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Changing the Rules of a 15-Year-Old Game: Quake Live Update Causes Controversy
An anonymous reader writes: As id Software aims for a larger, more mainstream audience for its free-to-play shooter Quake Live (based on 1998's Quake III Arena) on Steam, big changes are afoot. A new update was pushed out last week which adds some new, more beginner-friendly features to the game. These include weapon loadouts, which grant players a weapon of their choice when they spawn, timer icons, which indicate when the all-important powerup items will spawn, and an automatic bunny-hop to gain extra speed. The changes have been met with hostility from longtime players who prefer the "purist" rules of old and the duel format. As the writer points out, however, if the update helps attract more elite players to the gamer, it could breathe new life into a very old game.
... that when I originally heard it I thought they were going to basically make the 'real' sequel to quake 3, and redo all the graphics/models /w modern tech, but it's just Q3A with a web interface and less mods/flexibility of the original.
It's the same thing that's taken down games like World of Warcraft. They kept making it easier and easier, hoping to gain more players. After a while, the game is just too simple and repetitive to interest anyone. The whole thing just collapses.
Yeah, WoW is technically still around, but the players have been dropping out so badly that they have to consolidate realms now, instead of bringing out new ones. Even so, it's alarmingly vacant.
They are adding the new while making the previous behavior accessible. FTA:
Classic Quake Live isn't being abandoned
While these changes are part of the new default Quake Live ruleset, the majority of them can be avoided by opting for Classic ruleset games. All the public Duel servers will run in Classic mode, and Create Match will let subscribers pick from Quake Live, Classic and Turbo rulesets. That's another thing – PQL (Promode Quake Live) is now called Turbo. As the Quake Live team explain it: "We hope that running our FFA [Free For All] and Teamplay servers with these new, fun, and accessible mechanics that we can begin to build a larger base of players who could then try their luck at the Classic Duel experience."
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Just like the NGE for Star Wars Galaxy, any 'major shift' to the game in order to attract a new audience alienates your current audience. You're basically saying 'screw you guys, we want some else.'
If that's the truth, then go for it. If the current audience is insufficient to proceed, then go for it. If you'd like to keep the people you have...you'd better not do it.
It's possible the maintainers of Quake Live are simply done with the project. Rather than shut the doors while there are still people playing, they need to chase everyone away first. That would make a whole lot more sense than trying to attract people to a 15-year-old game by changing it. The only people who are going to play a 15-year-old game are the ones who are trying to relive the 'glory days.' If you change it, they are no longer the 'glory days.'
bunny hopping and strafe jumping became part of the skillset that players had to master. What's the big deal? It wasn't unstoppable and it gave your position away. Abusers routinely got their asses handed to them. All of the elite players used it too, esp for specific jumps that weren't normally possible.
If they require all these cheats (let's call them what they are) to play, how in the name of Hell are they "more elite"?
Are they somehow empowered to greater delusions of grandeur?
Or are they chasing players who're monetizing their game streaming?
In which case FUCK them.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Man that brings back memories...
...Picture this: A bright young student with plans to take over the (animation) world, follows the "hip kids" word of Quake II-Lithium (until then I had no clue what the Quake games where all about)...it's like Barney Gumble from the Simpsons, he was a decent guy and a heck of a helicopter pilot before he met the brown bottles with ice cold Duff. That's me and Quake. I bought the darned CD, put it in - and was lost forever...
I ended up using all my school money on investing in an ISDN Line (that was the *SHIT* back then when everyone else where on 14.4K dialup), found out that it still lagged more than a donkeys behind sunday mornings so I Invested in a DUAL ISDN line (that's a 64 x 2 = 128k line) and pinged the bejeezus outta the competition. That stuff cost 700$ a month + lost childhood + no school buddies + no school basically (see what it did to me? I have to write stuff like + in between words to substitute for bad grammar and such).
So kids! Let that be a lesson for you, stay in SCHOOL! And don't let the QUAKE get you!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The way I see it, id Software's new owners are evil because they even tried to frivolously sue John Carmack, who invented all their games and technology.
I think they mean players that think they are "elite", but are anything but. In short they want the pseudos, those with big egos and small skill. Easy games and true elite does not go together.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
They're trying to keep this old game alive and with a community. I think the initial release of Quake Live, or this move, has little to do with cashing in and very much to do with love of the game.
Moreover, "making it more fun" is pretty much what they are attempting. It's been a known problem for a long time that a new player will get completely owned when they first try, it's just such a brutally skill-based game and a small pool of players makes large skill differences more likely in matchmaking. Few people enjoy total domination by their opponent.
Quake 3/Quake Live used to be a living esport, now most of the big tournaments are gone. The game is beautiful, especially when played at a professional level. I'm all for any attempts to revitalize this genre so that the FPS duel might still be a thing in esports in the future. Of course the risk here is that the game becomes unrecognizeable.
You're way too hard on them. That's not all they do before releasing the game.
They'd also slap the current year onto the title. How else would you know it's a new game? From looking at it? Please...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
OTOH, it's hard to attract players if the only thing they do when joining a server is getting their asses handed. It may be fun for some of the older players to play with their prey rather than having a "real" fight, but it's just no fun at all for the prey.
The way I see it they can't win: Make the game easier and alienate the old players. Keep it the way it is and ensure no new players will come.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This is basically the new player experience in Quake...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In technical terms, Quake multiplayer was groundbreaking. But in gameplay terms, even by the standards of its time, it was extremely conservative. It was straightforward "shoot the other player in the face with a basic selection of weapons" deathmatch that hadn't really evolved since Doom. In contrast to the almost Spy-vs-Spy-like multiplayer in DN3D, it was extremely barebones stuff.
Plenty of people did more interesting things in mods, of course.
You seem to have misspelt WFA.
That's why there are different servers in Q3A, based on the player's skill (last time I checked).
Dumbing the game down to attract console players is not the way to go.
The game speed is what made Quake & Unreal into classics. Unreal 2 and Doom 3 looked and felt like console ports (dumbed down and slow action)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The changes sound like a good idea. I picked up a copy of Q3 a week or two too late and was never able to compete in multiplayer as I would be fragged into oblivion in the first .03 nanoseconds after connecting to a server. I quickly gave up and went to a different genre completely where new players were not punished so severely for not having camped out the night before release at Best Buy to be the first to own a copy (or for not playing 23 hours a day on a steady drip of red bull).
Now, this won't really bring me to the game as my life is different now than it was 15 years ago, but I do think the changes are a good idea.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
news at 11.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on