The problem with Quake, is that it is old-school. That means, there is no system of positive reinforcement. Modern games are the most pussy shit you have ever seen. They hold your fucking hand the entire time you play them. They reward you even if you lose. And that's exactly how we need to make Quake.

A section of Quake can be reserved for professional - no pussies allowed - gameplay. The entire rest of the game should take every step to eliminate negative reinforcement, and add positive.

It used to be, if your kid acted up, you'd beat the shit out of him. Today, you're just supposed to have a talk. That sort of change is the same in video-games as it is throughout regular culture. So while we are mostly a bunch of old-school, hardened motherfuckers, the vast majority of modern gamers are total fucking pussies. To them, Quake is like corporal punishment. They can't take it. They don't want to take it. And that's ok, because we can change the game to make it pussy-friendly.

The skill-matching system is a good example of what i'm talking about. If you lose, it punishes you by ranking you down. Being ranked down is negative reinforcement. It basically amounts to corporal punishment. Quake people think it's a good mechanism, because it helps make the game more even and fair, but in reality, new-school players interpret the system as corporal punishment or negative reinforcement. If you can only rank up, and never down, no matter what, then you successfully eliminate the negative reinforcement while retaining the positive.

I'm not going to go over every aspect of the game or system, but hopefully, I don't need to do id software's job for them. Even on a team, each player has their own job to do, and when they fail to do that job, the entire team suffers. The less other player's have to compensate for the failing players, the better the team does. So go do that.