So What Are Your Thoughts On The Demo?

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 11:57 am

Well after staying too late up playing the demo after a long shift at work, I am finally awake. The site had it's second busiest day ever and poor Dubious's server is still getting hammered with downloads. But we all managed to stay up and not kill the Net like we almost did in '02. The intial response has been almost ALL positive. Not that it suprises me, it is just good to see.

I am working on some ideas for a UT2004 Demo Ladder but I don't have anything definite yet. When I know more you guys will know more. I do have a quick question about servers. Somewhere I remembered seeing a table on what the Netspeed and Tick Rate should be for different upload speeds. Does anyone have a link to that? I setup the UO Server and we played on it for a while last night but it got a little laggy when we have 7 people on it. If you know more then drop by the forums and share the love!

Don't forget to vote in the new poll or stop by the forums!

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:21 pm

I really love UT2K4. I can't wait to get the DVD version. I will be spending most of my time, probably like everyone else, enjoying Onslaught. I dreamt of playing last night. :p

Good job Epic/Atari/DE!

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:26 pm

The new demo is awesome, somehow Epic have brought back the feel and gameplay from UT. The weapons are really very well balanced and the new look shock rifle, fits snug in my hands just like it did back in the days of UT.

The game deffinately runs smooth on my system and i had all visuals on full detail, but im sure the full version may have a few more detail levels.

I played a death match with a friend and it was fast and seemed easier to aim and shoot, unless i started paniking....

Epic, you guys have done an incredible job with this release, i think it will bring the old skoolers back, i think its safe to say.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:29 pm

I think they actually pulled it off. Its a very fun game that should sell well enough to put my fears to rest.

One minor nitpick is that it isn't very... unreal tournamenty? Is that a word? Being on foot seems nearly useless. Weapons don't have that punch they did. Its kinda like Tribes where the only way to hit someone is to throw a LOT of ammo at them, or like Quake 3 where no weapon really feels deadly. I'm talking goo-gun deadly, the kind where you can make any weapon lethal if you know how to handle it...

I did play CTF and BR just to see. Its not the same by a long shot... don't get me wrong, Onslaught is a LOT of fun. Just not UT fun. Perhaps they should have called it Unreal Warfare.

Oh well. I'm hooked regardless.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:31 pm

TRy playing DM, that has the feel of the old UT playability. Very Happy

Guest

I love the demo but have a few gripes on my expierence:
-In onslaught, I didn't feel like I was on a team. I usually play 8x8 CTF in UT03, so 12x12 ONS just felt like too many people. I think it was made worse that people didn't know what they were doing yet. This should get better.
-Servers were laggy. I think this was just because so many people made 16x16 servers and their connection was crap.
-Felt like once one team started to get in control, there was no way the other team could "come back"

But I think those three will get better as the server load evens out and people start working together instead of testing things out and not knowing what they are doing.

Things I love:
-Game was fun. Period.
-Vechicles. They kick ass and are fun too.
-Anti-vechile options.. I felt like I had a chance when I wasn't on a vechile. I would rather be on foot than in a Raptor or Manta during combat.
-Performance. Better than UT2003. Ran awesome on my 8500 128MB.
-General feel. The game felt polished (just one those feelings you know? U2 felt polished, though it was crappy). But this is polished and fun.

Things I still want to try out:
Voice chat. Heard one or two people using it. But it wasn't much more than "woah feels like Starship Troopers." I need to get a headset and try some teamwork with it.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 2:06 pm

My daughter and I played it last night, every game mode and here's what we came up with:

DM - it's back and has more of the feel we loved in UT that got lost in UT2K3
TDM - same
Assault - one of my personal favs - fast paced, good to see the "real" sniper rifle back.
Onslaught - this is a team game, period. You don't work as a team, you are going to loose. I agree with Spoon in that there's a learning curve with this mode - linking the points together and controlling things. This got better as we went along. Since we are used to BF 1942, the maps seemed 'small' but plenty of room to move around. Short learning curve on getting a handle on vehilce control - but when used right, they are deadly. The Link gun is sooooo important in this game mode, and linking the link gunners is the way to go in building the energy points as well as taking them down... three in a row is fast.
CTF - oh hell, love it, what can I say - and we played it instagib to boot... yay
BR - football with guns, now faster - yay again

Over all, things don't seem so "big" like in 2003, weapons adjusments are so far good, increased fire rate on the minigun helps, but noticed the accuracy is down a bit, but the trade off is good. Translocater is "almost" as good a UT, and much better than 2K3. Fast paced and smooth like the UT we love, but pretty like UT2K3. Lost of room to move around.

We're going to buy it for the hose (3 copies) and looking forward to the dedicated server for Windows (caust that's what I run at my LANs)

Guest

I hve to disagree with Spoon regarding Onslaught, I played with bots and we took over all of the power nodes except their base, but they came back to win in the end... I'm sure this game is great on a decent computer but I found performance to be worse than UT2003 on my poor old P3 733MHz, GeForce 2....

Guest

Gandalf - That's cool... I have no doubt games will get more competitive once people know how to play. I think the servers I was on had people mostly for the first time (I played bots myself for an hour or two so I knew already what was going on, the bots did seem to keep it close and I guess they knew what they were doing).

I still don't understand the purpose of overtime in onslaught. I can't seeing it doing much, unless perhaps blue is at 90, red at 30, and red can attack blue's powernode. Otherwise, it seems the powernode's "power"(?) decreases too fast for anything other than the team with the most power left winning anyways. Dunno maybe better games will show it more interesting.

Can anyone suggest any server or servers that actually play well? I had to go to about 5 different servers before I found one that wasn't having obvious problems with lag and such.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 5:38 pm

not UT-ish? you are the first one that says that so I've heard and I'v heard alot of praises about it's real UT feeling. I say the major thing that made it UT-ish was just making gamespeed 110% which was possible all along in GAME SETTINGS! I mean "it's just so slow" about UT2k3 is the most silliest thing I've heard... IT'S CALLED GAME SPEED! USE IT! Mad

on foot? it's cool that the maps aren't actually that big as they seem... you can get over them quite fast on foot though of course it seems slower when vehicles race infront of you.

a team can always win a "lost" fight... except if it's just full of n00bs ^^

Guest

I had some much better matches last night. One match was 8x8 and it went back and forth serveral times. I've also noticed that the offical Atari (Epic, whatever) servers are REALLY good. No lag, no performance problems, just perfect. It's starting to be more fun now that everyone is getting strategies and use the game.

I am wondering what others use to bring down vechiles when you don't have an avril? I've been using the shock rifle (or whatever it's called) and haven't had much luck as it takes 5+ hits even on a Manta! Just curious how others are doing this.

Turrets are pointless. Not enough armor!

Going out tonight to buy a headset microphone, gotta love voice support.

Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2004 2:40 pm

some weird things.. bugs. and stuff i just cant understand..
also the game is cool.. tho i dindet like Assault as muhc as i thought.
and ONS roxors.
i havent even played anything else then onslaught and assault..
il do it some other time Very Happy

Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2004 3:38 pm

After playing a lot more DM and CTF, I have to take back my comment about it not being very UT-like. Its a very polished, finely tuned fun machine that has broken every expectation and hope I've had for this game. I haven't had this much fun in deathmatch since Quake 2. Oi!

I'm very jaded, so this is saying a lot.

A few minor things still bug me...

1) Bombing run still seems very off. I can't seem to get the same feel for it as I did in ut2003. I'm hoping this is just the included map that's bugging me. I'll wait for the full release before I dump it for good.

2) The game runs very smoothly, except for Assault. Almost unplayable compared to the other included maps... again, I'll wait for the full release.

3) BRING BACK UT-STYLE DOMINATION!! None of this two-node crap. I want the fast-paced fun of the original domination.

Still, the end result is that this is the sequel they should have released for UT. It improves and builds upon it in so many ways and I'm left with far too much fun packed into one game. This is the best fun I've had in many years. A big congrats to all involved. My faith has been restored. Smile

Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2004 5:11 am

i do agree on assault.. its a bit weird.. after a few feet i am death again...
and its not balenced..
also i dont understand what all objectives do, where is that intro video i saw on the italian video?
hadent had a chance to play BR and DM and CTF an all.
DDOM sucks.. normal UT domination was real fun.. but this DDOM suxors..
it was already in UT2k3. i hoped they would change it in UT2004.. but no..

o also 1 note.. BOTS ARE DUMB!!

Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2004 6:15 pm

well then cheetah, if the bots are dumb then turn the settings from novice to skilled Razz