Aug 1st 2025

23:25 -03 - 2359 users online

I see most topics are dead, even some that have interesting information.

How is the users online calculated? hmmm

In the 500th episode of my "Reflections" series I interviewed Victor "Makaveli" Cuadra, elite dueler and Quake legend.

Makaveli was one of the pioneers of the professional Quake 2 duel scene in the late 90s, along with friends and rivals Thresh and immortal. Players like Fatal1ty and ZeRo4 have credited him with inspiring their approach to pro play. He became the "unofficial world champion" after beating Shub in an exhibition series after the Norwegian had won EDL.

Makaveli discussed his recent recontextualising of his playing career, the reasons he chose a life without esports and how archiving his past has changed his perspective.

So a few words or ideas about the actual situation of gaming and (defunct) id Software MP games in special.

I think that irony with all newer games after Doom2 was that their MP was better than the SP where they focused more on SP, like Quake2 and Doom3, and the game that was designed especially for MP, Quake3, did not rise to the level of Quake2 Nor Quake1 or Doom3 in deathmatch.
After looking again at all those epic matches, I started to think that Quake2 was the most perfectly crafted, sometimes balanced, sometimes not, but giving importance to aspects like denying weapons, positioning and making in general brain matter more than in Quake3. What made Quake3 bad compared to Quake2 was the perfectly timed items, the imposed faster gameplay paced and improved accent on aiming. Filling all maps with too much armor and reduced respawn times for weapons were supposed to make games more frantic, fight, fight, fight. Instead it produced boring arse matches, where the spectator watches in awe at perfectly executed stunts with refined aim, and left you after empty, like watching a movie filled with special effects but garbage story.
To its due, Quake2 because is more slow and more methodic in its action is not fit for anyone, not for the stupid.

But Quake2 did not escape the garbage.
What f-ed up Quake2 still is the modern gaming hordes, who learned to abuse maps architecture. Like on The Edge, you supposed to pick mega and armor by rocket jumping and using the stairs, not combo-jumping and pick up all fast. This would slow a bit the pace and would reduce the control of the guy defending the room since he could not be exactly so easy all around to pick all in 2 seconds. Then they started to buy expensive mouse hw to aim better (to cheat in a way the limits of the railgun and of chaingun -hitscan weapons) and they cheated even more using crazy fovs to see more around. As an irony the end result was that players who became good at this kind of play, based on aim, execution, fast action and +forward, in Quake games, lack brain and general strategy knowledge, and got owned by brain players like Rapha.
So in a way the concept of Quake2 and Quake3 gameplay got its revenge, having the abusers getting kneeled by people with brain. Unfortunately not many rise up in the scene like this, because things are increasingly difficult with games where pro players can use execution to such extend, thanks to gimmicks, advanced hardware and all that garbage, that would overcome smartness. Unless smart guys have to spend huge amounts of time to get at closer level with the established "elite".
So I seen guys commenting about older Quake players and how they would stand no chance versus "enlightened" new wave or shall we say players after 2000. Well, I say, give them a ball mouse, reduced bind options, less strafejump mechanics (add a block depending on armor carry), and deny wider fov and all that s (supposedly improved) stuff that made them cheat their way to the top. Would they dominate then? After 2 decades of building just muscle memory and brain drainage? I don't think so...

So up until now, watching thousands of matches for quake1,2,3,ql,d3, q4, all I can think is that the ones played in the beginning are more valuable because (raw) superior gameplay mechanics, during the times of Quake1 and Quake2, and Quake2 gets the top of the cake. Quake1 was also close, until players learned to use and abuse strafejump to perfection and add new hw for improved aim, which changed the whole picture and the animation of the gameplay into -again -execution instead smartness.


[maybe I'll add more thoughts in the future]

side note: the only weapon that I don't like, never did in Quake2, was the blaster -design wise, usability, rate of fire and the shot effect is like you shoot colored spagetti