Quake Live gets a massive, newcomer-friendly update in anticipation of the Steam launch
55 replies, posted
just buy quake 3
"Lets reduce all the the spawn-times so map control doesn't even matter"
Makes me sad
as long as it's optional, it's fine for me for the most part
also shit like this:
[quote]Players may now hold jump to continuously jump.
Players may now hold forward and jump to 'bunny hop', allowing them to slowly gain up to 2x their base movement speed.[/quote]
this feature is already in a free game called Warsow, which plays a lot like Quake 3 with the addition of dashing and walljumping. If I'm understanding this correctly, the fastest you can get by holding down space and forward is 2x movement speed, which is incredibly slow by bunnyhopping standards. In warsow, doing that is the easy way to gain speed, but you can only get faster by mastering strafe jumping, which is what I guess Quake is going to do.
anyway, i understand that they want to attract more than Quake veterens, completely understandable, but I hope they keep the "new" Quake and the classic very separate. The worst case for this game would be if they forced this change on everyone. (I mean the loadout stuff, the bunnyhopping change i don't really care about, but both things should still be options). In my opinion, this isn't really much different than CS:GO's "casual" and "competitive" gamemodes.
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i'd like to add that while this update is fine for the most part, these particular points are the most concerning to me:
[quote]Unified weapon respawn time to 5 seconds across all game modes.[/quote]
[quote]Added in-world item timers for "major" items, including armors, megahealth, power-ups, and medkit.[/quote]
[quote]Reduced ammo respawn time from 40 seconds to 10 seconds.[/quote]
mainly because they change both the classic game and the "new" game (which is implied by the wording, but i could be wrong who knows)
They're trying to equalize things between veterans and newbies, but unfortunately veterans tend to take matters like that rather personally. When Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was found to effectively make B-hopping impossible because you just get slower and slower with jumping, the vets went up and said it lowers the skill ceiling and makes the game more bland. On the flip side, if basically everyone can tell when a weapon is going to respawn, ammunition is more abundant for everything and so forth without having to dedicate time mastering the game by heart, they're probably going to complain that the devs of Quake Live are trying to outright remove the skill ceiling / neuter the vets.
Maybe i'm just cynical towards competitive play, and personally I hate the idea of loadouts myself in something like Quake. Yet I feel this is just a stupid decision overall even with the few positives it presents - especially if, like some say, making a Classic server is behind a paywall, relying on F2P players finding classic servers themselves to not have to deal with that shit.
So, played around with update for a bit, here's my take on this stuff as a US player:
New auto hop is a really meh change. When they said "slowly build speed", they meant fucking slow. The speed gain is almost useless on most non-CTF. Anyone who can do quick circle jumps and knows how to strafe has 500 speed almost immediately, but with the new "hold forward and jump" it takes about 3 seconds to get from 320(run speed) to 500. It doesn't take anything away from the movement, but it still lets newbies feel faster, even if small amounts.
Duel, the main game mode of Quake, is still running classic on the official servers. No auto jump, no forward jump for speed, no item timers. Same old duel, with a new weapon.
The Heavy Machine Gun(HMG) is a bit strong. Overall I feel it's the worst change this patch. It just feels too strong and doesn't add anything. In fact, it replaced the Chaingun on most maps. Hell, even the iconic Q2DM1 had its Chaingun removed. Worst change.
Official CTF servers have the new strafe jump changes, but no one plays CTF on official servers and hardly at all on premium servers. CTF is pretty movement based, so I can't see the changes affecting too many people since most already know how to strafe jump and the people that don't know how aren't and won't be useful even with the hold forward+space change.
Loadouts... Oh boy are these obviously going to be controversial. On one hand, I can see why they were added, especially in FFA, but on the other hand, they're kind of annoying. For FFA, newbies start playing and get destroyed by people who have weapons and armor and know the map, when they only have an MG. They get frustrated and quit, game doesn't grow. Loadouts give newbies a chance, but at the same time, with loadouts FFA is even more annoying than before because you kill a guy and then he spawns in front of/behind you with 120 hp and a rocket/rail/LG/HMG which can be even more frustrating than it used to when the guy would spawn in front of you with just an MG.
In world timers are really just whatever for me. They're not in classic duel and it's not that big of a deal in FFA with 8+ people running around. Also doesn't matter when most people just play the same shitty tiny maps anyway. Powerup world timers are probably annoying for the people that tryhard FFA pubs and to a lesser extent, pub TDM and CTF. TDM is in the same poor state as CTF though, almost no one plays it on pubs, in the US at least.
Weapon respawn times I can see being quite annoying for TDM, but that gamemode is generally left to pickups anyway, so pickup servers are probably just going to use classic anyway.
Friendly fire change is fine for the few pub games of TDM that happen. Nothing more annoying than someone with no aim costing you the game because he's rocket/railing team mates all day.
I don't play clan arena, but I think the only change that effects the gamemode is the LG nerf, removal of nail gun, removal of chaingun and the addition of the HMG
Quake Live is really cool until I'm matched with people that know Quake. I just need to play with fellow newbies. :(
This entire thing is yet another proof that dumb shit executives shouldn't be let anywhere near a fucking video game.
Do these shitheads even know why people play Quake ?
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;45822453]This entire thing is yet another proof that dumb shit executives shouldn't be let anywhere near a fucking video game.
Do these shitheads even know why people play Quake ?[/QUOTE]
People play Quake Live because it's free to play, doesn't have an unlock system where you have to grind for hours to unlock good weapons, doesn't involve extortion in the form of pay to win like with Combat Arms and it doesn't involve having to select a role as part of a bigger team like in Team Fortress 2. These [b]optional[/b] changes will only bring back more players and attract new ones by levelling the field and not disproportionately advantaging Quake veterans who sink all their free time into the game to master every weapon and level. That way, newer players won't continuously die without getting a single frag, and will instead have a better chance which will lead to those players probably sticking around for a while to enjoy the game.
Face it, you're in the minority.
I'm a UT99 guy more than a quake guy but please don't fuck quake up
I just started playing Quake Live because I never really played Quake growing up and wanted a high skill fast paced shooter. Even as a new fan of the series, this really upsets me.
As someone who has played Quake Live for more than a year, I'm greatly disappointed
I've been excited for the upcoming steam release, then they pull this bullshit
I downloaded Quake Live today
I am SO [B]B A D.[/B]
classic servers are still public, duel is always classic. only change that carries over to classic that matters is 6-damage lg cells, and even then it's not that huge.
as a dueler it doesn't really bother me, old quake is still there but there'll just be tons of valve-server tier baddies to shoot in pubs. If even a few new players develop skill and learn to play the old version it'll be all good.
what I really do like is the fact that item timers are visible in non-classic will teach dudes to time items to prep for actual duel because every single player I know who starts duel has no clue.
Oh wow now the game bunny hops for you..
What a shame, I always thought Quake Live was made to bring the arena fps format to younger players, not to spoil the original experience with all these little "aids"
And a month after Steam release it's gonna be as stagnated as it is now because this will change nothing.