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Quake Live Beta Ends, Optional Subscription Plans Added
An anonymous reader sends news that the beta tag has come off of id's Quake Live, and they've added two subscription plans to monetize the game. The announcement asserts early and often that the game's current "Standard" play options will remain free-to-play. The lower subscription tier gets extra maps, a new Freeze Tag game mode, and clan creation abilities, among other things, for $2 per month. The higher plan, which is twice as expensive, grants players those benefits plus the capability to create their own private servers.
All this for a game that you could find the bargain bin for 10 dollars...3 years ago.
It broke the linux game, seemingly for everyone who is using the free-version, because when the ad finishes, the game crashes. No comment from id yet, 3 days later... http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showthread.php?57-Firefox-closes-when-joining-a-game-(Linux)
Yes, they really do advertise it as "$1.99 per month, billed annually". http://bethblog.com/index.php/2010/08/06/id-introduces-two-quake-live-subcription-packages/ So 12 months or nothing, buster.
.
. hmmm
Pretty sure I can do ALL of that with the copy I bought over a decade ago, and of course, I and many others did.
At $2/month, I will join just to support them.
It's pretty lame, lots of reports of problems on Linux where the ad ends and causes a browser crash.
Simple update to include ads and they botched it somehow. (random stutters once in a while too, never happened before)
Quake 3 and ID software thrived on mods and modifications to their engine and changing the source code. I was never that great at quake 3 but I would love to play freeze tag. For those who don't know, freeze tag is a team mod of quake 3 where everyone has only a modified railgun. Shooting an opponent freezes him so he cant participate in the round, you can unfreeze teammates by standing next to them for 2 seconds causing them to respawn immediately. Freezing the entire team earns your team one point and causes everyone to respawn. It was a superb game mode that i enjoyed a lot more than the regular game.
The point of these subscriptions. I mean they're not expensive or anything but anyone could host a Q3A or OpenArena server for cheaper / free and It would basically be the same thing imo. Just without paying annually. Is there something Quake Live has that Q3A and OpenArena don't? (Last time I played Quake Live was a while back)
Problems with Quake Live compared to Quake 3 Arena:
1. No ability to mod or create/use new maps.
2. No ability to host your own servers or use unofficial servers.
3. Common free user mods now require a subscription.
4. The subscription is between 2 and 5 times what Quake 3 Arena costs, but for that price you only get 1 years' worth of gameplay instead of a lifetime's worth.
Quake 3 Arena is an awesome game that, in terms of sheer gameplay, still has no equal. If Id just re-made Quake 3 Arena with updated graphics, but the same gameplay, same customizability, same map-making and mod-ability, it would be a smash hit. The only reason people stopped playing it is because at some point it crossed the psychological boundary between "new" and "old." Tournaments stopped using it, and it faded into obscurity. But when no game has topped the visceral, breakneck pace, strategy and balance of the game, Id has a surefire hit on their hands just simply making the game look new and re-releasing it. Why they wasted all this time trying to monetize the old version is beyond me.
I'm fine with the free version, and I think the free version is a great idea. But when they start to charge for anything, it's incomprehensible why they're wasting their time trying to re-sell a dated game at a higher cost and lower value than the original.
While I understand a consistent revenue stream makes life easier for the devs, is that really a good thing? A subscription model for maps and mods means that once the subscription is up, you either buy the game again (what these prices equate to) or give up access to the media you've been using for the past year. That could be a powerful incentive for some users to re-subscribe, whether the devs have been releasing new maps and mods or not. My pessimistic/paranoid side says they'll build up a semi-decent game and then just sit on it till it rots.
A one-time per-item charge for maps and mods would force the developers to keep releasing new material on a regular basis. If they want to build a subscription model on top of that, say to remove the ads, run private servers and such - stuff that might actually affect the day to day costs of running the game - that's fine with me. Tacking the maps on to said subscription strikes me as over-bundling... Paying for the crap so you can get the few items you want. The music industry pushed that model for many years, much to the detriment of their public image.
They did remake it with updated graphics, it was called Quake4. That and all the other myriad QIII style arena shooters aren't used for tournaments any more because bunny hopping around and spamming rockets and splashing around corners just isn't very strategic.
5. No custom cfg's.
6. I'm guessing no RA even though it was probably played by more people than DM. (lol@butthurt DM purists)
As for a remake, I'll pass. As the next poster mentions, they did make Q4, and it sucked, bad.
They did, it's called Quake 4. But I agree, this Quake Live think looks like a completely terrible thing that shouldn't even exist, but sadly it gets many new players or returning old players. I mean, pay 2 bucks per month for Freeze Tag, that I've been playing on the regular Q3A for free since forever? I'm glad id has found a new cash cow to support Carmack's space hobby, but fuck this.
Quake4 failed because apparently the competitive players that moved onto it had FX5200s and bitched and bitched about the engine being too slow.
If they're so gaming savvy, one would expect them to own something competent for a video card... that's obviously not the case. It's all an excuse to un-cheat the ambientLight cvar to turn off all the lighting causing the levels to be fullbright. Since the final 1.4.1 patch, it became a ghost town where no one plays Quake4 online anymore because it is no longer fair and fun for anyone.
StopHavingFunGuys says it all. If you please these guys, you fuck it up for everyone else, and make the learning curve shoot up into the sky.
That is pretty cheap for a subscription by others standards. I think WOW costed around 15 a month
Very good points!!!
Haven,t played Q3A for a long long time but back then I was a hardcore q3 player but I don,t have the reflexes anymore. What an amazing game, the best that ever was. The pure, fast, simple, fluid action, all the amazing maps (default and custom). Gave me adrenaline rush every time. Nothing compares to it. And no alt fire thank you! The rocket jump, the rail gun (imho the ultimate was the railgun in Quake 2). I close my eyes and I can still see the maps. My favorite was q3dm6.
I am a premium subscriber. I bought the subscription with the thought "now that we can make clans and create servers there will be a league or official id competitions". Unless that happens I doubt I'll renew my subscription. The additional "Premium Only" maps are indeed nice and the competition is fierce among Quake Pro's. Right now I only see it as a way for id to capitalize off of the hardcore Quake players. I'm hopeful that we'll have some kind of league system built in so clans can thrive again. I'm not going to hold my breath but if id wants to make money on a team game it would be nice to motivate people to form good teams and compete so they.... I dunno... stick around and renew their subscriptions year after year.
I understand the gripes about it being an old game but as most have pointed out... it's one of the best team games ever created. One of the reasons for it's success is because of fairness. As with Chess, everyone has the same weapons, it's how you use them that counts. Quake 3 / Quake Live is a First Person Shooter equivalent to chess... thus it's a masterpiece.
I don't hear anyone complaining about Chess just because of how old it is...
consider that you can pretty much play the game on any PC -- much like Steam it's going to be easily portable. No more dragging around a CD and having to have the key to install it. For a quick fix here and there it's a good bargain. Hell, if you play 2 hrs a month that's only $1/hr. A cup of coffee at Starbucks costs more..
I've played around with Quake Live now and then.
Its crazy buggy and the java in it slows my computer to a crawl. I have a fairly modern machine, and Quake 3 was making it bog down. Seriously?
Not only that, but I wanted to play with a friend of mine who lives about 100 miles away. Neither of us could figure out how to start a game that was just private for the two of us.
This is not Q3A with updated graphics, the graphics are pretty much the same (possibly the engine is further optimized). The game play has been tweaked for balance and competitive play. If you want the free mods, free private servers, etc.. just play normal q3a, it's almost the same thing.
Quake Live is a service and is priced as such. You can fire it up from anywhere anytime and it keeps your stats. This is something id wanted to do since they first started work on QuakeWorld, and now they did. It turned out pretty good i think.
If Id just re-made Quake 3 Arena with updated graphics, but the same gameplay, same customizability, same map-making and mod-ability, 95% of the copies sold would be pirated, just like every PC game. Id probably wouldn't make a profit.
There, fixed that for you. Really, why does the average slashdotter think they know better than the people who do this for a living?
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
I disagree that a full-blown remake of Quake 3 would be a good commercial proposition. Remaking the game on fresh technology would be expensive; even with the current console generation (which defines the technical limits for most games, with a few rare exceptions like Crysis) edging up towards 5 years old, development costs remain far higher than they were when Quake 3 came out. The successful bits of the industry can absorb these costs because there are far more gamers than there were a decade ago. However, I think the appeal of a Quake 3 remake to most newer games is almost non-existent.
Even at the time, despite the strong support it gets from part of the fanbase, Quake 3 perhaps had less impact as a game (as opposed to its engine, which powered umpteen other games over the next few years) than had been expected. With its multiplayer-only focus, its emphasis on the "pro-gamer" market and its lack of new ideas, it really marked the point where id lost their leadership in the fps market. It's not really age that killed the game off from the tournament scene, but rather the fact that the audience shrank relatively quickly. If age had been the factor, then Counter-Strike (which ran on technology long-since obsolete by the time of Quake 3's launch) wouldn't have outlasted it for so long. In the era of Quake and Quake 2, if you played fpses online, you basically played one of those two games or one of their mods. Quake 3 was never more than one competitor among many.
Quake 4 achieved some reasonable sales success, but the fact that it vanished almost immediately from the mainstream online scene indicates that the singleplayer campaign was probably what most people bought it for. With the current online gaming scene dominated by Modern Warfare, Gears of War and Halo 3, it's pretty clear that tastes have moved away from the "bouncy deathmatch" model of the Quake series.
Thanks for doing the mental legwork, but if people just used _specific numbers and units_ instead of three SUV trunks to the gallon of football fields, I would feel less like smacking someone.
Rant over.
ioquake3 - ioquake3.org
No what's funny: in many ways ioq3 engine is better than Quake Live engine (basic stuff like surround sound is actually working)
All it needs are updated graphics and a better server browser. Unfortunately the new QL graphics are not "licensable" so you're stuck with Q3A graphics if you paid the game, or stuff like Open Arena (it's ugly and does not represent Q3 game play imo)
Another alternative in the batch of mostly open source quake-like stuff is warsow, which has pretty fine graphics and innovative game play. I don't like their policy tho (they don't release sources unless you're really convincing), but it's the best one I've used - I mean it's actually challenging and fun to play, like Q3A, but slightly diff, and free.
Quake 4 shares very little with Q3A physics and gameplay, it just has the "so called similar weapons" but it's a different game.
Quake Live is a modified Q3A but most of it is actually the same as Q3A, physics are tweaked but nearly the same, and so on
QuakeLive gives me games at my skill level at any time. It works very well on Linux. There are many servers. It's free.
Sure some people prefer to play Q3A. Or maybe Excessive (ugh). Or OSP. Or of course CPMA. So what? Just continue doing so.
quake4 failed because the multiplayer was broken from the outset. finally around version 1.4 they fixed a bunch of shit (like removing the stupid ticrate cap that was set at 16ms/60fps) only to add it back again at 90fps in 1.4.1. why? a couple of idiot whiners. by 1.4 the physics had been completely changed and so the maps that shipped with the game were completely useless. the fixed physics were playable but nothing great. it felt like you were flying/bouncing around all over the place on surfaces made of ice with only the barest of strafe-jumping..the weapons were not balanced well.
modding the game was a disaster. it was almost impossible to make maps look decent lighting wise without killing performance. the one or two lights per surface works fine in games like doom where everything is dark and locally lit anyway. try to build a quake like map with soft shadowing and such? good luck. even with that, the stencil shadowing was tough on the cards of the time so geometry had to be really simple unless you built your map entirely from 'models' instead of brushes and lit the whole world with one light and a couple of small detail lights. worthless..
the sdk was buggy and mostly uncommented. change one bit of code one place, and *crash*. ...dont even get me started on the GUI /game scripting language that id implemented. terrible. break one little piece of code in one file, and ALL of the in-game scripts would bug out.
quake4 failed because of the multiplayer that was completely worthless in 1.0. by 1.4 they fixed a bunch of it, but it still wasn't right. by then it was too late. it just ended up being a broken q3 with a realtime lighting system that placed harsh limitations on how maps were lit (if you wanted performance) and an overwrought physics engine that needed a beefy cpu to run it well. to this day, the game still drops network events, so things like hearing the sounds of other players activities would get dropped was a hit or miss scenario.
quake 4 was an outsourced project and it shows. sorry raven, but you blew this one.
That would be $24. It costs 1.99 monthly only if you already subscribe, which means you paid $24.
How do these dickheads get away with this " $1.99 per month, billed annually," BS?.
That would be $24. It costs 1.99 monthly only if you already subscribe, which means you paid $24.
How do these dickheads get away with this " $1.99 per month, billed annually," BS??
Quake 4 achieved some reasonable sales success, but the fact that it vanished almost immediately from the mainstream online scene indicates that the singleplayer campaign was probably what most people bought it for. With the current online gaming scene dominated by Modern Warfare, Gears of War and Halo 3, it's pretty clear that tastes have moved away from the "bouncy deathmatch" model of the Quake series.
it vanished because the multiplayer was what people bought it for. They got it to a playable state in 1.4, but the overwrought physics engine made gameplay clunky, and the overwrought lighting system made it almost impossible to make good looking maps that ran well, even on top end gfx cards of the time (7800gtx). by this point the community was fed up.. in fact, it was q4 that helped to seal the fate of the dwindling q3 community. many had jumped ship to q4 thinking it was the next big thing, but when it was shown to be the turd that it is, a lot just threw in the towel.
the mod sdk was a joke. the C code was largely uncommented which made it very difficult to manipulate because it was a LOT larger than the codebase of the previous games. the gui/game event scripting language interpreter was awful. break one bit of syntax in ANY script file anywhere in the mod dir and every script in the game would go bonkers. the version of q3radiant they hacked into the quake4.exe (yes it was built in which is fucking retarded) was missing 90% of the features the community had grown used to thanks to the 6+ YEARS of development that had been done with the open source gtkradiant.
I think only one mod project is left, and that is q4max. these are the guys that do promode for q3. it's decent considering what they had to work with, but the game's engine ruins it.
There's something called CD Keys for multiplayer online games. You should look it up. It's a pretty big deal, I hear.
1. no unsanctioned user content.
2. no 3rd party independent servers.
3. it's a stupid browser dll. why? just have the javascript call quake3.exe with the params...
4. the stock q3 maps were not much to rave about. only a few were serviceable during q3's lifetime (q3dm6,q3dm7,q3dm13, q3dm16, and everyone lived q3dm17 for some reason). the rest were rarely if ever played. the rest of the 'premium' content is just the team arena maps. big deal. paying for map packs = lame bullshit.
5. sure it has a 'community' but then so did q3. q3's community is/was far superior in many ways. many were active producers of content and the consumers played active roles in testing prereleases. many of them cared.. that makes a BIG difference in the intrinsic value of something like a game community. people paying subscriptions have a completely different attitude.
6. no blood, censored language chat in game and in the forums.. really? since when was quake rated PG? the quake I remember was full of piss and vinegar and attitude, game and players both. that was its charm. pantywaists with thin skin need not apply.
1. no unsanctioned user content.
2. no 3rd party independent servers.
3. it's a stupid browser dll. why? just have the javascript call quake3.exe with the params...
4. the stock q3 maps were not much to rave about. only a few were serviceable during q3's lifetime (q3dm6,q3dm7,q3dm13, q3dm16, and everyone lived q3dm17 for some reason). the rest were rarely if ever played. the meat and potatoes were the maps that came with the various large mod projects that came later.
5. the rest of the 'premium' content is just the team arena maps. big deal. paying for map packs = lame bullshit.
6. sure it has a 'community' but then so did q3. q3's community is/was far superior in many ways. many were active producers of content and the consumers played active roles in testing prereleases. many of them cared.. that makes a BIG difference in the intrinsic value of something like a game community. people paying subscriptions have a completely different attitude.
7. no blood, censored language chat in game and in the forums.. really? since when was quake rated PG? the quake I remember was full of piss and vinegar and attitude, game and players both. that was its charm. pantywaists with thin skin need not apply.
1. no unsanctioned user content
2. no 3rd party independent servers.
3. it's a stupid browser dll. why? just have the javascript call quake3.exe with the params...
4. the stock q3 maps were not much to rave about. only a few were serviceable during q3's lifetime (q3dm6,q3dm7,q3dm13, q3dm16, and everyone lived q3dm17 for some reason). the rest were rarely if ever played. the meat and potatoes were the maps that came with the various large mod projects that came later.
5. the rest of the 'premium' content is just the team arena maps. big deal. paying for map packs = lame bullshit.
6. sure it has a 'community' but then so did q3. q3's community is/was far superior in many ways. many were active producers of content and the consumers played active roles in testing prereleases. many of them cared.. that makes a BIG difference in the intrinsic value of something like a game community. people paying subscriptions have a completely different attitude.
7. no blood, censored language chat in game and in the forums.. really? since when was quake rated PG? the quake I remember was full of piss and vinegar and attitude, game and players both. that was its charm. pantywaists with thin skin need not apply.
(if there are dupes to this post, I'm sorry, but slashdots' scripts are buggin out again).
I've always wanted to just rent my games... ...only from zenimax.... but remember $2 hhhhooooorrrrrssssseeeee aaaaahhhhhmmmmmuuuuuhhhhhh... can't wait to see their next trick!
Quake 4 achieved some reasonable sales success, but the fact that it vanished almost immediately from the mainstream online scene indicates that the singleplayer campaign was probably what most people bought it for. With the current online gaming scene dominated by Modern Warfare, Gears of War and Halo 3, it's pretty clear that tastes have moved away from the "bouncy deathmatch" model of the Quake series.
Maybe for consoles, but TF2 certainly is way up there as far as current online pc gaming scene. Guess you forgot about that market?
Yep, TF2 on the PC has done pretty well. But this doesn't weaken my point. If anything, it enhances it. The relatively complicated class and objective based gameplay in TF2 is a long way from the pure-deathmatch of the Quake series.
"With the current online gaming scene dominated by Modern Warfare, Gears of War and Halo 3, it's pretty clear that tastes have moved away from the "bouncy deathmatch" model of the Quake series."
Oh, I dunno -- Unreal Tournament was doing great until Epic dropped the ball in UT3. 2k3 and 2k4 were pretty popular until just a few years ago, and a lot of people were excited about Tribes: Vengeance util it became clear that the gameplay was getting dumbed down. I think there's a market for "bouncy deathmatch" shooters, but the developers need to unlearn all the habits that the serious-business shooter have taught them and remember how to have good, bloody, explody, ridiculous fun.
You do know that the original TF was written for Quake, right? IMO, it's still the best class and objective based gameplay ever written. TFC was merely a rewrite for the Half-Life engine. The only other mod that ever came close was Weapons Factory (written for the Q2 engine), and that borrowed a lot of concepts from TF.
I've said this before and I'll probably say something like it many times more: The sheer diversity and creativity demonstrated by the modding community for Quake and Q2 was mind boggling. I agree; a big part of what limited widespread adoption of Q3A and Q4 was the deterioration of the modding tools that id software made available. Too many modders found porting their projects from Q2 to Q3A's engine too difficult. Those that stayed interested ended up moving over to Half-Life and Unreal engines instead.
Two points:
1. As kangsterizer said, Q4 is not close to Q3 in terms of gameplay. Q4 was based on the Doom 3 engine, which was hardly optimized for competitive play. There were silly limitations on the number of allowable players, the gameplay was hamstrung in numerous ways, and everything was much much slower.
2. If you don't realize how strategic a high level Q3 match can be, I urge you to play against some of the active top players simply spamming rockets and "splashing around" corners. You will be find it humbling and embarrassing. No, you need to exert carefully timed control over certain weapons, armor, and strategic locations that differ for each map, if you want to do well.
We just need a good commercial version of the Generations mod.
www.moddb.com/mods/generations-arena
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
TF2 doesn't play anything like Q3. In fact, TF2 is specifically designed to appeal to a type of player that would not and does not like Q3.
While TF2 has "competitive arcade shooter" roots (originally being a mod for Quake 1), it replaces much of the individual skill requirements with teamwork and limited classes. 8/9 of TF2's classes move slower than a character in Quake, several of the classes have poor individual combat skills, and several are built around the idea of standing around in one area or depending on another player to watch your back. There's no items or item control to speak of, only about three classes are even capable of displaying "movement" skills, much less reliant on them. And that's not even taking into account the health differential between classes.
No matter how great you are at deathmatch, if you are not good at working with teammates and thinking about a larger strategy in TF, you can easily lose to players who are worse at deathmatch but better at coordinating, communicating, and generally working together.
Anyway, my point is that Team Fortress even started off as being a much different genre than Quake from its inception, despite being directly based on it, and with TF2 has evolved even further away. TF2 probably has more in common with Call of Duty at this point, with its classes, team objectives, (generally) slower movement speed, relative lack of jumping/movement skills, etc. than Quake (1/2/3) DM.
I developed a game which sold 1.2 million copies. It cost less than $6,000 to make with a team of a whopping 2 people. Development costs are not going up. UDK is free, Unity3D has a free version. Your imagined development costs are between publishers and tool providers. I could build Left 4 Dead 3 in 1 year, with near 5-6 grand cost using oursourced artists. You already have free tools availible to make a Quake 3 remake, specifically Tenebrea 2. The only development costs incurred would be personal salary. It does'nt take the hundreds and hundreds of individuals to make a game. It's an illusion created by publishing companies to generate more income. The end user gets a shitty product, wrapped in overhyped never delivered promises. The engine has extremely little to do with how pretty the game is or the cost, and 99% of the time they use reused code from previous projects costing them nothing. Advertising in this day an age is moot. Word of mouth or email, or forum spreads like fire on speed. No matter how many advertising bucks went into Hero of Douchebaggery part 7, you would be aware of it's exsistance and it's reception. It's a fucking game, like every other business out there.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
The CD key algorithm is ridiculously simple (see bottom), only the official master server checks that the same key is not being used by two clients at the same time (so, only matters on the server browser built into the game, many players use something like XQF for an infinitely better UI), and only PunkBuster verifies the key was actually issued by id (which most servers don't have running, given that PunkBuster isn't available for ioquake3 and such).
I know the original TF was a mod based on the Quake engine. I also know that TF2 is a million miles removed, in gameplay terms, from the original Quake.
The starting point for this discussion was "a remake of Quake 3 would be a really good idea". I disagreed on the basis that the hardcore deathmatch playstyle of Quake 3 was already out of fashion by the time the game was released (thanks in part to more sophisticated experiences such as Team Fortress and Counter-Strike) and that a re-release of Quake 3 would fail to find the kind of market to justify the investment needed in porting the game to modern technology.
I don't really think that the failure of Quake 3 to dominate the fps scene in the way the first 2 games did was down to the difficulty of modding the engine (though this may have played a very small part). Most of the big, popular fpses and third person shooters since then have not been particularly moddable (or moddable at all in the case of most of the console games). I think Quake 3 underperformed because id had fallen behind the curve on gameplay innovation and had, partly I suspect in fear of their own fanbase, retreated back into their comfort zone and put out a dated and unimaginative game.
2 bucks for a game which works under Linux and has a guaranteed wealth of populated servers full of great players, excellent graphics and no (obvious) bugs? You don't even have to pay 2 bucks, if you know someone who's prepared to invite you onto a freezetag map.
Its great when youre playing Modern Warfare 2 and see someone trying to play using the "bouncy deathmatch" strategy. You know immediately that they are from the old school of the FPS days. After you admire for a second, you just blast away. The old tactics of jumping and spinning don't work so well anymore.
They did remake it. I never actually played quake 3 arena, but from what I hear the graphics have been updated quite a bit.
Off-hand grenade spamming isn't a million miles removed. I assume you don't know about the class update packs, living under the "TF2 IS RUINED FOREVER" rock all this time?
You do know that the original TF was written for Quake, right? IMO, it's still the best class and objective based gameplay ever written. TFC was merely a rewrite for the Half-Life engine. The only other mod that ever came close was Weapons Factory (written for the Q2 engine), and that borrowed a lot of concepts from TF.
I never played the original TF (just seen it) but I think Q3F and later ETF were awesome. Much better than TF2 for gameplay and overall fun.
"Remaking the game on fresh technology would be expensive; even with the current console generation... ...With the current online gaming scene dominated by Modern Warfare, Gears of War and Halo 3, it's pretty clear that tastes have moved away from the "bouncy deathmatch" model of the Quake series."
I don't really care about consoles--hand controllers will probably never compete with PCs in terms of raw playability compared to a mouse and keyboard. As to the expense, we're talking about massive savings using the existing game design. A graphical upgrade wouldn't be cheap, but I doubt it would be prohibitively expensive. Compare it to developing new games, or (more relevantly) developing and adapting an 11 year old game and paying for all the infrastructure to centralize the servers, etc in Quake Live.
People's "tastes" are not confined to one variety of gameplay. The games you listed are the current wave of mostly-console hit FPSes. They are slower games with heavier physics and a multiplayer emphasis on team strategy. They work best on a console because the slower, more cautious gameplay suits the less agile controls better. A PC with better controls fits best with a different type of FPS experience, and currently, I see no example that beats Quake 3 for that type of controls.
"despite the strong support it gets from part of the fanbase, Quake 3 perhaps had less impact as a game (as opposed to its engine, which powered umpteen other games over the next few years) than had been expected. With its multiplayer-only focus, its emphasis on the "pro-gamer" market and its lack of new ideas, it really marked the point where id lost their leadership in the fps market."
I really just don't understand this. Quake 3 Arena was seen as a resounding success and essentially set the standard for a multiplayer FPS to beat for many many years. I don't think it caused Id to lose "their leadership in the fps market," except for the fact that, as I would agree, they didn't update it fast enough and eventually people were wooed by the "new" games. In my experience, the community was large, easily accessible, and persistent. For years I played sporadically, and saw hundreds of servers each time I looked for a game. I almost never saw the same people, unless I frequented a particular server, and then only sporadically.
I also don't understand why "multiplayer focus" is an irreducible problem with the game. Just because people are playing single player console games now doesn't mean that is a superior game type. Quake 3 Arena simply is not Quake 3 Arena when you turn it into Gears of War or Halo 3.
"It's not really age that killed the game off from the tournament scene, but rather the fact that the audience shrank relatively quickly."
Quake 3 had an active, reliable, and large audience online for an extremely long time. It was released in 1999, and there were still many major tournaments with a broad and high level of players in 2006. I don't understand how that translates to "relatively quickly."
surround sound is actually working
I hear they want to take that out for some poor sod's fps gain from 170 (slow) to 177 with a belief how useless HRTF is because OpenAL sucks.
Extreme gamers are stupid.
I am among those with the "Waiting In Line" achievement (or whatever it was called) and was playing from the early days on. IMO it lacks in some pretty basic things:
1) The matching system doesn't work for casual players (like myself)
I'm around for long enough to have played Wolf 3D when it came out, so I know rocket jumping, bunny hopping and so on. Yet I'm thrown into games with "matched" difficulty where I don't stand the lightest chance. I don't think I've ever completed a "matched" match ranking higher than last or second-to-last. This persists; no matter how many times I end up being last, my skill assessment isn't changed. Ever.
Yeah, I could spend weeks practicing, but if they announce they know my skill, they better know it. But they don't. You can guess how much 'fun' it is to play that way.
2) No voice chat
This one is a deal breaker really. At 35, I find Quake Live to be at the limit of what I can take reaction-wise, and typing stuff to communicate is simply out of the question. I'm a fast typist, but you're thrown back into the game in moments and I won't stand around and get my ass handed to me even to type "lol nice shot" or something.
OTOH, when I play the casual game of Counter-Strike: Source, no matter on which public server I play, no matter if I know the people playing there, there's voice chatting going on, people having a good time, commenting on the game, talking about whatsoever. It feels like being with other people, not like sitting around alone shooting bots. It's a bit like a night at the pub with the guys, only we're also playing a game.
Gaming is a social thing (at least for me), and QL just doesn't support that.
3) Stupid account management
So I registered waaaaay back when all you needed to login was a nickname and a password. I don't play regularly (because it just isn't fun) but check back every few weeks/months to see whether something changed for the better. When I showed QL to a friend who might like it better, I noticed that logging in now needs an email address and a PW. So I fired up my FF (which was still logged in because it still held the cookie) and wanted to add an email address to my profile so that I could login from another computer or when my cookie expired.
Guess what? There was no way of adding an email address to the profile. Now guess again. Yes, the cookie is expired by now and no, I cannot login any more.
I don't feel like starting everything from scratch again, so I simply abandoned QL. After all, CS:S might be old hat, but it's fun to just drop in, play some games, joke around with the guys, show and see some funny and/or awesome moves - all in a friendly atmosphere. The same goes for DoD:S, TF2, you name it.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
This is partly because of the proliferation of the game pad. Nothing demonstrates the weakness of a game pad like an acrobatic game of Quake.
The other part is that people like the realistic, punchy weapons you can find in the games you mentioned. Ever since Quake 1, iD has had difficulty making weapons with a satisfying punch to them.
I used to play Quake2 CTF obsessively (by my standards at least) in my early 20's; 3 hours a day for a couple of years. I loved being able to hide in wait at a strategic point in the map, and then grapple away just as I heard an intruder running towards me, and railing him half way through the grapple fall. If you were proficient at grapple, you basically owned the game. I had a custom binding script to map grapple to right mouse, and it was so easy to use! If you didn't master the key mappings, you couldn't play on the same level as most players: walking around was a sure fire way of getting fragged quickly.
But my absolute favourite for feeling of sheer power, was quad with double shotgun: I felt truly invincible with this. I've never seen another game that gave the same feeling as that weapon combo.
Since the servers started going quiet when Q3 was released I stopped playing FPS online completely. Nothing since Quake2 has given the same sense of agility that was easy to pick up but hard to master. The same sense of power if you managed to get the right powerups and weapons, and, besides, from a purely online FPS point of view, there are only so many ways you can design an intersting map, that reveals more tactical opportunities the more you play it. Unreal's maps were, in my opinion, not half as good for tactics as Quake2: You just had to run around fragging, and it was more about speed out in the open, but with Quake2, there were more tactical methods to beat an opposing team.
One of the 'benefits' of Quake2 was that you were constantly fighting against the physics limitations of the game; how fast you could move, how fast you weapon switched, etc, and this was actually one of the things that made the game great. Q3 was too fast... too easy to manouver... Q2 in comparison was slow, and you had to master the physics to become great, and that sense of acheivement of 'beating' the engine physics was very addictive.
I realise that current FPS, the story driven ones, are light years ahead of Q2: I played Modern warfare on my dads xbox and it was like a movie even during play! But online fragging is still determined by map design and game play and weapon balance, and not great graphics.
For me, Q2 will always be The King of FPS.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
It's not just 2 bucks, it's two bucks each month, and that's the cheap subscription. If you played it for as long as Q3A has been available, you'd be out of 256 bucks, or $512 if you opted for the more expensive option.
Excellent graphics? Are you kidding? Quake live doesn't look very different from the regular Q3. All your other points aren't dependent on the player-milking subscription model either.
ok well i've not got an axe to grind here. I use Linux, I play games sometimes, and I'm pretty lazy when it comes to looking for them. I heard about OpenArena, and someone there explained that it got quiet because everyone left to play QuakeLive and after checking it out I joined that exodus.
Where do I get a free, linux version of quake3arena? I can't see if on ID's site. Is this a spun-off free open source version? Are there loads of servers in/near the UK full of people all day every day? My machine (cpu, ram, gfx card) are not too shabby so that shouldn't be a problem.
Sounds to me like we're violently agreeing to a large extent, then. :) I think the major sticking point is still that your focus on the DM aspect of multi-player Quake and its successors as a significant factor in their success or failure. My admittedly fairly hazy memory is that MP QW didn't REALLY take off until after Threewave, the original online CTF mod, came out. Threewave showed what could be done in terms of developing true team based gameplay. Modders seized on the that path forward and never looked back. Until, that is, the woeful state of tools in Q3A forced them away from the game engine and in different directions.
Take a look at Valve's offerings, for example. Three out of four of their most popular lines (TF, DoD, and CS) started out as player mods. Original CS still dominates virtually every player chart that I've seen some 8? years after the first beta. DoD has been around for about six, I think. TF we've already talked about.
Frankly, I think the game companies are missing a HUGE bet by discouraging player developed mods and add-ons. (sigh) Oh, well. There's always Urban Terror to fall back on if any of those games disappear. :)