I know this will sound trivial and maybe even wrong, but FFA in QL is lacking imo. And its the main mode which new people play, and its probably the worst main mode, in terms of how its had very little changes to improve it (except the maps ofc).

Its fair enough to make changes to duel, but those changes also apply to FFA, where they may not work so well...

The main problem in FFA is it seems to encourage more frustrating situations (compared with all other quake FFA I have played) -

- It takes too long to frag people even when you get high acc (which means noobs deaths are drawn out). What usually happens is what may be favourable to duel - they are bounced/pushed around for 'ages' - then somoene random finishes them off (frag stealing). No one enjoys any of that. The frag stealer gets no satisfaction, the attacker is left frustrated, and the attackee feels like crap. Also, because you often have to chase people down, there will nearly always be someone behind you shooting you in the back with mg (which wouldn't be a big problem if all weaps except mg were stronger).

- too hard to dodge in close combat (slow run speed + fast rockets with loads of bouncing).

- weapons respawn too slow, encouraging camping

- players respawn too slow (coupled with long drawn out deaths and slow weap respawn makes the time available to get a frag quite small for a noob)

- Quad introduces a huge random element

- too much ammo on weapon pickups = too much spam

IMO FFA needs some tweaks, something like:

- Make quadless servers available (replace quad with haste: At least give people the option, most people (especially noobs) HATE quad in FFA.)
- Increase weapon damage for all guns except mg, gauntlet, bfg, gl
- lower bounce on RL and knockback on LG
- Increase player run speed to Q4 speed
- lower weapon respawn times and player minimum respawn times
- change weapon ammo amounts on 2nd pickups

FFA should be fast and fun!! Its not terrible atm but its not as good as it could be IMO. But its not just my opinion, but most people's opinion who I've asked in the past few months. But maybe we are all wrong, but it would be nice to at least try some new things.

The larger hitbox has just made things worse, because it was already hard to dodge, consider that ql is one of the hardest quake games to dodge in.

The biggest problem is that in ffa, theres too much chipping away at peoples health, players die a lot but its very random how they die (ie more random than the other quakes were). Instead of having a fight to the death, what happens is players get seperated and die elsewhere, have to wait to spawn, then have to wait for a gun and usually get spawn killed (but SLOWLY not fast, which wouldn't be as bad).

FFA is what gets a lot of people into quake (along with CA maybe), which in turn makes them eventually try duel, see some nice games, and decide to try and become a good player. So whereas everyone seems to kind of ignore FFA as if its a stupid pointless mode, I think its really important and it needs a good look at, to see if people (new ones especially) are having as much fun as they should be having.

Maybe I am 100% wrong, but no one even seems to discuss FFA, so thought it would be good, at least for a change ;)