UT and Q3 maps, armour and item timing

I don’t know who this was in reply to. It was in an old text file on my computer. I like it because it is about UT.

How many completly custom maps are played in competitve duel in lets say Q3?

At its peak 1-2. At UTs peak zero. At q3s peak a map list might contain 5-6 maps where as UT could be anything from 6-15 with insane things like tempest included for duelling. Percentage wise Q3 is way ahead, but more than just numbers it means the community will at least accept change.

Sphere and Davidm are not used regularly, they are not “standard” like ztn or aero. In addition to this no tweaks or community accepted additions were made to UT whereas they were made for q3. I feel this is because UT works well enough out of the box not to bother whereas Q3 was fairly broken. Also davidm, if it is the map with that name was not good, this map and the other third party ones around the same time were not very good.

I don’t care about TDM or CTF, however the UT map and item style means almost anything works.

I agree that in duel the difference in usage comes from the fact that in UT we can easly put not only 5 but even 7 playable standard maps, and so custom maps must compete with them.

Tempest was an accepted duel map up until at least 2002. I feel this highlights the problems with UT in general. Tempest was not a good duel map but it was played because it sort of worked. If you were playing for fun it was okish, if you were playing to win it was disgusting for all involved. Since tempest was accepted as a duel map so should have arcane, peak, crane and any of the other retarded non-duel suited maps that would work because of how UT appears to have been designed. I liked highlighting how bad some maps were and frequently won 1-0 vs all levels of players. Not because I had to win at all costs but to show them that the map was a joke.

In Q3 without custom maps we would have to play a very poor maps like T2 (yes, no more of that map) and even then T4 had to be kept (thx QL) 😛

And playing tempest is somehow better than playing t4? T4 is “better” for dueling than tempest ever was.

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Not to mention both aerowalk and ztn, were made back in Q1.

Irrelevant. Remakes are acceptable if they are good maps that work on the new game. Both of these work in q3/whatever.

The pace in which UT weapons can deplete ammo is rather high, and respawn time for both weapons and ammo is 27.5sec, which make it impossible to replenish ammo as often as in Q3 with old 15sec settings.

Thats fine. However the weapon does not have to have the ammo next to it. Also the doubled up aspect of the weapons gives you twice as many pick ups that do similar things (rockets + falk alt, pulse + mini, shock + sniper, etcetc). Look at deck, pulse and mini next to each other WITH full ammo? Do you really need that many shots of hitscan in one place?

As for armours we must keep in mind they are much stronger than the ones in Quakes – Q3s yellow armour is equal to UTs pads, and Q3s red armour is even weaker than UTs body armour.

That is also fine, since the damage absorption is not the problem. Not to mention higher DPS weapons in UT, it makes sense that they absorb more. However with the DPS available the pads were not equal to yellow armour, they would have been equal to 3 shards.

And if it is about number, we had an example of what can happen if there are too many items on rather large maps in UT2003, where there was too much spread to control everything.

It was not really the quantity, more the duration of spawns, more specifically the respawn time of the belt vs the jacket and the slower game pace it promoted. The player with the belt has more advantage than just the protection it provides, he can also push the jacket on its second spawn without worrying about his item. This would be similar to playing Q3 with one armour and a mega. If you really want to count the pads, not that anyone serious did, this map you are thinking of has three armour shards somewhere.

You would have been spread too far in 2k3? That’s ok because with maps actually designed for duel you could overcome this and have an awesome game. Not to mention that spread is good. It breaks it down into two players items. If you are good you can make inroads into their items and win.

Instead you end up with something that basically works on every map ever created and is luke warm at best. This is not a problem really because I am sure it helped the popularity of original UT.