Why the Unreal Tournament '99 Rocket Launcher is Goddamn Awesome

In designing competitive games, it’s incredibly important to make sure that there are always distinct choices for players to make. Distinct choices are what make a game interesting, and their presence or absence can make or break a game. For example, let’s say you can choose between two weapons, A and B. A does half the damage that B does, but the two are otherwise exactly the same - same range, same speed, same everything. Which would you choose? Of course you choose B, the weapon that does more damage. Why would you sacrifice half your damage for no type of measurable difference, no advantage?

Choices being strictly better or worse than one another is something to always be avoided. In the example above, B is the superior weapon because it does more damage with no downside. If the other weapon had, say, twice the range, which is better? Now you can’t say for certain. Weapon A having twice the range but half the damage of Weapon B is a distinct choice. Chances are that each weapon would excel in different circumstances; neither is strictly superior to the other.

So choices shouldn’t be strictly better/worse than one another. Got it. What about Rock Paper Scissors? Any gesture you can play loses to one gesture, meaning it also beats one gesture. There is no choice in Rock Paper Scissors that is strictly better than any other, so it’s an interesting choice, right? Not really. In any given situation, each gesture has a ⅓ chance of winning, losing, or tieing, and every situation (my gesture versus yours) is equally likely to occur. While Rock Paper Scissors lacks choices which are strictly superior to one another, it also completely lacks distinct choices. It doesn’t matter what you pick, it’s just as likely to win a given round as any other choice you could make. The lack of distinct choices keeps it from being interesting.

With that background information out of the way, let’s talk about the Rocket Launcher from Unreal Tournament ‘99. Why talk about a game from 1999? Because shut it, that’s why.

I’m kidding. You’re great. (Really!)

I’m going with Unreal Tournament ‘99 (UT99 from now on) because I’ve spent more time playing it than any other first person shooter game, I haven’t played later games in the series, there’s plenty to be learned from studying something regardless of its age, and UT99’s Rocket Launcher is an incredible weapon in a game of great weapons.

The Rocket Launcher fires a slow-moving missile that explodes on impact, damaging anything in a small radius. This property means that directly hitting the opponent is unnecessary, which is good since the rocket can be avoided by sidestepping it. If I were to fire at your chest, you could simply avoid it as it passes by and explodes in the distance. However, I can instead shoot at your feet - it’ll explode when it hits the ground near you, dealing damage. This is much harder to avoid, since you’re trying to avoid the blast radius (large) rather than the rocket itself (small). This leads to the Rocket Launcher being highly effective in two different core scenarios - when you have the height advantage, shooting down on your opponent, or in enclosed spaces, both of which make it difficult to avoid the explosion.

The Rocket Launcher  has more tricks up its sleeve, though. Instead of shooting rockets, the weapon also allows you to use its ammunition as grenades, lobbing them a good distance where they explode if an enemy touches them or after a couple of seconds. This opens up the Rocket Launcher, giving it a ton of new functionality. You can toss them behind you while running away, making chasing you a very dangerous proposition. Is someone on the other side of a wall? You can’t shoot a rocket through the wall, so lob a grenade over it! Is someone around a corner? You can’t shoot a grenade through the corner, so lob a grenade around it! Is someone else with a Rocket Launcher shooting down at you over a ledge? Who cares that they’ve got the high ground advantage - lob a grenade up at them! The grenade functionality very cleverly shores up the weaknesses of the traditional Rocket Launcher.

UT99’s Rocket Launcher doesn’t stop there, though. If you hold the fire button, it loads multiple rockets (or grenades, depending on the firing mode) to fire all at once. It can hold up to six in its barrel at any given time, and once it has six it automatically fires them all - rockets spread out in a fan, and grenades fire in a cluster. This isn’t so useful in tight hallways, where the Rocket Launcher already shines, but further makes up for its weak points. You can drop multiple grenades behind you, making it harder to avoid the cluster of them and increasing your chances of escaping a pursuer. In wide, open spaces, you can load multiple rockets and fire them in a fanning-out formation - a singular grenade would be easy to avoid in a large space, but avoiding 4 or 5 at the same time is much harder.

UT99’s Rocket Launcher also has a feature where, after aiming at a target for a few seconds, a rocket fired at the target will home in on it. This again, is useful in open spaces; dodging a rocket isn’t too difficult given enough space, but homing rockets, well, home in, making dodging ineffective. It’s another mechanic to strengthen its weaknesses, but the Rocket Launcher already has a way of increasing effectiveness in open spaces by being able to fire multiple rockets at a time. Lock-on is kind of superfluous. Not everything can be perfect!

The Rocket Launcher is one of the strongest weapons in the game if you’re on the high ground or in a narrow area, where its missiles are difficult to avoid. In wide open spaces where avoiding the rockets is easy, you can load and fire multiple rockets at once to make avoiding the attack more difficult. This isn’t a perfect solution, since it requires setup time and additional rockets. It can also use grenades to reach areas that the rockets can’t really hit, including over ledges, which makes fighting another Rocket Launcher that has the high ground not impossible.

There are other weapons for these situations, though, and those weaponsperform better in their niche than the Rocket Launcher does when it barges into their territory. The Flak Cannon and Biorifle, for example, shoot projectiles in an arc, easily sailing over walls and ledges from farther away than the Rocket Launcher can. The Ripper fires discs that bounce off of surfaces multiple times, making it great at shooting around a corner. The Minigun deals consistent, hard-to-avoid damage as long as you can keep the opponent in your sight, which is easy to do in open spaces.

The Rocket Launcher does a few things extremely well, while providing more options to do things that it normally can’t do so well. These secondary options require setup time or extra ammunition, though, and the Rocket Launcher is a passable, but not ideal, choice in these situations. It isn’t strictly better than any other weapon in the game, since it’s mediocre in certain situations where other weapons shine. And in turn, those weapons are often nowhere near as good as the Rocket Launcher in its primary areas of effectiveness. Which weapon you want to use in a situation is a distinct choice because each weapon is different enough from the others where the choice matters, and is always an interesting one.

In short - it’s goddamn awesome.

-Jacob

Comments

[Peter]

This did a great job of explaining competitive game design, really. You break down what choices mean in games, how they can be different, you clearly include how many different situations the rocket launcher can be used in, and then sum it up with counter examples that show how it can handle some situations, but it's out-shined by other choices. Nicely done.

Just a thought--does the rocket launcher's placement in a map have anything to do with what situations it's good in? Or really, any weapon--are they placed somewhere that their strengths shine? Are rocket launchers usually high up, so they can immediately be used for some kills (but in a visible location, so opponents can see you angling for the powerful option)? Is this true because in UT99 nobody lives for long, or is it not true because goddamn, everybody gets fragged in seconds? I haven't played it seriously in a good long while, so I'm wondering if you had any insight on it.