Quake Champions - multiplayer hero shooter from id Software

[Blaine]

When I know beyond all doubt that the latest rape of a franchise will end up being indescribably pitiful and awful, I roll right on by the Depression Inn, run out of gas, and just coast into a parking slot at the Nihilism Motor Lodge.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

fucking hell this game's been in beta for waaaay too long and it's already starting to look like something from last gen.

honestly they should have been able to copy/paste the code from QL, upgrade the graphics, and release but instead we've got this thing that's in beta for like 2 years and everyone hates and nobody is going to play because it's got such a bad rep

 

[Astral Rag]

 

[Blaine]

"What are our strengths?"

"Nevermind that, we're going to bandwagon with whatever's popular, just like everyone else."

"Okay, sounds great!"

 

[udm]

Recent reviews are now Mixed, and Overall is Mostly Positive

 

[Durandal]

They sent out free steam keys for existing players to share with others, probably because the playerbase is shrinking that badly.

 

[SkiNNyBane]

I can run overwatch on decent settings at 200 fps but quake champions keeps dipping to sub 100 no matter how low i go which is a deal breaker for me. The game feels clunky (relatively to old quake) can't really figure out why exactly. Definitely not a fan of the new abilities and health variation. If I were making a arena shooter of this kind today I'd focus on making a good CTF game first and not focus on dueling too much.

Durandal I could use a key tho if you don't have anyone else to share it with since I never bought the game and it might actually end up being good in the future.

 

[JBro]

They sent out free steam keys for existing players to share with others, probably because the playerbase is shrinking that badly.

Someone gimme a Steam key, then. I'm not using their dumb client.

 

[Wulfstand]

They sent out free steam keys for existing players to share with others, probably because the playerbase is shrinking that badly.

Someone gimme a Steam key, then. I'm not using their dumb client.

Same, if someone could PM me a key, I'd much appreciate it. I'll play with ya to boot!

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

https://www.reddit.com/r/QuakeChamp...ment_physics_being_tied_to_fps_demonstration/

 

[Durandal]

 

[Astral Rag]

​

That music, holy shit. That art style is garbage too.





vs the utterly feeble, generic tween-safe trash posted above.

Fake id continues to bring MASSIVE decline on all fronts.

 

[Parsifarka]

Spoiler

It reminded me of a mix of dull Borderlands with

Spoiler

 

[fizzelopeguss]

The fuck are these dickheads doing.

 

[fantadomat]

Lets not forget quake 2,it was not a great single player game but it have some good music.

 

[grimace]

Quake Champions Idea

Battle Royale Arena Mode
Instagibs and 100 players

(Lowest ping wins!)

 

[Blaine]

The fuck are these dickheads doing.

I dunno, it's hard to picture.

Maybe picture it like this: The developers who've made bank off of this Team Fortress clone fad are scientists who've sold lots of science juice, and they're busy chalking equations on a board. Developers like id software (whoever the fuck that is these days) want a piece of the pie, so they quickly fashion lab coats out of spare dustrags and desperately start scratching at the dirt with sticks, not really understanding how or why writing squiggles on things is effective, but hoping to miracle up their own tasty science juice and make a lot of money.

In a way, I feel slightly bad for the no-talent hacks and small-time chumps trying to play catch-up and mimic what's selling, because players are fickle and there's no telling what they'll latch onto in any given year.

On the other hand, the levels of risk aversion and total lack of innovation today deeply disgust me. If your only "skill" as a studio is to notice what's making someone else money and then try to copy it like the world's most pathetic troupe of baboons, and if you've never produced anything worthwhile or innovative ever/this century, then quit game development and go get a real fucking job. Car mechanics make about $40k a year, depending on locale. That's great money in a small city.

 

[Quatlo]

I have lost all hope in FPS market after HiRez somehow managed to murderfuck Tribes Ascend with their greedy retardo p2w practices, but that Borderlands ripoff trailer just makes me giggle over the complete disconnection and creative bankrupcy of modern developers.
This shit is hialrious in some way.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

I had to watch that on youtube just to check the channel and make sure it wasn't a parody or fan-made or something. It couldn't be less Quake if it tried. The script, the art direction, the music, everything. Would've been more fitting for Pilotwings or some shit. I wasn't even particularly interested in the game and I'm still disappointed.

 

[Revenant]

I think it's supposed to be a humorous twist on the Borderlandesque implementation of Quake... But it still comes off lame af, lol

 

[Blaine]

I'm pretty impressed, actually. They're ripping off Star Trek, Borderlands, and Overwatch all at once—not that all of the aforementioned franchises aren't ripoffs in their own right, mind you.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Lets not forget quake 2,it was not a great single player game

WAT?

 

[fantadomat]

Lets not forget quake 2,it was not a great single player game

WAT?

It have great multi and honestly i do have fonder memory with quake 2 than with quake 3. Splashing your friend's face with a rocket after a nice rocketjump on "The edge" in LAN is a great memory. Even if your other friend decides to headshot you in mid air with the railgun. The single wasn't that great,mainly because of the level design and the aesthetics,most of the levels felt the same. Quake 1 have the best single player of all the quakes.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lets not forget quake 2,it was not a great single player game but it have some good music.

By modern standards, Quake 2's campaign was a masterpiece.

 

[fantadomat]

Lets not forget quake 2,it was not a great single player game but it have some good music.

By modern standards, Quake 2's campaign was a masterpiece.

No debate there mate,quake 2 had a decent campaign with interesting secrets and secret levels. Still liked the first game single more.

 

[Durandal]

On the other hand, the levels of risk aversion and total lack of innovation today deeply disgust me. If your only "skill" as a studio is to notice what's making someone else money and then try to copy it like the world's most pathetic troupe of baboons, and if you've never produced anything worthwhile or innovative ever/this century, then quit game development and go get a real fucking job. Car mechanics make about $40k a year, depending on locale. That's great money in a small city.

Funny thing, somewhere I read that the higher-ups at Nintendo would only prefer to hire people in game design positions who have barely played any video games. That sounds silly, but it actually makes some sense. Experienced players often take a lot of game elements for granted, so their line of thinking for coming up with new concepts is often constrained as 'X with Y', whereas a total newb can have an easier time thinking outside of the box, which lends itself better to innovation.

In a way, that also explains why the arena shooter 'genre' or 'subgenre' is the most incestuous genre of games in present history and the biggest waste of potential since the active years of Amiga gaming market. I find it hard to call it a genre because of how derivative all the games within it are and how much of an evolutionary dead end it is. Any new attempts at making an arena shooter utterly fail because a) most new arena shooters are often small indie projects which have little chance of maintaining a stable playerbase and b) they fail to seriously move on from Q3A. Why should I play this new game with no chance of a playerbase filled with players of all skill levels instead of Q3A which does have players (but all of which haven't moved from their chair the day they opened their Q3A box)? Just take a look at the arena shooters here and tell me which one actually stands out if you were to look at them mechanically (not counting Quake Champions, I'll get into that one later).

These new attempts fail to move beyond Q3A because they're largely slight iterations on Quake made by high-level Quake players, for high-level Quake players. Games like Defrag attempt to ease new players in through a myriad of tools and guides and matchmaking to help new players improve, but the core issue remains, it's still a fucking Q3 clone, and nobody not in the know is going to turn their heads twice for that. What do these new clones offer anyways? A different aesthetic? That's not going to keep people playing. An entirely different weapon arsenal? That's only going to work if the weapons are as unique as they were in Unreal Tournament, and even then it speaks bounds of the originality of your game that the only new things you can offer are different weapons. Some new movement techs? Bitch, only pros care about that stuff, especially when it's some obscure movement tech which slightly decreases your air friction and is only possible to execute on a handful of spots on the map by jumping and turning your mouse veeeery slightly, which allows you to pinkytoe-jump, a secret high-level technique. Nobody is really going to be drawn in by that.

It's not fucking hard to be a bit more imaginative here, Titanfall 2 was a modern popamole release but it had a very well realized and unique movement system allowing you to gain large amount of speeds, on top of its focus on wallrunning immediately setting it apart from any peers. Shit, we had fucking Tribes too until Hi-Rez drove it into the ground.

But the core fundamentals; the item control, the resource economy, the weapon archetypes, and the movement systems remain untinkered with. Nobody really tried to do anything interesting with these, so you end up with clones whose differences are largely superficial and don't take away from the burning question: why shouldn't I be playing Q3A/QL instead?

Of course, there's Quake Champions with its fucking... Champions. TotalBiscuit published a rant about this topic decrying Quake elitists for being too reluctant to accept innovation, and while he's right that this is an utterly stagnant genre, this does not mean we should gobble up any kind of garbage as long as its different, and I cannot blame these Quake elitists because nobody has really tried to offer a viable alternative to the arena shooter genre, one which isn't a direct descendant from the Quake family.

As a concept, I am not opposed at all to the idea of multiple player characters all with their own special shtick in an arena shooter. However, it is obvious that QC is chasing the (now long past) hero shooter trend and all the cancer it entails, this also entailing the presence of some kind of cheap one-button Ultimate which you can activate to instantly turn the tides in your favor, which is just cheap. A lot of the 'ultimates' in QC are often just that, cheap trump cards which force the opposing player on the defensive. Some Champions don't and their abilities are versatile enough without being a guaranteed advantage, which in turn the opponent has to take in account properly, which also lends itself better to mindgames, or the bread and butter of high-level Quake play.

I'm sure different player characters could work out in an arena shooter. After all, fighting games have massive rosters and remain competitively viable despite the presence of character tier lists. The argument that this is a no-go because arena shooters are always about players being on equal footing rests entirely on tradition, which isn't a valid argument and one of the main causes of stagnation within the genre. And it's not even entirely true for that matter. The initial spawning and respawning positions of players in maps is completely out of the players' hands. This randomness also affects which weapons and items are closest to you, essentially forcing your hand. You have no say in spawning close to a weapon you prefer. Sometimes you can hear in Quake matches the commentator say that someone got a bad spawn.

However, this is not seen as a glaring issue, because the good maps played over and over in competitive leagues compensate for this by balancing out the distance from spawn positions to weapon positions, or by putting them in harder to reach spots, so as to not completely fuck over a respawned player by having him spawn in a position far away from most items and weapons. This could have been a problem on paper, but in practice it works out just fine because of good map design. So if matters like these are merely matters of execution, what's to prevent having a character roster in arena shooters done well? Personally I think this isn't the right time to attempt doing so since it can be a seen as cashing on the already-fading hero shooter fad or copying Quake Champions (lol), but the potential remains.

Just think about it, why should any new attempt at an arena shooter have to copy Quake to the letter but not be different where it counts? This game in beta called Wormhole Wars is basically Halo meets Portal, but it got a lot of attention because the idea sounds cool. You can shoot portals on some surfaces and use them to transport yourself wherever, on top of that weapons in this game abide the law of physics so you can shoot a portal beneath a weapon to have it be transported towards you.

I am just going to reach in the depths of my asshole here. What if you could reverse the pull of gravity to switch between walking floors and ceilings at a moments notice? What if the game had both destructible environments and a cum gun to build platforms a la Prey? What if weapons technically have infinite ammo, but require item pick-ups to level up in terms of power and have special attacks which downgrade the weapon on use? What if you had abilities to screw with item spawn timers? What if all weapons were projectile-based, but some projectiles are too wide and too fast to reliably strafe around and need to be jumped over/slid under?

I'm sure some of it sounds terrible, but I'm also sure some of you are thinking "maybe this can actually work". I'd rather someone takes a stupid-ass concept and just tries to make it work rather than iterate on a game and only change it in miniscule ways. Fucking fighting games can be incredibly varied under the hood even if everything happening on the surface looks identical to some other fighting game you saw because you do not even fully comprehend what's going on.

Also, a singleplayer campaign helps to give your game staying value. Just sayin'