Arena FPS, why is/was it dying? How can we save it?

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Arena FPS is a genre that gave birth to FPS that we know today. Unfortunately, the genre has stagnated and risk dying. Back in its prime, the arena shooters were a highly popular genre that has attracted the attention of many gamers. This may change with Doom as it just got released but many had voiced out that the multiplayer is terrible. However we should still keep an eye on it, but do expect the worst outcome.

The player counts on other Arena FPS is really low. In fact, one study I find is that the game lacks appeal to new players, it seems that being free and not pay2win also doesn't seems to help the genre. I have collected a few arguments from other sites and people I know that still plays arena shooters and here is the lists. (Sequenced by most common response)

1) Counter Strike & MOBAs:
CSGO hammered quite a few nails into the coffin due to its very strong Esports scene. The strong success of LoL and Dota has also drawn in young gamers who did not managed to get exposed to arena shooters.

2) Very high skill gap and rusty mechanics:
Due to the small amount of players, seasoned players are often more skilled than new ones and can easily destroy new players whenever they are matched together. This happen quite often and will not be solved with matchmaking system due to very small amount of players to make the system work properly in the first place. If new players keep dying, they'll eventually get bored and not play the game at all.

3) Gamers' mindset and demands have changed:
Many observe that games are getting easier and more casual, due to Call of Duty's success, many young and new gamers turned away from the complex and competitive nature of Arena FPS. Also, gamers who are very competitive are often drawn into Esport titles.

I personally think that while these points are valid, there are bigger issues than the ones listed here.

4) The genre is too fragmented:
Arena FPS doesn't seems to have a well defined standard. Too much games with too little players.

5) The genre lacks selling points:
High skill ceiling is NOT a good selling point by all means. A high skill ceiling game requires other aspect to go along with it to make it work. For example, Dark Souls has very good plot and unique approach with it making the game hard but very rewarding to those that beat it. Counter Strike has good tactical aspect of the game other than just shooting.

6) The genre lacks advertisements:
There is not much live-streaming for such games. So there is no distinct personalities in the game, thus creating the impression that the game is dead.

How can people save it?
Epic Games has a very cool way in engaging the community to build Unreal Tournament up again. But this won't solve the inherent issue of the game not garnering enough new bloods and may die out eventually.

I personally think that there is a great need for the players of Arena shooters to promote the genre heavily. Putting up livestream on twitch, create gameplay videos with the game. People of the community and devs are ultimately responsible for the success of the game.

This thread's main focus is to identify the cause of the decline, and then the ways that should be taken to save it. So dear users, please give your honest and serious feedback.

The feedbacks here will be collated and posted to UT forums and other ArenaFPS reddits after 1 week.

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new doom is like an arena shooter.

2 Likes
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Able to join match easily with one click from Twitch stream could be the way.

A bit manual interaction is good way to change casual behavior to making friends without effort, and through that addicting and changing 30h solo lobbying game into 200h one. I think in this point it really doesnt matter anymore how bad that game is just as long game and lobby are sturdy work.

Isint this exactly what the "community" is trying to do?

4

Ive tried multi-player a few times but no one was there.
One thing that could help would be notifications in single player mode that players are available.

Wife," Are you shooting at a schoolgirl?"
Me, "She's shooting a rocket launcher at me!"
It also plays on anything

5

Hey there RazorLR1,

I think you are pretty spot on with your summation and I agree, it's a great shame.

I have to confess I've never really been a big arena shooter guy, I mostly grew up with consoles not PC's so I didn't really have the access, and with a limited contemporary community I've not really dipped my toe in much. I really like old school shooters, but lean towards to single player (still prefer Brutal Doom and Duke 3D to most modern games!).

That said, I enjoy the genre and Unreal2004 is a game I go back to every so often. When I finally get some time I want to jump into Quake Live and I'm hoping the new Unreal will get a good community. Into the meat of the subject, I'll pick up on some of your points.

I think that the genre can be a bit bland, particularly when you consider the focus on skill. There is a perception of 'pure twitch' with arena shooters, not entirely true, but after 20+ years of gaming, simply 'shooting' is not really a selling point. I've never had amazing reflexes or trigger discipline so maybe that's why I personally I gravitate towards shooters that offer something beyond this;
1. The wall hack mechanic and gadgets in Blacklight Retribution.
2. Fisfull of Frags; the tension and difficulty of inaccurate, slow firing guns.
3. Dirty Bomb; objective focussed gameplay that emphasises more than just K/D.
In all of these games I've been able to do well probably because there is not an overwhelming focus on pure traditional shooting. Arena shooters have their own magic to offer, the higher time to kill, intense speed and general over the top ridiculousness. But all the actual game modes can be found elsewhere these days.

Community
Arena shooters need a scene like CS:GO, I can't imagine that game would be as popular without this. Maybe eSports, maybe streamers, but it needs more exposure. Give the sheep a new shepherd.

Embrace Hyper reality
Give me some hilarious, daft characters and environments and some crazy game modes. Or something else entirely unique. Unreal with a Timesplitters style would be awesome. I appreciate that most arena shooters are by their very nature most of the way there, but maybe they need a little more unique character?

Lack of Meaningful Reward
We need Endorphins! What is the reward of Arena shooters? Probably the gameplay itself and bettering your skill. There's not much there to retain players in the long run. You need to consider that casual players probably don't give a shit about their own skill level, and many others lack the commitment or time to continually want to improve. That's a lot of your audience gone after a few weeks of fun. Most games offer something to keep people coming back, unlocks, ranking prestige, community events or personal challenges targeted at the individual etc. Arena shooters are good, but beyond this obvious fact they do nothing to hook players long term IMO. We are talking about addiction here, but that's reality.

A gateway game
I think the genre needs a gateway game (mode?) with a lower skill ceiling. I was playing Dirty bomb the other day, I was going full sprint at a sniper from behind carrying my faithful shotgun, I'd avoided mines and killing zones to get to him. He jumped, did a 180 and head shot me. Bravo. But I have absolutely no answer to that and likely never will. Takeaway the head shot damage and the fight would probably have been 50/50. I know it's heresy but I think we need a game that doesn't have head shots and maybe some other skill flattening. There is more to a good FPS than just trick shots, it can be interpreted as a major handicap by some. When someone can kill you so effectively in one shot it can render all your other skills moot.

6

What are you talking about?
There are plenty of options for you to choose from.
The game industry has just gotten bigger which makes arena shooters look more niche but it's really just as big as it ever was.

UPDATED:

http://tesseract.gg/
http://xonotic.org/
http://www.quakelive.com/
http://sauerbraten.org/
www.reborn.gg
http://maniaplanet.com/shootmania
https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/




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Absolutely there are games and many are good. Warsow is another, it's even free. And there's Robot Roller Derby Disco Dodgeball and ShootMania.

The problem is the player numbers are low, very low and spread out. If you browse the servers for some of these games you can see for yourself. I've got no idea how accurate steam charts are for player numbers, but based on personal experience I'd say they tally up pretty well.

It's probably not correct to say the genre is dying, that's already happened, if it fell off any more it would be dead. It would be nice to see it bounce back a little. Even a few hundred players would make a day and night difference to some of these titles.

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I was hyped for the new UT but it isn't very intuitive. I gave it a shot, tried to set up my own private lobby with bots and of course problems ensued. First I had to wait for "everyone" to "ready up" even though it was just me, then some random guy joined and wiped the floor with me while I could barely aim my shots. Wasn't very impressed. I do realize it's in Pre-Alpha but how hard is it to make a private lobby private?
Anyway I don't think any game will ever become truly huge anymore. There's simply too many games out there and people don't want to actually invest time to learn them when all of their friends jump from one flavour of the month to the next day after day.

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YOUR OLD PEOPLE GAMES

ARE

NOT

DYING.

CALM DOWN PEOPLE.

  1. A barebones arena FPS is relatively easy to make and there are a lot of them already. That's why there aren't many AAA ones. That's why there aren't many in general.

  2. People don't play barebones arena FPS games as much anymore because there are a thousand more subgenres and adaptations than there were when barebones arena FPS games were the most popular. We have things like Battlefield, Arma, Overwatch, etc.
    Also, games have grown since.
    The average gamer now would think "hmmm should I play this barebones arena shooter....or should I play this arena shooter with 21 characters with interesting personalities, asymetric combat, cool abilities, nice looking stylized graphics, and cool collectible items."

Arena FPS is alive and well.

What's dying is barebones 90's style arena shooters.

Get over it and stop circle jerking about how good barebones arena shooters were.

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i am actually fairly decent with the new UT but there is a extremely low player base at the moment. only major gripe with it has to be movement speed (to me it plays like im running through sand all the time) only major gripe with titan fall was movement as well was like running in mud. and i just cant stand slow movement FPS i need speed.

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Yea, I feel like titan fall could have been so much better.

Something about it just couldn't keep my attention. I think it was the level design. It was designed to look pretty instead of play well consistently throughout the map.

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i liked the looks and the levels just could not stand the movement. former steel battalion player and compared to that game the titans were slow and offered piss poor movement. concept was nice if i had a choice i would take steel battalion cross it with gundam, and quake. movement from quake story from gundam pick a time line there all decent and the ability to customize your "tank" from steel battalion. (only downside is i loved the steel battalion controller and i would want to use it for this game as well)

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I recommend Xonotic. Really one of the better arena shooters out there. Switched to it after Quake Live got ported to steam. I only play instagib, but the other game modes are pretty fun.

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No, new doom is call of dooder: shit my pants its a shooty boomy demon edition

No. What we need is more games like toxxik and less bullshit thrown at the modding community. A lot of games have been made by the modding community and I think part of what has killed the best FPS branch is that there are no mod groups anymore for FPS games. All thats left are esoteric games like Urban Terror which you can really only learn about from other players or freinds and very few modern titles bring stuff like this to light anymore.

A new Unreal coming out will bump it back I think, but it will never be like it was. I play CS:GO like I play every Urban Terror match or like I play Quake 3. Since so may players rely on sound I can confuse people really easily. I put my old username back on my steam, ph4nt0m, because I figured out how to play CS like an arena shooter and I have had more fun than ever before.

I actually want to make a server pack for CS:GO to make it Quake, but rather than having the very difficult BHOP stuff from quake, have the easier mechanics from source. I want to make maps again. I want it all back and no one is looking for it anymore.

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jaded much?

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Hardly. If they fixed the speed then maybe, but it won't be the same either way. The map areas are still too small and I haven't heard much on them adding more weapons.

If they added all that needed to be added and patched what was fucked since the beta then awesome. I'm still not going to buy it though.

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Spoken like a serial modder.... how many different guns and shitty user-made maps does it take to make you happy with the game?

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Hey, I don't want shitty little hallways and drops into lava. If all I get is a rocket launcher and super shotty and the 4% chance to have a rail gun to have any fun I don't care. The guns feel like rubber band guns. After a half hour it wears off :/

And yeah, I'm a modder lol.

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OP mentions that Arena shooters have stagnated. The problem is there isn't an agreed upon definition of an arena shooter. So a game changes a couple things, and now its not an arena shooter by some people's criteria. What changes are you allowed to do and have it stay an arena shooter? You can't say one change to the mechanics of Quake 3 that people would universally agree is a good thing.

Like i think clips in shooters is a very good system. It emphasizes managing your ammo at all skill levels. While an ammo pickup system means people with good aim will usually have more than enough ammo while people with much worse aim will usually be out of ammo.

1v1 was the height of Quake 3, but is 1v1 that compelling in the modern day? Playing with teammates is social and adds the teamwork element. I'm not saying it needs to be 5v5, but 2v2 or 3v3 could still definitely have the mind games of classic arena shooters with some social and team aspects.

Weapon pickups. This system really makes it hard for new players to learn the game. They die because they have a weak weapon, and because they keep dieing they can't learn the map to be able to get good weapons. Maybe this could be overlooked if it was a single map, like MOBAs, but there are many maps and you don't stay on the same one very long. Plus, some people just prefer different types of weapons, its more fun for more people if you aren't forced to use a specific weapon.

Is Fast speed really necessary? It seems like the Sonic franchise. Where at first it was just used for marketing, and then everyone drank the koolaid and now its the defining feature.

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I have been enjoying HAWKEN lately. It is free on Steam. I don't like UT, it is too fast for me.

I think the "problem" is there are SO many good games today that the market has become FRAGmented (see what I did there?).

Also there is what I refer to as the 'Call of Duty' syndrome. Just when a game gets good, a new AAA title comes out and the servers for the perfectly good existing game dry up. I used to love CoD:MW and skipped MW2. Then I was forced to switch to MW3 and I never bought another CoD game.