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Rocket Arena is a user-created multiplayer modification ("mod") for the seminal First Person Shooter game Quake (and subsequently for a number of games). Released in 1997 (less than a year after Quake's debut), Rocket Arena (often simply known as "RA") is one of the most successful and influential amateur-created game modifications.
Rocket Arena's gameplay is similar to the standard deathmatch mode, where individual players chase one another around a virtual world, trying to slaughter one another with a variety of weapons. The Rocket Arena mode aims to correct some of the weaknesses many found in conventional deathmatch. In particular, in deathmatch, slain players are reincarnated in a relatively weak condition, and must dodge their better prepared opponents while searching for the upgrades necessary to compete successfully. This can lead to conditions where one (or a small number of) player can dominate the game, hoarding all the game's upgrades and repeatedly killing their perpetually disadvantaged opponent without ever dying themselves. Such domination isn't a particularly good reflection of the dominant player's skill - it frequently reflects their having been fortunate in getting into the dominant position first, or having more experience of the particular setting (i.e. knowing where specific upgrades will appear).
Rocket Arena aims to level the playing field by giving reincarnated players full health, weapons, and armour. No further pickups are available, so each player's condition monotonically decreases through the game, until they are killed and reborn. Once a player is fragged, he or she is removed from play, and allowed to spectate. Depending on the specific mode, they player must wait until their team wins or loses, until the queue of players waiting their turn for combat has been exhaused (the "round robin" mode), or they are immediately returned to the game. The nature of RA rewards accuracy and the conservative use of ammunition, and encourages fluid, open play rather than some of the static conditions in which ordinary deathmatch quake can sometimes decay; tactics such as hiding, sniping, and camping (seen my many as unsportsmanlike) lose much of their effectiveness in Arena-mode combat. Many players consider Rocket Arena to be the best and fairest showcase of a player's skills, where effects of luck and unsportsmanlike play are largely mitigated.
Freely available in both source and binary forms, the original Rocket Arena mod quickly became one of the most popular modifications for Quake, running on hundreds of public servers worldwide. The Rocket Arena team subsequently produced versions for Quake II and Quake III Arena, and similar arena modes of combat are built into (or available for) many current FPS games, including Half-Life (with the Lambda Arena mod) and the Unreal Tournament series.