Changing the subscription model is the ideal place to start, but newcomers to QL will always need *someone* or *something* to give them a helping hand in getting started.

In the Q3 days virtually nobody who was a newcomer to quake figured out config tweaking and trickjumps (two key things that not only reduce the amount of initial rape, also open up a whole new world) by themselves, it was always handed down from "generation to generation", unless someone was actually already aware of this kind of knowledge from previous quakes.

My point is, id need to focus on the potential newbie-friendly aspects they could incorporate such as:

- Extensive hands-on tutorials for every aspect of the game: Aim, Timing, Map Control, Teamwork, Map Specific Advanced Movement, etc... at the moment they only cover rocketjumping and basic movement.. with a generic bridge to rail being the Ultimate Test!!!!!111

- Simple "theory" content, either written or explained via video by some established pro, explaining the basics. For example, it's surprising how many newcomers just fail to realize how important armor is. Imagine how many hours and hair-pulling you can save them if you tell them first off that ARMORS ARE KEY TO SURVIVAL. It's all very well having Crash tell you about it in the combat training but frankly there isn't just enough emphasis on it at all. This "theory" can by applied to other aspects such as weapon choice, the concept of +forward and +back, in control and out of control, build up to quad, positioning, item rotation, and many other things that experienced players just take for granted.

- Inspiration. I don't know about you guys, but what really got me hooked before I even realized just how great the Q3 engine was, was being inspired by seeing how big the competitive Q3 scene really was... learning about Q3's history, watching interviews and especially fragmovies just made me fukken hooked. It should also be one of id's goals to at least promote epic fragmovies on the front page of the website, instead of the usual crappy slideshow.

- Everything Multilanguage. Okay so russians are born with quake physics hardwired into their brain, but what about everyone else?

- etc

Yes, the QL website does need a new page full of tutorials & blogs etc but I don't think we should bombard newbies with all this stuff - better to keep it simple.

Well, one thing they do need to be bombarded with is fragmovies on the front page. Every single human being should view the best Q3/QL fragmovies, let alone potential new players.

Sad thing about this is that most of the stuff you mentioned could be easily solved by providing a (community-driven) wiki within quakelive.com. There are already dozens of videos, tutorials, guides, howtos, etc for q3 and ql, they just need to be accessible at one single place ... and the ONLY good place for such a wiki is ql itself.

Yup :/

are you saying we don't have enough wikis?

Put yourself in the eyes of a newcomer to QL. How the fuck is he supposed to find ANYTHING? QL website has nothing and QL forums are full of fuck.

Your average new player will never look for anything, he will play 2 3 minutes which will decide if he likes the game or not. If he didnt enjoy himself he willl never come back.

Not if he is forced to see an epic fragmovie before his first match.

I learned pretty quickly. Watched one grand final and I knew I wanted to play ql. It's really a simple game!

I don't know, all of my mates have been put off by the learning curve. Strafejumping is a whole new 'unwelcome' concept, even though they are my age they'd rather fag about on the xbox playing shitty COD and COD clones.

plus it rhymes with eazy fag

I thought this was kind of interesting:

about 4 years ago when ql was just starting out I created a quakelive invitation thread at a gaming forum I had frequented since the late 90s that centred around fortress games mainly (qwtf, tfc, q3f, tf2). I had just got into the beta myself, and was thoroughly enjoying my first real Quake experience ( I had tried q3f and ra3 before but not really in depth).

I invited at least 50 people and at least 50 others got in through that thread when the people I invited got their invites to use. So about 100 somewhat competent pc gamers with a genuine interest in fast paced fps games tried it out in summer-fall 08. The thread is here: http://forums.thecatacombs.net/showthread.php/104056-Quake-Live it spanned 13 pages with a lot of talk and interest about the game, and if you goto page 13 you can see the discussion stops pretty much on the week of the public opening of the site =/ (pretty telling imo)

fast forward 1.5 years, somebody made a post in the same forum that any remaining ql players should post their usernames, so we can see who stayed with it. Thread: http://forums.thecatacombs.net/showthread.php...-usernames

not even half of one page long.

I found this quite interesting to go back and see/read after these few years. Its also sad =/

The reason is simple: you can't be a public hero within a week. Like in CoD - or almost any other console shooter (I like CoD 4, because sometimes it's fun, but the skillcap...well... : )).

to summarize:

Mac, linux, chrome, queue, 10 years raped

If there is really a good noob-friendly mode other than CA, it's Domination.
I don't see any reason why FT would be good for noobs, it's as annoying as FFA and half of the time you can't even play, because you're freezed. I don't consider myself a total noob, but even I got more frustration with FT than fun, I wouldn't play it even if it was free and populated.

Time fraggers will always win.

this mentality is rampant... but I honestly just looked at it like an appropriate challenge (starting quake in 2008). Most other games did not provide a suitable challenge. I wish more people would adopt my mentality and just dive into quake :)

I am guilty however of wanting to play new maps all the time and avoiding ztn and dm6 etc for much of my quake days because of some TIME FRAGGERS WILL WIN mentality lol. But I also think its kinda warranted since new maps also keep games going and fresh!

better to be bad at the highest level than average at a low level.
Thats not a mentality most people can endure.

saying that, there is loads of stuff id could have done to make the game more successful and they have not which makes me think they do not know or care.

i was shaking my head, its actually impressive what they done, but it was never going to be a success with how they treated new players and there are things they could do for not much money and time.

If they made some key changes and relaunched it again (cos it was so badly promoted) they could make a difference for not much money.

I was looking at pro sub other day, was gonna get it o support them, but I was like, its 38 quid! that's more than a brand new top of the range game with engine. You can buy quake 1234 and doom3 for that.

frustrating, someone is making bad choices.

lower the entry level... simplify something, like in xonotic, pressing jump will make you keep jumping forever unless you release the jump bind :S could make it easier to learn strafejumping, just needs mouse coordination.

All in for FREE FT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Got a balanced idea?

Incubus.

Quake is needlessly complex and a lot of the design can be ripped out and remade without losing (or even increasing ) the skill level needed.

Noob friendly is not in automatic conflict with high skill ceiling, if it is the game is just badly designed (which quake partly is). Quake is like a web page from 1997, it looks horrible, is badly designed by today standards but probably worked back then.

What game really need 8(+) weapons, 4 differently colored health pickups and 4 differently colored armor pickups (that even overlaps the health colors!) and a hard to understand and counter intuitive movement system?

rofl! oh boy...

yes, yes, and yes

games like cod and halo have way more than 8 weapons :/

Hello shootmania fan/player.

Have you tried Militia Shootmania?

I think domination is better for a newbie mode.
The objective is very clear and shown on the screen and you can easily make points by capturing or defending. And you don't have to wait when you die like in FT which is really boring imo.
And you start with all the weapons.

newbie retention isn't that hard if you just copy what other games do.

For example, duel simply shouldn't be available from the very start because it's way to complex so it ends up in throwing too many things at the beginning. I'd say even FFA is too much, so CA is just fine.
Another huge problem is that there's no step in between CA and tdm/duel, which ends up in most players sticking with CA. FT (not iFT) comes to mind (maybe one of the new mods instead?), but that also requires setting a default maplist that only has simple maps and with as less items as possible (q2dm1 and not cpm4).
This should be encouraged with rewards and others for current "CA only" players. It isn't much of an issue for new players as you obviously want to play the newest thing you unlocked.

Not inventing the wheel here as that's what CoD does (fixed classes, not having access to all mods). Do you really need a programmer for all that? Nope.


Now lets rip off LoL. Embed streams (in LoL's case just links) and global chat (in LoL it's built into the client) matter a lot these days. Anyone can do it as those are the easiest things ever to implement, and id software already supports streams but not fully (providing the lan client/authorization, a link on the website, fb, twitter).
I'm just asking that they do what they do with quakecon (embed on the main site so you can't miss it) for all DHs, UGCs, etc. and major online tournament semis and finals (like 2 a year). Maybe even put the embed stream for q2's EDLs (one tournament a year) and qw's qhlan.
Also a permanent not invading live stream bar would be nice.

How about a proper ladder? The sole reason why I'm playing LoL right now are ladders. Probably I'd still play quake (got bored) if it had one on the game's site, with proper encouragement and all that. Right now there isn't a single reason why anyone would start playing tdm, ctf or duel, or getting better at those.

Community integration? In QL it is so badly implemented they even split the community in half by not being able to join lower/upper tier servers. Getting to know more players, local and international communities, and tournaments are crucial to keep people playing. Lower tier players, which are probably the most as even experienced people aren't tier3 or 4, are simply excluded, particularly noobs.


Now lets say we think about this for 2 seconds.
Where can I get free and already available content for my videogame? Greasemonkey scripts, all what Memento Mori has done (spawns, guides, etc), QL wikis, videos of older matches (twitch.tv is spectacular on this regard as you can watch whole tournaments), etc.
How can I get free advertising for my f2p game? how about putting a simple link and description in the free version of wolf3d that was probably played by millions of people. They didn't do it when they should have (and still haven't) so just don't waste that opportunity with doom.
Have you thought of, I don't know, hosting a LoL and SF4 tournament at quakecon? More often patches (even one map) so the game doesn't feel dead? Daily bonus? Decent awards (in game) and rewards? Maybe, just maybe, googling "new player retention in videogames"?


I think id software got stuck in the 90s. All this and much more has been implemented in games for more than a decade, are absurdly easy to implement and yet they can't think about those. Even their AAA titles are so behind the times it's sad.


tl;dr: just copy this. http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/forumdisp...order=desc

Aye, I agree.

I hope they announce something concerning QL and its current and future state at QuakeCon this year, even if it's only from prodding by anxious consumers during Carmac's panel.

see: noghost mod for 1.16n

no idea what you mean with that. Only thing I remember from noghost is instagib, which was different/better than the default one, with faster movement speed (i think it had regular jumps but those were obviously longer as running speed was faster) and increased railgun knockback (helps flagcarriers).

That insta should be the default actually. Way more entertaining than the regular one and right now insta adds nothing to the game (not a different mod).
Easiest change ever as well. I could do it in...5 mins or less