[Zaxx]

I just have to ask something at this point: what was Bethesda doing in 2018? Sure, Fallout 76 was a disgrace to the gaming industry as a whole and every single decision maker should be fired for that alone but man, this is not the Quake of Champions it was one month ago.

Let's see what the December update did:

- They managed to fuck the game back into a non-functional state for a pretty large portion of the playerbase: the game did not work if you only had 8 GB RAM in your machine.
- They fixed that after a week with a hotfix but it's still undeniable that the game got buggier and less stable. People complain a lot about server issues, fluctuating performance, hitching, crashes etc. For example there is a server now that lags for me like hell even though my ping there is actually quite good... and of course you still don't have any way to find out what server you're playing on so you can't deselect the buggy one from the data centers.
- They introduced a new progression system that looks good on paper (basically Fortnite's battle pass system instead of loot boxes) but feels like a scam in execution. You can level up to level 100 now with gradually unlocking cosmetics, shards and some platinum along the way but the XP requirements are so high that there is no human being on Earth who will get to level 100 before the season ends in the middle of March.
- They removed ranked 2v2 from the matchmaking guess because they were like "we've yet infuriate every part of our playerbase with something".

Damn, Bethesda, get your shit together in 2019!

[MusicallyInspired]

Aw that's sad to hear. I was enjoying Quake Champions even before it was made f2p permanently (I got it free during E3). Stopped playing for a while just because of other things, but it was a fair amount of fun then. Then I heard it got better. Sad to hear it got worse again.

[Tea Monster]

Hey, just wondering something.

I downloaded the Xmas Jam 2018 and all the maps read as 'completed' when I start them.
I've tried both EZQuake and Dark Places.

Not sure if I'm doing something silly.

[Zaxx]

MusicallyInspired, on 31 December 2018 - 02:06 PM, said:

Aw that's sad to hear. I was enjoying Quake Champions even before it was made f2p permanently (I got it free during E3). Stopped playing for a while just because of other things, but it was a fair amount of fun then. Then I heard it got better. Sad to hear it got worse again.

The fucked up thing is that yes, when it comes to its mechanics QC is great, hell, mechanically it's the best FPS in at least a decade and it sure as shit has a chance to become the best multiplayer Quake outing. The developers who work on it from id are passionate and they are the Quake Live guys so they know their shit, the game balance is at the best place now... but it's just obvious at this point that Bethesda is not putting enough resorces into QC's development. On top of that Bethesda's QA sucks ass so every single patch is a gamble when it comes to the technical side of it.

Also: it's just weird that they've switched the business model. I hate loot boxes and I think it's great that they got rid of them but this new progression system does not feel rewarding at all and they are just monetizing the game in a bad way. Quake fans / old school FPS fans do not care about cosmetics, what they care about is content so instead of this whole cosmetics stuff they should sell core and extra gameplay content.

For example it's just weird that you can unlock champions through gameplay if your playerbase doesn't care about buying cosmetics: having a free champion on a weekly rotation is good enough as a f2p option but if you want the full roster paying for the Champions Pack or buying champs for platinum should be your only options because that's how this game can make money. Instead of focusing on weapon shaders and other cosmetic fluff they should make stuff Quake fans are willing to pay money for: the game has some excellent Lovecraftian lore so stuff like comics would sell, I'd love to buy a soundtrack album, announcer packs featuring some of the champions or prominent members from the Quake community would work out too AND most importantly they should do something about single player. Quake 1 style, minimalistic campaign DLC packs would be a great way to make money and they could also attract an audience who doesn't play multiplayer. You pay something like ~15 bucks, you get a Quake 1 style single player episode you can play with all the champions: it's a surefire hit and while it's more expensive to make than cosmetics they'd also make more money with it.

Anyway I'm rambling at this point so I'll stop.

[leilei]

Tea Monster, on 31 December 2018 - 03:58 PM, said:

I've tried both EZQuake and Dark Places.

You need Quakespasm.

[Tea Monster]

Thanks!

[NightFright]

I use Fitzquake Mark V, it should also work, but no guarantees. It's still missing some limit removals/enhancements they did in Quakespasm.

What I like about Mark V is that it's super fast, a single-file solution and it can run Nehahra natively.

[Zaxx]

Okay, thankfully my rant on QC is outdated now: id Software released a performance patch that solved a lot of issues. The servers are still messed up a bit in Europe but hopefully that will be sorted out soon too.

Anyway the devs might be struggling with development because of a fucked up schedule and Bethesda's shitty QA but they are good people: they are out there helping out and gathering information where they can = they care, QC is absolutely treated as a passion project even though this won't be the next Fortnite. They are reaching out to people who have problems which is good and if you know how to talk to them they are listening to your complaints. For example today I reached out to the devs because after asking around a bunch I found an issue with their lootbox system (basically one legendary weapon seemed to be missing from the boxes so nobody got it): Adam Pyle, their lead designer turned up, checked if I was right (I was), fixed the issue and compensated me by unlocking the missing weapon on my account. That's some grade A support there and it's great that they are transparent about this stuff, reminds me of the old id.

Overall all I can say is that everyone who is interested in QC should at least give it a try because it is the best FPS on the market now when it comes to game mechanics. It's easier to get into it than you might think and if you have no technical issues then picking up the champions pack or some platinum to spend on cosmetics is a good way to show your support. Support good PC FPS, support Quake!

[NightFright]

Currently I am playing the "Xmas Jam 2018". Excellent stuff! 21 rather compact maps (playtime 5-10 min each) accessible via a central hub, some of them with nice Christmas theme. Like always with map collections like this one, quality is mixed, but even the "worst" of them are still fairly good! If you have around 350 MB to spare, fire up ye olde Quake with this and enjoy!

[Zaxx]

I think I should give this year's Xmas Jam another go: I played so many fanmade maps for Doom at this point that usually I stop playing immediately if I find something terrible and I just move on to something else. Now when I tried this map pack the first thing I saw was a map that was about pushing boxes veeeery slooowly so I was like "kthxbye, I'm done".

[NightFright]

That mainly happens in the very first map, but there are a lot of really good ones without pushing any boxes. ^^

[Bloodshot]

https://www.moddb.co...nfo-and-trailer

[VGA]

YEAH!!!!

[Zaxx]

Haha, I like the QC super shotgun. Pumped for this mod.

[Zaxx]

Some newly rediscovered photography from QuakeCon 1997 with Romero, Carmack, Killcreek, Thresh, Kornelia and more:
https://dondeq2.com/...an-zyfly-works/

[Malgon]

That's a 90's overload there!

[Zaxx]

What's interesting to me is that by looking at the pics it feels so long ago yet 22 years is really not that much. While most of these people have left the scene a long time ago they are still around and they are still relatively young. For example Kornelia lives in Budapest now, she is working at Digic Pictures (look that one up) and according to one mutual friend she did not even try Quake Champions yet.

[NightFright]

Even more Xmas Jam 2018 beauty. There are really some visual highlights in this pack.

[Zaxx]

It's good to know that QC's community managers are out to get the feedback that's important:
https://twitter.com/...261533150699521


Edit: Oh hey, they care:

+community stream on Friday.

[Zaxx]

This fucking symbol on Galena always bugged because it looked familiar from somewhere:


Had a look at Heretic the other day and damn, there it is:

Can it be that they are using the Serpent Rider symbol as an easter egg? The cover of the second game is similar too:


Fuck, I need a new Heretic now.

[NightFright]

Heretic, true... the "Fantasy Doom" clone. I have always thought the game was highly underappreciated. Ok, the weapons sucked (at least in the first one), but regarding atmosphere it was amazing. I dunno how often I played the second one, but I loved the levels and story.

[Zaxx]

I always loved Heretic, when I was a kid I think I played it more than Doom. It is absolutely a Doom clone and some of the weapons really don't feel powerful at all (and that mace they have instead of the BFG is just terrible) but the Tome of Power makes all of them awesome (and I really like that it makes the "pistol", the staff with the crystal really powerful because in Doom you did not use the pistol all that much) and I think Heretic was the first real FPS to have an inventory too? It's also great that it has a different Nightmare difficulty than Doom, one that makes everything move and shoot faster: that kinda made the gameplay future proof because it suits WASD + mouse gameplay well.

Also: turning enemies to chickens never gets old.

[Aristotle Gumball]

The thing that bothers me about QC is the atmosphere doesn't really feel like Quake anymore, if that makes sense. It might be mechanically solid, but I honestly enjoyed Q3/Live mainly because I just really dug how the maps/guns/character models looked.

Ditto on Heretic, just finished it recently. I also think the level design is a bit better than Doom's, even though it's a clone.

[MusicallyInspired]

I've been revisiting Heretic and Hexen while recording their SC-55 music packs recently and it's as good as I remember. Definitely would love to see more. If there was a new Heretic game that improved on Doom 2016 the same way it improved on the original Doom and didn't just use its engine for a similar to same experience, it'd be great. Ditto with Hexen. I enjoyed Heretic much more than Doom, however. And then Hexen much more than Heretic due to its superior weapons and non-linearity which was groundbreaking for an FPS at the time. I played Heretic 2 but it was so different (3rd person action) it turned me right off. I still haven't gotten to Hexen 2, which used the Quake engine. I've heard it's not as great as the first one though? Still, it's a true FPS so I imagine I'll enjoy it more than Heretic 2.

And yes, I believe Heretic was the first FPS with inventory, afaik. Or...did Blake Stone have inventory? Or ROTT? I don't remember.

[Zaxx]

thricecursed: QC's atmosphere / art style is a weird one: I really like it because to me Quake = Quake 1 and QC carries on from there in its visuals but also expands on it with varying results. The problem with Q1 is that the styles of the episodes vary a lot so with QC the devs focused on the Elder World with its Lovecraftian style but came up with a bunch of different elder gods to serve as visual themes. So really the game has around five visual styles unified by the elder god themes and it works well but with that the sci-fi aspect of Quake was eliminated from the maps. Guess they did this because id already has Doom as a sci-fi themed game but Quake's multiplayer always had a lot of sci-fi maps so in QC it feels like the game is missing those.

The weapons I absolutely adore though and I really like it that you can unlock different weapon models for almost every single one of them. Nothing beats fragging with the Quake 4 lightning gun in QC.

[Zaxx]

MusicallyInspired, on 16 January 2019 - 08:44 AM, said:

I enjoyed Heretic much more than Doom, however. And then Hexen much more than Heretic due to its superior weapons and non-linearity which was groundbreaking for an FPS at the time.

I have mixed feelings about Hexen: I love the art style and the gameplay mechanics but some of its maps were very hard to navigate for me back in the day.

Hexen 2: I played it but never finished it. Somehow it didn't feel right with Quake 1 graphics.

Heretic 2: That one I at least finished but it never really grabbed me.

[Aristotle Gumball]

Zaxx, on 16 January 2019 - 09:59 AM, said:

thricecursed: QC's atmosphere / art style is a weird one: I really like it because to me Quake = Quake 1 and QC carries on from there in its visuals but also expands on it with varying results. The problem with Q1 is that the styles of the episodes vary a lot so with QC the devs focused on the Elder World with its Lovecraftian style but came up with a bunch of different elder gods to serve as visual themes. So really the game has around five visual styles unified by the elder god themes and it works well but with that the sci-fi aspect of Quake was eliminated from the maps. Guess they did this because id already has Doom as a sci-fi themed game but Quake's multiplayer always had a lot of sci-fi maps so in QC it feels like the game is missing those.

The weapons I absolutely adore though and I really like it that you can unlock different weapon models for almost every single one of them. Nothing beats fragging with the Quake 4 lightning gun in QC.

Quake = Quake 1 for sure, but QC feels like UT or something. It's kinda colorful and I'm not getting as much of a Lovecraft vibe TBH. More like a cheesy Dungeons & Dragons vibe. Meh.

[Aristotle Gumball]

Hexen 2 gave me headaches. Shit like this: https://youtu.be/e9iAvepqfLA?t=177

If you're someone who hated the main campaign, though, try the expansion. It has all the best parts of Hexen with none of the bad. No walkthrough required.

[axl]

Interesting opinions here. It's rare to see people prefer Heretic above Doom. Anyway, I'm not too a big of a fan of Heretic as it is more like a complete copy paste of Doom in a fantasy setting.

Hexen on the other hand, is a really good game in my opinion. Beautiful levels, different weapons per character, great atmosphere, ...

Hexen 2 builds further on the same formula but kinda gets way too wild in the puzzle-department. But it is still a great game. And like Quake 1 it has some really goodlooking designed areas. The expansion pack is far more linear and action packed.

[Zaxx]

Btw. can Hexen 2 run on some kind of a modern Q1 source port like QuakeSpasm, Mark V or Darkplaces? Maybe I'd give it another go if I could play it with a source port.