When comparing Cube 2: Sauerbraten vs Diabotical, the Slant community recommends Cube 2: Sauerbraten for most people. In the question“What are the best PC arena shooters?” Cube 2: Sauerbraten is ranked 9th while Diabotical is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Cube 2: Sauerbraten is:
There are no skills beyond those common to all AFPS games: very basic movement, aim, weapon switching, item timing, map knowledge. There is less to learn so newbies can become proficient more quickly, but there is still the ability to hone those basic skills to a very high level, as evidenced by regular community tournaments.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Simple gameplay
There are no skills beyond those common to all AFPS games: very basic movement, aim, weapon switching, item timing, map knowledge. There is less to learn so newbies can become proficient more quickly, but there is still the ability to hone those basic skills to a very high level, as evidenced by regular community tournaments.
Pro Fast movement
Movement is very simple but acceleration is very fast, so hitting an opponent good at dodging is more difficult than perhaps any other AFPS.
Pro Cross platform
Available for Windows, MacOS and Linux.
Pro Free, open-source
Pro Low hardware requirements
If you can run the original Quake 3 you can probably run this (with the advanced graphics features disabled).
Pro Easy map editing
Getting into map editing is very easy, which has resulted in a large number of user-created maps with a wide variety, from massive sky castles where you have to hunt down your opponent from far away, to large CTF maps, to competitive, claustrophobic 1v1 arenas with teleports.
Pro Many gametypes and gametype combinations
Free-For-All (everyone for themselves, all weapons allowed), Capture (where teams fight for control of points on the map), Capture the Flag (two teams fight to capture the other's flag and return it to their base), Teamplay (defeat the other team's players to score points for your team), Tactics (FFA, no weapon pickups, players spawn with random equipment), Efficiency (FFA, no weapon pickups, players spawn with all equipment) InstaHold, where two teams have to possess a single flag for a minimum of 20 seconds to score points; Collect (kill enemy players and collect their skulls, which then have to be returned to the home base), and Protect (teams try to touch each other's flag). Instagib, regenerative weapons ("regen") and Teamplay versions of most of the game modes are available, as well as online cooperative map editing—one of Cube 2's most interesting and popular features.
Pro Has a Doom-like singleplayer campaign
Pro Made by people from the e-sports scene
James Harding, aka '2GD' is the main man behind The GD Studio and Diabotical. Jonas Gustafson, aka 'OoZe' is also an animator for the game. Both are former e-sports players and the team gets direct input from other people from the e-sports scene in developing this game.
Pro Great modding support
The GD Studio is developing a map editor for Diabotical, but the game will have a very high degree of modability. According to the developers, who created a new engine from scratch for this game, players will even be able to create an entire stand alone game if they wanted to. They plan to make use of the Steam Workshop to support modding.
Pro Great movement mechanics
This is all subject to change as Diabotical is still in development, but as it stands the game will feature strafe jumping and double jumps. A quick double tapping of the jump button will also make you go higher than a normal double jump. Weapons can also be used for movement, such as jumping up walls with rocket launchers (rocket-jumps) and there's a certain degree of air control.
Pro Built-in community building features
Diabotical will feature community hubs for anyone, but everyone can make their own community hubs for their clan or build one with the map editor. The admin can decorate the hub with decals, there will be Twitch integration, so you can play entire streams on a screen inside the hub and there is a separate screen for Twitch chat. Also, there will be a wall where there will be a model for each member of the clan. It would take the default uniform of the clan and when offline, the model of the member's character will be on display there. When hovering over a model, the player's name and possibly statistics will be displayed.
Pro Good marketing
The studio shows right off the bat their skills in marketing, they somehow managed to pull in an audience without even showing anything inherently new and innovative weapons/movement wise as far as arena shooters go. Even if it turns out to be bad/unoriginal game, chances are it will still be popular. The studio (2GD especially) is not afraid to put their reputation in use.
Cons
Con Simple graphics
For the most part it looks like a game from the early 2000s. There are advanced options that use a lot more GPU power, but inefficiently compared to modern games, and many competitive players turn these off in favour of visual clarity and a really high framerate.
Con Simple gameplay
The gameplay is more basic than almost all other AFPS games. Movement doesn't get any more advanced than recoil/rocket jumping, without even crouching or bunnyhopping. This is great for newbies and for becoming competent quickly but for experienced AFPS players getting around the map is less interesting and there are less skills to work on - just the basics of aiming, weapon selection, item timing, and map knowledge.
Con Epic exclusive
Most gamers are fine with devs publishing their games off of Steam but it tends to become a problem whenever the developer gets bribed by Epic.