[trends] nexuiz vs alien arena vs warsow [trends]

[Gego]

google statistics:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=nexuiz%2 ... l&date=all
what can we say about the trends?
is nexuiz ever gonna beat warsow, and will alien arena ever become a good game?

[Vermeulen]

first of all, Alien Arena isn't a bad game. I've never liked the gameplay, infact i hate that style of deathmatch, but it was done really well. It for sure has more of a constant art style than Nexuiz, even if the art in that game looks really outdated

i have no idea how warsow got so popular so quickly. It's a good game also but it has been for a very long time, I don't know why it suddenly got noticed. Exposure for any quake based game is good though.

[Gego]

warsow, cos of eSportsTv
and the eSports Turnaments

[kozak6]

I tried Alien Arena.

It runs poorly (story of my life, eh?), and I didn't like the weapon balance.

Also, some of the maps have absolutely horrid music that I wasn't able to turn off, and when I tried it, there were more bots than players.

And even if there were other players, you had to beat the bot's score to advance the map. Even with experienced players, we ended up playing the same map something like 2-4 times in a row. It was awful, especially at the maps with the horrid and obnoxious music. And then, secondary fire modes still weren't availible on most servers.

I tried to install WarSow once. I got random grey squares for a title screen. I gave up and uninstalled it.

[Irritant]

Well clearly something happened in July of this summer to really spike Warsow very high in the search trends, similar to when Nexuiz caught a huge break getting on Slashdot.com when it was first released, as can be seen by the initial huge spike. I'm thinking it was the eSports community, plus GIGA has been pushing Warsow(almost as if they have commercial investment in it), and that is helping them alot.

As for Alien Arena, I'm not so sure the gameplay is really much different than Nexuiz. Sure, it's a different weapon set, and the movement is slightly different, and health is done a tad differently, but both are pretty similar to UT overall, probably more than resembling Quake games. Also, AA2k7, is vastly, vastly different than it's predecessors in many ways, so if you've only played AA2k6, it's not a good judgement of what the game currently is.

Warsow on the otherhand, is pretty much straight up Q3 CPMA, right down to the weapons, which are for the most part, identical to Q3. It's a good game, but I definitely prefer Nexuiz over it, as it adds something new IMO.

[Irritant]

I tried Alien Arena.

It runs poorly (story of my life, eh?), and I didn't like the weapon balance.

Also, some of the maps have absolutely horrid music that I wasn't able to turn off, and when I tried it, there were more bots than players.

And even if there were other players, you had to beat the bot's score to advance the map. Even with experienced players, we ended up playing the same map something like 2-4 times in a row. It was awful, especially at the maps with the horrid and obnoxious music. And then, secondary fire modes still weren't availible on most servers.

Alien Arena should run very fast on most any computer. Not sure why it did not for you. I can get 30-50 fps on an onboard Intel video chip.

I'm not sure when you played the game, or what version, but the music has been able to be turned off for quite some time now, and secondary fire has been present on all weapons for nearly a year, I don't think there is any servers ever being run with those old versions any more.

As far as having to advance through levels, it sounds like you were joining listen servers that were playing in tournament mode. Like I said, I'm not sure when you played the game, but finding good matches hasn't been a problem in a very long time.

Ok, sorry, don't mean to be pimping AA on a Nexuiz forum, just wanted to clear those things up.

[The mysterious Mr. 4m]

Haha look at the hits from Poland for "Warsow"!

[Vermeulen]

Well clearly something happened in July of this summer to really spike Warsow very high in the search trends, similar to when Nexuiz caught a huge break getting on Slashdot.com when it was first released, as can be seen by the initial huge spike. I'm thinking it was the eSports community, plus GIGA has been pushing Warsow(almost as if they have commercial investment in it), and that is helping them alot.

As for Alien Arena, I'm not so sure the gameplay is really much different than Nexuiz. Sure, it's a different weapon set, and the movement is slightly different, and health is done a tad differently, but both are pretty similar to UT overall, probably more than resembling Quake games. Also, AA2k7, is vastly, vastly different than it's predecessors in many ways, so if you've only played AA2k6, it's not a good judgement of what the game currently is.

Warsow on the otherhand, is pretty much straight up Q3 CPMA, right down to the weapons, which are for the most part, identical to Q3. It's a good game, but I definitely prefer Nexuiz over it, as it adds something new IMO.

hey welcome to the forum. I agree with you that AA and Nexuiz have a very similar basic settings, but I think because of the movement and the levels it makes for very different gameplay. One example of this is teams and CTF, personally I've never thought Nexuiz worked well in teams as it was more of a excessive twitch shooter, while with Alien Arena thats one of its main focuses.
Actually Slashdot did not bring a lot of hits. What gave us the big break was gettng on Heise.de, which gave us probably 50k in the first few days.
And yeah, I think a lot of Warsow's popularity is in its traditional movement. With its fullbright graphics and gameplay that people are used to, its perfect for league games.

[R4ND0M]

"And yeah, I think a lot of Warsow's popularity is in its traditional movement. With its fullbright graphics and gameplay that people are used to, its perfect for league games."

Agreed.
Personally I don't play AA nor warsow, but I tried both a while back. I didn't like the AA-gameplay. Warsow felt quite funny, but I had no ambitions to get used to its trick-jump possibilities. I think overall a big plus for warsow is its smooth performance which is really impressive. Imo it runs just as well as a commercial game.

[esteel]

Its good that at least one of the games is so much in the spotlight its just a shame that its the worst of them . Though they offer quite a different experience Nexuiz and Alienarena have quite a few things in common gameplay wise and i did not notice any big speed difference between both. It just seems AA has problems getting european servers while Nexuiz has slight problems in the US (compared to europa). Maybe thats a good chance to point to http://planetfreeware.org which wants to help those 'underdog' games. Yeah underdog is not the right word as Nex, AA, OA (openarena) have stable and working communities but those deserve more attention.

All those games are rather well done but Nexuiz and Alienarena are more self-defined then warsow if you were to ask me. Warsow just feels like an unfinished CPM(A) clone to me and i really see no reason to play it instead of the real CPM. And NO walljumps and weak/strong ammo are not a good reason to play it. Especialy combined with the attitude of its players in general.. Part of which could be seen with the way the planetquake poll was handled.

After all getting players is about meeting expectations and it seems there have been a few mistakes in the past. Be it the 'based on quake1 engine'.. while technical true it also turned down quite a few players as they expected a similar performance while the engine is more like in the doom3 league. Be it a few ugly scenes with other communities.. which seem to have been resolved by now. Maybe the 'traditional movement' is a selling point but that can only work with former (hardcore?) quake fans as new players do not know about it and the movement (i only know there for sure..) in Nexuiz not as simple as it might appear at first glance and i guess AA also has things to offer in that regard. So this should not influence things too much.
Well it would be great to see 'our' games get more coverage and attention but on the other hand it also keeps the communities nice and friendly

And not to mention that those google trends can be very tainted..