... 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

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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!