Well... their day 1 of closed beta is probably more a stress test than anything else, including player satisfaction.

Changing topic completely, here's a clip from one of my all time favourite shows:

Agreed. On the other hand, people who might not me able to use that key could be good. It is going to ensure a much larger number of interested players, players who voice various opinions on a wide scale is going to create controversy, that is very good for publicity. If they won't screw things over for long periods of time, but actually do something about risen problems in a matter of time and priority proportionate to the nature, importance and relevant time in which to solve them, then it is forgiven by me and let's have a great fucking laugh about nit-picking each bad hair out of QC, ESR loudmouths.

I honestly dont care its free or not, I would be more willing to pay for something that provides a decent user experience (Blizzard) vs something that does not. This is its free so we are allowed to fuck up in infinite ways is not good for anyone, users or the developer.

Man, I agree their queue predictions were off, but you have to remember it's a closed technical beta, with primary purpose to see what breaks. When they have that under control, then they can focus on ensuring players are enjoying the experience. This is precisely why everything is under a very strict NDA, because at this moment the game isn't ready for the being enjoyed yet, they just need to test the infrastructure with more than their usual 12 people, and gather all the bug reports they can.

They should have made this clearer to be honest, people are having the wrong expectations.

You're acting like you just bought the game. It's the first 'beta' where they stated they were stressing the server. That lasted a whole day whoopty fkin doo.

I did not say anything about the game itself, the game so far looks pretty okay. My doubts are to the ability of execution by id software, they have had the best area shooter game for many years but failed to popularize it to the extent blizzard does for example for any game they make and you can see why.

A component made by the company you worked for just made my laptop die. ;/ At least id hasn't fried my laptop yet.

Relax, it's just a computer game.

You, mister, I have my eyes on you. You are on thin ice.

?

Don't make things worse on yourself.

the game isnt out yet and also a 100% release date isnt given yet.
beta is supposed to be for testing and find problems.

i can deal with that, since the game will be awesome when its out and bugfixed.

I'm telling you, these are the guys that burn their girlfriends when its 'over'.

there are two variants of beta game test.

a test where its more like a demo for promotion.

or

a real test.

Or that time when we organised a LAN in Sydney with sponge and syncerror and they fucked up causing a bust for a first day. People flew from all over the country for it too lol.

no one had a copy of q3?

or of QLOP (the unofficial client).

I mean the admins of that Aus LAN are at fault as well as sync+sponge were, because they could have taken those two measures just in case. Very easy to setup too; actually easier than hosting a QL LAN.

Well, that's what we ended up having to do. I can't remember what happened exactly, but people *were* in contact with id software at the time, and their response wasn't far off "Too bad, suck it".

Was the software you guys ended up using related to the hacked QL launcher I got off Fraze, which ended up having Trojan.Agent/Gen-Backdoor? LOL :D

http://www.esreality.com/post/2622158/re-why-...pid2622158

What an idiot.

they have launched limited capacity servers to test how they handle with maximum player count and how does that affect the game

of course they did

This is a testing phase. You all are supposed to test the game and the servers, not to necessarily have fun.

LoL, OW, etc. all went through the same on the first days of the closed beta phase. Actually LoL had like a whole year of network issues on the open beta phase.

id should hire you guys as community PR managers for defending so hard. Oh well that will be too smart of a move by id track record.

If you do want to test capacity limits you do not launch servers with 800 less player slots, more like 100. This is a screw up in the line of more to come in coming years and all of you know that as well but you are incapable of admitting it, this is called blind love.

I'm gonna guess you've been getting rekt

to quote the wikipedia article for "beta":

Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. Software in the beta stage is also known as betaware.[3] Beta phase generally begins when the software is feature complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs.[4] Software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it. Beta version software is often useful for demonstrations and previews within an organization and to prospective customers. Some developers refer to this stage as a preview, preview release, prototype, technical preview / technology preview (TP),[5] or early access. Some software is kept in perpetual beta, where new features and functionality are continually added to the software without establishing a firm "final" release.

We all know what beta implies on the other hand you seem not to know kgb, implying that he would not know, so who's less illuminated here?

the only person "implying" what anybody else knows here is you, by speaking as "we", and also making ignorant and false claims about me.

I know most of the ppl here for more than 10 years enough to understand that they know a lot about gaming.

Putting in context your "but this a beta shtupid" how many times did I hear that excuse already? At least since the good old times of Doom3 leaked released back in 2003 or 2002 when every1 tried it and had a pessimistic feeling about the core of the game. And there they were the same optimistic lunatics with "but this alpha, shtupid". Same old, same old silly excuses. Or was that the alpha version?

where have i said "but this a beta shtupid"? it isn't an excuse. the wikipedia paragraph perfectly sums up the behaviors being complained about here in this thread. the game is called a beta by its development team, and the status of the development accurately meets the requirements for being considered a beta. server load testing is a critical aspect of preparing for public release, and i'm sure id software has a lot of great data to work with now to decide the direction of their development.

not sure if trolling or dyslexic

dyslexic people cannot troll?

damn, mind blown

They made abilities available almost twice a minute putting the abilities in direct competition to the importance of big items. This will breed serious problems regarding gameplay and esports competition, very serious problems. Campfests and passive matches are on the way.

Take for instance the injection ability: this ability basically competes with the mega and would also be unbalanced as hell by design, for if you got the mega adding the injection it would give you a surplus of health hard to overcome and on the other hand in many other situations the presence of injection ability contradicts the scope of having health on the map, as afaik injection ability does not deny the player from picking up health.

The main idea is that injection ability and other abilities does not have consistent use and because this games would be more like poker games because you would never know if you would have the opportunity to use your ability three times in a match or 15 times -if you encounter a dodgy +back player then there is not way in hell you could take advantage of your superior ability more than 2 times/match, and low frequency is not the problem here, but the randomness of it is.

over reacting m8

Quake isn't iDsoftware production anymore. It's Bespezda. Noobish aim and movement in promo videos, speed limit, no enemymodels, etc - that's not iD. John Carmack played Q3, at least...

Ye, but he sucked in it, so I'm not exactly sure what is the analogy for.

Surely you mean Kacapstda.

- I've a lot of words to determine moscovian goatfaced scum, but not this time.

you're the most amusing nazi I know ;D

- Nazi killed 30 millions. Commies killed 60 millions. Who worse?

nazi's.............cause they suck at killing.

For me the significance of the departure of John Carmack from id software cannot be overlooked. And I am really puzzled why this is not talked about more frequently. I am surprised nobody has made the effort to persuade him to go back. He was the creative force behind programming graphic engines of the future. A new id game was always ahead of the hardware at that moment and that was the key to success. Because the future mysteriously becomes the present if you wait long enough.

I'm not sure how significant it is tbh. He was never the only creative force behind id's games. His biggest contribution always was the tech, but nowadays there are lots of people (and teams) who can produce engines good enough to supply the sort of gameplay we want. Even Carmack is probably tired of the engines as a whole thing since they've become so generalized.

His passion for the tech led him into VR, which personally I couldn't care less about. Keeping him around would just mean future games from id would be Carmack's tech experiments or demos of engines to be sold off.

To supply you with the gameplay you want, a couple of cheap code monkeys are sufficient. But they cannot change the evolution of game engines.

Game engine evolution is quite irrelevant beyond what is needed to make an enjoyable game.

Things don't just keep getting better forever, and the improvements become less influential over time.

Doing amazing things with the engine is only required when you want to provide a new gameplay that needs those features.

Besides, Carmack thinks the evolution is VR. I ain't strapping that bulky, heavy, wired, expensive, motion sickness inducing, mostly useless contraption to my head any time soon. It's bad enough with totally isolating headphones let alone not being able to look around you. There is also such a thing as too much immersion.

Your expectations as a consumer of a good game are quite modest, but a developer must think differently because he needs to be one step ahead of the competition..That's what I am talking about, the scope of vision that John Carmack (not uniquely) had. But the likes of him aside. even I can see that a VR set at one time in the future will not be bulky, heavy, wired, expensive and dizzying anymore, but tiny, light, wireless and so comfortable that it will change our idea of visual reality. Add this to the idea of augmented reality, even I can see the enormous potential in both business, medical, military and entertainment applications of such a device. And our perception of reality in general.

Yeah, my expectations are modest, and what are yours? Do you expect a revolution every time a game is released? At the end of the day, it is just a game; it is just entertainment. And there are still plenty of ways to get decent entertainment using conventional media.

I can also predict a time when a VR headset is no different to a pair of sunglasses, and I still won't be terribly interested---because all it offers and ever will offer as far as gaming is concerned is improved fidelity. The actual interactive part of the interface is crap; even a Wiimote is better. So it is just a display device at the end of the day. It won't actually be "virtual reality" because you won't be able to move around with your real body while using it---unless you want to be constantly bumping into things. The only way around that is to combine the game world with the real world like some kind of Pokemon Go, and that ain't my cup of tea. I actually want to immerse myself in a completely different world, where I have abilities my real body doesn't have.

Using a visual technology like this that is not somehow messing around with your brain will never be able to prevent motion sickness, which is due to the disparity between what you are seeing and the motion detected in your ears. You will just have to wear it until you get used to it. There is also the problem of too much immersion (things being too real) and not being able to see around you, which you did not address. Besides, VR tech has been around for about 25 years now, and the main difference between then and now is graphics quality and price tag.

It most definitely ain't going to change our "perception of reality", and why is doing so even necessary? It is just a display device. It will certainly have applications in business and medical, but for gaming (what I actually care about and what we are talking about), it won't be a revolution imo, anymore than going from 1080p to 4k is. I neither need it, want it, nor care for it. I don't know when id software was in the business of making display devices or graphics cards, so I don't see why they should care about it either until it becomes a device they have to support.

When has Carmack's vision encompassed anything much beyond more realistic visuals? (Good on him for supporting moddability and open source as long as he did.) Visuals have been his thing all along, going all the way back to his side-scrolling technique in Commander Keen. Carmack's ideas have always been based around the tech, never around what is actually enjoyable. id software had other people for that. This is why he was the guy trying to get rid of strafe jumping. In the beginning, getting something as realistic as Doom in 320x200 graphics was mind boggling and enabled new gameplay. Now, adding another billion polygons means absolutely nothing for gameplay. You reach the point of diminishing returns in that area. So you need to work on something else, like AI or being able to modify the map. But that is all wank unless it facilitates a better gameplay and enjoyment of the game. Look at a game like No Man's Sky. It uses new technology, but it is as boring as fuck. Look at the most popular games today, LoL, DOTA, CS:GO, Overwatch; they all use very simple graphics and zero revolutionary tech.

The tech should be driven by the desired gameplay, not the other way around.

Carmack was OP in his era, but then he stuck with old ideas like small teams, and his last game Rage was crippled with problems. Its good he left, when it was announced i was super sad, but after seeing DOOM and PAX footage, good riddance. The times they are a changing.

Well, I wouldn't go as far as saying "good riddance". :D

The dude deserves a lot of respect, but he just isn't a necessary part of the equation anymore.

The moment Carmack left was the moment id software's engines vastly improved. Might be a coincidence or not,. but in any case he's a good riddance since Doom 4 and QC show he isn't needed anymore, and that saves the company's money.

I mean the guy does deserve praise for his work in the 90s, but afterwards he started hurting the companies he's worked for.
- Carmack's last good engine was released in 1999 (idtech 3). That's 18 years ago.
- In the early 2000s he was the one that took the decision to keep the dev team so small id's games take 5+ years to be released. That policy changed the moment he left.
- His goal of id's games displaying his latest technology was limiting the gameplay, as the games began being hindered in order to better show it. Doom 3 was so claustrophobic and slow (even being of a different genre than Doom1 and 2) in order to better show the shadows, Rage ended up being a Borderlands clone because of it being the 99th attempt at trying to sell an engine with megatextures, QL's budget went into making it one of the first 3D browser games and the first one with ingame ads instead of it going into making it a better game.
- And recently he made Oculus lose $500 million dollars. Fantastic.

I think Carmack was only ever interested in whatever new tech he had been working on. So he'd build an engine around that feature.

My guess is he wouldn't deign to spend much time on the more mundane aspects, or maybe they weren't getting enough attention due to the small teams gSTRUCTOR mentioned. id would then pump out a game to showcase it as quickly as possible, usually with the game being incomplete (though I think everything before q3 was fine).

This is all just speculation, but it is my impression.

Anyway, I don't think it was incompetence, just his direction and focus.

Sure. But I'm much liking the direction of Zenimax's id software than of Carmack's id software. Gameplay over graphics.

You are contradicting here. There you said that Carmack's contribution was mostly on the engine and you talk about engine improvements, yet with his departure you praise the gameplay? Gameplay does not equate graphics as you well know.

Carmack was involved in the gameplay as well but as a negative influence, as I explained.

Yeah, you get ever diminishing returns with graphics. That's why they were a big deal in the beginning but not so much now.

Going from VHS to DVD was great. DVD to HD was pretty good. HD to 4k is nice but not necessary. 4k to 8k, what's the point? :D

You could always buy a bigger tv and then put it as far away from you as possible. Perfect too to feed the narcissistic desire for "better".

"4k to 8k, what's the point? :"

pan videos, how cool would it be to watch a film or a nature thingy which you can revolve around and maintain good resolution?"

You can only do this with 8k or 16k videos because you introduce parallax issues with multiple cameras, so a nice 8k native image with a very wide angle sens would add a lot of worth to digital media.

My point was that as the resolution increases, the next step up brings smaller and smaller benefits. And it is a basic analogy that applies to most areas of tech, like polygon counts for instance.

In the case of screens, there are more gains to be had from better colours, contrast, intensity, frame rate, response time, input lag, higher bitrates for shit like netflix, etc than resolution.

When talking about resolution, one must take into account the Lechner distance.
https://hdguru.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11..._chart.pdf
http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.png

With certain combinations of screen size and viewing distance, the human eye won't be able to resolve detail at such resolution anyway, making the increase pointless---except perhaps for viewing of artificial scenes containing high frequency content that hasn't been appropriately filtered.

I'm not sure I understand your example.
You want to revolve around your TV?

"My point was that as the resolution increases, the next step up brings smaller and smaller benefits."

yes, but it also brings potentially new benefits too, hence my example which you do not get.

Click the video I posted and navigate around it using the control bar at the top left. You can see anything at any angle.

imagine how much shelflife it would give a program if you could control what angle you watch a film from, that technology kinda allows this.

Yeah, the part I don't get is why you need 8k resolution to do that.

You can display pretty much anything on the screen at 4k, and it will look just fine. You can use whatever system you want for changing the viewing angle and then display the scene at 4k, and it will look just fine---as in you won't be able to tell that it is higher resolution if you went to 8k unless you're sitting right next to the screen.

By the way, I was never saying anything against recording, mastering, scanning, editing, etc in 8k or higher. I am only saying that the final product displayed on the screen doesn't need to be greater than 4k resolution.

I guess that's where our confusion must be, because I'm talking about the resolution of the display. You can use a 360 degree camera and record in a much higher resolution, but each frame displayed on the screen when it is played back only needs to be 4k.

When you watch 4k video or any normal video its 9/10 shot through a 20-35mm lens, in order to do rotateable videos the camera captures a MUCH wider FOV and is wrapped in software meaning the sensor is now having to use that 4k image to cover a much wider angle, which means its going to deliver less detail per view because the user has the ability to see things from multiple angles.

If you capture with 8k, and downscale to 4k, you'll get much more detail than if you just captured in 4k, providing all the other things like bitrate are the same.

look at that 4k 360 video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rqVspFNcDw

The level of detail is low despite it being 4k, because its covering so much distance.

Yeah, like I said, feel free to record in 8k, 16k, or whatever, and put that data on a disc or in a file. There are benefits to doing so for applications like the one you've mentioned. I was only saying that the screen itself does not need greater than 4k resolution.

I must have gave the wrong impression when I mentioned DVD and VHS instead of resolutions. I kinda mixed those in together with HD and 4k as resolutions of the display device.

"4k to 8k, what's the point? :"

pan videos, how cool would it be to watch a film or a nature thingy which you can revolve around and maintain good resolution?"

You can only do this with 8k or 16k videos because you introduce parallax issues with multiple cameras, so a nice 8k native image with a very wide angle sens would add a lot of worth to digital media.

I think you can perfectly answer your own question 10 years from now. All you need is a little patience :-)

It was a rhetorical question. There is no point in going from 4k to 8k, at least for viewing purposes. See my comment #56 for the reason why.

Found this nice vid on youtubez abt why did Carmack leave id Software:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG1y-cwti44

Synopsis of the video's notion: Bethesda's bosses want Virtualy Reality in their games but realize they have driven John Carmack away from the company.

I think that even if Cramack left the company if Bethesda guys would have not acted like arses to sue him but ask for his cooperation instead things would been running ok. But no, show Carmack and the world that Bethesda's balls are bigger!...