Quake2 is a diffrent experience

Nice euphemism.

i think q2 has one of the more popular scenes, but uses a different website.

What website would that be?

http://q2scene.net/

Q2 is my least favorite of the series but hey it's still Quake (sorta!). I dipped into the NA scene a few years back just to see what was going on. Like all the Quake scenes here not much. I think this is the main Q2 community site worldwide - http://q2scene.net/scene/

Whoa I remember talking to you about QW and Doom a while back! :D

Tried Doom and it CTF was really, really enjoyable. Unfortunately it only seems "active" once a week during Odamex's Nitro events. :/

Haven't tried QW yet, but I downloaded nquake and the necessary files (I think).

Why is Q2 your least favorite Quake game?

Doom and IDL took a big dive in the last year. Various reasons for that but most of the good competitive players have finally moved on. It's still great fun but without a certain size community everything goes to shit. If you want to have some insane fun play Skulltag (Doom client) survival co-op. The IDL might not have many more seasons but we'll see. A continuous 12 season run over the past ~6 years is amazing in the current NA environment for these FPS games.

NA QW also took a dive over various drama , if you love drama see this - http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/topic/5658/whe...nity-first

I've gone through various communities over the years looking for a good DM game to play but it doesn't seem to exist in NA right now so if you are the same CaptainAhab, just save yourself some trouble and give up. ;-( What I learned is small communities really suck, not because they are any worse than larger ones in regards to the people but because they are so fragile. One asshole or fuck up can screw up any small community. For example if one guy runs a central website but forgets to pay the monthly fee the whole community is fucked (seen this a few times). In a large community you have multiple websites so it doesn't matter if one goes down for a while.

A continuous 12 season run over the past ~6 years is amazing in the current NA environment for these FPS games.

I agree, especially for a game that's nearly 20 years old. A shame it looks like it's finally on its very, very, very last legs though. :/

NA QW also took a dive over various drama , if you love drama see this - http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/topic/5658/whe...nity-first

Read the first dozen posts... yeah, that didn't look like a fun time for anyone. :( When you see 5-6 paragraph posts... you know shit got real. ;)

I've gone through various communities over the years looking for a good DM game to play but it doesn't seem to exist in NA right now so if you are the same CaptainAhab, just save yourself some trouble and give up. ;-( What I learned is small communities really suck, not because they are any worse than larger ones in regards to the people but because they are so fragile. One asshole or fuck up can screw up any small community. For example if one guy runs a central website but forgets to pay the monthly fee the whole community is fucked (seen this a few times). In a large community you have multiple websites so it doesn't matter if one goes down for a while.

Yeah, it's really a damn shame. I remember many years ago seeing my brother (or was it his friend... whatever...) playing Quake 3, and I was enthralled. I never really got to try it, but it was one of the first video games I saw and I was absolutely blown away.

Fast forward many years through Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft, RuneScape, and half a dozen games in between, and I stumbled upon a Quake Live banner ad. Needless to say I was hooked from the beginning on the gameplay. I immersed myself in Quake's long history and its pure, beautiful, intricate, and brutal gameplay. I feel like I've plateaued in the glorious gray area between t3 and t4 as of this writing, which is fine by me. Never set out to be one of those frag movie pros anyway. ;)

One of my chief interests and hobbies seems to revolve around the history of video games that I enjoy, and thus I read up on all of the Quake games (save Quake 2, as per this thread), and wanted to try them all. However, a while back I had the mindset that if it wasn't a game with CoD, WoW, LoL, etc. player numbers, it was probably not worth playing. I couldn't have been farther from the truth.

There are so many factors going into why this genre of gaming isn't terribly popular anymore, especially in NA, and there is no need to go into it, the topic has been beaten to death by this point. However, I've resigned myself to the fact that if I want to play this genre of games -- arena shooters -- I need to realize that I'll probably be playing in pretty small communities, comparatively speaking.

I threw myself at it and soon realized that small communities, when there are enough great people that are passionate about the game, can be even better than massive communities with tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people. I love the feeling of hopping in and knowing at least a handful of people in the match, exchanging details on how our lives are going, what's new, throw a few smiles, hop on voice chat and exchange banter and competitive discussion and friendly trash talk, and the like. It's a wonderful feeling that I now prefer over games like LoL where I hop into a match and realize that I'll never see these players ever again. It just doesn't have the same feeling as being part of a strong community where people are kind, considerate, and realize that their actions could carry heavy and far-reaching consequences if they fuck up, which is why I feel in a lot of these smaller communities, people tend to be a little more "careful" of how they act. Granted, this varies from game to game.

For me, a game is only dead when there are no more servers (in my case, literally no NA scene at all, or less than 20 people or something like that). It's a shame that in NA the arena shooter isn't very popular *at all* but in the end I just told myself "well, that's the way it is I guess" and hopped on board some games with nice communities and solid gameplay.

One game I've been growing fond of is Sauerbraten. Ping hardly affects gameplay at all, so it doesn't matter where you are from globally, you'll all be on the same server, and it's awesome. :) Gameplay is simplistic, but addictive. Sure, it doesn't hold a candle to Quake, but it's still quite a bit of fun for a Quake noob. :D

Warsow has a very small NA scene, but I like what I've seen thus far and I hope it grows. One thing I've noticed is that we can't just sit around on the sidelines and say "game is dead, nobody plays, I'll wait until more people play." Enough people need to be willing to take the plunge and hop on board and help the community grow for it to hopefully, eventually reach those heights. Granted my schedule is rather busy, so I don't really have the time to sit around in servers waiting for people to join, which is a shame, so that limits what games I can play to a degree.

In the end, small communities aren't all that bad, I recommend Sauerbraten, it's a shame that Quake isn't more popular in the US but oh well, hopefully the genre will pick up steam again sometime in the future. :)

I can occasionally have lots of free time but I've gotten to the point where I don't want to invest myself into building communities for smaller "dead" games. While the effort does pay off it's very touch and go and usually doesn't last long. Maybe because these games are new for you they still have a lot of magic and I can respect that. For me however I was around during the golden age of these games originally when you had all these crazy mods and packed servers. I used to play public FFA or CTF in Q1/Q2/Q3 for hours and have no trouble finding full servers. Eventually I moved into competitive scene mainly TDM. Playing in a league of 20+ TDM teams was magic to me. I don't think there is one DM style game with a NA TDM/CTF scene with good activity and say 20+ teams (probably hasn't been for 10 years?).

I can occasionally have lots of free time but I've gotten to the point where I don't want to invest myself into building communities for smaller "dead" games.

This is the exact reason why there are some games that I simply can't play; I need to be able to hop on, frag, and hop off, because my free time is pretty limited. So it's a balancing act -- a game can't be so small that I need to sit around for 30-45 mins just to get a game going, but at the same time I enjoy smaller communities.

Hell, that's the reason I quit WoW, and that has millions of players. I got sick of sitting around for one hour trying to get raids started or looking for open spots in groups that had a vague idea of what they were doing. Being in 99% of the guilds that actually raided wasn't an option either because then I needed to tailor my schedule around raiding, which I really didn't want to do and inevitably, when I tried to, made me stressed about the rest of my day and being sure I could make the raid and not let the other players down.

these games are new for you they still have a lot of magic and I can respect that.[/q]
Yeah, I think this is partially the reason. Firing up QL for the first time was an awe-inspiring experience, one that I'm assuming most of today's Quake players first felt 12-15 years ago, rather than only a few years ago.

I keep hoping that some of these older games will become so old that people will look at them and say "damn, there must be a reason people are still playing this, I'll give it a shot," fall in love, and then we'll have a, for example, "Quake 2 renaissance" with a new surge of players and such. The chances of that happening are so slim it's absurd, though, so meh, it's only a dream.

If Sauerbraten didn't have *at least* 20-30 people playing 24/7 (out of a community of ~800-1000 active players, I'd wager), I wouldn't be playing due to my limited time.

Renaissances do happen for older games but you likely won't hear about it on ESR in time or at all. There was a NA QW burst of activity for about 6 months starting in November or so last year. We managed to complete two 4v4 TDM draft leagues in that period before shit hit the fan. You might want to try Tribes Ascend, while I have my issues with the game and don't play much anymore it is fun for a while. It also has a very easy "play now" button that just works, so you can literally be in a packed server in 15 seconds. I did however play 100+ hours before I burned out on it and it seems to always have 1000+ people on so far.

Yeah, I remember seeing a number of QW-related posts back around that time, and it seemed like QW was teeming with activity.

I'd be playing Tribes Ascend if I hadn't heard a lot about how awful the player base and the devs are, coupled with the fact that my computer can't run it.

The player base is actually about as good as you can hope for. It's just that there are some old school guys who are very weird/negative. Not much different than Quake really. Also surprised you can't run it since I can run it on my M11x r1 laptop fine.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Tribes/
http://www.twitch.tv/behindtheblueplate

^^^
Good community actually as those links show.

The developer HiRez is epic fail however.

Yeah, my computer is very dated. Upgrading next summer, but as of now I can't even run TA with those special, modified .ini files. Regardless, I tried it a bit on a friend's computer, just didn't do much for me. :/

Brah -- If you're on at reasonable times contray to mine, I'll hook you up with my Sauerbraten Promode package as well as stuff for QuakeWorld (Not just Pak1.pak, which you already have) but also other stuff as well as settings etc. :>

That would be most welcome! \o/

Oh, haha, ignored your last question but got off on a tangent. It's just my least favorite because it's weapons feel weak and I'm not a big rail whore. All the Q2 weapons while still very effective just weren't fun to me compared to say Q1 or Doom or even Q3. Really not a fan of slower rockets (hate that in the original Doom series too).

Quake 2 is the best Quake imo,the fact that you dont hear much about it is because the scene is on the "summer break",leagues usually return by the fall ( EDL,EuroQ2l etc...), admins dont really have the time to make some tourneys in the summer this year, also, news can be found in www.q2scene.net and not in ESR ( ill try to make News in this site starting from next season which probably will start in september)

Euro scene : www.q2scene.net
American scene : www.Tastyspleen.net
Active Servers : http://q2servers.com/
IRC : #EDL and #euroq2l @ QuakeNET

ill post a news about something related to Quake 2 when i get the time,if you got any Questions,feel free to ask.

Does Q2 support bots? I'm seeing a handful of populated US servers at this time of night, which is unbelievable to me from an outsider's perspective. Does it show actual players, or does it include bots as well?

EDIT: Referencing your link to the server list. Also, after looking at it, I'm assuming WallFly[BZZZ] refers to a bot? The rest of the players seem to have varying pings and time spent online, which looks promising.

my link ( http://q2servers.com/ ) shows servers with real players,the servers that you are seeing are full with real players ( Tastyspleen DM,Vanilla and tourney), the US servers are pretty full on nights,dont be surprised,Quake 2 is still alive.

and yes,Q2 support Bots ofc,there are servers which are populated with bots but they are not showen in q2servers.com, if you want to get bots on your Q2,i can give you a link with the best bots ( reaper bots etc.. )

EDIT : WALLFLY[BZZZ] is a bot,indeed,its purpose is to link all the tastyspleen servers together,so you can go to all the server just by the command GOTO ( if you are in dm and want to go to vanilla,type GOTO vanilla and you will be transfered to there) also it helps in banning players and other admin purposes,the bot is allways in spec and never interact with anyone.

Movement wise Q2 is similar to QL, other than that the main differences are:
- slower weapon switching
- slower rockets
- more delay on the netcode
- no LG, it has a CG though
- you can use grenades in the grenade launcher, or use them as hand grenades, which you can time so they explode in peoples face
- you spawn with a very weak blaster, the MG is a gun you have to pick up
- Two types of shotgun, the fast reloading tighter spread single barrel (SG) and the slower, wider spread double barrel (SSG). The SSG is most like the SG in QL, the single barrel in Q2 isn't really used much, but it is a fun weapon.
- Tiered armour: you can pick up more RAs than YAs or GAs, and also the RA is insanely strong, it gives 80% protection, the YA gives 60%, and the GA gives just 30%.
- You spawn with 100hp instead of 125hp, and the RG does 100 damage, so you can get spawn raped with the RG really easily, it makes shards really important to pick up

Overall it probably has the steepest learning curve of all the quakes, because if you lose control in duel or TDM, you will get totally owned if you don't know what to do. I mean it'll be really hard even to score a little bit of damage, you can't get lucky so easily, you have to know what you're doing all the time. So its the kind of game which really rewards well but it punishes really hard too. Compared to QL it gives you a lot less chances.

I wish Q2 had a nice client with raw mouse input and other tweaks, I'd play it then, but last time I checked it was so dated compared with all the other quakes :( its by far the worst thing about it imo, other than that I think its a great game, probably my favourite Quake overall.

NetQuake is the steepest learning curve because the netcode is garbage. :-) No client side movement, YAY! You have to learn how to move and aim with every change in ping differently.

And yeah control is one reason I think a lot of people don't like Q2. Back in the day there was some controversy regarding 10hz input, etc.

Haha, yeah, good ol' netquake, I love it. If you are not used to it and play on 100 ping you'll get motion sick.
On reasonable ping I actually prefer it over qw but here in EU its only a little ffa these days.

I could never get over the slow weapon switch in q2dm. I guess that's why I only played ctf and ra2 for years. I just felt the combat flowed so much better with the rail/rocket combos. I miss the old ctf clan war days though =/

I really like Q2 FFA, mostly because there isn't that annoying machine gun spam everywhere :D

q2's ffa is awesome. By far the best I have ever played.

especially on The Edge

can't plus this twice :/, particularly the last paragraph

You use the word slower, I tend to use the word 'tactical' :)

I really dislike these 'Q2 vs Q3' or 'QW vs Q4' comparisons as they are all very good in their own way. But this is a general example that I personally in general feel that Q3/QW players misunderstand from their initial experience point of view when it comes to weapon switches being 'slower' in Q2.

In Q2, you have to actually think before entering a fight (in a completely different manner from QW/Q3 or Q4) and you can't with ease change your good or bad decision before entering a fight in Q2, you will basically die from a poor weapon choice. This together with the sound system in Q2 (that you hear basically everywhere on the map) creates a very tactical meta game in Q2 that is very hard to learn, but at the same time something we Q2 players notice when switching to the other Quakes.

I just wanted to point out 1x thing from a different view (Q2 players) that in general is a very big complaint from the general 'Q3' players mind; namely the 'slow' or 'tactical' weapons switch, but it's also one of the things we 'Q2' players in generally like :) In general this from my experience depends on which Quake you started with as this is the classic 'first love' experience.

QW/Q2/Q3(ql) and Q4 are all very good games and I've played all of them in higher level part from QW and they all have their smaller and bigger advantages or disadvantages that we never will completely agree on :)


Edit: I do also agree that Q2 has the highest learning curve out of all the current Quakes from my own experience. It simply is harder to start with Q2 than the other Quakes and some of the reasons you have mentioned.

Edit 2: Q2 has a more advanced movement than QL, you do control the standard strafe movement similar in Q2 than in QL. However you can also add double jumping and ramp jumping as standard movement variables. This enables and creates the most addictive movement out of all Quakes together with QW's and CPM's speed, but with more direction for control of your movement rather than speed.

PURRI RESPONDED ON MY THREAD! :D

That's an interesting take on it. Pretty tempted to give Q2 a shot, but I'm just so busy right now and I'm starting college in about 1.5 weeks. :(

It's a good game. However, your are located in the NA and the Quake scene in general is a bit inactive there and in particular for the older Quakes I've heard :(

You have all the information needed @ http://q2scene.net (check forums for game + cfg tips)
and as mentioned as well, you have servers from www.q2servers.com or use this simple browser tool: http://r-1.ch/qsb-beta3.zip

Good luck with college and Quake :)

Yeah, though I when I checked the servers late last night and saw about a dozen NA players online, I was shocked. I was assuming games only happened through IRC, and were rare at that in NA. Had no idea people actually played in pubs.

Promising. :>

I really enjoy QL, but I feel like the older Quake games might have more mature and generally more amiable player bases. Except for Q4.

You should definitely check out http://tastyspleen.tv Jehar does some KOTH once in a while for Quake2 and some other games, very good for beginners as well.

And you can download Q2 here http://tastyspleen.tv/?page_id=744

It's kind of rare that a game will be requested on IRC. If at all it's probably for a duel. Most of the pickup is done on the servers, whether it be TDM, duel or RA2. Not many of those players use IRC.

I agree, I should have mentioned that the slower weapon switching results in a more tactical game.

Its been so long I actually forgot to mention the sound, but I remember having to be really careful about blindly picking up items in a certain order, which gave away really detailed sound cues, and even dropping items to fake sound cues and use them as bait or a way to buy time.

I also forgot to mention that I find Q2 is one of the funnier quakes, somehow it made me laugh a lot more, and also there is a lot of satisfaction in the frags. At the same time it was less frustrating, I feel a bit more anger in other quakes, things just tend to feel a bit more justified in Q2, whether winning or losing.

q2 would feel less random if someone finally "fixed" the in-built delay. They did it in warsow.

This enables and creates the most addictive movement out of all Quakes together with QW's and CPM's speed, but with more direction for control of your movement rather than speed.

Just for the good discussion purpose: http://esreality.com/post/2302859/re-movement/#pid2302598

Really it's just learning the times of weapons. Basics apply to all these games like high ground > low ground, some weapons pwn at long distance others up close, etc. Look at Doom 2, it has some of the fastest movement around, most powerful weapons and still takes more than 850ms to switch weapons. You'd think that wouldn't work but it does. People put way too much emphasis and importance on weapon switch timings, they are probably one of the least important things tactically.

I have NO input into Doom. I have no idea :)

Of course you can and will learn the timings and what weapon to use where etc over time. However, it's a bigger part of the game in Q2 (to my experience) than for instance QW, Q3, QL and Q4. I just wanted to say that I kind of disagree with you and that this is not as easy as you think and it does require you to learn it very well in Q2.

A little off-topic, but Odamex is having its 1-year anniversary of Nitro events this Saturday. Huge, fun event, might want to check it out if you have nothing better to do. ;)

Can't plus this enough.

Q2 is BOSS. try it.

http://tastyspleen.tv/?page_id=744

this link lets you download Q2 for free with pretty much everything already setup, you just need to set your keybinds in the autoexec. size is 200MB because of high-res map textures

It has one of the friendlier communities. Which "contrary" to popular belief, is a good thing.

They also had a few revivals in the past few years. There was the LMCTF resurgence which was well-promoted, and the Chaos mod (you know, the one with the crossbow, jumping happy-face grenades and all) has a new following as well. Played a bit of both and it's all great fun.

i love how you ignored quake4, plus'ed.

:P The only people I ever hear talking about Quake 4 are p0rt and that usagi god-war guy.

just like rocky5

It's just really different from all other quakes (like purri explained).

I'd say QW and Q2 are the 2 extreme opposite types of gameplay the quake serie can offer.

Q3 is a synthesis of both of them but leans a bit more towards the QW gameplay, especially CPM.

The following ones, QL and Q4, are based on Q3 so their gameplay is also closer to QW than Q2.

As most of the ESR users are former Q3 players, it's harder for them to understand the appeal of Q2 since it's so different from what they've been playing.

spoken like a true q2'er... vq3 is nothing like qw :C

it's still closer to QW than to Q2 imo

Shaft, fast rockets, fast weapon switch, balanced weapons...

rail, slow rockets, slow weapon switch, slow movement. as i said, true q2er :S

although the part about balanced weapons scares me, do you really believe q3 shares qw's weapon (im)balance? 'cos that's kinda nuts.

It's truly baffling how anyone would compare q3 to qw. I think someone needs to explain to him that the lg in qw is actually a rail :D.

Q2 TDM is really fun.. a lot more fun than Q3 FFA TDM :<

q2 is better than ql imho. and equally good as qw ...
qw is more popular because it's the first quake while ql is more popular since it's still the latest quake ...

imho

Pretty sure he's lying about his own opinion.

q4 was the latest quake at some point and it wasn't that popular

Quake2 <3 !

is there some programm to search servers in q2? like all seeing eye for q3
do q2 have active scene in baltic countrys, fin-swe and west russia?

http://q2servers.com/

http://www.esreality.com/post/2309799/so-quake-2/#pid2310254

There are both players and servers in .fi .ru and the other baltic countries.

If anyone is interested in trying out Q2, here's a link to a small installer package (43 MB) that is basically just the Q2 demo, 3.20 update, R1Q2 client and a simple pre-configured server browser that uses q2servers.com as it's source.

Quake II Starter: http://q2s.tastyspleen.net

I realize that there are a couple of other packages out there already, but I started this project out of a desire to provide an easy way of setting up the game for people who just want to start playing right away with a more standard configuration.

sorry i forgot about that... i would have posted it above with the kicker.