of the best UT99 players around. I didn't really get into UT until 2003, but there was a decent sized competitive scene at least until Painkiller came out and started taking over all the money tournaments. You can still find some pages on youtube where people are still playing high level UT99/2k3 though.

http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=288770

Daumen

Germany1073 Posts

September 24 2013 06:40 GMT

I should redirect my Brother here, he was kind of a Competetive UT player. He had a nice story to tell on what he did vs those a**holes that went Assault Rifle only :D

So yes, there was a competetive scene, it think it died down with UT 2004. UT3 gave the Killshot though, according to my brother it killed everything that made ut99 awesome and competetive.

QuackPocketDuck

410 Posts

September 24 2013 06:40 GMT

I was waiting for UT Live or something like Quake Live but it just never happened or maybe it did but I did not notice since it was nothing successful. Great games stay great forever and will always be fun to play however when the community dissolves I lose all competitive drive to be good at these slowly forgotten games.

Lachrymose

Australia1928 Posts

September 24 2013 08:06 GMT

UT Live will never happen unless esports gets to the point where it's free money or somebody that gives a shit buys UT, somehow. Epic openly stated they didn't give a shit about esports during the release of UT3 and their focus was with the mass market. The game was, coincidentally, complete fucking garbage. Even the casual modes were awful compared to 2k4.

That blog about Gitzzz was really cool. I never got to play against him or any of the other super good Europeans, but I did get to play Evenflow*dx that the blog mentions beat him in winner's finals (and lost to him in loser's finals) at WCG 02. I also go to play Snoop*dx who got third at WCG 03. It was unbelievable how good these guys were, especially Snoop. Completely unreal (!) link aim, among, well, pretty much every skill that could be mastered in the game.

UT was really cool and definitely had a reasonable competitive scene for a long time, it's a shame it got SC2'd by that piece of shit UT3 that displaced Ut2k4 and turned out to be not viable to replace it for competitive play. Yes, I'm bitter. Oh well.

TaShadan

Germany1979 Posts

September 24 2013 08:11 GMT

UT99 had a fairly big competitive scene.

clik

United States319 Posts

September 24 2013 12:15 GMT

UT had a big competitive scene yes. All the way up to 2k4 at least. The series was in WCG, ESWC, and even CPL for a brief moment. UT was always in lots of smaller LAN tournaments.

A lot of Quake fans weren't into the guns of UT. A lot of them were hit scan, and there were just an overwhelming amount of them including alt fires. The stop and go movement of the dodge system was a turn off as well.

Lachrymose

Australia1928 Posts

September 24 2013 12:35 GMT

I think the whole dodge-jumping thing is overblown. Dodge-jumping was pretty much absolutely not something you could do in combat. Ut2k4 was a hitscan based game, it's true, so dodge-jumping against an opponent holding a Lightning gun (It's the equivalent of Quake Rail, not Lightning) or Shock rifle is essentially giving them a free hit if you're not breaking line of sight pretty early into the move.

Dodge-jumping was mainly used to move through the map at speed as it was the fastest way to travel, but it was also the loudest way to travel. You only did it when you thought your opponent already knew were you are or you didn't care about revealing yourself, which admittedly was pretty often.

The cool thing about it, I think, was that to execute a proper dodge-jumping you continued to hold forward so as not to lose momentum and swung the mouse to one side and dodged sideways the opposite way then quickly recentered the mouse to the direction of travel. So what this means tactically, is that to move at peak speed you had to constantly move your aim away from camping the corners you're approaching which could introduce a significant delay in making your first shot in a fight.

The noise, the tactical aim sacrificing and the difficulty of making long or tight jumps with the mouse swing style (example Rankin lower-elevator ledge->ramp or backwards, unsighted Rankin ramps) meant it wasn't always brainless, either.

KarlKaliente

United States434 Posts

September 24 2013 12:53 GMT

I used to play clan arena matches in 2k4 back in the day. I was never very good but there was definitely a competitive scene.

DW-Unrec

492 Posts

September 24 2013 13:04 GMT

#10

What do you mean by hitscan weapons? Weapons that don't have a projectile? The only weapons that work like that are the sniper rifle and the minigun.

Maybe I like UT99 more than quake because of the nostalgia aspect, but I can totally see why unreal isn't as big: the game's too simple mechanically speaking. *looks at LoL*

Yacobs

United States846 Posts

September 24 2013 13:16 GMT

#11

UT99 was one of the best multiplayer shooters I've ever played. None of the other UTs compare. I wish they would re-release the game on Steam or something. I don't even care if they update the graphics, I just want a vibrant multiplayer community.

duckii

Germany1017 Posts

September 24 2013 13:23 GMT

#12

I played mostly ctf in UT99 and then TacOps later. great times

The only thing I didn't like in UT was the rocket launcher.

clik

United States319 Posts

September 24 2013 21:37 GMT

#13

On September 24 2013 22:04 DW-Unrec wrote:
What do you mean by hitscan weapons? Weapons that don't have a projectile? The only weapons that work like that are the sniper rifle and the minigun.

Maybe I like UT99 more than quake because of the nostalgia aspect, but I can totally see why unreal isn't as big: the game's too simple mechanically speaking. *looks at LoL*

Shock Rifle, Lightning Gun, Sniper, Bio Gun. 2k3 and up had a lot of hit scan. It turned off a lot of quake players.

writer22816

United States5775 Posts

September 24 2013 23:22 GMT

#14

I had a lot of fun playing UT99 and UT2004. Is there a "best" UT? Or one that had the largest competitive scene etc?

xDaunt

United States17988 Posts

September 24 2013 23:34 GMT

#15

UT2k3 had a pretty decent competitive community, but it wasn't anywhere near as good as UT99's. The community fractured pretty badly when UT2k3 was released, and it never recovered, even though most players thought thst 2k4 was a better game than 2k3. Basically, UT suffered the same fate that Tribes did. It's a shame, because those old shooters are better than the crap that is being released today. Titanfall looks like it may be cool, but I honestly have no idea what FPS does or will fill the void left by those old classics.

Toque

Canada30 Posts

September 24 2013 23:35 GMT

#16

In 2004 I represented Canada at WCG under the alias n:toque (team No Escape). I played primarily for fun and didn't really take it seriously, but was still able to manage a WCG spot. UT2K3/4 had a great competitive scene, it wasn't huge but then again back then the entire e-Sports scene wasn't nearly as big as it is now.

When UT3 came out the scene instantly died because it was basically console mechanics in a PC game. If you've played UT3 and Gears of War they feel pretty similar.

Tim Sweeney at Epic announced they are working on AAA PC only FPS. My hope is that they bring UT back as an arena shooter with the same user driven economy that Dota 2 has. User generated armour, weapon skins, player models, maps, etc. I think it would kick ass.

AofH

Canada1 Post

September 25 2013 00:28 GMT

#17

Hi Toque, nice to see someone from way back then still around. Its good to hear that epic is working on new fps game.

but back to topic. Ut99 had the largest competitive scene but back then you only really had two fps's quake and ut so the community wasn't shattered into a billion different pieces that yearly game releases and DLC provide. However I played the UT2k* series competitively. I wasn't as good as toque but I was a solid player. The ut2k* series had the problem of maps not being up to par with the quake series. People kept wanting to use all the neat graphical tricks the unreal engine had and this led to fairly weak maps which mixed with weapon mix being predominately hitscan meant that you played a lot of hit and run style games. I used to hate the shield gun but it was necessary with the shock rifle.

Comparing quake and ut was like comparing apples and oranges. One is smooth with a tiered weapon system while the other is disjointed with unbalanced weapon systems. Both offer different gameplay styles and are fun for different reasons.

In short, UT99 was the best game of them all but the 2k* series was solid but with minor problems.

xDaunt

United States17988 Posts

September 25 2013 00:33 GMT

#18

The shock rifle is still the coolest gun ever created for an FPS.

zuqbu

Germany797 Posts

September 25 2013 08:50 GMT

#19

never played UT seriously, but from what i remember the CTF scene was pretty competitive. TBH most of my knowledge comes from this movie:

oscar62

Canada417 Posts

September 25 2013 09:04 GMT

#20

are there currently any platforms/communities to play some UT99 online?

this game dominated years of my childhood and i wanna relive some of the memories.

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