It's an interesting thing to think about. Do games really need to drop the skill ceiling to be successful in the modern gaming industry? Or has that just been the path of least resistance, which 90% of companies have adopted due to its success?

I'm of the opinion that games really don't need to drop their skill ceiling and be 'dumbed down' to be popular and successful, because classic sports that have been around for a 100 years haven't had to do that. Tennis for example, massive skill ceiling and 1v1 mode and high entry level skill / knowledge requirement.

But right now changing this aspect of the modern gaming industry would be next to impossible IMO, and if by some miracle a very rich investor who has a dream of increasing the competitive purity of esports throws money at the problem I don' t think there is enough money that could shift the current behemoth's in the gaming industry.

The difference is a kind of laziness is what attracts people to gaming in the first place, unlike tennis. :P

Most people switch on their PC or console to play games precisely when they don't want to make efforts. For them, playing a game is more like watching TV than it is like playing a sport.

table tenis was dumbed down! :)

consider Dota 2. Its the most popular game on steam and the biggest (money wise at least) esport and yet its one of the most complex, obtuse and unforgiving games out there

This huge depth is largely knowledge based though. Also, knowledge of the meta etc is not actually needed to play the game - moving and fighting etc is all extremely straight forward.

Knowledge based skill gaps are far more accessible because you don't need to make any effort outside of playing the game to improve at them.

That's likely why games like LoL and Dota are so successful - you can outplay new players without ever really needing to challenge yourself.

thats true, but it does show that people are willing to learn complex mechanics themselves. maybe CS:GO is a better example

either way heroes with easier movement abilities and a basic/complex movement tutorial should go a long way

What QC needs is a new gametype. That's all really.

After only three weeks TDM and FFA have become stale.

The real question is: What can we do to keep real quake (live) alive when ca scrubs (most of the ql players, unfortunately) and pros that want some quick easy money, switch to Heroes of the Quake? Do we just continue playing ztn with same 10 Russians until Yames makes Diabetical?

bind SPACE "say i'm going back to quake live, thats where the skill is"


spam in QC pubs. safe qekk

Even after that.



And keep #tdmpickup and HoQ alive. Most importantly.

I'd say adapt to survive; Overwatch 2.0

Quake needs team-objective game modes, death-match focus aren't working anymore

Objective games allow both newbie and good players working together without rely too much on skills and also have a chance to win.
Especially with the new champions system (everyone has different stats and ability, can adapt to different situation base on the object)

A comment by corvu from this thread, which is pretty true right now

http://esreality.com/post/2704045/can-we-finally-accept-why-quake-failed/

I think Blizzard is on the right track with Overwatch. We quakers will probably hate it, but it may grow a large and lasting community.

- Only team focus.

- Objecive based gameplay.

- 6v6 - A weak player can be carried, it is harder for a beastly player to dominate.

- A single weapon per hero and four easy to use abilities. Amongst the competitive elite there will be room for execution (i.e. aim) to make a difference, but focus is on complementing and countering different abilities.

- Lots of different heroes with different playstyles (e.g. heroes that don't need a good aimer behind the screen).

I have killed green robots for a long time. What i enjoyed about q3/ql, after having learned the basics of the game, was building strategies with my team mates and then winning and losing trying to perfect them. However as time went by it became clear to me that pure deatmatch skills is far more important than any teamplay skill can ever be in q3/ql. And to be honest, I am dead tired of ONLY trying to kill the green robot more times than he kills me. I'm going to try out overwatch - probably going to hate it, but I want to enjoy it.

p/s before thinking about e-sport & shit, lets make the game survives first

Team objective: kill other team more than they kill you. :D

Anything that equalizes players is just making skill irrelevant. You cannot at that point call it a skill-based game.

"Chance to win" is provided by playing against people as shit as you.

"Working together" is a skill too, and you can't expect a noob to have it any more than any other skill.

quake cannot be saved at this point

quake is potat

The thing is, you don't have to surrender every single principle you have as gaming company and copy+paste the thing that is popular that specific year.

Stick to what you're good and and players will reward that by playing what you give them.

CS:GO is doing great and they haven't put in auto-aim ... yet, but Valve does have some principles, beside being a money grabbing whore, and that will never happen. Also I doubt mid round healing will be added.

Blizzard, while doing some weak as casual shit, still supports starcraft that is hard as fuck to master, but I'm sure they'd get n+1 million more players if the removed the need to macro and just kept a moving for all engagement situations.

id is just selling out and it is very sad, which is also I why I kind of hope that QC flops, which it surely will, because it is a a pale shadow of what it could and should be. Long time quakers and other FPS players will shun it soon after release because it is casual as fuck and way too cosmetics/shiny trinkets oriented and the "new" surge of players already have LoL and Overwatch to which they well go back in a few weeks after QC is released, because the latter already have established and somewhat stable communities.

"Long time quakers and other FPS players will shun it soon after release because it is casual as fuck and way too cosmetics/shiny trinkets oriented"

100% guaranteed that 95% of quake veterans will LOVE the new quake, and will stick to it at all costs.

People here loved loadouts, fart gun and item timers.

Someone whined, but lets consider the community actions and not the words: dumbing down has been a huge success.

The majority of community spawned servers have even more retarded settings: vampiric health, 14 people ffa on bloodrun, 16 people ffa on longest yard, ffa where you spawn with all weapons, clan arena with fart gun and 18 people servers, only few servers have auto shuffle, no sign of tdm or ctf servers and the only other gamemode is instafreeze tdm. That's right, not even classic freeze, insta freeze.

It's mind-boggling: the servers were MUCH healthyer and quake-ish when they weren't spawnable by the users.

Quake champions will be a success between quake veterans.

Also the customization and cosmetic stuff. There are tons of people here that will spend absurd amounts of moneys to have the rarest, gayest skins. It fits perfectly. with the "mightier than thou" attitude of the average quaker.

Paradoxally, quake champions might have less success between casuals than between veterans.

But being a free game, it will be huge regardless.

Paradoxally, quake champions might have less success between casuals than between veterans.

I don't really like that distinction between veterans and casuals. I'd say the vast majority of veterans ARE casuals.

QC is going to be dogshit, even though its going to get pushed pretty hard.

this new duel mode sealed the deal for me since everyone knows ID wont support classic duel competitively outside of a side tournament at qcon.

i should be happy because even vs players who are actually insane i end up getting the first frags before i get pooped on, cuz for some reason the spawn gods favor me.... but im not happy because this is yet another game i love that's been ruined.

Our generation is the most pathetic, spoiled and unimaginative generation ever.

We don't deserve better games.

*YOU don't.









Here, fixed it for you.

I'm surprised that they picked Quake to do this with. The game that's widely regarded as the most hardcore multiplayer FPS on the planet. I would have preferred if they did it in a new IP or in Wolfenstein or DOOM instead of the weird multiplayer in that last one.

They are ruining the image of Quake a bit I feel, how do you go back to the truly hardcore roots of Quake in future games when so many people will associate the game with champions, abilities etc now? :/

My question. Do we care if QC is huge or not?
I personally could care less. QL and doom satisfy me.

IT'S GONNA BE FRIGGIN YUUUUUGE (c) Tim Trump



I only need #tdmpickup to have 7 more players, and that's my quake needs addressed. Sometimes, however, that is earlier said than done.

How is #tdmpickup doing at the moment?

there's generally always a game on from 13:00 to 01:00, sometimes 2

Couldn't, m8.
Couldn't.

Quake is dead.

I believe Quake is the best game ever, and has the foundations to be even better. It's partly our responsibility as veterans to help the new blood and make it easier for them. There needs to be easily accessible and easy to find online guides and video tutorials on how to play, and opinions on things like sensitivity, hardware and ways to play. Most other games have these content creators. This is in my opinion a big part of what we've been missing Vs other recent popular games and we need to step up on this sort of thing.

> "our responsibility as veterans"
> reg date 2012

Anyway, we've been missing out on everything but those.
ID abandonded Q3 in 2001 and ever since then there was a stream of content.
OSP, CPMA, gtv, maps, mods, tournaments. The community efforts were so good that our old, old game got featured at gamegune and eswc in 2008.
Btw, check out the number of hits for the eswc 2008 thread. This is how "dead" Q3 was before the ql abomination came out.

And it went on with ql - aside from more maps and tournaments, things like qlprism, qlranks, wolfcam, fragtv, hook etc. were community content. As for tutorials, there were plenty on ql forums AND youtube - for example, here's a great strafe jumping tutorial by 2gd (released sometime in 2010 or 11, dont remember exactly, this is a reupload). Or how about some of the stuff by Memento Mori? DH 12 and 13? Send your thanks to the swedish quakers aka dh admins.
These are just some examples, there was a sea of content.
Isnt this admirable, given the limited access people had to ql? Isnt this true dedication, given every ql update rendered these things useless but people never gave up?
Maybe the problem is that this content was never integrated into ql and the few casuals who stayed never knew these things existed.

Cry much, little queen?
Looking at dates and counts, roflmao you jerk.

You must dislike historians, don't you?

He's right though. You cannot blame the community for a lack of content. There's been tons.

And the only thing you can really say is that content was hard to find for a new player entering the game---because google is obviously too hard. :D

Google is not a friend of 90% of Earth's population. Because you need the ability of comprehensive reading AND writing AND you need the ability to use 6th grader logic. Three very demanding quality right from the start.



Especially lovely, when someone makes a thread, thread after thread, asks questions and such, and the answer is usually the first fucking hit on Google. Or it's in the first 5 or 10 hits - dat blasphemy, dem cunning fagetz hiding the knowledge so well from (illiterate) mortals.

off to your ca server, boyo

If you're judging someone by the their registration date, you've automatically removed yourself from the gene pool of procreation.

a) only oversensitivity does that
b) when you bash veterans for lack of involvement, its relevant to point out you mightve not been around for long enough to see the whole picture

Like reg date on ESR has ANYTHING to do with for how long he plays Quakes (or how dedicated he is as a content maker or player).

competetive and hardcore quake players have to know esr. Ive never found any site which is more related to quake tournaments and so on than esr.

Ofc I played quake long before I registered here but not in a competetive way. Just for fun and this doesnt count much.

Whatever... its always a funny universal argument vs new registered users :D

btw registration date 2012 isnt that bad. At least 5 years experience

"btw registration date 2012 isnt that bad. At least 5 years experience"


Make that ~20. (And lurking around ESR since 2006.)


See?

My other account was reg in 2005 and I've been playing Quake since I was 10 (26 now).

edit: I guess its right I can't call myself a "veteran" though, but I think I've been around for enough time to have an opinion on that.

Evolution or involution of gameplay how you wanna call it in this game series is only half of the problem. The other part was that until 2001 id Software was forefront in 3d engines, and the only competitor they had -Unreal engine -proved a tough competitor mainly based on the engine itself. Sure, Unreal DM was new strange and interesting, along its darkmatch mode that some were mindblowed at that time and the SP was also praised a lot but culturally wise and feeling wise it was inferior to quake1 and doom1/2, yet the graphics put Unreal on a high pedestal.

The solution for id would be to went ahead with the graphics, hire guys from nvidia from the graphics department, maybe shader creators from Valve -these guys come and go on a regular basis -or study harder what's going on in the newer dx and opengl shaders support and try to build the most visually advanced game there is -as always the limit is in the hardware not in the way they could build engines. Then on top of this I'd create a quake1 based universe maybe add properties instead abilities -and build from there.

In other words I'd create games based 50% on skill 50% on smartness -quake is not chess let's admit it- and cram the games down publics' throat bc superior graphics, advanced physics and advanced AI on top of keeping them culturally relevant -no lipstick colors or many "special" effects, sorry. And what I'd basically do to build culturally relevant games would be to ask myself all the time if this or that element would have been working (in terms of artistic expression) during the XVII century, projecting myself in those times, so to speak, when culture and arts were real.

q1: newcomers raped by skilled players and leave
q2: newcomers raped by skilled players and leave
q3: newcomers raped by skilled players and leave
q4: newcomers raped by skilled players and leave
ql: newcomers raped by skilled players and leave

simplicity AND proper matchmaking is the ONLY way out
FOr example in current beta state there are no abilities for noobs to outperform or equalize their skill with old-school quakers.

Tank-class champions are slow and eazy target, they cant dodge and u could hit 50% lg on CLutch/Scalebearer and only 15% on ANarki/Nyx. :))))))))

Noobs want more balanced tank-classes i guess. Nobody plays tanks now.

ATM newcomers raped hard in all matches and id must afraid for their feellings

Na, the mentality of all the new gamers, they want instant gratification, back in the real LAN days it was awesome getting destroyed by a better player in the Quake genre because you were like fuck yeah, I'm gonna learn to get that good.

Now the noobs get shitfucked and leave because they don't have that same competitiveness as we the older gamer generation did.

Today's games opt for simplicity in the sense they want to see results of their gameplay improvement in a few months, not years.

FPS will never really be the same as it was, attention spans are too short to learn a mechanically and mentally tough game like Quake, it's easier to get into a game like DOTA and just have more fun.

TL;DR DM arena shooters are kind of dead, to the new comers.

true. I remeber every time I got owned 20 0 against one guy in internet cafe. took me 1 and half year and I beat him and after that , I started to own him.

'proper matchmaking' isn't the ultimate answer either. As long as the main game mode is 1v1 and the game allows for vast skill differences (aka really high skill floor/ceiling) then even when ppl get matched up vs people around their skill level it will still be a more stressful/frustrating experience than just going and playing some overwatch or csgo etc.

Look at SC2. It has literally perfect matchmaking but you still have 'ladder anxiety' and the community die off due to people not wanting to get stomped on even if they have a 50% win rate.

i'm agree but anyway better to have 50% win rate, than 30%. ELO must be default in every duel game like options with key binds

I don't think I'll be playing it past the initial few days.

I think that the big publishers have played a major part in shifting the general gaming culture away from satisfaction through challenge, towards instant gratification, and I think that QC exemplifies this. We have yet to see some sort of saving grace in QC that retains that intangible element of difficulty and depth of skill. IMO it all comes down to passive consumerism and the general unwillingness of gamers (and perhaps society as a whole) to think for themselves. Some people don't appreciate that kind of moralism, and I'm reluctant to make grand statements, but I just don't see how it could be otherwise given the current state of affairs in gaming. I think it will ultimately take indie titles like Diabotical to step in and start shaping the gaming culture instead of feeding it and making as much money as possible.

Ah yes, the morals of a game dev: Thou must spend millions of dollars creating a game that only appeals to a niche segment of the market so that it will neither please a large number of people nor make a profit.

Like it or not, when you buy a game, you are a consumer, and you are part of the evil consumerism. If you don't like it, stop buying things. You're not emperor yet, so you can't pass a law saying only worthy products can be made or mandate Quake classes in school so that everyone has an appreciation for the game inculcated into them. :D

Game devs didn't make people the way they are; they just exploit the way people are.

This has nothing to do with people "thinking for themselves". It has to do with the fact most people view games as a kind of relaxing pass time, not a place to prove themselves as worthy human beings. There's plenty of other places to do that in life.

I want them to make a good game too that preserves a lot of the greatness of Quake, but I'm not gonna start talking about morals and the degeneracy of mankind if they produce something I don't like. I just won't play it.

I wasn't rejecting consumerism outright. I'm not the guy living 'off-grid' in a mud house with a windmill generator, nor am I a Stalinist (although I do appreciate Marx). Freedom of choice is of utmost importance, but I think as consumers we do generally need to make more informed choices about what we buy.

There is certainly precedent to say that firms have some role in shaping consumer preferences. In reality consumer rationality is not a given - when consumers lose the ability or will to collectively discuss and criticise the value (moral, monetary or otherwise) of products and services, the firms will naturally use their powers to affect the way in which their products are viewed by consumers. If you can get people to like dumb, easily-accessible games, this will be considerably more profitable than if tastes were oriented towards less-accessible, challenging games. Firms are not essentially benign reactors to demand - they often have the ability to affect demand.

We seem to have a fundamental difference in perspective. When I see something wrong I don't just shrug and say 'that's just the way it is'. In this instance I'm not worried about people's casual gaming activities, but I do care about the video games people play as sports and towards which obscene amounts of money are being invested. I don't use terms unironically such as 'degeneracy' because I have my own problems and I won't throw stones at glasshouses. But we need to ask questions like 'what does it mean?' when we see young people obsessed with crap like dota2. Why should we reserve moral judgement just because we're discussing a fond past-time. Don't past-times serve as a reflection of our society? I don't expect you to agree with me but I think there is something wrong when nobody seems to be asking these questions.

If consumer rationality is not a given, then your rationality is not a given---because you are just another consumer. Or are you one of those people who think everyone is a sheep, and you have somehow transcended them all and can see things that they cannot see? :D

Yes, some people are just plain stupid, and there is a lot of them. They do have money though, and they are the easiest to be persuaded to part with it.

The fact that we're even having this conversation shows we most definitely have the ability to criticize whatever we want about any product. In the age of the internet, people have never had access to so much information and opinion about what products are good or bad.

I really don't think the game devs are CONTROLLING our tastes. People really do just like "dumb, easily-accessible games". OW was hyped to the max via advertising, but if it were not a game people enjoyed, it would be dead already. In typical conspiracy theorist style, you overestimate the power of the conspirators.

The value of a game is just what the people who play it get out of playing it. I don't see where morals come into this. There is nothing morally wrong about creating a dumbed down Quake. I didn't know Quake had become a religion.

"When I see something wrong I don't just shrug and say 'that's just the way it is'."

I get you're trying to make me sound apathetic to the great moral tragedy of our times: Quake Champions. But beyond trying to spread your views by talking to people and "educating" them, there is absolutely nothing you can do about this terrible "wrong" that would not be WORSE than the problem you are trying to solve---remember that old "freedom of choice" thing you were talking about. I mean, you could ban all advertising (who'd miss it?), but then you'd eliminate most free content, and there'd be much less funding for tournaments to bring those video games people play up to the level of sports, like you say.

I don't like DOTA either, but I'm not gonna say, "oh, the only reason these people have vastly different taste in games to me is that they were brainwashed by the machine, man". This is not the music industry, which is truly brainwashy. What does it mean? It means people enjoy DOTA. It's funny you use DOTA as an example because the original DOTA was highly popular and created by the community; it didn't have any huge and powerful media conglomerate pushing it.

There are much, much bigger problems in our society than what video games people play in their spare time.

"There are much, much bigger problems in our society than what video games people play in their spare time. "

No.

















:p

[+]

All true, but nothing really new imho. Good summary of the current issue in fps gaming.

"Unfortunately these phenomena is a necessary evil to keep the modern gamer on a leash, ergo making the end product economically viable. "

No. This is what brainless managers tell themselves and their superiors and the general public in order to excuse their lack of imagination and intelligence. Challenging games that punish you for mistakes severely and don't hold your hand exist today and are popular. Take a look at H1Z1 King of the Kill for example. Take a look at popularity of SC:BW versus SC2 (yes, it is 90% because of koreans and their obsession with the game, but is it not proof that simply "dumbing down for general public" doesn't really work?. ID has tried to dumb down QuakeLive with floating damage indicators and loadouts - did it work? Did it increase the player number? Of course not. Truth is - no one even TRIES to create a challenging, skill-based arena fps that really punishes you for mistakes and rewards for good decisions.)
The real problem of today's gaming industry(and even art in general) is not the audience, it's the impotence of creators. People seldom try to come up with anything genuine, original. Mostly it's reissues, remasterings, reboots - in everything, not just gaming. ID has jumped on that train long ago, probably since Q4. Doom was an unexpected breath of fresh air, but QC so far is nothing but a mix of used ideas without originality. And it's exactly because of that its future doesn't look very bright.

The further through time you go, within the particular scope of an art form, the less original ideas that are actually any good will be left. So instead, existing ideas are combined in interesting ways or refined a bit more, and things are borrowed from elsewhere.

There is likely good, original ideas left, but the fact that it has taken so long to discover them is an indication they are not easy to discover. I think it is normal to expect something truly original but also great to come about less and less often.

It usually requires some revolution of the technology itself to break the stagnation, and that's really what allowed 3D games and FPS to come about in the first place. That said, I have no clue what that's gonna be this time round. VR just doesn't seem like it.

Maybe the alternative is for our civilization to collapse so we can forget everything and start being original again. :D

Anyway, originality, especially in something like a game, is a bit overrated. It only really has the appeal of novelty for a short time before any continued appreciation of it is dependent on its inherent worth. MOBAs try to do the thing where they extend the novelty period through constant additions. That's a kind of lame in its own right, though.

Or maybe you are right, and people just have got dumber and greedier and want to take the easy road. :D

I think true originality and creativity have always been rare. And the masses have always been dumb. It's just that previously there wasn't such catering to the masses.

Art became market specifically to try and sell itself better at the expense of, in many cases, stopping being art. Masses should not dictate what art must be. They are incapable of dictating it correctly. Art should not be lowered for the masses - it exists to make people rise to grasp it. It's the same for game industry as a form of art. Games should not be dumbed down. It simply doesn't work - they stop being good games - and they die quickly. Examples are numerous.

It's just that I hate it when people think that mixing up together pieces of "popular" ideas or mechanics is what creates good products. By going down this road they guarantee the mediocrity (best case scenario) of the end result and deprive themselves of any chance of having real success. Real popularity. Not following what's already popular - but driving popularity, creating newly popular things! Yes, they do earn money by going this 'safe' way of catering to the average idiot, but they also miss much, much more than they can potentially gain.

yeah, the dirty pesents who like having pretty stuff to loko at shouldnt get to pool there resources to have art made that they like because their stupid

yeah, instead of creating new interesting challenging board games, let's make new chess with shiny pieces that can make cool animated moves, let's also remove a few pieces so that the game is not so difficult to play and let's sell the colored skins for the pieces. Classic chess are 'old' anyway! So let's make "dirty pesents" happy with pretty stuff! That's the best way to create games, right? I mean, who cares if that's not a good game anymore, if the "dirty pesents" are happy for the next few months?

yeah because its a either/or situation /s ROFL and random anonymous people demanding that theyre standards get met is stupid. why should we respect random anonymous standards over legit artists making artistic decisions for thereselves lol

art should recquire a collage dagree to figure out what ur even looking at. if ur to stupid to figure it out than maybe stick to farming pototos pleb. u dont desrve temporary respite from this life of hell

The CIA funded and bankrolled the modern art movement.

cost is not a trouble