Quake Champions - multiplayer hero shooter from id Software

[Lyric Suite]

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?

I had to gleam over the wall of text 'cause tl;dr, but i think i found the heart of the problem here.

It is not a matter of whether one should or should not copy Quake. The question is about maintaining the same standards. Quake and Unreal Tournament were different on various levels, but each still got the basics to perfection (to the point liking one over the other really becomes a matter of taste more than anything), which is what counts for a game of this type.

It's like with shmups (to use an analogy that might be up your alley). You look at games like DoDonPachi and Battle Garegga and they are very different but also very close in terms of how well each handles the fundamentals of the genre. Now i'm a new fag to this type of games but i've noticed there are lot of indie shmups that try to add "new" things while failing to uphold the basics (and in many cases those new things are an hindrance more than anything). And that is what is happening with all those nu-shooters. And that's simply unacceptable for a type of game where you are supposed to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours on. See, a game like Deus Ex could get away with fucking up certain of the basics (gunplay, animations etc) in exchange of expanding the scope of the genre to new directions because single player games operate more like a work of art. You are enjoying the content, not necessarily the perfection of the execution. But with an online game, you can't do that. Everything has to be perfect. The shooting has to be perfect, the balancing needs to be tight, the design flawless, and so forth. Hell, i dare say even the aesthetics play a part. It's why Starcraft is so beloved, to use an example from another genre. Not only is the gameplay flawless (or as close as any game can get), but even the design of the art, the sounds etc is well done.

All those calls for "new things" normie faggots like Total Biscuit and people of his kind fixate on is a coop out. They don't get the essence of a particular game, so they make up for it for some fuzzy happy joy joy idealistic notion of "creativity" and "innovation". Anti-elitism is basically a code word for cluelessness and the resentment their ego suffers when exposed to something that is beyond their capability of understanding, and "innovation" is the way they ignore the question of substance by hiding behind pointless fluff and fancy imagery, which is what this "innovation" usually amounts to anyway. And when some faggot like TB bitches about Quake fans being "against innovation", this is what he is talking about. He is asking us to stop fixating on substance and join his happy joy joy club where we have to hold all the retards by hand and try not to bruise anyone's ego by asking for some kind of fucking standard of excellence.

 

[Durandal]

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?

I had to gleam over the wall of text 'cause tl;dr, but i think i found the heart of the problem here.

It is not a matter of whether one should or should not copy Quake. The question is about maintaining the same standards. Quake and Unreal Tournament were different on various levels, but each still got the basics to perfection (to the point liking one over the other really becomes a matter of taste more than anything), which is what counts for a game of this type.

Here's the thing, if your game is by most standards already perfect, what's there left to improve on? At some point someone had to realize that they weren't going to top the perfect game and that their efforts are better spent in other unexplored areas. Instead you end up with a whole bunch of 9/10s trying to imitate a 10/10, so naturally most people stick with the latter. For singleplayer games different takes would have more far-reaching consequences in terms of execution that justifies their own existence, but in the case of multiplayer games you need a playerbase to be playable at all, and only the best remains. There's nothing left to improve, only to add or do differently, but in this case the additions are minimal and the differences only noticeable to pros.

It's true that any game needs a good set of basics before it can start doing its own thing, as is the case in any craft, but just good basics can't cut it in terms of grabbing player attention anymore, and the issue here is that there's only a single movement in the art, so die-hard enthusiasts have a hard time imagining an arena shooter beyond the design confines of Quake without it turning into a different genre, because no viable alternative in terms of arena shooter design philosophy exists, whereas for shmups you had people like Yagawa and Ikeda with vastly different styles in terms of design and infinite fanboywars about which is best. Shmups need to be wildly unique because of how incredibly simple (but easy to fuck up) their basics are. In this case, Q3A (or UT) is the basic framework. Technically it's no different than any tacked-on multiplayer mode in any contemporary FPS, but it stands out because of how utterly perfect it is and how much depth can be had out of the deceptively simple pillars of moving, jumping, and shooting. You can't really beat it. Either you take Quake and do something interesting with it, or you make something entirely new from the ground up. This new theoretical multiplayer game may not be as perfect, but at least it has some things going for it that make it more worthwhile.

I hate the notion that innovation is a requirement as well as it prompts people to judge a game via comparison rather than on its own merits, though this also holds the same for standards. Two years ago a FPS called Devil Daggers was released, which is a horde shooter where you're stuck shooting skulls on an entirely flat space until you die. Sounds lame, but I consider it to be legitimately (near-)perfect. However, some other die-hard old-school FPS enthusiasts elsewhere criticized it for not having 'real' level design, real level design in this case being Doom/Build/Quake. But from a mechanical perspective, and for reasons I won't list because tl;dr, trying to implement 'real' level design in this game would essentially break it because of how tightly intertwined all the gameplay systems are. It just wouldn't work, but said purists just can't wrap their head around this game because of how firm their image of what a FPS must be is and how unlike any other FPS Devil Daggers is, at which point they confuse a difference in taste for objective criticisms. Sometimes when I read some posts about Serious Sam I think the same thing again.

Normally I would agree with you, but the FPS genre and by extent arena shooters are in dire need of any kind of creativity, even just to give people something to improve on if need be.

 

[Blaine]

Durandal Yeah, I put a good 700 hours or so into Tribes: Ascend before life got too busy and interfered with my playtime, and in retrospect I'm glad it did because I missed the game's period of neglect and decline by a hair. It was the last team/arena shooter I put any time into. I tried the Hawken beta around the same time, and enjoyed the aesthetics and kicking everyone's ass hard, but something about it didn't grab me. Apparently, Hawken went dark in January of this year.

I don't think that arena shooters will ever be truly popular again, because they all require a fairly high baseline of player skill to enjoy, let alone to excel in. The dotas and TF2s/Overwatches are all designed to accommodate low-skill players so that average retards can also enjoy themselves; at least, that's how it's always seemed to me. I put a little bit of time into TF2 back in the day but didn't see much appeal.

 

[RoSoDude]

Another ~700 hours Tribes: Ascend player reporting in. I feel like that's a genre ("FPS-Z" or whatever) that could be mined further for innovation. It still has a massive problem with skill floor, where most people futz around for 50 hours barely able to hit anyone with spinfusor disk let alone move, position, and lead targets in midair, but I still think a game like it could have garnered a respectable playerbase if HiRez hadn't shit the bed with it. There was something deeply fun and engrossing about it for which I haven't been able to find a replacement since.

Mind you, Tribes 2 Classic is still unmatched by the modern entries, but I was hopeful for Midair, since it seemed to be bridging the gap a bit better and maybe polishing up some of the more unapproachable systems of T1/T2C. There's still that pesky newb/veteran problem with the design, where I want naked spawn to add strategic depth but also admit that having to load into your heavy suit, just to slowly fatwalk your way to the enemy base, just to get sniped or backlanced is maybe not an experience that will retain new players (even T:A had a problem with relentless defense stacking in public games, making it a real chore to play offense unless you were good, which I'd like to say I eventually managed). Then again, the reward for a successful offense in under those rules was that the enemy defense was truly scrambled by a good base run, which helped keep things balanced and crucially, dynamic.

Oh yeah, Quake Champions. I still have almost zero interest in playing it. I'm still playing Quake: Live fairly routinely on the only server that's still consistently populated, and will probably keep that up until it's truly dead or gets shut down. After all, on average I come out to be simultaneously the fifth best and fifth worst casual Q:L player left in the world, why give that up?

 

[Blaine]

I really do gotta go fast. Every time I watch videos of these typical (multiplayer) shooters in which you trudge around like a fat janitor, I immediately lose interest. Going fast is part of why I allowed myself to get pulled into Warframe, which is a shit game, but definitely allows you to go fast.

Were any of you guys around for the influx of new players right after TotalBiscuit did a video on T:A? God, that was great. So many clueless scrubs to effortlessly mow down and carpetbomb with grenades from above, just plain, good old-fashioned fun.

 

[McPlusle]

So which real Quake is the most active? There's no way I'm dropping $5 on this.

 

[Revenant]

none

 

[Blaine]

Probably Quake Live, I think... although at this point it's a case of which empty condiment bottle has the most dregs left sticking to the bottom.

Pure skill shooters have a serious retention problem. Eventually, no one plays except a few hundred extremely skilled people. The occasional greenhorn has little hope of learning readily or "catching up" in anything like a reasonable time span, and soon quits.

Once the number of active skilled players dwindles enough, they get butthurt that there aren't more of themselves to play with, they move on almost en masse, and then the whole thing self-destructs.

 

[fantadomat]

Quake live did still had a players last year. I do like to go in and play once or twice a year. If you have some decent experience playing old school shooters,you won't be on the bottom of the scoreboard. In a game with a lot of players is very chaotic and it is more easy to score frags without high map knowledge. In one on one you will get your ass handed by the old dogs.

 

[McPlusle]

I just checked Unreal Tournament "4" and it's still in Pre-Alpha. Did Epic give up for their children's game? The only remotely active arena shooter I own seems to be UT1999, which still has one or two deathmatches going with over four players.

 

[SkiNNyBane]

I just checked Unreal Tournament "4" and it's still in Pre-Alpha. Did Epic give up for their children's game? The only remotely active arena shooter I own seems to be UT1999, which still has one or two deathmatches going with over four players.

Yea their developers are all focusing on Fartnite.

 

[Big Wrangle]

Unreal Tournament 4's last update was in June, and they were generally slow. It was gonna stagnate with or without Fortnite, which one could see coming back when they put up the source code.

 

[Maggot]

So which real Quake is the most active? There's no way I'm dropping $5 on this.

Quake Live, Quake 2, and Quakeworld in that order. Quakeworld is more active if you live in europe but if you live in NA like me its the occasional 1v1 and TDM or the weekend Team Fortress matches. Quake 2's servers are mostly based in Texas but they have an active competitive European scene (mostly poles and swedes) and play Action Quake 2 all the time.
http://nquake.com/
http://q2s.tastyspleen.net/

 

[McPlusle]

So which real Quake is the most active? There's no way I'm dropping $5 on this.

Quake Live, Quake 2, and Quakeworld in that order. Quakeworld is more active if you live in europe but if you live in NA like me its the occasional 1v1 and TDM or the weekend Team Fortress matches. Quake 2's servers are mostly based in Texas but they have an active competitive European scene (mostly poles and swedes) and play Action Quake 2 all the time.
http://nquake.com/
http://q2s.tastyspleen.net/

Is Action Quake 2 fun? I haven't played anything that looks similar since The Specialists 3.0 for Half-Life.

 

[Maggot]

Yes it's what The Specialists and Urban Terror are based off of. It's got Quake 2 movement which means double jumping up lampposts and buildings and sliding around the map at high speeds while having round based, CS style matches with lethal weapons. Unlike CS its meant to ape action movies rather than be a more "realistic" shooter. Nowadays you either have to play it with the Finns or BRs for a proper game or sometimes the American FFA server.

 

[udm]

So which real Quake is the most active? There's no way I'm dropping $5 on this.

Quake Live, Quake 2, and Quakeworld in that order. Quakeworld is more active if you live in europe but if you live in NA like me its the occasional 1v1 and TDM or the weekend Team Fortress matches. Quake 2's servers are mostly based in Texas but they have an active competitive European scene (mostly poles and swedes) and play Action Quake 2 all the time.
http://nquake.com/
http://q2s.tastyspleen.net/

And if you live in chink continent like me, you're just flat out of luck.

 

[Revenant]

So which real Quake is the most active? There's no way I'm dropping $5 on this.

Quake Live, Quake 2, and Quakeworld in that order. Quakeworld is more active if you live in europe but if you live in NA like me its the occasional 1v1 and TDM or the weekend Team Fortress matches. Quake 2's servers are mostly based in Texas but they have an active competitive European scene (mostly poles and swedes) and play Action Quake 2 all the time.
http://nquake.com/
http://q2s.tastyspleen.net/

And if you live in chink continent like me, you're just flat out of luck.

Just install q3+osp and look for private servers. There are some alive, I doubt the chink gubmint blocked their IPs.

 

[Big Wrangle]

What's the best source port for the first Quake? I'm looking for one that retains the original look without any new graphical additions.

 

[McPlusle]

What's the best source port for the first Quake? I'm looking for one that retains the original look without any new graphical additions.

The nQuake installer lets you uncheck the fancy high-res stuff. Avoid sourceports like Darkplaces.

 

[Big Wrangle]

Avoid sourceports like Darkplaces.

What is exactly wrong with that category of sourceports? Just curious.

 

[McPlusle]

It's not bad; it's just the opposite of what you're asking for. Darkplaces is largely for "graphical improvements"

 

[Big Wrangle]

Ah I see, yeah that makes sense. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I use Quakespam myself:

http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/

Make sure to change texture filtering and get rid of the round particles for tr00 software experience:

To enable oldschool pixel rendering in instead of the texture blur enter gl_texturemode GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR in the console. Oh, doesn't it look great now!

Square Particles

You can also make particles be rendered as squares instead of circles by entering r_particles 2 in the console, not many engines support this. Fitzquake and Quakespasm do.

I think this is the best sourceport now. Maintains the feel of the original but also supports all the new maps, can play the music in lossless formats like flac and so far hasn't given me any nonsense.

 

[Big Wrangle]

 

[Parsifarka]

What's wrong with WinQuake?