lmao

"We have Quakecon at home"

bruh if Texas is succumbing to globohomo just have it in Florida wtf.

They gonna send a shipment of BAWLS and fly in a load of thirsty american basement beasts to Bucharest?? How else am I gonna get to see my cherished bawlzchuggin???

I see they are continue to ERODE our VALUES and TRADITIONS.

Eyy, Florida is just a wannabe Texas, except our primary industries are tourism and bathsalts.

The brackets contains the whole quake champions playerbase, stunning.

TBH, QC is fun to watch... much less fun to play, though.

Top 3 favs are Rapha, K1llsen, and Raisy, I think. Vengeurr, Maxter, and Av3k also have strong chances for top 3. DramiS, Zenaku, nosfa, and cnz are the darkhorses who might go further than expected.

I hope Av3k takes this one. He's got the experience, mechanics, and mindset to do it this year. He's always been on the verge, in terms of potential, of taking a QCon, and I hope this is his year.

BREAKING NEWS:
Some non-russians will play qc in Romania.

Anyone interested in bets and/or full coverage? Come on, we need more than a link to the brackets :)

Here is something : ShaftasticTV made a stream of prediction for the tournament.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1561794715

Raisy predicted the outcome of every match in a very insightful breakdown:
https://youtu.be/51UfZAR8Y_E

For virtual bets, Danmer made a neat site: https://quakelife.ru/predictions/QWC-2022/

Official schedule: https://quakecon.bethesda.net/en/schedule/

Main stream at https://www.twitch.tv/quake
05:30 CDT, 18 August 2022 WB round 1 (8 games)
10:30 CST WB round 2 (5 games)
14:15 CST end of day 1

05:30 CDT, 19 August 2022 WB round 2 (remaining 3 games)
06:45 CST WB round 3 / quarter finals (4 games)
09:45 CST LB round 3 (3 games)
12:00 CST LB round 4 (2 games)
13:30 CST end of day 2

05:30 CDT, 20 August 2022 WB semi finals (2 games)
07:00 CST LB round 5 (2 games)
09:30 CST WB final
10:45 CST LB round 6 (1 game)
12:00 CST LB final
13:15 CST GRAND FINAL
14:30 CST end of day 3

Secondary stream at https://www.twitch.tv/quake2
08:30 CDT, 18 August 2022 LB round 1 (7 games)
12:45 CST end of day 1

07:00 CDT, 19 August 2022 LB round 1 (remaining 1 game)
06:45 CST LB round 2 (4 games)
09:45 CST LB round 3 (1 game)
10:30 CST end of day 2

All Day 1-2 games are bo3, Day 3 games are bo5 until a bo7 grand final.

Aaaand it's already wrong ;)

Slot at 06:45 CST will be a round 2 game, k1llsen vs winner of Garpy-dandaking (I'm not spoiling results).

Disregard everything i wrote based on that stupid website ;)

Schedule in official tweet was consistent with schedule from QuakeCon's site:


But the actual schedule at the start of the stream was:

I figured it out, they made a snafu. In a 24 player bracket, first round of LB needs losers of WB round 2. It is impossible to have LB on secondary stream until WB round 2 is already mid-way.

How did ESR not notice this? More importantly: how did PGL miss it? ;)

So they reshuffled it, to get some of WB round 1 and 2. By the look of things, there will be 4 LB round 1 matches, as well as 2 LB round 2 matches ready to be played, maybe the second stream can start in an hour or two.

(just one small mistake imho: Raisy's and Rapha's games should be swapped to give winners of previous two games one game of break each)

Yep, the B-stream is up (exactly 7,5 hours late because of this snafu) and it has commentary and Fortylions, yay... if only it wasn't tearing ;)

They had 2 LB round 1 matches ready for hours, but clearly decided to delay them, to keep this second nice stream from hours of breaks. I approve. Best thing to do under the circumstances.

lol

Thanks for the effort to post. There's basically no coverage on social media or anywhere...

u def?
hope u get veaten by anons everyday

May the best player win.

Added official Toornament link with brackets/results to the OP. (It's still sleep time for Liquipedia)

Sad that the Russian/Belarus players who have nothing to do with Putin are banned because reasons?

I guess discrimination is a bad thing, except when it comes to certain people only, horrible...

because whoever is hosting the tournament has to abide by US treasury sanctions on RUS/BLR, which means no business deals, contracts etc with citizens / entities of those countries, or they will face penalties themselves. like mafia intimidation, but legalized.

you have to be special kind of dumb if you believe in your reasoning

https://quake.bethesda.net/en/news/2yzTZVAdDc10jYGD0ChBsh

tbh I was interpreting this within the context of US sanctions on Iran, Syria and the like, but it hasn't reached that stage with Russia yet. So I wonder why Bethesda would reference that as the motive if it isn't the case.

You're correct. I believe that a limited range of business can be conducted between the US and Russia/Belarussia, atm. It's a sliding scale, and Iran was certainly at the harshest edge of the scale. But Russia is not far behind. Bethesda is abiding accordingly.

They're not "banned." Those players are still listed as being in the QPL. Bethesda simply cannot pay them any prize money. So if they can't legally pay them, should Bethesda expect these players to attend and play for free, even if they win? That seems less fair to me than telling them stay at home until this issue is sorted.

And just as a reminder for people not following QC scene, the format of the QPL season is paying money for every map played, with bonus money for every map won. Small sums, yes, but the US Treasury told them to stop.

For the finals I assume there's price money only for top x, but can you guarantee Cooller or Cypher not ending up in let's say top 8? They are simply not allowed to do it.

Besides, I don't get the silly comments now. This is old news in QPL, but you can always go post on Munich 2022 socials about why there are no Russians or Belarussians there. Your rage would have bigger reach and all ;)

"Bethesda simply cannot pay them any prize money."

They might as well be banned then, that's disgusting. Like I said they never had a say in the war, they were just random civilians like you and me who just happen to live there.

The whole Russia Boycott thing makes me sick to my stomach and how so many people seem absolutely fine with it.

They might as well be banned then, that's disgusting.

Really? You would rather them be banned than temporarily unable to play in tournament matches? That does not make much sense now and it would make even less sense if the war were to end tomorrow and the sanctions lifted.

The whole Russia Boycott thing makes me sick to my stomach and how so many people seem absolutely fine with it.

The same could be said of the invasion of Ukraine. Doesn't that make you sick to your stomach? Not being able to participate in a video game tournament seems pretty trivial compared to the vast number of people being injured, dying, displaced, traumatized, or losing their livelihoods because of the war in Ukraine.

I never said the invasion of Ukraine didn't make me sick to my stomach, but fucking the citizens of a country where the majority have no say in what's going on and are innocent is fucked up.

Also, it doesn't just apply to video games and you know that.

Especially when you consider that america should have been boycotted the same way and have sanctions put on them by the rest of the world for their latest invasions. Vietnam, Afghanista, Iraq, Lybia, Syria..... where were the sanctions? The international boycotts? American athletes should have been banned from competitions as well.

Yet nobody seems to realize the double standard, and when you point it out you see people's jaws literally dropping with the sudden realization.

Add on top of that that this whole invasion is still america's fault anyway, as they pushed nato forces toward Russia's borders for decades, trying to poke the bear into another war. They finally succeeded, and now they're trying to spin it into an invasion out of nowhere, when they've been cooking that up for literal decades.

The coup d'etat in Ukraine in 2014 was directed by american agencies. A legitimately, democratically elected leader was replaced by a NATO puppet, and from then on tens of thousands of ukrainians and athnical russians have been assassinated in Ukraine until 2022.

Let's remember what happened last time someone tried to do the same with america, putting missile bases in bordering countries.... yeah, america was planning to nuke and invade Cuba, but the URSS leaders weren't as eager to trigger WWIII as america is today and decided to withdraw in favour of world peace.

But america didn't do the same, because all their interests are in another war in europe, to disrupt the local economy and the trading with Asia, to stay the only global superpower.

Totally agree, double standards are all too prevelent in today's world.

It's like xenophobia is wrong.

But against Russia it's fine.

amiright?

Yet nobody seems to see the hypocrisy xD clownworld.

It's honestly frightening. How open and candid many "pacifist" and "tolerant" people are in their absolute xenophobia against Russians, today in many internet forums.

On reddit, where you get banned if you say you don't like dogs, there are people openly stating that all Russians should be killed, and when you point out to them how crazy is that statement, they candidly reply "oh but those aren't people, Russians are subhuman animals".

History always repeats itself.

And those same people get super mad when you point out they're nothing else but modern day nazis. They literally keep repeating that to be racist you must be so against people, not subhumans or animals.

Those people are scary. They've never done anything meaningful in their entire, short life, except playing videogames or drinking decaffeinated soy lattes scrolling their iphones at the local starbucks, yet they'd be super happy to commit crimes against humanity if they had the chance.

"but guys we are victims too! we're literally persecuted by redditors with their soy lattes and their iphones!!"

*barf*

Imagine if you couldn't get a job tomorrow because you just happen to live in a country that instigated a war yet you never caused it in any way I myself would be fucking pissed.

Two things wrong with the premise:

1) There are more jobs than playing video games.

2) The whole point of the sanctions is to apply political pressure on Putin to end the war and SAVE LIVES.

"1) There are more jobs than playing video games. "

It's stopping a person potentially making an income + it's already happening in Russia with businesses being raped by the West, not good.

"2) The whole point of the sanctions is to apply political pressure on Putin to end the war and SAVE LIVES. "

To save lives, we must financially ruin them, yeah....

Russia already rapes their domestic businesses themselves. They don't need the West to engage in this. Putin invaded Georgia, and already annex part of Ukraine, causing the international community to impose sanctions, but Putin's cronies have a well-established reputation for jailing business owners and political opponents, and confiscating their property/businesses as their own. Putin hardly needs the West's assistance in raping their citizens of their financial well-being.

And what about Ukrainians who are being shelled? Would you do nothing? Just tell Putin to stop it, hope he stops when he has no incentive to stop, and wish upon a star that everything will be OK?

Don't mind people having their home or workplace shelled. Don't mind people having their stuff taken by force. Don't mind people unable to sell what they're making because Russia rockets ports, airports, storage depots and blocks the sea your stuff was supposed to be transported by.

Those people's incomes don't matter.

Cooller's income does! Would someone think of the Cooller!

What a retarded comment, lmao.
<3

Thanks for sharing, rando

"oh no how will this affect my job"

you just happen to live in a country that instigated a war yet you never caused it in any way

Would you rather just happen to live in a country currently being shelled? Would that also make you pissed or slightly irritated?

Well my thoughts aren't with the army/leader who's causing it, but with the innocent civilians who are just trying to make a living.

Same goes for any country, the governments do the fucking up, the civilians pay the price.

Wow, national discrimination..what a hypocrisy
really sorry for the guys

most tolerant ruSSian.. doesn't discriminate the people his terrorist country kills
anyway, cry more about discrimination.. i'm sure people will take you seriously

another russophobe yelping, not surprised

another ruSSian downplaying his terrorist government

More hate please. It's so exciting

if you think this is coming from a place of hate, you're delusional. it comes from immense disappointment and borderline depression.

you might think having a senseless war in Europe is completely fine, but I don't..

Take meds (don't take them, they are bad for you).

Not ethnic, but national.

OK, I love zsx like everyone else, but the casting of rapha-tox made me mad!

To me this was the best match of the day and tox was magic! He's like 120/50, attacks a 175/125 rapha, rapha survives with 5 hp and the casters are like "yeah what is this stupid fuck doing, this can never work" ;) Clearly it works and tox is still a turbochad! He just forgot that in QC it's sometimes (but only sometimes) beneficial to time the items.

Good game, this is what I like! (Spart1e-serious was supposed to be this, and it was indeed good, but not this good, I think Spart1e had a hardware issue? Or he simply forgot he was a timing god back in QL days - but even his interview kind of confirmed he's not putting any effort into Quake, the guy has a real job and to play more Quake, he needs to lose sleep.)

so avek is portuguese now

LAWL!

Guys, guys! Quake Champions has been officially released today!

That thing on the bottom that said "EA"? Says "RETAIL" now.

Steam store page? No Early Access anymore.

Steam reviews? A "pre-release review" from today (as opposed to the thousands of "early access reviews"), and a review with no qualifiers, actual released game review (which says, and I quote "My spacebar fighting back." - you can't get a better first review of your freshly released new game!)

The game does feel pretty polished by now, judging from the stream.

It still takes minutes to "load" the game (with 0 disk activity) and minutes to get from a match back to the menu (again, says "loading" but it's not loading anything).

There's still severe frame pacing issues, the engine is completely DRAM-bound and normal people still report dropping under 100 FPS. I get like 350 in Proton (which itself is amazing), but it takes work no esport title should require [1]. An esporty game needs to deliver 250+ FPS on potato PCs out of the box. This one can't do it on top of the line hardware. You get 20% CPU, 20% GPU and wonder what the heck it's waiting for :)

I remember back in 2017, the main stream was 15 FPS, so yes, we've come a long way since that disaster! :) But the two things you'll complain about right after installing are still the same, and sound like the simplest things to optimize (but of course no programmer worked on this game since the end of 2018 ;)), are still there.


[1] Yes, yes, this is Quake, we've spent the 90s tweaking every single cvar to squeeze half a frame more, "overclocking" USB ports, writing modelines to squeeze every last MHz of hsync out of our CRTs... But in 2022 there aren't many True Quakers left :)

> It still takes minutes to "load" the game and minutes to get from a match back to the menu.

This is such a turnoff for me. Maybe it's the life I have now, but "time to fun" is the determining factor for how I spend free time.

It was one of my main complaints when I tried QC. The non-gameplay elements take too long, people get booted of the server after every match, you need to re-queue again and again instead of retaining the attention/playerbase.

It's such a simple method to keep players invested... to keep them chasing that "one more level/map" rush.

I just installed it again today. Still feels sluggish and I optimized to me.

I play QC: Doom Edition with friends.. so much snappier =))

Day 2 schedule:

Oh, cool. Rapha's next opponent probably Maxter, then Vengeurr (who is probably 60% of what he was last QCon), then straight to the WB final.

Meanwhile on the other side k1llsen, raisy & av3k are going to eliminate each other.

Sill the GOAT - most Gifted titles Of All Time :)

Didnt Vengeur beat Raisy just recently?
Strongly doubt he is an easy walker,
anyway, Raisy, Vengeur, Rapha, easy top 3, Raisy being my personal favourite to take it all. Maxter might be an underdog, but I dont really believe has what it takes.

Still haven't learned how seeding works, huh?

lmao@rapha

Rapha saw your comment and decided to drop into the lower bracket, to face everyone and show you who's the boss!

Very cool!

I am really enjoying this event. Good casting and good production. I'd still like to turn lethal down to 50% speed (server side) so he doesn't forget how he started his sentences, but he's a bit better than he used to be as far as understanding quake goes at least.

It's pretty good. Some good matches and surprises too.

Q2 remaster?!?

rapha losing to maxter is a real plottwist. Dramis is rapha in beard disguise in case the rapha account loses. also imagine xron winning from basement :D

damn lets go maxter $$$

Dramis' slash movement was on fire.

COOLLER

Why let Xron play from home?

Who is going to protect the homeland if he leaves?

What a Cha1n of events

rapha vs zenaku went clutch AF.

nuts

Zanaku vs Rapha was pretty awesome.

that last game delivered and how

GG WP

Poor ZenAku :(

Also, schedule for tomorrow:

Raisy vs Rapha, Maxter vs Cha1n, K1llsen vs Vengeur, Vengeur vs Rapha, Finale K1llsen vs Rapha, K1ller take it

Quake is so fucking good! Super entertaining stuff +)

GGs

My heart goes out to Zenaku, excellent match

That final frag was a good play by Zenaku, but that predicition rocket from Rapha is what won that game. If Rapha hadn't shot that rocket, or it didn't bounce Zen like it did, Zen would've obliterated Rapha with LG. Or, at least, crippled Rapha enough for Zen to win full map control.

A testament to how close that game was that it came down to a single, split-second decision.

I agree, I think Zenaku was truly a match for rapher and it was a 50-50 chance that had to go one way

I checked and:

- ZenAku was 95/32

- rapha was 150/75

- he didn't see the rocket being fired (Visor's wallhack only shows you where enemy is, not their projectiles) and walked into it, but it "only" did 55 damage bringing him down to 72/0 (ZenAku managed to do 60 damage even with readjustment after the bounce, good aim is good!)

- then the SSG did 75 damage, one pellet less and he would survive, now that's unlucky!

- however, rapha was still 129/35 at that moment, so realistically two more seconds needed to shaft him down, and he still had the ghostwalk!

Even without that rocket, not much would have changed, because ZenAku showed himself half a second too late to pin rapha to the corner and finish it, and even then, rapha had ghostwalk ready...

So there was no chance of killing rapha. Plan was to hit a second of 100% LG (bringing rapha down to 100/0 let's say), eat a rail or something (ZenAku down to 37/0), force the ghostwalk... and then what? Rapha would probably still go to emerge at the heavy with the SSG ready. Remember ZenAku had no rail (or even tribolt) after that suicide, and would simply run away.

So it was doubly unlucky that he just died there, but actually, there was no chance of him winning the game or even no realistic chance of getting control at that time.

To me the mistake from zenaku was to let rapha stack up so much prior to that fight. Felt like something went off with positioning in the prior 30-60 sec.

1hp...

If this was Cooller, he'd just go to the post-match interview with a smirk and open with "calculated" :)

Im very impressed by maxter, very clean plays.

What's wrong with rapha? Half of the games that he's lost were due to overagression. Why would he stick around for a fight in game four with 1 minute on the clock, two frags up, with visor good for two piercing sights? So frustrating to watch.

My take is, Rapha himself would probably disagree, but he cannot be expected to be purely objective in self-assessment, his mindset slowly but surely deteriorated through months and months of online play netcode fuckups and consequent rage about them. Instead of cold, calculated acceptance of the state of the game.
His late streams were riddled with rage about wrong hit registry and other shenennigans related to the netcode.

I think this took a toll on his general decision making and his emotions under high pressure. Some decisions on LAN were very uncharacteristic, too much aggression and relying too much on aim, instead of his former cool head with superior strategy.

you had situations like that that had taken place.

Correct link: https://www.twitch.tv/quake/clip/GorgeousRams...78zexuSShv

Situations like what, being surprised with 75/25 vs 150/150 and dying? It's the expected outcome, no? Is there context I'm missing?

Maxter stack 137/166. Rapha has the tele exit covered with RL. Maxter teleports, first rocket splash to the feet changes stack to 123/140 = 50 points of damage. Second rocket misses the direct, hits splash, stack 118/131 = 14 points of damage. Total damage by 2 splash rockets: 64.

Discussion:
The first rocket splash after the teleport fully wraps maxter in the explosion animation. One has to wonder why it did only 50 damage and no pushback at all. Realistically, maxter should have gotten 80+ damage and should have lost the ability to dodge for a moment.

The second rocket splash is delayed compared to the timing of the rocket fire. One would expect the rocket to straight explode after impact (you can see the rocket flying by going step by step). For some reason the rocket took much longer to explode, and as the first rocket did not hinder movement in any way, maxter could do a brilliant cooller dodge into the opponent. Still, 16 damage seems awfully low.

IMHO, Rapha was right even in this instance. We saw a netcode fuckup ON LAN. It was possibly triggered by the timing of the first rocket explosion and the teleport at almost the same time, fucking up hit registry for the entire situation.

Conclusion:
Rapha could hardly win this situation, maxter had too much stack, but for rockets to behave in such an unreliable way shows serious issues with the hit registry.
The hit registry is bugged even under perfect conditions (or there was a lag spike on LAN or whatever, less likely, because no visual indication, but also possible).

Can someone post rapha's demo? Oh wait, it's QC.

There was no first rocket, it was a totem exploding, 50 damage. It was getting shiny, so perhaps rapha just dropped it (then there's a cooldown before you can shoot).

"Second" rocket was the only rocket and saying it missed is not giving credit to maxter's dodge. Here we'd like to see rapha's POV, which we can't get, but really, maxter's jiggly forward dodge is exactly what you do to make people miss directs, so...

Again, I don't see the context and haven't actually watched ths game on stream, but looks like rapha was just dropping that totem and got surprised by maxter's appearance, all he could do was maximizing damage before dying. Unfortunately, the rocket missed and maxter didn't stick to LG and instead hit an excellent 95 damage SSG just before rapha had time to shoot another rocket.

Big confidence and very good play by maxter. Potentially risky (SSG reload is 200 ms longer than rocket's, IIRC, so he had to hit it), but he waited for rapha's dodge and hit a strong blast, so it was an excellent choice (no way to deal so much damage with LG before rapha can shoot again and start juggling you about).

Oh yeah, it was a totem alright...that changes all. (somehow because zsx says "hes gone through the tp" I saw the sparks as the teleport, not as a totem. But now that I saw it once, I see it every time and wonder how I got that wrong)

I need to correct myself, my conclusion is null, it was a legitimate situation for once.

Congratz k1llsen. I was rooting for Raisy, but well earned! These were some tense, high level games.

Props to maxter, Zenaku, chain for showing up with very serious performances.

Too bad for vengeur, not being able to regain his QCon 2021 shape. And lol @ Rapha for blowing it on the easy / gift side of the bracket :)

All in all, Quake still going hard!

The "easy" part of the bracket is a questionable statement.

GGG great final

[img1]

"I mean, it's kinda lame, that kind of playstyle" - k1llsen about his strategy in the final

I feel for Raisy.

6 times man :(

Raisy has some kind of mental block on winning, I think. He's got the mechanics, strategy, and tactics to win vs. k1llsen or anyone else, but I don't think Raisy thinks of himself as "the best" and lets other people be that.

The tournament was pretty awesome. Really enjoyed it, and good work to anyone involved!

The keel sorlag ending was a little underwhelming. It felt like the match was over as soon as Killsen had 2 frag advantage. Maybe there aren't enough champions to do a BO7?. Anyways, ggs

I agree, the amount of available champions played heavily in favour of K1llsen in the last map. If you get advantage with Sorlag you can just run it.
But then again the selection format is a matter of strategic selection. You could argue Raisy picked the good ones early because he needed to overcome the map advantage of K1llsen and had to accept the consequences afterward.

I havent paid attention to QC for quite a while and the game looks in pretty good shape. It is finally fun to watch. The tournament was high level and we have seen great performances. But you need to mention that a significant element of the quake elite was missing, the (bela)russians. I do not think that the outcome of this tournament accurately reflects the current skill hierarchy.

I agree with the champ pool and BO7s. This last map was similar to or even worse than the QPL Season 2 Stage 1 Finals where Raisy had to play with the then-weak DK on the last map.

There's more than enough champions, even with this stupid system.

When you move from bo3 to bo5 to bo7, you gradually lose the ability to ban maps, but you still ban champions. Just don't let them ban champions either, it's this easy...

This makes sense.

Love watching QC.
Never played it tho.
Gratz k1llsen!

Thanks.

ggs <3 k1llsen

Congrats k1llsen! I've missed quake, super entertaining to watch again! So many great games <3

GGS!

Congrats to Killsen. Raisy is looking like the modern day fox.
It's honestly a pleasure to watch QC. I wish I could say the same about playing it.

It's funny, I wanted Rapha to be beaten so much since he wins everything, but tournaments are boring without him tbh and he'll always be recgonised as the top dog.

Well played to K1llsen, amazing gameplay he played out of his skin and to 3 0 Maxter was sublime.

Gutted for Raisy, but a hell of a performance not just from him but everyone who attended, there were no easy gifted games.

I think Rapha will come back from this or he'll perhaps move on / retire who knows, he definitely still has the reactions, skill for it.

The question is, can it be said that k1llsen has won a QuakeCon?

There was absolutely zero reference to QuakeCon in this event's branding & marketing.

Quake world champion does not sound too bad either

Not that it matters too much, but for some reason the championship bracket https://quake.pglesports.com/ says Raisy won 4:3 :>



On that note: this was the BEST production of Quake I have ever witnessed. It was basically a flawless production from start to finish, props and respect for the organizer team!

It is sad to think now that the whole production has reached such level, it will end.

We now saw how the game plays on LAN, without any netcode hiccups. And it was glorious!

I would rather see the team finally putting, I dunno 200.000 (lets say for 2 people, half a year of dev time) into getting the netcode/server code finally fixed to a good level. To give the game a good fighting chance after the tourney series.

That way, the game can possibly survive and prosper after the tournament investments dry out.

With the online netcode as it is now, after the tourney series ends, the game is as good as dead and will finally die out in no time... :/ I hate the prospect, but its true.

It's stange, for the last 3 years or so, after each big patch, I seen people stating "yeah QC is *finally* playable now". Who is being honest and who is lying to themselves? I once tuned in to see what rapha was up to a few weeks ago and he was playing QC and swearing at all the dumb shit that was happening (i.e, bugs, broken netcode). I've never seen rapha like this, I asked a mate and he said yeah that's pretty standard rapha/QC these days. He was losing his shit during the LAN too. I didn't notice any issues myself watching the games on LAN, but I trust rapha's judgement as to how broken this shit is online. Must be so frustrating after a lifetime of Q3/QL. And even more frustrating knowing that QC is approaching it's 6th year of "development", all this money thrown at it and still an unfinished product.

As little faith I have in id software's capacity to come up with a functional competitive Quake title, at this point I'd rather see any resources be put into a new Quake title anyway than see a single cent poured into the bottomless pit of mediocrity that is QC development and its complete lack of accountability has become. I'm surprised anyone still has any faith that throwing money at this game for the 6th year in a row will *finally* leave it in a playable state, it's obviously hopeless spaghetti code by this point that nobody at the company knows how to detangle.

Need new maps? Shouldn't have cheapslutted themselves out during project's conception and made it possible for the >>>community<<< to provide this type of asset in the first place. Mediocrity doesn't deserve life support.

That said, I guess realistically there's no other choice. There probably won't be a new quake multiplayer title for a long time... and I do like tuning in once a year to see my Quake heros duke it out like in the good old days. Ignoring the fact that it's QC they are playing, there were a lot of close and entertaining matches, and I will admit the deciding factor always came down to whoever made a mistake, as it should be in Quake, not whoever got lucky with some bullshit champion/ability.

Imagine a quake battle royal as the next iteration

Unironically, would work. Quake is compatible with large maps and lots of players, be it BR or other formats. A shame this was never put to its fullest potential in QL. Just the halloween event iirc.

I would be curious, vampiric PQL CA has something of a BR when you look at the really good players manhandling 4 players doing 2000 dmg

Imagine following gaming trends that already peaked.. let's not.

Well put.
Rapha was the last one to start commenting on the netcode. There were many others before, most prominent Strenx. Strenx quit QC for the bad netcode.
But once Rapha started, it was like the flood gates opened and could not be closed again.

The problem is, once you start blaming outside factors (truthfully, but none the less) you partly lose the control over the things you can influence. You lose focus. Emotions cloud judgement.
Rapha lost his temper a few times too much, it leaked into his professional attitude and poisoned it. It's normal.

Regarding the state of the game's code, I also strongly suspect something hardly fixable, somthing bad documented, with strange workarounds, held together by duct-tape and hopes and prayers.

So this is the moment you hire outside professionals on the specific topic. You hire professionals which take 200k+ a year for their skills, not the budget amateurs from Saber.
You make clear all you want is to fix the mess. I think it should be possible, not only possible, but it is THE ONLY sensible course of action. Once the tournament stops, and QC isn't fun and "fair" to play online, the only possible way to play it because no third-party servers allowed, the interest will drop to 0 in the blink of an eye...it's completely obvious.

id Software never extended Saber's contract past 2018, so the game has seen no actual development for the past 3,5 years. Someone integrated an anti-cheat library and that's basically it, the rest have been small fixes and tweaks.

Tim (and then Todd) moved from id to Saber, which in the meantime produced two WWZ titles, which I'm not in a market for, but I'm curious how the engine evolved. Does it load fast now? Does it get stable FPS on potato PCs?

Back then, Tim tweeted at least twice that Saber was willing to continue working on QC, if only Bethesda allowed the expense. It was too late - you only release a game once (no, Thursday's release doesn't count, although there's a fresh stream of noobs on servers, from the Microsoft Store or whatever) and after a million dollar tournament on 15 FPS, for a game that back then was more gambling lootboxes than a shooter, there probably was no chance of ever recuperating further investment.

Oh BTW, did you know the next Painkiller is being developed by Saber? Another chance for that studio to fuck up a brand ESR likes :)

Another chance for that studio to fuck up a brand ESR likes :)

i don't know if you were around when Painkiller was used in CPL.. but ESR shat relentlessly on this game ("too fast and mindless") or simply ignored it for not being real Quake (vq3).

No, I only heard about it years later, when pros moved to Shootmania and everyone was like "what is this shit, we'd rather see Painkiller! Remember when stermy fought Fatal1ty?" ;)

I played the "extended remake", Painkiller Hell&Damnation and it was cool. I like old school single player shooters, currently I'm waiting for Ion Fury: Aftershock (Ion Fury was game of 2019 to me) and for WRATH: Aeon of Ruin and ULTRAKILL to exit EA, after buying QC in EA I won't be burned again! ;) So I'm definitely interested in another Painkiller (again: single player). Maybe they saw Doom's success and will make a nice and fast PC demon shooter? Surely they can't make it as bad as the last 3 Wolfensteins... :/

but ESR shat relentlessly on this game

Can you name a game that wasn't shat on by ESR? :D

Painkiller was the game that replaced Q3 at the CPL, back in 2004 (I don't count UT2k3 as such, as it was only featured on 2 CPL events). Naturally, ESR reaction was hostile. QW-like movement and atmosphere also didn't sit well with the crowds here.

The game itself, although decent in single player, had terrible netcode and never achieved a strong user base. It was only the million $ from CPL that kept it on life support.

The matches themselves were quite interesting, although two favourites emerged early on.

>had terrible netcode and never achieved a strong user base.
well well well

It's almost as if the fundamentals matter the most.

Imagine a game functioning as intended on launch, I mean it used to be a thing but it's 2022 now and having unfinished games with "DLC" being content they couldn't be bothered adding as extra $$$ is the norm now.

I'm just happy that I lived through the golden era of video gaming (all opinion of course).

Nintendo 64, Xbox, GameCube, DreamCast fucking bliss.

Mandatory quake is dead post.

the game is as good as dead and will finally die out in no time... :/

I think we've been dealing with this sentiment since early 2000's when counterstrike became more popular than quake.

Perpetually locked in this "finally nail in the coffin" status quo.

Running-gag aside, you removed an important part of my sentence "once the tourney series ends".

It is not dead as long as it is on (money) life support by the tournament series. Afterwards, this is my predicition, that is it. No small community like Quake Live had. 100 to 0 real quick. Why? Because the horrendous netcode that removes fairness, competitiveness and fun.

Just imagine QC, but with Overwatch "no issues whatsoever" (tm) netcode/servers.

I bet there are programmers out there that specialize on (game) netcode. When throwing money out the window, why not chose the remaining money wisely and invest in something lasting? Like fix the damn netcode!

Are you saying: hire Weird?

maybe... I don't know of his actual programming skills, but if he is some kind of an expert.

Have to correct myself - QC will have the same niche life QL had, some small russian tourneys with some C-level talent will keep it alive just long enough that it won't be obvious the game basically died not because of vaning interest in this type of game, but technical failure in making it playable online, where it matters (because no LAN servers allowed).

On that note: this was the BEST production of Quake I have ever witnessed. It was basically a flawless production from start to finish, props and respect for the organizer team!

PGL is a Romanian esports production company. it was no coincidence two of the biggest Quake Champions LANs were hosted in Bucharest. they also produced DOTA2 events like The International in the past.

we may not have many notable esports players, but I'm proud of these guys.

I missed the games due to work and other priorities, but I gotta say it's nice to see a lot of old names I recognize posting in this thread. Good on you boys, hope you're all doing well in life.

M A X T E R
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This was one fucking amazing tournament.

The amount of 1 frag difference matches and overtimes was ridiculous!!!

Thanks to everyone for making it possible.

Q U A K E
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1 frag dif, overtimes AND clutch 1 HP situations on top of that. :D

Yup, Grand Finals, Raisy vs K1llsen and corrupted keep iirc. 1hp to win the sudden death.

just like Crea said, probably the best produced Quake tournament ever, and imo best matches ever in QC history
(and i don't even like or play QC, even tho i bought it day 1)

there really isn't anything that comes close to watching quake being played at the highest level

it was a joy to watch!

"there really isn't anything that comes close to watching quake being played at the highest level"

This so much!

Next time Bethesda wants to throw a million bucks in a Quake pool, they should use 700k to get the main matches aired via ESPN+ or whatever, and 300k for the prizepool.

just showed k1llsen post-match interview to a mate, he had an interesting observation

"one day they gonna be thanking their grandchildren on stream"

Latest post on QC Reddit at the time of writing: "Frag movie, but my daughter chose the music" :)

Random Funny

https://youtu.be/puvQ0P3QFIw?t=70

Anybody has link to the prize money distribution of quakecon 2022?

Click on the Liquipedia link.

GGs tho I am sad we didn't get to see many great players competing and making the event even more interesting.

Finally got around to watching the last of the matches last night. Well deserved by K1llsen. He says he's not at the form that he was 3 years ago, but he's still world class. His Nyx is masterful—the best in the scene. He uses ghostwalk offensively in ways that are at least a level above anyone else, which is a nice change compared to the defensive way players usually use the ability.

In the months leading up to the tournament, I caught a few of his matches against rapha. I was worried about K1llsen's +back play because he would lose track of items and fall back to simple tactics, but he's clearly patched all that up since then.

I've had my eye on Maxter for a while. If he keeps improving at his current rate, in 1 or 2 years he'll be up there with Raisy, Vengeur, K1llsen, and the rest of them. And props to Av3k and Toxic for improving so much recently. Their styles are flexible now, and I don't doubt that Av3k especially can get back to the top. A few more changes, and he'll be there.

Aside from the embarrassing echoes of the casters clapping and the awkward exits after player interviews, the production is at a good place. The casters have improved, and zsx is top notch as always. Whoever (ZeroQL?) is splicing together those frags that are played immediately after each match is working fast.

As for the game itself, there is a lot left on the table. The loading times are inexcusable. The UI is clumsy. Most of the characters are dull or corny. The marketing is amateurish and undeveloped. 30/30 and strong rail lead to passiveness, which we saw all weekend and especially in the grand finals. I don't like to play QC, but I do like to watch it. As Cooller said about the game: "Good enough."

what do you mean about maxter being "up there" with venguear and rapha? he already beated em. specially vengeur. he always beats him...

After KeenCon, it's clear even Maxter's off-season shape is enough. I'm so proud of him.

If I was going to watch one match from this which should it be?

Raisy vs Rapha
Maxter vs Rapha

either one. or both.

Thanks bro

boring. sterile. nothing feels or looks impactful or meaningful. maybe if they stopped showing the enemy positions to spectators there might be some suspense. shit game. shit community. shit company.

also: if you disagree you're legitimately and literally actually retarded. if you enjoyed any of these matches you're a low tier npc (the kind that repeats the same line when you walk into a new area, and that you only talk to more than once to see if they say anything new on the second interaction).

the casters are shit, too. one of them was babbling about the heavy armor in quake live. the other awful line that stood out was rapha getting killed early in a match and the guy said "if you're going to die, that's the time to do it. better early in the game when you have a chance to come back than later in the game when you don't." his bobble-head retard casting-mate just mindlessly agreed. yes, indeed, the best time to drop a frag is when your opponent gains momentum and map control with 8 minutes left. brilliant analysis, tranny.

even if these fags haven't ever played at any significant level (upper mid skill, maybe?), they should have watched enough quake to know that giving away a frag with a 5 point lead late in the game is much more preferable to giving away a frag with a 5 point lead 2 minutes in.

just a terrible game and event in general, and people praise it the way they'd praise sucking shit out of a sewer if they were dehydrated during a drought. give me a break.

It's a fun game to spectate but a mediocre game to play.

You go back to something like Quakelive or Quakeworld and you wonder how they fuck they messed up so much in the gameplay department.

Had a rough day, dude?

yeah, i voluntarily watched quake champions and spent the day fighting the urge to dig my eyes out with a pocket knife. how was your day?

It was good. Saw a big pigeon.

Yeah I'm with you on that. It's the latest in a continual years-long rape of the Quake playerbase by a company that has just never cared. John Carmack cared a bit but it wasn't enough. No resource approaching his calibre is assigned to Quake Champions. That being said I do want people who're willing to overlook the problems to have an event that they can get something out of and maybe even enjoy. I don't have any hard feelings for the organizers or players, although I often wish they had put more pressure on Id Software in the past..

-most people do not like extreme resource management and these games have that (unless you play the ca mode)
-most people do not like high time to kill, and that is the case for these games. people say brs are high ttk but they're not, it takes a long time to kill someone that has armor and health in afps compared to br. because of this, they wouldn't even bother with ca because the mainstream fps is boots on the ground, low ttk, military setting. and then from there you can decide if you want counterstrike mechanics or ads and low recoil.
-it doesn't cater to people who like team games. ca has no objective other than to kill people, and the other game modes are less fun because there are too few health/armor items, which means only 1 or 2 players will be stacked and everyone else will be naked. this is why for example, quake champions didn't take off: they didn't actually turn it into a class based shooter, they made it a hybrid of quake armor/health pickups and character attributes. so most of the overwatch/tf2 crowd left after a few months.

but if you remember earlier on in qc, there was an attempt to make the overall time to kill lower. the armors became tiered so people couldn't +back and restack quickly, but they didn't give as much as cpm, they also had decay implemented from vq3, many of the characters were given stack limits of 50 and 75 armor respectively. there was no yellow armor. lg 8, rail 100 dmg when zoomed, rockets were 1100 ups and splash was very big, shotgun and mg and nailgun all became way more useful, tribolt was kind of a dud until spring of 2018 when they made it a portable artillery piece. and there were abilities. and hourglasses so people could get their abilities back quickly, so that there's no way to understand what their true cooldown is. all of this was done to help encourage new players to play qc, and not have to deal with extreme aim or extreme +back. but it didn't make a difference. the game was still too high of a time to kill compared to traditional shooters, and that's not what most people want in a shooter. when it comes to multiplayer shooters, most people want cs, call of duty, and battlefield. that's it. they don't want quake, or unreal, or tribes, or any game where it takes 2 seconds to kill someone with lg even with 100% accuracy. in apex legends the havok kills in 990ms to the body with 200hp. in qc the same kill with lg is going to be 1.81s.

some other things:
-quake4 and ut3 were total failures. dead af despite advertising themselves as much as they could.
-in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, the pace of new fps releases slowed down, and id software decided not to take advantage of this window. in fact from 2008-2016 all they had to show was... quake live.
-epic also decided that licensing ue3 and working on ue4 was the best solution.
-they release ut4 but unfortunately the game never took off. the resource management is even worse than quake games and the movement system was not as easy to learn as 2k4.
-quake champions tried to make the game have a lower time to kill in the beginning to encourage new players, but it didn't actually work. all it did was uplift the people that were stuck in the middle and lower high skill levels, but new players didn't actually benefit from reduced health and armor and higher damage values.
-diabotical came too late, too low of an asset quality for 2020, and people still want boots on the ground, low ttk, and military setting, which is why warzone overtook it.

the big question i have isn't "why id fucked up qc" or "why quake is unpopular", it's why the pace of new fps releases is so slow. the 2008 recession is no more, there's no shortage of game engines, programmers, artists, sound designers and voice actors. the hardware is better now than it was back then. pc gaming has grown more than ever. and yet, its still brs + cod csgo battlefield with the only new addition being valorant. im bored of brs, vanguard was terrible, csgo randomly decided to buff m4a1s to have ak47 body ttk, and battlefield is literally zero cover snipers heaven + vehicles heaven, plus i never really liked combined arms battlefield and literally only played no vehicle gamemodes on bf4 with smaller scale maps (small for bf anyway). and valorant well, it's riot, they're going to eventually flood the game with characters that do too much and then the game will eventually become deathball. they already did that in league of legends, look at s3-s6 when you could see people with godlike skill like faker and apdo inspiring a whole generation to minmax their lane phase and become the most hyperaggressive in your face dodging skill shots, huge cs lead, killing you and your jungler when you try to gank, unbelievable shit. and now look at modern league where there's so much dmg, cc, movement speed, cdr, the game basically plays like urf and they buffed the ever living shit out of junglers and supports whereas before they were literally irrelevant and could only be made good by godtier players.

but anyways, why is it that it takes so long to release new fps games? it shouldn't be so that valve can change weapon balance literally every fucking year, treyarch or sledgehammer put out a shit cod, and ea dice just makes another boring combined arms battlefield game, and no one tries to compete with them.

it was 7 lg not 8 i had q3 on the brain