End of An Era: The Death of the Arena Shooter?

[Korten12]

So today, after seeing that Halo 4 has abandoned all pretense of being an arena shooter and has gone full-scale CoD clone arcade shooter.

I missed this part, Halo 4 is not a fucking CoD clone, saying it as much is just fucking stupid, the term cod clone has become so bloated it has no meaning anymore. You know what, everything is a cod clone.

Hell in Skyrkm yo get PERKS! Such a clone! Guild Wars 2 you have primary and secondary weapons! All mmorpgs copy as you need to level to use new weapons!

Having one or two features like another game DOESN'T making it a fucking clone. Halo 4 perk and loading system while similar is not based on COD but a much older game with loadouts which are very much like how's Halo 4 is. (I will get a link when I am not on my iPhone.) Halo does 't fucking play ANYHTING LIKE COD. People who have played it (not journalists) state the same.

But yor right it's a COD clone, it has iron sights, reduced jumping, no veichles, no shield, all elements of previous games removed... OH wait, it doesn't do any of those fucking things!

 

[Okulossos]

Great, still hanging on to CS not being tactical and halo being the last arenashooter...

Yes, maybe we will not see another AAA arena shooter for some time, but since at least quake live is still MLG its not likely that we will never see one again.
And what do you consider to be a professional developer? If it is someone who earns his living by doing that, than you are already wrong, because it is being done right as we speak many times all over the world.

I guess the real problem is, that the line between those categories are not that easy to draw as you would have liked. Games such as GoW are hard to put in one of those boxes since it is not even an FPS to begin with.

Yes, we all know that skill-based shooters have not been as successful for obvious reasons, but that does not kill them or make them "gone" by a long shot.

Yes, halo is retreating even further from being an arena shooter, but since it was never really one of the main arena shooters to begin with I would not consider it a terrible loss - or even the death of arena shooters for that matter.

So in the end, arena shooters are not so much AAA at the moment but they are not dead either, not by any means.

So lets all just wait for doom 4 and/or quake 5, when ID brings back the glorious days of games which no troll-kiddy could play and untill that happens we can enjoy all those nice skill-based shooters that are open source and well crafted.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

There are arena shooters of course, but no really popular ones I know of. Resistance didn't start off exactly arena, but even it has gotten more arcade through the three games. I just hope that one day all the games that strived to join the beige pool of CoD imitations at the cost of their individuality lose their suffering original fans to some new game that actually recognises the niche and fills it. Choosing a shooter nowadays is almost a false choice, if you want a different theme or weapons or art style or setting there are dozens to choose from, but if you want a different EXPERIENCE you really can't rely on big games anymore.

Personally I think pick any of the other types, make a good game, and it will get milage from lack of competition alone.

EDIT: Also, CS on iceworld.

 

[GoaThief]

Nexuiz

A proper, non F2P, arena shooter - crashed and burned. It was original and looked damn sexy pushing hardware to limits and yet nobody gave a flying fuck. The arena shooter is dead, the only thing with a little bit of life is Quake Live but that's essentially Quake 3 in a browser... where's the new stuff? The open-source arena shooters like Xonotic have a playerbase that barely scrapes into double digits. Dead. Unless Doom 4 shakes things up I can't see them ever coming back.

On the other hand, Tribes Ascend is quite fun if not an arena shooter as such (Arena gametype is where it's at). I'm using that as a stop-gap alongside Left 4 Dead 2 whilst waiting for the aforementioned Doom 4. The problem is the vast majority of people just want easy mode in their multiplayer, they'll quit if constantly challenged and lose more often than not.

Oh, almost forgot; Gears of War is certainly a tactical shooter or it was as I've not tried 3 online. Strategies like laying down suppressive fire whilst team mates flank the enemy are valid and commonplace, although this community certainly seems to have it in for that particular series for some reason so truths spoken will probably fall on deaf ears.

 

[INF1NIT3 D00M]

Last I checked, there's still Warsow. I'm pretty sure it runs off of a modified version of the quake engine.

There aren't nearly as many arena shooters as they once were, but that's not developer's faults. Not enough people buy arena shooters. For a very long time, pretty much all shooters were arena shooters. There are more different types of shooter than there were a few years back, so there's going to be fewer examples per category. Like it or not, the vast unwashed masses are gravitating towards arcade shooters. It's not like there will never be another arena shooter ever again, it just might be a while, or you'll have to look harder to find one to play.
Also, I don't think the last round of tactical shooters did very well either. They're not the best fit for consoles, partly because of the audience, and partly because the last few examples that were released were all very spartan and had strange control schemes.

The social element of arcade shooters is what really keeps people locked into that type of shooter rather than the others. In single player you get a shooting gallery with lots of eye candy, and in multiplayer you get this social network. In it you kill things, shout at people, paint your gun all pretty, record yourself playing, and then pretend that all 63 million other players give a damn about your gun's paint, your annoying voice, and your 1337 SK1LLz.

 

[taciturnCandid]

Well Halo 4 is sort of a Arena Shooter, it's become more a Hybrid of Arena and Class/Arcade. Since you still can't spawn with power weapons and you need to find them on the map.

But I can sort of see what you're saying... Wasn't there that Arena Shooter Nexuis or something like that released on steam recently?

No.

Halo 4 has completely abandoned the idea of being an Arena shooter.

Because the basic principle of the arena shooter isn't the power weapons - thought that is a core part - it's that EVERY SINGLE PLAYER, REGARDLESS OF PLAYTIME OR EXPERIENCE STARTS EVERY GAME EXACTLY THE SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE.

In an actual Arena Shooter, everyone spawns with the same weapon. The same grenades. The same inherent abilities. You may acquire others from the map or other players, but every you respawn or a new game starts, everyone starts at the same exact place.

Halo 4 does not do this.

You do realize there will be gametypes and matchmaking stuff to make it just like the other halos.

From what I have seen, you can disable loadouts and even armor abilities. You can have people start out with the same stuff and play like a classic halo game. I'm sure there will be playlists built around that as there are enough classic fans who like it like that

 

[Okulossos]

There are arena shooters of course, but no really popular ones I know of. Resistance didn't start off exactly arena, but even it has gotten more arcade through the three games. I just hope that one day all the games that strived to join the beige pool of CoD imitations at the cost of their individuality lose their suffering original fans to some new game that actually recognises the niche and fills it. Choosing a shooter nowadays is almost a false choice, if you want a different theme or weapons or art style or setting there are dozens to choose from, but if you want a different EXPERIENCE you really can't rely on big games anymore.

Personally I think pick any of the other types, make a good game, and it will get milage from lack of competition alone.

EDIT: Also, CS on iceworld.

define "popular". does it mean, that a shooter has to have a playerbase grwoning into a 6-digit number or does it mean, that you can find players online any day and any time? If its the latter one, Quake live is being played a lot, the whole quake series still has many players and server up and running. UT3 has a large playerbase, Xonotic are few (yet of cause a lot more than what Goathief thinks) and is growing fast, Alien arena is very popular, Nexuiz is still played a lot if only for instagib, but still... and so on.
Of cause you wont find playerbasis as huge as in CoD, but remember that these playerbasis consist of trolls, casual players and the ones that its just not fun to play against for other reasons.
Yet there is no lack of competition... if you can handle a dedicated fanbase with lots of practice

Nexuiz

A proper, non F2P, arena shooter - crashed and burned. It was original and looked damn sexy pushing hardware to limits and yet nobody gave a flying fuck. The arena shooter is dead, the only thing with a little bit of life is Quake Live but that's essentially Quake 3 in a browser... where's the new stuff? The open-source arena shooters like Xonotic have a playerbase that barely scrapes into double digits. Dead. Unless Doom 4 shakes things up I can't see them ever coming back.

Nexuiz did not crash and burn it was MLG and its still quite popular. Even though most Nexuiz player move on to Xonotic
Xonotix playerbase barely scraping the 4 digits would still be incorrect, check you youself
There are differences between QL and Q3A thats why both are still played a lot.

 

[teh_Canape]

I heard Serious Sam 2s multiplayer is going to be released free to play on Steam at some point.
Not sure where or when though.

even if it goes F2P, I personally don't suggest you going for it, go instead for the Encounters
2, compared to them, is like Nerf Arena Shooter (in other words, weapons feel way too weak to play for too long)

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

Oh look, more people speculating as to a game destroying something.

Seriously, unless you work at 343, you basically have no idea what every aspect of the game is going to be about. Hell, for the classes it might be as basic as only letting you choose whether you spawn with the DMR, BR, or AR. You don't know.

I see your definition of an Arena shooter, but by that definition there hasn't really been an arena shooter since, oh I dunno UT2004? Sure Halo 3 had you all spawning in the same place with the same weapons, but there were so many weapons within 2 seconds walking distance that it made essentially no difference. Sure, not all of them were good, but it essentially made it so that each person could have a different "loadout" going into the first 20 seconds of the game.

 

[distortedreality]

ITT - a lot of people that haven't played CS competitively. Might want to rectify that before you cast it as an arcade shooter in the same mold as CoD.

OT - I thought arena shooters died in the 90's? Admittedly I haven't had much interest in the genre, so ignore my ignorance. I'd hate to be relying on the next Halo for anything though.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Oh, almost forgot; Gears of War is certainly a tactical shooter or it was as I've not tried 3 online. Strategies like laying down suppressive fire whilst team mates flank the enemy are valid and commonplace, although this community certainly seems to have it in for that particular series for some reason so truths spoken will probably fall on deaf ears.

It may seem at first that the multiplayer in this game is all about mindless shotgun rushing, but it's ultimately quite a bit more than that. I never really played the earlier ones, but in 3 there's a lot of ways to play the game successfully and every weapon is a viable choice that can, depending on how you use it, be effectively counter or be countered by any other weapon.
It's not as tactical as something like Brothers In Arms or Day of Defeat but there is a lot of room to apply some clever, rather than cheap tricks here and there, and it's probably the only multiplayer game I've played in recent memory where excessively camping or whoring power weapons (which are mostly single shot and a ***** to use) will not give you a major advantage, most of the time it just screws you over.

Gears isn't very well thought of on here mostly because it's a big name console shooter, so all the negative, real or imaginary, implications of that tend to automatically get stuck to it. There's more legitimate reasons for it's dislike too, a couple big ones I see every now and then are things like the concern that it's further popularising the whole 'big dumb space marine' archetype and that it's setting is just bland and unimaginative.
-

The weird thing with the old school arena based shooters is that loads of players still greatly remember them and are fond or them, and a lot of people still play them, but despite their still evident popularity not many of them are routinely coming out anymore. That's most likely because there's only so much you can do with that type of game, and devs might nowadays feel that there's a lot more room for expansion, diversity and whatever in other kinds of multiplayer. In typical arcade style you have your players spawn, they pick up guns, (which pretty much always fall into shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, sniper rifle types) and they then proceed to kill each other. On the other hand with class-based games you can have a multitude of players in different roles doing different things in a variety of ways from the get go. Class-based games also often include systems of ranking up and unlocking stuff, very appealing to developers who want players to play more.

 

[josemlopes]

GOW of no where near tactical.

It can easily be, when the matches are balanced expect a lot of shooting just trying to push the enemy to a corner for the final blow.

In those matches every move has to be thought on how much cover will you have from how many sides and how much of the enemy can you see.

If the matches are unbalanced then expect a lot of just running around looking for someone to kill or to be killed by. But the same can be said about CS, right?

 

[Crises^]

GOW of no where near tactical.

It can easily be, when the matches are balanced expect a lot of shooting just trying to push the enemy to a corner for the final blow.

In those matches every move has to be thought on how much cover will you have from how many sides and how much of the enemy can you see.

If the matches are unbalanced then expect a lot of just running around looking for someone to kill or to be killed by. But the same can be said about CS, right?

Fair enough I never played matches in GoW so didn't get a good look at what tactics can be used in it. Yes alot of that is in cs as well as you said cover choke points using your angles.

 

[Okulossos]

GOW of no where near tactical.

It can easily be, when the matches are balanced expect a lot of shooting just trying to push the enemy to a corner for the final blow.

In those matches every move has to be thought on how much cover will you have from how many sides and how much of the enemy can you see.

If the matches are unbalanced then expect a lot of just running around looking for someone to kill or to be killed by. But the same can be said about CS, right?

If you play a game on a skill-level somewhere above "total noob" it will start to get tactical in almost any case. If you can understand what happens you should for example look at QL pro games and you will see the same tactical performance by the players, even though it is far more skillful and quick due to a better, more skillhappy and faster moveset and gameplay. And even though cover is not the perfectly placed, waist-high "meant to be"-cover, but improvised cover, which actually does make it far more tactical, since you really need to know what you are doing and how the maps looks.

Tactics themselves don't make a tactical game, its the gameplay that does it, the speed, the moveset and with it also the weapons. Arenashooters have a weapon for every specific situation and you have to know each and every ones strength and weaknesses and how to get them to survive. In tactical shooters you don't. you get you favorite weapon(s) at the start and will never change them and if you do, it will not differ much from you favorite weapon. Also the moveset is limited and gameplay is rather slow and more focused on getting from point A to point B as stealthy as possible. While camping in Arenashooters is a no go even if it is possible (which is really is due to the speed, you have to keep moving) is it a legit strategy in tactical shooters. Also tactical shooters are always teambased (ok, you can lay cs 1v1 but.. come on...), where as arenashooters don't have to be. If you still don't know the difference just check out some gameplay of CS and of Quake/UT and you will see the difference.
The thing is, that arenashooters are just not as accessible as other types since you have to learn them and learning is hard since you will not get even one frag against even only an advanced player when you start playing and even years into the game you will still find many player who will not even be scratched by your attacks. That can be frustrating because not many people are willing to offer that kind of dedication and time.

the difference between these very obscure subgenres mentioned in the first post is not always clear and often very subjective and that is the problem and that is why he placed halo where he placed it even though it never was one of the core arenashooters such as Quake or UT.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Nexuiz

A proper, non F2P, arena shooter - crashed and burned. It was original and looked damn sexy pushing hardware to limits and yet nobody gave a flying fuck. The arena shooter is dead, the only thing with a little bit of life is Quake Live but that's essentially Quake 3 in a browser... where's the new stuff? The open-source arena shooters like Xonotic have a playerbase that barely scrapes into double digits. Dead. Unless Doom 4 shakes things up I can't see them ever coming back.

On the other hand, Tribes Ascend is quite fun if not an arena shooter as such (Arena gametype is where it's at). I'm using that as a stop-gap alongside Left 4 Dead 2 whilst waiting for the aforementioned Doom 4. The problem is the vast majority of people just want easy mode in their multiplayer, they'll quit if constantly challenged and lose more often than not.

Oh, almost forgot; Gears of War is certainly a tactical shooter or it was as I've not tried 3 online. Strategies like laying down suppressive fire whilst team mates flank the enemy are valid and commonplace, although this community certainly seems to have it in for that particular series for some reason so truths spoken will probably fall on deaf ears.

I'm glad Nexuiz crashed and burned. That open source game you mentioned, Xonotic? It was forked off of the real Nexuiz project (which was open source) when one of the developers who hadn't worked on it in years cut a deal with the studio that made the commercial game of the same name. Basically, the rest of the team had to take the source code, come up with a new name for the project, and organize it so something like that could never happen with the new project. The sad thing is the old Nexuiz had a pretty decent player base -- it was in the triple digits, at the very least. If Xonotic really is "barely scraping the double digits," that sucks big time, because its predecessor was doing much better.

OT: I see it as coming full circle, really. Halo was never really an arena shooter to begin with. Mechanically speaking, it was a transitional form between the old Arena shooters and the modern "realistic" shooters. If the new Halo game is more like CoD, then its only following its own trend.

 

[Okulossos]

snip

As I mentioned above, Xonotic has a whole lot more players than GoaThief thinks and it is growing fast.

there has in fact just been a new fragvideo which showcases nicely where the game is today and thus where it is bound to go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPt5O9Rs1Gw

Oh and Nexuiz is still being played by some people .

 

[thespyisdead]

i think that to show case their new engine, EPIC is bound to make another unreal tournament, which i truly hope they don't screw up...

 

[DynastyBlaze]

On May 29, 2007: A hybrid-game flawlessly blended the key elements of arena, tactical, and class-based shooters and consequently created the widest known skill gap of any FPS ever released. That game was Shadowrun, and not a single fuck was given...