Quake3World

I'm new here and wanted to contribute my thoughts of the hows and whys it is that Q4 MP is in the state it's in. Sooo, if someone else has posted something similar I'm sorry...not gonna read every thread on this board

Did anyone here follow the Raven forums at all when it was first announced that Q4 would be jointly developed by Raven and id? Well, I did...I recall at the very early stages reading on that forum that there was no MP planned for the game. Then a good while later there was an announcement that a very basic MP component was being added to the game. Which what we have now out of the box fits the bill very well.

I really believe that the purpose and intent of the Q4 release was, from the beginning, to focus on the single player element that the "Quake" franchise has to offer. With that being said it's really no surprise to me that the MP portion of the game is lacking. If I had to guess they probably finished the SP with some cushion time left over before the release and produced as much MP content as they had time to. I applaud them for thier effort. I like the game even though there are some issues that need to be addressed by a patch.

I would also like to add that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars(MP game that could be likened to RTCW style MP) is in developement right now. I believe it's plausible to think that Q4 MP support and developement has been purposely stifled or neglected directly because of the Quake Wars bottomline. What do you guys think?

So...id/Raven have pretty much thrown us a bone. Hopefully the SDK will be released soon so that Q4 MP will really begin. Everyone knows it's the mods that make any Quake game shine.

"So...id/Raven have pretty much thrown us a bone." Your taking "looking on the bright side" to a whole new level.

Bottomline is, after Quakes MP history, Raven should have focused alot more effort into Q4 MP. They didn't and it clearly shows, this leaves Quake fans furious and also is a shot in the foot for Raven/iD.

Never mind, only 8 months until UT2007! That engine looks sweet. (Shame it's gonna have "Unreal physics", though).

Quoted from some guy on ESR (whoms name I forgot, sorry)

Raven Labs, July 29th 2005:
"err.. so, guys, u think we should add some MP to this shit?"
"k, I'll do it over the weekend, cya"

That's pretty much how I feel

errant wrote: I would also like to add that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars(MP game that could be likened to RTCW style MP) is in developement right now. I believe it's plausible to think that Q4 MP support and developement has been purposely stifled or neglected directly because of the Quake Wars bottomline. What do you guys think?

ET:QW is a test of the BF2 MP market and was announced in late May '05, long after Q4 was announced. I can't imagine how Q4 doing poorly helps ET:QW, rather the opposite.

Honestly if I was a dev, I would be crying myself to sleep at night having my name attached to the MP, and apparently being unable to even reassure the fans of the game that it is being fixed, and that I was sorry it was rushed without even considering changes which would need to be made to the game.

"Hey we ported the Q3 stats, game on!"
"Oh shit we upped the scale of the world, the balance is all wrong with stock q3 settings!"

Auto downloading is broken, not cool, but hey its bearable.
If your files do not match those on the server you cant connect, no worries an auto download feature will fix that right up....oh wait...

The comedy of errors goes on and on. I may even compile a big list since apparently I am not doing a whole lot at work atm.

Do I think it was a beta test for the xbox? No. What an insult if I was someone who put my work, and pride into something...
Do I think the devs want it to have this many problems? No.
Was it rushed by someone? Yes, and for fucking what? A bunch of bad press before christmas? The reviews have hardly been glowing.

GG Activision/id/Raven Note they are all to blame, personally I think the bulk of the problem was that it was obviously rushed out, and that I set at the feet of Activision, someone correct me if I am wrong, hell someone from Raven come and bitchslap some sense in to me, just make sure you tell us wtf is going on, but I think the only way it would be rushed is if Activision put their foot down and forced the issue somehow.

Its a serious fucking tragedy that id has allowed their serious grip on the market to be broken up by the likes of UT, and the fact that what, a month?, after the release of Q4 people are saying, "Don’t worry UT2007 will save us!" Even though they know its a pale shadow of what Quake could be is even more painful for me to see.

Quake and its game types of simple, and elegant 1v1/TDM are, woefully, now a niche market in this age of endless WW2 clones, and objective based team MP. Dont even get started on MMORPGs, hi I want to pay you $XX.XX every month so I can continue to play a game I bought more then a year ago kthx! Madness.

This ET:QW sounds like a good idea for what a game mode of Q4 MP should have been. Is it role based? Or simply team based with objectives? Who cares really, not I, but it would have gotten more new bodies into the game, more sales of the game, and a larger community base from which more people would have moved on to mods, blah blah, can you tell I am bored at work? I certainly do not think that Quake style MP, once again 1v1, TDM, CTF are staples, is going to compete with Quake Wars, any more then any other MP game would, they are different types of play.

Its just so frustrating playing a game that could be better, and really should have been better, especially when there isnt anything new on the market that fits that niche. What other 1v1 MP games are out there other then Q3? Not much thats for sure.

Now the game engine itself has little to add to MP lets just be honest with ourselves. Quake style MP is not about skulking in shadows, and as someone who doesnt care for the visuals that seems to be the focus of this engine, light and shadows, because really strip it all away like you can with r_singlelight, or r_detaillight or whatever it is and turn down the textures and suddenly your looking at Q3, maybe thats why the maps were not built so you could scale down the light effects and r_singlelight is locked, id/Raven didnt want us to realize its just Q3 with more difficult to remove shadows.

Was Q3 a success for id? Is a MP focused game feasible? I would have to say of course it is, SP is great, but what keeps a person playing for years and years dragging friends and family kicking and screaming into the game? A great MP with devs that listen and communicate with the community on a semi-regular basis, and dont pull back what little interaction there is, hey where did the SDK info go again? oh yeah "to much to soon just wait", right. Well by the time the devs/publishers/whoever decides the time is right how many people will have left the game for CoD2 or whatever else is going to be released in the christmas rush, and how many further sales will they take with them? Does anyone even care?

Now I play Q4, I play it quite a bit, couple of hours a night, till it crashes on me, and look forward to when the pro tournaments start churning out some good demos for us working suckers to watch but that fact that I play it so much just makes me see how much better it could be with a bit of polish. And that polish could be provided by the community that wants this game to fly, seemingly more then those who make money off of its success, but for that we need the SDK...

What, honestly what, is preventing the release of the SDK RIGHT NOW.

/bored rant mode "0"

Shit thats another thing, why in the name of christ did you change how the console works? CTRL + ALT + ~, seriously...

Yeah I can fix it by adding a line to my command line but come fucking on...

/me shoots self

In short, things take time. Bug fixes, Documentation, etc. Believe it or not, a lot of developers have lives and go home to families in the evening at a normal hour, so they all can't crunch 12-14 hours a day getting the SDK ready for people. Just give them some time. I'm sure they'd like to bring out a patch around the same time as the SDK so that the source they release is the source of the latest patch.

I also don't recall Raven ever stating they were going to patch things to each and every persons individual needs of what they don't like about the MP. Q4 MP is what it is, and people who expect it to be a clone of Q3 should just well.........keep playing Q3.

Sure, but how long does it take to throw up a faq on a website, forget the fact that the q4 site is a flash abomination .

One small post, shorter then my last one, on a website that everyone could find, tell the news sites, and list some of the issues being looked at and I bet there would be a lot less bitching. And it could be done in 10 minutes.