Unreal Tournament's CTF mode tweaked for better e-sports presentation

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Changes to Unreal Tournament's CTF mode have so far proved "quite controversial," according to Senior Gameplay Programmer Joe Wilcox, who says in the latest Unreal Tournament Project Update video that the implementation of halftime, overtime and sudden death are just "the very beginning" of an effort intended to make the game "more friendly to a viewing audience."

"There are a lot of things we want to try," Wilcox says. "We really want to do some things presentation-wise that I think are going to be really kind of unique, that nobody's seen before and that are really missing in the e-sports arena right now in terms of giving the spectator a chance to gain more information without having that frantic pace that you always see in e-sports."

Other topics of conversation including the translocator, the dodge button and the overall game speed, which is still being tweaked to ensure the game remains accessible to everyone. "The general consensus in the forums has been that the old UT99 players feel like we're too slow, and so we recently sped it up just a little bit," Senior Designer Jim Brown says. "But we don't want to get to the point where it becomes so frantic that the average player kind of gets lost in the shuffle or can't keep up."

To find out more about what's in store in the new Unreal Tournament, have a look at our epic Epic interview from May.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.