I doubt anyone really can break it down, who plays them all enough to rank them? No one. I play Doom 2 and QW some. Neither are super active but typically you can find lots of games at night and on weekends for both. QW has a 2v2 NA tourney going on but it's basically over/dead now. Doom 2 will have IDL (3v3 CTF) start Jan 2012 but players will start playing a lot in Nov as people practice/ramp up for the next season.

QL really is probably the most popular still but it has lots of issues and a fractured community. I don't see any major TDM/CTF tourneys in QL for the NA scene. QL is all public games it seems.

The pickup channel is very active on the weekends! You'll see so many games get played it's actually a miracle, I just wish more newer players would play, but they get ragged on for being bad. I really think we can get the tier 3 pub people and the tier 4 pub heroes to get into this pickup thing if they just take the time to go on IRC, type !add, patiently wait, and download mumble, which is optional but if theyve gotten this far, it wouldn't hurt. I feel as though, new people dont want to go through the trouble of all these uncomfortable applications they've never heard of. People from console games who migrate to Quake Live, don't know what mIRC is. They have no conception what a gamesurge.net is or a quakenet.org and what commands to use, they just understand how a chat works.

They also tend to not even know what pickup is, I for the longest time had no idea what a pickup was and when I found out and understood, it's organized play, made up of random players, I fell in love with it. How do we reach out to new players when the Quake Live Forum that used to be their little corner is no longer active because the elite have left, and the other newbies are too shy to pollute it.

You honestly cannot communicate with new players anymore at all. Only through people making binds and having long-drawn out conversations in game can you even give them a basic idea of what they are missing and chances are they don't care. They're sick of you and you're tier slumming and this "pickup" thing you speak of. They just want to play public games with their tier 2 and tier 3 friends and be noobs, and have fun. But, meh, what can you do? You know.

How do we reach out to new players

new players will not play pickups so long as the elites are camping that channel. I have already witnessed several of them getting dessimated in games and ragequitting shortly thereafter. Their best chance is finding a clan that helps them improve but all in all, ca is the only mode to play in the us with any kind of userbase. I would direct your attention to quakeworld or another game (plenty of good titles coming out soon)

but they get ragged on for being bad.

that's funny, citty said he'd crack down on that. Figured with ttimo and syncerror there, nothing would change. Part of the reason i finally gave up on this game. The developers let it happen. I told citty, i told him what would happen once the avenged, mrgreen_'s, tuckers, etc started joining. Nothing but an e-penis contest now. But no, he wouldn't listen. The veterans killed off the new playerbase. But, with this game in a freefall, noone cares, including myself, speaking of, back to bf3.

They're sick of you and you're tier slumming and this "pickup" thing you speak of. They just want to play public games with their tier 2 and tier 3 friends and be noobs, and have fun. But, meh, what can you do? You know.

it's called the casual crowd which makes up the biggest chunk of the ql community, whats' left of it that is. They have very few options anymore. If they go premium, they'll face tier 4 players. If they stay in pubs, they get raped by tierslummers on alt accounts. There's just no chance for the new player to grow.

p.s: just let it die daniel, you're wasting your breath, they (veterans) will never change their ways. Let em kill it off so they can ragequit back to q3 only to repeat the same mistakes there as well.

ray I guess Ill just enjoy it with what little time I have, I rarely play anyway, Im in college so I only play like three hours every two weeks.

I used to play as much as you at one point when you were playing like 4-5 hours a day. Times are just different and my life just got more complicated.

I realize this game is just too hardcore to usher in new players and the community, specifically in America is super negative and is all about humiliating others and not thinking about each other. It's kind of sad, I can't imagine this happening in a country were people aren't raised to be tough online and have some discipline. But discipline doesn't even help, I feel like the most disciplined players are very reclusive and hide behind their monitors too and rarely contribute something. You know who I'm talking about. They just spam smily binds and play everyday but they ignore the problems. I'm glad people complain, it shows that we are all fed up and want change. This revolution sadly will never happen because no action will ever be done, but so far #qlpickup is a brightlight in a very dim competitive scene. Hopefully people who want to get into the more competitive aspect of Quake will quickly learn of ESR, but I'm sure by the time that happens ray this place will be a ghost town or a joke, further dividing us, by making news no longer readily available. I swear the day ESR dies is the day Quake dies. ESR will be the new GotFrag section of TF2. Forgotten and replaced by ESEA and IRC. New players will never know whats going on and what's happening where. I hope new people will also learn of #qlpickup.us and will find this game as pleasant as I found it, even when I was being raped day in and day out. It has a lot of good lessons it teaches, that if you play a lot, and really practice, insane results can occur and there's always something new to learn if you keep trying. But, oh well. I guess I'll have to decide between CPM and QW I hope I can somehow figure out which one is more active.

I'll have to decide between CPM and QW I hope I can somehow figure out which one is more active.

QuakeWorld

"While everyone's toiling with the problems in quakelive, quakeworld has just been super active, since forever..."
-Ninex

"Now it's actually picking up. It's the highest skill possible, and that's including all quakes. What's really cool for me is Ignition, it's actually geared towards rookies"
-Quakephil
http://www.own3d.tv/TastyspleenTV#/watch/254584

So quakeworld =

1) active
2) highly competive
3) allows new players to improve through ignition, etc

High skill/competition, sure - but the game is dead in the US.

"(plenty of good titles coming out soon)"

like ?

don't want to create another topic, cause probably no one cares, but why the fuck does no one want to balance qw weapons? hey, let's put in a shitton of weapons but only make them use two. what the fuck!? i clearly remember people whining about ql weapons' balance, even though it was 10 times better than this shit. so please someone explain, why?

its just always been a very rocket heavy game but shaft is just as dominant if used right. the rockets are so fast they just fuck anything else up, the other guns are powerless, except the LG because of its high damage output, and this makes it a viable choice even when you yourself have a rocket especially in places that are open fields though Ive heard of people who can out shaft someone in a hall or corner with good dodging and aim

I think it clearly works out better for TDM and encourages teamplay where as QL is often a cess fest with people dying very quick and never being able to stay alive long. In duel it's up for debate which is better to me.

what would you say are the advantages of it in duel?

I'm not sure what's best in duel. Part of the problem is Q3 has really balanced weapons but the armor in Q3 is not similar to QW/Q2 so I haven't seen a Quake with good armor settings and balanced weapons yet. I remember there was push for that in Q3 for a while strong armor (CQ3 was it called?) but no one really played it. I think it's clear tiered armor is better than Q3/QL armor.

The reason you can argue unbalanced weapons are better is because weapon control and ammo becomes a lot bigger deal. In QL certain weapons are very effective in certain situations but most of the good weapons can be used decently in any situation. In QW LG/RL are dominant and you're fucked if you try to go up against them without having them yourself. In QL it's very possible to use SSG or plasma to take down someone with LG/RL/RG. In QL you often see guys get picked off on low health by someone with worse weapons, that's a rare occurrence in QW duel. QW duel has superior armors and 100 health spawns so it's hard to separate out those good bits totally from the unbalanced weapons, they are all interconnected.

It's called a proper weapon balance.

Whine more.

1) Weapon balance is an unproven dogma.
2) In most cases: "balance the weapons" translates to "make it so i can win"

yeah, well, "weapon balance" might not have been the best words. i suppose what i really mean is i want some diversity in weapons. i actually really like to use them qw shotguns, just so much fun, but it's a bad decision to do so because i get destroyed. about the whining, don't tell me you've never seen a deathmatch games' (quakes, wsw, UTs) player make nasty comments about realistic shooters weapons. all of them obviously use the same principle (hitscan) and so it gets boring real fast.

The boomstick is a bb rifle.
The ssg is meant to be shoved down someone's throat.
ng/sng = plasma spam around tp exits and easy locks ( quad or without a better gun )
gren/rl/lg : you don't want to give a gun and its ammunitions away. And you actually HAVE to control the lg cells/rocketpacks.