Or just have a smaller but specific map pool for each gametype, for example 5 maps in duel's case and more in others. Quarantine is a good example: pretty good for CA, but awful for duel and FFA. T7 is a good duel map but no one plays it in CA and same with aerowalk, and so on. I think there's not a single overall awful map for all gametypes (that are not CTF),

The list doesn't need to have only "competitive maps" but can have others aimed at noobs or for variety, like that one with fog, gothic rage dm17. Just not so much that you often end up having those 3 as the only map choices at the end of the match, especially in standard servers (no callvote map command so it's a wasted server), and not so little that people will not have an incentive to buy a sub, like ztn always being in the 3 choices.

Also, buy pro

Power Station is pretty much awful for anything.

nah

^exposed tier-slumming cheater Kennedy murderer

If you play QL a lot you can always get a premium account and play all the maps.

oh no genius? i have premium, but sometimes playing non-peak times.
for example today morning there was my options:

-play on a shit map on std. servers. there was two: 1 with solid and 1 with quarantine. maybe the guys will be nice enough to let me in to play (or one of them stays) and we also get lucky either dm6 or t7 show up in the votable maps.

-join to prem server and hope someone also fancy for a game at 7am. or not and ill be just running around on ztn for 15 mins. (not a rare scenario)

and again this morning, like many times before i said: meh fuck it, shut down QL and did smth else concluding it doenst worth the time / hassle to play 10 minutes of duel.

maybe its not that big of a problem peak time (undeniably peak-time traffic took a huge hit too), but certainly a huge problem late-night, morning and sometimes early afternoon in europe.
i just dont see why it cant be implemented, it would be for everyones benefit.

Okay, get a pro account and spawn a server so everyone can join.

You're not helping in any way.
This is a suggestion to make the duels more active.
Buying and spawning pro servers isn't the best option at this point.

Why not. He'd be playing at any time of the day and being able to callvote maps.

He did enough by going premium - in a way he donated and is keeping QL alive.
If most people would do so, QL would be much better.
I just don't see a point in telling people that bought premium to just suck it up and buy pro if anything bothers him.

just saying that's the easiest and safest solution that he can access to right now, instead of hoping in vain for years that players will massively subscribe out of nowhere or that id software will come back from its eternal vacation.

nope. how about rather providing the service i paid for? or providing a healthy enviroment so i can enjoy what i paid for?

how long until pro++ being introduced for 100$ with changed simple "pro" servers only showing up in your friend list while pro++ shows up in pub server list?

i always had sub, for first i bought to support the project. than the project leading the entire opposite way id like to...whatever. still subbing have its obv advantages (like not having to constantly asking invite at tdmpickup, which lets be honest can get a little embarassing for the 50th time) so just dont tell me what to buy and what not, im not a freeroller ill just keep my prem and continue resubbing if im still playing by the time it runs out, but thats it. yearly 25$ just not enough to get a reasonable duel game anytime of the day? more 25$ needed really? well im just not the idiot who can be bleeded out dry. and just because i spawn my server i cant spawn a playerpool too. rather soon a paying customer may say good bye. its on them, especially if it would cost them 2 clicks without losing out anything (and even maybe something to gain like growing the playerbase with providing an entry point to beginners etc).

I think id is currently working on the duel queue.

I still think my idea is sex

All 4 ideas are sex

duel is a different culture than team modes. quakelive has incompetently attempted to apply broad rules that apply to fun/team gametypes to a competitive 1v1 mode.

the servers need to have the main competitive maps available to all players, the servers need to stop reloading the same map if something else isn't voted for, premium/pro players should be the only ones allowed to vote, and the map shouldn't switch unless it's voted for or the server empties out. it's simple. there's no reason to devise some new forked system.

the queue bug should have been resolved the day the update was released. whoever is in charge of quakelive is either utterly incompetent or totally disinterested.

I agree with everything in this post except for only allowing prem/pro to vote. I think the only people that should be allowed to vote are those actually in-game. Also, maybe add an option for pro users when starting a server to allow spectator-voting if they so desire.

I think the totally disinterested option is clearly the answer. It seems syncerror is the only id employee who pays attention to this community. Who knows how much voice he truly has at id? (It seems to me they make decisions with their own biases/opinions and maybe consider what syncerror suggests from time to time). It's obvious he understand the queue bug is a huge fucktastic issue, yet it still hasn't been fixed.

To me it seems like the whole subscription idea is a failure for this type of genre (I've never seen any of their financial reports for quakelive, but anyone who thinks it's a success is lying), at least in the way they approached their attempt with QL. If they want to take the F2P method of other profitable FPS games currently with a large playerbase, then they have quite a bit of work to do.

QL was supposedly a general test run for Q5, at least according to early reports on QL from id software. If they had properly taken care of the game, then perhaps we may have actually seen Q5 transpire, maybe even into a huge e-sports title. But instead, they focused on RAGE and consoles. I truly believe that if id had gone (or even still could go) back to their roots with a very challenging fast paced DM type game with terrifyingly entertaining SP, fantastic MP, and an intensely upgraded, functional, battle.net type system for multi-player (Q5 in mind) then we could see them shoot to the forefront of PC gaming again. Console ports should be an after thought....see SC2, D3, CS:GO, etc...

I can't blame id for wanting to profit from idtech5, rage, doom4, etc...but I think half-assing QL will have a much stronger negative effect on their company than they appear to realize. Clearly their reputation has been destroyed to so many loyal fans. Perhaps we don't make up a large margin of their game sales anymore, but who honestly is going to buy their next title? Unless doom4 has enjoyable multiplayer (and by enjoyable, I mean worth playing over any form of quake) all they are going to sell to are the same damn kids who bought rage on consoles, and honestly more likely less of them. Doom 4 will only do well because of the name, and because of the god damned fans of the amazing doom/quake games.

I doubt I'll ever see an id title on my credit card again, unless doom 4 surprises me (honestly I'll probably still buy it just because it's called doom). Rage had semi decent sales, and I'm sure doom 4 will sell even better. But doom 3 killed rage, and I doubt doom 4 will do much more. Keep putting out mediocre-shit-multi-platform sp games on an engine that no one is even buying, and you will find yourselves out of the business in a few short years. I don't expect doom 4, rage 2, or w/e else they have in mind for the next couple years to bring them anything but profit. But I don't expect these games to bring them to the forefront of the industry ever again, forcing them to continually cut back and conform to dog-shit until they shut down, and Carmack moves on to rockets full time.

man u need to put ur thoughts in a order, u keep rumbling for 5 paragraphs…

for example: doubt I'll ever see an id title on my credit card again, unless doom 4 surprises me (honestly I'll probably still buy it just because it's called doom)

or

"Clearly their reputation has been destroyed to so many loyal fans" and later, "Doom 4 will only do well because of the name, and because of the god damned fans of the amazing doom/quake games"

it's like aimless thoughts, floating in the air, while contradicting each other

Yeah I realized that after I typed it, I was pretty drunk and spent about 1 minute typing out random shit, and was too lazy to change it after reading it haha. Doom 4 will probably be the last id title I purchase though, and only because of how much I enjoyed all of their 90s titles. I think many bitter fans will be in the same boat. They have definitely tarnished their reputation in the eyes of their oldschool supporters, but regardless I think a lot of them will be doing the same as me, buying it just because it's doom.

lol man, I should have realized that. Yea, I agree with what u are saying above and it’s pretty much how most quakers feel

I think id already made their choice to prefer the more popular consoles and all that goes with that. It's weird because their success was built on the PC and gameplay they are moving away from. There's no clear indication that if they released a old school style game it wouldn't be a huge success. They just haven't done one since Q3 (and even Q3 I would argue was quite far away from their best single player effort the original Doom 1 & 2 series). If id did Doom 4 with single player and co-op ala the original Doom series then a functioning battle.net style multiplayer experience, good mod support and dedicated servers for anyone to run I think it'd be a monstrous hit for them.

There's some Carmack quote where he says something close to Rage is the best shooting/combat they have ever done. I just think that shows they've changed a lot as the years have gone by. I mean the starting pistol in Rage has spread and you're most effective with it zoomed in crouching near cover. That's like a complete 180 compared to their previous run and gun arcade combat. Rage and Doom 3 destroyed their reputation for hardcore run and gun combat. Then Rage destroyed their reputation for technical excellent with all the launch issues it had. id clearly doesn't care about multiplayer either see Rage and Doom 3. It'll be interesting to see what Doom 4 brings to the table.

Yeah that seems to be the direction they have set themselves in for the long haul, I'm just not sure how long that will be considering their game sales compared to competitors in similar genres. I don't see them dying any time in the near future, but it just seems to me that by moving in this direction they will just slowly decline.

I'm curious to see what doom 4 will be like as well, like you said I think it could potentially be an amazing experience and most likely one of their best selling games ever. I think that type of doom 4 you described is just a dream you and I and other oldschool id fans share unfortunately :( I don't doubt the SP will be entertaining, but that's probably about as far as it will go. Personally I enjoyed doom 3, but I didn't put any time into it after the first 6-8hr play through.

That idea isn't bad.

when is the map pool going to change?

never. they added management overhead to a game that is already horrifically mismanaged. whoever is leading this project needs to be fired. i remember that people weren't happy when steve nix was running everything, but after he quit/was fired/whatever, the game has steadily declined into the festering wound upon quake history that it is today.

September 2

we've gone sub-1000 \:(/

http://qlranks.com/duel/

cu @ 500

This can't be right, why would it have jumped like that after qc?

qc failure + the crap included in update + standard accounts dueling were basically forbidden + hibernation in terms of tournaments (LANs, zotac, ..) + the quitters effect active players so that they can't play as much as they would want + whatnot

Update and zotac ending happened before that.

yeah but both have _major_ effect in duel activity

So their effect would have already been established by the time the drop happened.

no it still effects

E: the drop isn't really that huge and rapid though what's in the graph, i think

Or it wasn't enough to have an impact on itself but with the update...

Play Shootmania

That will solve all your issues

Following this post, I'd assume that the general populace of shootmania are people with issues.

you can say what you want, u can cry as much as u want to, but id doesn't care and only syncerror is reading esr and he proly can't do this

ha ha ha ID

For CS 1.6 there are a lot of sites that offer "ladder games" that puts a semi-competition atmosphere on every game making each game "mean something" instead of just being completely public/mixed.

Something similar is what I would like to see implemented for Quake Live and I think would be something that people might be able to pay for. I think it is difficult to sell content in the way of maps but I think it would be possible to sell "quality of game".

Ladders and matchmaking for clan games in tdm, 2v2 tdm, ctf, CA (yeah I said it) is something that at least I would be willing to pay for.

And if iD doesnt want to do it maybe some site like qlranks or similar would like to do it.

qlranks is essentially a ladder. But it's true it could be upgraded to have a separate clan games ladder.

this is what bugs me, this f2p model they are going for depends on the game having a healthy playerbase. dropping the active player base by 30% or whatever for the sake of a few more paying customers is just retarded.

I don't understand the reasoning of keeping the standard account option when at the same time they're trying to make it as unattractive to use as possible.

its trickery

If you don't let people try the game for free you'll get much less new players. If you give everything out to new players with some time limitation, a lot will just make new accounts.

Then make it clear, that's a problem I see with the current standard account. Either drastically restrict it so it can be looked at as nothing more than a demo or embrace it. Limit standard servers to one map per game mode, drop premium to around $10-12 and pro to $25-30.