inb4 raythenoob

i don't know the europe side of things. but instead of posting a troll remark, why don't you help op out and give him an answer to his question. oh wait, you don't have the intelligence to do that....

"I don't want to spend months getting good at this game, then join a clan, only to find out the clan scene is dead."
Quake is not CS. It'll take you more than some months to get good. (some years)

I played similar games to Quake for 10+ years.
Doubt it would take me years to get to a level where I'm good enough to join a clan.

Anyway, thanks for answering my question(s), you two... (especially fezy)

btw #tdmpickups , #qlpickup.eu
if you get some mates to play with, games aren't hard to find (5/10 mins avg)

You can be good after a couple of months and no u don't need years of playing ...
Btw. it took me longer in 1.6 to reach a certain lvl as in quake.
So if he isn't a complete moron, has some fps talent and put some time into getting better he will do fine after like half a year.

i don't agree. i played 5 hours a day and it took me about 4 months to really understand the game at a level where i could make a difference for the team is was on. But there are so many more levels past that point, that it really does take years before you can get involved in competitions at all in this game. It's one thing to be able to frag someone, but its' another to be able to time, be at the right place at the right time, be able to coordinate attacks/defense/work together, etc. And for duel, those all apply + the ability to do so without making many mistakes, as one mistake in duel can mean the end of that game.

So in short, to op: regardless where you play, it will take some time and thus, if you're not willing to put the time into it, this game is not for you.

rofl, years to take part in any competitions, are you kidding me? :D

are you saying the walters, jones', coolers' (aka the top guys) just started playing in this past year? no.

we're not talking about pickups , we're talking about tournaments w/ prizes sponsored by id, etc. Those kinds of tournaments. To win one of those, yes you need many years of experience.

looks like you are thinking OP wants to get pro in a short time. i think he just said 'a clan' to play divisions with...

wrong, i gave my personal assesment as to how long i believe it would take for a noob (not a q3 player) to get to the point where he could become an asset to a team of tdm players for his clan.

true dat, but as far as i know we all don't know what he means with good in compared to your or our interpretation to good. anyway with hardcore training i would not say years though.. perhaps 1 year and a half (if he was decent enough in the other game he mentioned so he has built up some kind of team spirit)

hence why i gave my own interpretation. like you said, everyone has their own interpretation of how long it takes to get good. Then again, i've watched players get better over the past 2 years and have a general idea as to how long it takes. He just needs to check his own progress and make goals for himself. The rest comes down to practice with his clanmates.

btw: "perhaps 1 year and a half"
that's still years isn't it? or maybe your view of years and mine differ. Anything over 1 year is years to me...

walter = jones = cooller ...wth

where in this quote of mine

"are you saying the walters, jones', coolers'"

did i say walter = jones = cooler? do you see a = there? no
don't make stuff up dude it's pointless for you and me

you're a moron for even mentioning them in one sentence.

that made no sense since all 3 are quake live pro players. Obviously you think otherwise.

If by pros you mean players with a pro account.
Cooller I would call a pro, jones maybe in CTF but walter... C'mon

stop nitpicking words, you know damm well that walter is still easily better than 99.9% of the playerbase in ql. This argument is pointless. Just accept it for what it is, no reason to pinpoint who "YOU" deem is pro and who is not. To a newcomer, listen carefullly, to a newcomer, THEY'RE ALL PROS. Get it?

edit: """ with a pro account""" ??? what? you think people are "pros" if they have a pro acount on ql? lololol seriously?

l2read.

troll

You might want to refine your definition of pro.
To a newcomer 50+% of the playerbase in ql would be called a pro by your definition. Because they're easily better than those newcomers, right?

"""what? you think people are "pros" if they have a pro acount on ql? lololol seriously?"""
I was merely ridiculing your list of so-called pro players and questioning your definition of pro.
Oh wait, you don't have the intelligence to comprehend that.

lol. i actually agree that the top 50% of the game's players would appear pro to newcomers, was just emphasizing it further. I don't really think we disagree, you just wanted to argue with me. Only problem is it's 92 degrees outside and girls are running around without their tops so gg till the next topic

Have fun watching them from behind your window!

so called pros:
http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showthread.php...ava-damage

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

yes, i do. cooller might be a pro, no idea how you could think jones/walter are on the same level in any way.

have you ever seen jones play? You do realize he plays with one of the best ctf teams (dafoneman) in north america right?
http://bibsql.com/?p=clan&c=125
notice how they won season 3 of bibs.

oh wait, he doesn't play duel, so he's not deemed a "pro" . ok gotcha..

next

you're dumb and you know next to nothing about quake, great.

no rebuttal? oh wait ya i crushed your little argument to shreds. You couldn't get passed jones on ctf2 if your life depended on it.

what does that have to do with anything... and how do you know that? i used to play mid in ctf.

maybe you remember the time when ctf was popular around 2004/05 and had a eurocup (again) with everyone from the tdm teams joining in, i did that too.

look, the point is, and i'll restate it one more time; The "pro comment, including the 3 individuals i mentioned" was merely an example to showcase what a new player views as the top echelon when determining his skill level and where he sees himself in the bigger picture. So whether or not the 3 i mentioned are "top" pros or evenly skilled pros (since we both agree one is a top duel player, another a top ctf player, and the 3rd, according to you, a has been) doesn't matter; the bottom line is, that is what a noob would consider, "top players".

Now can we move on from this pointless debate, i'm sure both of us have better things to do.

good to see you see yourself as a "noob" who is unable to tell the difference between cooller and walter/jones, i'm glad we settled this 'cos i happen to agree.

can't be surprised you opted to want to win the argument instead of agreeing to disagree.

Noone ever said those 3 are on the same level.

last time: since you're blind, i was explaining:

from THE NOOBS PERSPECTIVE THOSE 3 ARE PROS.

(Regardless of whose the best out of those 3, because it doesn't matter....)

so "any competition" = top10? i'll repeat myself, you're a fucking moron

You failed to understand the concept i was drawing up; from noob to top player (takes years). For him to compete with his clan in tdm games, not as long. How long depends on him.

You're really the moron for nitpicking words here.

to dumb it down for you, when i referred to competitions i was referring to top tournaments, again based on the "noob to top player analogy". I gave him that info so he could draw his own conclusions as to how long it would take for him to get to a middle point (the point he wants to achieve (low/mid level tdm skill).

________________

to op: don't worry about these morons overcomplicating the issue, this is all you need to know. Base your skill level on your progress:

1. low skill, bunny hopping, rocket jumps - 1-3 months
2. mid skill, timing/tricks, strafing properly - 4-6 months
3. high skill, tournament player, profficient at movement&timing - years

1. noobie, bunny hopping, rocket jumps - 1-3 months
2. low skill, timing/tricks, strafing properly - 4-6 months
3. low-mid, tournament player, profficient at movement&timing - years

noobie = low skill....
so a mid level player = veteran? i don't think so...

mid level player is someone who has been playing for about 6 months. a veteran is usually someone who picked up q3 before they started playing quake live.

ur both a morons ))))))))))

I see where you're coming from, but this is clearly not what the OP was asking.

depends what 'good' means to you

dragon, a german duel/tdm player, went from newb to awesome in 6-9 months of playing. it's definitely possible but largely depends on how serious you are about improving and what people you play with/against (and if they care about you :p).

so, if you play as much as most russians do (24/7 cunts!!!) u'll get good fast! there ya go :D

You have to play as much as those russian, you have to play against the best russians, you have to concentrate hard and avoid ragequitting.

i'll agree to that. It's not common though thats' for sure. But you can also play a lot and not improve to that top echelon, see: mellowtab) In the end it comes down to your talent, age (reflexes), etc.

Defo worth playing, cause its quake.
Unfortunately it's not very active in terms of clanmatches.

Could you define more specifically what you mean by "not very active in terms of clanmatches" ?

Thanks.

well hazrd is playing for bface, a high skilled team, so he probably has a different experience than others. from my personal experience i can tell that you should be able to find a mid/low to mid opponent for basically every evening and you can always play pickup aswell

Alright, cool.
That's what I wanted to hear. :)

I can't stand spamming for a 4v4 for hours on IRC, and never finding an opponent. :/

spam in #tdmpickup ! :) once you get to know a bunch of teams around your skilllevel join/idle in their chans and pester them for some games.

Are there more?

thats a good question, hoq said that they wanted to get into tdm but i dont know about their specific plans and another kuh3liha should start aswell. on top of that there are most likely going to be some cups

so right now the situation isnt perfect but there will be opportunities to compete in the future and the more active teams we have, the more competitions we get

and has there ever been an active tdm ladder after the old osp days? (or even then?)

You'll find opponents around your skill level from monday to friday in the evenings for sure. Team bot on IRC etc.

There are different pickup servers for different modes @QuakeNet

TDM:
#tdmpickup
iCTF:
#instagib.ql
CTF (mainly):
#qlpickup.eu

You tend to get all sorts of clan arena games almost all day just by looking at the servers (from 1v1 to 8v8, Standard and Pro) and almost everyone in the servers seem to be part of a CA clan. I'd recommend 1v1/2v2 CA's initially for practice.

The clan scene for iCTF growing (clanbase activity is raising alot, with maybe 4-6 clan matches a week and more clans are preparing to enter).
For TDM/CTF I cannot really say a lot for, many of the clans seem to be Div1/Div2 quality - so you would have to ask others.

"Say you're in a low/middle skill TDM clan in Europe, how easy is it to quickly find a friendly/practice vs another TDM clan during the day? During the evening?"

easiest thing, you will definetly find mid/low tdm pracc games from 6 in the afternoon to about midnight everyday, tdmwise you wont have a problem finding top tier games aswell, just be at the right irc channels (qlpickup.eu, tdmpickup, instagib.ql). I dunno about CA, but I see ppl looking for pracc for it aswell, CTF is something more elusive, but finding low/mid ctf pracc's isn't impossible, but I don't advise you to only play ctf, thats too dead. iCTF has grown very active in the last few months, it has pickup (very active), and CB ladder and whatnot, you will deffo find alot of games there aswell, maybe not the most pracces but there are matches, and its a friendly place alot of times mixteamed pracces accour.

Is it worth it to learn this game? Depeneds on how good you wanna be, if you wanna be a regular mediocre quaker its not a big deal, but seeing how uncertain the future of this game is, I don't think u should be training seriously to be the next toxjq cuz it ain't worth the effort I think

Thanks.

I'm not looking to be the new Cooler etc. In fact, I'm not even looking to play duels.

I just want have some fun playing clan wars with some cool people.
I don't mind being a low-skill player, as long as I'm ever so slowly improving a bit over time.

#tdmpickup on qnet runs almost 24/7 and you wont be having any trouble finding pcws until you reach the level of ~top10 clans

It's as easy as you make it. The CB OCs happen every 3 months and normally run until the end/overschedule so if you signed up to each one you could play pretty regularly all-year-round. If you think your team sucks then you can just view the current OC groups and then go into the irc channels of those in the bottom group (that haven't been removed due to inactivity) as these are the clans that are active & at a lower level.

very active

LOL!!! OH PLEASE.... hahah

Compete.com's stats only reflect their selected panel from the USA. They don't measure usage outside the States.
Also their stats have been shown to be inaccurate (links to tests in your thread)

get out from under that desk you're hiding from in moscow. Don't trust the industry standard, no, instead trust what some noobs on here have said. "its' doing great". lololol. You're just in denial dude.

Don't put words in my mouth, I never said it was doing great.
The post is correct and the information confirmed by Aaron Prebluda from Compete.com

I'm just the messenger. Sorry you can't handle it.

"""Once all the data of web surfing activity, sites, etc., is collected, it is normalized, or weighed and skewed to correct biases like the geek-heavy toolbar users. The goal of the normalization process, which by the way is conducted and overseen by people with Ph.d’s in this sort of number crunching, is to have each consumer measured represent the average American consumer."""

"""While Compete is panel-based, local analytics providers track user activity by setting cookies through some element on the web page (i.e. a pixel, an iframe). So, if the user deletes their cookies and clears their cache, they will appear as a new visitor the next time they access the site. Since our approach is not cookie-based, we will only count that person once, which is a reason why the numbers never match perfectly """"

i know all about their metrics. Their data reflecting unique visitors/ip's is going to be more accurate than quakelive.com's own analytics based on the explanation above about cookies. The trends analysis from google and compete were very similar so you still obviously don't get the fact , in this case, the data is very comparable. The trend is there, and it's negative and that trend is reflected no matter what service you look at (google.trends, compete, alexa, etc).

And really again, i'll take my 2.6 months of playing time and i'll compare the data of available servers to empty servers to your x number of playing days any time. Reveal yourself if you want that debate.

"""The goal of the normalization process, which by the way is conducted and overseen by people with Ph.d’s in this sort of number crunching, is to have each consumer measured represent the average American consumer."""

"""Compete takes out any traffic originating from outside of the U.S. – in other words, if a user comes from India, Canada, or any other non-U.S. country to a site, this visit will not be reflected in our numbers."""

The stats you seem to be spouting around (if those are even valid) reflect only the American market. You have no clue how active/inactive the European market is yet you laugh when someone from Europe says the scene is active.

Actually no. I know "from what others have said" that europe is stable and i have said so freqently. I also know compete only registers data based on u.s consumers. We don't disagree you just don't understand my viewpoint (that i am speaking for the U.S playerbase). I could care less about the euros (not because i don't like them, because i do), but,because i'm indifferent since i dont' play on european servers and since its' (euro quake live) doing fine.

Nevertheless and i'll say it again, the implosion of the u.s playerbase WILL affect the european playerbase and the decisions id makes for the game, you have to understand that.... you don't really think the lost revenue from u.s players won't make an impact on everyone else... i hope you don't think that....

why are you looking at ladders in the first place, no one ever took those serious. esl and cb have cups every 3 months, irc has pickup, clan praccys are rather easy to find in the evenings. so yeah, worth it.

I don't know anything about your experience in QL, especially TDM soi I'd like to add that people confuse skill levels a bit in TDM these days imo. Pretty much all more or less active players bring a lot of experience and experience isn't just about knowing maps and being able to strafe jump and aim.
So here's how I see it these days:

- VERY High Level: Top 10-15 teams in Europe (i.e. the world). Often hard for them to find an opponent as there are only those 10-15 opponents and they don't practice that much.

- High Level: Div 1 in the Opencup. They definitely know their way around and often bring good teamplay. Hard to find enemies because the VERY high level teams dont wanna waste their time while the mid level teams are scared or at least try to find more equally skilled enemies first.

- Mid Level: Div 2 and 3 in the Opencup. This level is very much alive. Mid skilled teams (those who look for low or low-mid in IRC) are very active and keep getting better.

- Low Skill level: Lowest division there is but mostly fun teams and newcomers. And here is the problem: This level is pretty much dead as those teams usually get crushed by all the other existing teams.

My advice to you: Start with publics (map knowledge, movement, aim) and pickups (teamplay) until you can keep up with some of the low-mid skill level guys. Only then find a team and make sure there is at least one guy who has experience or understanding of tactics and stuff.

My advice once you're in: Try not to play pickups. Practice with your clan whnever possible. Pickups are the easy way to get skilled, fun matches going so more and more people choose that easy way instead of working with their clans. This effectively weakens the clan community.

This sounds about right, though my perspective is from a "VERY High Level", so my opinion about mid and low skill clans might be a bit off.

Alright, thanks.

Div 3 is what I aim for. :)

Noobs view on Quake vs CoD(console).

Quake: I lose every match I play, I never win.

CoD: OMFG I just got a double kill. HEADSHOT OMFG IM AMAZING. SIT DOWN BITCH.

pretty much.

It makes you much happier though when you realize that you fully understand the situation, act in the right way and win. A lucky tube in cod is pretty much the opposite and gets boring after a while.

So QL: Put something in and you definitely get something out.

Yes, but it seems like patience has gone out the window in are new on demand lives.

hit the nail on the head. That's why games like cod are more popular. People want to get off work and pwn, something you can't do in ql because you first have to play a lot to be able to do that, time which people don't have. I don't think ql could ever be noobed down enough though. There's too many variables in ql that no amount of hitbox increase updates could change the steep learning curve in this game.

welcome to scbw, a wildy popular game

Exactly why I can't get my friends on it :[

Quake has ups and downs but will never die, it has a style of its own and will only fade away when a WORTHY fast-paced fps game will make the player base migrate. So if you're having fun there's no reason not to play it.

PS: raythenoob please stop spamming and get a life fucking idiot

I don't agree with your assesment that quake will never die, because unlike you i believe it needs to change to survive. You can keep the game as you want for another 10 years or you can help it morph into something "everyone" can appreciate so it becomes as popular as it once was and last for decades to come. I know the selfish thing to do is, keep it as it is, but then future generations will lose out on what has the capability of becoming mainstream once again.

shut the fuck up

Spoken like a true juvenile.

Quake can become mainstream again if id decides to do Q5. Meanwhile enjoy what you have. QW is still alive and even a bit older then Q3/QL. I bought Section 8: Prejudice this month and after 2 weeks there are only 2 servers with ppl on it. Thats what I call a dead game...

inb4 2 servers means it's not "dead"

p.s: i agree 2 servers = dead game, but i know others here will say no (since its' their main argument against the current state of the game being dead, Imo for the exact same reasons you gave) lol.

While new and flashy visuals may attract a horde of newcomers from day one, they won't last long if Q5 = QL with better graphics. All the veterans will crush them and the newbies won't bother to put time into the game to be able to compete in x years when they can just switch back to game b and "pwn" right away.

Q5 would need a hell of a great skill matching system to protect newcomers and still enable everyone to have fun. Something no game ever had unfortunately.

right on the mark. f1

like i once heard: quake is a religion :)))