The decision to make player characters egg-shaped is a pretty clever way of communicating that there are no headshots in this game, something that has always seemed a bit confusing to newcomers jumping into Quake in the post-Call-of-Duty era. The decision to release an esports-ready competitive shooter with no personality of its own on the Fortnite launcher wasn't quite as clever. Diabotical may as well have been dead on arrival.
It could still be lots of fun, of course. It's transparently a Quake III clone at its core, the movement and shooting were both as fun as always, and the original maps all felt adequately designed. But multiplayer shooters live and die on so much more than just the competence of their design. Slavish adherence to arena shooter tradition alone doesn't bring in new blood, as much as we all wish it could. Without the community to back it up, Diabotical became a mausoleum for its own ambition.
It could still be lots of fun, of course. It's transparently a Quake III clone at its core, the movement and shooting were both as fun as always, and the original maps all felt adequately designed. But multiplayer shooters live and die on so much more than just the competence of their design. Slavish adherence to arena shooter tradition alone doesn't bring in new blood, as much as we all wish it could. Without the community to back it up, Diabotical became a mausoleum for its own ambition.