Here's a spicy question: What are the most skillful FPS games?
Now, everyone can make a lot of good arguments for this, but obviously there is no right
answer.
Nevertheless, if you ask some of the FPS veterans, a lot of them will tell you it's one of the
Arena FPS games, and in a way they have good reasons.
Well there was this long period of time in FPS history, where you would be playing whatever
awesome shooter that came out that year, like Counter Strike, Team Fortress or whatnot,
but sometimes you would lose to opponents that you knew were worse than you were, but
he only won because he got a better team or got lucky or something, right?
So, to prove to him that you are actually better in pure skills, you would
challenge that person and go, "Duel me in Quake".
And that's what Arena Shooters were for the FPS veterans.
Those were games that could cut through all the bs and randomness and try to preserve
the best showcase of individual talent.
They were the gold standards for competitive shooters for a long time because they require
an equal amount excellence in aim, strategy, tactics, and kind of an unbreakable mentality.
But I've noticed that there is not really a working definition for Arena Shooters.
So, what really is an Arena Shooter?
Why did so many FPS veterans say they are the most skillful games?
So, how about we come up with some answers?
Let's try the definition first.
So the way I did this was to look for commonalities between games already in the subsets, and
see how they differ from other FPS games.
In my results, I found 3 things that can be categorized as defining features of Arena Shooters
Now let's take a look
First and foremost, weapons.
In arena shooters, there are two things that are almost always present in the weapon systems.
Number one, there is never an upper limit of how many weapons you can carry at the same time
No class loadouts, no weapon attachments or any predetermined upgrades.
All weapons are spread around the map for everybody to pick up.
Number two, the rosters of weapons are usually vastly diverse, and collectively require all
distinct types of aiming styles.
Arena Shooters pioneered almost all of the weapon archetypes, and often with designs
minimizing random factors.
You will see weapons that require tracking, flicking and leading, the three main aiming
styles in first-person shooters, but all in the same game.
But then you'll also see stuff like tracking projectile weapons, tracking hitscans with
spread, flicking hitscans with spread, variety of projectile weapons with arch and/or ricochet,
so on and so forth, and then these crazy melee weapons.
By doing that, they force you to understand the pros and cons of each type of weapon,
and they force you to think about when to switch to the right weapon based on the you
and your enemy's positioning in midst of these chaotic combat situations.
After the late 90s, there were two schools of thoughts of arena shooter weapon designs.
One lineage follows the steps of Quake with more simplicity and purism.
Each weapon has distinct utility, but they have clear weaknesses, so faster weapon switching
on your feet becomes extra vital in these games.
We are talking about games like Reflex Arena, Warsow, Doom 3, Diabotical and so on.
Then there is this other lineage which was spawned by Unreal Tournament, where weapons
are much more versatile because they often came with an innovative strong alternative fire
In these games sometimes two or three guns can wreak havoc, games like Painkiller, Xonotic
and Toxikk, so on and so forth.
By the way, some of the weapons in these games have the craziest interactions between primary
and secondary fire.
You can make an explosive arrow by shooting an bolt into the grenade you just lobbed from
the same gun; you can make a huge blast by igniting one of the plasma balls you just
launched; you can even curve your rockets and then detonate it early in midair.
There are a lot of these creative weapons.
Anyways, a lot of Arena Shooter players find it easy to pick up other shooters afterwards,
and a large part of the reason has to be that Arena Shooters require so much versatility
in skills just in their weapon systems alone.
Second in line of defining features in Arena Shooters is the movement, and I really don't
think any other types of games have the same depth in movement as Arena Shooters do, because
unlike a lot of other games especially shooters, if you are good at movement, you literally
run and accelerate faster.
You can make quicker turns and you can jump a lot higher more precisely.
It takes quite a bit of practice to even just get a grasp on the various movement mechanics.
I found out that only less than 1% of Quake Live players actually passed the movement
tutorial, which is just insane.
But the thing is after you learn them, it is the most satisfying thing just to move
around the map because you have such comprehensive control of every aspect of your movement.
Actually due to how technical but also how enjoyable these movement mechanics are, some of these games
have huge scenes in just racing.
So how about we run through a few techniques you might be seeing in arena shooters?
We have bunny hop, strafe jump, rocket jump, rocket boost, grenade jump, a variety of other
splash jumps, crouch slide, crouch boost, grappling hook, jetpacks, portal boost, stair
boost, air dodge, wall jump, wall ride, teleport, etc etc, and this is just to name a few.
Also, believe me, sometimes it takes years to just master one of these.
Let's use rocket jumping as an example.
Minute changes in exact angle or the timing of your jump will cause monumental in outcome.
For instance, if you press your jump a few millisecond too late (or early depending),
then you jump too high and you become a really easy target in mid air.
If you are a few degrees off your angle, then you lose all of your momentum
and you took self damage for nothing.
Once you get a hang of some of these, you can then chain a bunch of movement mechanics
together, and get to places otherwise impossible to reach, and let me tell you once you pull
that off, that is just pure joy.
The feeling of flying through the air and then flicking that killing shot, that thrill
is impossible to replicate.
The depth of movement has to be partially why these games have such loyal fan bases.
The third and possibly the most important
defining feature of arena shooters is the maps.
I mean, they are called arena shooters at the end of the day, so you would expect arenas
to be an important part of it.
But what makes an FPS map an arena?
The point of an arena is to bring the best spectating experience to the audience.
Arenas have got to ensure that rush of adrenaline because they are built to be spectacles.
That is the principle of arena shooter map design: the sole purpose is to stimulate the
most exciting competition.
Weapons and pickups respawn at set times and locations, so players can kill each other over these
items.
You also see a lot of these weird arbitrary terrain handicaps or advantage points, and
they are there just to make the combat situations more interesting.
In Arena Shooters, players are supposed to maintain map control, so they always have
an edge on resources.
Great players keep track of spawn times of many pickups at once, and so they can predict
when and where their opponents will be based on these timings, and then they just make
conniving plays.
So much room for tactics and strategies are granted by these maps, that even if you have
worse aim than the opponent, you can easily win fights with better positioning, smarter
reads, better control of pickups on the map, better weapon choices, so on and so forth,
but only if you have the proper map knowledge.
One more thing about the maps.
Just like real arenas, the maps are never trying to reproduce anything that can really
exist.
They might be sometimes themed with familiarity, but architecturally they don't attempt to
make any sense at all in real life.
They are purely set pieces for combat.
You don't question why the map is just four walls with seemingly no exits.
You don't question why jump pads or portals are in Lovecraftian medieval castles.
You don't question why weapons and supplies are placed in a corridor or stored on a cliff.
It is not at all about the realism or the authenticity.
Everything in the arena is built for the showcasing the competition at the highest level.
That is why some classic maps keep appearing after 2 decades across multiple franchises
of games, and then make their way back into the old games.
That's how these maps created some of the most memorable moments in e-sport history.
And there we have it.
A pickup-based weapon system with diverse aiming skills.
A set of intricate movement mechanics.
And arena-like maps with an emphasis on item control.
The three main defining features of arena shooters.
But my favorite thing about Arena Shooters hands down is how they allow you to excel
in so many different ways with aim, speed or just pure intellect.
You have to put in some real work to be good in arena shooters, and once you master an
Arena Shooter, other FPS games seem quite a lot easier to learn.
Because Arena Shooters ask so much of you and train you in so many different ways, but
they in turn grant so much room for players to be good at the game in their own ways,
and you really get to see a lot of different personalities and different types of talents
when it comes to Arena Shooters.
Anyone who has watched any Duel in Arena Shooters can tell exactly what I mean, because you
can easily tell who is playing even without seeing the name tags.
That's the kind of things I want Arena Shooters to be known and remembered for.
Some of these games we talked about today are ten, twenty, or even twenty-five years
old, but their loyal fan bases are still there.
Because of that, even if they are no longer the most popular games, there will always
be a place for more Arena shooters.
I'm sure my set of criteria will leave out a few fringe cases that people consider to
be possibly arena shooters as well, and that's inevitable with any definition really, namely
games like Tribes, Midair, Lawbreakers, Team Fortress, Dirty Bomb and other Splash Damage
Games titles, so on and so forth.
It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
But I think it's important to keep clear perimeters for the definition, because if we dilute the
meaning of a genre too much, it doesn't meaningfully serve the purpose of accurately informing
other fellow consumers anymore.
However, that does not mean beyond the clear definition, we cannot be flexible when talking
about it.
It doesn't have to be a dichotomy.
So those games like Lawbreakers, Team Fortress and whatnot fulfills 70, 80 percent of my
definition, so I feel comfortable saying they are 70% arena shooter, you know.
Cause after all they clearly have many elements of other genres as well.
There always should be some grey areas between definitions.
So that's on the subject of fringe cases.
Now if you know some things about FPS history, you would know that arena shooters have many
more legacies beyond gameplay.
In the description I will link two videos about Quake's history, and how arena shooters
were the pioneer of polygon FPS, e-sport, modding, demo replays, machinima, speed runs,
all sorts of things.
It's definitely worth a watch if you are interested.
Lastly, for those of you that are new to Arena shooters, I just want to say, grab a friend
and give it a try.
Most of the games in their video are free-to-play or entirely free even, and most of them run
buttery smooth on a potato laptop.
I know the skill gap seems daunting at first, but many of these games have bots, custom
servers and many game modes, so you don't have to worry too much about the skill gap
or the population of the game, you will have fun if you have a friend of two.
Anyways that's it for me today.
See you guys on the flip side.
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