OldTimber wrote on Dec 19, 2013, 03:40:
Old CTF player before transitioning to TF and all I can say to mark the anniversary was this. I fear no one but the one with a quad & black magic. Dam still remember that sound then just going oh shit.

I'll never forget the day where this guy on CTF had the 2x damage rune and the quad damage, which multiplied to 8x. He swatted me with the lightning gun but I had the red armor, and had just run over the 200 health cube. Just enough to barely survive a quick swipe. That was on the map with the two giant faces facing each other.

It's too bad the modern Quake thing never brought back these old maps, old skins and weapons, sounds, and the spike ball grappling hook. The leap pads-and-only-leap-pads stuff just jumped the shark into no soul territory.

We don't like you having to develop that kind of talent with rocket jump and grappling hook, no sirree! Get thee gone!

Old CTF player before transitioning to TF and all I can say to mark the anniversary was this. I fear no one but the one with a quad & black magic. Dam still remember that sound then just going oh shit.

I keep waiting for a new UT.. but without the over the top supervehicles etc.. nonsense.
or a new pure Quake-type game..
or a new SoF (yeah, I said it.. something like BF.. but without all the extra shiny screen shaking over the top nonsense)..
or a new Unreal XMP

I also want community-made maps, mods, etc.. and charge me $60 for the game, I don't care.. but give the game BACK to use gamers. The ones that made you who you are today.. the ones buying games from your studios for ourselves still, and maybe for our kids.

Give the gaming back to us.

ViRGE wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 11:26:
Ahh Tribes. It was ahead of its time and yet everything that follows only gets farther and farther from the purity of its vision.

AQ2 was the pinnacle of gaming for me. Nothng has felt as good as that. It amazes me that we played so smooth and flawlessly on 16+ people servers over 14.4 modems with a 125 or so ping - and now we have fiber and T1 level connections at our houses, and we can't get a AAA title under 200 ping on a regular basis.....my how they have fallen....it is laughable at best, the netcode is now so bloated in games that even a sub 50 ping can sometimes be unplayable.....(I am looking at you CoD and BF games)

wow....these kind of stories always bring a range of emotions. As my time becomes more precious, and gaming hasn't been as easy for me as a new dad, the thing that stands out the most is...

HOLY HELL CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW MANY HOURS IN MY LIFE I HAVE PLAYED VIDEO GAMES! hahahahahah Amazing.....just amazing.

Dagnamit wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 11:50:

nin wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 11:28:
UT99 - woot! Still the best.

I always preferred UT 2003. Was I the only one that thought quakeworld was kinda janky when it was first released? I actually preferred the original netcode for gameplay purposes. Of course, my 300+ ping might have had something to do with it.

Quake World added a lot of prediction to it, which flopped miserably, at least on dialup, with fast-twitch action.

I was in NBI, a regular clan that vied near the top, and finally quit after a Quake World match where I had rocket jumped from a lower to higher bridge over water (under heavy assault), the kind of stuff I loved. Sudden lag, and I found myself underwater running in the corner.

The predictor, combined with bursty twitch changes, just couldn't handle it. As it was almost all Quake World by that point, screw it.

ViRGE wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 11:26:
Ahh Tribes. It was ahead of its time and yet everything that follows only gets farther and farther from the purity of its vision.

Come to think of it, there was another game that was ahead of it's time and has yet to be duplicated when it comes to multiplayer. It was Joint Operations which had massive maps, tons of different vehicles, 128 players on a server, and grass that a player could lay down in and barely be seen even from a mile away (best grass tech in a shooter when considering visibility from long distances). Why hasn't anyone duplicated that type of grass? Of course, it was a PC only game.

I just want to reply saying I love this website... Thank you!

ahh, yes... Tribes. I actually first heard about the game the moment when I got a free CD of it given out at a lan party. I think I even saw Blue there with his sketchpad taking notes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXz90BkPcxw

This comment was edited on Dec 18, 2013, 16:14.

ViRGE wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 11:26:
Ahh Tribes. It was ahead of its time and yet everything that follows only gets farther and farther from the purity of its vision.

So true. 64 player games. Vehicles. Mobile infantry. Troop carriers. Destructable bases. Amazing mods (Renegades anyone?).

Beamer wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 14:34:

oRuin wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 14:03:
I honestly wish that I could go back to the mid-late 90s. Just don't enjoy gaming as much than back then.

Is that because of you, or because of games?

I bet it's a little bit of both.

Personally, I am game-jaded.

But also, I find recently that games try to do 'too much', and they fail in their core concept.
Games that focus on accomplishing 1 thing really well, are good for me - with gameplay-mechanics/weapons/player-movement/AI/feedback/etc well matched to the core concept.

Most fun I've had with 'recent games' (multiplayer) was with the very basic games.
- War Thunder (dogfight)
- Dungeon Defenders (stop waves of crap)
- Orcs Must Die (stop waves of crap)
- Mass Effect 3 MP (stop waves of crap)
- Starcraft2 (self explanatory)
- Doom3 MP (classic DM in modern engine)
- Left4Dead (survive, get from A to B)
... and a few others

But a lot of other games I've played left me feeling kinda 'meh'.



Diablo3 managed to make the levels repetitive, by tossing most of the random level generation out. Then forcing people to play through the same areas over and over looking for OP trash mobs in the hopes of loot. Because the boss loot was a joke.

(Glad they left Starcraft alone, and basically made SC2 track closely to SC1)



Modern FPS is just XP and unlock farming, with way slow action to fill the time in between.


No Battlefield has ever been as fun as 1942.
They have since made it all "serious"... and the gameplay is really poor now.

In 1942 the gameplay boiled down to wiping out your enemy's spawn points, until one side is annihilated - making the final press really hard when the enemy team is all in one place. It was organic, and it was a celebration when you won.

In the new ones it's about farming kills until the ticket counter runs out, then checking your unlock progress.

Although, I do enjoy the counterstrike mode in BF4. The games have way more organization and team effort. Too bad there are all of ~4 hardcode servers playing that setup...


COD is just. Sigh. In their defense they haven't changed the formula... but they've just made it inconvenient. No dedicated 3rd party servers, no custom maps, less console tweaks, etc.



These days I find myself firing up zdaemon(doom1|2)/doom3/QuakeLive, and having more fun than with any modern FPS.



I had hopes for MWO, but they took it from sim to arcade, which isn't my cup of tea in that genre of game.



Looking forward to Star Citizen, in the hopes that it will be like a multiplayer WC Privateer.

-scheherazade

Beamer wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 14:34:

oRuin wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 14:03:
I honestly wish that I could go back to the mid-late 90s. Just don't enjoy gaming as much than back then.

Is that because of you, or because of games?

Mid to late 90s was the golden age. I feel the same way. Playing Diablo 1 and Ultima Online all night. Going through Fallout for the umpteenth time. Quake deathmatches. The awe of building my first PC (To replace one I overpaid for in 96) so I could play Unreal in late 1998. That christmas where I played BG1 and HL1 nonstop for hours...

There is no magic left in gaming. Maybe it's all been done, maybe it's just nostalgia I don't know...but for me the magic isn't there in gaming anymore. I want a game to conquer my life and capture my imagination the way the first two fallouts, BG or Diablo did. Last game to do that was probably Gothic 2 back in 2003.

Good memories. I got online 17 years ago then, because I signed up for my first (As in, it was paid for by me, not leeching off a friend) internet account back in October of 1996. Couple months later I got the shareware of Quake and a friend unlocked it for me. We used to play Quakeworld all the time after that. Funny how it was so playable even at 28.8bps whereas I dumped DSL back 6 years ago because it was too SLOW. Amazing.

Modern shooters don't do shit for me. Quake, the first Unreal and UT...after that it all started to go downhill. I think UT was the peak. For me anyway.

Unreal 2: XMP > UT2k4 > UT99 = UT3 (when people were playing) > UT2k3.

Tribes 2 > Tribes > Tribes Vengeance > Tribes Microtransactions!

Quake(world) > Quake 2 > Quake 3 > Quake Live...

Edit: Forgot UT3

oRuin wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 14:03:
I honestly wish that I could go back to the mid-late 90s. Just don't enjoy gaming as much than back then.

Is that because of you, or because of games?

Quakeworld was almost too ahead of its time. Client-side prediction was kind of janky on dialup (I stuck with netquake), but it really came into its own a few years later when everyone had access to broadband.

harlock wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 13:12:
shazbot!

I was just thinking, the other day, that it would be sweet to see games using the voice commands like Tribes had and being able to add all the ones that people made like the Darth Vader (You're not a Jedi yet!)sound bytes and stuff. Or Homer Simpson "Doh!". It was awesome to be able to communicate with people by remembering the key command menus and hitting Voice command key followed by the sequence to use the sound-byte that you wanted. That was a game in itself and the skilled players could even do them while being chased down by the enemy team. There was some real skill involved in Tribes. Even the sequels couldn't stand toe to toe with the original.

I honestly wish that I could go back to the mid-late 90s. Just don't enjoy gaming as much than back then.

Blue wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 12:46:

Frags4Fun wrote on Dec 18, 2013, 12:19:
I don't think that the Date for Unreal Tournament & Unreal II is correct because Unreal wasn't even out yet. I'm pretty sure it was like 2003 for Unreal II. Probably a copy and paste error when adding the hyperlinks. Been there, done that.

You are correct, I messed up the year. But it was only '98. Apologies for the error.

No need to apologize. Lots of good memories came back to life from the post. I like the "This Day in Gaming History" posts BTW. I know it's a lot of work to get all this info together and I think we're all thankful to see it. It's amazing that the old Bluesnews pages are still available. It brings back so many memories that would have been buried forever in the depths of our minds. 'Love it!

Much love for UT99, I always keep an installation on every PC I own (along with those ultra hi-rez compressed textures included on the original 2nd CD), and too many fond memories of Quakeworld seeming to almost open up an entire new world of possibilities. Same can be said for the concept of "classes" in the FPS genre by Tribes.

As other have said, the games produced since that time have built on the foundation laid down back then but in many ways never equaled, much less surpassed them. A few may have come close, but that's for another day in Gaming history..

shazbot!