[Radar]

I know that not many Dukers here spend much time playing Duke3D online. I, on the other hand, do. I play both Yang and Meltdown quite a bit using the XDuke and HDuke ports and I've become very well known among that community. I'm much more active there than I am over here anymore.

While some Dukers may not be aware of this (at least I wasn't for a long time), there is a community of extremely active Dukers that don't belong to Duke4.net or any other forum. They actually don't care about any mods either. They just care about playing online Duke, and they play the game just as much as us.

I make this topic with a simple question. I'm curious to see how much the modding community is truly aware of how massive the community of people that still play Duke Nukem 3D really is. I also want to see how much attention is paid to a very important style of gaming that Duke3D was intended for.

The question: when I mention a certain person named "Fran" (or "Capitao", as he has now renamed himself within the last year), does anyone recall who this person may be? Is anyone here very familiar with him? Is anyone maybe just acquainted with him? He his an extremely active Duker that is infamous for a certain quality, but I don't expect many people here to know of him since he resides only in the Dukematch style of gameplay. I will eventually just say who and what he does if no one really knows and is interested.

So, to the point, who knows who "Fran" (or "Capitao") is?

[Jblade]

I think a more important question is "Why is this important?"

[DNSKILL5]

I'll play multiplayer, whenever Eduke32 supports it for real.

[Jimmy]

[DNSKILL5]

I've never laughed so hard on this forum!

[Radar]

James, on 08 May 2012 - 12:46 PM, said:

I think a more important question is "Why is this important?"

It's not. Truthfully, Duke Nukem 3D as a whole really isn't important.

Tell you what. I mentioned the amazing AMC TC to some Dukers on Yang once. They didn't like the sound of it. They truly just won't touch anything beyond vanilla Duke and a couple custom user maps. I basically got the same response: "Why is this important?"

Now you may think they are being fools, but honestly, they think the same thing about this modding community as well. EDuke32 still doesn't have online support. Also, ever heard of a map named "Iod2"? I assure you it's the most frequently played Duke map in existence besides Holly, but from the looks of this thread so far, I doubt anyone here has ever played this map.

[Jimmy]

Oh, beware the elitist hightower Duke douche matchers!

P.S.: Iod2 sucks and it's overrated. I can think of ten better DM maps.

[Radar]

It looks like you have some type of familiarity of people online? You don't lie Captain, there are some real douches in the online scene. That's part of the reason why I asked about Fran...

And I completely agree about your comment on Iod2.

[Jimmy]

That was one of the reasons I stopped playing. They all just play these fogey old maps that suck, and use all kinds of exploits and cheap tactics. It's not worth the hassle of spending ten hours to get the game to work through all these stupid hacks you have to do. And most of them are royal dicks, which says a lot a considering I'm saying it.

[Fox]

Well, what do you meant by "exploits"? Do you mean in-game exploits like warps, or user maps filled with masked walls which only the author knows about?

[Jblade]

I don't think they are fools at all, since there's still many Doomers who won't touch source-ports or mods either. There's stuff they're missing out on, but the same can be said for everyone here. I spent pretty much all of 2009's summer playing AMC TC co-op with the rest of the team and it was incredible; I'm hoping that multiplayer will be worked on again soon since there's limitless potential for mods there.

[High Treason]

You find both of these exploits online, I admit to using the first (in-game exploits) but they aren't as fun as they were when nobody else knew about them - in my defence, it might have been me who taught these guys to do some of them, oh, actually, I'm digging a hole here.

As for this Fran/Captao, I've encountered him under both names, the guy was an ass, he did nothing but moan about my lack of skill (one point behind and I was playing keyboard only) and then when I blasted him with an RPG he quit the game, not like quit, pulled the plug, out of sync and he was not in the lobby. Of course, this might have been a different Fran. I've been there with the Elitist-only-play-vanilla crowd before, but eventually you have to try new things, there is no rule that says I can't enjoy both vanilla and spice at the same time.

[DNSKILL5]

Quote

High Treason:
"playing keyboard only"

That's how I play Duke Nukem 3d on single player, it's also how I play Wolfenstein 3d and Doom, though it's really hard to play that way on multiplayer (mainly deathmatch).

Also, is Xbox LIVE worth getting to play Duke online? Or should I just wait for EDuke32 support?

[zykov eddy]

What is Iod2 and where I can download it?

[TerminX]

I'm aware of some of the elitist dorks this thread mentions. A lot of them aren't really that good, especially on maps that only have one bottle of steroids (or none at all). One of the primary tactics these players like to use goes like this: 1) run to steroids 2) use steroids to quickly run to another bottle of steroids 3) repeat. Actually shooting the other players only really occurs during chance encounters in which the other player is found somewhere on the path to more steroids (or when they're both using the same tactic). There may be a few of these players but realistically their numbers pale in comparison to the amount of people who would rather check out new developments and cool mods that people have come up with. The EDuke32 site gets more unique visitors in a day than the number of these hardcore DukeMatch players that have played the game in the past 5 years.

It just gets boring when you've got the same few hardcore players, playing the same few maps, utilizing the same lame (depending on your point of view) tactics for years and years on end. There was once a time when EDuke32 development attempted to cater to such players in a few ways, and it was pretty much a disaster. Denying evolution for the sake of a very small minority is never a grand idea. Even when EDuke32 multiplayer is eventually finished, these players will stick to playing DOS Duke on Kali with a Windows 98 machine before they ever accept any kind of change and get with the times, and frankly that's fine with me because I would just as soon not have them here.

Also, I guess "Fran" is Franpa. I know him.

[HellFire]

Well TX, that style you pointed out is basically the most efficient way to win in the registered maps. If you want to win on these maps without any additional rules, you will have to do item control, map control, and abuse steroids. Steroids is a very important item in DM, keeping your opponent of getting it really gives you the upper hand. If you dislike playing like that then i guess you just dont like high level duking at all. But that is what actually good players do. The player in question here is Fran, and he is not any good. He usually play on lame maps full of fake walls which lead to secrets full of items. Some of these maps have a lot of "layers" of one sided maskwalls secrets to keep it harder for the opponent to know where the secrets are. Fran's (and some other players) tactics is basically to hide on these secrets, wait for someone to approach and kill them with RPG. This tactic is very dominant against newbies, but if youre actually good at this game this will give you no problem. I dont even know why Fran's name was pointed out since he is a no one. He is not even good at duke and on top of that he is an ass. To say the truth, most players at YANG don't know what competitive Duke is at all. The high level dudes are all in meltdown. Just poiting out.

For the people here that dont know how high level duke is, here is a link @youtube of a match:

I hope that the Eduke32 Multiplayer code gets done someday. If we could have something similar to ZDaemon, it would be just too cool. CTF anyone?? Duke is THE game for CTF, its fast, has a lot of tactical potential, etc...

[Jimmy]

The term "high level duking" just makes you look like a high level douche.

A certain part of me hopes EDuke32 never gets multiplayer.

[HellFire]

How should i say that then? Because for me its obvious that the people that play duke multiplayer for years are better in Dukematching than the guys that never played it or only played it like twice in their lives. I didnt wanted to sound like a douche anyway, its a surprise for me that someone interpreted it that way.

[Jimmy]

These guys aren't even good. If they were playing Quake III they would get crushed. Their tactics are cheap. Not to say I'm good, because I'm not, but all these guys are doing is hogging all the items and weapons, and only fighting the other player when he might get them first.

[Fox]

I understand. But Hellfire has a point, you need to use the items if that's what taken to win the game. The problem would be that Duke has an unbalanced multiplayer.

[Danukem]

If EDuke32 had fully functional and reliable netcode, I would be interested in developing a mod that was the Duke equivalent of Challenge ProMode Arena for Quake III. In essense, a mod that refines the multiplayer game to perfection, eliminating cheapness, adding new gametypes and better bots, while keeping it Duke.

[Jimmy]

You only have to manage weapons and items because the other player is a cheap bastard. I used to play with Corey Eddy and Sam Swashbuckler way back in the day and they played the game right, not like little girls. We had tons of fun until elitist dorks came into our rooms.

[Fox]

They "played the game right"? Now you are sounding like a bad loser.

[Jimmy]

Not really, I suck and I admit it.

[Fox]

So I don't know where you are trying to get by telling other players what is the "right way" to play. Duke is a game filled with powerfull items that respawn every half a minute. If you don't like it, you shouldn't be playing that game. Trooper Dan is right is saying the game could be modified for a more balanced gameplay.

[Jimmy]

Yes, I'm sure 3DR intended for players to dash toward the items, only attacking the other player because he might get the item first.

[Fox]

What 3DRealms intended (or what you think they did) is irelevant. Besides multiplayer was just an extra addiction to Duke, and I don't think the developers put much tought behind it.

Anyway, if 3DRealms ever intended for something, they did a poor job. Deal with it.

[Jimmy]

Your posts are funny.

[Fox]

Thank you.

[TerminX]

HellFire, on 08 May 2012 - 03:12 PM, said:

If you want to win on these maps without any additional rules, you will have to do item control, map control, and abuse steroids. Steroids is a very important item in DM, keeping your opponent of getting it really gives you the upper hand. If you dislike playing like that then i guess you just dont like high level duking at all.

Competitive gaming is fine, it's when people abuse gameplay elements in ways that they were never designed to be used that things start to bother me. Just because somebody figures out a cheap trick that works almost every time YEARS after the game can be patched to fix balance issues doesn't mean that using such tactics makes you skilled. If "high level Duking" means spending every second of every match focusing on controlling one particular inventory item or performing one particular action that can be abused, then no, I guess I just don't like it at all.

It's the same with some more modern games... I used to play FEAR multiplayer very competitively (played in TWL matches, was known by pretty much everyone, was invited to play in a tournament in NYC with cash prizes, etc) and the same thing happened there. Somebody figured out that the melee system had animation bugs that let you essentially instantly kill someone on contact, and someone figured out that there were glitches in leaning left/right that let you shoot through walls, and soon enough every match turned into a competition to see who was the best at abusing bugs.