In Q3, the middle-tier weapons were SSG, GL, and PG.

This was great because each one was totally different and required different mechanics for success. These weapons were crucial to TDM and CTF where resources were split across the team, and while Duel eliminated that need, they still each had a solid niche purpose.

In Quake Champions, the middle tier is HMG, LG, and more LG.

It's all the same mechanic, and eliminates need for other weapons.

Why is this?

In Q3 there were typically 2 SSG spawns per map, because its range was poor, but by increasing its availability, it became a great standby which was always around to provide an upgrade in close-range power over the MG.

In Quake Champions, there's only 1 SSG per map, and instead the LG takes on the high-availability standby role.

Sarnath has 2 LG spawns and Burial has 3 LG spawns. Sacrifice adds a 4th LG spawn. Furthermore, the HMG now has the same DPS as QL's LG; 120 dps (even more when you zoom). So basically the HMG is just another LG without the range cutoff, and a bit of RNG added.

Soak that in for a moment. Who in God's name ever thought the LG ever needed more spawns in Q3 or QL? Now DM6 has double the opportunities to get trinity-caliber hitscan tracking damage. On other maps it gets worse: triple, quadruple, or 5x the opportunities. Quake Champions is passing out LG's like candy.

Id has announced they are bringing back the GL as an active ability gimmick on a new character, which speaks for itself as a bad idea. Certainly opinions on the GL in Q3/QL were mixed, but there are easy ways to cut down on the spam; Q2 fire rate, along with better audibility and visibility. People didn't go running into "random" nades so much in QW when you could hear them clanging around the room from a mile away, courtesy of Trent's overdriven sound design.

Next, here's a PSA:

The Super Nailgun is NOT just a reskin of the Plasmagun.

IT'S MISSING 50 DPS.

No one ever asked for a 50 dps drop on the PG, because it was just barely able to hold its own against trinity weapons as it was. CPMA tried that damage drop circa 2002 and realized it was a bad idea. Arq explained why in a memo when Arqmode was standardized:

http://packages.vstone.eu/quake3/cpma/docs/arQmode.txt

The QC team obviously didn't get that memo.

No doubt, some Quake vets will read this and figure "as long as the holy trinity works, who cares?". But I'd argue that Quake was never supposed to be about JUST the trinity, and if you allow Id to weaken the middle-tier and pass out trinity weapons like candy, what you're really getting is Rocket/Clan Arena masquerading as Duel/TDM.

So please make noise about this, unless you want QC to offer nothing at all over all the older, expired arena shooters where you can't find a populated server unless it's CA.

Hi, I've been trying to get some LAN TDM games going and I'm having problems rotating maps.

First off, I can't get it to work at all on a listen server; the game acts like map_rotation is set to 0 no matter what. Even stranger, if I try to manually change maps mid-game, it crashes out to the main menu.

On a dedicated server, I have to manually set map_rotation to 1 AFTER the game has already started; it ignores the setting when entered via autoexecution or mode. Once it begins rotating the maps, it will only rotate the default TeamMaps.txt. If I try to use a custom maplist, or edit the default one, it reverts to not rotating maps at all.

Does anyone have any advice with this problem? Thanks in advance.