If you have not seen this one yet, check out my video on active Arena FPS communities ON STEAM alive and well in 2023! ua-cam.com/video/pV4s44r6he8/v-deo.htmlsi=tRDeRSzyFq3eTC7Q
Great vid! QC:DE is my favorite multiplayer game. It seems to me like quite literally every game has a bunch of miserable people on forums and videos screaming at people that they shouldn't play a "dead game" because "nobody cares about it". Doesn't matter if it has a dozen players or thousands. It's just that a loud minority like that is a lot more apparent in niche communities. It can be an indie RPG like Sea of Stars. Sells 250k+ immediately after release, and on day 1 there's "durr ded gaem" "hasn't aged well" on Steam forums.
Arena shooters were the default kind of multiplayer for fps games originally, so of course that's what people played by default. As the genre grew and developed and evolved, the starting point kinda got left behind, but I think people overestimate how far we've come though, as most multiplayer fps games that we play nowadays are very close to their roots still.
It never really got left behind, except by the developers. People seem to forget this rather important detail about the history of such games - during the initial boom time for Steam, when it went from being something we reluctantly adopted to play Half-Life 2, to our primary gaming platform... there were basically no arena shooters around. Both the UT and Quake franchises had gone through a total dead patch, because Id and Epic had both migrated to console and cross-platform releases (Epic went heavily into Gears of War, abandoning PC players entirely, and Id focused on Doom 3 - very much not a multiplayer game at all). UT2004 didn't even appear on Steam until 2008, and when it did, it came with no actual Steam support (no community integration etc). Incidentally, if you think that UT99 represents a "default" or a "starting point", you should go back and play it (not being snarky - I mean genuinely, play it, it's awesome); the feature list is utterly vast compared to all modern shooters, with more customisation, a wider variety of game modes and maps, and it remains the champion for bot design.
@@NicholasBrakespear what I meant was that "arena shooter" as a style, going back to Doom multiplayer, is the default in that it is simply using the existing mechanics from the base game, and putting mumtiple players into it together with a score system. It's the most basic way to make a multiplayer game with the game mechanics available. I consider ut99 and quake 3 the ultimate culmination, in many ways the peak, of the genre. That's when it really hit its stride. I agree it was the industry that moved on, but even in terms of PC multiplayer fps, you get team fortress mod way back in the quake days because players were very interested in objective class based fps games. Team based games would eventually become the preferred variant because more people enjoyed that experience.
@@MFKitten I see what you mean. I still maintain though that actually, all subsequent shooters moved backwards, aggressively, in this regard. And I think we shouldn't downplay the actual subtleties of good multiplayer game design - while you could take (for example) any given singleplayer level in Unreal 1, and stick some players in it in a competitive mode, and they'd have fun... I'd say there's a huge evolution in level design and balance visible in UT. And of course, on the topic of team-based and class-based stuff; UT already had some of the best team-based action around. I think it's also important not to mistake the fluidity and fluency of the peak arena shooters (and the best classic shooters in general) with "simplicity". They only appear simplistic; the actual nuances involved in their supremacy go deep. For example, I'd recommend the GDC talk "The Importance Of Nothing" - in which an Epic developer discusses why the original CTF-Face map worked, and why their subsequent attempts to reproduce this success failed... which also gives some insight into why the sudden "improvement" of visuals in the 2000s did not actually manage to produce equally improved gameplay, and why some of the older, more visually "simplistic" titles actually feel better to play.
@@NicholasBrakespear Arena shooters are jack of all trades but master of none, same as RTS games. RTS is dead because most of the people who used to play RTS are now playing games from newer genres that cater more to their specific interests. People who like the combat and micro more than anything else are playing MOBAs, people who enjoy strategy and resource management above everything are playing Grand Strategy games, there's also Tower Defense and Base Building games for people who only want to play one part of the RTS game loop by itself, resulting in the only remaining audience for RTS being the very few people who want everything at the same time. The same thing happened to FPS. The most popular game mode in Quake back in the day was the mod Quake Team Fortress. And well Team Fortress 2 is still consistently in the top 20 most played games on Steam. If TF2 didn't exist then maybe all of those people would still be playing Quake. But TF2 does exist, and so for people who only ever wanted to play "Team Fortress" to begin with, there is nothing that the old AFPS can offer them. Also, team modes in AFPS have a fatal flaw inherent to the fundamental rule set of AFPS, which is that item control is not fun and not strategic when you have 8 or more people running around on the same map. Team games in AFPS have a natural tendency to devolve into the two most skilled players in the server hogging all of the items and leaving everyone else to fight naked. Halo is the only game that has tried to address this issue by changing the item control paradigm (your spawn weapon has decent killing potential, and the only items that you have to fight over are a single mega health and a power weapon, i.e. the BFG per map) and the changes worked well enough to make Halo the only AFPS where the main competitive mode is team based rather than duels.
@@FakeGuthix01 Eeh, no. UT's not a jack of all trades; it's a pretty flawless and precisely calibrated master of movement and weapon balance, to the point where the moment to moment gameplay feels as good and tight whether you're playing CTF (CTF-Face is still superior to 2Fort) or deathmatch. Nothing else actually feels like it; Quake 3 might have been its direct competitor, but feels and plays nothing like it. In fact, its actual combat feels better by far than TF2, with more natural hit feedback, and none of the salt-inducing class match-ups and limitations, and less reliance upon hitscan weaponry. The reason TF2 dominated and is still played is that TF2 rode the initial success wave of Steam itself, being entirely integrated into Steam's ever-improving community features - the same applied to CS:S. The older arena shooters, however... didn't even appear on Steam for years. UT2004 didn't arrive on Steam until 2008, and when it did it had zero Steam integration. It wasn't that people moved towards the more specialized shooters - it was that there was literally zero competition for them. And this remains true. The closest thing we have is the microtransaction-molested, hero-shooter-compromised Quake Champions. Arena shooters simply were not present - at all - during the formative years of the next generation of PC multiplayer gaming, and then the "death of arena shooters" became a self-fulfilling prophecy because nobody was willing or able to make a game as good as the original UT again. In fact, the same even holds true for the RTS genre: Around the same time that Steam was becoming the dominant platform for PC gaming (and especially multiplayer PC gaming), the entire RTS genre was being (famously) wrecked and subsequently abandoned by all the major publishers. Dawn of War 3? The Command & Conquer franchise? Homeworld? All the big hitters were either being reduced to a shadow of their former selves by dubious publisher decisions, or left to gather dust by a total lack of releases. The one exception being Starcraft... and oddly enough, Starcraft has been a constant, with a hugely active "esports" scene, and it has only drifted from mainstream attention because - once again - it has never been on Steam. When you actually look at the market patterns it becomes apparent - that the primary drive for people migrating to these younger genres has been availability, store presence and release quality.
I'm still playing Unreal Tournament just about every weekend with my girlfriend and our mutual friend. Due to 20 years of talented mappers, my deathmatch map list alone now has 600+ entries (and that's after I filtered out only the best), and I have a mod that turns the game into Quake 3 - replete with weapon models, sounds, gib effects, announcer voice, HUD elements etc. And I would suspect, given that Epic have gutted the franchise from digital stores, that UT will soon appear on various sites once more as abandonware. I think people genuinely forget how insanely well UT has aged. Quake 3 tends to be the one people mention as somehow the "king" of the arena shooter, just because it dominated the sweatier end of the competitive shooter market, but UT was actually the winner in that contest overall; it was the game that more people played for more time, due to its superior visual and audio feedback, its more imaginative level design, and bots that felt more human and fun to fight. I would say, in all seriousness, that if the original UT had a Nightdive-style basic remaster and re-release on Steam? It would actually gain a vast following quickly, because it's so easy to set up, the UI is so intuitive (as are the mapping tools), and there's so much customisation built into the game it has huge longevity. Incidentally, if you want to know why arena shooters actually died? Blame Epic and Id. When Steam came along, neither developer had their shooters on it, let alone Steam support for them. UT2004 didn't even show up on Steam until 2008 (and again, with no actual steam community or server support). And when UT3 came along, it just stank from top to bottom of Epic's migration to console, and most PC players shunned it. So put simply, arena shooters completely missed the rise of Steam.
Zandronum is an abandoned engine for like 5 years. But QCDE has own fork of it (Q-Zandronum), which is maintained by geNia specifically for QCDE. It has many-many improvements and implemented Quake physics, updated net-code, menu features and etc. QCDE 2.7 was the last version for classic Zandronum 3.0. And QCDE 3.0 uses the fork, which gives incredible amount of new features.
@@dechmusicis it easier to find servers on QCDE? Zandronum server browser is a fucking nightmare, 90% of the servers are unavailable and are total conversions. Seems only a small percent of servers are actually DM, TDM or CTF
I wonder if Warsow (2006) has any players these days or if anyone's even heard of the game. We used to play that in school back in the day and the game has really stood the test of time when it comes to visuals thanks to it's celshaded art style. Still looks like a really fun arena shooter. EDIT: Apparently Warsow has been replaced/further developed to a game called Warfork.
Thanks for including Quakeworld. It is very much alive with a stable, very experienced player base and a lot of tournaments. There's even 2 annual lan tournaments (Sweden and Poland)
Cube engine is one of the most interesting game engines on earth! It is all built out from tiny cubes (much earlier than minecraft!) but because there are rules of what happen at cube transitions, you can make very nice graphics. Also a very extremely optimized engine and old version went flawlessly on very low-end PCs while still looking awsome!
This takes me back. I remember Aardappel, the developer from the early 2000s. He was already a legend back then. I can't believe (and by that I mean I totally can) he's still out there rocking!
Nice video! Open Arena is another thriving free Arena Fps Game. It's a free version of Quake 3 arena. The community is quite active with a few actively developed mods and regular CTF, CA and FFA games. There is also a ranked competitive CTF scene with regular tournaments.
I still play q1 and ql. Getting a game is usually faster than champions where I'm located. :) It is unfortunate that QC went down the hero shooter route, I despise having to learn new heros and constantly changing / buffing / nerfing metas . Nice vid btw, cheers!
I started the video already thinking about UT'99 because it's the one game in this list (other than the Quake remasters) that I actually still play. And by that I mean, I actually got into them only recently, when Epic decided to kill the UT franchise. I was only quick enough to grab UT2K4 on GoG on the final day, but I downloaded UT'99 outside of that. And honestly, what a game. What a dedicated community, that still plays and still makes content for it! I can't believe I missed this when I was younger, but I never had a PC powerful enough to run these games back in the day. Thankfully now that I'm an adult, I can actually sit down and still enjoy this piece of classic gaming that somehow refuses to die. Out of the other games you mentioned, I do want to try Xonotic (heard about it before but never actually played) and QC:Doom Edition as I love me some oldschool DOOM, especially with mods.
Yeah, Epic went corpo thanks to Fortnite's Battle Royale mode becoming an uncontrollable success and tried to kill the series that made them, but even I'm surprised that they failed in the end! I mean, I thought the console-based Unreal Championship series would be the only one to survive thanks to Insignia, but NOPE! Unreal Tournament is still doing fine. I even reinstalled the game and set my profile name to "BennyhatesEpic". I should note that the game that practically replaced Unreal as their flagship series for the mid-2000s, the Kill Switch-inspired gothic third person shooter Gears of War, has had even better luck surviving Epic's corpo skulduggery, being sold off to Microsoft pre-Fortnite and still doing fine with people playing Gears of War 2, 3 and 4 multiplayer (particularly the latter) despite the much-reviled Gears 5 placing the series on a still-ongoing hiatus.
The popularity of the Quake remasters' multiplayer offerings has proven that there IS a moderate group of people who want Multiplayer Arena Shooters. It's just that only a few would want to do a multiplayer only game.
Thanks for the video, may the algorithm gods bless you. I'm still salty about Epic Games yeeting all Unreal and Unreal Tournament games off the didgital platforms.
@@SaltyOctopus ...destroyed a part of gaming history and it's own legacy. But to be honest, Epic is not the same after Cliffy B left. And sadly, no news about Unreal Tournament X. UT99 was my first game, my mom showed it to me when I was eight, in 2003. My taste for shooters and music was formed from it, and many great hours I spend on arenas with my friends! Good memories. Still playing it from time to time.
This is a great list here as I really miss the good ole days of arena shooters being so full of excitement and competitiveness. The fact that you didn't mention UT 2004 must mean not a lot of people care about or play it anymore which saddens me as that was the one that I had the most fond memories of mapping, modding, and competing. Does anyone else miss UT 2004 as much much as I do or is it just me?
@@SaltyOctopus That’s amazing news. I’ll be looking out for your next video. I feel like the game deserves more credit than it’s given for arena shooters in general.
Yep, nothing I've found comes close to ut2004. Vehicle based combat was so good. Everything seems like straight deathmatch now, but it feels like a step backwards. I played until 2015 until it felt almost dead except like 2 servers at certain times of day. I miss it. CS:GO is super popular in comparison and I just don't get it.
Thank you for making this video, Salty! It's really nice seeing people care this much about the Arena FPS genre and its communities. I love arena shooters, and watching this content on UA-cam makes me happy! You did a great job bundling all these sources in a convenient way for your viewers. Keep at it, man! Now, I hope you don't mind, but I would like to share my thoughts about some things you said in the video. 1) In general, when it comes to some people calling the genre "dead" (even though I agree with you that it's not dead), it's because it's hard for them to find players in their region. No one likes to play with 200+ ping on overseas servers. Just because there are people playing a game, doesn't mean that they are all geographically close to you, unfortunately. 2) I have never played GoldenEye: Source, but I don't think it is a "source port". Like you said, it is a recreation using Valve's Source engine. 3) Open Fortress is not really open source. You can read more about it on its FAQ in the official website. Basically, they were reverse-engineering their TF2 leaked code to make it open, but had to close it because of a request from Valve. I guess that's everything. Keep the content coming, Salty! :D
True, but doesn't justify lying and being a dick to people. And a LOT of the "ded gaem" stuff comes from people who actually play. I follow QC forums on Steam. The worst haters have thousands of hours in it. It's not even about facts. It's about them being miserable and thinking they'll feel better if they ruin the fun for others and spread lies so less new people join.
Thanks man Appreciate you watching and taking the time to provide some feedback and correcting a few errors there. I never take that stuff personally. I'm always happy to receive corrections as long as it's done in a tasteful manner like you have. Have a good one!!
Actually UT did something unique with its assault modes, it uses single player mechanics but in a multiplayer game. The domination mode was also an original I believe, but I'm not sure since modding or probably other games might have it already present, people will tell. So DM and and CTF and some of their variants like LMS and others existed already in quake and also the first unreal since unreal is the basis of UT. Unreal included the first bots in an FPS game and I wish these were included more often. in before these were mods in the past. Modding was the first thing to help the genre to evolve. This is too bad that Q3 with TA and UT with its sequels while they added some interesting elements they also detracted a lot of things that made their previous games cool in the first place... My problem is that UT and Quake lost some of their identity over the years while being somewhat the same at some point.
Diabotical is also still active. That's the game that I play every day. Player numbers even went up recently because the new wipeout league starts soon. From 17:00 until around 1:00 there's usually a couple wipeout lobbys on EU. And on NA the game is active, too. There are a bit less players on NA but you can still play every day there for a couple hours. Warmup (which is hotjoin all weapoons FFA), aim arena, duel, instagib, mcguffin and some other modes are also being played sometimes but not as much as wipeout
Great to know! I plan to do a part two and I will include it. If there's a discord you use, please feel free to provide me with an invite link and I'll include it in my next video.
Funny how you saying about increase in popularity but when those leagues end its agaij will be 10 players overall and you cant find any aerver being full so those "playing hours" you speaking about will be wasted in trying to find anything to play. Yo playing "everyday" as im playing Skyrim aka never. We have so many popular arena shooters, and you decided to speak about that piece of garbage? Shame on you
Yeeesh i tried to get into Diabotical when it came out, it revealed to me that i have a case of the boomer brain and can't compete anymore. :( Glad it's still active though, i sensed genuine love for the genre when i dipped my toe.
Keep an eye out for Midnight Guns, an updated take on Action Quake 2, and Bloodrails, a quake1 standalone mod with swinging grapplehooks, instagib, and rune powerups, both coming out this year!
@@SaltyOctopus but it's still possible to download really easily though. So there isn't much worries about that one there as the community has kept it alive pretty much without anything. Though, most of the activity tends to be on certain public servers, along with the pug ones. Also, the time when the cups and leagues see a spike in activity.
For me the best arena shooter is UT99. The balance it struck with the maps, the high damage output on the guns and the somewhat restrained movement was just perfect for me. Definitely a skill issue thing with me, but a lot of arena shooters are way too fast for me.
Yeah, things like wall dodging, rocket jumping and such eventually got out of hand. I often found myself returning for chilled out DM games on UT99 way after the mid 00’s.
Indie games recently haven't been making games that look like 2007 -2012 era graphics, I feel like that level of graphical fidelity like in bioshock or left 4 dead would be great for more arena shooters. Xonotic is kinda like that already
id like to add, if you only have a console, or want a game that's more of a mix between arcade and arena shooters, Halo is a pretty good choice. I know not everyone considers it an arena fps but it does share a lot of similar elements
I was too young to know if it was that good or not but I remember the game Warpath (2006) was fun, it has mid reviews but I remember enjoying that and Unreal Tournament 3 at the time
Nice! Guess I need to satisfy my new arisen itch for ut99 soon! Another Arena shooter that got a small but dedicated community and is still under active development is World of Padman.
I remember hearing that World of Padman was still around. I remember playing it back in my Q3A days when it was still a mod. I'll have to check back into it! 😃
@@SaltyOctopus would love to see you around the wop community! We got a discord and every first Sunday of the month is PadDay where most players gather to play a few rounds. :)
It’s insane that I’m still playing tf2 7 years later and I still come back daily for hours of fun. Quake is still top 5 but I don’t play as often as I should honestly
Bro sauerbraten was my childhood. I use to have an OLD pc and so my closest to big fps at the time was sauerbraten as it looks pretty but also was free (i didn't even know how steam worked) And i would map edit on that game non stop.
Sauerbraten is already FOSS. All of the source code is packaged with every release and the engine is under zlib. Tomatenquark is fundamentally a new game made using the same engine but it tries to retain the same aesthetics as the original so I suppose it could be considered something like an unofficial sequel.
@@SaltyOctopusNp! Also, remember that this is just the beginning of the mod. This mod was just made for a tournament and they didn't think it would gain this much attention this fast so remember to follow the project. It only has 2/10-15ish maps and 6/15 champions now. And it's still this good. For me it's by far the best Quake to duel in and I've been playing like 70-80 duels the last 5 days on it They will also implement other game modes like CTF later on
6:16 I can't believe learning German, actually helps, because Sauerbraten is a German dish, which means roasted beef with some gravy and vegetables, which is kind of like meatloaf, and it's a specialty for German people lol
Just want to mention Half-Life 1 multiplayer, one of the big games that still has an active playerbase and much more bigger playercount than Quake Champions.
Zortch, new Unreal Tournament in pre alpha, Toxikk, war fork, reflex arena and master arena all games to check out though I can't speak for activity on all of them.
@@KraequhoS No it's alive. It's a small community and not as active as others, but people play it. You used to be able to get it on steam, but you can't anymore but there are ways around that now haha.
Open Fortress isn't open source anymore, no? Also the OF community is VERY pussified, even the slightest banter gets you kicked and banned off the very limited amount of active servers they have.
I really don't like how universal Quake became most Arena shooters are a copy paste of it nowadays and in my opinion it is one of the least interesting arena shooters
Sadly, Red Eclipse was ruined in its latest update when it went to steam. Stick with the version before the Red Eclipse 2.0 update, it's genuinely much better.
If you're interesed in playing a third person arena shooter called Red Faction Guerilla, let me know. We use a mod that adds new characters, custom maps, and weapon balance
_Warsow_ and _World of Padman_ are also games to consider, though I do not know how well those are maintained now-a-days. -Edit: it seems that World of Pom is gone... Can't find it at least... Can't find a traces of it.-
Warsow is in an interesting place. It became Warfork and it seems the community has splintered a bit. I plan to include it in a future video, but where can we find games for it? Discord?
@@SaltyOctopus yeah ive heard it in the video. I play rarely nowadays kinda burnt out from all the weird and broken new relases (payday3). Xonltic deathrun or ctf was hella fun tho
All of the Quake and Doom engines are Open Source but are still proprietary and owned by id Software. I guess I am not sure what you're getting at. The engines can be both proprietary and open source.
@@SaltyOctopus it can be, like Half-Life SDK for example, which has source code available, but it's still proprietary and doesn't allow some stuff. However, when I said opensource I also meant free software. And usually proprietary and free and open software are complete opposites. Quake and Doom are for example GPL licensed and considered free software, not proprietary. Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like a Richard Stallman here, I'm just not sure what did you mean when you called Cube proprietary when, yes, it's always been owned by authors and contributors, but the licensing allows using the code for anything you want until you not remove the authors mentions, do not misrepresent them, mark modified versions, etc, all according to zlib License. It's a free software, it's not proprietary.
It's all good and fine and the Arena Shooter mos def is far from dead, but I really don't get what's wrong with Quake Champions and why people subject themselves to any of this ugliness when they have a perfectly legit free-to-play OG arena shooter available.
Btw, how to play a GOG version on win10? Direct 3D gives unstable gamespeed, glide 3d gives some low FPS and custom Direct 3D 10 support doesn't allow you to play multiplayer (servers ban for unknown renderer)
Fps arena is dead lmfao, a handful of indie projects and open source projects with a player count of 90 players isnt "alive and thriving" Quake literally being the biggest name drop and it doesnt even get over a thousand players at any given time. That isnt "alive and thriving" this is overdose levels of cope. If you like arena shooters thats great but arena and all the proponents and examples of it youve shown only serve to show how niche the genre has become. Im not an arena hater either ive played almost every single one of these
I'm sorry but when we are talking about a genre that used to have tens of thousands of players, a couple hundred is "dead". If this was any other game or genre you would rightly admit so. Dead in this context simply means the amounts of players are way below it's peak and that is the case with these games. Due to the sheer scale of numbers with regards to player activity/statistics we are talking about with popular games or even moderately popular games a couple hundred is statistically insignificant hence the label "dead". Doesn't mean that these communities aren't active but when we compare it to games with 2k 5k 10k 15k players it pales in comparison. You could say the label is over dramatic but dead doesn't literally mean 0 players in this context. I do like how you and other people are optimistic even though it is a bit underground, funnily enough underground artists can have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of plays on their songs but they are still considered underground due to the sheer difference between them and established artists.
Dead to you may mean something completely different than dead to someone else. That's the message. The label is wrong and misleading. Those underground artists are still able to make a living... gamers playing the arena shooters still find full servers, communities and joy every day...why call them dead? Call it something else. That's my point.
@@SaltyOctopus I don't disagree but again to the mass majority of people in gaming this is what dead means. Which is why you see so many people call games that become less popular "dead". When the majority of a group think a certain way things become essentially "facts" and the word has taken on a new meaning than it's original intention not much you can do about it since so many people view the word dead under this new meaning. On face value someone seeing your point of view would assume you are denying these games aren't niche and that you are trying to imply the player counts are in the thousands. This would happen because the majority has changed the meaning of the word to the point where if you argue they think you are acting stupid like "oh come on you know what we mean" kind of thing. Some may view it as arguing semantics or something akin to being a grammar nazi.
Arena shooters ARE dead for me Mostly because the only way to play with someone is to join some steam group or discord server or whatever and organize games there... IMO if they were alive i wouldn't need to do that and i could hop into the game at any part of day. Also we can treat "dead" as "no new players" as well tbh
goldeneye source is actually garbage. no players, the ones you find are shouting n word into the mic. nobody i have got to install it found it to be anything like goldeneye64. literally nobody is playing ut99..... even less playing ut2k4
If you have not seen this one yet, check out my video on active Arena FPS communities ON STEAM alive and well in 2023! ua-cam.com/video/pV4s44r6he8/v-deo.htmlsi=tRDeRSzyFq3eTC7Q
Great vid! QC:DE is my favorite multiplayer game.
It seems to me like quite literally every game has a bunch of miserable people on forums and videos screaming at people that they shouldn't play a "dead game" because "nobody cares about it". Doesn't matter if it has a dozen players or thousands. It's just that a loud minority like that is a lot more apparent in niche communities. It can be an indie RPG like Sea of Stars. Sells 250k+ immediately after release, and on day 1 there's "durr ded gaem" "hasn't aged well" on Steam forums.
Yep. Exactly. Just gotta ignore it and keep enjoying the games we love. Thanks for watching and the comment.
Indie rpgs sell way better then any arena game now
Arena shooters were the default kind of multiplayer for fps games originally, so of course that's what people played by default. As the genre grew and developed and evolved, the starting point kinda got left behind, but I think people overestimate how far we've come though, as most multiplayer fps games that we play nowadays are very close to their roots still.
It never really got left behind, except by the developers. People seem to forget this rather important detail about the history of such games - during the initial boom time for Steam, when it went from being something we reluctantly adopted to play Half-Life 2, to our primary gaming platform... there were basically no arena shooters around. Both the UT and Quake franchises had gone through a total dead patch, because Id and Epic had both migrated to console and cross-platform releases (Epic went heavily into Gears of War, abandoning PC players entirely, and Id focused on Doom 3 - very much not a multiplayer game at all).
UT2004 didn't even appear on Steam until 2008, and when it did, it came with no actual Steam support (no community integration etc).
Incidentally, if you think that UT99 represents a "default" or a "starting point", you should go back and play it (not being snarky - I mean genuinely, play it, it's awesome); the feature list is utterly vast compared to all modern shooters, with more customisation, a wider variety of game modes and maps, and it remains the champion for bot design.
@@NicholasBrakespear what I meant was that "arena shooter" as a style, going back to Doom multiplayer, is the default in that it is simply using the existing mechanics from the base game, and putting mumtiple players into it together with a score system. It's the most basic way to make a multiplayer game with the game mechanics available.
I consider ut99 and quake 3 the ultimate culmination, in many ways the peak, of the genre. That's when it really hit its stride. I agree it was the industry that moved on, but even in terms of PC multiplayer fps, you get team fortress mod way back in the quake days because players were very interested in objective class based fps games. Team based games would eventually become the preferred variant because more people enjoyed that experience.
@@MFKitten I see what you mean.
I still maintain though that actually, all subsequent shooters moved backwards, aggressively, in this regard.
And I think we shouldn't downplay the actual subtleties of good multiplayer game design - while you could take (for example) any given singleplayer level in Unreal 1, and stick some players in it in a competitive mode, and they'd have fun... I'd say there's a huge evolution in level design and balance visible in UT.
And of course, on the topic of team-based and class-based stuff; UT already had some of the best team-based action around.
I think it's also important not to mistake the fluidity and fluency of the peak arena shooters (and the best classic shooters in general) with "simplicity". They only appear simplistic; the actual nuances involved in their supremacy go deep.
For example, I'd recommend the GDC talk "The Importance Of Nothing" - in which an Epic developer discusses why the original CTF-Face map worked, and why their subsequent attempts to reproduce this success failed... which also gives some insight into why the sudden "improvement" of visuals in the 2000s did not actually manage to produce equally improved gameplay, and why some of the older, more visually "simplistic" titles actually feel better to play.
@@NicholasBrakespear
Arena shooters are jack of all trades but master of none, same as RTS games. RTS is dead because most of the people who used to play RTS are now playing games from newer genres that cater more to their specific interests. People who like the combat and micro more than anything else are playing MOBAs, people who enjoy strategy and resource management above everything are playing Grand Strategy games, there's also Tower Defense and Base Building games for people who only want to play one part of the RTS game loop by itself, resulting in the only remaining audience for RTS being the very few people who want everything at the same time.
The same thing happened to FPS. The most popular game mode in Quake back in the day was the mod Quake Team Fortress. And well Team Fortress 2 is still consistently in the top 20 most played games on Steam. If TF2 didn't exist then maybe all of those people would still be playing Quake. But TF2 does exist, and so for people who only ever wanted to play "Team Fortress" to begin with, there is nothing that the old AFPS can offer them.
Also, team modes in AFPS have a fatal flaw inherent to the fundamental rule set of AFPS, which is that item control is not fun and not strategic when you have 8 or more people running around on the same map. Team games in AFPS have a natural tendency to devolve into the two most skilled players in the server hogging all of the items and leaving everyone else to fight naked. Halo is the only game that has tried to address this issue by changing the item control paradigm (your spawn weapon has decent killing potential, and the only items that you have to fight over are a single mega health and a power weapon, i.e. the BFG per map) and the changes worked well enough to make Halo the only AFPS where the main competitive mode is team based rather than duels.
@@FakeGuthix01 Eeh, no. UT's not a jack of all trades; it's a pretty flawless and precisely calibrated master of movement and weapon balance, to the point where the moment to moment gameplay feels as good and tight whether you're playing CTF (CTF-Face is still superior to 2Fort) or deathmatch. Nothing else actually feels like it; Quake 3 might have been its direct competitor, but feels and plays nothing like it.
In fact, its actual combat feels better by far than TF2, with more natural hit feedback, and none of the salt-inducing class match-ups and limitations, and less reliance upon hitscan weaponry.
The reason TF2 dominated and is still played is that TF2 rode the initial success wave of Steam itself, being entirely integrated into Steam's ever-improving community features - the same applied to CS:S.
The older arena shooters, however... didn't even appear on Steam for years. UT2004 didn't arrive on Steam until 2008, and when it did it had zero Steam integration. It wasn't that people moved towards the more specialized shooters - it was that there was literally zero competition for them.
And this remains true. The closest thing we have is the microtransaction-molested, hero-shooter-compromised Quake Champions. Arena shooters simply were not present - at all - during the formative years of the next generation of PC multiplayer gaming, and then the "death of arena shooters" became a self-fulfilling prophecy because nobody was willing or able to make a game as good as the original UT again.
In fact, the same even holds true for the RTS genre: Around the same time that Steam was becoming the dominant platform for PC gaming (and especially multiplayer PC gaming), the entire RTS genre was being (famously) wrecked and subsequently abandoned by all the major publishers. Dawn of War 3? The Command & Conquer franchise? Homeworld? All the big hitters were either being reduced to a shadow of their former selves by dubious publisher decisions, or left to gather dust by a total lack of releases.
The one exception being Starcraft... and oddly enough, Starcraft has been a constant, with a hugely active "esports" scene, and it has only drifted from mainstream attention because - once again - it has never been on Steam.
When you actually look at the market patterns it becomes apparent - that the primary drive for people migrating to these younger genres has been availability, store presence and release quality.
I'm still playing Unreal Tournament just about every weekend with my girlfriend and our mutual friend. Due to 20 years of talented mappers, my deathmatch map list alone now has 600+ entries (and that's after I filtered out only the best), and I have a mod that turns the game into Quake 3 - replete with weapon models, sounds, gib effects, announcer voice, HUD elements etc. And I would suspect, given that Epic have gutted the franchise from digital stores, that UT will soon appear on various sites once more as abandonware.
I think people genuinely forget how insanely well UT has aged. Quake 3 tends to be the one people mention as somehow the "king" of the arena shooter, just because it dominated the sweatier end of the competitive shooter market, but UT was actually the winner in that contest overall; it was the game that more people played for more time, due to its superior visual and audio feedback, its more imaginative level design, and bots that felt more human and fun to fight.
I would say, in all seriousness, that if the original UT had a Nightdive-style basic remaster and re-release on Steam? It would actually gain a vast following quickly, because it's so easy to set up, the UI is so intuitive (as are the mapping tools), and there's so much customisation built into the game it has huge longevity.
Incidentally, if you want to know why arena shooters actually died? Blame Epic and Id. When Steam came along, neither developer had their shooters on it, let alone Steam support for them. UT2004 didn't even show up on Steam until 2008 (and again, with no actual steam community or server support). And when UT3 came along, it just stank from top to bottom of Epic's migration to console, and most PC players shunned it.
So put simply, arena shooters completely missed the rise of Steam.
I like your take. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Honorable mention: Zandronum. If you wanna play some classic Doom DM, Zandronum is usually popping
For sure!!
Zandronum is an abandoned engine for like 5 years. But QCDE has own fork of it (Q-Zandronum), which is maintained by geNia specifically for QCDE. It has many-many improvements and implemented Quake physics, updated net-code, menu features and etc. QCDE 2.7 was the last version for classic Zandronum 3.0. And QCDE 3.0 uses the fork, which gives incredible amount of new features.
@@dechmusicis it easier to find servers on QCDE? Zandronum server browser is a fucking nightmare, 90% of the servers are unavailable and are total conversions. Seems only a small percent of servers are actually DM, TDM or CTF
God this video sent me on a nostalgia trip i didn't know i needed, especially when you mentioned Sauerbraten. Great video guy.
Thanks bro. Glad you enjoyed.
I wonder if Warsow (2006) has any players these days or if anyone's even heard of the game.
We used to play that in school back in the day and the game has really stood the test of time when it comes to visuals thanks to it's celshaded art style.
Still looks like a really fun arena shooter.
EDIT: Apparently Warsow has been replaced/further developed to a game called Warfork.
Warfork on steam now. Yeah. From what I understand it's playerbase is pretty small. They use discord to organize more regular games.
Thanks for including Quakeworld. It is very much alive with a stable, very experienced player base and a lot of tournaments. There's even 2 annual lan tournaments (Sweden and Poland)
Cube engine is one of the most interesting game engines on earth! It is all built out from tiny cubes (much earlier than minecraft!) but because there are rules of what happen at cube transitions, you can make very nice graphics. Also a very extremely optimized engine and old version went flawlessly on very low-end PCs while still looking awsome!
That's awesome
This takes me back. I remember Aardappel, the developer from the early 2000s. He was already a legend back then. I can't believe (and by that I mean I totally can) he's still out there rocking!
I would love a full video about Xonotic. I've tried other arena shooters, but this is the only one I keep coming back to.
Love to see the Open Fortress mention : ) We have a lovely community over here.
I've heard nothing but good things! I plan to check it out soon.
@@SaltyOctopus If you do be sure to check out the Greenies Grove Deathmatch server. Great place.
open fortress was my first taste of arena fps
omg hi zachelbom from openfort
@@r0zemary ZOMG it’s famous open fort server host r0zemary!11!1
Nice video! Open Arena is another thriving free Arena Fps Game. It's a free version of Quake 3 arena. The community is quite active with a few actively developed mods and regular CTF, CA and FFA games. There is also a ranked competitive CTF scene with regular tournaments.
I added it on my latest video, thanks!
As a fellow who still playing sc2 and BroodWar, I can confirm that old games are way better than new ones.. Great video bro!
Thanks!
I still play q1 and ql. Getting a game is usually faster than champions where I'm located. :) It is unfortunate that QC went down the hero shooter route, I despise having to learn new heros and constantly changing / buffing / nerfing metas .
Nice vid btw, cheers!
Yeah man QC just complicated everything and the netcode does not feel as good as the older games. Thanks for checking the vid out!
I started the video already thinking about UT'99 because it's the one game in this list (other than the Quake remasters) that I actually still play. And by that I mean, I actually got into them only recently, when Epic decided to kill the UT franchise. I was only quick enough to grab UT2K4 on GoG on the final day, but I downloaded UT'99 outside of that. And honestly, what a game. What a dedicated community, that still plays and still makes content for it! I can't believe I missed this when I was younger, but I never had a PC powerful enough to run these games back in the day. Thankfully now that I'm an adult, I can actually sit down and still enjoy this piece of classic gaming that somehow refuses to die.
Out of the other games you mentioned, I do want to try Xonotic (heard about it before but never actually played) and QC:Doom Edition as I love me some oldschool DOOM, especially with mods.
Awesome. Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, Epic went corpo thanks to Fortnite's Battle Royale mode becoming an uncontrollable success and tried to kill the series that made them, but even I'm surprised that they failed in the end! I mean, I thought the console-based Unreal Championship series would be the only one to survive thanks to Insignia, but NOPE! Unreal Tournament is still doing fine. I even reinstalled the game and set my profile name to "BennyhatesEpic".
I should note that the game that practically replaced Unreal as their flagship series for the mid-2000s, the Kill Switch-inspired gothic third person shooter Gears of War, has had even better luck surviving Epic's corpo skulduggery, being sold off to Microsoft pre-Fortnite and still doing fine with people playing Gears of War 2, 3 and 4 multiplayer (particularly the latter) despite the much-reviled Gears 5 placing the series on a still-ongoing hiatus.
The popularity of the Quake remasters' multiplayer offerings has proven that there IS a moderate group of people who want Multiplayer Arena Shooters. It's just that only a few would want to do a multiplayer only game.
Thanks for the video, may the algorithm gods bless you.
I'm still salty about Epic Games yeeting all Unreal and Unreal Tournament games off the didgital platforms.
I agree man.. Like they just kicked their child to the curb :(
@@SaltyOctopus ...destroyed a part of gaming history and it's own legacy. But to be honest, Epic is not the same after Cliffy B left.
And sadly, no news about Unreal Tournament X.
UT99 was my first game, my mom showed it to me when I was eight, in 2003. My taste for shooters and music was formed from it, and many great hours I spend on arenas with my friends! Good memories. Still playing it from time to time.
This is a great list here as I really miss the good ole days of arena shooters being so full of excitement and competitiveness. The fact that you didn't mention UT 2004 must mean not a lot of people care about or play it anymore which saddens me as that was the one that I had the most fond memories of mapping, modding, and competing. Does anyone else miss UT 2004 as much much as I do or is it just me?
I just learned of an Ut2k4 community. I'll include in my next video on the topic.
@@SaltyOctopus That’s amazing news. I’ll be looking out for your next video. I feel like the game deserves more credit than it’s given for arena shooters in general.
Yep, nothing I've found comes close to ut2004. Vehicle based combat was so good. Everything seems like straight deathmatch now, but it feels like a step backwards. I played until 2015 until it felt almost dead except like 2 servers at certain times of day. I miss it. CS:GO is super popular in comparison and I just don't get it.
Play sauerbraten!!! It’s something for everybody to latch onto . 10/10 highly recommend.
I think I will! :D
Good ❤️
Will check it out!
Thank you for making this video, Salty! It's really nice seeing people care this much about the Arena FPS genre and its communities. I love arena shooters, and watching this content on UA-cam makes me happy! You did a great job bundling all these sources in a convenient way for your viewers. Keep at it, man!
Now, I hope you don't mind, but I would like to share my thoughts about some things you said in the video.
1) In general, when it comes to some people calling the genre "dead" (even though I agree with you that it's not dead), it's because it's hard for them to find players in their region. No one likes to play with 200+ ping on overseas servers. Just because there are people playing a game, doesn't mean that they are all geographically close to you, unfortunately.
2) I have never played GoldenEye: Source, but I don't think it is a "source port". Like you said, it is a recreation using Valve's Source engine.
3) Open Fortress is not really open source. You can read more about it on its FAQ in the official website. Basically, they were reverse-engineering their TF2 leaked code to make it open, but had to close it because of a request from Valve.
I guess that's everything.
Keep the content coming, Salty! :D
True, but doesn't justify lying and being a dick to people. And a LOT of the "ded gaem" stuff comes from people who actually play. I follow QC forums on Steam. The worst haters have thousands of hours in it. It's not even about facts. It's about them being miserable and thinking they'll feel better if they ruin the fun for others and spread lies so less new people join.
Thanks man
Appreciate you watching and taking the time to provide some feedback and correcting a few errors there. I never take that stuff personally. I'm always happy to receive corrections as long as it's done in a tasteful manner like you have. Have a good one!!
@@Phil_597 Yeah, I agree that these people exist, no denying that. I was just pointing innocent "dead game" responses that contain no ill will.
Actually UT did something unique with its assault modes, it uses single player mechanics but in a multiplayer game.
The domination mode was also an original I believe, but I'm not sure since modding or probably other games might have it already present, people will tell.
So DM and and CTF and some of their variants like LMS and others existed already in quake and also the first unreal since unreal is the basis of UT.
Unreal included the first bots in an FPS game and I wish these were included more often.
in before these were mods in the past.
Modding was the first thing to help the genre to evolve.
This is too bad that Q3 with TA and UT with its sequels while they added some interesting elements they also detracted a lot of things that made their previous games cool in the first place...
My problem is that UT and Quake lost some of their identity over the years while being somewhat the same at some point.
Diabotical is also still active. That's the game that I play every day. Player numbers even went up recently because the new wipeout league starts soon. From 17:00 until around 1:00 there's usually a couple wipeout lobbys on EU. And on NA the game is active, too. There are a bit less players on NA but you can still play every day there for a couple hours.
Warmup (which is hotjoin all weapoons FFA), aim arena, duel, instagib, mcguffin and some other modes are also being played sometimes but not as much as wipeout
Great to know! I plan to do a part two and I will include it. If there's a discord you use, please feel free to provide me with an invite link and I'll include it in my next video.
Diabolical? Are you seriously thinking its alive? 10 players online on all servers? That nothing near to being alive
Funny how you saying about increase in popularity but when those leagues end its agaij will be 10 players overall and you cant find any aerver being full so those "playing hours" you speaking about will be wasted in trying to find anything to play. Yo playing "everyday" as im playing Skyrim aka never. We have so many popular arena shooters, and you decided to speak about that piece of garbage? Shame on you
Sadly, it's pretty much dead in Australia.
Yeeesh i tried to get into Diabotical when it came out, it revealed to me that i have a case of the boomer brain and can't compete anymore. :(
Glad it's still active though, i sensed genuine love for the genre when i dipped my toe.
Keep an eye out for Midnight Guns, an updated take on Action Quake 2, and Bloodrails, a quake1 standalone mod with swinging grapplehooks, instagib, and rune powerups, both coming out this year!
For sure! I got a midnight guns Quakecon key and I just need a little more footage and I'll make a video about it!
I think Unreal tournament is not avaible in stores anymore.
Nope 😔
@@SaltyOctopus but it's still possible to download really easily though. So there isn't much worries about that one there as the community has kept it alive pretty much without anything. Though, most of the activity tends to be on certain public servers, along with the pug ones. Also, the time when the cups and leagues see a spike in activity.
Don't forget Urban Terror, F.E.A.R. Combat, also Battlefield 2, Warsow (Warfork), various Quake 3 things like OSP, CPMA, Defrag.
For me the best arena shooter is UT99. The balance it struck with the maps, the high damage output on the guns and the somewhat restrained movement was just perfect for me. Definitely a skill issue thing with me, but a lot of arena shooters are way too fast for me.
Yeah, things like wall dodging, rocket jumping and such eventually got out of hand. I often found myself returning for chilled out DM games on UT99 way after the mid 00’s.
Indie games recently haven't been making games that look like 2007 -2012 era graphics, I feel like that level of graphical fidelity like in bioshock or left 4 dead would be great for more arena shooters. Xonotic is kinda like that already
Half-Life 1 Multiplayer is also kinda fun. Not as alive as it used to be but still alive...
I covered it in my other video about games on steam
This is one's not on steam! Thanks for the comment and suggestion regardless!
I thought you were CrazyAl because of your profile picture
Xonotic and Cube 2 was new games for me. Warsow was one game I played 15 years ago. There is not lot players today.
Warsow is currently on steam by the name Warfork.
Xonotic player here.
id like to add, if you only have a console, or want a game that's more of a mix between arcade and arena shooters, Halo is a pretty good choice. I know not everyone considers it an arena fps but it does share a lot of similar elements
You didn't forget QC:DE !
Fistfull of Frags should be on this list, old but gold
I agree. I will include it in an update!
I was too young to know if it was that good or not but I remember the game Warpath (2006) was fun, it has mid reviews but I remember enjoying that and Unreal Tournament 3 at the time
Nice! Guess I need to satisfy my new arisen itch for ut99 soon!
Another Arena shooter that got a small but dedicated community and is still under active development is World of Padman.
I remember hearing that World of Padman was still around. I remember playing it back in my Q3A days when it was still a mod. I'll have to check back into it! 😃
@@SaltyOctopus would love to see you around the wop community!
We got a discord and every first Sunday of the month is PadDay where most players gather to play a few rounds. :)
@@o03aTmE0o feel free to send me a discord invite here and I'll hop in and check it out 😀
It’s insane that I’m still playing tf2 7 years later and I still come back daily for hours of fun. Quake is still top 5 but I don’t play as often as I should honestly
tf2 is an awful representation of "fortress" pretty much every fortress mod that came before it is better
@@phalxor Cope?
Sauerbraten was my goddamn childhood
I wish I knew about it back then...
@@SaltyOctopus The level editing system was perfect for a boomer shooter. Never seen anything like that since, except for maybe Minecraft
A Duke Nukem arena shooter is what we need
that would be sweet
Bro sauerbraten was my childhood. I use to have an OLD pc and so my closest to big fps at the time was sauerbraten as it looks pretty but also was free (i didn't even know how steam worked)
And i would map edit on that game non stop.
Cube 2 *is* on Steam as Tomatenquark, however. It's the same situation of War(sow/fork): the original game isn't on Steam, but the FOSS version is.
Good to know. Thanks 🙏
Sauerbraten is already FOSS. All of the source code is packaged with every release and the engine is under zlib.
Tomatenquark is fundamentally a new game made using the same engine but it tries to retain the same aesthetics as the original so I suppose it could be considered something like an unofficial sequel.
There’s this one small arena shooter on steam called Double Action Boogaloo which is Max Payne x pretty much any arena shooter
I'll check it out!
Nice video!
Quake 3 Arena Champions/Blood Run is upcoming and the best one so far imo.
It's very much not dead either so check it out
I will! Thank you for the suggestion.
Oh, first time hearing about this one! Will def check it out! Thanks for the suggestion!
@@SaltyOctopusNp!
Also, remember that this is just the beginning of the mod.
This mod was just made for a tournament and they didn't think it would gain this much attention this fast so remember to follow the project.
It only has 2/10-15ish maps and 6/15 champions now.
And it's still this good.
For me it's by far the best Quake to duel in and I've been playing like 70-80 duels the last 5 days on it
They will also implement other game modes like CTF later on
@@gangstaboy9387 I've been trying it. It's really good. I just need to find a server with some players now haha
I like Quake 2 Remastered.
You didn't mention Quake Live. I used to play that game with friends every week for about 3 year. :D
That's cuz this is games not on steam. Steam games, I've mentioned it in previous vids.
@@SaltyOctopus Sorry I didn't realize that. Already looking forward to part 2. ;)
6:16 I can't believe learning German, actually helps, because Sauerbraten is a German dish, which means roasted beef with some gravy and vegetables, which is kind of like meatloaf, and it's a specialty for German people lol
there are also JK2 Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy
and Tremulous
Cool suggestions. I'll look into them.
Nice video!
Thanks! Keep up the good work!
Just want to mention Half-Life 1 multiplayer, one of the big games that still has an active playerbase and much more bigger playercount than Quake Champions.
Yes. Mentioned in my other video on the steam communities still going strong.
Just started testing the upcoming TRIBES 3 game! Everyone should play it.
I applied to get in. You enjoying it?
I don't think it quite fits the genre, but since you included Golden Eye, you might as well throw F.E.A.R. Combat in there.
Man I need to play that game again haha
@@SaltyOctopusDo it!!! ;)
Dude love this video. great concept, keen to see what else you whip up
I remember when Phosphor was were I had to go to enjoy arena shooters online for free
I'm not sure what that is, sorry.
Interesting, I’ll have to check on some of these, if there’s games I can map for then that might be worth a nosey.
Many of them you can with Trenchbroom! Try your hand at Quake or Quake II mapping! :D
@@SaltyOctopus I used UnrealED for a long time, if it is similar then all the better.
Fortress Forever needs more love, it's a solid remake of the original Team Fortress.
You forgot Fortress Forever, its still active
Do you guys know anything about ut2004 community? Is there possible to play somwhere?
I'll look into it
ut2004 just like ut99 is pretty much alive, but you have to do quite a bit of digging itself for it.
I play UT4 and UT99 every once in a while.
You forgot "Blood run", some russians ported QC to Q3 engine
Zortch, new Unreal Tournament in pre alpha, Toxikk, war fork, reflex arena and master arena all games to check out though I can't speak for activity on all of them.
Does Zortch have multiplayer? The rest don't have many players these days, unfortunately.
@@SaltyOctopus UIT is even totally abandonned, isn't it?
@@KraequhoS No it's alive. It's a small community and not as active as others, but people play it. You used to be able to get it on steam, but you can't anymore but there are ways around that now haha.
@@SaltyOctopus Oh ok! I thought that the removal from Steam just killed it. Good to know !
And forgotten and cursed Diabotical
I did an animation pack for Cube 2.
Half-Life has twice more players than Quake 2, I think it can be also counted as arena shooter (I mean multiplayer mode)
True. But it's on steam and I mentioned it in my previous video :) good looking out tho
@@SaltyOctopus ah makes sense then. I just seen this current video in my recommended
@@B.M.Skyforest trying reading on top of just seeing
Open Fortress isn't open source anymore, no?
Also the OF community is VERY pussified, even the slightest banter gets you kicked and banned off the very limited amount of active servers they have.
I've heard it's not really open source anymore, yeah, thanks to Valve getting legal on them. Too bad.
I really don't like how universal Quake became most Arena shooters are a copy paste of it nowadays and in my opinion it is one of the least interesting arena shooters
What ones do you like better? Just curious.
@@SaltyOctopus Unreal Tournament mainly.
the void of darkness the boomer shooters calls me ever since i tried ultrakill I YEARN FOR THE BOOMER SHOOTER
any Quake III Arena communities still going?
I am sure there are but I am not as familiar these days. However, QuakeLive is far more active.
Sadly, Red Eclipse was ruined in its latest update when it went to steam. Stick with the version before the Red Eclipse 2.0 update, it's genuinely much better.
Good to know. Thanks
Do anyone remember afps where one of player skin was housefly like? I only remember housefly skin.
No wolfenstein ET? Pretty much an arena shooter but with a WW2/team play theme
I understand where you're coming from considering it's roots. It could be an honorable mention, but I consider it more of a team based game.
If you're interesed in playing a third person arena shooter called Red Faction Guerilla, let me know. We use a mod that adds new characters, custom maps, and weapon balance
Not a big fan of third person if I am being totally honest with you.
_Warsow_ and _World of Padman_ are also games to consider, though I do not know how well those are maintained now-a-days.
-Edit: it seems that World of Pom is gone... Can't find it at least... Can't find a traces of it.-
Do you mean world of Padman?
@@SaltyOctopus
That's it...
Why did I think it was called Pom..?
POM may have been the acronym for another game...
@@GegoXaren no worries! I'll talk about it soon ☺️
@@SaltyOctopus
I remember having a folder called pom on my desktop, and people thought it said "r n" instead of "m". :-p
Lets not forget about Open Arena
I haven't! I'm making another video :)
@@SaltyOctopus :D
🙂 thanks for the headsup
You sir, deserve a sub
Thanks!
Just wondering whhat about Splitgate? it has a good rising in its early access and due to crossplay its still a active arena shooter
I mentioned it in my other video
Warsow too
Warsow is in an interesting place. It became Warfork and it seems the community has splintered a bit. I plan to include it in a future video, but where can we find games for it? Discord?
@@SaltyOctopussounds similar to Xonotic and Nexuiz story
@@dechmusic yeah it does
Serious Sam The Second Encounter
Xonotic was fire and is still kicking
yessir... I play with the 7sins
@@SaltyOctopus yeah ive heard it in the video. I play rarely nowadays kinda burnt out from all the weird and broken new relases (payday3). Xonltic deathrun or ctf was hella fun tho
Nvm im reinstalling xon
Yay FortressOne!
Xonotic and Warsow are def top tier imo.
Yup. I will talk about warsow soon.
@@SaltyOctopus Worth noting, and I too just learned. Warfork is the new Warsow. Actually has populated servers.
@@bakedveal2624 yes! I'm gonna mention this in the next video.
How is Cube Engine proprietary? It's open source and always had been.
It's still owned by the creators. They own the rights to it and then made it open source. So it's both.
@@SaltyOctopus and so is Quake? The code is FOSS, everything else isn't.
All of the Quake and Doom engines are Open Source but are still proprietary and owned by id Software. I guess I am not sure what you're getting at. The engines can be both proprietary and open source.
@@SaltyOctopus it can be, like Half-Life SDK for example, which has source code available, but it's still proprietary and doesn't allow some stuff.
However, when I said opensource I also meant free software. And usually proprietary and free and open software are complete opposites. Quake and Doom are for example GPL licensed and considered free software, not proprietary.
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like a Richard Stallman here, I'm just not sure what did you mean when you called Cube proprietary when, yes, it's always been owned by authors and contributors, but the licensing allows using the code for anything you want until you not remove the authors mentions, do not misrepresent them, mark modified versions, etc, all according to zlib License. It's a free software, it's not proprietary.
@@a1batross_ it's all good. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. :)
I guess you're not talking about Red Eclipse because it's dead ? :(
It's on steam. This video is about games not on steam
Diabotical! Free on Epic, we even have a league going on
I heard the new wipeout season started and players are back. Nice.
There is also renegade X, its not really an arena shooter tho it borrows a lot of its elements
Where do I find it, Steam?
@@SaltyOctopus i remember dowloading it from the website
whats the first game
Opening game is Unreal tournament 1999 and the mode is instagib.
Anyone up for some UT2004?
don't forget OpenArena with its tons of mods
I haven't forgotten it. Just plan to add it in a later video. Thanks for the reminder regardless!
It's all good and fine and the Arena Shooter mos def is far from dead, but I really don't get what's wrong with Quake Champions and why people subject themselves to any of this ugliness when they have a perfectly legit free-to-play OG arena shooter available.
too bad we cant get a UT99 legally to play it again... what a shame.
eBay an OG disc. That's what I did!
@@SaltyOctopus thank you for the idea, I almost forgot that physical PC games existed...
still a bummer for the digital part.
UT99!
both videos are missing warfork
Next one will have it
do a video about shootmania elite plz
I included it in a previous video. :)
You forgot OpenArena ;)
Play more reflex. Tourny on the 30th.
Awesome. :)
Suprised i inew if a few of these
Except UT99 is on Steam. I know because I play it regularly.
Yeah but you can't buy it anymore. It's not there for people who don't already have it.
Btw, how to play a GOG version on win10? Direct 3D gives unstable gamespeed, glide 3d gives some low FPS and custom Direct 3D 10 support doesn't allow you to play multiplayer (servers ban for unknown renderer)
Just for those who want to know some random info, Joe Rogan played this game! Ask him if he would join, Quake Champions
Fps arena is dead lmfao, a handful of indie projects and open source projects with a player count of 90 players isnt "alive and thriving" Quake literally being the biggest name drop and it doesnt even get over a thousand players at any given time. That isnt "alive and thriving" this is overdose levels of cope. If you like arena shooters thats great but arena and all the proponents and examples of it youve shown only serve to show how niche the genre has become. Im not an arena hater either ive played almost every single one of these
I'm sorry but when we are talking about a genre that used to have tens of thousands of players, a couple hundred is "dead". If this was any other game or genre you would rightly admit so. Dead in this context simply means the amounts of players are way below it's peak and that is the case with these games. Due to the sheer scale of numbers with regards to player activity/statistics we are talking about with popular games or even moderately popular games a couple hundred is statistically insignificant hence the label "dead". Doesn't mean that these communities aren't active but when we compare it to games with 2k 5k 10k 15k players it pales in comparison. You could say the label is over dramatic but dead doesn't literally mean 0 players in this context. I do like how you and other people are optimistic even though it is a bit underground, funnily enough underground artists can have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of plays on their songs but they are still considered underground due to the sheer difference between them and established artists.
Dead to you may mean something completely different than dead to someone else. That's the message. The label is wrong and misleading. Those underground artists are still able to make a living... gamers playing the arena shooters still find full servers, communities and joy every day...why call them dead? Call it something else. That's my point.
@@SaltyOctopus I don't disagree but again to the mass majority of people in gaming this is what dead means. Which is why you see so many people call games that become less popular "dead". When the majority of a group think a certain way things become essentially "facts" and the word has taken on a new meaning than it's original intention not much you can do about it since so many people view the word dead under this new meaning. On face value someone seeing your point of view would assume you are denying these games aren't niche and that you are trying to imply the player counts are in the thousands. This would happen because the majority has changed the meaning of the word to the point where if you argue they think you are acting stupid like "oh come on you know what we mean" kind of thing. Some may view it as arguing semantics or something akin to being a grammar nazi.
Arena shooters ARE dead for me
Mostly because the only way to play with someone is to join some steam group or discord server or whatever and organize games there...
IMO if they were alive i wouldn't need to do that and i could hop into the game at any part of day.
Also we can treat "dead" as "no new players" as well tbh
Quake Live has a good server browser. No need for discord to find a game.
sounds like complete bullshit, in every afps you just join through server browser
goldeneye source is actually garbage. no players, the ones you find are shouting n word into the mic. nobody i have got to install it found it to be anything like goldeneye64. literally nobody is playing ut99..... even less playing ut2k4
No
Anticheat?
o^O