Their newest update shows armor and mega timings on the HUD. I hope its temporary, it makes duel and other modes feel dumb and empty. Its ironic they make a game with the complex CPM movement system yet show item timers on the HUD.

Its not temporary, but they plan on implementing new mechanics and things that change the meta for duel.

I played some duels last night with the item timers and it was a very different experience, but certainly not in a bad way. I was skeptical at first but not anymore.

I know they added global sounds for mega, which isn't bad at all. Experimenting with new ideas is alright, but I can't see how this does anything but lower the skill ceiling. delaying items and playing tricky? a large part of that is removed from this. its not fun to duel and know when every single item comes up to the second.

I dont think a players ability to add 25 or 35 to the clock is particularly skillfull or strategic. Perhaps a player doing it for 3 or 4 items but thats relatively rarely done.

Somoene on the reflex forums phrased it quite nicely

Also, I don't think the strategy will be all that nullified as people argue. It could be kind of closer to what chess actually is; Just because you see what move your opponent did in front of you, doesn't always mean that you fully comprehend it.

Just because both players are aware the item is up doesnt mean there isnt strategy about calculating who will or wont go for it, how to attack for the item, whether your opponent can get there in time and all the rest of it.

Theres a guy right now making an arena fps game where you can see your opponents health and energy and he can see yours. That doesnt reduce the strategy it just shifts it to a new area of the gameplay.

With this new change I didnt find myself thinking or planning any less, but I did find myself thinking and planning different things and in different ways.

You saw how retarded ql FFA got with timers above items? I cant imagine how retarded it would get with timers on HUD. And thats FFA which was a mayhem anyway. Duel with timers and global pickup sounds makes every map aerowalk/toxicity, where you always know whats up and where your opponent is and its all about aim

I dont think a players ability to add 25 or 35 to the clock is particularly skillfull or strategic.

then maybe you shouldn't be talking about the changes. no offense but saying timing is easy only shows how little you understand high level games. of course adding numbers is easy, its doing everything else that's difficult. pointing and clicking is easy, do we remove that?

you don't see it impacting the game because that's how little you understand it.

I'm not saying its easy and therefore its pointless, but its not irreplacable. In games like QL I think that timing and major item pickup information is very important, but in reflex you can pretty much hear every pickup from any point of the map anyway so you already know when items have been grabbed.

I am open to seeing what the reflex devs implement to compensate for this change. I was extremely skeptical about this too when I first heard about it, but I dont have much of an issue with it anymore and thats before theyve even implemented anything else to switch up the meta.

you don't see it impacting the game because that's how little you understand it.

I see it impacting the game a great deal, its just not a bad impact.

Maybe adding 25 and 35 modulo 60 is kinda stupid thing to learn, but cycling items and making sophisticated plans around them is something that would be missed. There are few ideas how to avoid "the math": remove timer like in cpm or have an analogue clock. Global item spawn timers are on another level of simplifying the game.

I agree, theres a bunch of things relating to timing I will miss, but duels feel different now and not in a bad way which is refreshing. I'm thinking about different things as I play and like I said above, they intend to add even more to affect the meta of the game.

Its not as simple as saying "game has timers = game is now casual"

I'm glad you enjoy it, duel and tdm now feel empty and brainless for high level play. The mystery of what's going on during the game is gone.

But hey, the casuals are having fun. Screw the fun of high level play, right?

Was the mystery ever really there? You can pretty much always hear items being picked up from anywhere on the map, you can see when the mega timer restarts from the visual cues on your opponent. Its not like QL where item information is vastly more important.

Anyone whos played more than 10 duels is going to be aware of when items are spawning and when items are picked up even before this patch and you claim it has turned the entire game into something brainless?

Its almost as though youre trying to get riled up.

I'm aware I wont convince you otherwise, and I'm not particularly invested in doing that anyway but bear in mind that the game is not complete. They are testing things out.

They said that they plan on implementing other ways to change up the meta so if the items timers stay for good you can expect something new to come along to fill any void it leaves in its wake (though you are exaggerating the size of that void).

The community has to let the devs test stuff out, its an early access game and they want to do some cool stuff with it. Currently the balance is fucked, but it would be stupid to complain about that now either because the game isnt in its final stage.

Just play the alpha, enjoy it if youre capable of doing that, give constructive feedback and see how it ends up. Bitching and whining when they start trying new things is just going to stop them from ever implementing anything different for fear of being lynched by the community.

It is possible for an arena fps game to exist that is different to the current formula and is still competitive and fun. Dont stamp on Reflexs neck before its even had a chance to try and do that

Anyone whos played more than 10 duels is going to be aware of when items are spawning and when items are picked up even before this patch

Did you just say anybody can time items after 10 duels? Because that’s what timing is: reliably knowing when an item spawns.

I mean that the global pickup sounds make it much easier. Anyone playing 10 duels is a big exaggeration

ok, but do u honestly time?

Not anymore he does, that's called adjusting and not being a cry baby.

oh no, skill ceiling might be lowered if you'll be able to know when mega spawns without counting :D

plz retard, go back to your 1999 q3 cave and stay there.

1. Say retarded things
2. Smile and call someone else retard
3. ???
4. BR

Seriously, HUD timers and global pickup sounds? They might as well remove items and make it a CA 1v1

"Registered: 2 Dec 2013"

Oh boy, another guy that just started playing Quake, and has it "all figured out." gg.

Great interview zEv!

Apparently reflex started with trying to be a quake clone and now its desperately trying to differentiate from quake by making questionable changes. The date i registered to a forum has nothing to do with this argument. I didnt try quake for the first time in 2013. if tahts what youre implying, but that is hardly important to this topic. If someone removed offside from football even my mother would be aware of how stupid that is

Thanks mate! we you enjoyed it!

When i heard of the game first i thought movement is the only problem of the game, hoped for an alternative movement in future and bought the game. But after so many months of development the game is moving in the wrong direction with every fucking update

an alternative movement

So what's wrong with cpm movement? You don't like this coz the cpm movement is too unnecessary/hard for you?
Perhaps, you've been waiting for aim-based game with simple movement system (smth like in PainKiller + autojump).

QW movement > CPM movement

The CPM movement is a blend of other Quake series games.
It's like an aged premium blended whisky has rich flavour and strong palate.
It's provides you more freedom than QW (imo) or any of FPS. QW has strongest air-control but there is no strafe-jumps, no wall-bugs, you cannot to counter stairs, etc..

p.s.: I'd like to add gaz-boost's in Reflex. %)

If its a biggie that means thst its BIG

If high skill/pro players can no longer make smart strategic moves with just item times showing, then perhaps the high skill of Quake was never high skill in the first place.

I have bought the game

It will never become big

Actually this could add more depth to metagame. It's always nicer to watch how pros play that "I know that you know that I know" card.

itll be so fun to see them not be able to delay item timings anymore.

Oh yes, so much depth in that. Face it. it's just a trick of rich quake game mechanics, 5/100 maybe. Take a look a fighting games for example where this mindgames excels. That's very entertaining for specs as well.
It actually makes sense that there is an annoncer on arena who provides global timings for players.

i would like to mention that, even if widely assumed in here, making sophisticated decissions is not necessairly the core skill of fps.

yes - it's something that distinguishes players, yes - classic item system allows to do better than some1 else via brainy plays. but even if there was no item system at all there would be skills to master. only difference was that competition would be (far) MORE about how perfectly those OTHER things are mastered. (in fact i m not even sure if good decission making should be called a skill, doesn't really fit my personal definition of the term too well, but whatever.)
if u don't like the skillset a game requires/rewards/favors, don't play it. say "i don't like this, i like games with more emphasis on smart decission making" and play sth like that. instead of shouting "this is bad". it's ur own preference. maybe other ppl like other things. maybe the developers are doing a game they like more than ur favorite chess fps. maybe their preferences are legit to exist. just cause sth is different in a way u don't appreciate doesn't mean it's bad. (not for everybody at least.)
i personally don't see why (especially arena) fps have to be big brain games. y'all talk like that's a must, like it was the most important, indispensable thing in a proper arena fps. would u have developed that attitude if the game u been playing for ages looked different? i sort of doubt. coming from warsow ctf (which offers some extremely active gameplay) i never rlly understood why a 1v1 fps should not exclusively be about going nuts motoric whise. if not in an arena fps, what other genre? always was pissed by the occasional need to play "passive", sophisticated in duels (even though wsw duel is far less positional anyway). that was against my nature, or against the fun at least :D a game solely crowning the perfect aim+mover wouldn't only be skillfull as well, it would be legit nontheless! (again, fuck the "no brain no skill" attitude many of u seem to hold (probably developed cause it gives positive self esteem to upvalue a skill one holds, and maybe cause u wanna profit from old skills in a new games competition). take a loot at real sports. half of them ain t bout mindgames i d say. still u don't fucking bash "this is brainless, no skill". childish bs.)

tl;dr version:
changes lead to different rewardings of skills (=/=less skill. just other skillsets rewarded). arena fps don't have to be brain heavy, that's some weird ideology. other favors regarding gameplay and what skills should be rewarded how much are legit! ranting "this is bad" because it doesn't fit ur personal preference is way less legit.


apart from that we don't know yet what might still be implented to offer more possibilities for mindgames. and anyway decission making in a game with lots of possibilities (8 weapons and a movement system that offers many possibilities, unless the opponent is in ur face,) will always play a important role.

I’d prefer my game to offer more depth than 1v1 CA, thank you very much.

me2, but i think i could live without armor system/with a less important one

Powerups are there to give you incentive to move (there can be others like flags, bombs etc.). Without them there is no need for perfect movement, air rockets or lg levitation. There are boxes and ak-47 instead. You can't give players freedom of movement and remove complexity of decision making at the same time.

ye i aggree that in order to create a movement-intense gameplay there have to be incentives for players to move. but u can easily decrease complexity of decission making/make the game less brain heavy and maintain a high motivation to move. the incentive can even be increased if the more complex prior rules often give incentive not to move.


(ofc removing all sorts of items in a game where the only goal is to frag ur opponent wouldn't result in epix movement wars. didn't intend to make the impression i'd totally chear for that :p)

taking items doesnt feel the same anymore. i dont like this change at all

For me, part of what makes quake hard and an actual competitive game is the fact that the player has to keep track of so much stuff during the game. Adding hud timers seems to remove a lot of this.

During a game, it’s a trivial task to roughly evaluate who’s in control and who’s not (it’s not that hard even without timers that notify you of every pickup). Then you look up the spawn time of the next red and the next yellow, and if you’re in control, you go for the red, and if you’re out of control, you go for the yellow. It’s of course quite more complex than that and very different from any quake we know, but from a first glance it’s hard to argue that the game gets more competitive with these changes.

Generally, they as devs should try to actually bring forth their arguments instead of just randomly implement game-changing features (haven’t listened to interview yet).
Additionally to that: If they actually plan on making major changes to gameplay, then they should do them all with one patch, let people try them out for like 2 weeks, then change everything again to a new set of ideas. Basically a gameplay-development version of Eric S. Raymond’s The Cathedral and The Bazaar*. Slowly morphing the entire gameplay is gonna put people off along the road.

* “If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.”

exited to hear that they won’t do sci-fi. Pure sci-fi is boring.

e: from the actual official announcement thread: (emphasis by me)

The other problem, which is likely going to cause the most rage, is that preventing people from having on HUD item timers is now borderline impossible (at least without doing some really unpleasant things to our nice new system). While this isn't ideal, it's a minor sacrifice for an incredibly powerful system and only a short step from the external tools and HUDs with big lists of numbers - 25 seconds that many players already use. So in the interest of keeping everything fair for all players, we'll probably be adding these timers to the default HUD and preparing ourselves for the accusations of "noobing up the game for noobs".

So basically it’s got nothing to do with gameplay, and it’s something that appeared purely for technical reasons. If he really thinks that this is not a huge deal, he either never played an arena fps before, is trolling or (and I hate to say this) just plain retarded.
e: at the same time, i think that a timer that you have to start yourself is nowhere near as problematic (bind R countdown_25) as just having the hud automatically respond to map events. Surely being at rl/low-ya on ztn and being notified of the red or high ya pickup removes depth.

im willing to give it a try but i think they were very misleading on what the change actually was. i thought it would involve the player having to press a bind to start a 25 second timer or something. now it sounds like it's all automatic 100% of the time?

I would like the change more if it could be tweaked to only put the timer on items you picked up.