>HOW TO MAKE QUAKE FFA COMPETITIVE

Invite Tony.

Case closed.

"but what if we don't decide the winner with 1 match?
i mean, how about letting them play 10 maps 4 or 5 min timelimit, and count the total frags to decide the winner."

Bad idea. On smaller maps, the whole game is 4-5 minutes long while on larger maps, you might need additional cycles to stack up properly and / or getting all the absolutely necessary weapons before the next PU spawn / area control. Not to mention that if you play a 4 minute game, only 2 PU spawns will occur. Your chances of coming back are significantly reduced if you miss the pickup. An 5 minute game is not much better; it means 3 PU spawns max which can be reduced to effectively 2 (1st: 00:59; 2nd: 2:59, 3rd: 4:59 - hf taking advantage of it in 1 sec )) ).

If you were saying 10 minutes, that would have been a tad bit better, but on larger maps, it might not be enough to reach the fraglimit, which is absolutely depressing in FFA - so let's leave that timelimit on 15.


"so if there are 16 people, split them to 2 groups.
group A plays 10 maps in 50 min.
group B plays 10 maps in 50 min.
top 4 in group A and top 4 in group B play 10 maps in 50 min."

That's basically a small tournament with too short timelimit.


"also if the server can disable showing nametags on enemymodels, its good coz we can avoid team plays that should not happen in competitive ffa."

It's bad. Actually I never encountered premeditative "team plays" in like 14k games (or they were so insignificant that it didn't matter on the large scale), on the other hand, crosshairnames are very useful, because you can specifically target the most "dangerous" player (dangerous, as in the person who's currently 1st or 2nd place, or you know that if he's/she's gonna get some streak going on, he / she might catch up very quickly and then draw away from the field) who's in combat with another participant.

tl;dr crosshairnames makes it possible for you to willingly hinder a certain player's advancement on the scoreboard since you can prioritize on him / her when you are the laughing 3rd-4th-5th wheel in a brawl, even when the situation (the other 2's / 3's / n's currently used weapons and possible stack) would normally suggest you to attack the other player(/s).


"i mean, there is no reason to make it competitive."

It's pretty competitive with proper server settings and map pool. I wrote about an idea last year (which you liked very much btw), gonna quote that (with some minor changes);

server settings:
8 players
fraglimit 50
timelimit 15
physics: VQL (as in PQL needs a different map pool)
pummel + mg spawn @ 125 / 0 stack
no item timers
no unified ammo packs
no item timers
no hmg
yes BFG


Needed mimum FFA games played: 350
Needed minimum amount of time since account created: 3 months
IRC: mandatory, be authed
cg_autoAction 3 mandatory

Admins: 1 / group
Streams: ideally 1 / group

Cup start: 1700 CEST, Saturday
Cup finish: when it's finished

12-map pool;
dm6 (Campgrounds)
dm9 (Hero's Keep)
dm12 (Dredwerkz)
dm15 (Demon Keep)
dm17 (Longest Yard)
dm18 (Space Chamber)
dm20 (Hidden Fortress)
qzt3 (Hell's Gate)
qzt6 (Almost Lost)
ra3m11 (Overkill)
Purgatory
Limbus / Terminatria (the participants vote on IRC prior to the tournament)

8 player groups. (32 participants would be the ideal, so 4 groups).

Everybody gets points; 1st place - 8 pts., 2nd place - 7 pts., 3rd place - 6 pts., ...; 8th place - 1 pts.

Every map gets played, after finished with all, each groups' top 4 move to semis, meaning 16 player. Earned points getting nullified. In the case of equaling points (and it affects the potential advancement to the semis), one map gets played again, which is dm6 or dm20 (cointoss; heads / tails).


Semis gets played on:
dm6
dm18
dm20
ra3m11
qzt3

Same as before, 1st place - 8 pts., 2nd place 7 pts. etc.

After each map got played, top 2 of each group (4 x 2 = 8 players) makes their way to the final. Points get nullified again.

Finals gets played on:
dm6
qzt6
dm12
dm17
dm20

Only top 3 gets points (3 - 2 -1), after the last map finished, points get added together and we have the final rankings.

Maybe little prizes (subscription, a mouse, mouse pad, cord holder, small things like that), some extra titles, like "most excellents", "most impressives", "most quadkills", "biggest BFG-whore :>", "most kills with machinegun", "fewest deaths", "MVP: most kills".



Yay.

I think we dont have to make it complicated by setting points for 1st-3rd etc or disabling hmg/bfg those are just small things.
but this looks good enough.

did it happen in Europe?

if someone can do this (need 1 event admin, 1 streamer/caster, and server admin), i can purchase a zowie G-SR or this (less than $50 plz or my wife will get mad) and send it to admin.

also i want to allow shit talking (if they want).
it's a huge part of quake. (cypher and cooller will agree with this)

I don't think this is complicated, at all. Rather the opposite.

Disabling hmg is not a small thing. And I never said to turn BFG off (and never will). : >


There was a cup (with annoying fuck ups at the start) and that's it.
I'm all in for another one.

nice, do you have a link for the stream?
I wanna see how it looks.

I don't, but I'm sure you can find it on YT.

Great idea kukii!! Ffa would be better with no powerups and everything you said.

No way. FFA maps without PU are mostly pretty crap tbh (like Quarantine).

Its always just unfair fights, cant stand to watch TDM or CTF when the powerup comes around. Its more about who gets control of the super unfair advantage. Not fun or skill filled.

: D

Too much thinking for a casual mod man
TL;DR
Edit: says the 1200 elo dueler

It's only casual if you play it with a casual mindset.

Meh, I was just about to look for your stats in order to find something to invalidate your point.

F3

:D

Too complicated.

Three maps, 10 points for the winner of each (then 8 6 4 2), most points total wins

No item timers
No power-ups
10 minute games
No frag limit
Player limit: 2

Oh wait...

turn item times off

We've been playing like that for some time now: http://fragme.org/league/?game=quakelive

Quite fun unless a completely strange map is used and ppl just spec it instead of playing.

Meh, I bet it's RU servers and everybody with LAN ping..

And not a single english word on the site..

That's what google translate is for)

The problem with this is that you are alienating almost everybody outside of the Soviet Union. )

Saint-Petersburg or Moscow servers, yes, and most ppl with LAN ping. But e.g. Kenny plays from Ukraine.

I think FFA can be competitive if people treat it like a competitive mode instead of playing it casually.

If you open a pub TDM and some random noobs join and mess around, of course its not competitive. Same for FFA. Maybe get a pickup for serious players?

There was a pickup. People cba to hop on IRC it seems.

fuck irc. this ain't the 90s brah

Sadly.



<3 IRC

DICKSWORD?

ffa = scrubb mode

i have to break it for you tht bad news announced

Well, scrubs playing it as a scrub mode.

#truth

You should check bloodlust (doom4) mod, maybe you will find some insipration there, to how rounds points can work.

Really enjoying FFA again, it's intense and gets your heart going + the fact it's a race for frags means there's less camping and lame play styles.
I mean if you're playing publics your choice is pretty much limited to either CA or FFA anyway...

I love TDM but fuck having to queue on IRC and wait for 10 players to start a game...

Duel is way too nerdy IMO, good to watch the pro's play but if I want to enjoy a good game for me it's not synonym to having only 1 other dude with you in the arena and then having to do maths and time 4 different items while strategically avoiding your opponent, hiding, silent walking, stacking up and only engaging when you have good stack... I can appreciate players who are good at it, but personally I get bored of it.

May FFA be alive again like in the old Q3 days :D

High-skill FFA is not that much different from duel in the terms you mentioned tho.

the approach is completely different though, timing items is still relevant but the results of the game is not based on it as there are so many other random factors

When someone dies he should drop health.

That indeed, would be wonderful to try.

Intressant.

I think there's a very simple way to make FFA competitve. Limit the amount of players, because anything above 8 players is not suitable for competitive gameplay, it becomes too random, too overcrowded for comprehensible play.

Limit the player count to 6, then it's going to be a FFA where you will be able to have a real grasp on the outcome of the match, because resource control suddenly becomes more viable, timing becomes more important, because it's actually possible to plan ahead and position yourself more consistently (in high player count matches it's often just hoping that you won't encounter too many random factors, too many players that you can't track and predict).

Capping player limit doesn't scale well across the maps. Bigger maps need more players, smaller maps need less players. There is a sweet-spot for each map.

Last FFA tourney I played I had couple games with 6 players and it was in my opinion as bad as having too many players because it just becomes campy: couple players hogged the main items in their corners of the map and others got spawn fragged between them. There is no incentive for the stacked payers to go and hunt other stacked players - they'll just sit comfortably against weak ones. So because the player count was so low there wasn't enough firepower for the guys out of control to overcome the players with stack.

The problematic variables that change with different player numbers are the amount of items per player and the physical space per player on the map. If they added health dropping on death it would allow the mode to scale better with different player amounts because the item count per player doesn't drop when it gets overcrowded. Not sure if it would make it actually more competitive, but pub FFA would be better for sure.

It can already be competitive as it is, just so long as you have 8 players or less?

8 is fine.

never gonna be truly competitive due to random spawns
it's fine tho. just remove the item timers

The way FFA usually goes, is 2 maybe 3 good players going for the lead, timing armors and quad, controlling wespons and punishing spawns. The rest are just casual players.

With to many players it's all combat skills and quad runs.

I'll tell you what though, I have played a few ffas that were highly competitive. One that comes to mind included tyryl and maybe stv_ plus some duelers/CA aliased guys.There were 6 players on t7. Everyone was timing and challenging armors and mega, quad was passed around. I forget who won but the time limit hit. The end score was something like 35,33,30,29 etc. Lead was highly contested and it was almost like a tdm match.

TL;Dr FFA can be very competitive with skilled players, a balanced map and low amount of players.

^^