Rage

[obsidian]

OD = OverDose, o'dium and Team Blur's perpetually developed game/mod.

Doom 3, Quake 4 and ETQW all had official SDK's and probably more documentation released initially than even Quake 3 (most of that documentation was built up by years worth of community members). While I agree that SDK's help provide a game with a bigger community, it's not the primary factor.

Both Doom 3 and Quake 4 sold well, but didn't develop much of a community following (thus you not hearing very much buzz about it post release) due to what I think is a lack of decent multiplayer. Single player games tend to promote more "closeted" players who will play through the single player campaigns once or twice and while they may really enjoy it, there is little need to go online and start up a community to talk about it.

Multiplayer games are by nature social, so you are more likely to have players on an online forum talking about the game, planning strategies, setting up matches, etc. This type of community is more likely to spawn a group of people willing to create custom content, so that they actually have a crowd of players to tailor to.

[MrLego]

I agree, I think that the player community gets bored and leaves if there's not custom levels available when the novelty of the new game wears out.

If a games MP portion sucks then people get tired of it pretty fast and tend to move on.

When RTCW came out many of the Q3 mod community members were already in place and were eager to map for a new game - RTCW sustained a very healthy mod community for years. When Enemy Territory came out it was the same thing - and on top of that it was a free game. The MP game code was mature and all of those Q3 engine games were very popular.

Once D3 and Q4 hit the scene things slowed to a crawl - the built in editors and heavier use of models put a huge cramp in many peoples ability to crank out a level in a short amount of time. We went from a community knowledgable in an editor (Radiant) to something that was quite frankly, not all that user friendly. Because the MP portion was not up to par with the previous generations games, the hard core competition players went elsewhere.

Not everyone has access to a modelling program either, and while there are some free ones out there they never seem to be user friendly enough for the masses to easily adopt.

Quake Wars has one of the best SDK's of any game I own - the documentation and sample maps were online by the time the SDK was released. The game raised the bar for the mod community even more with the megatexture technology and large terrains.

I don't believe that much of the Q3 community made the leap into QW, either they don't like the game or maybe aren't willing to take the game out of the corridors and hallways and bring it outdoors.

A lack of a SDK for Wolfenstein is probably just Activision saying FY to id and the community as a parting gesture.

The mod communities will probably even get smaller because most of the upcoming games seem to be sized for the console crowd - six or eight per team and developed for some kind of Microsoft based platform - the Linux side of the world gets left outside looking in.

A lack of Linux base based servers will also kill many of those clan-sponsored game servers that keep these communities alive, either for playing the new content on or for map input and testing. Almost every game server in the past nine years that I have run and/or paid for has been Linux based - the MS ones were always more expensive and more prone to crashing.

[Foo]

I don't believe that much of the Q3 community made the leap into QW, either they don't like the game or maybe aren't willing to take the game out of the corridors and hallways and bring it outdoors.

Completely different games, the only similarity is the name. There's far more crossover with games like Warsow and UT2004, hence you'll find more players jumped off to those games than QW.

[dONKEY]

It sounds more to me like you are used to making really old art, i.e. diffuse only textures, low poly models, lightmaps etc... To be honest, thats how you come over to me. "I can't be arsed to learn these new and improved methods so I'll just say they are terrible.".

Absolutely not the case.
I even have tutorials on my site regarding the use of models and modelling apps to map with, but I'm not getting drawn into all that.

No 'complete' functioning multiplayer I think is the real point, and good part of what I mean by that is bots.

[fKd]

so back to rage, i have a feeling this game will have little to no impact on the gaming world.
my spin is that its just gonna be a bunch of the same old, same old... this is not really based on any one thing... just a feeling...

thoughts?

[MKJ]

it has been rather underwhelming till now.
could also be just me

[AEon]

I have the feeling Rage will turn out to be quite an interesting visual experience, much like DOOM 3 (even though I hate horror and "dark"). It should be fun to explore the more open world of Rage, possibly even interesting to find all those "gimmicks" (i.e. scripted stuff in those races), but once you have played the game twice or so, it will probably simply wither away on your HD, much like Quake IV did.

Well, I'll have to buy new hardware to play the game anyway, so that is presently quite a big show stopper for me.

[axbaby]

Rage will benefit from absorbing what was fun with BorderLands and a lot of the newish titles that have come out recently.
They will learn what was bad with multiplayer game servers recently and the gameplay.
I suspect Rage will introduce something new to WOW us and will miss a key feature that the mod and map community will jump on.
That is where we come in but the solo map projects are history unless your super dedicated and have a lot of time to stare at the screen.

Good managing of these map teams "egos" will be the key to finishing the map.
most sleek map projects will probably fail or will be completed a year late.

[Infernis]

I sure hope that Rage will be an instant classic, but looking at the past, I expect little. There hasn’t been a good ID game [internally made or licensed] since RTCW and ET. Doom 3, while impressive, lacked in gameplay. Somebody said once: “Doom 3 is out” to which the other replied: “Cool, when are they going to make a game for it?”. It’s the best description I can use for that game. Quake IV was mediocre at best. The entire game just felt hollow and the only thing I remember is the part where you get Stroggified. So much for a big impression. Quake 2 however, I can still remember from start to finish. QW isn’t my kind of game, so I can’t judge that but the new Wolfenstein was really a low point in the series. Although there was some excellent leveldesign, the entire game felt clunky and had some of the worst AI in years. I didn’t even bother to finish it. Then there's the fact that none of the mentioned games had any MP that was worthwhile. Of course, this is just my opinion.

Most of you got good points. You usually need MP in order to create an online community. If you want custom content, there will always be people who figure things out themselves but proper support in ways of documentation or an SDK by the developer would certainly help. It’s not that people don’t want to learn new stuff, it’s just that things get increasingly more complex and most of all time consuming. Not everyone has the same motivation or the luxury of enough free time. All these factors combined: more games to choose from, more complex games, less support, less online community is basically why big mapping forums are a thing of the past.

[dONKEY]

I think axbaby and Inf make the crucial point. Even with idtech4 games, many of us that did take the learning curve just don't have the time to produce work on our own. For the same reason we can not commit to 'map teams', or simply don't want to commit to a team effort. It really isn't that people are lazy. Because new tech requires so much time to create content, what I personally found was by the time one got to grips with designing for a game, the fan base had dwindled and moved on. Like most of us here I make stuff for myself, but saying that if I'm going to spend 3 months or more on a map I'd rather do it for a game that I know 1000 or more people will bother to look at it for, rather than 10.
Perhaps Rage will be awesome. I really hope so. But I ain't counting on it.

[obsidian]

I enjoyed the Doom 3 and Quake 4 SP missions.

ETQW was a great game, played that solidly for a good 2 years and ranked top 500 internationally. I still hop on a server every now and then casually.

I'm not too sure what to think of Wolfenstein (the new one by Raven). It looks as if the game was developed by two teams, each group working on completely different levels. In some of the levels, gameplay and visuals were amazing (the underground hanger, the castle) while other maps were completely blah.

I think the Rage SP will be pretty fun. It'll be a classic shoot-em-up with some driving and RPG tossed in. I don't expect much from an MP perspective. Coop (not sure if it will have coop) would be interesting.

I'm hoping Doom 4 will present a better MP experience in the package. id Software's SP games are still pretty good, but what they lack is a really solid MP title (besides Quake Live).