I'll try to write a micro-article here on Mastodon. Let's see how it goes :D
Why aren't the classic arena shooters so popular today? Is it just things being better "in the old times"? Why do modern #FPS #games suck? Did arena shooters suck too? Do they suck now?
Asking a lot of questions is fun. I am gonna share some facts that will hopefully help you answer them.
The first problem is that classic arena shooter game design is incredibly brutal.
Think #deathmatch in #Quake 3 or #UT'99 ...
... the goal of the game is to score the most frags (kills) on your opponents. The more and faster you can kill, the better you are at the game.
Newbies give you same bang-for-blood as untouchable experts of the game. So why make things hard? You plow through the n00bs!
This means that unskilled players are the primary target. Just by joining a server where nobody knows you, and showing little skill paints a huge bulls' eye on your back...
Things are about to get SO much worse for you ...
... in modern shooters you almost always spawn with all your gear, ready to go and make someone wish they hadn't been behind your crosshair today. Even good old Counter-Strike does this (with caveats - moneh!).
In classic arena shooters you spawn with the wimpiest of weapons, and a limited ammo supply to boot.
All of the "good guns" are only available to you, once you find them in the map and pick them up - either fresh from an item spawn, or blood-stained after you've downed an opponent ...
... well, there's one more eye-watering trick up the Arena's sleeves, and boy is it a good one.
Powerups: what does the word bring to your mind? Invisibility? Invulnerability? Damage amplification? Increased mobility? Yes, all of the above are there for the taking - usually hidden in areas that are not so easy to access (lest a noob like you would try to crawl out of their shallow grave!). If you know the maps well and can do some *trick jumps* you can gain an even more ridiculous advantage ...
... well, if you can somehow hold your own against people who've been perfecting their skills of frame-accurate key-presses to break the movement code and crush you for the last 30 years - you *should* be good to go.
Oh, wait... I LIED , there's MORE!
Superweapons! Another thing that only arena familiarity and unparalleled agility will let you access - guns that are completely and utterly unbalanced - usually allowing whoever possessed them to deal ridiculous amounts of damage either ...
... through dropping a tactical remotely-controlled nuke, or through a one-hit kill full-auto plasma-gun-wonder of a BFG10K. Your blood will do but an excellent paint job on these two facing towers... or this here cybernetic hell dimension...
So as you can see the problem with classic arena shooters might lay in their game design which has many layers of positive feedback mercilessly magnifying any amount of a skill gap.
There definitely is an incredible feeling of might that comes when ...
... after years and years of grinding it's YOU who is dominating the score table and wiping the floor with everybody else on the server... if only for a little while, before someone way better joins and puts you back in your place again...
It is truly something. A feeling of being unstoppable, inhumanly fast and smart...
I can't deny that I see where the nostalgia is coming from. The times are changing though, and it's harder to find time to grind a game so much just to be this good. ....
... what if the game took that bull's eye off of your back and put it on an objective on the map instead? Then if you don't feel ready to engage enemy - you can just keep your distance and try other things? What if the game didn't reward mercilessly mowing down the same players over and over and instead - provided other goals with squashing enemies being means to an end, and not THE goal of the game?
Getting one-shot by aimbots is nearly as frustrating as getting one-shot by veterans so ...
... maybe not every first-person shooter needs a sniper / railgun one-hit headclicker that makes it so *easy* to make others miserable in the game?
I think the arena shooters were an important step in the FPS genre evolution - many small and big new ideas came to the space of games where we shoot things dead.
After arena shooters stopped bringing the crowds, game developers found a new idea: "cover shooters". A third person perspective allowed the players to still watch the arena from ...
... behind cover. Why do we need to make players run back to base for a medkit every time they get shot? Why not just let them wait it out? A decade later DOOM 2016 brings a new mechanic. Got hit? PUNCH enemies to get your health back!
What a brilliant idea - turning something that normally made players run for cover into something that made them PUSH harder!
The game designs evolve. It's been a while since a game's goal was to make you feed quarters into an arcade machine ...
... maybe things changing isn't always so clear cut to be a bad thing.
Sure, I could do away with gambling in games - this is probably more dangerous than the quarter-eating arcades, but there's usually some good coming down the pike with the bad mixed in.
I trust us to learn the lessons, sift the garbage out and design new games to be different, to explore new ideas. There's rarely anything truly new under the sun. and even when there is, the Sci-Fi writers have already seen that coming ...
... from centuries away. But new is often created by combining old elements in unseen ways. I trust the indie game scene to continue to lead the way and innovate.
Maybe I'll be able to contribute something worthy of note myself in the form of https://libla.st . Maybe YOU will! We together?
And with that positive note (and shameless plug) I want to thank you for sticking around and reading this micro-article on Mastodon.
Take care. Be kind. I'll see you around!
- unfa 2025-07-16
[EOF]
PS: for your convenience, here's the link to the first post of this micro-article-thread, in case you'd want to share or boost that ;)
https://mastodon.social/@unfa/114859780652170137
Thanks!
@unfa I think if you want to convince people that new fps games don't suck, you should first understand why they think it does.
Now, I don't know most of them, so I don't know if they suck, let alone why.
But I do know why CS:GO kinda sucks, at least for me.
First, though, let me address one of the points you made somewhere in the middle of the thread:
1/
@unfa You said that getting stomped by a skilled player sucks, and that this is due to positive feedback loops.
But in any competitive game - from chess to judo - if you're a newbie playing against a highly skilled player doing his best, it will suck. You will have no idea what hit you, what your mistake was, or what the opponent did well. You won't be able to learn anything, and it'll be frustrating.
2/
@unfa
However, if the skilled player is pulling punches, or the skill gap isn't as big, so that you do see a slight chance to succeed - that I think is the most fun thing possible.
When you're getting stomped, but every time you die you know what you did wrong, and then finally you manage to get a kill on that much stronger enemy - that's way more satisfying than being on top of the table and stomping all the noobs.
2/
@unfa but for that to happen, there are some specific conditions:
1. Repeated interactions.
You need to repeatedly face against the same enemy, so that you remember their name, their playstyle, develop a rivalry relationship.
2. Initiative.
You need to be able to prepare, have some idea where the enemy is, decide when to engage. Not be killed from behind by some other player who just had pure luck.
3/
Many modern shooters use skill-based matchmaking. Which on one hand, should prevent the skill gap from being overwhelming. But on the other hand, it prevents repeated interactions. You'll never see that same enemy again. When you get better, you won't see that you're getting stomped less.
4/
As for initiative - ofc those with aimbot or wallhack ruin it.
But also, this is much worse in deathmatch than in a team/sides-based gamemode, like CTF, UT's Assault, or CS's bomb defausal.
In the latter modes you know which side to expect the enemies to be, and you have some places that are relatively safe.
(this also helps with pickups, but I'm fine without pickups)
With deathmatch, you have to constantly check both ways if someone is coming, because the enemy can be anywhere.
5/
@unfa True, in these more than 25 years FPS have changed a lot, Quake III Arena, Half-Life multiplayer, the first Counter-Strike, etc., although the spirit of the Arena types remains in some current games, such as Quake Champions, including several open source, such as Xonotic.
Right now, innovating in FPS is not easy, and if you succeed, maintaining a good number of players for a long time.
@unfa Maybe my experience of these games was different, but it was much less common to be playing with people you didn't know than it is today. When you have social context for the people you play with, those dynamics carry different weight/have different meaning. At my LANs, picking on newbies wasn't seen as a fun or rewarding experience.
I'd suggest that these things feel more brutal in today's online matchmaking dominated world than they were at the time when it comes to skill differentials
@Cheeseness @unfa Most of my arena battles were with people I already knew. They knew how it worked: 1) more players means more fun 2) picking on noobs would make them quit, thus reducing the number of players.
The modern 'anonymous' internet changed a whole lotta things.
yes, totally depends on the community as well, there are the good, the bad and the uglies when speaking of public servers to join a game of choice.. very cool XP i had with Tribes:Ascend (CTF), that came to mind as i was reading this thread.
@Mazzo @JammerGRG @unfa I think that's part of it though - if you're not getting what you need out of the community, you stop spending time in it?
I think matchmaking ends up putting people with different needs in the same bucket, and that creates/amplifies friction points?
@SonnyBonds @unfa I totally agree! IMO, the hyperfixation on global matchmaking is probably the biggest misstep the industry has made in the past decade or two. It's led to a lot of cultural shifts that I don't think are healthy for developers and definitely not for users.
It comes back to that whole modern day tragedy of just how much we (culturally speaking) sacrifice at the altar of perceived "convenience"
@SonnyBonds @unfa My perspective is that the shift to focus on matchmaking is what reduced player-hosted server player counts, and led to many developers not supporting player-hosted servers.
I think when you're playing in a developer-hosted space, it's easy to see that as part of the game, part of what you've paid for. Playing on a player-hosted server feels more like you're a guest in someone else's space. The sense of entitlement is different, and there are social consequences for behaviour.
@unfa Fundamentally I think every effort that is put into making an AFPS great for competitive play makes it less accessible. It's almost like they evolved themselves into extinction.
There is one meta that emerged from the base formula: Aiming, movement and map control, and every time that meta gets refined, instances of lucky breaks for low-skill players disappear.
When skill is all that matters, it will result in consistent blowouts between players with even minor differences in skill. And what tactics to use to build skill are often not obvious.
- Quake 1's RL was such a one-hit-wonder that you could score frags with it no matter how much you sucked, Quake 3's weapon set is honed so well that there is a different optimal weapon for every situ (though usually RL, LG or RG) and if you're not using it you die, and even if you are using it it's an aim duel with your opponent. If you have worse stack, you die. If your stack is even but your aim is slightly worse than theirs, you die
- Map control and cycling are hard things to get your head around or identify. You're getting creamed by someone who always has a better weapon and more armour than you and you have no idea why. AFPS games don't usually have a fluent way of communicating to you who is in control of the map.
- Same with movement tech. You cannot understand why your opponent is able to traverse from one side of the map to the other twice as fast as you. You don't understand why they always seem to be bearing down on you when you're weak, and ghosting you when you're strong.
It's a funny catch-22 because games like Quake Champions tried to introduce more variables into the game to break this meta, the players rioted and the player abilities were toned down to the point of being meaningless.
I feel conflicted myself because I love the idea of a game that just has absolutely no randomness or cheapness, but without that luck and cheese on my side, I just lose every match against everyone.
@unfa Better onboarding can help I guess but most will still never achieve a baseline skill needed to be competitive against established players.
I don't know if anything can really be done about it at all, I mean you can't evolve the genre backwards (like, who would want an AFPS that deliberately has WORSE balance than the others), but if you try to break the meta with character abilities, loadouts etc, then it's not really an arena shooter anymore.
Maybe we should just get comfy with the idea that the genre hit its evolutionary apex 20+ years ago, and the playerbase that is left has hardened into a diamond that could stick it out for another decade at least.
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