The State of EPIC Games’ new Esport: Righteously Unpopular

An open letter to Epic Games, developers, communities, and gamers.

Arena First Person Shooter was the first hot take at what a shooter game can be. It was the most a multiplayer experience could offer. A fast paced environment, real time strategy, comfortable video game, about twenty four years ago. The current year is 2020, and there are games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, The Cycle, Overwatch, and Call of Duty, with a good number of alternate choices of variations and blended styles. The currently popular games are simply far superior in overall gameplay, character design, brand growth, originality and evolution than the games invented twenty years ago. The simpler aspects of these games may very much resemble the more basic shooter modes of the original “AFPS” games, but they are enjoyably advanced. Their fresh originality triggers our dopamine release. The more original an experience, the sooner we hit play a second time. The most original mode AFPS has to offer is duel. Unfortunately, the duel mode design created toxic expression and repression of any newer player enjoyment. Logically, any player thus left disinterested in the game and genre, would have rightly been so. Ironically, the minority of people who are the retained players, would interpret the losage of players as a compliment to their own illusioned self-worth. Unfortunately that is a self enabling negative loop, a guarantor for a poorly judged community whom only further enable poorer development choices.

The Vietnam war ended in 1975. Quake came out in 1996. That means it would have been 21-year-olds who first introduced the term “Frag” into video games at the rise of Quake. Since the first gamers barely realized they should use WASD, it would have to have been their children who would make do of their sport. So by 2010, it would have to be 30-year-olds making up the majority of the player-base to keep the term “Frag” around. (Doubled by the fact that the old games HAD to be ultra gorey and evil looking to express the realistically lacking masculinity of the players, as can be factually proved by the political unease against the great women’s movements of those times.) Newer era brained children typically grow up with the internet already understood under their naturally higher IQ, and aren’t interested in keeping lame words around for more than 2 years, nor need be fulfilled with Freudian insecurities. This is proven by how quickly terms like “yeet” get rotated out of cool talk, and how “no balls” is still relevant. Children and young-guns are more evolved. Any modern game, uses a normal term such as Kill, or cooler still, Elimination, for successful executions of opponents. Those words are direct! They’re energetic! You might even be smiling now. Nobody smiles about “frag”. Frag is something you say after bedtime, if you don’t want your boomer parents to ground you for knowing you play sinful killing games. Thankfully, any modern evolved parent generally encourages highly fast paced gaming because it makes their children smarter and develops better neuronal connections. This generally explains why repeated old-school dead games like quake or other “arena fps” games flop so consistently. It’s always the exact same people that decayed the previous game making decisions for the “newer” game, each time believing they’ve achieved nirvana of gaming. Typically they drink coffee daily and their neanderthal-esque brains struggle with metabolizing caffeine, making them constantly euphoric over basic ideas and mundane decision making.

A diamond in the dirt, Duel. Duel, is a threefold 10 minute mode where two players are pitted against one another in a small, enclosed map. Firstly, both players respawn with a fraction of their maximum health, encouraging the collection and denial of healing items like bubbles or armor. Secondly, their objective is to select more dominant positioning and defensive pathing as to minimize virtually all the empowering items that an enemy can collect. This in effect, enables the third final fold of the game, which maximizes the capability to land eliminations, primarily more elims than the enemy could against them, in a consistent and controlled manner. This folds into what the mode is called, a duel. A euphoric “ground breaking” mechanic was ultimately added in 2020, which reduces the total match timer by some seconds for every kill difference between the two players, then requiring the player, that has the most kills at the end, to complete another before the match can actually end. The great boomer-brain failure here, is the game continues to advertise the mode as “frags” and insist that large disparity matches like 23-1 are not a big deal, but continue to bask in the ego fountain it spews instead of evolving the mode upon it’s legitimately enjoyable aspects. (Actions speak louder than words.) Basically, losers picked a game nobody wanted to play, to enjoy seemingly being good at something few others were lame enough to bother investing into; nobody wants to play it for easy scores early and with actually no incentives to complete matches. A game with zero growth, zero development. The first lame “frag” is as dopamine releasing as the last one. In this case, none at all. A real life analogy to understand the state of duel, would be to state that drift racing is all about which silly car company can bring the bestest baddest blondest most bitchin’ escort lady to the track, and only by that measure is what the drivers should be known for. The car companies would insist the sport is not really about that, and that its about the drift, the slick turns, the handling, the skill, who can stay ahead and finish first, and that its normal to crash and not at all the driver’s fault for getting distracted by primitive sightings; yet, Only The Models, is what would continue to be shown on the leaderboards, the advertisements, the posters, the shows. The pervy fans, would insist nothing needs to change, forcefully bullying outsiders to stay out. Any mentally-stable, true-hearted racer would surely leave the sport in a matter of time on refusal to associate with such insult to the core sport.

Prior descriptions of the game were left intentionally unnamed, as they’re all practically the same. The latest flop in the series is called “Diabotical”, with developers whom are delirious about the state of their game due to EPIC GAMES choosing to kindly fund their little indie project. (Oddly, it was already funded by a kickstarter backing but the Devs failed to deliver and delayed over 3 years.) Any good Fortnite kiddo that doesn’t live under a rock or have Quacker parents (that are actually sad enough to enable parental controls across their *WIFI* network), will know how ridiculously successful and generous EPIC GAMES is. This, is compounded by the fact that the current lead dev of “Diabotical” is an iconic ex-STEAM employee. The old competitor to the Epic Games launcher. A steam employee choosing to deal with Epic Games rather than their original company speaks volumes for Epic Games, as they are in fact the company more supportive of game developers. Notably, this also amounts to absolutely nothing regarding “Diabotical”. It’s just a mega corp flexing on another mega corp by stealing their girl, or well, guy. (If you weren’t in front of James “2GD” Harding, you probably couldn’t tell.) The honestly impressive parts about “Diabotical” are that the engine was written entirely by a single person. Diabotical game programmer’s work shouldn’t go unnoticed, and only makes any bad decision by the management team stand out as a greater insult and waste of time and talent. (More on the story about the one who wrote the engine here: https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/28937190/creating-new-arena-fps-game-diabotical)

Diabotical’s owner, @follow2GD, insists on pushing more team-based modes, drunkenly citing gameloops from DOTA2, (not a first person shooter) as ideals for his first-person shooter game. The amazing physics-based movement of the Diabotical are perfectly suited for unique modes like Duel or Capture The Flag ,with grapple hooks and portals. Both run ignored with still no grapple being introduced nor portals, nor proper evolution given to the duels. Only daily engine updates by a tireless coder, who is really only singlehandedly remaking long failed games. Team modes of games like Fortnite, CS:GO, Valorant, Overwatch, are successful because they are well crafted, balanced, and enjoyable. They are evolved modes of ancient community made mods of other prehistoric games. They are tried, tested, evolved, and continue to evolve. Modes like Duel, should absolutely not have some archaic term like “frag” be the highlight of the mode, the spotlight of a leaderboard. Computing power has come a long way, and there are better functions to determine progress. New ways to determine score values. Despite the introduction of the new “Golden Frag” mechanic that runs down the clock, the misguided concept of chasing dull “frags” is not changed. It still presents itself as a game about getting the most kills the quickest way possible with nothing more to achieve, and most new players see it that way. Most older players broadcast it that way. Most streamers prove it that way. The Real Gem! The Cat and Mouse Rush! The Thrill of the Hunt Feeling! The Checkers-esque Logical Structure! The Excitement of New Year’s Eve Count-Down! are all feelings few players will ever experience in their passing of this trampled genre. Players shouldn’t have to throw their lives away to get the slightest glimpse of that experience, they shouldn’t have to learn to overlook the largely advertised deaths, the player automated mocking chat, the crowds jeering at the large difference in “fraaags” at the top of their screen. Its the developer’s job to DEVELOP the game to where the feelings prior are the design by choice, the intention, the public expression. Good development makes the enjoyed experience self-evident. The excuse that the game is “overlooked” because it “has a considerable learning curve” and that people just “aren’t smart enough to understand it” is utterly based, moronic and untrue.

Games like League of Legends DO have a CONSIDERABLE LEARNING CURVE and their player-base continues to grow significantly every year. Their success, despite being new at the MOBA game scene, because they developed what DOTA2 left to be interpreted. New players are rapidly picking up League of Legends, learning it, and enjoying it. There are AI systems that can personally coach people, countless online coaches, in-game overlay improvement widgets, player statistic lookups, the list goes on and the fact remains obvious. People genuinely enjoy playing a very. complex. game. In it’s early days the moba had longer matches than it does now, character growths were improved to provide a more definitive gameplay such that taking early and correct advantages could properly snowball into completed games. At higher ELOs, teams close matches in about 25 minutes. At those high levels of the MOBA, players play a single match that is twice as long as the maximum length that is a duel in Diabotical. Note, that not all players are of the highest rank in League Of Legends, and despite that, there is the significantly greater amount of active players who play the MOBA on REPEAT. Active replay in ranks where they can lose a single match that takes longer than 40 minutes! Yet it is still found enjoyable. The game flow progresses. The game objectives are clear, with kills being a very distant variable that is quite literally never considered the deciding factor of which team won or not. Never could you hear a team state they were better because they got lots of kills, despite losing. It doesn’t happen. Nobody questions it. The scoring of control is clear, and destroying the enemy base (called the nexus) is crystal clear. Comparing such experience back to Diabotical, where the existing but deluded playerbase continually insists that their game’s lack of attention is due to the limits of the average brain. It’s not. They have received equal attention, and no amount of marketing will change the fact, that people look at the game. The Diabotical is up at the second row of the Epic Game’s Store, creepily close to the listing of Fortnite. People see the game, and those people then turn away, in utter disgust and disinterest; At times giving it attention, giving it their interest, and still leaving with nothing but disgust. Arena FPS is the date that never showers, never combs, never speaks, never puts in effort and remains confused as to their lone stature. It isn’t unlovable, it’s just not worth anyone’s time nor effort. It make’s no changes of it’s own will for the better. People move on to better places and have no reason to look back.

A duel is 10 minutes. Of the two contenders only one of them need score a single elim after the match timer expires. A difference of 1-0 closes the game victorious, as equally as a difference of 21–11 does. (Players could avoid one another for the full 10 minutes, upon which they enter the “golden frag” at 0–0, the next kill determining the victor. Alternatively many kills can be exchanged and the game ended prematurely around 5 or 6 minute mark. In either case, the same result.) Defensive play is naturally smarter play, as an opponent who blindly chases after an enemy essentially puts themselves “at the back of the line” to any empowering items the chased-player choses to path through. Generally a player that is ahead in elims will play safer as the stakes of the match become higher, for example a money tournament. The player with the upper difference of kills and most empowerments is the one said to be “in control”. The dragon atop the lair of gold that devours any trapped adventurer, whom wanders within looking to take a single coin. The longer it takes for the mouse-role player to eliminate the controlling cat, should naturally score more for that objective. Currently, it doesn’t matter. Logically, a certain buffer should ensure that smart and effective play by the cat-position would maintain a minor lead, perhaps the time-based elimination bounty should be scaled as a fraction of the cat’s score. Multiples of consecutive kills within a shorter time window when being in full control, having the lead in kills, (as the cat) should be worth some more. The taken items currently serve no purpose once taken, until they appear again, other than to be empty sceneries. The game seemingly introduced “Super” version of weapons, but chose then to remove them. The lead dev repeatedly touts DOTA2 growth systems. It seems like a no brainer to evolve duels with coin economy where coins would spawn for brief 2 second windows at the middle of a taken item’s respawn timer, or sell overflow ammo gained from ammo packs for coin, and later used to upgrade the largely ignored, uncollected and lesser powered “non-trinity” weapons. I, the writer, am not a game designer and that fact should speak volumes about the developer’s decision making, when I in my unpaid time can brainstorm more effective gameloops as to encourage a player to play the FULL LENGTH OF THE MATCH and ENJOY it. In it’s present form there is none, not even a low-effort penalty (lazy bad game design) to discourage quitters. The summary of all this is, there is a multitude of ways to evolve the unique mode of Duel, that single handedly separates the game into it’s own unique genre, into a modern model that emphasizes the enjoyable aspects of cat-and-mouse strategic play with comebacks, and proper objectives touted for victory, rather than the righteously unpopular, dull and boring, vietnam-war got-a-lot-of-kills arcade game.

All of this has been about Diabotical’s most unique mode. The sole thing that could possibly set it apart, that can plant the game down as a popular, competitive, and enjoyable PC game in the year 2021 and beyond. The unique physics engine and physics based movement could well be used to evolve the classic capture the flag game mode. Except, if the developers can’t evolved their game’s natural talent first, then there is absolutely no way that they will be able to revolutionize a mode that has already been beaten through by existing popular titles like Overwatch. It’s a real shame where the developers throughout the years passed the torch of “Arena first person shooters”, but we are where we are. Here is the “ㅋ” from us all. RIP to the great sport that never will be. The abused and trampled garden whose fruits are never harvested and seeds never grown. GG.