Oddly enough, Carmack actually had the nerve to say, "I'd say probably the success of Quake Live is going to determine whether or not we do another Quake Arena project."

It puts the pressure on the fans instead of trying to say "we'll make it so good, people will be lined up to buy it."

that is a fucking ludicrous interpretation of what he said. I call troll.

You are a troll, so I'm not surprised you would.

your dumb :(


I mean if quakelive had been perfect from the start. Which obviously means in the alpha version because people like you and Julien and not capaple to grasp the concept of a "beta".
If it had been perfect, you are just saying that even if noone played it for free that should not influence the decision to make quake 5 or not. Risking the financial future of id itself and its employees.


if you reply please do it to this statement: "A product's performance will always influence decisions about making a successor."

You misunderstand, but that's no shocker. I agree that they shouldn't make a sequel if QL fails, but I don't agree with the fact that they're simply making a product and hoping it turns out well instead of meeting and beating all expectations.

Look at Blizzard - they have decided that they're going to take a more personal role in regulation of tournaments in SC2, and just sponsored GomTV with almost $100,000 ($40,000 for SC). Sure, they also put $40,000 into WoW, but you have to split it between a team. Aside from QW, I think this is the biggest 1v1 prize pool ever.

Now look at id - guitarherocon.

sorry to disappoint you, but you simply wanted to misunderstand carmack's statement, he just said what I wrote in the end.


Also you and tourist (remind me which one of you is the sidekick again?) aren't quite obvious when you use the same attack every time.

Well, all I can say that all men who are known for their intelligence (e.g. Einstein, Da Vince, Planck) are the ones who can see they made mistake and have flaws and admit to them.

All the others who can't admit it, just believe they were smarter. And it goes without saying that they also look down on everyone who admits one. You really are quite sad, youknow?

I haven't seen you this defensive in a while - been drinking? Take your pity party elsewhere.

aww, feeling embarassed by other people's pity?

poor you :(

Embarrassed? No. Not your mother? Yes.

my mother has a strong enough personality to stand by her mistakes, so yeah, I agree.

Oh and before you get another impression, I don't want you to stop what you are doing, it's hilarious to see you dodge around, never replying directly in fear you might have to admit you were wrong. <3

I mean you jumped from interpreting a statement by John Carmack about a free game in beta phase to how much money Blizzard spends on a game that has earned them tons of money. And all that in the space of 3 posts (including mine).
Priceless :D

Reply to what? All you have said is "ur wrong" and thrown some personal insults on the end. Excuse me if I don't humor you, but your trolling is really slipping.

awesome reading skill.

I started with an insult, didn't end with it.

and why would you reply at all if there was nothing worthy of a reply.

Nope, what really happened is the you interpreted Carmack's statement, I said you misinterpreted it, that it was just a normal statement that goes for every product.
And then you realized your interpretation might be wrong and tried to talk about something else.

awesome reading skill.

I started with an insult, didn't end with it.

http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1708106#pid1708106

Seriously? Are you unable to even understand the things that YOU posted?

In the comment you qutoed I wrote that you jumped from carmack's statement to Blizzard's pricemoney instead of replying. All of which obviously happened in comment #10.

And there I started with an insult.

I'm not responding to issues that have nothing to do with what I said, which is what always happens with you. When you replied to ME (see link I gave you), you say "no ur wrong" and then throw a tantrum.

yeah a talking about on of your comments obviously doesn't have anything to do with what you are talking about.

I dont really care about the prize monies but its sad that id dont get that many/most quake players are in it for the competition and cater to those players.

TDM, which has always been the biggest competetive mode in EU (except after the game died - hi ctf/ra3 ;) is less then an after thought for them. I completely agree with focusing on CA to attract the noobs but I dont see why they had to make so much damage to TDM in the process.

To get back on track - id hosting tournaments would be great.

It makes far more sense to ruin TDM so that nobody wants to play it...

Yeah, I mean, Im not into bashing id and I actually enjoy the game a lot when Im not too frustrated from having people refusing to play anything else than dm6 for 1on1 and so on. But the way they handled TDM was/is disgraceful.

Btw, whats your ql nick?

The best thing that could happen to Quake would be the removal of 1v1 entirely.

Agreed, team games is where its at. Last years NC > eswc. The biggest joke of the q3 scene was when the top players stopped playing team games to focus on their 1on1 games.

toxic! :}

For the last time, id only consider this a "beta" in the same way that google mail is "beta".

The open "beta" has been called the "full release" on several occassions by id software. Feel free to defend QL, but stop using this "beta" argument as it doesn't hold water.

not at the time when the interview was done.

... what? What does that have to do with you defending it as beta now?

if you look really really close you will see that my post was a reply to your comment about a quote from carmack.

And statements should always be understood in the context of the time they were made. Which was before the public beta.

Additionally, you managed to form you lasting opinion soon after the public beta started which does prohibit you from forming a unbiased opinion now.
Put differently, I mean if you looked at the game today and were able to form a new opinion I'd say it wuold be a lot better.

So far imo the biggest remaining flaws are:

- mediocre netcode
- not enough (new / good) maps
- no gtv
- pb

Three of which are being worked on. So that would make a decent release in my eyes.

I spoke out against QL long before open beta.

good job!

The whole concept is half-baked if you ask me and they haven't thought it through sufficiently. They don't even understand the product they are trying to "sell" (A competitive multiplayer game).

I can put up with dodgy netcode, lack of balance and missing features (I played OSP with PB crippling my experience for years after all).

oh yeah, they could definately improve on the marketing side of things.

Maybe a big tournament with an official "release".

Try to get the all times greatest players to compete, etc.

Maybe even include ladder and/or league systems on their page. many possibilities.

That's not what I was referring to, I doubt that would make much difference :P

yeah, I know you weren't directly referring to that, (except for the first sentence, I guess)

but really, marketing always has two sides. The product itself and how to define and address your target group.

I wasn't thinking it at all!

I was talking about how id are designing the game around being for "casual" play and being anti-competitive in features (et cetera) and the "browser" game idea.

Edit: So actually I guess in a way the ladder/league stuff I was implying.

well, that is marketing. maybe not the popular definition, but the real one.

I'd call it more "product design" here.

yes.

"Industrial design is an applied art whereby the aesthetics and usability of mass-produced products may be improved for marketability"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_design


while the field of marketing does not include product design as such, it does include the presentation or a product (read website) and the approach to customize your business models to fit your customers or in this case users.

Yes.

Ultimately I don't think being a browser based game benefits QL all that much at all.

Well, I don't know there "could" be people who play a round i their lunch break, and probably neither of us would know cause they wouldn't really be in our tier ;)

Also, some of what I wrote in #59 can be a reply to you.

The browser idea is good for this but the way id have made the game doesn't seem to suit this.

In this scenario, we have to assume that it's a PC that doesn't already have the game installed such as one at an internet cafe (If it's at the office, it's still installing a game on the machine so it's no different from a standalone client).

This means he'll have to download the game and make sure his settings work before he can start to play, taking up a part of the lunch break. The game should be a lot easier and faster to setup than it is currently for this to realisticly happen.

hmm, true you can't really download 250 mb or what it is in a hurry.

But I do think that it works a whole lot better for the newbie user as compared to the normal way to setup quake and update to the latest cpma version, and get new maps, etc.
Plus the integrated server search is also better than that in vq3 (who uses that anyway?)


But yeah you are right things could be way better.

Btw do you know if quakelive saves your config on their own servers, and then loads it when you use your own login? If not I think they should implement that! Can't be that difficult, anyway.

The game currently saves some elements of your configuration but not all of it, and doesn't save your hud at all. So unless you are the most casual of casual Quake players, you aren't going to be setting up the game in a hurry at an internet café.

Still, it is a better situation than we have in QW/Q2/Q3/Q4, I think the game is closer to 300mb which is actually quite impressive considering Q3 was 500mb off of the CD (?) but for me even this is too big for what it wants to and could achieve.

Since I came home for the summer, I loaded up that Prism thing for Firefox and turned QL into it's own "standalone" application. The game doesn't need to be in a browser if it's going to work the way it does currently.

well so far I agree, except that I would say casual of the casual are actually an integral part of the target group!

You know, instead of playing freecell, or spider solitaire or Moorhuhn (which was quite big in Germany) why not jump on a server and play a short round of QL?

Yes, it does sound a bit strange to me, too. But I think it is a least a possibility, especially since they removed the gore (!). Would make a world of difference to people of the older generation.

Sure they can't strafe and their aim sucks, but that's what the tiers are for after all...

Yeah, I think the game needs a fundamental re-design for that to truely happen though (without destroying the game for everyone else)

are u kidding? lets face it, even if those features were added ql would only be a pale imitation of cpma. if u thought about it a little bit ud realize carmacks statement was more about the website aspect of ql than anything else. if u want to get worried about anything u should worry about the fact that we've seen practically no work on the website/social networking whatever side of things in months.

well, the social networking is not really good, but the question is what would people really need?


I mean they do have a friendlist (even though the search function sucks) some stats, some awards (yes many people want those) and what I think is good is that you get notified when a friend goes online.

So, yeah they can improve both fields and from what we can hear they are spending time on both, even though the game part seems to take precedence over the social part at this time.

And after all the game is fully playable and the social part is working without (hardly?) ever crashing.



I still gonna stand by this: Only time will tell if it will be a success or not. Not a specific feature, nor some website stats or a new map. Not even a big marketing campaign. The internet has always been quite unpredictable.

dunno really. im not a social networking kinda guy. but im sure there can be lots more functionality added. simple things like clan pages etc. or being able to upload videos and community news and stuff. i guess the forums are part of it but a dedicated system for stuff like that would be nice. a chat system like irc would be nice too.

and those are just a few things. along the same lines there needs to be a lot more done to make the game more interesting to newbs. just skill tiering is not gonna do it. things like better more interesting tutorials, maybe chat sessions with pro players, massively better main page with things like ongoing tournaments, spectator possibilities along the lines of gtv, movies blah blah blah.

obviously stuff like this has been talked about here and there. some of it needs to happen soon, others wont happen at all prolly.

i just find it weird that the site side of things has been static for so long. then again maybe they just decided to focus on gameplay/maps for a while.

i agree the gaming market isnt that predictable but i would say that even if id manages to incorporate all sorts of great features and stuff, most of it is only gonna help retain a player base, not really attract a new one. i mean the main hype about ql was the fact that a classic game suddenly became free. but that wont wash for long. id will need to figure out a way to attract the other side of the gaming base - teenagers and console gamers and such. thats prolly what the success of their next game is gonna depend on.

ok 5 am long post. going to bed.

lol at "beta". So you mean in like 1-2 years when they've finished updating/fixing/adding more maps then it'll no longer be beta and it'll be the official version? Sure the 20% of players left playing by then will think it's great lol. How does that plan make any sense btw?

read #38 please.

RAGE is all the rage

God I hope this is a troll.

why would it be a troll? carmack actually said that.

putting pressure on fans to make QL succeed instead of working on a new game is just irresponsible. (its like when hundreds of thousands of people ask for more casual content in world of warcraft and blizzard makes yet another raid most people will never see the inside of because they dont care about that...its irresponsible)

instead of working on something important ...like:

--making the netcode work atleast to a point where people wont think their opponants are cheating.

--making the hitboxes stay attached to the playermodel so we dont have to aim behind an opponant to hit them. sure you can get used to it but you shouldnt have to.

etc etc etc...

... theyre adding maps..old maps weve already played the hell out of..instead of new ones...

can you say halfassed?

im all for quake 3 getting a makeover but they should atleast be doing it right if they want it to succeed..not just saying we better like it, and play it, and make it popular if we want them to make a new one.

fast paced games on 60Hz monitors suck anyway

Which means, QL doesn't. :p

you fail at logic

they should just pick up q3 with osp mode and make this game available through the web browser, the rest of the fixes would just regard netcode and web facilities, no weapon modifications and 1001 other fixes

Well, I wouldn't take Carmacks word as gospel, things change over the years. He's probably realized that he had unrealistic expectations for Quake Live considering the limited amount of effort he was willing to put into it.

Hopefully Carmack realizes this experiment created the following question and answer;

If you take a 10 year old game, make minimal changes but have it easily accessible and free, will it be a success? Answer = No.

You guys need to look at the long-term, so when this launches out of beta.

For example, when it launched the first time, queue and all, it got more hits than Steam for a short period. That shows you how much interest there was in this game.

At the moment it's still moderately successful anyway, it's a very active game already, and it can only get bigger.

Yeah, then most of those people realised:

- They had to wait
- Download and install a plug-in
- Restart their browser
- Wait again
- Download more
- Launch a warm-up game against a bot (Which is insanely boring and shit)
- Probably get stuck at this stage as it fails to realise you've beat Crash already

All of this before they actually got to play the actual game (You know a multiplayer deathmatch game). If you check out the award statistics you'll see most gave up during one of those steps.

But those problems will be pretty much fixed, or at least streamlined, at the next launch. Then they'll go all out on the publicising instead of just relying on word-of-mouth like they did last time, it still has the potential to be huge.

There is no next launch. Last time the opening was all over the place and not just word of mouth or gaming websites, it was on the BBC website (And was quite a popular item).

The majority of those problems won't be fixed either, only the waiting stages. You will always need to download a plug-in and restart the browser, you will always need to download more stuff and you always have to play the crash warmup game.

Didn't know how widely publicised the launch was but , still, the interest is there.

oh and you don't need to restart the browser after plug-in install anyway, that and it's clearly explained why the Crash match is there in the first place and not that many people actually cared that they had to play it.

The annoyance came afterward when for a huge portion of those matches it didn't record the result, meaning players were stuck in an infinite loop. Those problems will all pretty much be gone by the time id decide to launch fully.

It is launched fully and the interest was there, briefly. You do have to restart the browser if you use firefox.

Clearly explained or not, it was/is a barrier to starting to play and it's just not fun.

actually you do not have to restart firefox after installing the plugin. All you do is close the quake live tab. I never restart firefox when installing a new quake live plugin.

Well, it tells you to restart the browser.

Either way, you still have to close the website and then re-load the website for it to work.

I think there is reasonable hope that the updates that require a new plugin will become less and less over time.

Well, there hasn't been one for a while unless I'm forgetting a recent one but there's still the initial stage where it has to be installed.

In fact, I forgot a stage in the process too.

- Sign-Up

I bet some people saw they had to sign-up and just didn't bother too (Although, obviously in QLs case a sign-up is good).

Well, yeah but signing up has somewhat become an accepted nuisance for a lot of people. I mean almost everyone has a spam account by now.

playing against the bot makes sense. It at least tries to gauge your abilities to put you in a correct tier. If this didnt exist, more people would instantly leave by getting trounced immediately.

The problem is, it doesn't make sense, it's boring, isn't able to accurately achieve the desired goal anyway and just gets in the way of playing the actual game.

It's a nice idea but the way it's currently implemented just doesn't work. This is reflected in the fact most people don't even continue on to playing a single actual round of Quake Live.

Most gamers in other games manage perfectly fine to just jump in at the deep end, in QL this wouldn't even happen as you'd just start everyone off on low skill servers and quickly promote the good players to higher skilled servers (or mid skill and drop/promote as appropriate).

they could have done that, but then you'd have lots of people quit immediately after their first match after being beaten soundly and not having any fun. So really, it wouldn't be too much different then now imo. Also, you have to take into account people who play instagib (unranked, does not count on the profile), and people playing on a local network, at times it does not count the games (a friend of mine's profile still says he has never played, despite playing in several games with me on the same local network). We can't just assume that all players chose not to continue because it was boring (which is obviously true for some). In regards to the matchmaking, I think, for the most part, it works pretty well.

The idea that newbies quit Quake almost instantly due to losing their first few rounds is a complete myth.

It's funny how other games don't seem to attract these players or force the newbie into such a mental state where the only apparent rational option to them is quitting the game (simply because he lost a few rounds) and other games don't even have matchmaking.

From the newbies perspective all he wanted to do was try out that cool FPS game that works through a web browser, score some frags and have a bit of fun. Alas, unable to do this they must sit through a tedious, patronising tutorial and demeaning match against a computer controlled player.

It would be better for the standard Deathmatch/Free For All mode to be re-worked at the low tiers with less players, smaller maps and quicker rounds.

The system can then quickly assess the new player based on one short round and re-assign them to a different server if required.

A simple explanation of what's going on in text can be given (e.g. "You are being moved to a game that more accurately fits your ability") and ranked/unranked players can have a different symbols next to their names so that it is clear why this guy is beasting everyone on the low tier server.

Make people have to unlock instagib (and possibly other modes), people love unlocks, awards/achievements et cetera. Then they can't join an unranked instagib server first.

The local network problem you described is a problem that should be fixed and not something the game should be built around.

Obviously it's true of some peoples decision, but it will be a massive minority of people who quit because they lose.

should stop agreeing with you, cause this is esr and I've got a reputation lose... :P


Anyway just thought I'd add the story of my former roommate who got hooked on bf2 for some time. Especially at the beginning he got knifed quite often and pretty much always have negative stats. But he really didn't care and kept on giving out ammo, requesting medics via chat system and so on. Only reason he stopped was diplome, job, son and wife :P
Also come to think of it I think it was the same with me when I started with rtcw.

My very first experience of online Q3 was a TDM match on ospdm5 against rB (I think they were div 2 Jolt at the time) so the Jolt admins could decide what division we would be put in.

None of us had played Q3 or TDM before and hadn't even seen the map, I'm sure you can imagine what happened.

hehe, even better than I would like.


I even put a short snip of our first clan match in our video. (And that was after some months of pubbing).
Was pretty much, entering a fight with 2 rounds in the mp40 barrel, having autoreload on and then the medic who should revive me dropped a nade on me. And I didn't tab out in time so I got a 38 sec respawn. Not that the map lasted that long...

FUN :D

The good old days eh

:')

in real life, it is the same whatever you do,
whatever sport you chose, in the beginning you lose,
is it any different anywhere else?
don't you get run over in startcraft and in counterstrike too, if you play the game for the first time?

Yes :)

I would say in those two games, the player base is much larger so the skill levels are much more spread out. Plus in starcraft, most people play BGH or some fastest map possible variant, which significantly dumbs down any skill it takes to build up a good base/army. In Quake, the average skill level is way higher then any other game I can think of.

Everyone seems to be forgetting the availability factor. Quake Live to me is like Windows Vista that was slapped right into everyone's face as the new standard (yeah i know windows 7 is out..lol)

Admitted that QL is in beta it would still be foolish to expect much to change. Some countries will have their servers, some won't. Those who won't will curse id and switch over to some other game or stick to cpm (online or lan). End result? I can't play the bloody game even if I like it!

As a platform it's still very promising. If enough tournaments happen more interest will rise.

I believe you got it upside down, here is my fix : If enough interest rise, tournaments will happen. (really doesn't work the other way, e.g. PK)

but gtv will rise interests in competition, especially since big matches could be announced on ql's main page

Yeah you are right, but I think it works both ways. When high profile tournaments are coming up or going on, you usually have a surge of players. Most of these are probably returning players, but since quakelive is much more accessible than Q3, PK or Q4, perhaps it could bring in more people. HOPEFULLY. It would have been nice if they had sponsored tournaments through the website, with cash prizes. That would have really drawn a crowd.

id could make something like cs or teamfortress as a mod

Why would they do that?