@@whirligig_saw They are not mainstream anymore because they didn't age well. Its true that they are hard, but you can basically master 1 arena and master them all in terms of gameplay. They were pretty mainstream back then but they aren't anymore. There are FPS shooters with basically 0 Esport scene but they are still hard as fuck. Battlefield games for example. They aren't easy in comp matches. You need 8+ specific people and they all need to master infantry play or vehicles aswell as having map knowledge and a game plan. They also need to learn how to deal with stronger players in the enemy team.
@@IlNamelessKinglI You can't say battlefield is harder than fps arena because the reason of their difficulties is completely different. Mastering an fps arena means getting very good skill gameplay-wise and map knowledge, while mastering battlefield (or overwatch, or cs go, or LoL or many others) require a certain level of skill, but mostly team-coordination for doing objectives together. The whole point in fps arena is "fragging", while getting kills in these team-based games is a good thing only if it helps doing the objective of the map. I'm not saying team-based games are easier, I'm just saying that it's a different tipe of concept, so they shouldn't be compared this way.
@Estrogen Fury no the fortnite kids i don't think any of them heard of arena shooters and ironically i played most fps games but not halo.....yet . and please man don't use that tone i just uninstalled reddit
@Estrogen Fury if someone asked me to categorize halo i wouldnt start by calling it a arena shooter tbh, no health or armour pickups, way slower pace in terms of movement, limited to two guns at a time. I think you could get away with calling it an arena shooter but its a very fine line, id considered it more ground warfare fps tbh, to each their own though nice opinion on it.
The best thing about arena shooters and games descended from them like Team Fortress is that hitscan weapons usually have a catch to them. Shotgun is low range, machine gun is low damage and requires tracking, the railgun is slow. You don't have the assault rifle archetype that is strong in too many areas and as a result makes the map design and player interactions really boring.
In Call of Duty, I found that the automatic rifles are the only consistently viable weapons and there are no better weapon types since other weapons have either worse dps or worse accuracy or whatever, whereas in Quake and Doom, the best weapons are entirely dependent on the situation and personal skill, except for the BFG being the best and the gauntlet being the worst.
ut3 was on eswc an clp for some time, equals to quake2 and 3, very nice times, playing a quakecon was my goal and i did it, worth it dunno but fps arena are the best moment of any 30's old men
Unreal Tournament 1999 is always gonna be my favorite game, i still play to it at night with my old gaming friends, and the music is also a masterpiece
I'm not a competitive gamer, but every now and then I launch the original UT and play with the bots. The game is still very addictive an lots of fun. I wish they still made bots for games.
Well done for including content from several Unreal Tournament games! Much respect for highlighting them. Honourable mention should also be the soundtrack these games offer (especially, the UT ones).
What's great in my opinion is how some non arena fps games, most notably titanfall 2, have adapted and implemented similar high skill movement systems. The more games that do this, the better I think.
god, I just want a new doom game that has a traditional arena FPS multiplayer. like 2016 was good REALLY GOOD but still, it left some to be desired with loadouts and such. I liked hearing the marathon music not enough appreciation for that oldie. plus as an obnoxious halo fan I enjoyed the end sentiment with flexible definitions because I believe that at least traditional halo counts too. its a lot of the same ideals and structures but built to be comfortable on a console despite their limitations of a controller and such. my old school appreciation and collection of games would have never started if halo didnt get me going on the style then make me need to find others like it to survive after halo added sprint, loadouts, ADS etc. now ive gotten my hands on marathon, doom, quake, unreal, halflife, shadow warrior, duke, hexen, heretic, wolfenstein. all such good games that have been lost to the ages...
Bro, please make some edits on your channel for Warfork, you can find tournament and demons on TheKeep arena fps youtube channel. They recently did a Clan arena tournament which is absolutely entertaining to watch
to be fair a lot of indie arena shooters are basically just Q3 clones with some things changed up. Of course quake style shooters would get brought up more.
@@xanious3759 Everybody thinks they know how to make the next big arena shooter, but even Cliff Bleszinski of ALL PEOPLE doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about anymore.
The whole genre is basically Q3 clones, UT clones are pretty rare. There's like... Toxikk and then Open tournament died in early development. I can't think of any others.
For anyone who loves the movement aspect of arena shooters, a game called Krunker is great. It isn't really an arena shooter, but it focuses heavily on movement, and is extremely easy to run, considering it is a browser game
Arenas were the most played game when internet connection was not present or was quite slow. People gathered in internet coffees and made their own town leagues and matches casually after schools. Most of the nowadays game industry was born there.
Been playing jedi knight jedi academy for years. It uses the q3 engine. I can strafe jump and Saber duel with the best of them, but as soon as I get in a guns match, the old quake pros just air intercept the shit out of any easy target they glimpse. Snap aim, tracking, leading, strafe jumping, predictive shots: there's soooo much that can get you rekt if you challenge the wrong players to a guns match XD
That's the problem though. I loved JK2/JKA to death, but it certainly wasn't for the damn gunplay. The guns in that game actually feel WORSE compared to the beastly Dark Forces 2 weapons. To this day, I don't know why they didn't just pseudo-port them over, and our clan constantly jokes about how lame most of the JK2/JKA weapons are in comparison.
I play tactical shooters and I’m not used to arena shooters. But one thing I gotta say, the gameplay of Quake/Ut looks so much satisfying and I think the player is a badass.
The name tactical shooter is ironic. Most of those game have very small tactical pools compared to non tactical FPS games. Cover based shooters is a more apt name
RIGHT! Arena FPS is the best genre, my favourite game is Unreal, I've playing it since I was 6, and it wasn't even my first game (the first one I think was Unreal 2); I love the whole franchise, and I hope to see more UTs (or even Unreal 3, or Unreal Remake [Keeping that amazing soundtrack]), I love Quake and Doom too, they're amazing!
I'm still playing UT99. Not that often but once a week. But I mostly in the Monster Hunt section because my aming is way to bad for competitive. Funny fact but my aming skills are good enough for CS GO and Fortnite
Team Fortress 2 actually currently has 2 sourcemods in development based on AFPS. One is Open Source (Open Fortress) and the other's closed development (Team Deathmatch Classic)
im genz and only into afps now because back in march april or something i played a ton of open fortress unfortunately ive been playing less and less because i'm in south america and just tired of playing at high ping in other regions just to get games so im on krunker now which is fun and simple enough but it's basic compared to actual arenas
I am super hung over and this was the most in-depth and thorough break down of arena shooters. The descriptiveness of each element and the way you explained everything was super soothing. Ez sub
another thing I've found is that, aside from hyper-precision weapons (like railguns) you'll NEVER find a one-shot kill weapon in an arena shooter. this makes it so that ambushing an opponent gives an advantage but doesn't guarantee a win and generally makes the game feel much more fair (you won't round an unlucky corner and get hit point-blank with a shotgun and just straight-up die because of it. sure, you'll take a lot of damage, but it's entirely possible to still win if you have great aim and movement)
but that's precisely the reason i like playing OG doom deathmatch: it's an arena shooter where you can get you face blown off at full health blue armor with a supershotgun or a bfg :>
@@noobguy9973 because you went out of your way to let everyone know that you still play Quake 3, which is extra ironic because it was in reply to a comment partially making fun of people who do exactly that.
Tribes isn't a arena shooter, it's a flying over a small city shooter! Loved Vengence and played the newer one in like 2015. Amazing games that have a lot of good mechanics attached.
@@Januii specifically because he talked about "the most skillful games", and in my opinion Tribes is an arena shooter but with the skill components dialed up to their theoretical human limits
Bennett Harnisch Exactly. Tribes (especially the first two titles) required all of the mechanics required in a typical arena shooter but with the added challenge of effective skiing and compensating for the verticality brought about by jet packs.
I played both but in QII had 59 mods was in 3 clans lol ran my sound through a sansui rec the walls n windows would shake sigh ... oldschool dinosaurs yes indeed
Singleplayer Arena shooters: -You run faster -You usually fight 15-25 enemies (npcs) -You don't reload, you just add ammo to your weapon -You rely on movement and speed more -You are usually alone, no ally or friend besides you -You fight in open environments and big maps Singleplayer Tactical shooters: -You run slower -You usually fight less that 8 enemies at once -You reload -You rely on strategy and tactics more -You are usually in a team or a squad -You are usually in a confined space or building
Yep. I was raised on Quake, and was always below-intermediate quake player. BUT i am playing a ton of other shooters on diamond+ or equal level, requiring around a month to get there. Quake does wonders to your aim.
You really managed to capture absolutely everything in a video just over 10 minutes. Very thorough and I'd say appreciative of all communities within AFPS, the addendum at the end was a nice touch too. It's still the "royal genre" and the godfather of gaming innovation if you ask me.
FFA in original quake was the most satisfying game I've ever played , yeah we had 200ping dropped connections roller ball mice but when you start winning it's a hell of a rush !! Nothing has come close since not even nearly !!
I only like arena shooters like unreal and quake. Because they almost feel like racegames and shooters at the same time. The flow is just so good. It gives me a big adrenaline boost everytime you frag someone. I love it.
I love arena shooters so much, they have such atmosphere and they're all about purely skill. Wish these games were the mainsteam. I bet the professional gamer title wouldn't be common unlike today.
I Would even think that some professional players Wouldn't be above some experienced Quake / Unreal Veteran players 😁 "Man, enable Your Aim-Assist !" (I Saw that on a Halo Tournament on PC, playing with a Controller !! On PC...) And then he won and get famous and rich 😁(I have to find back this video). Media and cash corruption nowadays
@@f.f.mwitchcraft4519 They aren't. Some of the popular ones occasionally stream AFPS games and they get their asses handed to them by the general community. Most of these players are good at positioning, and crosshair placement, and thats about it. Thats all the mainstream fps games like CS:GO require skillset wise.
Something that often gets lost in talking about the immense skill ceiling arena FPS have is just how low the skill floor is. Quakeworld wasn't a cultural juggernaut just because it allowed for complex movement, tactics, and strategy; it was also easy as cake to start playing. There's no loadouts to prepare with fifty different assault rifles and SMGs to choose from, or killstreaks to know about and plan around, or individual characters with their own weapons and abilities. You spawn, run around until you find a weapon, and go to town until you find better stuff or die. The most complicated the genre gets in terms of baseline required knowledge are powerups like Quad Damage or Megahealths (which are self explanatory) and secondary fires on guns, which is just a matter of pressing RMB and seeing what happens. I think this gets overlooked so often because arena shooter evangelists want to really press on how skillful the games are under the pretense that a game being more skillful is necessarily superior to a game that isn't, and I don't entirely disagree with that impulse. But there are more players in the world than just those who want to put in the time and effort to reach for that skill ceiling, and it's important to think about how the average, non-gdlk player will see a game. I personally love how easy it is to hop into a FFA and start blasting, but we also have to admit that we're a long way from 1996. For most players, such ground-level simplicity is just too basic for them to have fun with for very long, but the intricacies of what the genre can offer are too involved and complicated for those players to even see, let alone want to learn through grinding out movement tutorials or getting stomped by the people who do know them (the rocket jump's nuances in the video is a great example, but strafejumping/bunnyhopping is even more immediately necessary to know yet _far_ more complicated to learn). So for the average player, Quake is either "that game where you just run around and shoot rockets at each other" or "that game where you just run around and shoot rockets at each other except that some people are flying around like fucking speed demons and I have no idea what the fuck they're doing." So there's a somewhat-paradoxical trend within the game playing demographic: low to mid-level players who have been around games for a long time want to have something more complex and nuanced than "look at a guy and shoot him til he's dead," but that still feel more accessible than the complicated and counter-intuitive layers that high level AFPS design offers. The CoDs and Overwatches of the world have answered this demand through having a higher skill floor with the aforementioned loadouts, killstreaks, character abilities, etc, and guide their playerbase through that higher skill floor in different ways - limiting player choices through XP unlocks in CoD, detailed tutorials and characters with different levels of complexity in Overwatch, etc. Thus, even though their games have far lower skill ceilings than AFPSs, they're able to make most players feel engaged by raising the floor enough that they get a sense of navigating depth learning how to play the game without feeling overwhelmed, and then have a guided means to go deeper from there through unlocks or character choices adding new layers of depth gradually. It's this desire to appeal to the experienced but still lower end player that made Quake Live introduce loadouts and Champions introduce character abilities alongside loadouts. They're controversial decisions among the old guard, to be sure. But it isn't controversial to say that AFPSs haven't been much more than a cult phenomenon for a long time, and if there's going to be any kind of resurgence of the genre, there has to be some kind of answer for the desires of those players (unless there's some kind of FGC-style scene of people that regularly get together to compete and create a culture around that). But maybe there doesn't. Maybe 5 people a day playing Reflex is fine if those five people are the ones who care about the depth of the genre. After all, it only takes two to duel, right?
Nice observations, and well expressed. On your last point about loadouts and abilities, I feel that they detract from the game as it destroys the balance of the game, in favour of appealing to a broader audience. I'd much rather the games retain their superior balanced design with fewer players than introduce mechanics (champion abilities) that lessen the design in the hopes of attracting more players (this hasn't worked e.g. Quake Champions). Regardless, AFPS had their time in the sun and those that care about the games are still playing in their tight knit communities. The fact these games are still around with players 20+ years after creation, whereas games like CoD need new releases every year to remain relevant, prove the superiority of AFPS.
games don't need to attract new players, they need to retain them. most players of games have barely invested more than a few hours, if that into them. how are you going to retain players when your movement mechanics consist of "haha shift go brrr"? you shouldn't care about retaining a casual audience who can't even be assed to learn something basic like rocket jumping if you care about having deep game mechanics. compromising the core mechanics will compromise your core fanbase who actually care about the game
Nice vid. The days of q3a (osp) was simply the best for me. 1999-2005, amazing time to be a gamer. And you are totally right about immediately being above decent in any other fps automatically.
Loved the Marathon 2 soundtrack at 4:03. Not for every gamer AFPS genre, people don't exactly like to be destroyed continiuosly till gain some skill, but when you start getting there, oh god...greetings and congrats from an Argentina UT player, good video man.
@@kek8726 halo isnt in the same league as cs, most consider counter strike to be the most well made and skillful fps of all time along with arena shooters
We are loyal for a reason, i personaly think about quake. Next to unreal tournament and couple more games that is one and only one true skill game, movement, aiming, timing and spacing. Shoting trought the time and space is more fun then press E to win.. Amazing video, brings back a lot of good memories. Thanks
No wonder my favorite Overwatch player, Get Quaked On can be so fucking good at Overwatch, he does show his some of his arena shooter play from time to time in bits and pieces. But goddamn I can start to see why he remembers all these tricks he can exploit, like there's over like 40 different movement tricks with Doomfist and he knows them all and uses them consistently
UT99 was my game. Then later i played UT2K4. The rush of adrenaline when in the zone i will never forget. Being so good at something that everything becomes second nature. I know many of us humans have that feeling with something in life. But for me it was when i was a kid and played Unreal.
Great video nailed it on your 3 points maps movement and weapons. There's 1 thing I want to add tho the arena shooter games force you to point and aim then fire while playing to progress no extra anything is rewarded for kill streaks, unlike just about all war games that have so many ways to get killz without having to aim and click. Arena games bring true aiming skill to the players and all the other non arena games give you perks booby traps bombs air strikes just about 2/3's of the ways to get killz dont require aiming to get them and that is why there's less skilled fps players out there that are not arena qualified....
I'm old school unreal tournament player 2k3-2k4 1 thing I wish happened was instead of "CarBall" being reused to make "Rocket League" I wish Bombing Run was remade in "FragBall"
Sure buddy That’s why the player base for arena shooters r very small compared to fighting games There skill gap between casuals and pros in arena shooters is so high that your either a bot or a pro there is no in between And that’s why u will rarely see tournaments for these games cause most people suck at them
Frax yea it may look cooler and more appealing but the reason people can’t learn arena shooters is because they lack reaction time, instinct and awareness just skill in general All of which is needed to be good at the game
Frax maybe reaction time but not the other 2 Cause u can see the fighter right on your screen it’s more so trying to read their moves as to what their gonna come up with and counterattacking, trying to keep them in a corner
In my book any fps that has sprint and iron sight mechanics is pretty much trash, i can play it and moderately enjoy it, but i'll never be able to take it seriously. Same goes for fpses that have split second ttks but moderate to slow movement speeds. Those mehcanics were literally invented to allow even average/terrible players to get 1/1 kds, as opposed to being systematically farmed, and also to allow fpses to be played on consoles.
A damn fine video. I didn't like FPS games until I came across Quake II on the N64 which only got deeper as I bought my first PC and also bought Quake 4. I spent around 9K hours into the game since I first played it in the mid 00's to about 2014. Quake 4 and Quake like games became the ONLY games I started to play. Once you master movement or at least have a high understanding of the system, no other games can give you the same rush. But that was also my problem, the movement mechanics were so amazing that I couldn't slow down, something CoD taught me later on. lol. I had to bomb around as fast as possible EVERYWHERE AND ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the TIME. lol
Very insightful video man, good job Quick question: what's your opinion on old school franchise (namely Quake) adopting the Heroes/Champions aspect of newer games? do you think it's a necessary change to keep up with the times or just them following trends? because i've heard a lot of people complaining that the addition of champions diminishes the "fairness" of duels, since you have to make a decision of what "style" to play before the match even begins, while others argue that the addition of different characters expands the skill ceiling since now you have to strategize beyond what was necessary before. anyways, would like to hear your point of view in the matter.
Thx! I don't mind games trying to break the format and branching out, and I don't think abilities are a bad way to do it. At least someone is trying something. My personal issue with QC at the moment is 1) how the abilities are so strong and damage-based, not utility-based, and 2) how much the duel format has to be gutted just to make abilities work. Otherwise I don't have a problem with the principle of adding abilities. I actually loved how QC uses passive abilities/movement attributes to put different types and generations of AFPS players together.
@@makothemagnificentrabbit8783 make sure you check out the latest Quake Champions patch (Nov) They just did a massive balancing patch, most of the high dmg moves (rangers Orb use to do 8000 dmg and was instant kill, now does 90 dmg) all the speeds are normalized so there is a base speed and then faster champs, the heights have been fixed, hitboxes, etc.. major balancing wave right before DreamHack Nov
I think its possible to add new elements to the arena shooter genre and make it interesting enough to draw in new players, without losing its roots. I think Quake Champions did it wrong, and I have full faith the Diabotical is doing it right. I CANNOT wait for that game to launch check it out if you don't know about it.
I just recently got Titanfall 2 and was so good at the game i got 1st place on leaderboard 5 times in a row after just 20 hours now i feel like i beat the game and dont really want to play it anymore my most memorable experience was executing a titan, seeing two pilots running after me and quickly ejecting killing the in the explosion and then while falling shooting at three pilots which were standing right next to each other with the burst laser grenade gun thingy and killing them all thus wiping out the whole enemy team. I could not believe what happened and had to recount the kills a few times to make sure. I played a bit of quake champions before that but i think i got my skills from over 200 hours in doom eternal.
"There will always be room for these games" Next suggested video: "The Fall of Quake, Unreal and Arena FPS | Death of A Genre" Hmm, getting some mixed messages here.
Fucking hell that's a good video. The best one on the subject imo. Most of them usually show a clear bias of the author towards a specific game or a group of games. This one looks at the entire subgenre in sufficient depth to make a comprehensive overview of the topic.
MASTERPIECE. QC, new UT, and Toxikk are the main titles I play, but it's mostly QC since I can't seem to find a proper match in the other two. I tried Xonotic, but I dunno why I don't play it. Warsow I think has the largest player hitboxes and it's very easy to hit rails there, and I play it from time to time. I would love to play Reflex, but it's not free. QC:DE is waiting to be installed but now I want to try to finish doom 2016 on ultra nightmare pistol only.
im completely new to AFPS, but what got me interested in them was playing doom (the 2016 one) by being able to move around the map really fluidly and finding what weapon combos are the best for which enemies. diabotical will be my first one, and ive never really had access to them because ive been playing console for most of my gaming time.
bro you've only really made one such video and it's absolutely great. I want to encourage you to do more of that. Please take the time. You're doing great work 🙏😌
Hella funny reading some of these comments. Saying CS is harder or shows more skill than Quake or Unreal is just a crock of shit. And goes to show none of these kids know what they’re talking about. Nothing compares to a Quake duel or Unreal DM 1v1. Cs aim at a corner lol. Its like checkers to chess in all realness. Why do you think summit and shroud didn’t play QC? They BOTH said it was too hard and the skill ceiling was too high. Quake Champions is free. DL it and get that ass whooped a few times CS go gods lol. Where all that aim wont save you. All aim no brain doesn’t do well around these parts.
UT 2004 has the best movement for me, double jumps, wall jumps, dodges, wall dodge, shield jumps, translocator etc... sadly none of it was shown in the video. Because not many people mastered it. Quake 3 on the other hand made it much more easier. Just time jumps at the right moment for boost jump and use rockets. It's still beautiful to watch, but it doesn't get close to UT2004. Also shock rifle is beauty to watch when mastered, combos you can make are insane.
simply put, they're not generic sprint-ads-shoot-hide annual copy-paste broken legs shooters with guns that are basically the same. I love Arena shooters. Run-n'-Gun is my style
It's funny how whenever Quake, UT or the arenaFPS genre in general gets positive coverage, bunch of Halo fanboys show up and want to slab that "arenaFPS" sticker to their franchise as well. But they're nowhere to be seen in every day arenaFPS communities or discussions, quite literally zero interaction other than to show up once in a while to get validation. That just shows how little Halo actually has in common with the genre.
I think at one point Halo did indeed have game modes that gave it the potential to be an AFPS-lite, even though within those game modes, depth in weapon choice/movement is still dwarfed by common AFPS. However Halo players don't actually play any of those modes, and if anything Halo is one of the key catalysts of dumbing down of shooters. Unfortunately being a decent game of its own doesn't mean its impact on FPS is anywhere near positive. **EDIT**: lol just realize it's you, lord Smilecythe 😁 nice to see you revisiting this video 2 years later.
@@makothemagnificentrabbit8783 halo ce probably is my favourite shooter because of the 2v2, you could control the spawns, that shit was like fps chess.
the best shot for arena shooters to ever comeback is for game thar combines the movement style of titanfall 2 with the shield and gunplay of halo ce, the gunplay is what really sets back arena shooters for new players
