Guess the reply system is still busted after two decades. That was my yearly post here

Genre is dead. There isn't much space left to explore which hasn't been touched, and there aren't any designers capable of doing anything new.

Anything radical enough will just result in Quake becoming TF2, Overwatch, etc.

Enjoy what you got, cause we've been on this downhill trend since 2003.

Tbh. what changed in the last 5 years for gaming in general?
Just rehash after rehash after rehash,
which new trend is there since 2017?
Right nothing.
I am predicting it already since a longer time, there will be a videogame crash just like in the early 80s where they had to put all these games into a landfill because noone wanted to buy them

I'm not sure whether they will bust or not but from my experience they are all boring. Usually, the loop is nothing more than: Go to X->Do Y->Collect Z->Return home.

Even though I had amassed a sizable collection of games on the various launchers (which I have now uninstalled), I had never spent more than a couple of hours in any of the games. I'm sure there is a large enough market for them, but I'm not just part of that demographic anymore.

I would have no issue with Quake Champions if the netcode, engine, and balance wasn't utter shit, but in fairness what else would be left? Art? Even that's crap outside of a couple of maps and vanity items. Diabotical is just VQ3 with modern features but looks and feels worse. Reflex is just CPM with modern features but looks and feels worse and more dead.

In retrospect you could imagine a timeline where Reflex & Diabotical developers try to hash out something new, instead of writing two new engines.

Netcode of QC is actually quite good ... I dont think its possible to play transcontinental on a high level in the previous quake titles ... but yeah, while CS, Valorant, Apex, Call of Duty Warfare, Fortnite, Overwatch, et. al. deliver high quality experiences that dont need high hardware requirements and still look good and are perfectly stable and well maintained ... we have Quake with high requirements engine that has issues, not too frequent updates, battle pass with a lot of low quality joke items and maybe if we are lucky every year one map ... and a lot of features missing, demo recorder/editing, etc. ... and the artstyle is also worse valorant/overwatch etc. ... it's so sad ... imagine someone like blizzard or riot giving afps the proper treatment, a proper QC experience with more focus on TDM ...

Does QC uses client-side hit detection? Sorry, I'm not technically inclined, but I imagine there has to be some serious trade-offs i.e. they simply cannot make latency disappear.

As a Quake player I want to agree with your sentiment about TDM, but I don't think TDM is it... or at least not in its current state. I'm not sure if there is a solution, but I think the gameplay experience has be better than: spawn at random location, go fast, gobble items, spam so you can gobble up more items, or die and repeat.

it seems netcode is based on the same concept, but has better prediction algorithms:
https://www.reddit.com/r/QuakeChampions/comme...code_work/

You forgot one thing in your TDM description, the Quad!!!

Quad is part of the gobbling phase ;)

People say that it does, but evidence suggests it's age old backwards reconciliation, aka q3 unlagged/qw anti-lag.

QL had artificial limit of perfect hit detection up to 55 ms (80 ms buffer - 25 ms frame time), because the community hated the idea of being shot behind corners from HPBs, plus impossible rective dodging (remember how vocal Weird was about it, even with this low limit?).

The code never had such limit, QW plays inter-continental since qqshka implemented the anti-lag in KTX back in 2009, and the original implementation, which was q3unlagged, also started with a comfortable buffer like 250 ms as well.

So it was artificial in QL because there was still a vocal community of noodly shaft lovers, who spent the previous 10 years learning how to pre-aim everything on the single server they ever played.

So QC is QL without the artificial limit, and on top of that, the affected hitscan weapons (MG, LG, RG) have been buffed, to further alienate people who hated the change in the first place :)

(QC's projectile prediction is another story, they almost made it right, but fired the dev team in a very bad point, leaving that code almost there, and yet so far away...)

It's not a question of what is possible, because a lot is possible with the medium in terms of gameplay mechanics, storytelling, etc.. It's more a question of what is fun and that's more about human psychology.

Frankly, there are some pretty big buttons in the human brain for stimulation/entertainment. One of those is gambling/probability. That's why so many games have loot, drops, crates, and other "surprise mechanics." It's why BR remains such a popular format.

And there are some less immediate forms of gratification (like mastery), but that requires a lot of patience and time to experience. In the world we live in, where the video game market is super-saturated with high-quality games (yes, they are high quality), it's very hard to convince potential customers to play your game. Those that have some immediate gratification have the edge in this environment.

In Quake's heyday (really peaking with Q3), there were simply not that many games from triple-A studios like id Software. Quake 3 was on the bleeding edge when it came out and the competition from other FPS games was simply not that great. And that really lent itself to games like Quake where there was a lot of satisfaction from patience and persistence. It was a given because there were not that many games like Quake competing for your attention. It's also why John Carmack said in a recent interview that he didn't think a game like Quake 3 would be popular if it were released today. It's simply not that good at hitting all those gratification buttons that other games are good with.

With all that being said, I do also think there's an element of trend and fashion in the gaming industry. There are some trend setters (usually indie games) and all the major studios follow them. This results in some periods where so many games look alike until some new game comes along and changes the paradigm.

With all that being said, I do also think there's an element of trend and fashion in the gaming industry. There are some trend setters (usually indie games) and all the major studios follow them. This results in some periods where so many games look alike until some new game comes along and changes the paradigm.

I'm not sure if this is the case anymore as the sheer cost of creating AAA assets is well beyond the reach of indie developers. I think this helps explain why smaller developers pursue "retro graphics."

Retro graphics are definitely easier, but I also think it's got something to do with the demographic who grew up with retro graphics and are not interested in the current trends in gaming. The retro graphics hits the nostalgia button, I guess. I know it does for me when I see games like Valheim or Graven that use modern tech but also lean in a retro direction with textures/models.

Although, from what I've seen, a lot can be accomplished with relatively little effort with the Unreal engine. You can get some really high-quality looking games with out of the box settings in UE and then there are tons of meshes/models/animations available (to buy). But then again, your game will look pretty standard and indistinguishable from the masses of other games using the same engine without something that sets it apart.

Maybe the trend of retro graphics is reaching its end because so many people are doing it.

Incidentally, have you played Inscryption? That game has a retro vibe, but in a variety of ways. Don't want to spoil it, because it's a great game, but there are layers of different retro vibe in a self-aware/meta sort of way.

Retro graphics seem to be ok for older gamers ... but also kids nowadays that grew up with minecraft do not seem to have many problems with bad graphics either for some reason ... on the other hand there are those people around that say some newly released game looks like shit because its maybe 10 % worse looking than the current front-runner in graphics

I think you're right about retro graphics capitalizing on people's nostalgia, but I think the economics of game development really drive most of these decisions. Sure, there are some great tools available like UE, but the volume of assets + time it takes to create them (model, skin, animate, sound, etc) just doesn't make sense for indie developers. I should add that when I'm thinking of indie developers, I'm mostly thinking of very small teams that do not have access to a large cash reserve and/work develop their project part-time.

I also agree that graphics done in a retro-style, or an older engine (Q1, Q3, etc) can still look great, but I think you'd agree that they're hardly pushing any ostensive limits of visual fidelity.

I haven't played Inscryption. Sounds cool.

some harder games still achieved commercial success like Dark Souls, Sekiro, Nioh, Cuphead, DOTA, Tekken7 (and many other fighting games) etc.

recent AFPS games failed in creating the attachment required for players to stick around and master them. also online-only AFPS are very hard on beginners, they are confronted immediately with the fact that they suck in a myriad of ways.

an immersive singleplayer campaign in the Quake reboot could create that attachment, throw in some singleplayer content with incentives to learn the game mechanics like a speedrunning mode, survival, defrag maps.. and people can hone their skills in a controlled environment outside of multiplayer. custom maps in classic Doom/Quake1 are created in large quantities for a reason. people still play those games to this day because they are attached to the atmosphere, themes, weapons and bestiary.

also there's some concessions when it comes to movement mechanics which took forever for AFPS to develop. for example strafe jumping is fairly easy once you gain speed. the hard part is the initial circle strafe jump to gain speed in the first place. Diabotical found the right answer to that with the boost button or whatever it's called.. but fuck me, that's kind of 20 years too late. not to mention that item timing in your head was never fun, yet here we are..

an immersive singleplayer campaign in the Quake reboot could create that attachment, throw in some singleplayer content with incentives to learn the game mechanics like a speedrunning mode, survival, defrag maps.. and people can hone their skills in a controlled environment outside of multiplayer. custom maps in classic Doom/Quake1 are created in large quantities for a reason. people still play those games to this day because they are attached to the atmosphere, themes, weapons and bestiary.

I might be mistaken, but I think that's probably what will happen. The sequel to Doom Eternal will probably merge it with the Quake universe.

Diabotical found the right answer to that with the boost button or whatever it's called.. but fuck me, that's kind of 20 years too late. not to mention that item timing in your head was never fun, yet here we are..

Yes, exactly my thoughts. DBT's audience is pretty much the veterans who enjoy a good circle jump and timing items, so it's a catch 22. Either go purist and have your hardcore community happy (but still unhappy), or adulterate the "hardcore" formula and piss off your main community, but attract a few more "casuals" to the fold. I kind of figure the whole AFPS design is really not that fun/exciting without the mastery part. By itself, it just does not compete with how fun it can be to play a good BR with some friends.

I think Quake's core gameplay is just boring compared to what's available out there in the multiplayer space.

Games like Reflex and Diabotical thought the issue was a combination of: the platform, graphics, accessibility to the software, modern functionality, etc. but that obviously turned out to be completely wrong. Even players good at these games stopped playing because the games provide a braindead gameplay experience. I think explains why modes like CA have stubbornly retained their playerbase because it doesn't hide this fact.

Quake multiplayer still had great legacy back then, it's not just Q3A that suddendly made Quake a success ... the predecessors with their great legacy actually made it possible for a subpar quake to suceed ...while Q3A still had enough quake elements to make it "good enough" ... there is definitely fashion, Dota/LOL created the MOBAS PUBG the Battle Royales ... thing is where are these mods nowadays that could become popular standalone titles? Noone is playing mods, they are all waiting for their official BP content ... it's like the internet transformed into facebook and the only pages you can look at are facebook pages with their facebook restrictions ... a nightmare come true

Quake 3 rode on the success of Quake 1 & 2. Let's not make any qualms about that fact.

And Quake rode on the success of Doom. Q3A was a culmination of nearly a decade of people playing id games competitively, and already made everything worse... QL tried to fix that by basically including mods people made for Q3 to make it bearable, and that mostly worked, it was just 10 years too late, plus a bit unlucky with that ad-supported model failing (and let me remind you, it already came back into games and promptly forgotten again in favor of NFTs and other garbage)

I think people were intrigued by the idea of playing a video game through a browser and that even if id software did things "right," most players would grow bored and leave for greener pastures. We saw something similar in the Steam launch. Lots of players trying it out, almost none of them sticking around.

The in-browser launch was on a barely functioning game that launched players into unreasonable queues, and the steam launch was years later everyone knew it was a niche game in maintenance

You're right but what makes you sure any players "lost" during the initial release would've stuck around?

The solution to this problem is so simple: Remove the quit/disconnect button from the menus. Also, if users try to end task from task manager, just lock them out of their system until they pay a subscription fee to enable the quit/disconnect button in their menus. It's win-win, tbqh. The "pay-not-to-play" model can work if some studio will just give it a shot.

This is the type of outside-the-box thinking we need.

git gud ransomware. with enough marketing, it might just work =))

it's easy to answer when phrased this way: because some always stay and in fact did. Otherwise, of course not enough would have stayed, but if the surrounding features were better, more would have stayed.

My reasoning for that is seeing how RTS works now, for example: legacy franchises with histories, big publishers and big marketing do get reasonable popularity, just not the kind big game of the half-decade gets. And I think Quake could get that, if we look at the interest compared to the quality of the games.

All this seems on point. I think it became very obvious at the time MOBAs got popular at the latest

class-based shooter approach simply has much more appeal, it's always a safer investment

team arena was the closest quake got to perfect arena / class-based balance

QWTF?

The game industry is mostly built around consoles.
Game consoles are built around joypads.
Joypads retard FPS experiences and players. At least compared to PC counterparts who can develop at a faster and better rate, and thus require more advancement in the genre.

In other words, no one is going to build a game where 99% of the mechanics are designed to stimulate 1% of the market cos its going to sell shit and the studio goes bankrupt.

You're welcome...

b00mer sh00ter is not arena sh00ter

at least Doom Blood and Serious Sam fans get new g00d shit =))

I started playing apex legends and i found the same joy when i started playing quake 3 osp