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Similarly to this discussion, I updated the spawn vis to the latest version of bloodrun.

- newest version (Infrastructure Upgrade ?)
- new version (PP12 ?)
- old version

The newest version has 10 spawns, so we are back at a 20% spawn prediction.

A screenshot comparing the three versions:


Following the community feedback, the PG spawns were removed. The mega spawns remain in their shifted location, preventing spawn fragging there. A new spawn is placed at the GL platform.

Recently, Quake Live Premium Pack 12 was released. As the rumors anticipated, this was going to be big update, possibly the biggest since the beginning of the premium packs. A number of features have been added, expanding the QL horizon in terms of modes and functionalities, and possibly bringing a change in the way the community will play in the future.

Overall, the community response was a mild appreciation with spikes of enthusiasm and satisfaction. As usual, many questions arose, especially regarding the premium model, the lack of anti-cheat, and the non-inclusion of community maps.

I believe there are a number of points that deserve discussion.

The new content

The update brings a massive amount of changes. Full change log is available here. I touch here some of the points I think are interesting.



A small but notable change is the hotbox fix. The way it is phrased in the change log makes it sound a marginal change, but the consequences in game may be important. Rail should no longer pass through, possibly providing a more consistent experience. Unconfirmed rumors say the update had influences also on rockets, making them more powerful, and lg making it harder to hit. Whether this is related to the hitbox change, or if it's just placebo, I cannot say. Shoult it be confirmed, the main question would be the consequences this new weapon balance may have.

Another change is the addition of features that may change the way the community spawns servers in the future. Two things contribute to that. First, the new server spawning interface, Start a Match 2.0, allows to configure the game with quite some detail. It may still not be 100% configurable, but there is really a lot of stuff. Settings can be exported and shared, replicating whatever becomes popular, and allowing defining new standards. Eventually, we want standards to become default, but being able to test things on our own is a really welcome change. Second, they removed the necessity for the server owner to be in the server for others to join. In conjunction these two things offer the ability to provide support any mode within the range of what can be configured. Extensions to the configurations should be possible, based on the demand. I’m happy about this because, traditionally, I’ve seen the community make amazing stuff even if given little to work with, so I'm curious to see what will come up here.

The most highlighted change is definitely the introduction of five new game modes. They are all derivations of existing modes, with Domination (Dom) clearly coming from CA, Red Rover (RR) being a mix of CA and FFA, and 1 Flag Capture The Flag (1FCTF), Attack & Defend (A&D) and Harvester (Har) Coming from CTF.

Dom has received some positive feedback. The nice thing about it is that it solves two of the major CA drawbacks (waiting time, and lack of incentive to move), while keeping the spirit of the game mode, i.e. for fun, possibly with music on, enjoying the weapons, physics, and chaotic rushing. RR is also pretty neat as it solves one further problem, the team composition, allowing uneven numbers and skill levels to successfully play together, its FFA individualistic nature being a proper match for public play. I believe both modes are a big improvement over public CA, and could easily become – in terms of gameplay – the backbone of the non-competitive playing experience.

I have a less clear opinion regarding the other modes, which - I admit - I haven't played much so far. From some discussion it appears they generated mixed feeling. The proposed gameplay seem solid but the community response might have been a bit cold so far.



I have little to say regarding the rest of the update content, except it is welcome. Glancing at the list the impression is quite good. Most of them are little things, but we had updates in the past with a comparable number of such fixes, but much less juicy stuff, so it’s quite hard to have a negative reaction today.

Where do we go from here?

Let me start by saying that, as I wrote countless time, we can only control how elaborated and well thought our wishes are. I believe this is positive for the community, as it builds up knowledge and filters the rants, and to the devs - should they be listening - it presents a clear message.

I think I can speak for many people saying that the major point going forward is the content access, i.e. the Premium Content model. Our community is small. Modes and maps are separated by a thin line marking the part of the content played by a critical mass, enough to sustain playability, and the rest which is there but cannot be played as one never finds other people to play with. Freezetag is probably a good example of what happens to valuable content that fell onto the wrong side.

It is therefore legitimate to question the future of the new game modes. One observation is that after the golden age of TDM and CTF, CA had progressively larger pieces of the cake. One could then argue that Dom or RR - as evolution of CA - may have better chances than Freezetag. (With the same argument, given the current popularity of CTF, the future of A&D, 1-CTF and Har should be quite dark). On the other hand, even with CA being popular, the number of premium CA players may simply not be enough, and we could witness what happen to Freezetag all over again. How can it be avoided?

If you look at the problem in terms of making a profit ([1]), you see that there are options, but they imply compromises which will necessarily cause a certain amount of whine.



The major drawback of the current model is how static it is. Content gets assigned a category, and it stays like that forever. This is bad for a number of reasons. As it takes one a bit of time to start appreciating a map or a game mode, and invitations can only do so much, static content access prevents people to get “teased the proper way” with premium content. Additionally, it somewhat works against the friend invitation concept, as by creating a clear cut between paying and non-paying customers, your friends in QL are likely to have the same account you have.

There are a few things that could be done to improve the situation:

- One idea is to release prior premium content as free. Depending on the timing of it, this may or may not become a “try in advance” feature for paying customers. The main disadvantage of this is that it puts more pressure in releasing premium content, and given the low man power id currently can afford, this is probably not a good idea, at least for fast cycles.

- A better idea, which is also my favorite, could be content rotation. With the recent “free to play” week, we just had a glimpse of what QL could be when the whole community access most of the content. Content rotation could include a mix of modes and maps that are free for a short period of time. Free user would then get to actually appreciate the content by trying it out for a bit of time. This could have benefits in terms of mixing the community, giving more space to less played maps, and bringing more people to appreciate premium content.

- Promotional weeks or weekends should happen more often. One could even think of the community unlocking promotions. It could work like: “If we reach X many new accounts by the end of the month, we all get a free content weekend”, suggesting players to let friends know about the game. I haven’t thought thoroughly about the options, but I feel there could be some room to get non-paying community more cooperating.

- There have been even more aggressive proposals, suggesting that server features should be used as part of the premium content, making free server less appealing to everyone (removing votes, forcing advertisement to all connected players, etc.). This is definitely on the unpopular side, where you take away instead of giving, but there is definitely some logic to it, even if evil.

Conclusions

My take home message, after this update, is that there is the potential for new game modes to become part of Quake. In the past, we have seen the core physics and weapons being tweaked in various ways, but attempts to bring new game modes often failed due to lack of promotion and the separation into different mods. As bad as some may picture it, QL brought a unified platform which distributes content and allows for promotion. Servers are easy to configure, and can be spawned with three clicks. To me this calls for evolution.

What I think must be addressed is the Content Access. As it is right now, the risk of having good content remain untouched is quite high. Freezetag burdens as failure, and that is not a bad game mode in any way. The new game modes are good as well. Are we really willing to see them dry?

In terms of the relation with id Software, a lot of things have been said in the past. Having a bit of personal experience with companies and management, I cannot feel angry at the individuals working there, as it happens to be willing to do the right things but just not being allowed to. My message to the devs is: let your managers know that content access is a serious issue. Show them how LoL is doing it (content rotation). Convince them this is for the good. The stuff you added is valuable. Don’t let it go wasted.

To conclude, the sinking boat did not sink after all. It may not be as titanical as some had hoped, but it’s still sailing the seas, carried by a gentle breeze. Many people love Quake and support it. There are things, simple things actually, that could help developing some of the potential. Lazy people whine on the part that is out of our hands, usually without structure or purpose. Identifying the problems is valuable, but it’s only half of the cake. The other part is to sit down and look at the big picture, try identifying new tools, and use them at our advantage. We’ve done much since 2009, and we just have to keep chewing rocket-gums while getting our ass where we should go.

The recent QL update brought quite some changes to bloodrun. I updated the spawn visualization:

- new version
- old version

As you can see there are now 13 spawns instead of 9, which reduces the probability of spawn prediction from 20% to 14%.



What's more important is how the current layout affects the spawn control.

New spawns:
- Three spawns have been added to the back of the map (PG/50hp rooms)
- one spawn in the RL room.

Changed spawns:
- The SG spawn (symmetric to the tele exit) has been moved to the RL stairs.
- 2 RG spawns moved slightly closer to mega to make sure they are not picked.
- GL spawn moved so it is less spammable from RA.

Effect on Spawn Fragging:
- From mega, you can no longer spawn frag the two RG spawns. You can still spawn frag the RL room, just with lower probability.
- From the RL room, you can only spawn frag if you are at the shards stairs, shooting at the bumppad spawn.
- From the GL platform you no longer can spam the SG spawn (moved), and have a 57-43% split between PG and RL room, depending on how you position yourself.
- You can spawn frag the new 50hp spawn coming from the lg bumppad.
- The new lower PG spawn (at the bumppad door) can be spammed from the teleport exit, and possibly rushing from 50hp room (you need to be outside 50hp room at spawn time and rush in).
- If stading at LG, you now have 71% chances of the opponent spawning in RL room.

This is all I got so far.

Introduction

A lot of people consider CA a broken/inferior mode. People playing CA competitively tend to disagree.

Although I’m far from being a top quaker, I’ve played different modes at an average competitive level. I used to compete at ra3 during 2003-2005, playing Clanbase div2 with DSQ. With QL I started playing Duel, and spectating quite a lot of the more “serious” modes.

My goal here is to discuss how CA works and what I think are its major problems. While in a game design discussion some things are a matter of taste, like for instance whether a game should involve computing numbers while under pressure or not, other things like having a consistent design are more objective arguments. I’ll try to focus on the latter.

The flaws of Competitive Clan Arena

In a nutshell, CA gameplay resolves into meeting up with your team in a convenient location and use numerical, positional, and personal-skill advantages to kill the other team.

This concept is in many ways similar to CS. That game may have bombs, hostages, a cash system, but still it is worth drawing a few parallels to it. One may find CS boring, but there has been a lot of polishing and refinement over the years to force on to admit that, to the least, in terms of creating a competitive game, that’s a fair product.

To me, the real flaws of CA are the (1.) poor spawn system, in conjunction with (2.) poor map design, i.e. maps that either were not designed with that gameplay in mind, or were simple poorly made.

CS has a clear map design. It solves most design difficulties by having a fixed paradigm. The two teams spawn at predefined locations at the edges of the map with two bombs locations more or less at equidistance. A map designer in CS can start by that, and then polish the various routes, trying to make maps less biased in terms of weapon balance, and as fair as possible for both teams.

In contrast, in Quake no effort was made to design a proper spawn system for CA. Rocket Arena was initially a fun mode to rocket jump in the air a try to hit mid-air crazy shots. There was no real design in mind, although people realized it could be fun playing it in teams, trying a variety of maps. These maps would have just standard spawn points, distributed evenly around the rooms and halways, and the spawn system would just be random. That was fine at the time. When people started to try and play more competitively, the game design was set in stone, and people just assumed that randomness would solve any unfairness issue.

Having seen many different games, one should try to distinguish between real design choices and excuses. Since there are no items or flags, the only thing in CA that makes a position important is its advantage in terms of fighting with your team.

Ignoring the general concerns of what creates advantage (true in any mode of Quake), there are CA specific questions that should immediately arise: how many of such points should be there in a map? How far should they be from the spawn points? How do we make it fair for both teams to reach these points? Etc. These are all important questions, and it is definitely clear, from looking at the maps (especially at the ra3 time), that a very poor job was done in answering those questions.

Competitive Ra3 has suffered immensely from this lack of design. It had a few decent maps (If I had to call out a few, ra3map7, ra3map9, ra3map3) but the map pools tended to be overreaching, resulting in teams picking the weirdest of the maps (ra3map4?!?) as their home, or compensating the ping/skill disadvantage taking cluster-fucks map (like ra3map2 and in a minor extent ra3map8) which would end in teams camping in adjacent rooms, depleting nades and rockets until someone finally managed to bully in. If you add the immense importance of ping, and how this would affect server search, the competitive side of ca, a setting where a team would do everything to win, tended to become super time consuming, frustrating and boring.

Over the years, CA evolved with sets of unwritten rules. In public, i.e. a non-competitive setting, people would start to play in a specific way, and even kick/ban from the servers (especially in Germany) those who would not follow. The most obvious case was being forced to meet at courtyard in ra3map11. People realized that by enforcing the rule of having a single meet up point, followed by carnage, the game would be a hell of a fun. Matches would be quick, action packed, and provided that adrenaline rush CA players learned to enjoy so much.

What was never written crystal clear, but that to me looks like a viable map design description is the following: Let’s make CA be centered in a single big room, with one strong and highly contested spot, and a few peripheral weaker spots directly connected for the losing team to fall back.

This would possibly be the case for the courtyard of Overkill, with the problem that that maps has large areas with marginal to no role, except for the fact they screw up the spawn system with a few players always being late to the party, or they allow +backers to make useless rail runs that make everybody in the server waste precious time. Recent maps, like Trinity and Asylum implement the concept much better, the former being arguably a bit too big, and the latter - in my opinion – being the most convincing CA map design-wise.

Conclusions

I think one reason why competitive CA never took off is because of lack of proper design. I think this could be fixed by being more explicit in the types of map that should be played, and by fixing the spawn system, which to date is just wrongly conceived.

To be more specific, closed rooms are a big problem and should be avoided; they generate deadlocks and prevent a good flow of players. The spawn system should be either changed to grouped team spawns, or maps should not be too wide and have good connections to make sure a match is not decided by the random seed.

Finally, I wish people involved with ra3 had more guts to try more things. There is a great range of design decision that could improve CA. Just as random comments, one could think of using short time-limits with a proper way of managing which team scores the point, so that people feel the urge to act. I cannot recall the name of that mod which had a circle appearing in the ground and killing you if you did not get out of it soon enough, but it was pretty damn fun, although possibly improper for competitive play.

In general, what makes CA good is the fact that Quake, even stripped off of additional strategic components based on items or flags, is still a fucking solid game, with awesome weapons and physics. I just think there could be more effort in designing game modes by conceiving interesting dynamics, and not by hacking together bits and pieces, as it was done with CA.

To conclude on a side note – not really related to competitive but to public CA - I’m very excited about the introduction of Red Rover. This is a mode that does exactly what it is supposed to do.. It provides an action paced Quake experience with all weapons and armors, it’s absolutely robust to whatever map, whatever spawn system, and whatever mix of people is on the server, and does not pretend to be serious in anyway. We will see what happens with that in QL.

I found this laying in my computer.



Are these stats up to date?

For those of you with a premium or pro account:

I would like to know why do you pay, and for which account. Is it just to support the game? Are there particular features you think deserve your money? If yes, which ones?

Whatever is your reason post it here.

So, we had tons of discussions about this, but the information is scattered all over the place, not always well written and so on. Let's make a container for the subject, hopefully with some good quality content and presentation.


What I ask you is to write how you would distribute the features and content of QL into the free, premium and pro accounts (or variations), considering that:

- You need to maximize the income, i.e. have as many subscribers as possible.
- Currently non-existing features/content do not come for free. They can cost months of development and therefore fall off the "feasible range".
- Your solution needs to be concrete. No generic "feature worth paying", but actual specific stuff.

Try to be as realist as possible, as if you were given the redesign task for real.

I'm curious of what you guys can come up, because it doesn't seem a trivial problem to me.

What is punishment?

Proper punishment has two purposes. First, to teach the offender a lesson. Second, to wield repressive action and make potential offenders consider twice. A form of punishment that fails to fulfill both aspects should be considered unsatisfactory, and replaced with one that succeeds.

Let us focus on banishment, or exile.



Lucifer: The Fallen Angel - Diego Maia

In times where communities were small, scattered far apart and life in the wild was dangerous, banishment could result in starvation/death, or to the least a life of solitude. As the density of population over the land increased, someone in exile could try and rebuild a new life in a different community, with the danger of his previous identity being revealed, possibly leading to a new banishment.

If we discard the danger of being in the wild alone, the major strength of banishment is the loss of things one considers dare to him or her. A rogue with no family, friends or belonging, would probably suffer less than a respectable citizen, banished after some regrettable crime. This is why, in some cases, banishment was a privilege, and death dispensed instead to those unworthy of it.

What is our home land?

To understand punishment in the context of Quake, we need to understand what is this “place” our community inhabits, what are its goods and trading rules, what do people really consider of value, i.e. what would they be sad to lose.

We have the game, where one has an account, with stats, achievements, and a friend list. We have ESR, as main exchange plaza, and we have localized websites. We have QLRanks.

As money comes from the real world, it may or may not be important for the offender. In certain countries 50$ is the price of entrance + 1 cocktail in a club. In others is the pay of one week of work. We must consider the worse case, where money does not count for the cheater. In-game stats and achievements are also not so relevant. They are not really considered of much worth as they are not really exposed or relevant while interacting with people. Finally, the ELO rank can be rebuilt relatively quickly.

So the things that are left are the skills of the player (very valuable, but cannot be taken away) and his place within the community, i.e. his e-fame. That is a mix of records or worthy achievements, interpersonal relationships, and the social role one has. Indeed, these are valuable stuff, and cannot be rebuilt fast.

Now who are the respectable citizens and who are the worthless rogues?

Without falling into elitism and oversimplification, we can take the skill of a player as main factor, and add any community relevant job (cup admin, streamer, movie/guides creator) one has done. Rogues are therefore newbies with no past or future, coming into the game and cheating. While prosecution at a technical level is necessary and important (we see how bad the situation is at lower tiers, where the long-criticized pb has left a hole), their treatment should be as close to a death sentence as possible. No need to alert the population about it.

What needs public attention are those cases of respectable citizens, the latest notable cases being ZeroQL and Zhu.

What form of banishment?

This is the real topic of discussion: how should a ban work?

Besides the technicalities of account/ip banning being unsatisfactory or inapplicable in some cases, there is the social aspect of it. In both cases mentioned above, we witnessed the following: first the cheater gets exposed and banned from the game, and second, soon after the ban, the cheater returns with some form of community contribution (movie, guide).

Aren’t banned people supposed to be gone for good?

Currently they are not, and this exposes the first problem of how we perceive and implement banishment. Cheaters have been banned from QL, but they haven't from ESR.

Indeed, this looks more like a modern version of banishment, the ban you would give to – say – violent hooligans; they are forbidden to enter the stadium, but they can still sit at the bar, watch games and cheer for their team (which is a considerable part of being a soccer fan).

ZeroQL releases Frag movies, Zhu posts video guides. What should we do? Some people hate on them as they are cheaters. Some others actually enjoy the content. I think we should decide as a community the proper response.

Outlook

If cheating is so bad that a full banishment should be issued, then it should be done at all levels. Banned from the game, banned from ESR, banned from any Quake site, the nickname put into a public black list, to warn anyone of what this guy has done. This is the only way to take away the “valuables” from the cheater and make the banishment a strong punishment. Let them hide in the dark, their past haunting them.

Or...

Alternatively, we can make a game-only ban, where one is not allowed to play in competitions, but can still participate to the community. He won’t receive much love, but also not walls of hate. The advantage is that we can benefit from social work done by these individuals, and they can seek redempion over time.

Your turn.

I had this idea in mind since the first 2D visualization I made for Bloodrun. The concept is pretty simple: get a 2D visualization of a demo. CS has had a minimap for ages, and while one can argue about the benefits in-game, I saw most of the potential in the demo-review process.

Ideas are nice, but it's the realization that makes them worth. I therefore went and ask for help to myT, the guy behind UDT project. He and I had some nice IRC discussions, and from there we began a cooperation that, in a couple of days, brought us here.


The viewer runs as an independent program, and has basic visualization features.


This is the first working prototype, and it might take some time before we reach the release to the public. Our hope is to be able to integrate everything into UDT itself.

We started with duel for simplicity reasons, but eventually see TDM and CTF as domain where this could provide the most benefits.

For now, I just wanted to share this first result. As usual, your feedback is welcome. Thank you in advance.

Link: Donate?

Since I got this question asked many times, I figured I would write an article instead and point people here.

This process describes how to convert Quake Live maps into 3D formats.

Tools

- Quake Live Decembler (quakelivedec.exe)
- An HEX editor (HHD HEX Editor Neo)
- Any version of radiant (GTK 1.4, 1.5, net, ...)
- q3map2.exe

Steps

Let assume you want to convert campgrounds (dm6).

1. Fetch 'campgrounds.pk3' inside '...\AppData\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\baseq3'

2. In a command prompt windows do:

quakelivedec.exe campgrounds.pk3 campgrounds.zip

3. Extract the zip content and fetch 'campgrounds.bsp'

4. Open it with the HEX editor and change the fifth byte from '2f' to '2e'. This converts the BSP version back to Q3.



5. In a command prompt windows do:

q3map2.exe -convert -format map campgrounds.bsp

This will generate a 'campgrounds.map'

6. Open the map in radiant. Filter the geometry off (toggle with alt + 1) select all entities and delete them. Around the map, create a brush box with the shader 'caulk'. Hollow the brush and save.


7. Create an 'info_player_start' anywhere in the map. Save.

8. In a command prompt windows do:

q3map2.exe -game quake3 -meta -patchmeta -subdivisions 2 -v campgrounds.map
q3map2.exe -convert -format ase -v campgrounds.bsp

This will generate 'campgrounds.ase', which can be read in most 3D applications.

9. The textures are exported as relative path assuming that the map is located in the folder 'maps' of QL tree. Repeat step 2. for all pk3 files. You can use a batch file like this:

for %%i In (" ...\AppData\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\baseq3\"*.pk3) do quakelivedec "...\AppData\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\baseq3\%%~nxi" "destinationfolder\zzz-%%~nxi.zip"

Extract all the files, and put the generated 'campgrounds.ase' inside the folder. Your 3D application should now find the textures.

May 2015: This thread is old and the links are dead. Refer to the official one, which has the updated links: Interactive Spawn Visualization.

Old Methods


New Method

You can check an updated method here:

- Aerowalk
- Bloodrun
- Campgrounds (new)
- Furiousheights
- Hektik (new)
- Lostworld
- Toxicity

Big props to newuser for investigating and finding this solution!

The current version has been confirmed as correct by different people. Your feedback is very welcome. Please report any mismatch by presenting a screenshot and making a circle around the wrong spawns.

Map Conversion Process

I recently got many requests, and decided to make a post about it.

Memento_Mori: Recently, there have been discussions about how the spawn system computes distances to the spawns, with experiments and clever inputs from the community.

I decided to go on and create a web interface to visualize spawns interactively. Simply move the mouse around the map and see the spawns getting updated in real-time.

This is a list of the maps currently done:

- Aerowalk
- Bloodrun
- Battleforged
- Campgrounds
- campgroundsintel
- Cure
- Furiousheights
- Hektik
- Lostworld
- Toxicity
- Sinister
- Silence

Offline Version: You can download the offline version here.

Related threads: Investigation, Bloodrun changes.

Hello,

I created a simple map in radiant, and compiled the .bsp.

I then used:
bspc.exe -bsp2aas -focesidesvisible -reach -optimize mymap.bsp
and got 'mymap.aas' back.

I changed the bsp version to QL one, put both files into a 'maps' folder, created a zip, used quakelivedec.exe to get a pk3 and tried to play the map in ql.

The map loads, I can play, but I cannot add bots: Fatal: aas not initialized.

So how do one generate proper .aas ?

Thanks!

Related threads:

- Bloodrun
- Lostworld
- Aerowalk
- Toxicity

I got a bunch of requests for furiousheights. I tried to do my best, but I am not very experienced with that map. I tried to add some in game stuff to explain better a few things, but I'm quite sure I missed some things.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuWDa3CEXms

As usual, feedback is welcome.

I made a first pass to the Duel Basics on the wiki. You can read it here.

As usual, your feedback is welcome. We can use this discussion to debate the content. I will then gather your suggestion and correct/improve the page.

Hello,

During Christmas break I spent some time creating a duel map. I finished the layout and the item placement. Feedback at this stage would be good to understand if it has potential gameplay-wise, or should be put away.


Edit: thanks frs for the youtube video.

Related threads:

- Bloodrun
- Lostworld
- Aerowalk

Hi guys, today I converted another map. I tried to cover all spawn harassment I know of, which is not much. If I missed some spawn-rapes, point that out.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irPWNWN-Pf0

As usual, feedback is welcome.

What is this?
Free Coaching is a voluntary based initiative that has as primarily goal sharing knowledge about Quake Live and helping players of any skill level in learning and improving.

Who can participate?
Anyone is welcome, either as voluntary coach, as student, or both.

How does it work?
The main form of interaction is the “coaching sessions”. Each coaching session includes a coach and one (or more) student(s), and to all extent it consists of a lecture about specific aspects of the game.

Additionally, coaches and students are welcome to discuss the coaching sessions over IRC and on the forum. Not everyone is a born coach, the same way as not everyone is a born champion. Discussing can improve the experience for everybody.

Organization
The neuralgic center of this initiative is its IRC channel #FreeCoaching on QuakeNet. See the tutorial on “how to connect” below.
The channel is like a public plaza, for coaches and students to meet, and organize coaching sessions.

General Guidelines

1.Common sense and acceptable social behavior are desirable and expected. Be respectful of the other people and you will be respected. Be positive, and it may spread to others. Create too many problems, and you will be ignored / banned.

2. Participate when you have the energy and the will of participating. While we want to keep certain standards, this is not a duty, but rather a different and positive way of interacting with the rest of the community playing a game you love. Both students and coaches matter when it comes to the atmosphere in the channel and in the game. Having a good experience starts from you.

3. Correctness and humbleness are the key. Teach when you are confident. Listen when somebody criticize you. Look for help when in doubt.


Coaches

This is a voluntary initiative. Anyone who is willing to help, can help. There is no "official" vs "unofficial" coach. If you think you can teach something and follow the guidelines, you can be a coach.

The list below is just a help to keep track of the 'whereabouts' of some of the coaches. If you want your data to be added, just post a reply, or send an IM.


Students

Anyone is welcome to join the channel and ask for help. To make things easier, you should give a few key information pieces about yourself, and about what you are looking for.

In specific, coaches want to know:
- where do you play (continent/region)
- what game-mode you would like to train
- what skill level are you (elo/tier)
- Anything more specific

Examples:

<jsnow> North America, Duel, 1300elo, looking for help playing Toxicity
<LittleFinger> Central Europe, CA, Tier2, need help with close combat!

Tutorials:


What now?

This initiative is as good as the collective effort we put into it. We can make the difference.

Now, it's all about letting people know about this initiative, join the channel, and get involved! There are surely different aspects that can be improved, especially on the technical parts, so don't hold your thoughts back. A few comments and ideas have been posted in the original forum discussion.

- Are you a an IRC bot expert?
- Do you host ts3/vents/mumble servers?

IM me, or joing #FreeCoaching on QuakeNet.

I talked with the admins, and we have their blessing. Somewhen soon, we will have a wiki system within ESR.

Why a wiki?

Trivial answer: because it is a good way to store and access information. A wiki just gives a simple unified structure to otherwise scattered information.

Go to TeamLiquid and look at BW and SC2 wikies as excellent examples.

Why on ESR?

A wiki is as good as the exposure it gets. If you make a wiki and nobody knows about it, you could as well not doing it. Make a wiki in a busy place, and people will make it flourish.

ESR is the best Quake Live has, so this is the place to have it.

Wait, I already started a QL wiki!

Props to you for the effort; let's work together!

This is not about personal pride, nor about content ownership. Contributions are very welcome from anyone, and if you already have put thoughts on this, the community will benefit from your wisdom.

So far, I could find the links below. I cannot judge the japanese ones, but it seems they were isolated attempts that got overwhelmed by the challenge.

If you know of more places, please post them.

What now?

The first thing to do is to agree on an overall structure. This step is crucial to organize a good wiki. Once that is there, people are welcome to fill in the actual pages.

Secondly, we should scout for available content. The more links we collect, the better.

I will post my thinking in separate posts, so that it is easier to discuss.

Structure

EmSixTeen and I worked on a general structure. You can visualize it here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xxxQrnQZt...xInkQ/edit

If you want to edit it, send an IM with a google mail account.

I've been thinking of promoting a bit the game by helping out newbies with free coaching sessions. The idea is to go beyond the "help the random dude in the server" (which is a good thing), by adding some sort of interface that might make the newbies feel part of something, have a goal, and stick around.

I'm still in the design phase, so any constructive criticism is more than welcome.

Requirements:

- Little to no extra time should be required besides the actual coaching session.
- Teacher and student should be able to talk.
- There should be an easy and quick way to get in contact and set things up.
- It would be nice to record everything and then publish it on youtube.
- (optional) coach should have pro account.

Tech solutions

To communicate, I see two options:
Solution 1: Skype based. The student adds the coach (whose account is publicly available, see below). If the coach status is 'available' (green) it means he is available to get a student. If he is 'occupied' (red) it means he already has a student. If he is offline, the student should get back later, or contact an other coach.

Solution 2: IRC/TS3 based. The student joins the appropriate channel, and asks for a coach. The coach status could be a tag in the name. If one is available, the two join TS.

I personally prefer the first one, as it is definitely more newbie friendly. On the other hand, supporting IRC may be good in the long run. Not sure here. Maybe starting with 1. and move to 2. later.

To do recording:
The audio can be recorded easily from either skype or ts3. For the video I guess using xstream is the simplest way, although playing fullscreen might be troublesome. Using QL demos might work, but it requires more time to sync audio/video.

Presentation

I was thinking to have a sticky thread (on QL forum and here on ESR) to properly present the initiative. Besides the explanation of the project and a dumb-proof "how to", the post would contain a list of coaches profiles like:

nick: Memento_Mori
location: Central Europe
skype: mementomoricoach999
languages: English, Italian
game mode: duel
student-level: up to 1100 elo

Ideally there would be more coaches, for different skill levels and game modes.


FAQ

- Why would I coach?

[+] whoring, of course! Besides... I'm a Quake enthusiast. I like didactic challenges. I think this can be a rewarding experience that does not cost too much, and can spread good.

- Why talking?

Talking makes things easier, and is necessary for publishing a video.

- Why publishing a video of it?

Many reasons. First, it allows other to assess the quality of the coaching, and leaves an important trace for coaches to improve over time. Second, it allows other player to benefit from the video, should the content matter for them as well. Third, it gives exposure to the coach and the initiative as a whole, potentially increasing both the demand and the offer.

Misc

Additional gimmicks like having a FCI clan tag, may make the initiative look stronger. I'm delusional enough to think that, should FCI work and become a respected entity, certain people would thrive to become a coach.

For esports, and for Quake. A bold title for a column maybe, but it is what I feel after this last DreamHack Winter 2011.

The first argument is that the esport crusade, that began twelve years ago and has always been surrounded by doubts, has finally settled foot on a strong ground. StarCraft 2 – the champion and main force of the army – is there not only to survive, but to grow and conquer. And it is not just excitement we are talking about. We now have better business models, we have game developers actively financing events and supporting esport, we have streams reaching important numbers, and organizations benefiting from improved infrastructure. We hear people like Carmac talking about synergistic interaction among the organizations, and more importantly, it seems that the people involved in esports are finally learning how to make sustainable efforts, after the numerous failures of this past decade. Another reason to have faith? All of this is happening during a harsh economic crisis, when conservative and careful thinking are mandatory for any investment. If something grows in these conditions, it means it has a good foundation.

Wait, I thought Quake was dying!

I hate this sentence. Not because I want to escape any reality behind it, but because it has no practical meaning. It is the human nature to witness death but still fight ‘till the end, and it should be obvious to everybody how nonsensical it is to choose not to live because of our fear of death. Simply put, I am mortal therefore I am dying, but I try not to give a fuck. Philosophy aside, “Quake is dying” is a dead-end for our minds; it cuts out opportunities and intelligent thinking, which are the things we actually need the most.
This past Saturday, 40k people saw a Quake final. It was not the perfect final (the mouse failure delay, the 3-0 that left us a bit empty-handed, the dominant SC2 audience, etc) but it was - arguably - the biggest exposure competitive Quake ever had. How? Just by cleverly interleaving the schedule, a simple but powerful decision.

Do those 40k viewers solve the problem Quake Live has? No! So why are you in any way happy?

I’m happy because – goodbye, writing style - Quake is fucking awesome. Old news, maybe, but it is the whole point of our community, of our crippled ESR, and of that part of our lives we spend playing, watching or thinking about Quake. It is an awesome experience. And most importantly, it can be an awesome experience also for those who are not Quake oriented, yet.



One of the nice things about cross-gender (FPS vs. RTS) interactions, is that the blatant difference in the gameplay allows people to drop the “mine is bigger” mindset, and allows a clearer, less-biased view to appreciate what is there. It is somehow funny that we needed CS to be “as dying as Quake” to finally have a mature reaction to it (which is either ignore it, or - for few rare individuals - appreciate it). Anyways, we live this very fortunate situation where the Quake and StarCraft communities seem to like each other. In an internet sense, of course, which means we don’t insult each other too often, nor slur the opposite games too much… :p

Now why is that important? Because they are the “next-gen” spectators competitive Quake can aim for. We no longer talk about Quakers (already oriented), but rather a mass of gamers and esport enthusiasts with little first-hand experience in FPS. They don’t know about all the underground shit, fights, debates, missing resources, id software’s hate or whatever. Still each one of them counts: in the stream counter, as potential new player, as positive judgment that can spread the word. The thinking from there is simple. Allow me a stretch: gamers are grown adult, some already with kids. Do you think so many kids would start playing soccer or baseball if they never saw these sport on tv? This might not be the reality today or tomorrow, but esport AND Quake survived a decade, so these time scopes are not that ridiculous.



This mass of spectators is a challenge and a relief, with big potential benefit for our game and community. For the productions and casters, it means to be able to entertain a broader audience, give that kind of information they need and like. This gives strength to the need for better spectator support (fixing the bugs, and adding some key features), which we all would benefit from. [Insert rage against id software here]. True, but when the evil SyncError sets the priorities to stuff like “allowing tier-slumming in NA servers”, an item like “improve spectator HUD” might receive a few additional points if one knows there is a big event with thousands of non-Quakers viewers ;)
Another advantage is that SC2 streams set standards, with which we would have to cope. A gimmick like showing the player’s heartbeat might sound silly at start, but it goes in the direction where if you give a good caster bits and pieces of information, he will have a base to spice his casting, making it more interesting and fun for everybody.
Third, if SC2 people start liking Quake, we are more likely to see Quake at important events. Think of the delusion after IEM dropped Quake, to understand how important this is for us all.

Ok but Quake still has lots of problems.

I won’t deny this. I just think we have to embrace what gaming is today and present Quake at its best. Drop anything we cannot control, and play with what we can. To me our priorities as competitive community are:

- Improve ESR, both as what the site features and how the people use it. There have been discussions about this, and hopefully this gets expanded in the comments. My take is that this place could look and feel much better.
- Improve the tournaments formats. I liked rapha’s points of having a 2on2 TDM rather than 4on4 and for duel to cycle more among the available maps. I also liked the map round system in the last SK tournament, which would allow to actually see all maps in the pool. The community should discuss, and tournament organizers take actions.
- I’m happy to see that more people started producing commentary videos. These should keep coming and improve. Moreover, good players should start streaming while playing. There are technical challenges, but with some efforts solutions can be found.
- Discussing the game. It would be nice to start seeing the kind of tutoring support one sees on team liquid, where one posts the demo of a match and asks for the mistakes. Posting a youtube video of the match might help getting lazy people to reply.

To conclude, let me give the proper respect to all the people who spent time, energy and money to make this last event happen. Level Up TV, 2GD, the players that attended even if they had little chance to win, the admin that decided to keep Quake at DH, xou who always does an amazing coverage work, and all people who woke up early and stayed up late to follow the streams, cheer, and make the IRC chat the funny spamfest it always is. Quake is awesome.

After the very successful first attempt, twist3r just released his second duel analysis video. This video shows the Bloodrun match from the final of Asus Spring Cup 2011 played last May, featuring Cooller and Cypher in a breathtaking fight until the very last second.

This video includes in depth analysis and breakdowns of the important moments by one of the best duelers in Germany.

Related discussions here and here.

My understanding is that several people playing with cable appear to warp in their opponents' screen.


The goal of the discussion would be to:
- Discuss the solutions (if any)
- List the ISP causing problem

ISP list
- CH Cablecom
- UK Virgin Media
- NL Ziggo (see comment)
- DE Kabel Deutschland
- PL Multimedia

Hello guys, this is the first episode of "Casting from Home" (CH), from Atomigo and Memento_Mori.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fhwTpJ2Ko4

This was the first setup testing sessions, with templates for name, logo, and overall organization. Besides a few technical issues things went quite smooth.

The format is still not set on stone. We would ideally do "one topic evenings", discussing either a map or a particular game situation. We could potentially host guests through skype (to be tested).

Feedback, both on the production and on the content is welcome. Suggestions about topics, guests or anything are even more welcome.

I had an idea and realized it is broken. I wanted to share just because it might inspire some of you, and maybe something good comes out of this.

So, time limit is what we are used to. It is simple to understand and guarantees the length of a map. Schedule-wise there is the unknown of BO3/5 which still screws things up, but at least the length of the continuous play is fixed. Other advantages of tl?

Now imagine this: a mega pickup limit, say set to 15. Since mega spawns every 35 seconds, this guarantees a minimum of 8 minutes and 45 seconds played, but:

- There are always delays, so the match will be longer. Tuning the number, one could obtain roughly 10 min of play on average.
- Picking mega would now add another dimension. As usual, it boosts your health and prevents your opponent to stack, but it also makes the match shorter.
- As picking mega is the only thing that makes the game end, committing to the item will be important for both players. A player with item control but less frags on the scoreboard will have the dilemma of picking one of the last megas – therefore making the game closer to its end - or chasing the opponent. Similarly, a player with lower stack but more frags, will have the challenge of talking the last megas without giving away too many frags.

Things may get broken for the following reasons

- comebacks may be harder. The player coming back would have to guard the mega area, while the other may pacman all armors, and briefly build enough stack to bully inside the mega area.
- matches may get longer. I don’t really see a full deadlock, but still, players may start delaying pickups early, making maps way more longer than 10 minutes.
- It may not adapt to all maps equally well.

Thoughts?

Edit:

Alternatives:
- The game ends as soon as one of the players reaches X mega pickups (say 10).

Related threads:

- Bloodrun
- Lostworld

I converted Aerowalk, and made a first recording. I added a few basic comments, for people new to dueling in this map.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rKUwqLbWVc

Your feedback is very important to me. Again, let's use this thread as a collector for tips and tricks. Eventually, I would like to remake the videos, buffed with all the knowledge.

Related threads:

-Bloodrun
-Aerowalk

I converted lostworld, and made a first conservative video. I decided to not go into details as I have little experience.

This thread is meant to capture all the information about spawn system in this map. Feel free to contribute.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13Ms79dieho

While rotating the model around, I guessed three possible spawn-raping situations, but before recording anything about those, I wanted to check with you.

All three cases involves you being on one side of the central room, and the opponent spawning at one of the entrances. More specifically:

- from bottom-mega-room to the bottom-LG-room
- from top-LG-hallways to top-mega-room
- from RL-platform to top-LG-hallways

Each one has 1/9 probability. Can anyone confirm these?

Related threads:

-Lostworld
-Aerowalk

I wanted to share some of the efforts I'm doing in visualizing spawn points. In this first video I explain basic things about ql spawn system and ztn.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s14EO-YI14Q

Technically, I consider this a proof of concept; an ok solution that does what it is meant to. What I did was converting the map into a generic format, and use some tools to visualize the stuff. The rendering is nice, but the rest is somewhat limited to placing geometry and talking.

Ideally, I see this as part of a custom program, where things that matter can be computed and visualized. The ultimate goal would be to play a demo with this visualization, stop at anytime, and show a hell of information on what is going on, potentially switching to the classic view etc.

Hello, after the timing guide, I started writing on other aspects of dueling. This part is about damage output. It is quite basic, mainly for beginners, but I hope you will like it. The topic is less prone to text guides, but I wanted to pin down a few concepts. Any feedback is welcome.

Damage Output

Quake Dueling is about high damage output. Ultimately your goal is to frag the opponent, and to do so you mostly rely on your ability to deal damage (you can’t hope for the enemy to jump into lava/void, can you?).
The equation is regulated by the damage dealt and the stack production of the map, considering which stack each player runs. In the limit (if they are fucking pacmans)

- The big stack (mega + red) provides: 411 points / minute
- The small stack (2 yellows) provides: 240 points / minute

In practice, the numbers are lower, as challenges may delay item pickups, items may be synched etc. However, these values do not consider additional health/shards a player may take. So we can take them as fair upper limits.

So what are these numbers good for? During the game not much, as one usually reasons in pickup cycles rather than minutes, but after the game, they can help you give a bit more meaning to a win or a loss.

If I look at a recent duel I lost in Toxicity (mega, red, 2 yellows), I can see that I dealt 3470 dmg over the 10 minutes of play. I know that my opponent was running the big stack for most of the time, which means that to have a chance to win I should have dealt at least 4110. No wonder I lost.

There are many other indicators, as the final score and the item pickup counters. In a clear loss, all indicators agree, leaving the doubt of what is the major problem. Sometimes however, you may find yourself in the situation where although you did a good job in timing items and play the roles correctly, you still get destroyed. The ratio of damage dealt by you and your opponent is something to watch out.

Avoiding damage?

While at the input level dodging is a different skill than aiming, the two are strongly intertwined. Your dodging may assist your aim or spoil it. Shooting at your opponent forces him to dodge and aim less. There are situations where getting away alive is more important than killing. All this stuff is complex and situational, and we are not going to discuss it here.

For the sake of this discussion, we will focus on damage output, i.e. how to deal damage. The naïve understanding is that by learning how to deal damage, one starts to learn what is dangerous, which is definitely the first step to learn how to avoid getting damage. This is not everything you need to not take damage, but it is a start.
So, let’s say you know I have a poor damage output in a map. What should you do?

Knowing the Angles

There are several reasons why the damage output can be low. If the opponent is far better than you, his dodging will make your aiming harder, your access to the important weapons will be limited, and he will not expose himself preventing you to use the little position advantage you may have now and then.

However, even if the opponent is better than you, there are a few things you can certainly focus on. This knowledge is usually called “knowing the angles”. On the bright side, this is pure combat stuff, so even if you hate the brain-heavy sides of dueling, you will like this part. The dark side is that this is map dependent.
The requirements to do damage are quite simple:

1. Be in the right position
2. Have the right weapon
3. Use the weapon correctly

The order here matters. You may have 5-10% better lg than your opponent, but if he catches when you take a jump pad (ex: upper ya in t9) he will destroy you. Similarly, a good position to take lg fights may not be suitable to rail from, as it may have no quick escape routes if you miss. Finally, if you are in position and have the right weapon but hit like crap, you won’t achieve much.

These three criteria gives you a base on top of which you can judge damage exchanges.

Watching Demos

Watching demos is one of those things people are inclined to preach, yet it is one of the less popular practices. The problem is that there is a lot that goes with that “watching”, and if one is new to dueling he won’t know what to look for. So let’s try and give a first simple recipe that anyone can follow.

You want to watch demos and consider the damage exchanges in terms of position, weapon and aim

Forget about the items, the advantage and so on. These things will come at another time. Just take a demo of a map you want to learn (ex:noctis in toxicity), fire it up and whenever you see damage dealt, consider it in the perspective of position, weapon, aim as well as what happens afterwards.

Don’t look only for the damage that is dealt, but also the one that is not. Sometimes you see a player – rail in hand – waiting for the enemy to show up. That is important, mark that in your head and the next time you play try and see if you can get the same shot. Other times, a player will sniff a trap, slow down, bait the trapper with fake jumps etc. These are priceless tips. That trap may be worth doing, and knowing how to counter it may win you a game.

Good players spam a lot. Spam is your friend, and is one of the primary sources of damage. Unless you are in stealth mode, or about to get trapped with low ammo, spamming is always good. With time one learns the why, how and whens about spamming, but you can start right now. Copy what pros do.

Pro’s Demos vs. your own Demos

Watch pros’ demos for inspiration; watch your demos for mistakes

If you load your own demo right after the one of a pro, you are likely to notice a lot of differences. Of course, not everything that applies to pro’s will apply to you. You cannot hope to have their raw combat skills, so you may realize that in practice you cannot do what they do. On the other hand, you do many more mistakes you won’t see in a pro demo. These difference are what you want to work on.

For damage output, what you are looking for are tips, combinations of positioning and weapon that can work. These are often related to what mistakes the opponent does. And since you do many more mistakes than the pros, you want to watch your own demos and focus on when you take a lot of damage. You can then go back and see what pros do in similar situations.

Additionally, if you use WolfcamQL, you can switch pov to see how things look from the opponent’s point of view. You may see how silly your dodging was, or how imprudent you were, and try and do better the next time.

Finally, you want to look for situations where you could have dealt damage but did not (you did not spam, you did not expect him to be there, etc). Try to incorporate the spam you see from pros. Do a few cycles between your own tries and their correct executions.

How does it work?
1) Users/Admin connect to the server.
2) The admin tell the server to start a demo.
3) All clients receive the demo stream, mostly in sync (modulo ping, like gtv).
4) The server accepts command for playback (stop, play, rewind/go to time), either from the admin, or any user.

How?
Ioq3 based server / client. FTP to store demos on the server.

Why?
The main goal is to allow multiple people across the internet to watch a demo together, enabling in depth demo analysis while on voip. This is mainly intended for coaching, match preparation or debrieding, as well as casting/shows.

Is this already there?
No, this is just a concept. The idea crossed my mind recently, and I wanted to share. This is actially not too far from GTV, with the difference that the source is a demo and not a match being played. If somebody is interested in the development, let me know.

Since the recent news about ESWC and ESL dropping Quake Live, ESR looks like an ant-hive after someone walked on it. Some react by tearing their clothes off, others try to spur the community to do something, others simply lurk Teamliquid to see if Starcraft2 can fill the void QL left. They did moan with us, our fellow sc2 players, didn’t they?

Many people blame id Software, from Syncerror, which seems to be the shit-storm umbrella, on to the rest of the dev team. Regardless of whether this is a reasonable stance or not, this gave a stronger voice to those who have – in some cases for a long time – promoted the going back to Quake 3.
This column is about this concept of “moving back”. What does that mean? What would it imply? Is that really what we want? Would it work?

The potential with Q3

There are several beafy areas where the Q3 option shines, the major points being:

-Development
-LAN servers
-Maps

In many aspects, CPMA / OSP have more features than QL. Hosting LAN tournament was possible, if not easy to do. There were plenty of maps available for anyone for free.

Guarantees

Assuming everybody “moves back to Q3” (whatever this means), are there any guarantees that the community would sustain itself? Are still there those geeky developers that would take on from whatever CPMA/OSP left, and carry Q3 on where the future needs it to go?
Development is a big word. It can mean a lot, if there are people with enough knowledge, time, dedication, and coordination to do things that matter. Or it could mean as much as a dead body darken coded from the hospital bed.

And even if we had the CPMA/OSP team in full force, would this be sufficient? Sufficient to “save Quake”? Because we are discussing about saving quake, aren’t we?
Q was pretty much dead before QL, wasn’t it? The only difference now, is that we cumulated experience. We have seen the benefits of streaming. We have seen how QL worked and not worked, so we could build from there on. But is this enough?

Community Psyche

Excitement freaks; this is what we are, given, of course, that we are also sheep. Beeeh, anyone?
As silly as it sounds, the reality is that, should a big e-sport organization pick Q3 for the next season of whatever with prizes and shit, people would instantly teleport to Q3 without saying goodbye. Would then these people actually play in those tournaments? No, but the pros would, and that’s exciting. This, and the fact that “Q3 is where everybody is going”.

We had these things in the past. When big tournaments picked CPMA over OSP, when Q4 came out, when QL came out. But actually, the same happened before, with Q2 and Q3. Were these moves the result of careful thinking and planning? No. People just had the feeling it was the right thing to do. In some cases, they did regret the change and went back. The community partitioned and groups did evolve – read shrink – until extinction, with the exception of what communities are left today, playing the various Quakes versions.
My point is that – even if with reasoning one could say a move is the right choice - moving a community is freaking hard. You have to build a consensus, facing tons of opposition from regular people and derision from trolls. And there are no guarantees.

So, should we go back?

I think the only big thing that could excite people enough to really move back, is a community-built system that gets where Quake Live should have. Maybe not as far as where Battlenet2 and SC2 are, but surely on that direction. A platform, either client-integrated or through web, where a few key social features are implemented. A platform that would give players a reason to play, give constant feedback on the progress and make players feel inside a playing community. Is this even possible? Developed spontaneously by the community?

I don’t have a good answer. Aiming for the core, the essence, may be a sustainable challenge, the reasoning being that all the expensive eye-candies would arrive later, should things get any momentum. But surely it is not easy. It probably means little to nothing, but I spent the afternoon at the hospital where my brother is recovering from a blood infection. He has a degree in math and one in computer science, and he works on cloud computing / distributed systems. We talked a lot about Quake, battlenet2, we looked a bit into the problem of implementing an ELO system for real, and we looked at simpler systems like WC3/Halo, discussing the minimum web development something as simple as a ladder system would require. I let my fantasies and hopes go way beyond where it is reasonable, because I was happy to just be there and talk about these things.

Your turn, now.

To conclude this column, I think that people should calm down a bit. It is ok to be sad about losing something we love, but we should never forget that this whole Quake thing was, is, and will be a passion, a hobby, for 99.9% of us. And when people spend hours lurking anxious posts, filled with “Oh noes, everybody panic” vs. ray the doom’s rant, what has a passion become? Just keep it cool. Play the game, create content, and if you have the skills, think of what could be done.

Just pretend for a second that there were the possiblity of implementing stuff for QL. I was wondering what would you expect from a ladder system in terms of feature, look and feel and so on. May people point out that battlenet2 is so nice, so try to elaborate what you like and what you think would work well for quake.

Hello folks,

I was inspired by Phil's post and started thinking of doing some Duel Commentary of the games I play, trying to explain what is going on and what I think I should do.

Commentary Videos

These are full commentary videos with editing and eye-candies. The quality improved over time, so you can take the last videos as an example.

I'd like to use these to really go into some specific aspects of the game, possibly writing stuff on the screen, and making them a mix of commentary and tutorial.


Spawn-System Videos

These videos are my attempt to discuss the spawn system. Please notice that time has passed since I first made them. In the meanwhile I realized that some rules are not exactly what I thought, and in fact I realized that the Interactive Spawn Visualizations (news, wiki) are probably better than any video. Still, I include the videos here for completion.


Miscellaneous

I put here other videos that might be of interest.

I'm opening this discussion to see what is the general opininion about moderation on this site and if/how things should be changed for the better. I did some search and the only somewhat related thing I found was this thread.

As far as I can tell, there is some loose moderation applied, mainly caring about the form of the individual posts rather than acting on the people writing. In the Site Guide, the admin guidelines include a paragraph on moderation, which basically suggests to keep the writing polished, especially in majored items, and either delete/nuke anonymous rants. The guidelines however talk about respecting other people as we are all at the same level, and also suggest to not take the admin role as a job, but just as an addendum to the usual web page usage. This somehow conveys the loose moderation spirit.

So the main question is if you think things could be improved, and how. I think there are various levels of moderation, from the little to none that we have now, to a stark moderation you see for instance on team liquid.

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