As and old Quake vet who doesnt play anymore (and doesnt intend to) but still enjoys watching the occasional video of competitive Quake duel or Starcraft Brood War, I thought it might be worthwhile to share some observations regarding QC from a spectators perspective. Of course this is all my subjective opinion.

1. Visuals
- There is more fidelity but to a certain extent this has come at the cost of clarity for the spectator. Ultimately I just wanna clearly see what is going on.
- The gun movement in QC seems much less of a tight translation of player action. This is a trivial point but for instance Q3/QL does a much better job in this respect. In Q3 there is a tighter link to the gun swinging left / right (walking) and the gun bumping / kicking up down (jumping / being in air). Its trivial but helps the viewer better understand what the player is doing. In QC this is less clear, in fact the gun model appears to do all sorts somewhat random wobbling and angles up / down when jumping which is a bit of an annoying distraction as it does not reflect the direction the player is aiming at.
- Player models are also harder to see

2. Sound
Even if I turn up the volume some sounds effects seem flat or more implicit. Again this doesnt help the spectators experience to understand what is happening. Its less entertaining as well

3. Rules
Just a matter of taste, but so far, from a spectator perspective the rounds based system come across as annoying breaks to the action, killing the pleasant flow of seeing either player moving across the map pursuing their hunt or map control or trying to evade or regain control, etc. I am sure it adds new forms of depth but I am not too fond of the breaks

Again just my 2 cents on this, dont know if relevant id people still read ESR. Either way, interested to hear your views on this. Do you agree or do you think my observations are bollocks :)