In my mind everything comes full circle eventually its just a matter of time before Quake makes its resurgence be it as a standalone game which has new features incorporated into it or a newer version but the FPS genre has always been owned by quake and tbh I think it always will be. It first needs to be these things:

1. A fun game that you can just join and play
2. It needs a good league system that has skill building tiers
3. It needs a solid tournament system with consistent weekly cash events
4. It needs a Large LAN event that has a cash payout that is substantial enough to support world wide competition.

These are simple things to achieve to start to build the user base. Players are not looking for new and exciting things in a game they want a game that provides some sort of structure to nourish growth in the game, why do you think the current games like LoL or Dota2 are doing so well. Its not the constant little micro transactions that players are doing its the tools that are in place that help nourish the gamer and help them grow and improve in the game.

As humans we all want to improve and be better and lets face it in Quake atm there is not a system in place to nurture this need. Everyone wants to make money and a lot of the big name sponsors do not see any money return on quake because they look at it as a game that has been milked dry. They are wrong it is just that all the tools to teach and grow the user base are missing in the game itself. People are inherently lazy and require resources to be all in one place.

The other thing that Quake is missing is that fun factor. I miss the days of firing up quake and joining a server and just playing. People want to be able to just play for fun and in Quake atm that does not exist. Quake has been completely set up as a competitive game. From the "F3" Ready command to the score boards that give you all of the in game stats during and when the match is finished. These things were everything that the game lacked competitively that was introduced as mods in Q3. The problem is that it completely killed the public fun aspect of the game which is what ninety percent of any games user base is.

I would love to see how successful a server would be if it had no ready up percentage, if it just had a 30 sec countdown on the map that loaded and then you could just start playing the game. There was no timeout command or call vote command to change the team size everything was set to the max so team games would be 8v8 and single player games were set to 16 players and of course they would have to have maps that were appropriate for them which there is. Yes its not competitive like 4v4 CTF for example but its fun. I see TF2 still today with full servers that are team games that are 8v8 or even more. So why cant we do this sort of thing in quake too. Why are we still just catering to that ten percent of the player market that is competitive. Why not have a mix of both.

I think the standard user base should have only that option they should not get the competitive features of QL unless they pay for it and then when they do pay for it then they see all the other features that Quake has to offer. But to force a competitive game style on someone as soon as they download the game seems a bit ridiculous to me. In my mind it is the reason to where the game has evolved to today and why now we are struggling to see the user base grow. The game needs to offer both aspects of it the competitive aspect that Quake Live is today and the fun aspect that Quake III Arena used to be. I still love going and playing 12 v 12 CTF on Crom in Q3 almost every night, why cause its fun its not competitive and even the scoreboard only shows my points, ping, and time played. I never hear from anyone at the end or during the match that i suck cause i maybe am at the bottom of the score board with the least amount of frags and most deaths cause i am playing offence on CTF and keep dieing just trying to run the flag. These features are great in a competitive environment but as a fun aspect of the game they actually have a very negative impact on the game and the new players that come to play it.

I see great things in the future for Quake and I hope that maybe we all take a look back and remember why we were so drawn in by this game when we first encountered it. It was not the competitive aspect that we see in front of us as Quake Live it was the fun factor of just logging on and playing the game and it was exciting and new and interesting. The weapons were cool and the maps were demonic and close quartered. The over feel of the game was intoxicating to play for hours on end. I miss those days and sometimes I throw up my Thunder CTF server in QL and fill that sucker for hours on end playing 7v7 CTF. I miss those days and I think if we had servers like that you would see the fun factor return, its where high skill meets low skill and we all can play together and enjoy the game for what it is FUN!!

These are just my thoughts and I do not want to spark a debate I just thought I would throw them out there, hopefully you will understand the enthusiasm I have for this game and why you see it in my streaming and the reason I have been promoting the game religiously for years. Whether it be by spending thousands of dollars running a server for over 10 years in Q3 or streaming live competitive shows online or being an admin for ESL, CSN, and now Faceit. I love the game and just like you I want to see it grow and i do not believe it has to do with money it has to do with making the game fun again. If the game is fun the user base will grow, which in turn provides a slightly larger competitive scene which in turn draws in the money, remember the money goes where the people go in esports. So to me my goal is now to try and make the game fun and nurture the skills for players by providing a system that is competitive but only with in each players skill level.

Cheers

P.S. There is no tl;dr version sorry :P