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Title: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2016-06-13, 17:31 http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/06/13/e3-2016-bethesda-reveals-quake-champions
Quote Studio Director of iD Software, Tim Willits, came on stage at the opening of the conference and said, "Yes, Quake is back." The CG trailer showcased a variety of warriors battling in an old-school arena combat zone. Willits added, "“A competitive arena-style first-person shooter for the PC designed for players of all skill levels. Whether you are new to Quake or have been fragging for the last 20 years, Quake Champions will give you the challenge and rush you’d expect from iD Software multiplayer games." “The game features a diverse cast of warriors each with different attributes and unique abilities, allowing you to fight the way you want," Willits went on. "iD has a long tradition of supporting competitive tournaments. The game is designed for world-class eSports play at every level.” It's fun to see Wrack and Visor fully rendered in the trailer, but the rest is a big question mark. Many suggest, based on the "warrios with unique attributes" and "fun for every skill level" bits, that Bethesda is trying to capitalize on the current trend of hero-based shooters like Overwatch. We certainly know from Doom 4 that Bethesda will not greenlight an Id title without some sort of big marketing gimmick to make it a crowd-pleaser. If you follow through all the stupid pages in that article, it's speculated that Wrack's purple ball is basically a translocator mechanic complete with telefrag capability. Meanwhile, Visor allegedly has a wallhack similar to Widowmaker from Overwatch (oh god...) It's really too early to judge. I don't mind the idea of hero abilities, and it could work for Quake, especially if you are still picking up weapons off the map. Hopefully Bethesda has gotten the message by now from Doom 4's lackluster reception that no one cares to see loadouts in Id games. This could also wind up being a lot like Unreal Championship 2, which almost worked for Unreal (though it still had serious flaws). But yeah...to be safe, I am just going to assume it's going to be a more Quake-like version of Law Breakers, and then it can't really disapoint me. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2016-06-13, 18:30 I just saw the trailer... and I'm rather a bit upset. I was looking forward to a Quake 1 reboot. I was not expecting a Quake 3 Arena reboot. Now I have to go make a preventative news post because I know what's going to happen. :evil:
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2016-06-13, 18:57 Yeah, I agree that a Q1 reboot would have been interesting. At least we got an HD Wrack, even if he is so overmuscled he looks like a rejected design for GOW.
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Thomas Mink on 2016-06-13, 20:50 They gave it the name Quake (pretty much), and even went so far as to use a font that is very reminiscent of the original game... then essentially decided to make it Q3-2.
All I can say is 'meh'.. and get further insulted as yet another game uses the name 'Quake' and has little to nothing at all to do with the original game. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: scalliano on 2016-06-13, 21:10 Yeah, but "Arena Champions" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
I too was hoping for a return to the series' roots, but if it actually retains what made Q3 so ace in the first place (eg no loadouts for a kickoff), I can live with the character attributes and such. Good to see Wrack and Visor and I'm assuming the hot babe with the blue hair is Mynx. Like Gnam says, if they learn from DOOM's MP missteps (no FFA?? Seriously??) and go flat out arena shooter, it could be awesome. After DOOM's SP campaign, I have to say I'm more optimistic than I've been about an id game since Quake 4 left me with a salty taste in my mouth*. *For the record, I thoroughly enjoyed Q4, it just wasn't really a Quake game. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Angst on 2016-06-13, 23:04 I just saw the trailer... and I'm rather a bit upset. I was looking forward to a Quake 1 reboot. I was not expecting a Quake 3 Arena reboot. Now I have to go make a preventative news post because I know what's going to happen. :evil: What? No GenQuake Champions? ;)Quote from: scalliano After DOOM's SP campaign, I have to say I'm more optimistic than I've been about an id game since Quake 4 left me with a salty taste in my mouth*. For what it's worth, Doom's MP was outsourced and Q4 was Raven trying their hand at id's canon instead of making a new heretic/hexen title...*For the record, I thoroughly enjoyed Q4, it just wasn't really a Quake game. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: leilei on 2016-06-13, 23:10 I'm open to champions. Who knows, it might play like Generations :)
So much "rip quake" around the internet, when the game really died in 2000 when Counter-Strike came out and when they figured out "oh its open source let's make our pro qw cheats legal new way The way to quake is us now huhuhu......why are there no players!!!! *posts warez repack as a free game* " also it's not CPMA of course, and it's still just a reveal/announcement and game design is still subject to change. After all, Q3A once had (weight) classes, and every time I bring that up, quake fans think i'm pulling that out of my ass, or "correct" me towards Q3TA's runes FTR I wasn't anticipating a "Quake sequel" or anything like that (not even from the job "leak" (https://www.reddit.com/r/quake/comments/4jkxh8/possible_quake_reboot_leak/d386lel))because that would be a bit of a brand clash with their own The Evil Within and Doom properties (especially when Quake was originally an ambitious rpg that turned into a slapdash doom). Every Quake in the series is a radical departure from the last anyway, and ironically the one that's a real sequel is the black sheep of the series. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: scalliano on 2016-06-14, 01:14 The so-called Quake "elite" crying foul at every turn right now is embarrassing. It's fine to be apprehensive, but the "omg quake is dead" rhetoric is a bit extreme. Has it not occurred to these people that the game might actually be decent? Personally, I could live with Overwatch mit strafe-jumping/rocket-jumping/plasma-riding/trick-shots/etc. As long as the game is still Quake at its core, what's the issue? Q3R on the PS2 had character attributes, basic as they were, but they worked (possible exception being Anarki who was just OP as feck in MP). But when did the Internet ever embrace calm?
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Thomas Mink on 2016-06-14, 14:19 Hey.. I'm still not sure if I even accept Q2 as a 'Quake' title, let alone Q3. So my earlier comment is nothing new for me.
Quake has been dead since '96 from my standpoint.. even though I didn't stop playing (QWTF) until around '99 or 2000.. whenever it was that my clan decided to try a jump into Q3F. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Kain-Xavier on 2016-06-14, 16:28 I'm happy there is a new Quake game coming out but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that it was not a sequel to the original game. id tech 6 added back real-time dynamic lighting and I feel like you need that to do a Quake sequel proper justice. It's also the 20th anniversary of the original game so I feel like it's weird to not do something with it.
My other apprehension is that Quake: Champions will not add enough new mechanics to distinguish itself from Quake III Arena. I realize that's a stupid fear to base off of a trailer which does not feature any gameplay footage but it's grounded in the fact that Quake 4 already tried to reinvent the wheel with its multiplayer and failed. (On a side note, I loved Quake 4's single-player. I shouted out in glee when Kane was dropped onto Stroggos.) We also have Quake Arena Arcade and Quake Live. I don't feel like there's any advantage to remaking Quake 3 at this point. That said, while I have not played Overwatch, people seem to really love it, and if Quake: Champions is anything like that game or the titles id has put out in the past, I'm sure people will love it as well. Also, I will be incredibly stoked if the game turns out to be id's version of Unreal Championship 2. That is my favorite multiplayer shooter / brawler and it is a such a shame that it was never released on other platforms. (On a another side note, I really need to release the UT3 mod I made which features shock ball traps and sentient goo.) Also, :offtopic: (again) but one of the E3 announcements for DOOM 4 was that id will be adding a free-for-all mode to the multiplayer along with several others. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: scalliano on 2016-06-14, 20:37 Thing is, Q3 always struck me as the FPS equivalent of something like Marvel vs Capcom, or more specifically the mor recent SF games, ie a large roster of characters including a decent contingent of guest fighters from other franchises all brought together to duke it out in an ultimate showdown. Champions seems to be an extension of that, giving each character their own unique way of fighting, just like the beat-em-ups we've had for almost 30 years now. That's what Overwatch, Battleborn and QC are, Street Fighter II with guns!
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2016-06-14, 21:17 I'm also puzzled by all the "Quake is dead" comments people have. There's 454 Quakeworld servers that Qtracker's picking up right now, along with 245 Quake 2 servers, and 472 Quake 3 Arena servers up. I'd hardly qualify that as "dead". Sure, there's not a million people online playing Quake simultaneously like in the old days, but back then that's all there was so everyone played Quakeworld and Quake 2.
Now that I'm over my initial grumpiness about not getting a Quake 1 sequel, and getting the disclaimer news post out of the way, I'll wait and see what Quake Champions brings to the table. Who knows. If it's good, maybe it'll bring enough old Quake players back to the table to bug Id and Bethesda to do a proper Q1 followup game? Well, I can hope anyway. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2016-06-15, 17:25 That said, while I have not played Overwatch, people seem to really love it, and if Quake: Champions is anything like that game or the titles id has put out in the past, I'm sure people will love it as well. I can comment on that a bit since my girlfriend was anticipating Overwatch and got me to play with her starting with the open beta in May... Overwatch does have some similarities to Quake since it's heavily based on Team Fortress. However, being by Blizzard, it's also aggressively casual-friendly to the point that I don't think many Gen Arena players would like it. In general, easy stuff like hitscan spray weapons and character ability gimmicks take precedence in damage over skill-based projectiles like rockets and grenades. Hitscan does have a damage fall-off over distance property, but it's more appropriate to think of it as a "close range damage buff" property, because despite dealing a proper 50-70 DPS at long range, they fly off the handle to 170 or more at close range. So basically across average combat distances, projectiles don't have the raw power to make up for their slow travel time, and you have to hug character gimmicks like jet packs and energy barriers VERY HARD to stand any chance. The game also has really lackluster movement. If you think UT is too slow compared to Quake, then hold on to your seats, because Overwatch is a whole new kind of slow. There are a few characters with a jetpack, teleport, wallrun, or mine jump, but they're really not enough to make the game feel-paced or like movement is heavily skill-based. Even just the basic game of zigzagging, bobbing, and weaving in place to avoid enemy fire is very weak compared to just about ANY other arena shooter. I say all this because it's the worst case scenario for Quake Champions' promise of "fun for all levels of players". It's entirely too early to judge QC's gameplay, but if Bethesda goes full-on casual with it, Overwatch is what it could be like. In terms of popularity, there is some potential there. Overwatch's fanbase is largely non-FPS players who finally have a shooter that caters to their lack of twitch aiming skills. However, there are also some arena shooter fans like me playing it simply because it's a new arena shooter with a large playerbase fit to blow off steam casually after work. In fact, I happened to be on the official Overwatch forums when Quake Champions was announced. Normally the OW forums are full of threads demanding nerfs to the "overpowered" flavor of the week character, but the Quake Champions thread stayed near the top for a good portion of the day as Quake fans crawled out of the woodwork to comment about how they were excited to play a game with more skill-based hardcore mechanics. However, if Bethesda really wants to edge in on Overwatch's turf with Quake Champions, they have a huge hurdle to cross with marketting and character design. Overwatch has gained a huge audience specifically because it eschews the testosterone-fueled violent aesthetic which has become a cliche in FPS. The trailer Betheda released earlier this week is the exact opposite of the vibe that has won Overwatch so many fans. That's not to say that Quake has to entirely reinvent itself with no violence at all, but parading meathead overmuscled GOW-esque character designs is not going to win Quake Champions any fans. Generic blue-haired, leather-clad cyberpunk heroines will not work either. Bethesda is really going to have to reach hard to come up with character designs that are fearsome but also sophisticated in order to win over a modern audience. Generic beefcake space marines are not at all in fashion anymore. Doom 4 may have been successful despite this, but think back to all the bad PR over the official cover, which was a shot of JUST the marine without even any of the demons that made the franchise. THAT is what Quake Champsions has to face if they don't step up their marketing. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2016-06-28, 17:41 Some interviews on Quake Champions with Tim Willits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvDyLCadGGY http://metro.co.uk/2016/06/21/quake-champions-tim-willits-interview-people-are-afraid-of-quake-which-is-kind-of-awesome-5958340/ He is very adamant that QC is not a moba, doesn't remove strafe-jumping, nor does it remove weapon pickups. Overall it's pretty reassuring. In the Metro.co.uk interview he even addresses the idea of making a "lovecraftian" single-player. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Angst on 2016-06-28, 21:02 Chiming in on the Overwatch bit, I would definitely agree that it lacks the frenetic pace of a proper deathmatch. As for skill.. It fits Blizzard's trademark "Easy to play, difficult to master" mold fairly well. I used to hate playing Junkrat and Tracer early on, but now that I have a proper feel for the mechanics, the only character I hate is Hanzo because his friggin arrows have a hitbox the size of a Mack truck.. Also the "shooter-based-hit-detection" can be frustrating in the extreme. Can't tell you how many times I've taken damage from behind a wall because some high ping player lobbed an arrow in my general direction some 3-400 msecs ago. Slowing down the game helps even out the netcode issues, and forces players into teamwork situations. I enjoy the latter when it works, and dislike it when it doesn't.
They're talking about taking this direction with Quake, and while I don't mind gimmicks when balanced, I'm a bit concerned about the netcode. I'm cautiously optimistic after Doom's single player. But the multiplayer makes me concerned that Quake is going to feel more like Gears of War.. I suppose we'll see.. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2016-06-30, 19:50 After watching and reading the interviews, I don't think the netcode is going to be a problem. If they're catering to hardcore pro Quake 3/Quake Live players and the ones that have been testing it actually like it, then that's one of the most picky audiences around to try to appeal to. I'm a bit relieved by the interviews as it establishes a few things:
1) Quake Champions will be PC Only. YES! This has been every PC gamer's gripe since it began with other titles: Consolitis. Id remembered its roots and is finally doing something sane. 2) This will be classic FPS-style play with added character abilities. Since the abilities of each "champion" come with the champion and are not part of a progression system, then anyone can play in any way they want. There's no "that's unfair" because any player can use any character and have that ability set. If the weapons themselves are shared 100% across the various champions, then that will work. 3) It's aimed primarily at the Pro/eSports crowd. This means it's not going to play anything like Gen, since we're purely aimed at nostalgia and not out to cater specifically to Pros. It will be its own game, and may end up being awesome and something I'd want to play without invalidating what we're doing with Gen. It also means there will be advanced controls for game tweaking as if those are not there the Pro crowd would be the ones complaining the loudest. I'm good with all this so far. If this takes off and is successful it may trigger a renewed interest in Arena play, which can only be good for old Quake mods like ours, and with enough interest in Quake we might finally get that Q1 sequel that people have been begging for. :slippy_love: Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: scalliano on 2016-07-01, 00:12 TBH I can't see progression unlocks being completely absent, but the game could get away with them if they were cosmetic only. In fact, I'd be all over that. I love custom models/skins for Q3/QL, but it sucks when I know that other people on the server can't see them. Such a system would negate that (and let's be honest, mod support ain't on the cards), allowing at least a degree of player individuality, something we've come to expect in online multiplayer in recent years.
All things considered, show me some gameplay media and I can get properly hyped. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2016-07-01, 01:07 One thing with the cosmetic unlocks: As long as it does not start looking like how TF2 looks now. I can get behind good stuff, as that's what custom player skins and models has always been about, but if it starts to stray into the absurd then I want some way to turn the ones I hate off.
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Thomas Mink on 2016-07-01, 14:04 One thing with the cosmetic unlocks: As long as it does not start looking like how TF2 looks now. I can get behind good stuff, as that's what custom player skins and models has always been about, but if it starts to stray into the absurd then I want some way to turn the ones I hate off. So much this.But I'll be honest.. if it's cosmetic, I feel that should be an option anyway. Keeping with TF2: as soon as hats were first released, I was part of a very small group of people asking for an option to turn them off. We got called 'jealous' and 'hatless bums', despite the fact I had earned a few.. just chose to outright delete them instead of trade or wear them. A popular response was also 'don't use them then'.. but what good is that if you can see it on everyone else? I stopped playing entirely a little after that because it went from tolerably annoying to just plain bad as more updates came out. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Angst on 2016-07-01, 19:01 I'm more a fan of Blizzard's cosmetics. Skins and/or visual retools of a character so long as it doesn't drastically affect gameplay.
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2016-07-01, 19:06 @Mink: Same here. I found after the first set of unlocks were coming out that when something happened to the server's connection to the master servers and everyone was limited to using only default weapons and no hats that the gameplay went from semi-crappy to rock solid. I wanted a "vanilla mode" option so that the original gameplay that sold me on TF2 would be possible again, but instead it went from one set of alternate weapons per class to insane hats, loadouts (hat + all weapons in a set = bigger bonus), and so many unlocks that it went from a streamlined, easy to learn but hard to master teamplay game with great visuals and great visual contrast (important in teamplay) to a mish-mash of God-knows-what and everyone tying up team spots standing around in the base trading hats instead of actually being part of the team that's trying to play the game. Real nice when you have two idiots standing in the base and 3 people are trying to fend off a 5 player team that actually knows what it's doing. We never got a vanilla mode because Valve was making too much money selling virtual items to non-virtual idiots, so I just deleted 100% of my inventory, wrote a negative review, and uninstalled the game in protest. To date, no official support for a vanilla mode exists that I'm aware of. If that changes I'll reinstall, but after this amount of time I'd expect to see Half-Life (episode)3 first. Oh well, at least I can play Duke Nukem... :\
As for the community itself... the usual responses I got from other players regarding wanting a vanilla mode consisted of "that would split the community and it would be bad" (um, the community already split when the people wanting old-style play got sick of the unlocks and started leaving because the devs gave us the digital finger), or "there's vanilla servers" (without pointing any out, so where were these mythical servers, exactly?), or some other justification about how "at least Valve is supporting the game by balancing it and updating it" (odd since it became more unbalanced with each update), or the typical "stop whining" (but we can't give you a valid reason not to be unhappy) snobbery. I even had someone ask me for my inventory items after I posted my review stating that I was deliberately deleting them! So yeah... anyways, let's hope Quake Champions doesn't have any fugly annoying visual stuff like that. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2016-07-25, 21:41 New interview with Tim at Polygon:
http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/25/12273082/get-the-details-on-quake-champions-playable-characters Unfortunately it doesn't really tell us anything new beyond officially confirming all the character details people already gathered from the trailer (Ranger gets a translocator, Nyx gets a blink, and Scale Bearer gets a charge). One detail I hadn't fully realized is that Ranger's translocator is supposed to be the spiked sphere from the Shubb boss battle...which is weird, since it doesn't even have spikes on it or any other resemblance to said spiked sphere. Still, I guess the basic idea of the slipgate warrior possessing a portable slipgate for a signature weapon follows soundly enough. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Kain-Xavier on 2016-08-05, 00:19 There's a new trailer up with more gameplay footage:
Quakecon 2016 Debut Trailer (http://kotaku.com/heres-what-it-looks-like-to-play-the-new-quake-1784845619) Spoiler (click to show/hide) Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2016-08-05, 00:33 Well... I like what I see so far! I think when this hits Doom's multiplayer will lose a LOT of players.
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2016-08-09, 15:33 A total of 4 new characters were explained at Quakecon:
https://youtu.be/gL1DLw46W30 Anarki has higher base movement speed at the cost of health and armor. Sorlag spits acid for area denial (sounds like UT's biorifle). Galena drops "totems" that heal herself and teammates. Clutch is a big slow tank robot with some kind of shield. So much of the negative reaction from fans seems SO short-sighted and premature. So much parroting of "classes are the opposite of Quake" is going on, yet arguably Generations Arena is the most authentic iteration of an id shooter there is, and is distinctly class-based. In fact, if Champions had started out by introducing Wrack, Grunt, and Visor as based entirely around QW, Q2, and Q3 movement physics in the way Generations does, I feel it would have been much better received by fans, as the first impression would be "classes are making Quake more authentic" as opposed to "classes are making Quake more like Overwatch". I'm not going to hold my breath for QC to be too much like Generations, but I do feel it would have gone over better with the community to at least start out that way. Speaking of Doom 2016 multiplayer, I wonder if Champions will include Doomslayer with double jump as his main ability. He would still have to run faster than in Doom 4, or he'd get slaughtered. P.S. there is some leaked gameplay footage on youtube if you search. The allegations that Champsions would not have strafejumping were definitely flat-out wrong. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2016-08-09, 16:29 There's always going to be haters that want things exactly one way and if it's not exactly what they feel it should be they'll never be happy with it. It's a small percentage, and devs know they have to ignore them. If people want an authentic Quakeworld experience... um, go play Quakeworld. It's that simple. Same with Doom, or Q3A, or anything someone expects to be 100% this or that. Nothing can ever be 100% to the original except the original. You can get close, you can reimagine, you can update sounds and visuals and environments and bring all the physics in, etc, but there's always going to be at least subtle differences. With something as major as Champions, it's going to have departures that some people will love and others won't. Doom 4 got a lot of hate like this before release, and it turned out pretty good. People need to wait and see and decide after they get to take it for a test drive. :ninja:
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2017-03-20, 23:50 You can sign up for beta on the official QC site. There's some new trailers out, and some footage floating around from PAX. The official site now provides art, data, and a demo video for most weapons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHrq31NWBCg Some new tidbits of info: 1) There are alternate weapon skins based on prior Quake games. The Q1 RL and Q2 RG have been seen in addition to the default QC variants. 2) For a starter weapon, you can choose either a single barrel shotgun, "regular" nailgun, or machinegun 3) The Super Nailgun replaces the Plasma Gun. It does 150 dps instead of 200 dps, and possibly has a faster projectile speed. The projectiles are matte gray like Q1, which combined with the high speed and realistic lighting makes them almost impossible to see...I hope this changes. 4) The "super" alternative to the starter MG is the HMG from QL instead of the Chaingun (ugh). 5) The SSG does 120 total damage instead of 100 or 110 of QL and Q3. 6) Item timers are making a return from QL, at least on default server settings 7) Trailers for individual characters will be released as follows: Nyx - out now Scalebearer - out now Anarki - 3/29 Clutch - 4/12 Galena - 4/19 Ranger - 5/3 Visor - 5/10 Sorlag - 5/24 Slash was seen in-game at PAX even though she hasn't been officially announced yet. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Angst on 2017-03-23, 15:45 THE QUAD IS UT-DAMAGE-AMP-PURPLE..
That is all. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-03-24, 02:59 I'm not too fond of the fact that item spawns are all glowy and have timer rings. From the PAX footage I saw, item spawns (such as the Quad) are visible through walls... WTF? Those are two things I wasn't too thrilled over. There better be options to turn off the dayglow CPMA-ish brightskin crap or I'm going to hate it.
The champions themselves don't just have some special ability, they have varying max health and armor stats. For example, Galena had very low armor max - I think 50, and health was 100, whereas Sorlag had 150/150. You could go over these, but the armor and health would count down to them. That doesn't bother me too much, but I could see it being a balance issue where the "tank" classes... er, "champions" become unstoppable - unless movement speed is a factor. Hard to tell from the footage so far. I'm not sure what this is supposed to bring to the table over Q3A other than updated graphics. So far I don't see anything groundbreaking, but it is early. I'll reserve additional judgment until I can get my stupid Bethesda account to actually work and try this thing out... Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2017-04-24, 17:35 I'm assuming admins wil be able to disable item timer graphics in custom servers (if the option for custom servers exists). IIRC QL disabled them for duel so hopefully QC will disable them for duel matchmaking as well.
IMO rather than changing starting and max health/armor per character. it would have been better to vary the benefit each character gets from pickups. So everyone starts with 100 health and zero armor, but depending on whether they're a light/medium/heavy character they get: small health - 10 / 15 / 20 medium health - 20 / 30 / 40 megahealth - 80 / 100 / 120 armor shard - 3 / 5 / 7 small armor - 18 / 25 / 37 medium armor - 38 / 50 / 75 big armor - 75 / 100 / 150 I agree that it's a delicate balance in terms of how much advantage the medium and heavy characters should get vs the light, so the exact numbers are up for debate, but you get the idea. Overall I do feel like Generations' method of seperating classes by movement physics and weapon variants makes more sense within the Quake framework than shoehorning in MOBA abilities. Even if the classes weren't based at all on replicating the gameplay of previous id games, it still puts the focus in class differentiation on movement and weapon skill, which is what Quake has always been all about. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-04-24, 23:53 At least you guys are able to run it. For some reason the Bethesda Launcher won't run properly on my Win 7 install, so I couldn't even install the beta. Some other people have been having the same problems from what I saw on the Bethesda forums. :surprise:
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2017-05-12, 19:24 My full opinion on the beta, now that the NDA is lifted:
1 ) Rocket lag sucks 2 ) Grenade Launcher desperately needed 3 ) Damage buff for zooming is a terrible idea (Railgun, HMG) 4 ) Having 2-3 LG spawns on Burial and Sarnath is terrible 5 ) Super Nailgun @ 150 dps / ~3000 ups is too weak, should be 180 dps / 2000 ups 6 ) 80 DPS for LMG and 120 DPS for HMG is too high, should be 50 / 100 7 ) Single-barrel shotgun really should pump faster 8 ) Super Shotgun has the opposite problem of LG; not enough spawns 9 ) Armor values are too low 10 ) Visibility is bad for available vs. unavailable items, and medium vs. heavy armor 11 ) Mouse input still feels laggy and imprecise 12 ) Movement feels too slow unless you use 120-130 fov. Overall, champion traits are the least of the game's problems. The weapon balance favors hitscan over projectile weapons really badly due to the combination of rocket lag, too many LG spawns, no grenades, low SNG damage, and excessive LMG/HMG damage. As I said before, tha armor values are too low as it is, and the max armor for light characters is so little that it makes RA obsolete. Overall this weakens the resource control game a lot. I don't think the champions are implemented in the best possible way, but they also don't hurt the game that badly. The fact that the devs don't appear to understand Quake weapon balance and aren't addressing people's criticisms there is far more alarming. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-05-12, 19:34 Well that's disappointing. I suppose they don't have a bunch of Quake veterans on the team, which is probably why things aren't working the way they should. Weak rockets, no grenades, and a hitscan fest doesn't sound very fun to me.
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2017-05-13, 18:12 At this point I'm no longer surprised when developers compromise weapon balance for the sake of casualization. What's really frustrating is the attitude from some actual Quake veterans who have taken the attitude that "no nade launcher is fine, it was just a skill-less spam weapon anyway" and "it doesn't matter how many LG spawns are on the map, you just have to get gud".
It seems like a lot of that attitude is a result of the way TDM and CTF diminished in competitive popularity in favor of duel through the Q3 era on to QL. When you no longer have to share resources with your teammates, it becomes a lot easier to use the "holy trinity" all the time. It's only natural that rocket and rail fill the single-fire, high per-hit damage roles in projectile and hitscan respective, but once LG ammo isn't so scarce, it easily fills *everything* in between, diminishing the need for all the various volume of fire roles that the rest of the weapons provide. Thus you don't have to rely on "lower" weapons like the QL, SSG, and Plasma/Nails nearly as much, and don't learn to appreciate the unique dynamics they bring to the game. Add to that the pervasiveness of Rocket Arena as the defacto pub/casual mode, and you wind up with huge portions of the Quake community who rarely ever see the rest of the weapon in the game, and believe RL/RL/LG is the sum total of everything in Quake. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-05-14, 01:49 My multiplayer experience began with Quake 2 as I was a bit late getting onto the internet, and deliberately so. I simply didn't trust connecting computers together, so I did not play Quakeworld online during its heyday... and I didn't like Quake 1 at the time anyway. With Quake 2 I got familiar with normal deathmatch, then I played Rocket Arena 2 extensively. To me, there was a place for every weapon. Since dialup was the rule, and lag was always a factor, the railgun and any other hitscan weapons were hard to use at first. Rockets offered splash damage, the chaingun offered sustained firepower, and the super-shotgun was forgiving in its spread. Nobody ever whined about the grenades during the early days that I can remember. There was always somebody crying over the BFG in normal deathmatch, but people always have something they don't like. The BFG is typically disabled in RA2.
Now enter cable/dsl. People started to get 40-90 ping, and then there were us dialup users with 200+ ping. The railgun started to become a serious threat, along with the chaingun, especially in RA2 since you spawn with every weapon sans the BFG. Add to that a lot of wide-open spaces, the ability to rocket jump without losing health, and dialup users had some problems. The grenade launcher became a great friend to me as I learned how to use it to cover retreats, hit players below me, and attack around corners to avoid exposing myself to railgun hits. It was a strategic weapon. Once low pingers started to be prevalent I heard the term "luck pillz" for the first time. A lot of these low pingers would love to do 2 vs 2 matches in open rooms, immediately switch from the rocket launcher to the chaingun and attack one player at match start, which was near instant death, then finish off the other player. It was considered by a lot of us high pingers to be a very cheap tactic because it deliberately exploited the ping delay that would allow them to attack first on the server. In larger team games or 1 vs 1 matches it wasn't so much of an issue, but in 2 vs 2 matches it was a point of contention. What's funny is the same people would complain about a high-pinger using the SSG... Now taking ping differences out of the equation, what I loved about Q2, especially during my early dialup days (before my ISP went to crap and I couldn't even move after connecting, which pushed me over to broadband finally) was that every weapon had a purpose and a place and worked well. Here's the lineup of how I remember things: The blaster, while mostly useless, was a way to humiliate an opponent. Shotgun was good for finishing off a weak opponent at a distance, especially in RA2. SSG was a good all-around for DM, and a great close-range finisher in RA2. Machinegun was an overall decent weapon. You could finish with it, it was better than the blaster, and it was common. The damage rate was steady, but not overwhelming. In a large FFA you could get a lot of frags by finishing off weakened opponents after they traded rockets. Chaingun was devastating, but the spinup would allow for someone to normally get a rocket or SSG blast in prior to the gun being up to full-speed. With high ping it wasn't so easy to keep on target so it got used in the water a lot to great effect, where movement was restricted. Grenade Launcher was not as commonly used by other players that I remember, nor were hand grenades, but were more situational in use and less spammy. Rocket Launcher needs no explanation. It was one of THE go-to weapons. Hyperblaster occupied a unique niche. It was hard for a high pinger to use, and it got the nickname of "laggerblaster" as the projectile spam would cause some high pingers with bad connections to get packet flooded and stall their movement. For the most part it was disabled in RA2 due to the lag problem. In normal DM it was surprisingly effective if you could hit with it as it fired at the same rate as the machinegun, did almost twice the damage, and penetrated armor to a degree. Q2 calculated "energy" damage by downgrading your armor a type. A blaster hitting red armor treated it like yellow, yellow armor was treated like green, and green armor was completely ignored. The railgun doesn't need much explanation, other than when playing RA2 it was very hard for a high pinger to use and low pingers would dominate with it to the point of not using other weapons. One tactic in RA2 was to fire the railgun to goad another player into switching to it to railgun duel at a distance, and while they were switching weapons close in while switching to rockets and hit them up close. The BFG10K was quite the controversial weapon. I'm not sure when exactly people started considering it cheap to use, but opinions on it were definitely strong one way or another. To me, it was a rare weapon that could help a player that wasn't doing well to catch up a little, especially once ping differences became severe. For some people the hatred was so vitriolic as to be irrational. There was a mod called Weapons of Destruction that made every single gun in the game overpowered in various ways, especially hand grenades. I actually had a player complain about me shooting him off a wall (there was a grappling hook) with the BFG and calling it cheap... which to me was rather absurd considering he was throwing napalm grenades that basically saturated an area with repeating explosions that was basically instant death. There was also one specific role the BFG filled that was actually quite necessary, and I'll explain that below. Now I look at the individual strengths and weaknesses of the weapons, the movement speed in the game, the availability of ammo, armor, and items, the map layout and spawn frequency of specific weapons, and Quake 2's gameplay was really very balanced. Rockets, rails, and chaingun (LG in Quake 3) were the "big three", but they were also the least common weapons. Shotguns, machineguns, hand grenades were more common. Weapons and items tended to be spread out well, and the map design was quite good for the most part. There's only one controversial item that I would say tended to ruin the game, and it was the power armor. Maps with power armor tended to give God Mode to one specific player that would then dominate the rest of the match. The worst place for this was Q2DM8, since the power armor, megahealth, and red armor all spawned in the same spot in rotation. About the ONLY way to kill someone tanked up on cells was to hit them with the BFG repeatedly - especially if the person ran away all the time. I got into a match where a player was dominating the map and managed to tank up myself. He'd trade railgun shots with me and always make sure he was in a place to get out of sight in a hurry. After trading a few hits in the rocket launcher room we both chaingunned each other and he ran off before I could finish him, with BOTH of us running out of bullets. I think another player got a lucky shot in on him. Well of course he went straight for the power armor again, and I managed to get the BFG and some cells before he could hog them all, and fragged him two more times, then he left the server. So the most balance-killing thing in Quake 2 was never a weapon, it was actually an item. RA2 never allowed the use of power armor. So with all of this said, there was a lot of good design in Q2 for map balance, and that translated fairly well into Q3A. Why this is not translating properly into Champions seems to be bad decision making on the part of the designers. The whole "you just have to get gud" argument is garbage too. I've played with semi-pro Q3 players and I've seen pro Q2 players at work, I managed to beat a pro Q2 player in a match one time while I was on dialup, and yet the first time I played around with Doom 16's public beta for multiplayer I died repeatedly and never came close to the top of the scoreboard. Why? It didn't play like anything I'm used to playing. Everyone plays different games differently, and just because you might dominate at one game doesn't mean you will at another. Take a CoD player that's never touched Quake and throw them into Quakeworld or vice-versa and it'll be a self-proving point, so "getting gud" is NOT an excuse for bad map design and item placement. Anyone that thinks otherwise should take a trip over to lvlworld and talk to some of the veteran Q3 mappers - something I suspect the Champions devs probably did not do. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Angst on 2017-05-16, 21:06 Doesn't help that they spawn you with a mg, sg, and ng. I'm not a big fan of redundant newbie weapons, especially when you have (relatively) minor upgrades you can pick up.
It took me a few matches to properly realize that I spawned with more than just a machinegun.. Netcode and physics are still horribly broken, we'll see how that goes.. Honestly, part of me is convinced that there are no grenades because coding anything that doesn't go in a straight line is beyond their current programming ability -.- Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-05-17, 00:01 Funny, since I managed to code several different bouncing projectiles - even ones that run perfect simultaneous physics simulations on client and server for the Arena BFG to avoid network packet overhead! :smirk:
I did finally get Champions to work for me. It seems the Bethesda Launcher functioning is dependent on certain Windows updates being installed. So far I have played one round with Ranger, on the map with the eyeball thing. After getting spawn fragged 3 times while trying to adjust mouse sensitivity I was able to land a solid 3rd place with 20 frags, 4 of them being gauntlet humiliations. I killed the Quad carrier once, got a hold of the Quad twice, and seemed to do most of my frags with the shotgun and lightning gun. What I definitely do not like so far is the item spawns. I can't tell WHAT I'm picking up half the time because it's a green blob of something. The item timers make me think there's an item there until I get on it and see that, oh, it's NOT there. I spent most of the time trying to find someone to fight. I don't know the map layout, and I would either see someone really far away or run across a few people in combat. Actual combat, even with something like 9 players, seemed to be sporadic at best. I also do not like the outlines on the players. It's distracting. I just want to see the player model. As for weapons... pretty much anything worked at close range. Nails, shotgun, lightning gun, machinegun - just keep the crosshair on them and hose them. Gauntlet tagging was pretty easy unless someone was REALLY expecting it. The only real frags I got with the rocket launcher was when I was Quadded, so I didn't get a good feel for it as I didn't have it most of the time. The railgun felt SUPER laggy... as if there's a pre-fire delay. I'm not sure why, but the few times I had it I couldn't hit with it, yet I could light people up with the LG very easily. It's too early to make a hard assessment of the gameplay overall as I've played exactly one round, but it didn't feel as tight as the earlier Quake games on movement, weapon impacts, and general feedback of what was going on. I didn't encounter any serious glitches or bugs that I could tell other than the railgun behavior, but it's very hard to test in a live match with strangers. I'm used to more controlled testing environments. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: scalliano on 2017-05-23, 23:27 One thing that bugs me: why is it in modern shooters characters don't have actual team coloured skins anymore? I don't give a toss about showing off my loot unlocks in a team game, I just want to know who I'm aiming at and a tiny coloured arrow above my opponent's head doesn't really suffice. If I'm on the red team and my teammate has a blue outfit, I'm gonna bloody well shoot at him! Those habits die hard, y'know.
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-05-24, 03:29 Even with proper team colors I've had instances where I shot at my own flag carrier because the flag was blue, or if I've switched teams for balance purposes I shoot the wrong color. In Q3 if I was switching teams back and forth I learned not to shoot the guys with the yellow triangle regardless of color and I would be pretty much OK.
Which leads me to a gripe about modern shooters putting outlines around players in dark areas and arrows above all the players, even in FFA. That gets confusing in teamplay, and I don't like the giveaway in dark areas. If I get surprised by a player hiding in a dark corner then it's bloody well my own fault. If the game is too dark then there's a gamma slider. To me all these extra indicators are just unwanted visual kibble that takes away from the immersion and is distracting. If I can turn it off down the line I'll be happy. If not.. what happened to player options? Seriously, I don't need outlines and respawn timer circles and dayglow weapon pickups. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2017-06-13, 23:56 Someone leaked some design docs which confirm the addition of Keel, Doom, a death knight, a demon, a female marine, and some other characters:
http://imgur.com/a/XoY7h BJ Blazkoicz was also added to the beta this week for E3. In lieu of the grenade launcher they added this "tri bolt" weapon which fires 3 rounds in a burst for 40dmg each, sticks instead of ricocheting, and only has a ~0.5 second fuse or so. It's a poor substitute if you ask me. Overall I'm still underwhelmed with the game. The devs have stuck to their guns on bad ideas like health rounding and zoom damage, they haven't improved the weak Super Nailgun, and the netcode is still bad. On the upside, they have removed a few of the LG spawns and added a couple more maps. At this point I'm not going to touch it for a few months and will consider playing again later down the line if any of the issues are improved at all. Regarding the new starter weapons, I think it was a good idea executed poorly. It could have been a great nod back to the diverse arsenals of Q1 and Q2, but the MG does so much damage, there's just no reason to use the single-barrel shotgun or starter nailgun. I also would have loved to have seen a blaster option, as well as the ability to throw grenade ammo, but they can't even seem to fix the 2 extra weapons they have now. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: ~Va^^pyrA~ on 2017-06-16, 19:26 I've been playing since the second (?) week of the closed beta. I think it is generally a decent game. The aesthetics are mostly on point, and I love all of the callbacks to Quake 1 over, say, Quake 2 or even Quake 3. I actually wish they'd go further in that regard and supplant the machine guns entirely with nailguns. The less hit scan weapons the better as far as I'm concerned. :P
The idea of playing different "champions" never bothered me as a concept, since Generations is already sort of that. I don't think Champions pulls it off very well though. The vast discrepancies between health and armor hinder more than they help. Certain characters have such infinitely superior physics that it's almost laughable, and almost all of the active powers feel watered down to pointlessness. I almost feel as if they should have made each champion more unique for team based game modes, while stripping the powers away entirely for things like DM and Duel. All of that being said, I haven't played in a few weeks. Not because I feel as if it's a bad game, because it's not. It's not all that different than Quake 3, which was vastly different than Quake 2, which was vastly different than Quake 1. No, it's because the game takes FOREVER to actually play. You wait through menu after menu after menu, after loading screen after loading screen after loading screen. Not to mention the lengthy wait just to find a match and queue up. There also doesn't seem to be any way to directly duel people on my friends list. I need to be able to start the game and get in a few quick matches with minimal effort. As it is, I spend more time staring out loading screens than actually playing. Then once you get into a match? Prepare for lag! It will say that your ping is great, but it's quite clearly a lie. Not only will you see opponents bounce around and phase through corners, but well-aimed shots will simply pass right through them. This is on top of the already infuriating delay that so many of the weapons have. It often times feels like a fast-paced game, but once the shooting starts it becomes so imprecise that it's hard to stay enthusiastic. They need to get their netcode straightened out pronto... like yesterday! Without a smooth online experience this game is nothing, regardless of whatever else they do. Edit: Apparently there are Private Matches now? Maybe I'll take another look this weekend, especially since Blazkowicz is in now. Though it never really seemed in doubt that BJ and Doom would be added eventually, given that both series have current incarnations to promote. Now we just need Commander Keen and Dangerous Dave as champions, along with some love for RAGE. :P Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-06-16, 21:20 That's the one thing I don't get is why the netcode is behaving badly. Quake 3 has absolutely fantastic netcode. I was able to play Quake 3 at the end of my dialup days when Quake 2 was not even allowing me to move due to my seriously crappy connection at the time. It's sounding to me like they've ditched every single optimization inherent in Q3 and are just trying to rely on bandwidth to try to make up for it.
Some things I've learn about network optimization while working on Gen: Some things can be run parallel on server and client. Math is math, and as long as you have a place to start and run identical math then you can make some very complex stuff happen. Example: Arena BFG. All of the projectile physics are simulated in parallel. The BFG blast is triggered by a single event which contains an origin point vector (3 floats), integer (8 bit) that indicates which client owns the projectile, and a seed integer value (16 bit I think) to generate the random pseudo-random explosion pattern. That's the ONLY network data sent to spawn the explosion. If a BFG particle hits a player on the server the server sends an impact event to the client pointing out which particle number got hit, spawns an explosion at that point, and the client stops drawing that particle number. It's extremely efficient. I could blow up 50 Arena BFG projectiles and it would take up no more network data than 50 machinegun impacts despite rendering over 10,000 BFG particles, and each BFG particle would only send data if it hit something and exploded. So how does this relate to a modern game? Physics is physics. If a crate gets knocked by an impact then all the client would need to know is enough information to start the object moving. Until it is acted upon again by some other physics object the math can be extrapolated on the client. If there's concerns about synchronization, then the server could send periodic updates on objects. With an Arena shooter though... why would this even be needed? Unless you're going to allow the player to break the scenery with weapons fire how much physics do you need? Selective entity updating: Was there a change to the entity that the client needs to know about? If not, let it keep doing what it's doing client-side. Don't send data if nothing changed. A missile flying in a straight line just needs to tell the client "I've spawned here flying this fast" or "I hit something" or "I've timed out and got removed". The server doesn't need to update the entity data every frame to the client. Variable precision: Is a float needed when an int will do? Does this data need to be a 16-bit int or will 8 bits do? Selective data structure updating: Do I really need to send the ENTIRE data structure, or just what's changed? If a rocket is spawned do I need to send every possible part of the data structure that an entity can have, or just the origin, the time it spawned, the fact that it's a rocket, who owns it, and its velocity (direction is derived from this vector) since that's all someone really needs to draw a rocket in flight? Server framerate: How often does the server need to update a client on what's going on in the world? If there's 250 entities on a map, and I update it 60 times a second to 5 clients, that's a maximum theoretical of 75,000 entries being sent by the server. If I update 100 times a second 125,000. If I only need to update it 20 times a second that's 25,000. Now, throw in optimizations. Say only 5 entities need constant updating - players. Now add in 20 entities - gunshots and rockets. Run the server at 20 FPS. That reduced the server overhead to a theoretical max of 2,000 updates in that second. Say those 20 other entities don't need constant updating. Say they were one-shot events. That drops it to 600 updates: (5 players * 20 single events) + (5 players * 5 players * 20 snapshots ) = 600. If we run at 60 FPS that would translate to 1600 since only the snapshot number in the second half of the equation would change. That's not even adding in other optimizations such as area portals that exclude clients from receiving updates about events that they're not anywhere near. With all the testing I've done in Gen, and what you guys have done, I've gotten a really good education on how to optimize stuff to not break network efficiency. I can't think of any valid excuse for an arena shooter to have bad netcode. I can think of plenty of bad ones - laziness, sloppy programming, incompetence, poorly integrated game logic - but no good ones. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Angst on 2017-07-20, 19:27 ... Again with the linear projectiles?
Does no-one on this team know how to code anything with gravity? bounce? ANYTHING?! Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-07-21, 08:39 Well you've inspired me to a little satire if nothing else. :smirk:
Quote "Can't even code bouncing projectiles. #FakeQuake is terrible. Going to play some #UT instead. Sad." — Donald J. Trump (@unrealDonaldTrump) Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2017-08-22, 16:31 Willits has revealed the full line of Doom models:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BYEcxEJlDzQ/ To me the OG Doom version doesn't really nail it. It looks too much based on the box art rather than the in-game sprite, and more importantly it just looks stiff, awkward, and lacking in dynamism. The Q3 version isn't that accurate to Q3 either, considering that the Q3 model has so many more details to work with. The colors are so muted that it looks closer to the Doom 1 sprite, except for the gray pauldrons which aren't accurate to either Doom 1 or Quake 3. The Doom 3 version actually looks great, but it's still Doom 3 so I doubt people will ever use it. Here's hoping they add a helmet-less option to the cosmetic unlocks. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-08-22, 19:06 I kind of like the Doom box art guy on the far right. I kind of agree on the Q3 Doomguy. I just wish they'd cover up his abdomen. It was only exposed on the box art because his armor was torn open, but it became an unspoken meme: "Where to shoot Doomguy? In the bellybutton! It's his only weakness!" Doom 3 guy does look pretty awesome. I'd use him, just to annoy people that hate Doom 3.
I'll be happier when I see these guys in motion, and what they sound like. I'm really hoping for proper sound sets for Doom box art guy, Q3 Doomguy, and Doom 3 guy, but the other characters like the Qdude all talk, so I'm wondering what voice they'll give our silent protagonist. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-08-26, 07:41 I now have Quake Champions through Steam, and I can confirm there is a helmetless Doomguy option for the classic model. Doom Slayer's Berserk skill lets him throw punches and run VERY fast for a short time. The double-jump passive is a lot more useful than I expected, and can even help get some strafe-jumping acceleration going.
I've not been able to do much Champions so far as right now it's hard to find a match, and the one match I did find resulted in the game crashing shortly after starting warmup. That could be related to my video drivers being outdated, so I'm updating them now. Prior to crashing, I roamed around empty maps using the custom game option just to get a feel for things and experiment with a few champions. The tutorial included is nice as you get to try the weapons out against practice targets - floaty colored blobs - and gives a chance to test configs without having to join a live match and get fragged constantly. It's too early for me to say anything more than that. It's $29.99 for early access, and you do get all the champions plus some Quakecon swag. That's about it for now, really. Edit: I finally got a match in. I didn't do so great the first time out. I got a total of 16 frags. The top player got 46. I came in 4th. Most of my frags ended up being from the machinegun as I'd get ambushed before I could get another weapon. I couldn't hit anything with the railgun. Shots that looked like they should have hit ended up missing. I managed to get the Quad once, and for doing 4x damage... I splashed the same player four times with quad rockets before they died. I did get about 4 kills with it. I managed to get a few berserk kills in as well. I kept getting fragged by the same player a lot early on, which was a bit annoying as I kept spawning near him and he was a damage sponge. I'm starting to dislike the Scalebearer character for this, but then again, this is my second time playing total, including the closed beta, and I have no idea how long other players have been at it. I don't remember if I ever finally killed him or not. Hopefully I got him with the Quad or a berserk punch. A funny thing late in the match, one fellow was using BJ and kept dual-wielding on me. I ran into him 3 times like this and killed him with the wimpy machinegun all 3 times. Poor Wolfguy never gets a break. I can also confirm that Doomslayer has absolutely no voice. No pain sounds, no jump or impact vocalizations. You hear the suit double-jump jets, and make impact noises, but he's absolutely silent voice-wise, except for his ability. When you go berserk it plays the Doom '16 theme and I think I heard part of the Doom 3 berserk scream mixed in. That's it for first impressions. I suppose 4th place isn't so bad for the first time out with the Doomslayer, but I expected to do better. :!: Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Angst on 2017-09-01, 03:57 Yeah, I'm still salty about the rail's need for divine providence. I can land hits with the machineguns all day, but the rail just doesn't happen.
The LG is still WAAAAY overpowering. It feels like it's got more knockback than the original shaft, as I've had multiple instances of people sneaking up behind me and vaulting me across the map. Rocket splash is trash. Doomslayer's ability is nice, but I wish they'd do away hooking my cursor.. I don't WANT to have my mouse stuck to the nearest target, I want it to point where they'll BE.. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-09-02, 00:55 This was posted today:
Quote From Andre 'MoralEmperor' Carlos (Quake Champions Community Manager) Devs 'Ask Us Anything' #5 Answers - Sept 01, 2017 Hey everyone! Thanks again for all the great questions this week; here are your answers from the team at id Software. If you didn't get your question answered this time, stay tuned for a future questions thread. (And we might pull some of the really good ones from the previous thread that were posted after the deadline!) [Questions answered by Lead Designer Adam Pyle, Programmer Mike Rubits, and Studio Director Tim Willits] Q. When are you going to fix the netcode and hitreg for good? Do you intend to fix rocket launcher no-hit issues (direct and splash damage), or do you think it works fine as it is? What about rocket despawn? When will you fix the stuttering a lot of people experience? A. The terms "netcode" and "hitreg" are terms that cover a wide swathe of observable issues, some that don't even involve the network at all. I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about where we're at, and where we're going, so here's a (not so!) brief summary of what's going on! We started off the Closed Beta period with two major systems being handled on the client: movement authority, and shooting authority. This is a perfectly valid tech design decision, and plenty of high profile multiplayer games have released this way, but we felt uncomfortable with the trade-offs for a game like Quake. We made the decision to start moving systems over to server authority and client prediction, which is similar to previous Quake titles. This is a change that can occur in pieces, and we're still not completely there yet. One area where we should be seeing more changes is literally how the server is detecting hits (so the term "hit detection" is actually appropriate here!) We currently use an animation-based system where we simulate player animations on the server, and rig up a lower-polygon, fatter version of the champion, independent from armor selection. For the pace of our game, we felt the additional server CPU usage, and the technical complexity of having to sync up the state of the animation bones and blend tree over the network was not worth having the ability to match up hits to the specific animation. Our solution is to transition to using a static mesh for each character state. (moving, strafing, crouching, jumping, etc.) This also makes supporting rollback much simpler, and should result in a more reliable experience on higher pings. On the subject of rockets, which have been a sore spot for both us and our players, a couple of patches back we made two major changes: we fixed an issue that was causing extra latency when firing rockets, and we also started predicting rockets and local knockback on the client. This is something that's not been a part of Quake before, but we believe that this will make for a much better experience on a non-LAN environment, especially while rocket jumping or using projectile abilities. This surfaced some problems with animations simulating on the server differently than the client, and is what the initial cause of rockets not doing damage was. We've already addressed this by moving rocket collision over to the new static mesh system described above. What remains known now is strictly a client-side issue where the client incorrectly predicts a hit that the server will never detect as valid. This can even occur on LAN, where latency is not an issue. Once this is fixed, this should improve rockets, however due to the nature of client-side prediction, there may still be cases where it predicts wrongly. We'll continue to monitor the situation past this change, and see if any other issues surface. Additionally, we have also identified a potential fix that causes other players to appear more jittery, even at high framerates. The proposed fix is currently in development, and we're waiting to evaluate the effect it has, but due to the unstable nature of the Internet, sometimes it's not possible to evaluate a fix without actually going through with the implementation and trying it in a real world environment. Finally, we've also improved bandwidth consumption. I've attached a graph below, measured in a live 8 player TDM over a period of 60 seconds at ~160FPS. https://cdn03.bethesda.net/forum/uploads/6e812c77-cee2-48ac-963c-5c80350ceecf.png We've reduced the amount of game logs the client sends overall, and have gated certain logs to only trigger collection when the client or the server detects specific issues within the game. Bandwidth usage should continue to improve from here, although we do not consider this issue to be resolved yet. Hope that clears up some questions! Q. Will we be able to host our own servers through the server browser? Seems like people have a bad experience on your servers, with high ping. If we can host our own, we can get lower ping and good servers. A. We are continually working to improve the network experience for all users, this includes server providers and the code-side, but allowing users to host their own servers is not something we’re focusing on at this time. Q. In the last livestream, Tim said offline mode wouldn’t be implemented because it’s not secure. Could you develop a stripped-down server binary available offline that only allows for one human local player connection? Would this be a feasible way to have offline mode with bots? A.Unfortunately, this particular suggestion would not be feasible, because if you lock it down it can (and will) be hacked, hence it remains a security issue. That said, we’ll continue to look at other possibilities in the future. Q. What kind of feedback/bug reports are helpful to the dev team to fix netcode issues? A. Please include your KSIVA in any and all bug reports. You can locate your KSIVA on the watermark at the bottom of your screen. This is the most useful thing, as this code allows us to look up your game sessions, which provide a wealth of information. Q. What do you think about QWC pro players almost exclusively using Sorlag, Nyx, Slash, Anarki, and sometimes Ranger and Galena? Would you consider buffing other champions to also be useful in team/duel conditions? A.For our very first world championship, we are encouraged with the diversity of Champion picks. That said, we do recognize that we had a few Champions that weren't selected often and we have a lot of small balance changes coming that we hope will bring even more diversity into player's lineups. We also understand that there will always be some Champions that remain more popular with pro players and others that are popular among more casual players. Q. Slash’s ability automatically moves her forward; will this be changed to allow her to use the ability in the direction she’s already moving? (Backwards, strafing.) A. Yes, we plan to keep the speed boost, but not force the direction. Q. Are you working on a fix to Slash’s crouch slide suddenly stopping if you touch a small bump, e.g. mega health on Ruins? A. Yes, when we find areas in levels we make adjustments to the collision to address the issue. We are also looking into her slide code to help resolve a lot of these issues programmatical, but it is difficult to address it in code without also altering how her slide feels, so we have to be cautious in making these changes, so we will continue to address it via map collisions first when possible. Q. Will we get a champion with a grappling hook? A. We all have enjoyed playing CTF from the very beginning, and we are currently making a Champion with a Grappling Hook ability. We look forward to sharing her with all of you. Q. Will we see any maps with flesh textures? (Like q3dm13.) A. Not yet at least. We tried incorporating some into the Dimension of the Doomed themed Goroth maps, but in the end, it felt out of place and was removed. If we decided to add fleshy bits, we would introduce a new environment similar to Q3's Gothic Hell style used on Lost World. Q. When will the next maps be introduced? A. We have an Ithagnal Duel map coming out this fall. Q. Any plans to rebalance item locations on some maps, like Lockbox? A. After we introduced the Tri-Bolt we found some of the more powerful weapons were too centrally located. We plan on adjusting the item layout to distribute the power throughout and encourage players to make use of more of the map. Q. Are you planning to incorporate more elements of Lovecraftian lore into future maps? A deathmatch in the ice-choked ruins beneath the Mountains of Madness would be a dream come true! A. Absolutely. Tim loves the lore. Q. Why is there a longer weapon respawn time on Church of Azaloth? A. This was just a bug that has since been internally fixed, ready for a future update. Q. What are your plans for the Tri-Bolt? It’s still useless… A. We do feel it needs some adjustments. We are currently testing changes to it that we could hopefully roll out soon. Stay tuned for more information. Q. Will you allow us to change our name through Steam/Bnet? A. Name changes will occur in-game, agnostic of platform. This will ideally become an automated service players can access. We’ll share more about this as the feature is closer to release. Q. Do you have any plans on adding zoom sensitivity settings? A. Yes. Zoom sensitivity is a feature that we need to get in quickly. We are speaking with the team and should be rolling this out soon. Q. Why can’t we queue for FFA with our friends? A. Playing against people in your party is open to abuse, where those players can assist you in intentionally raising or lowering your skill rating. As a rule of thumb, you play with people in your party, not against them. You can currently play FFA with your friends in Custom Game. Q. Are there plans to give players more feedback about their stats in comparison to other players, e.g. leaderboards, divisions, public MMR display or something of the sort? A. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Q. Is crosshair customization coming? A. Yes, this will be coming sooner than later. Q. Can we get options to resize/customize HUD elements? A. We do not currently have plans for resizing HUD elements, but we do have upcoming plans that would allow players to change HUD styles. Q. The general feedback I've had from getting newb friends to play is that they are almost always confused by how they died, who killed them and where they were shot from. Are there any plans for a killcam feature or anything that better illustrates how you died? A. We understand their struggles, we've seen similar feedback. We have some plans on the backlog that we hope will address these concerns. Q. For the advanced movement tutorial, would you consider having an indicator similar to the DeFrag cgaz hud or Reflex Arena's accelmeter in order to elucidate to players where they need to move their crosshair? A. Maybe, but we haven't started on one yet. Q. Will we be able to join games as a spectator in the future? A. Yes. Q.Can we buy shaders with shards? A. There may be new premium shaders in the future. Q. The sell price for vanity items is higher than the number of shards you get for duplicate vanity items. Will this be fixed? A. Yes, this will be addressed ASAP. Q. Will you rework the rune system? I don’t think runes should drop randomly from backpacks. You should be able to play the champions you like to play and work on their runes first. A. Runes are intended as a long-term goal for players, but we will continually monitor how players are receiving and completing runes, and look for ways to improve challenges and rewards. Q. Will there be cosmetic effects? (Abilities, weapon effects, etc.) A. The QuakeCon 2017 Lightning Gun is our first example of a weapon with cosmetic effects, and we plan to continue adding custom effects to vanity weapons in addition to their custom sounds. Q. Can we have per-part shaders for headgear, torso, and legs? A. Different shaders for cosmetics would create some technical and performance issues for players, so this is unlikely to be something we’ll enable any time soon. Q. Will you adjust the shard price for cosmetics now that there are so many more things you can get in loot chests that don’t have a shard value? (Runes, weapon shaders, etc.) A. We are continuously evaluating the economy, it is our recommendation that if you see something you want to buy it immediately. Q. Can we get taunts like in DOOM multiplayer? A. Taunts have been in Quake games since Quake 2. We are working on Quake Champion taunts and look forward to rolling them out and getting feedback from players. Q. Any hints about upcoming modes? (Not CTF.) A. We're exploring options for additional modes. Some examples could be Instagib and Clan Arena, but we're evaluating how well these modes play in Quake Champions. We’re always interested in hearing your suggestions for new modes! Q. When will we have ranked mode? A. End of the year. Q. When will you start sharing more news on CTF? A. We just announced that we will be adding CTF. We are currently working on the designs to ensure that it plays the best possible way it can in Quake Champions. Q. When can we expect the gibbing system we had a glimpse of in the Quakecon video? A. Hopefully by the end of the year, and it'll be worth the wait. Q. ETA on Vulkan support? A. Vulkan support is coming along nicely. We're making progress and have the game up and running on it, but we're not ready to share it just yet. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-09-02, 04:43 So after playing some more here's some additional thoughts on a few of the various champions I haven't messed with before.
I've tried BJ out, and he's decent, but not outstanding. I don't think the dual wield lasts long enough. I could get frags with him, but he could use a health boost or something. I absolutely hate Slash. I've run into one person using her, and she's hard as hell to hit. She folds pretty easy if you do decent damage, but she moves too fast to really battle against. The problem is, to hit her you really need rocket splash, and we know how that's working right now. I've not tried using the character because I hated her in Q3, and I still do. Clutch seems to be a walking frag magnet. I have yet to see a player use it well, and I lost track of how many gauntlet kills I got against anyone using it. I have yet to see Clutch anywhere but the bottom of the scoreboard. Galena feels all around fairly useless. The health totem is a nice concept, but it seems out of place in Team DM where everyone is running the map, and it doesn't really make much sense in DM. For CTF I could see it being useful, but with her current stats she's just not effective. She's the most mediocre of the champions. The champions I see used the most to good effect are Sorlag, Ranger, Anarki, and Nyx. Nyx seems to be my best so far. I haven't tried Anarki. I'm not so great with Sorlag, but I've seen some pretty skilled players use her to great effect. Sorlag + lightning gun = deadly. I don't have any complaints about the character myself. That's about it for now. I really hope they fix hit detection soon. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2017-09-02, 06:12 Allegedly the "grappling hook character" mentioned in that Q&A is Athena from Quake 2. (finally!)
I've had similar experiences with the overall imprecise feel of the game. It's not nearly as blatantly brokenly laggy now as it was during closed beta, but it feels like there's a subtle, difficult to pinpoint layer of imprecision to everything in the game. Rocket splash seems to barely ever register. The way rockets are predicted, they tend to "hitscan" into you before you have a chance to see them coming first. It feels like a big blanket was thrown over the sound cues. The tight, precise feeling of previous Quake games just isn't there. I'm still not very inspired by the champion traits and just stick with Ranger cause I'm too lazy to bother spending points to rent other characters. The lack of diversity in the arsenal is still really underwhelming. The tribolt is more like a shittier version of the Quake 4 nailgun than an alternative to the Grenade Launcher. I'd rather see a Q2-style GL in the game, as well as a Q4-style Super Nailgun as separate from a Q3/Q4 style Hyperblaster, hand grenades, and a (improved) Blaster starting option. Tim Willits' claims about "inventing the multiplayer-only map" aren't making it any easier to like QC. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2017-09-06, 04:23 Apparently there are a bunch of wav files in the game files named for unreleased characters:
https://scontent.ftsr1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/21317474_1691462070871992_7050736877331346629_n.jpg?oh=bb027187c60a3ada74aecfd95d5807da&oe=5A5978EF Athena Commander Keen Crash Daemia Death Knight Hunter Ingrid(?) Keel Keen Klesk Orbb Raine(?) Strogg Terada(?) Unumrey(?) Uriel Xaero Many of these are literally just re-used Q3 announcer wavs, but some line up with names in previous leaks: (https://i.imgur.com/nuWOj6o.png) Athena (grappling hook) Strogg Infiltrator (drone deployment) Keel (grenade swarm) Death Knight (wall of fire) I doubt the identification of Sarge and Klesk below, but I would guess that Keel is correct, and "Bones" is actually Death Knight: (https://i.imgur.com/UtuwzZd.png) Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: ~Va^^pyrA~ on 2017-09-14, 05:31 Perhaps the aforementioned "Raine" is Nicolas Raine, from Rage? It'd be pretty cool to see him and Keen make an appearance.
I have to wonder why there isn't really anyone from the Quake 2 universe already, though. Visor is some "Russian soldier" instead of a Strogg cyborg? Clutch is some random robot instead of Tank Jr? Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-09-14, 08:28 Well, there is a "Strogg" mentioned...
I just hope it doesn't end up looking like a Strogg from Quake 4. :thud: Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: ~Va^^pyrA~ on 2017-09-16, 21:26 https://www.gamereactor.eu/news/591343
Tim Willits (who single-handedly invented deathmatch maps) might just be more interested in cross-promoting other Bethesda IPs than proceeding forward with appropriate Id characters. As a fan, I'm okay with them representing Id's heritage. Keen and Raine? Fine. Doomslayer and BJ? Doubly fine. Heck, even Galena is a great addition as a Hexen reference. I just sincerely hope this is all idle chatter and we don't end up seeing the Dragonborn (or Vault Bot) in Quake Champions. I don't want to sound like some old grognard, but that would really be off-putting for me. That said, the game has felt a lot better the past several days. At least for me. For whatever reason, I've seen a huge decrease in ping and FPS across matches, and have experienced none of the rubber-banding that I was seeing every few ticks just weeks ago. Projectiles still feel way off, but are at least visually going where they should. Rockets don't seem to have any splash damage and I can't hit anything at all with the rail. Nails seem pretty inconsistent as to whether or not they hit, but it's hard to notice given how many you generally let fly at once. At least the game seems to be slowly shaping up into something. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-09-17, 01:27 I'm not too worried about crossover champions. If they pulled some crap where only people with said Bethesda title had access to the crossover champion, that would be unacceptable. Special skins, sure, whatever. As long as it doesn't affect the core game.
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: ~Va^^pyrA~ on 2017-09-17, 03:20 I would be fine with a skin or cosmetic item that referenced an outside game, actually. For example, I would be fine with a Skyrim helmet for Ranger. Of course, I also thought that about Team Fortress 2, and now it's practically a hat simulator. :P
Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-09-17, 04:52 If this happens I'm out:
(http://funnypictures2.fjcdn.com/comments/It+s+missing+the+best+part+_042417be4ecba29e5c5e2823727f714a.jpg) (http://cdn.duelinganalogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/team-fortress-2-then-and-team-fortress-2-now.jpg) Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Gnam on 2017-10-19, 15:43 Perhaps the aforementioned "Raine" is Nicolas Raine, from Rage? It'd be pretty cool to see him and Keen make an appearance. I have to wonder why there isn't really anyone from the Quake 2 universe already, though. Visor is some "Russian soldier" instead of a Strogg cyborg? Actually in Q3 lore, Visor was never said to be strogg. I agree he looks like a strogg, but the official lore just refers to him as a "warrior clone" possibly from "Terra".http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Visor_(Q3)?file=P_visor.jpg There was a fan-made series of CG movies which said Visor was a strogg modified by the Vadrigar for the arena, but that was essentially fan fiction. The official lore leaves visor's identity ambiguous, but given that the origins of other Q2 characters like Tank Jr, Bitterman, etc. are expressly indicated in the Q3 lore, why would they keep Visor's strogg identity a secret if that's really what was intended? On this note though, it's funny that the QC mod for Doom has already included Kane as the champion with Q4 movement, while real QC just uses Slash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1KFOsDacUg Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: ~Va^^pyrA~ on 2017-10-20, 21:09 That's pretty neat, actually. I had assumed that Kane was being avoided in QC more so because of Id's lack of input on Q4, and overall lukewarm reception at the time. Being a "good" Strogg certainly gives him plenty of interesting angles to use.
Now I await Dangerous Dave's appearance.... Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-10-23, 05:18 OK, so I just read THIS THREAD (http://steamcommunity.com/app/611500/discussions/0/3182216552772642451/) on the Quake Champions discussion page. This is inexcusable, and I posted this so everyone can know that yes, that's ME posting it:
Quote OK, after watching this video I am SERIOUSLY mad. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHY GAME LOGIC MUST BE LOCKED TO RENDER FRAMES ON THE CLIENT. I don't go bragging on myself, but I'm a ♥♥♥♥ing AMATEUR HOBBIEST MODDER and I can code better than this! Another coder and myself FIXED the FPS-dependent movement physics in Q3 with a simple TABLE so that 125 FPS movement is possible from 20FPS up to whatever. How ♥♥♥♥ing hard is it to code a FIXED logical framerate and visually interpolate and extrapolate the time when EVERY QUAKE GAME IN THE PAST ALREADY DOES THIS? Someone's getting PAID to do what I and probably every other Quake modder can do better FOR FREE. It's a God-damned INSULT to see an Id title with this kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ behavior. I've excused a lot for it being Early Access, but this should have been fixed during ALPHA. There's NO excuse for this. I call a challenge here. Id, Bethesda, if you read these forums, message me and you can pay me HALF of what these chimps are making to fix this. I'm dead serious. Marty, Tim... www.wireheadstudios.org. Reg there and talk to me. We've touched with Todd H. in the past to keep us straight with you on legal stuff for our project. You know Lee'Mon. Quake deserves better than this, dammit! So there it is. I'm throwing down the gauntlet to Id to get this fixed. If their current batch of programmers can't fix something this basic I'm willing to step up to the plate and do it myself to save the Quake reputation. I've never claimed to be an expert programmer but if these guys are seriously this bad then Champions will be the title to sink the Quake name forever, and that just can't be allowed to happen. :wall: Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: ~Va^^pyrA~ on 2017-10-24, 22:36 Wow. :\
Phoenix, I would love to see them take you up on your offer! Really though, I feel as if Generations is already what Champions should be. It has enough class diversity to make things interesting, without the "lulz random" effect of one-shot abilities and vastly disparate armor/health stacks. Champions is certainly nicer to look at, but it also feels somewhat cluttered at times because of it. I'm curious how an issue like this even makes it past initial planning. It is my understanding that Quake Champions isn't using Id Tech at all. That's why we can have something like the new Doom run so flawlessly, while Quake hits roadblock after roadblock on seemingly mundane issues. It's apparent that Quake isn't a priority for Bethesda in any way, shape, or form. If it were, it would have one of their best teams on it instead of hiring it out to some no-name developer like Saber. It would be using a proven internally developed engine instead of the junk code that they settled on. Instead of seeing meaningful design and solid coding, we get a nickle-and-dime cosmetics shop. They're selling people hats in place of solid gameplay. It's a real shame too, because the potential for a legitimately fun game is there. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-10-25, 05:36 Someone posted on the thread that Bethesda is aware of the problem now and is working on fixing it. That gives me some hope that at least someone's doing something right over there in realizing how serious this one is.
I hear what you're saying on Gen, and it's definitely heartening to me. I would have loved it if Id decided to do their own version of a Generations-style game using Id Tech 6, though it might have shut us down or at least made Gen Arena kind of irrelevant. Not that we have the biggest fan base anyway at this point, but still... I may not really end up playing Champions seriously, but I just don't want to see a Quake title fail to the point of us losing any future Quake games. We may not ever get a proper Quake 1 sequel, but If Champions bombs it guarantees we won't see that or anything else down the line. It's definitely not fair to the Quake fans. That's my biggest concern here. With most of Id's old guard no longer there and with Bethesda having ownership there's no telling where their focus will be. It reminds me of when Origin Systems sold to Electronic Arts. Eventually Origin was shut down, and we lost Wing Commander, Ultima, and a bunch of other series. I'm not looking for a repeat of that with Quake, Doom, and Wolfenstein. It just can't be allowed to happen. I don't want to see Id shuttered because some exec that knows nothing about games decides to make a business decision and completely screws the fans. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: ~Va^^pyrA~ on 2017-10-25, 21:55 On the bright side, Wolfenstein and Doom both seem to be doing quite well. I think that the powers that be may simply have a hard time seeing where Quake fits in. They have these two other franchises that bring a very strong singleplayer element. To them, Quake is about multiplayer and little else. I think that the original Quake 1 universe is super compelling, but it's obvious that Id didn't favor it, as we instead saw three different Strogg themed games (not that that's bad either!).
Really, they could do a LOT to explore the Quake universe even within the confines of a multiplayer title. Heck, if Champions does one thing right, it's that it drips with atmosphere. It strikes a great balance in presented the tone of Quake 1. If they wanted to really explore that, they could make the "rune challenges" their own mini levels, like they were in Doom 2016. Each character could have a set of several challenges that not only introduces you to their abilities, but also explores the boundaries of the franchise. Title: Re: Quake Champions Post by: Phoenix on 2017-11-10, 09:25 I just don't seem to be very good with Champions. I had been doing well with Nyx for a while, but after the last update it feels like I'm slogging through mud and aiming is downright difficult. I've seen some strange behavior, like one player whose movement was all jittery, and projectiles from the nailgun was passing through him. As for aiming... it seems like the mouse movement is coarse, even with smoothing turned on. I can peg someone across the map with the rail in Q3, but in Champions? I'm lucky if I can hit someone down a hallway. I feel like the only way I'm getting kills right now is going berserk as Doomguy. I'm really wanting to like this game, but for some reason I just can't get any good at it, whereas in Q2 or Q3 I may be rusty but I can hold my own just fine. :surprise:
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