Many players from quake 3/UT era got repulsed and pushed away from it.Īll people wanted from quake 4 was a killer single player and a polished quake 3 multiplayer experience but with futuristic graphics- they got none of that. A classic, simple, pure arena fps experience with top tier, current generation graphics and user interface is what quakers and UT players have begged for a decade or more, and never got even once.Īll the 'afps revival' experiments that have been half assed in the last years failed exactly because the gameplay sucked big balls in trying tobe innovative and inclusive. So either way you lose, unless you can strike a very fine balance.

If you make a new arena FPS game and try to innovate as much as possible to make it stand out, then you will also likely turn away many potential players because they are not comfortable with trying new mechanics, either due to time investment or concerns that the new mechanics may break the delicate balance of the core AFPS gameplay, and there's no way to tell for sure without sinking many hours to test hypotheses about the impact of those new mechanics and verifying their viability in a competitive environment.

Hence why CPMA is still kicking with a small, but passionate fanbase while Reflex is pretty much dead in the water. So you don't get a lot of players as a result. If you make a new arena FPS game as pure as possible and add very little 'new' stuff, then there's no real reason to play the new game other than maybe some pretty new graphics, when older games that play pretty much the same have more well-developed and dedicated communities, simply because they've been around longer.

Xonotic vs open arena