Crysis, UT3 sales disappoint developers

crysis: what do you expect with a game that kicks your system in the teeth, punches you in the face and runs away with your wallet?

ut3: i assume this is because it's merely been overlooked in the flood of awesome games released in the past few weeks. come on, it's really nothing new.

I've not bought any games since i got TF2, when ever i have an hour spare to game i just fire it up. I've still not finished ep2, I can't seem to be bothered with story driven games at the mo (didn't bother with bioshock for example) and I was never very good as UT, so thats why i've not bought either. Besides that i'm sick of buying buggy EA games so i'm not sure if i'll every get round to crysis.

I think it's a case of too many awesome games too fast - a lot of people will have spent as much as they can budget for before xmas on games getting the Orange box and CoD4 imho.

These games will be long-term sellers. As people update their systems more and more, people will start picking up copies later on. Why play a game at measly settings rather than waiting a couple of months and playing it up on the higher ones? :D

Crysis is hog that demands you sell a limb to be able to play it.

UT3, reason for me not buying this game, is the lack of game control in the menu, give me UT2004 menu with UT3 gfx!

Most 'consumers' think:

They can not run Crysis on their system
That UT3 is a online multieplayer shooter
They need Vista to play them
Or a new computer

But maybe i am wrong and consumers buy both upcomming weeks.

I just don't see the reason to upgrade to DX10, upgrading cards to play these new games would mean I would also have to upgrade my computer as well for something graphic-wise that is very unnoticable between DX9 and DX10, meanwhile games like TF2 and CoD4 are running on DX9 hardware and are still managing to look mighty good while still having awesome gameplay. Lets not forget that to upgrade to DX10 I also have to buy Windows Vista and effectively downgrade my OS experience/performance.

The failure of Vista which in turn leads to the failure of DX10 leads to low hardware sales which in turn leads to bad game sales for games designed with new hardware in mind. Not everyone can afford a new computer whenever their is a software/hardware upgrade.... personally I'm still kind of sorry I sold my left kidney for my last upgrade.

The vast majority of PC players have no better idea what graphics card they have as what the brand of their monitor is. And thus, the vast, vast, bast majority of people can't play Crysis. I'm actually amazed it sold that well. The number of returns would be an interesting thing to look at as so many people take it back because they can't play it. In my humble opinion, when a game won't run properly in full detail at max resolution with THREE of the world's fastest GPUs running in tandem, how can anyone expect anyone to be able to run it? Crysis is little more than a curiosity and for that reason, 80 thousand sales is extremely good going for it!

UT3, on the other hand, is probably struggling simply due to overwhelming competition from all over the place, 2007 has been a brilliant year for games, and with so many quality titles it's only expected sales per title will be squeezed.

Any idea how well games like Bioshock, COD4 and The Orange Box did?

UT3 is proberbly the only I've bought for the PC all year (and I did need Vista to play it (wouldn't run on my XP install despite being on the same hardware). and due to looking almost as blocky as Doom 2 on my 6600 I've put it to one side until I upgrade my GC to something better.

Originally Posted by valium
I just don't see the reason to upgrade to DX10, upgrading cards to play these new games would mean I would also have to upgrade my computer as well for something graphic-wise that is very unnoticable between DX9 and DX10, meanwhile games like TF2 and CoD4 are running on DX9 hardware and are still managing to look mighty good while still having awesome gameplay. Lets not forget that to upgrade to DX10 I also have to buy Windows Vista and effectively downgrade my OS experience/performance.

The failure of Vista which in turn leads to the failure of DX10 leads to low hardware sales which in turn leads to bad game sales for games designed with new hardware in mind. Not everyone can afford a new computer whenever their is a software/hardware upgrade.... personally I'm still kind of sorry I sold my left kidney for my last upgrade.

? you don't need to buy dx10

I picked up both Crysis and UT3... Crysis was great fun - open, free and inventive - until the alien ship, at which point I lost interest. UT3... well, so far all its served to do is teach me I still suck at online FPS games, and that while the graphics are nice, I can spend too much time looking at the scenery and not enough time paying attention to the people who are shooting me. :)

Crysis, the Orange Box and Arma: Armed Assault, are the only PC games that I've bought this year. I've just had a lack of time to play games.

Crysis was a remarkably expensive game though, seeing as I bought a new graphics card and Vista to play it. :D Very worth it though, I loved the game and I needed to upgrade anyway. :)

In all honesty, I'm not sure what the hell people are going on about with Crysis. I grabbed a copy the other day, and I'm sorry, but I honestly cannot believe that people are getting the pathetic performance reported. My rig is hardly great in comparison to a lot of Bit Tech readers, and of course, the Bit Tech test rig. I get playable FPS, 30+ unless I start throwing a lot of grenades, on medium settings with high textures, AA x6 (On Catalyst, not ingame settings) and shadows on low. Considering I'm using X-fired 256 X1950Pros, with native reslution (1680x1050)?

As for UT3, I honestly don't know. I've been playing it since release, a lot on LANs rather than t'internet, but all my locals are capable of playing with mostly high settings, and none of us have newer than either 1950pros or 7900 GTS series cards.

I can't say the lack of sales surprises me, though. Crysis is widely known as the hardest kick in the teeth for your rig (Or so it's claimed) and UT3 is hardly.. Fresh, hell, most gamers I know still play UT, and prefer it to the newer iterations of the game.

I've not bought either yet, but then I still haven't completed Ep2/Portal/COD4 :(

never liked ut3 so didnt buy that

will buy crysis after i upgrade my pc after christmas

What are the sales figures on Mass Effect and The Orange Box? I bought that game, Crysis and the Orange Box.... and an 8800gt to run them :b Got mine for $259 woot!!

Just a side thought. I played part of the Bioshock Demo, if it wasnt for the Demo I think I would have bought the game. I dont know about the rest of you but Bioshock bored me after about 20 min of game play.

i'm just waiting for the 360 version, even though i have a pc and could run both games at med with a good frame rate

Are these world sales.. am presuming so.

It would be interesting to see how well COD4 sold on the PC. I know that in the US for November it sold 1.57M on the 360, and 440K on the PS3. The PC version was less than 350K otherwise it would have been in the top 10.

So numbers like 88K for Crysis and 33K for UT3 on the PC are dire. Really Really dire. After all the investment I would be amazed if we saw such future development on the PC when you can sell >2M on consoles (for more money per copy as well).

Personally I have UT3 and Crysis on the PC.. but Im not playing them at the moment. Nope.. Im playing COD4 and Supreme Commander Forged Alliance instead. More fun. My PC copes with all of them fine, but Im not sure everyone's does, which probably counts for something.

I know a few people who have bought Orange Box/COD4 over Crysis and UT3. Simple as that .. thats where all the sales are going.

I love UT3, I think its fantastic, the only problem is low sales = less people to play against. I already see loads of servers completly empty most of the time, and the servers that do have people in are often the same people I played with the day before. It is a real shame when games designed for multiplayer use isnt capable of supporting itself in the online world.
I can just see the players dwindling away and a few months from now there will only be a few servers left which woudlnt provide much entertainment for someone like me.

I played a bit of crysis but obviously thats a single player game and I will go back to it eventually.
I would love to play UT3 against xbox360 and PS3 players though. I dont know if that will be a feature or if it can only be done apart.

Originally Posted by -EVRE-

Just a side thought. I played part of the Bioshock Demo, if it wasnt for the Demo I think I would have bought the game. I dont know about the rest of you but Bioshock bored me after about 20 min of game play.

You're not alone, I played the 360 version, returned it within the same day I bought it, after about two hours of gameplay (Just to give it a chance, I didn't know if it was going to explode with interesting features instantly, but it never did :()

Crysis: Dont know wht everyones going on about it plays on my 8800GTS (640mb) at medium settings with only occasional lag. My problem with it is that a predominantly single player game the campaign felt criminally short. Farcry took me ages to complete, crysis took 1 saturday.... i didnt pay £25 for an 8hr long campaign

UT: Played the demo loved it but only didnt buy the game due to being at uni and not being allowed to open required ports... shame

Crysis is on my mental list of games to eventually buy sometime after I've done PC upgrades, though with the reviews saying that the hardware requirements are really, really steep even for newer hardware and that the gameplay itself is only good rather than great, its likely I'd wait till the price had dropped somewhat (probably the £14.99 or £9.99 levels on play.com)

The UT3 demo wasn't as smooth as I'd like and while it seemed decent, it still didn't seem as good to me, gameplay-wise as the original UT, at least in what was there, so again its on my mental list of games to buy but certainly isn't a priority either. The lack of real options was a bit of a niggle too if I'm honest.

I bought UT3 to make me feel good about dropping £180 on a shiny new 8800 GT graphics card, I've loved every incarnation of UT since I discovered bot multiplayer in the original Unreal game. It looks stunning and runs super smooth, and Vehicle CTF mode is lots of fun. Makes me very happy.

I've have avoided buying Crysis because i don't believe it will run well at the kind of detail levels I want to run it at. The thought of having to spend a while tweaking settings to get it to run 'acceptably' on a system that is decent enough to run pretty much everything else around (and that i've just spent cash on upgrading), well, that makes me sad.

I hear a lot of the argument that you can play Crysis now on medium settings and then go back in a year and play it on very high to get all the extra effects. Well, i've just been doing that with FEAR this weekend, and while the effects are cool the gameplay just feels old, and the environments feel bland and lacking in the kind of detail and interactivity found in newer stuff. I dont see how anyone can say the same wont be true of Crysis by the time hardware has caught up.

I know a lot of people that are not buying Crisis until they have the money to upgrade there systems. and I think this is a pattern that is common with those system raping games.

For me its the same old thing Crysis brilliant looking and some intresting things to do but nothing I havent done before in a FPS and no story to drive it on only so much im willing to pay to go ooo eye candy without a story. Give me a game like bioshock which costs the same maybe dosnt look as good but has a far better plot to drag you in.

Well same applies to UT3 really its all same old 've seen and played it before which I dont think exactly justifies the cost, I could say the same about TF2 but at least for £25 I got 3 excellent games that are thoroughly good fun

dunno... but could it be because there where so many ogood games released in nov?... i mean, usually you can buy 1 or 2 games per month and end up having all games worth mentioning... so some people prolly didnt buy crysis and ut3 due to finacial reasons.

besides that... both have rather high system requirements, sure, they arent that bad (both run on system in my sig), but some people might be scared.

First I love PC gaming, but I'm sorry to say it's dead Nooooooooo. Yes it's true, I have been a PC gamer for 25 years and it is coming to a end. It is taking way to long for games to come out on the PC side, and when they do you need a upgrade to run it well. I did not like the Xbox or the PS2 but with the new systems I have gone over to the dark side, the 360 and PS3 rock!!! with a HDTV the games look just as good or even better then a high end PC, for alot less money. And all the games are coming out at a good pace, not a long wait like the PC side. I really like the way you can hook a keyboard and mouse up to the PS3, it's very nice, and all the other things you can do with it just add to the fun. Being able to have voice chat this easy is a big plus, and if someone is driving you nuts with the things they are saying just click there tag and mute them. Peace and Love to all...

sorry... but you have to count the cost of the tv too, and the higher game prices if you want to figure out the real cost of consoles.

lets face it, the tv is only good for gaming, what they call tv i rubbish, and if they once in a while actually bring a good movie you could buy it a year ago in the bargain on dvd.
for the money of the tv license alone one can buy more movvies on dvd than they bring on tv... (that are worth watching).

I bought Crysis to play in my Opty165 (stock speed), 1Gb (had 2x1Gb, but one is ruined :\) and 8800GTS (320). It's smooth @1680x1050. Can't play with all the eyecandy and with AA. I'll play it max quality next year. I think that most people will only buy Crysis when they have rig capable of playing crysis at full quality.

I also think the game was a little on the sort side and i played it at the hardest setting, allways trying to sweep the whole island. I enjoyed the vastness of the jungles and the games of cat and mouse (the mouse being me running invisible and headshooting one merc at the time :) ). The vehicle action was very nice, too bad the VTOL level only got aliens to shoot down, i still had fun blasting the merc huts. The alien-ship was boring and the final boss scene was badly designed and coded.

When i played this game i kept thinking that this is farcry 2, but i remember farcry to be harder, with less bugs in the AI and more polished and tested. Crysis seemed to be rushed. The last level is a shame. There's no excuse to this.

Anyway, for me it's one of the GOTY for 2007. I still play farcry everytime i buy a new GPU and the same will happen with crysis. Both have a high replay value. It's a game that will continue to sell. Crysis just need a few mods and bug patches.

Not tried either of them here for pretty much the same reason as most people, the games would simply point fingers at my machine and giggle. I do plan to have a crack at Crysis as and when I have a pc that will actually play it

IMHO these games are will sell a lot n the long run....

yeah surprised about ut3, theres hardly anyone playing it, altho as with all unreal3 engine games the nonremovable mouse accel sucks

Crysis: waaaay too many reviews (and they're oh-so-true) underlining 3 major points: (very) short single-player, bad multiplayer and amazing top-of-the-line graphic. do the math. what do you expect? u think people will shell out $50 for something that has 2 bad flaws and 1 good point?

UT3: most reviews: UT2004 with better graphic. thats it. LOL.


point is, try to put urself in a regular customer' shoes. graphic is NOT the biggest thing most people would pay to play for. and other than graphic, what else do these games have?

TBH I don't see a whole lot of appeal in UT3. I can play UT2004 maxxed out at about 150 FPS and the gameplay is pretty much identical to a prettier version that makes my machine cry. Yes, I've read the reviews and know they're not the same thing... but they really are to me. Normally I'm all over campaign modes, but as far as I'm concerned UT3's story was just wedged in between a bunch of deathmatches and really awkwardly stuck in other game modes (this was mentioned in Bit's review, IIRC). Given that and how the over-stylized graphics let me barely get 30fps or so, there's no point in playing it.

Crysis looks like arse at the settings that it's playable at (other than destructable environments, Far Cry beats the pants off looks-wise at playable settings), but it's still fun at 1024x768 medium. I'd really like to see it in a couple years. Or at least when the nVidia 9-series hit.

i haven't had time, or money to buy UT3 recently, so that's why i don't have it

Crysis, i don't like it, IMO its a rubbish game, with too much emphasis on the graphics, i currently don't plan on ever getting it

Crysis: I'm with the rest of the crowd. There are lots of good games to spend my money on this christmas and they'll look lovely on my Dell 24" 1920x1200. I don't have time to play a game more than once, so until I have money for 2 8800 GTS 512MB or similar I can't see the point in buying Crysis. The game itself is beautiful, but not necessarily a great game, so playing it on a system which can't show the graphics is a bit futile. I honestly can't see myself playing it for at least a year so that hardware can catch up at a reasonable price. I mean read the articles on 3xSLI 8800 Ultras and a then add up the cost + the beefy power supply, and then how loud an amplifier will you need to cover the noise of fans. Plus that's really the ONLY game I need the hardware for, and 8800 GTS 512MB looks good enough for the rest (or SLI if you must) so cash wise (scan prices 17/12)

3 x 8800 ULTRA + 1000W PSU = £1400 (inc vat)
or
2 x 8800 GTS 512 + 600W PSU = £550 (inc vat)
or
1 x 8800 GTS 512 + no new PSU = £230 (inc VAT)

If SLI scaled nicely I'd say the middle solution would be nice either watercooled (like my beast of today) or had passive heatsinks, but my case allowed me to play a decent 120mm fan over the heatsinks. Its certainly affordablish although its more expensive than say a new notebook.

Conversely I'd expect interest in Crysis to re-surge when better hardware comes out.

I also think that anyone buying triple SLI ought to get it (Crysis) for free given the amount shelled out.

Garden Gnomes. I think we can blame it on Garden Gnomes.


No, seriously, I don't know. I loved Crysis for single player and I'm diggin UT3 - love it so far, although it's turning into a Vanguard because of the UI bugs I think it's turning people away. It's those darn console users that can't handle a sophisticated UI that ruin it for the PC users.

I wouldn't even try playing either on my old radeon 9600xt... i'll need to upgrade for me to even consider buying either :-/

If either game had been released when there was bugger all else to choose from (last xmas springs to mind) then they would of sold very well. But over the last 6 weeks or so there have been alot of top titles (for whatever reason) released and there's alot of people that either can't afford them all or just don't have the time to play them all yet.

I mean c'mon but when was the last time a bunch of games like this has been released in such a short space of time.
Crysis
UT3
ET: Quake Wars
Gears of War
World in Conflict
The Orange Box
The Witcher
Hellgate London
Clive Barker's Jericho
Call of Duty 4
NFS Prostreet (It may be crap, but it will sell regardless)

and i've probably missed a few more that would sell well without competition too..

UT3.... played the demo, wasn't impressed with the game play. And as others have said, it's same thing with new graphics. I might get it, I might not.

I do have to agree with the observations that the PC market might be on the down swing.

With a console you have a known set of hardware to develop against. On the PC you don't, Someone might be running P4 @ 2.2, someone else a Quad Core... 6600 GT with 128mb vs a 8800GTX. Supporting this wide range of hardward with settings that make the game look good and still be playable for all can't be easy. Develop for the console and you know what everyone has.... and that they will all get the same graphic and play experience.

Simple reason I guess is that Orange Box and CoD4 came out around the same time.

This is just another testament to the fact that consoles are taking large shares away from the PC gaming market. People that would normally be all over UT3 are playing Halo 3 or COD4 on the 360. Hardcore PC people will always complain about no keyboard and mouse, but most casual to hardcore GAMERS don't really care as much. PC used to be the best experience you could have, now it is just too expensive to keep up with, and you can have the online portion via 360. Plus you can do it from the comfort of your couch or bed on a larger screen. Plus there are all sorts of problems with PC games because of the wide variety of hardware, and buying the software and getting it to run well can be a headache even for more enthusiast level users.

I wouldn't say consoles are the sole reason, there have been a lot of good games to come out, but they definitely have effected the market on new games for PC.

im no hardcore, so i bought a xbox360 controller and tryed to use it on my PC, played Crysis and great force feedback, driving boats or jeeps feels so natural. but i just can't get the hang of aiming...... how can people play FPS with joysticks.

anyway, i'd expect the following reasons for each game
-Crysis: steep hardware requirements i'd expect, making the game seems like £300 instead of £30 (but still, i bought it :P ), the thing is that Crysis could have High as its initial release max setting, then release Very High when the time is right.
-UT3: come on Epic, Gears of War is better than this! i tryed the demo and guess what! i'd rather go back to UT2004. the interface is poo, the gameplay is a carbon copy of UT2004. only thing new is the graphics, although looks nice, but don't allow AA, and it takes a 8800 series to run smoothly. i'd rather buy Gears of War with a ported, yet better UI than this.
i'll consider buy UT3 when mod community catches up, and/or when it's a budget game

Problem with artificially cripiling it would be people would complain, especially those who had the gear to run it.

you must realize most people in the world have a rig like mine. CRAIZIZ? is that a russian dish?!

Worrying times. Lets face it PC gamers arnt daft, well the majority that play wow are, but... well you get what I mean; and most are reasonably tech savy. PC gamers aren't an easy push-over and when something is crap it wont sell. Im glad in a way that Crysis didnt sell well on PC seems most havent fallen for the hype, didnt think that the demo was anything to shout about.

Only 'bad' thing I see from all of this is that devs will be even less reluctant to throw money at the PC, but im not so sure this it neccessarly a bad thing in the long run. The PC imo has always been a platform for innovation, and good new games will always be around the corner. When devs do break the PC market they do get well rewarded. Blizzard and wow are a prime example.

imo games like Quake, while they were good back in the day (Quake 2) are now MP borefests good for a 20 minute mad run-a-round (all imo of course)

Originally Posted by Delphium
Crysis is hog that demands you sell a limb to be able to play it.

UT3, reason for me not buying this game, is the lack of game control in the menu, give me UT2004 menu with UT3 gfx!

you took the words right outta my mouth (keyboard) :)

You hit it on the head with the steep system requirments. I built a brand new system in anticipation of crysis. Then, when actually being played, has horrible FPS. I, then in turn, report this all over the place to friends/gamers online. How is it that a brand new system, with some of the best tech you can buy, can only get an average of 30fps in game? And they wonder why people are buying up consoles, like the Wii, at every turn. Games should equal a fun past time, not saying crysis hasnt done that, but it seems people build for these great games only to be let down as the gameplay isnt that great at all. And oh, I just got the ice level in crysis and I seriously want to vomit that its making my $1800 computer look like an atari.

Go buy COD4, it runs just as good, or better then BF2 and requires NO upgrade at all.

COD:4 is the top selling game at the mo it seems. That has to be because it is part of a known line of games (COD) but also becuase It only requires mediocre systems to play it fairly well.

So far this chrimbo I've bought Crysis and Bioshock. That should do.

Originally Posted by outlawaol
You hit it on the head with the steep system requirments. I built a brand new system in anticipation of crysis. Then, when actually being played, has horrible FPS. I, then in turn, report this all over the place to friends/gamers online. How is it that a brand new system, with some of the best tech you can buy, can only get an average of 30fps in game? And they wonder why people are buying up consoles, like the Wii, at every turn. Games should equal a fun past time, not saying crysis hasnt done that, but it seems people build for these great games only to be let down as the gameplay isnt that great at all. And oh, I just got the ice level in crysis and I seriously want to vomit that its making my $1800 computer look like an atari.

Go buy COD4, it runs just as good, or better then BF2 and requires NO upgrade at all.

what's your rig spec can i ask?

Crysis is fine if you play in Dx9 and use tweaks to enable most of the noticeable Dx10 effects.

actually, this news kinda makes me cry a little. its tru that PC gaming is slowly going downhill, and unless sales for these 2 games pick up drastically, then i think we're all a bit buggered. more and more developers/publishers will make more and more games for consoles, while us PC users get lumbered with crap like bioshock (yes, it was crap. it was a game that wowed XBOX users cuz they're not used to truly great gaming like deus ex/system shock 2etc)

what hasnt been mentioned is that laptops are outselling desktops nowadays. who here can honestly say they tried running ANY of these latest games on their laptop? probably only the 2% rich enough to spend a couple of grand on alienware or whatever the gaming laptops are. most of our 'casual gaming' market (who are destroying real gaming IMO) have crap-tops with out a real graphics card. that's a good reason why sales are ****. and yeh, i guess that all relates back to graphics being the source of the problem.

I just hope developers learn that graphics should be second or thirdplace in the line of priority, and not used to just sell games.

oh, and i haven't bought either of them because already spent shedloads on other games, most of which have proven to have short lifespans. i got no money due to buying xmas presents and hoping that someone will pick up my hints and buy them for me!

damn....what a depressing post!

Originally Posted by sotu1
what hasnt been mentioned is that laptops are outselling desktops nowadays. who here can honestly say they tried running ANY of these latest games on their laptop? probably only the 2% rich enough to spend a couple of grand on alienware or whatever the gaming laptops are. most of our 'casual gaming' market (who are destroying real gaming IMO) have crap-tops with out a real graphics card. that's a good reason why sales are ****. and yeh, i guess that all relates back to graphics being the source of the problem.

laptops that are able to run games arent really mobile (who wants a 17" 5kg laptop? lol)... and they got tiny little screens, yes, the screens they call big are tiny compared to what we desktop users get.

honestly, i simply cant imagine using a 12 - 17 inch monitor anymore.

lapotps are good if you need them just for things like word... but, for gaming they arent an option (as well as any form of media play back).

People paid a fortune to upgrade their PC to play Doom 3, or so i heard. I think the same is been done for crysis.

Its just that the new CPU (in affordable range) and new Graphic cards (Nvidia 9xxx series) aren't due out till 2008, so there not going to upgrade yet there going to wait, then they can go and buy crysis :) The point about hardware requirements is indeed a big point, as i can't play the game yet and that's why I'm upgrading in Jan/Feb :)

Well I hope nvidia hurries up with releasing a nextgen gpu so i can do a evga upgrade from my gtx. But i'am afraid the 90 days ar almost gone. :(

for crysis I think its simply because not a lot of people can actually run the game left alone smoothly (I can run it but I still have to shut down Anti Alliassing)

UT3 isn't doing very well due to a couple of reasons, for one you need a new PC to run it at max settings smoothly.
2de, they consolefied the game to me and many others has felt like a punch to the stumache, the main menu is crap, online service has been modified to fit the use on consoles limiting user friendlyness.

If I play online and I enter a custom map I play it, but unlike ut2004 when that map switches to another custom map i get kicked out due to a error.
Also the storyline has screwed to much with the game, A lot of things are left out.

Themes, Entire character lines, Gametypes, IMPORTANT MAPS (Like facing worlds).
Warfare that promised us a unieke gameplay element involving multiple maps in huge battlefields (hence the hoverboard) including both assault and onslaught gameplay... its a joke.
Warfare is nothing more than a modified often shrunken down onslaught game with a few custom level dependent elements that only HINT towards assault.
Not to mention that the original Onlaught gameplay with multiple nodes has been given a kick to the stumach by making NEARLY ALL warfare maps a liniar unchangeble (before it could be easily changed) node-setup.
It changed onslaught from a tactical gametype to something I redeem TUG OF WAR with ORBS... yeah, great gameplay element there, if only to fix what you broke.

The game simply often dissapoints, Also for mappers its a let down, I've tryed to make maps but features that made a mappers life so much easier have been left out.
Fake backdrop skyboxes and real water volumes for that matter, there are nearly no staticmeshes that can let you make forrests, egyptian themed maps and the many other themes that we lost.
UT3 was about bright colours, extravagant locations to fight in but MOST and FORMOST it was about the TOURNAMENT.
And thats where I think EPIC made its worst mistake. To remove the tournament setting and force us up this (i'm sorry to say) competely useless storyline with another (spoiler alert) ending that made me go like WHAT! YOU KILLED MY TEAM!, CLIFFHANGER, OMG NO!!! :(:(:(

Simply put, they removed to much for the sake of implementing a useless and frustrating storyline that noone will play for more than once because Unreal Tournament IS A MULTIPLAYER GAME.


And finally, theres the fact that nearly no-one is actually playing the game, UT2004 after launch had a huge amount of people playing. However a multiplayer game with 300 servers, but only (about) 300 people playing doesn't work very well. I often find only a hand full of servers actually include players. And only a few of those servers even by now, 2 months after launch include custom maps.
Unreal tournaments main drive was the community, and even if Epic would fix all the shortcommings this game has, they would still have to pull interest back to the game. And if they fail with that, I'm affraid UT3 will never be what its predicessors ever where, despite the graphics, dispite the fanbase and despite the awesome gameplay the game still holds.

Lets be fair, its a great game, but if you ever played ut2004, you can agree with me its not even close to what its predicessors where.
It pains me to see one of my all time favorite games in such a sad state of disinterest.
and I guess thats where the problem lies, because without interest... UT3 simply won't take off.

Yeah, UT3 may require you to upgrade your PC to play at max settings, but what game doesn't? Every new generation of game requires a more powerful PC to play at max settings, if you don't want to upgrade, don't play at max settings?

I do agree on Game Modes though, they culled some of the really fun ones, and the new ones can be a bit rubbish

I just wish they would bring out the Linux client (1 of the big points for UT) and i wish the Linux server was stable (it crashes so often ATM its crazy)