4 ms·

Quake Champions is a complete bastardization of the franchise, and an attempt by Bethesda to revitalize the Quake IP with increasingly familiar Overwatch / Pala

by strgrd 10y ago

Quake Champions is a complete bastardization of the franchise, and an attempt by Bethesda to revitalize the Quake IP with increasingly familiar Overwatch / Paladins / TF2 formula. Will the game be fun? Probably. But I doubt you will see more than 50,000 peak concurrent players, and I doubt QC will be anything but a blip on Quake's timeline. The ethos of Arena FPS has been abandoned by Bethesda. The community has been begging for Bethesda to remaster Quake Live with a modern UI and modern matchmaking. It took 4+ years to implement a party system, so you could join games with friends. The state they left Quake Live in is such a disappointment, especially considering its potential in eSports. How they came to the conclusion that it was the gameplay or the graphics stopping people from trying Quake Live is beyond me. People want lobbies, ranks, matchmaking options beyond quick play, etc. The demand for photorealism over high visibility has had an unattended consequence in relying on game engines that are frankly too easy to cheat in competitive multiplayer. Even if QC became popular, it would be plagued by the same fundamental client trust issues that CSGO has. I would be very surprised if this game maintained any sort of following through 2018. QC is a serious misstep, especially when it offers nothing but brooding backdrops to compete with Overwatch, which is already a very good contender in the mass-market Arena FPS world. /r/Diabotical gives me some hope. Reflex has quickly established itself as the replacement game for CPMA diehards. But real Arena FPS has not figured out a way to break into the mass market, and probably never will.

arianvanp 10y ago
Quake Live community was thriving during 2008. Then starcraft II came out and it died out. I really miss it. I tried playing again, but they 1) dropped linux support (WTF?) 2) reimplemented game physics (WHY??) 3) added auto strafe jumping ??? so many idiotic choices. I don't get it. Oh well, back to playing Quake III at LAN parties with friends I guess.
- Danihan 10y ago
  I miss Quake I, Expert mod.
- strgrd 10y ago
  Don't forget that it was F2P, and then it wasn't! Beyond that, the UI was horrible. The UX was horrible. It's not hard to imagine why the game never broke through. They added a party system, but no queue. Finding a duel could easily take 30+ minutes. Even with the party system, getting on the same team as a friend in CA took patiently waiting out the SPEC queue, and then battling the auto-balance to stay together. They finally caved and added QL to Steam, but Bethesda did nothing to make the game easier to pick up and play, and playing with friends (especially more than one) just wasn't fun or feasible.
Qwertious 10y ago
"The demand for photorealism over high visibility has had an unattended consequence in relying on game engines that are frankly too easy to cheat in competitive multiplayer. Even if QC became popular, it would be plagued by the same fundamental client trust issues that CSGO has." Could you explain why this is, please?
- strgrd 10y ago
  The concept of immutable game states has not quite permeated into competitive online gaming, for a number of reasons. To understand the state of anti-cheat, first you need the context that cheaters are perhaps the most prolific customers of popular online games. They are constantly buying (selling, and trading) accounts. Many developers are happy to employ weak anti cheat techniques like memory profile hashing (EAC, VAC) because they result in ban waves and buy waves, both of which can be controlled and planned. In the case of CS:GO, a ban wave is almost always immediately succeeded by a discounted sale on the game. There are perverse incentives to maintain the status quo in the cheat/anti-cheat war, and this is but one of them. Take AimTux for instance: https://github.com/AimTuxOfficial/AimTux https://github.com/AimTuxOfficial/AimTux This type of cheat, the techniques it uses to scan and alter memory, have been used in CS as early as 2001. This specific project has been open source since early 2016. Looking at the timeline of development in Counter-Strike history, extensive work and outsourcing has gone into improving the graphics, sound, and maps, with almost nothing being done to improve the game's immutability. Hacking is more prevalent, more trivial than it has ever been in the history of Counter-Strike. The same fate is now true for the history of Quake. QC is likely to launch as a beta with NO anti-cheat, as there only have been vague announcements regarding a third-party partnership (aka, EAC) to achieve it. It is hard to understand if this is incompetence or on purpose, but either way, QC will be seen as a greenfield for competitive cheats, especially as Bethesda has no reputation for defeating hackers. The truth is that it would take a complete rethinking of game engines to ensure competitive online play is fair. But developers know they would be preventing a line of reoccurring revenue. CS:GO has dealt with the proliferation of hackers by isolating them (offering "Prime" matchmaking that requires grinding to a certain level and tying your account to your phone number), but at the consequence of a lot of new/low-level players getting stuck with hackers.
swivelmaster 10y ago
I'm not sure how you can bastardize a franchise in which the first game was a gothic horror shooter, the second was a linear sci-fi shooter, the third was a multiplayer-only arena, the fourth was a sequel to the second, and there was also an RTS.
- strgrd 10y ago
  I would say the bastardization here is the addition of Quake Champions, instead of the commitment to Quake Live. We want Quake Remastered, not Overwatch: Quake Edition. Bethesda became convinced years ago that the reason people stopped playing Quake Live was because of the lack of variety, or something like that. They never listened to those of us screaming at the top of our collective lungs that the menus are horrible, and it takes forever to find a game, especially with friends. It's that simple. And now we have Quake Champions.
bitwize 10y ago
If it feels and plays like Quake, it'll be fine. There is a distinct difference in gameplay between Overwatch and other shooters like Doom and Titanfall 2; Overwatch feels like you are moving a piece around a board, setting it up for "special attacks", almost like a MOBA in first-person view. If Wuake Champions doesn't suffer from this, it'll be a great Quake game. Also note that different character classes and "personalities" were planned from Q3A but mostly scrapped.

by strgrd 10y ago

arianvanp 10y ago

Quake Live community was thriving during 2008. Then starcraft II came out and it died out. I really miss it. I tried playing again, but they 1) dropped linux support (WTF?) 2) reimplemented game physics (WHY??) 3) added auto strafe jumping ??? so many idiotic choices. I don't get it. Oh well, back to playing Quake III at LAN parties with friends I guess.

Danihan 10y ago
I miss Quake I, Expert mod.
strgrd 10y ago
Don't forget that it was F2P, and then it wasn't! Beyond that, the UI was horrible. The UX was horrible. It's not hard to imagine why the game never broke through. They added a party system, but no queue. Finding a duel could easily take 30+ minutes. Even with the party system, getting on the same team as a friend in CA took patiently waiting out the SPEC queue, and then battling the auto-balance to stay together. They finally caved and added QL to Steam, but Bethesda did nothing to make the game easier to pick up and play, and playing with friends (especially more than one) just wasn't fun or feasible.

Qwertious 10y ago

"The demand for photorealism over high visibility has had an unattended consequence in relying on game engines that are frankly too easy to cheat in competitive multiplayer. Even if QC became popular, it would be plagued by the same fundamental client trust issues that CSGO has." Could you explain why this is, please?

strgrd 10y ago
The concept of immutable game states has not quite permeated into competitive online gaming, for a number of reasons. To understand the state of anti-cheat, first you need the context that cheaters are perhaps the most prolific customers of popular online games. They are constantly buying (selling, and trading) accounts. Many developers are happy to employ weak anti cheat techniques like memory profile hashing (EAC, VAC) because they result in ban waves and buy waves, both of which can be controlled and planned. In the case of CS:GO, a ban wave is almost always immediately succeeded by a discounted sale on the game. There are perverse incentives to maintain the status quo in the cheat/anti-cheat war, and this is but one of them. Take AimTux for instance: https://github.com/AimTuxOfficial/AimTux https://github.com/AimTuxOfficial/AimTux This type of cheat, the techniques it uses to scan and alter memory, have been used in CS as early as 2001. This specific project has been open source since early 2016. Looking at the timeline of development in Counter-Strike history, extensive work and outsourcing has gone into improving the graphics, sound, and maps, with almost nothing being done to improve the game's immutability. Hacking is more prevalent, more trivial than it has ever been in the history of Counter-Strike. The same fate is now true for the history of Quake. QC is likely to launch as a beta with NO anti-cheat, as there only have been vague announcements regarding a third-party partnership (aka, EAC) to achieve it. It is hard to understand if this is incompetence or on purpose, but either way, QC will be seen as a greenfield for competitive cheats, especially as Bethesda has no reputation for defeating hackers. The truth is that it would take a complete rethinking of game engines to ensure competitive online play is fair. But developers know they would be preventing a line of reoccurring revenue. CS:GO has dealt with the proliferation of hackers by isolating them (offering "Prime" matchmaking that requires grinding to a certain level and tying your account to your phone number), but at the consequence of a lot of new/low-level players getting stuck with hackers.

swivelmaster 10y ago

I'm not sure how you can bastardize a franchise in which the first game was a gothic horror shooter, the second was a linear sci-fi shooter, the third was a multiplayer-only arena, the fourth was a sequel to the second, and there was also an RTS.

strgrd 10y ago
I would say the bastardization here is the addition of Quake Champions, instead of the commitment to Quake Live. We want Quake Remastered, not Overwatch: Quake Edition. Bethesda became convinced years ago that the reason people stopped playing Quake Live was because of the lack of variety, or something like that. They never listened to those of us screaming at the top of our collective lungs that the menus are horrible, and it takes forever to find a game, especially with friends. It's that simple. And now we have Quake Champions.

bitwize 10y ago

If it feels and plays like Quake, it'll be fine. There is a distinct difference in gameplay between Overwatch and other shooters like Doom and Titanfall 2; Overwatch feels like you are moving a piece around a board, setting it up for "special attacks", almost like a MOBA in first-person view. If Wuake Champions doesn't suffer from this, it'll be a great Quake game. Also note that different character classes and "personalities" were planned from Q3A but mostly scrapped.