no shit!?

just proves that "once a quaker, always a quaker" is a fact

C H E C K? check

Gaming product stage x - usage of words like resurrection, renaissance, 2nd coming, legends, nostalgia

reborn

Yea i don't think 2gd is doing it right

team modes competition is rather dead though

Last tdm draft tournament seen the second most participants to date with 100 players attending. Not really serious competition, but it's something. If duel thrives, more players will play team modes as well. Also Prague LAN.

draft =/= team competition
26 teams for the whole and only tdm cup(Eurocup + Opencup) and 22 in CTF is a joke, you can barely find a pcw versus some team once or twice a week, even a year ago you could find it pretty much any day
Prague LAN is nothing in comparison to 2 TDM dreamhacks and QuakeCon CTF/TDM once a year

its almost as dead as q4, as i expected. this time next year there will be <15 teams in ctf

its because clanbase is fking awful. can we please get a league with set gamedays. it takes 10 times more effort to schedule a game than to actually play

HoQ had set gamedays and didnt work either

hoq worked very well for the few seasons it ran, only the last one was a disaster where wbobc simply left without telling anyone after the first week. and when it went to shit, it was for completely different reasons than the set game day. infact the only reason the last season got any games played towards the end was the set game day.

yeah... i think wbobc got serious health issues back then. ... but he powered thru.

most country's tdm servers are barren wastelands, void of life

tdmpickup is actually thriving and we have more people and games being played than basicly ever. the problem is that such a small amount of these players are moving into clans/competitive games and the influx of new players in tournaments is less than the outflux of old players getting bored/whatever --> clan scene is really hurting

now i dont think the issue is that people dont want to belong in a team or play clan games/leagues, but the issue is simply that the effort to do these things isnt worth the payoff. clanbase being the only league running now and it being completely out of date in every aspect doesnt help at all.

This.

Let me also add that -imho- tdm pickup is working well beacause the service is great, especially for how simple and effective it is. No need to schedule in advance, very little waiting time, team balance is generally ok, and if you play focused you have a good time. There hasn't been a single time I regretted playing in it.

The leap from that to clan competition is huge, and if I had to name one, the scheduling aspect I think is the killer.

Yes. Although I love clan competition, when I tried to manage my div 5 clan we had maybe 3 possible opponents in the same skill range, and it was a bitch to organize games. Either us or they were missing players, lot of times we ended up playing versus mixes and it took way more time organizing shit than actually playing. Like 2 hours of organization went into a 2-map game, and many days after 2 hours of trying we had to give it up and say "maybe tomorrow".

With small playerbase team modes become a nightmare to setup, have enough people from the clan to play, etc. If we gain momentum and the playerbase increase, team modes would thrive. I see a lot less of that uber sad and angry trollposts that plagued esr for ages after quake4 failure. Periodic spam on your facebook, twitter, steam, twitch account, joining their groups, but most importantly C zliveCooller zliveCooller L L E R

Have to first distinguish between public and private games.

On the former to me ca is not quake therefore QL seems rather dead. Now it's duel or nothing, which is pretty sad considering how public ctf and tdm pubs used to be and the lost variety of available mods and mods played. Also it isn't that easy to find quality duels around the world at every hour.

On the latter online duel is going very strong, though it has to be said it is relying on faceit and donations which isn't much sustainable in time. However what I really miss on this point are major LANs: that social interaction and strive for winning that make people play on the long run. Right now there are only two organizations that support quake, only one in each side of the planet and only one is relevant for mass media, what makes quake still kinda be on the horizon (for one day right before the sc2 final)..

Oh and I forgot to say WMO.

"On the latter online duel is going very strong, though it has to be said it is relying on faceit and donations which isn't much sustainable in time. "

If a small percent of the quake fanbase invests 1% of their income we show the fucking money to the game we love, it will be sustainable till fukushima radiation kill us all or the sun gives us a killshot, moments after the least of your worries will be quake. Win win.

Depressing and sad post next.

People and current backers will inevitably leave, stop playing, watching and funding because of those little things called real life,money and boredom. ESR itself quite shows this (most users don't ever show up) and previous projects aren't active anymore, at least with this game or community in mind.

125fps, faceit, zootlive and DH are very small teams backing up a game's activity for altruistic purposes. That looks quite fragile to me and I think no one wants to go back to the dark ages of late 2012 to early 2013, with zero LANs and zero online activity. Does anyone believe they will continue to throw money and effort away into quake in 2016? Do you think zoot will continue streaming daily by 2015? What happens if they stop their efforts, or continue to do so in a much lesser way? Will even QL exist at all?

That's why the donating money and efforts for free approach doesn't work, no matter what the project is called or who is behind it.

Also I don't get how everyone is saying that 2013 was a great quake year and all...when there's been only one major LAN -almost NA only- and viewership numbers are consistently decreasing, especially faceit. That's why I made the second distinction: event and major competitive scene wise 2013 was the worst year for quake ever, with quake-only people not realizing the game looks dead to outsiders and sponsors long left it. The comeback so to say has been online only and months long, and relies 100% on people that will certainly stop backing up quake in the way the currently do.

But whatever, it's just a hobby and this is a very small part of it (the competitive scene can't be bigger than 10% of quake is and if cups and streams die we can still play). Just saying the broader perspective is to take the approach of more successful games over the years, which is going mainstream once again and the developer to step up, and acknowledge the community and that the current efforts are inevitably going to be smaller each year. We've seen this multiple times already yet people are almost foolishly positive about how things are developing just recently. And yes, I want time to prove me wrong on this one.

P.D: cooller will retire someday, when he won't be able to compete with the best. Worst news ever.

The reason I don't watch faceit because it starts too early for me.

IT all depends wether id decides to fix or not, aka making it moba type model (unlocking content instead of forcing people to pay), giving it a facelift, ladders and proper matchmaking, advertismenet... basically all that Riot did well. I hope they do it before someone else comes up with a dumbed down ripoff of Quake and takes the tittle of competitive 1v1 game, because mark my words, sooner or later a game like that will go mainstream, and if id remains an incompetent aspie that doesn't know what to do with its own potential someone else will capitalize on it.

I differ on one point: I think quake will never be mainstream without a major graphical improvement and tons of advertising. Remember QL used to be 100% free to play (more than LoL) yet it never was relevant on the grand scheme of things, though still more popular than now.

As for the rest I don't really know if they will work, but it is quite certain that the current business model is simply incomprehensible for new players and is rather annoying for active players.

Yeah, but when QL was free it was extremely buggy, it was worse than baseq3 and lacked a ton of maps. And yeah thats why I said a facelift. They should port the game to idTech 5, add ragdoll physics (i've showed the game to kids and they laugh at how the model was floating on the ledge of the grenade launcher ztn platform instead of realistically falling down like on modern games where the corpses have realistic ragdolls) this is untolerable in 2013, add gore back (every kid I show this game in fragvideos gets hyped, then they see no gore all over the place in FFA's, it really feels sterile compared to good ol Q3) and just add all kind of new GFX, higher map polycount (without modying the basic structure) and higher model polycount. Just make Q3 for the kids of nowadays. I know the fun factor is still there. I've gotten people playing Q3 on a regular basis just by adding a shit ton of bots in DM17 with graphics maxed out, they would coop against all the bots, but nowadays, you can't even create a server without paying more than the original game costs not once but every year, and you can't even add bots to the server.

Now we need QL 2.0

online cups and prem servers maybe see action. but free ql, public servers, that's been going down since may 2012. thanks to usa. and public/free ql is what feeds the game. with this trend, the community can only shrink

Yes but thats in usa, too much flouride makes kids want to play aim assited games. Bus as a whole, qlranks reported a steady increase in activity iirc.

i dont care about propaganda. i'm prolly the most active player in ql, i see how much activity there is, i take the pulse of the game, simply cuz i'm online so much. i'm talkin real shit, i'm talkin it. and i'm tellin u it's dropped a shitload and dropping

I'm not surprised there's a drop in player's if your the most active player. (hint: cheater)

public/free ql is what feeds the game

What is it feeding to the game?

In his Opinion the player's who don't pay feed the game. Either because

a) ad revenue is higher than premium account revenue in his opinion

or

b) he doesn't talk about money, but about the active playerbase and thereby concludes that if the free servers are empty it's not enought player or something like that.

Potential subscribers and player numbers for any possible advertisers? I'd imagine the majority of subscribers are people that were once standard users. I can't believe most people discovering quake[live] for the first time would go and subscribe before playing the game at all.

Now, I haven't played the game in over a year, but I know previously they did have ads occasionally on the ingame billboards. Any company that might be looking to advertise in quakelive is going to want to see player numbers. Don't get me wrong, I can't remember when quakelive ever had a constant stream of adverts. But every little bit helps.

Forget ads. They didn't bring enough income when they were there and they're not there anymore anyway (it's been almost a year now).

That's why I think it's a bit exaggerated to say "public/free ql is what feeds the game" when it's only subscribers that keep it alive. I'm not saying the free part isn't important; it is crucial in my opinion to get new people in Quake.

EDIT : Just to add a little precision : There have been a few ads since then but nothing dynamic like it used to be and only coming from id itself. That doesn't bring money in.

newcomers noobs like me. check. ;d

And I can't leave ;< and keep saying to everybody that they should play quake lol

but imo quake live need different business model.

ql needs hats. kids want to have golden desert eagle, lets give them golden gl skin. more player skins. fuck, lets give them constant winter theme on dm6.

and unlock all maps and gamemodes. leave pro account for spawning options.

Quite true. But when you using some config options you will not see these hats etc. :P (i dont care, but maybe others care?)

CSGO (or dota) model is quite good i think. CSGO is b2p, but low price. Also has weapons skins and shit with crowdfunding, so now DHK13 has prize pool 250k $

Also it has in game matchmaking, which now work great (sucks in the past), i guess in matchmaking you can get more items than playing other servers. MM is working on dedi servers so performance is ok.

Also it has news (from competitive scene) in game and even streams.

But imo Quake also need something like 100% casual mode, for newcomers. They all need to be hooked first. (something as "promode" should exist too, for better players).
Played recent;y against friend in QL, who was good at other fps games. Destroyed him and told me that Quake is stupid game...
Most people dont understand it, its like only jump and shooting for them...

But every user is the same, no premium or pro. Items are only cosmetic, nobody really needs to buy it.

PS. but csgo is so boring ;<

r_hatmip

Yeah, I'm 28, not kid at all, but even I would pay for wolfcam-style effects and female announcer.
If you make a game that players would hear "one minute warning" like a billion times, you must use female announcer :X

I like to see it that way, quake resurrecting.

Hopefully all the fuzz and fanboys can revive the NA and competitive scene as well.

guy, the american youth likes justin bieber and miley cyrus

How about Big Daddy Keel?

i have no desire to learn what that is

blasphemy

Ro-cket, don't stop it, everybody get to the bridge

Pull your LG out, we're about to shaft these kids

Now let me see that 1 - 2 - dodge

Great idea.
CG_enemymodel "justin bieber"

yeah why not invent skins you can buy for $0.99 or something! this should bring quake back to live, works for TF2...

europeens like it/he/she too :(

kill it with fire, let it burn!

might be, but eu has a moderate playerbase without beliebers =PPP

I mean, the way it runs at the moment, if it WERE to be sustainable, is pretty fine with me. I pay my 5euros a month for my subscription, here and then we all donate some money to a tourney or something and we have a steady player base of a few thousand players eagerly competing. Let's face it (no pun intended) quake will never be such a game like SC2, LoL or whatever where sponsors throw millions at your face because millions of 13y/olds buy the game if they see the last WCS or whatever. But as long as it stays as is, with daily stuff to watch on twitch, all our favorite players in, a wonderful QLRanks system and lots of daily cups etc. to play, and QuakeCon and DHW every year, I'm truly satisfied and I'm willing to pay mit 5Euro and donate 10 or so every month to some tournament.

WCS is shit now. Heard something that there will be "mobile games" soon, lol.

btw. SC2 seems to be dying., because of lol, dota etc. Which is sad. But this is also fault of Blizzard.

Esport without Quake and SC2 is dead for me.

Soon... LoL, World of tanks, Angry birds... wtf.

imo Quake need to learn a bit from Valve (csgo/dota example).

CS:GO is (almost) as much of a niche game as Quake these days.

You are wrong. It's the biggest fps game right now and growing (they added skins etc. recently). btw. about 50k players every day on steam is nice playerbase. A lot of cups, leagues, ladders. Lots of viewers on twitch when there is starladder etc.

Biggest FPS game, maybe (but I doubt it with all the Battlefield/Cod/etc games lying around), but competitive FPS as a whole is a niche compared to RTS/MOBA games, unfortunately.

Biggest competitive fps game
the biggest at all is TF2 right now, than maybe battlefield.

all games now are small compared to moba, even RTS (which is only SC2)

CSGO will grow for sure, and maybe will open gate for others. hope for that.

TF2 bigger than battlefield or COD? Do you have any source on that? Or do you only count PC gaming?

Only counting PC gaming, don't care about consoles.

but I agree that consoles had big influence on fps games, unfortunately :(

source: steam for tf2 and cod
bf has own site with stats

RTS/MOBA genre was not ruined by consoles

sc2 is so boring after a while and I don't understand the hate against dota. Imo it will even surpass lol and become the biggest esport game. I'm fine with it because it is a fucking good game backed with great support from valve.

I suck at sc2... i dont hate dota, i like playing it. I only hate it because it pushing sc2 of esport. SC2 is imo much more superior game, for me much better to watch on twitch than any moba.

dota is good game, but... maybe HoN was even more skillful (but HoN has bad business model)

I dont understand why moba games are competitors for sc2, its other genre!...

imo dota will be always on second place. LoL is easier to get into etc etc.

For me sc2 is like quake for fps games.

I played sc2 and was rank1 diamond when I quit. Think another week and I would have gotten into the master league but the game was both to time consuming and boring to play after a while. Wasn't fun when almost every game looked the same. Either fotm rush of the week or lategame deathball ;).
The thing is sc2 isn't really hard. I usually suck at rts games. But decent mechanical skills made it possible to beat master players and I usually played the same crap -.-.
Dota on the other hand is kinda hard to get into it but after a while it gets better and better. I think I have played over 500 games now and I wasn't even bored once. You always learn new stuff while you improve your play. The game is easy but on a certain level (which I haven't reached yet) it gets quite demanding. A lot of it is probably knowledge but the hard part is to put it into action ;).t

tl:dr

dota is fun!!!!!!! and even more fun the better you get. sc2 is a failed game and not really fun to play.

hmm... ok.

I suck at rts games and prefer these games with crosshair hehe ;]

but when I was watching pros, a lot of games was amazing and different.

but I dont watch a lot, prefer playing than watching, i watch only quake ;d

Well, but you can say the stuff you said about sc2 about probably almost any game, take sc:bw, as an example, where you had highly ritualized match-ups, so to speak.ZvP, as an example, was sort of 'fixed' until maybe the 20 minute mark or so and it came all down to the execution/mechanical skill. Or especially QL, where you also have the same situations over and over again, even more so, when you play in a tournament and have to win: mapcontrol/item running, the same shots, you have done a few hundred times over and over again (esp. on aerowalk) etc. etc. Sure, you have crazy turn-around-moments, but those happen rarely and can be seen in SC2 as well, if you fuck up the micro f.e.
I really enjoy playing Rome: Total War atm. the first not Rome 2 unfortunately, because my machine is too slow, but it makes so much fun, because you have any aspects of a competitive game without the mechanical skill cap (therefore it is not suited as e-sports). You don't have to have crazy multitasking abilities, it is not too demanding mechanically wise, but you have to go through the whole process of thinking, which makes e-sports so great: what thinks my enemy I will do, what can I do to throw him off-guard etc. etc.

tl;dr:

Rome: Total War is fun!!!
All e-sports titles are at a certain level so mechanically demanding, that it becomes a dull playing experience: SC2 and QL included. Can't get into MOBAS/Dota, way too complicated.

I don't know much about sc:bw. Only watched a bit of wc3 and played sc2 for a couple of months. So I can't comment on that.

Or especially QL, where you also have the same situations over and over again, even more so, when you play in a tournament and have to win: mapcontrol/item running, the same shots, you have done a few hundred times over and over again (esp. on aerowalk) etc. etc.

I disagree. Because in ql the style of a single player has a much bigger influence than in sc2. In sc2 it doesn't really matter who you play. Execution is almost always the same. Some have better micro than macro and vice versa but in the end you either act or react on certain builds (speaking of the lvl I played :P). Whereas in quake it is much more the player and his style you play than anything else. Imo the reason why ql duel skill is kinda hard to messure. Sometimes I have an easier time vs a 2k elo guy than a 1.7k elo player. The 2k guy obviously is stronger but his style suits me more than the other's.
What I am trying to say is that no matter what my opponents style in sc2 is I can still enforce my build on him. I can't do that in ql. I can't play aggressive vs a strong aimer when my aim sucks but you can still 11/11 rax a zerg :D (I played a long time ago :P)

All e-sports titles are at a certain level so mechanically demanding, that it becomes a dull playing experience: SC2 and QL included. Can't get into MOBAS/Dota, way too complicated.

Well, take a look at agent. His mechanical skills are rather weak. He has decent dodge but his aim is just ...
Again in sc2 you won't win a big tournament if you don't have the mechanical skills. In quake you can to a certain extent. There is no doubt that evil is the superior combat skill machine and yet rapha was able to take him down. The whole reason why I find duel so interesting and you don't have to be a pro to enjoy it. Only downer is the netcode :P.

Btw. dota isn't complicated. At first it is overwhelming but after a while you get the hang of it and then the learning curve is just fun.

This is why sc:bw is infinitely better to me compared to sc2, as it also allowed much more expression of style in games, because it was much less refined than sc2. It was mechanically way too demanding to play it right, so players would often have to choose between where to invest their apm more- macro or micro. And it allowed a much more wider spectrum of play styles.

I read quite a bit about sc:bw because I wanted to know what the differences between both games are. Guess I missed out a great game (
To me it seems that most developers/game designers don't really understand what a great esport game needs. Just take a look at all the popular games and their successors.
Source and go suck balls. WoW was once a great game now it is a bot game for brainless people. They try to cater to the casuals and destroy all the good mechanics which make a game great. Just take a look at cs 1.6 movement and cs:go ...
Even ql did it with retarded spawn protection, 50% further spawn and weapon nerf.

Yeah, I agree that most new games are not very competitive and fun, however, I think esports is often just used as a marketing buzzword.

Also you haven't missed out on bw really. The scene is I think much more active than quake nowadays. There are plenty of foreigner and korean individual and team leagues.

And cs1.6 had great movement. What are you talking about?

I meant the difference between 1.6 and the successors movement. 1.6 feels crisp whereas source games have that ice skating feeling -.-

yup totally. When source came out i tried it for a couple of hours turned 360 and walked away.

I hope that this dynamic will continue and that QL will rule forever over the world of e-sports











and cooller

good point

Don't forget to keep playing too. Most players spend more time watching instead of playing. Finding games is getting harder and harder.

i don't want to sound zhu'ish^^ but cooller changed my life.

thank you Anton, free hugs any time. you are a hugger, aren't u

So how old is the baby now? Congrats.

coolleR's swimmers are so strong they can impregnate men. Harosh swimmers.

Also via QL network. All it takes is to get on the same server with Master. Skint, you know what to do!

I played warmup with cooller on toxicity for a few minutes once... I thought that shit was a beer-belly!

Just be patient, it takes 90 months for a real Cooller's baby to be born. The chosen One.

FaceIt viewship is dropping because it's the exact same thing every week, not necessarily because there are less quake players (though this is highly possible, too).

At some point everything starts falling together - ie. less sponsors = less tournaments = less motivated players = players leave = players leave due to perceived deadness of quake (and this last step is what recurs over and over until there's no one left).

The best thing we can do about now is to brace for impact. Stop putting up expectations of Quake being a massive esport. We should try to keep tournaments alive as long as possible, but it has to end at some point. Quake is a hobby so enjoy it. At the very least we'll end up like the Tribes community, with maybe a few hundred people left that still enjoy fragging together.

125fps is infinitely more entertaining to me than faceit. i especially enjoy the group stages simply because you get to see a lot of new, promising players with refreshing styles who you havent seen every day for the last 2 years.

it doesnt help that the "mid level of high players" are all so fucking boring. great aim, great timing, solid/secure gameplay. but simply not entertaining.

make grannyc play more dule. he'll stirr the shit up

u aint no bosz of me.

no but I'm your new manager. so from now on i take 30% of every keyboard you win in faceit cups

scurvy dog! i be swashbucklin me hearty quakers for ye landlubber.

At the forest level, putting it in terms of 1 2 5 F P S vs F A C E I T isnt smart imo. At the tree level, FACEY also shows promising players in the first rounds, in fact ive seen them receive critiscism for not showing every game of <inset prefered player here> since the bo128 stage. On top of that your comment about players with great aim, great timing and solid/secure gameplay being boring... i think its nonsense. Youre negating the skillset that defines the game.

thanks for telling me what i find entertaining

< FaceIt viewship is dropping because it's the exact same thing every week >

Thats a fair point, i wouldnt say exactly the same thing, but it reached a tipping point of epicness some time ago with the legends cup and the rapha travelling to season finale, fastforward and the usa season was halted, their awesome movies and best moments of season productions became rarer, ddk has been casting solo some sundays, etc. But the games and players, which should be the #1 priority, has been so epic, the skill level of this sunday cup final was one of the best from all faceit events imo. So if you level things up, if you like quake, u gotta facey.

The way I always felt was. That esports is obviously a business. So it has a product and a consumer. If you watch the streams, subscribe, engage in the social media you are helping the scene grow by being a loyal consumer and rewarding the people who put out the content.

But I think it is very easy to not only be a good consumer but to add to the product. Play the game. Just playing the game consistently helps immensely, you are being part of a growing player base. Sign up for tournaments even if you have little to no chance of winning. Maybe you or your opponent will find that you like it and return next week. If there are only 100 great players that compete in quake it will very unlikely attract more than 1000 viewers. It also rewards the organizers as it is a good feedback to see good/bad participation.

Create community content. Simplest case scenario just engage in discussions about competition or the game in general, make your voice heard. There is a lot of content to be created- I am really looking forward to the talk show by qwih and koziol, I hope *cough cough* zhu keeps making his demo analysis. Remember that zoot used to be pretty much a scrub who started casting because no one else did it and he grew to be the face of quake casting in a relatively short time. There is plenty room out there for contributions and growth.

So don't just be a good consumer, play the game and be part of the product!

What QL 2.0 needs imo:

- new engine (id tech 5)
- new maps (not old ones we play for 14 years pls, we need new and fresh perspective)
- new textures
- new models
- ragdoll physics
- gore
- better sound engine (so we can finally understand if enemy is above us or below us, etc)
- no cfg editing, make it simple and same looking for everyone (I like playing with cfg, but, deal with it...if you want new players hop in the game, than don't force them to edit cfg's with million options and commands just to make game playable and on the competetive level)
- better net code
- gtv
- f2p (DOTA model)
- proper matchmaking

+casual and pro mode :p

Definitely no...splitting community is the worst thing you can do. Proper matchmaking is more fun and realistical.

CSGO has something like this.
competitive and casual mode

Quake is too hard for most people. imo

some people are playing CA, is that also splitting community?

Don't know how would that work in QL, but...I certainly don't want CPMA to be a pro mode in QL 2.0 haha... :) :P

just curious... why not? ;p

how will they make money?

dota model, skins, hats, models, avchivements, items etc

+ crowdfunding tournaments

"- new engine (id tech 5)
- no cfg editing, make it simple and same looking for everyone (I like playing with cfg, but, deal with it...if you want new players hop in the game, than don't force them to edit cfg's with million options and commands just to make game playable and on the competetive level)"

Nonono. idtech 5 is extremly bad, and cfg are common amongst all games, (even CoD and craps) just need all parameters to be available through ingame menu GUI.

I like most of this, but it is nothing more than a dream :)

Ain't gonna happeeeeeen!

no CA tourney = FAIL

lolca