Why Aren't Arena First Person Shooters As Popular As They Used To Be?

[Mr. Freeze]

Is Splitgate really an arena shooter tho? It's a lot like Halo and I don't think Halo is considered one. Great game tho! 

[Jacek Bourne]

I'm pretty sure halo is an arena shooter. It's just far slower pace than most typical arena shooters. Same with splitgate however it is faster than halo.

[ReaperAA]

12 hours ago, Worm318 said:

I think you have this point backwards. The high-skill player is better at aiming and dodging, that means he will win most (or all) of the exchanges with a new player and dominate. The only way for a low-skill player to win in this environment is when there are no feedback loops to recover resources such as health or ammo, but there aren't many games like that (Doom without item respawning is the only one that comes to my mind right now). Of course, in this environment the low-skill player can hopelessly run a bit longer but that doesn't mean he will have a good time.

A deadlier arsenal means that the noob can sometimes get a lucky headshot, grenade throw or rocket to the face of the veteran.

 

Yeah I made a oopsie mistake. I actually meant lower TTK instead of higher TTK. More deadly arsenal means that even a 200/200 health/armor player has a chance get killed if the newbie player can surprise attack.

 

Whereas in Quake 3/Quake Live, the TTK is so high that a newbie would never get to kill a pro player because the better player would manage to restack their health/armor after every engagement.

 

I fixed my previous comment.

Edited August 21, 2021 by ReaperAA

[ReaperAA]

3 hours ago, Jacek Bourne said:

I'm pretty sure halo is an arena shooter. It's just far slower pace than most typical arena shooters. Same with splitgate however it is faster than halo.

 

I don't think most would call halo an arena shooter. Sure it is not a "pure military shooter", but it is still overall closer to those than pure arena shooters in terms of gameplay elements. Regenerating health, 2 weapon limit, slow movement, vehicles etc.

[dpJudas]

14 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

• Extremely high skill ceiling. In most modern games, even newbies manage to get some kills here and there. But in arena shooter, even games between closely skilled players can result in something like 10 - 0 or 15 - 2 etc. This is very discouraging for a newbie. This issue can be somewhat reduced by weapons having a higher lower TTK (Time to Kill) which would allow newbies to get a kill here and there.
• Don't work as well on consoles compared to the likes of Halo, CoD or BF. Arena shooters require twitch reflexes and acrobatic movement from the player, both of which are extremely hard to do well with a controller (they are already frigging hard, even with Kb&M). The console factor matters A LOT as most of the sales of modern games are on consoles. This is also the reason why RTS (Real Time Strategy) genre has pretty much died.
• Egg and chicken problem of the player base. The few players that play such types of games are l33t level players. New casual players don't want to play these games because there are very few causals playing theses.
• Not being "Trendy". Arena shooters are seen as outdated by today's mainstream audience. Big publishers always go for trendy stuff. In the 2000s, we had the military shooter craze and now we have hero shooter and battle royal craze.

 

I don't think you can explain this by the skill ceiling. If you try a game like Apex Legends as a complete noob you'll get owned just as badly as you would have been in UT99 back in the day. It is significantly easier to get a kill in Battlefield 5 (super low TTK), yet virtually nobody plays that game. Likewise, UT99 instagib had arguably the lowest TTK in town!

 

It took me far far longer to learn and adjust to the tactics of Apex, Battlefield Bad Company 2 or PUBG than it did to any arena shooter. Unlike UT99 using my good aim was not longer enough to bruteforce me to victory. The TTK for UT99 is also far lower than it is for Apex Legends, for example. Spamming is very effective in UT99, while it won't do you much good in Apex.

 

The primary reason I never try new arena shooters is simply because whenever I see one they seem to be terribly stuck in the past. Take Doom 2016, for example. The multiplayer option there felt even more primitive than UT99. All it felt like I could do was to jump to counter enemy attacks. I was winning my initial games when the multiplayer demo was out, yet I just wasn't having fun. I've become used to many of the game mechanics that a lot of other newer shooters introduced that if you give me a game with the winning formulae of 1999 I won't play it for long.

[ReaperAA]

30 minutes ago, dpJudas said:

I don't think you can explain this by the skill ceiling. If you try a game like Apex Legends as a complete noob you'll get owned just as badly as you would have been in UT99 back in the day. It is significantly easier to get a kill in Battlefield 5 (super low TTK), yet virtually nobody plays that game. Likewise, UT99 instagib had arguably the lowest TTK in town!

 

It took me far far longer to learn and adjust to the tactics of Apex, Battlefield Bad Company 2 or PUBG than it did to any arena shooter. Unlike UT99 using my good aim was not longer enough to bruteforce me to victory. The TTK for UT99 is also far lower than it is for Apex Legends, for example. Spamming is very effective in UT99, while it won't do you much good in Apex.

 

The primary reason I never try new arena shooters is simply because whenever I see one they seem to be terribly stuck in the past. Take Doom 2016, for example. The multiplayer option there felt even more primitive than UT99. All it felt like I could do was to jump to counter enemy attacks. I was winning my initial games when the multiplayer demo was out, yet I just wasn't having fun. I've become used to many of the game mechanics that a lot of other newer shooters introduced that if you give me a game with the winning formulae of 1999 I won't play it for long.

 

I haven't played (or even watched much gameplay footage of) Apex Legends so I can't comment on it. However, regarding UT99, it is more of an exception rather than the norm in terms of its weapon behaviour and lower TTK. Most arena shooters tend to copy Quake 3 rather than copy UT games. And Quake 3 has a pretty high TTK. Likewise, Battlefield 5 is also an exception in that the game is not as popular as the previous BF games because of various reasons etc.

 

Also TTK is just one part of the skill ceiling issue. There are also stuff like item control, hard to use weapons, super hard advanced movement techniques like strafe jumping (again UT lacking hard movement is an exception).

 

I agree with you that another reason why arena shooters are not popular is because they are stuck in the past. Most of them are a carbon copy of Quake 3 (or in some cases a hybrid of Q3 and UT as in the case of Xonotic) and then people expect them to be successful :p. As much as I hate to say it, the genre seriously needs a game that brings some innovation combined with elements that make it easier for newbies to enter the game. Quake Champions tried to innovate by bringing champions with their own abilities. However, other than that one aspect, it was pretty much just Quake 3 with even less content and gamemodes.

[A Nobody]

Well with Quake 1 being re-released on consoles just recently, we might see a resurgence of the arena shooter to the mainstream.

[dpJudas]

1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

Also TTK is just one part of the skill ceiling issue. There are also stuff like item control, hard to use weapons, super hard advanced movement techniques like strafe jumping (again UT lacking hard movement is an exception).

The tactics of other shooter genres are IMHO just as complex, if not more so, than those of old arena shooters. To be good at Apex Legends you need to:

• master how you land, not too far from your squad, not too close. always know where your squad is relative to you in case you land the same place as another squad
• item control is quite complex. when you land you need to grab priority items before your enemy. that means even before landing you need to have a strict plan for how you intend to loot things - arena shooter isn't more advanced here
• weapons have stocks, barrel stabilizers, scopes of varying types (that you yourself need to figure out what works best for), multiple fire modes, recoil patterns, etc. They are different than arena shooter weapons, but not any easier to master
• strafe jumping also exists in apex. in fact, learning how to maintain high momentum is key to becoming good at the game
• health management is very important - when do you pop a shield battery in intense battle, when do you keep pushing to keep your squad members alive?
• all the heroes have special abilities that easily match what arena shooters had. octane has jump pads, loba the UT translocator, etc.

I completely agree with you that the carbon copy of Q3 and somewhat UT is the biggest problem. The added complexities in newer shooters is the primary reason I find all the new arena shooters so uninteresting. They seem primitive by comparison. And that's despite I actually don't even like the battle royale game mode and would absolutely love get a more arena shooterish game to play. As long as it isn't a Q3 railgun, endless jump pads, forced rocket jumps and recreations of old maps I've already played before. :)

Edited August 21, 2021 by dpJudas

[ReaperAA]

59 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

Well with Quake 1 being re-released on consoles just recently, we might see a resurgence of the arena shooter to the mainstream.

 

Pfft, only in our dreams.

[magicsofa]

I feel that people's definition of arena shooters is just too stringent, and some of that strictness seems to be coming from heavy allegiance to Your Favorite Shooter and major bias against new, popular games. I've played a fair amount of Call of Duty and Counterstrike, and I see no reason for these to be considered anything but arena shooters. Just because you can crouch behind cover, or have your health regenerate, doesn't mean that it isn't a movement-and-aiming based game set in a closed arena. The most popular FPS in the world right now is Crossfire, which closely resembles the original Counterstrike. The battle royale craze might rub you the wrong way, but in my brief viewings of Fortnite gameplay I saw plenty of running, jumping, and gunning. Then you have a game like Rocket League which, let's be real, is a hybrid of a virtual-sports game and an arena shooter. And considering that pro players can fly their car in just such a way that they can juggle the ball through the air, I'd say that there's enough skill-based action going on to appeal to non-casual players.

So really, I'd say that arena shooters are actually some of the most popular games today. I just don't think that having class-based abilities or more than 16 players in a match should disqualify games from the broad genre. They might not be as twitchy as Doom, but neither was Quake 1 or Unreal Tournament, both of which feature much slower player movement.

[Maggle]

A) Most Arena Shooters that come out nowadays are indie games. Indie games generally suffer from a lack of marketing, and depend heavily on word of mouth and social media for marketing instead. How much money did Mojang have to spend on ads for Minecraft back in 2010-11? 0$. That game's success hinged entirely on Youtube. Without that, it would have been dead in the water and just as relevant today as Infiniminer. That's just the way it is.

 

B) Arena Shooters generally make no attempt to bring in new players. From basic movement mechanics over-relying on physics quirks to gameplay relying too much on knowing the map and all the weapon spawns, to the lack of tutorials and training modes, to the community itself being full of elitist try-hards, getting into an Arena Shooter today is intimidating to say the least. They also generally make no attempt at outreach to FPS fans of today, which is an important demographic that you absolutely need to make an FPS successful. (Obviously, right?)

 

C) Here are some things that modern Arena Shooters need but largely don't have:

- Trying something new with the formula. Don't just copy Q3 and UT99. Modern gamers aren't going to be interested because they don't know those games well, and fans of those games won't be interested either because they can just go play those. It's a losing battle.

- Movement tech should be easy and approachable. Lots of games have cool movement options that are way the fuck easier than any rocket jump will ever be, so why play an arena shooter? How do you climb a wall in Apex Legends? Easy. You hold sprint and jump at a wall, and as long as it's low enough you can climb it. How do you climb a wall in Q3A? Well, you pull out the Plasma Rifle, you hug the wall and aim it at the wall at a very precise angle, shoot it at the wall, hurting yourself in the process, and hope to god the knockback works for you before someone shows up with a rocket launcher and kills you instantly. It's not the 1990s anymore. You're not the only game in town for movement. We're at a point where some Call of Duty games let you double jump and wall run by default. If a COD game has better movement mechanics than your Quake-ish Arena Shooter, you have some problems that need to be addressed. RJ'ing and stuff like that should be options for people who want it, absolutely, but cool movement should be available to everyone regardless of skill level. 

- Some modern shooter mechanics are simply more convenient, and should be in Arena Shooters too. Quick-Melee and Quick-grenade, for example. It'll be fine, it won't magically turn your game into a cover shooter, it's fun, people like it, no one wants to switch to a fist or a frag grenade as a separate weapon anymore. Plus it just slows the game down to switch to a different weapon to do things you could do just with the push of a button. Arena Shooters are all about speed, so why not?

- Arena Shooters rely wayyyy too much on item management, like knowing where the weapon/powerup spawns are and precisely how long it takes for items to respawn is basically the key to victory in most cases. I'll be honest, this is straight up horrible game design. It doesn't matter how good you are at shooter games, if you don't know where the items are then 9 times out of 10 you lose. It doesn't matter if you're literally John Wick, if your opponent knows that every 30 secs there's going to be a Quad damage at this location and a BFG at another then they will have either a Quad or BFG every 30 seconds. And there is no fighting back. You're screwed. Most MP games don't encounter this issue. This is a fatal flaw unique to Arena Shooters and for some reason no one has thought for the past 25 years to fix it. 

 

The solution is simple: Randomize what spawns in the map and where, kinda like what Battle Royale games do nowadays. I don't care if some people don't like that, you can't just quad damage all your problems away. You need to work for your frags. And it will be much more fun for everyone. Also, more health pickups, please. Arena shooters also have an irritating tendency to not have enough health pickups, or to have them all split up as far away from eachother as possible. This is annoying, because every time i end a firefight nearly dead (which is very often, because i can't dodge hitscan machine gun fire) i end up getting only like 20 health back if i'm lucky. Then the same person i just killed respawns and immediately kills me because i have like 40 health and 10 armor. Stop being so stingy with health pickups.

 

D) If there is marketing, it's always terrible. Do not advertise your game to the eSports crowd. The eSport crowd is a relatively small community that dislikes being pandered to. Whether or not your game ends up at EVO or something is up to them. You can't force it into eSports. It also sends the implicit message to casual gamers to stay away because most of the people playing are going to be elite eSports MLG gamers who will destroy you with their eyes closed.

 

Bethesda's marketing strategy for Quake Champions was legitimately the stupidest thing I've ever seen. It killed that game, btw. It will never recover from the lost sales from that stupid ass E3 2019 trailer.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Since the Battle Royale trend is getting more stronger than the standard multiplayer FPS genre, and even Arena shooters I'm general, it is unlikely it will ever be revived.

[KingBoss2003]

On 8/19/2021 at 12:31 PM, Coopersville said:

Gatekeeping happened. Doomers want everyone to play Doom on any electronic device of their choosing. Quakers want you to follow jank written guides on how to perform basic movements because things like bunnyhopping and rocketjumping aren't explained in the games, and never had intuitive control systems implemented that made those actions easier. Shooting at a blur darting across a 17" CRT monitor with a ball mouse while compensating for 200+ms lag isn't very engaging for hours either, and by the time technology caught up with the genre, tastes in multiplayer had long changed.

 

When referring to Quake II multiplayer mods, one ID employee stated, "grappling hooks were the best feature we never added". I think therein lies the key to bringing back classic arena shooters. Do away with all of the glitchy movement tech and give everyone a grappling hook they can just point at a wall and immediately go back to shooting. Some games are adopting this, off the top of my head: Titanfall 2, Apex Legends, Overwatch, and COD Mobile have classes or loadouts with grappling hooks. If someone made a F2P shooter centered around fun grappling hook physics, it'll revive arena shooters.

sorry if this sounds rude but with this comment being in act-man's rise and fall of arena shooter video and the many backlash videos of it I would like to politely say:

your wrong lol

also with evert UT game being delisted does that mean it's ok to pretty much make a sorta copy of it? anyhow here's funny Gianni video

I ain't giving up anytime soon

[Coopersville]

I'd love to be proven wrong (someday).