Yes, but the point is that you don't have to play loads for 14 years. A modicum of natural talent, the benefit of the community's experience and wisdom (lol?), and a couple of months of practice is enough.

make the interface like in all modern shooter clean and to the point. it's like playing a flying simulator with all those options making my head explode.

If someone has the time and is willing to do it, then i have the perfect advice which i came up with a year ago or so. Many QW players say that sponsorship is out of the question for QW as it's too old of a game. However, we're a mature community and so we use that to our advantage. One way of doing this is to arrange a huge-prize-pool-tournament with the help from sponsors with a deal that says that the amount of cash the community can chip in will be topped by the company and given to CHARITY!

* We help poor children (or something like it)
* The media likes this
* We get a big prizepool
* The masses will come like a chilling summer flood!

There you go.

Greetings from South Africa!

How's theping from SA and what the hell are you doing there?

New players are most likely more interested in FFA then anything else. Since activity is the most important for a new face..
How about when installing quake for the first time. you get very easy to understand directions to xs4all ffa server that is the most active one today...

I don't think there is any need for new maps at all in the 4on4 scene. There are plenty maps that came along with quake from the start. They never get played anyway because all that is played is dm3..
There is a need of attitude change there.. a big need!

Haven't tried but it's probably 400ms, I'm busy working for the next 14 months or so anyway. It's nice though, like GTA but in real life. xD

</OT>

I think coaching newbies is a good idea. I would definitely play more if I had someone to teach me...and if I had more time. Plus I would become a much better player in much less time.

I also think a "world QW ranking", for both players and clans, would be nice to keep people motivated. Maybe a ranking system like tennis' , where every 'official' tournament awards points.

Also better graphics (Q3/QL-like is fine) and a better interface (HL-like) would help getting people attention.

As regards to SR2, they did not take in just any unexperienced player but guys like Zero who were standing out from their team at the time...and _nowadays_ that could mean lots on inactivity in lower divs as those kind of players are somewhat valued and can even be a driving force for other not-so-good-but-potentially-active players..I have seen this multiple times. And as to problems in mixed games...just kick Blaze every time he does not want to play e1m2 And ban all the smokers.

I usually drop voluntarily anza, no need to kick.

Smaller tournaments, more often, that require less commitment from the players.
FFA and 4v4v4v4 tournaments are really popular with newer players.
NQR and EQL matches regularly take 3 hours or even longer. Plus the time you spend chasing the other team trying to schedule the match.

Have more fixed schedule tournaments with fixed maps and servers and shorter matches.
Leagues I most enjoyed were ones like the irish qw league, ukcl, wpdml, trickery dm league.
In those you just played one map a week, chosen by the admins, on servers provided by the admins, at a time chosen by the admins. If you don't show up, walkover.

Hmm

I am not sure quite which bit you are replying to but if it is the 3 hours thing yes for sure. Maybe if you are a Scandinavian clan it is easier (and maybe in the last two years, since I was really active, teams are better behaved) but with JAMS our matches, we mostly played against Swedish and Finnish teams and it used to take sooo long often. I was not always reasonable myself about servers and a good number of the matches we won were based on pissing off the other team hehe but still, some matches were real marathons. The worst I think we had was smackdown against vs SPAS and FU that both took almost 5 hours to finish three maps in the end.

Hmm I vaguely remember a brit team behaving like retards multiple times...are you referring to them?

we need some more hot movies to promode qw on different game sites
maybe we can orginize some found to pay some good quake moviemakers for good candy movies

What i used to do when i wanted to play original team fortress was i rared it with quakeworld, binded the server i was playing on to j key. then posted a thread on 4chan and i'd get like 20 players to play with everytime i'd make a thread.

Hi from the offline world. Some brainbits about how hopefully keep we alive and well.
1)I like the idea of using trainers. Somebody(players, qw elders?) could give this job and status to experienced and motivated qw-players. Make 4 or 5 of them maybe. Give then some nice tag to nickname to go with the trainerstatus. Or not. But let it be known that being a trainer is an honour. Trainers are a unit who choose more trainers in future and pass the trainer torch on. Implement .trainer command to qw-client and make it send a irc- or such message to all trainers. If a trainer online and available, can connect the noob's server and help him/her. If not available, qw-client messages the noob ' no trainers available atm.'

2) give qw-client to chinese. Does qw have china language support? New era of HPW-gaming.. too bad qw doesnt produce money, cause chinese are all about money. Anyway, maybe a few thousand chinese players could play or at least try qw.

3) squads, teams, communities. What creates them and keeps them alive? Communities keep people together. If being in a community is a shitty experience, why hang around? Tough nut..

4) maybe using shorter rounds in 4on4 with noobs. Twenty minutes is the norm, but few people like to use 20 minutes of their time being assraped these days. There are easier and more fun games easily available. Love it or leave it? Most people leave it.

Just a few cents worth.

Eh.. Why not use the movies that have already been done? I don't think a random player on a random game site has seen dde or qw malfunctioned or whatever.

"1)I like the idea of using trainers."

I like the idea of people helping out new quakers, but I really disagree with the idea of having 4-5 of them which the "qw-elders" choose and branding them somehow. Just go to a server with a newbie and give him some pointers. Like teach him how to jump from dm4 above-lg to the platform across the room. Or doing the dm3 sng walking part with a few jumps. Anyone can teach the basic stuff to a new player.

True, and although i think we have been pretty good at that we need to keep on doing it instead of relying on very few people to do the dirty work!

Exploring the marketing possibilities within the social networking sites is an interesting thought. I noticed the other day that the Quakeworld group on Facebook has 200 members for example, it's not millions but always a start. We need to make sure the information in groups such as that one stays updated and attractive though.

no problem with that, im just interested in noobs getting help. If they cant call help, or they dont personally get active with getting help/advice, its down to ALL active qw players being ready to help. Its great - personally I just like a setup where the responsibility is clear. You know, so everybody wont go in the 'somebody else will do it' -mode.

Anyway, first there should be noobs. Only then the help can be provided

I'm happy to see an active thread about this, since even as a non-participant (these days) I'd love to see QW get an influx of players.

Two things off the top of my head though:

1> Money is hardly going to help. Everyone knows what a huge gap there is between the top clans and the rest of the scene, and anyone on the outside looking in will realise that they'll never see a cent of any prize money

2> Yeah, the mixes are terrible. Back in the day when I was actually playing qw actively I played a couple of mix games. i wasn't good by any means (was high div4/low div3 at best), but I understood teamplay and tactics etc. Well, in every game I had to take abuse from highdiv twats for having the gall to pick up "their" weapon or armor (even in situations where we both just spawned), or accidentally shooting them, or what ever. I don't mean that anyone in div1 is a twat, just that there was no acceptance of those who weren't top players back then, and from spectating little seems to have changed (except the people doing the bitching).

3> I may be sounding like a broken record since this was one of my hang ups back when I was active but the tb3 (rapidly becoming tb2 or tb1 these days) is absolutely driving people away. The top clans know that they are unbeatable on tb3 maps and thus refuse any attempt at introducing new maps. This in turn means that leagues are afraid to "force" new maps into the map pool, and in the end you get 90% of all games being dm3. The influence of the top players really can't be overstated here. They have huge influence over what maps get played (or rather, don't get played). Anyone new to QW can recognize that an actively shrinking map diversity makes for a dull game, while making the struggle to get a foot in the door even harder for rookies who have to fight on a map which some people have played for nigh on 14 years.

At the end of the day I'd say that one of the biggest positives would be finding more people like sassa, gaz, even paradoks back when he was really dedicated. People who are prepared to put in a lot of time and effort, promoting, organizing and generally engaging with the players. But I know what a thankless task it can be to sink hours upon unpaid hours into something.

In my opinion the recipe for attracting new players is
> Take an active interest in supporting rookies (this goes for everyone, not just token rookie-helpers but the scene as a whole, including the div 1 veterans).
> Look to related scenes like warsow and cpm. Be inviting. Show them what QW has to offer. Tell them to come play with you.
> Find people with the drive and energy to spread the word. People like organize tournaments, who give interviews and promote QW outside of the duck pond that is the qw scene
> Don't be so damn competitive about it. Don't get me wrong. It's great to be competitive, and it is what has given us the ridiculous level of skill showcased by the top clans and players. I'm just saying that, as hard as it may be, players ought to be prepared to leave their own comfort zone at times - by playing with less skilled teammates, trying new maps or generally playing for fun.


There is no prize money to be gained here, what can draw people in is having fun. So it's up to the established players to show them how fun it can be


(God damn, sorry about the wall of text. I guess I got a bit carried away here.)

I believe what lib said is correct.

I don't think getting money into the game would attract new players in the sense that they actually try out the game to win the money. The effect i would be after would be the surge of attention the other esports sites etc would probably give Quakeworld if one could present a tournament with a prize purse that's comparable to the most popular games. The raised attention by new players who genuinely thinks it's a good game and wants to try it out would then be used for mass conversions! .)

I think money prices would mostly bring back ppl who quit in recent years or are taking a break but could still get back in form with a few weeks / months intensive praccing and activate those who are still playing but could play more. Of course, it would have to be a significant sum. It might make sense to have money tournaments in new maps to widen the potential group of winners.

My 2 cents:
1) Client should be click and go. Very light. Probably include in the distributive only 2-3 maps and textures for them. Bind mouse1 +rl mouse2 +lg mouse3 +gl and autoconnect to some dedicated FFA server. Just double click on an shortcut and you already in-game.
2) if you want to build a big community, newbs need to play vs newbs. No skilled players, no aimbots. The easiest way from my pov is installing qw servers on local networks of big ISPs and advertize them on local forums. (You need to invest your time for advertizing and to admin the server). FFA server with big, easy and intresting maps, without teleports and so on. Rocket arena server for "advanced" players.
3) Money will help if the majority of participants will be newbs. Offline tournament of particular town/village (with banned "pro"players)? One day championship in particular local network? (You need to invest not so big amount of money plus your time)
4) Also you can try to add a community. Allow Warsow client to connect to qw servers?

A reasonable question to ask ourselves is at what stage a potential new player turns down the game in favour for something else.

Does he/she even know the game exists?
Does he/she install the game, try it out, finds out it's way too hardcore and then quit?
Does he/she play the game for a year and then becomes bored with the community/whatever and quit?

My answer would be yes, ezQuake 2.0 has ~9500 of downloads, it's there for 6 months now, that's ~50 downloads per day. We used to be at 150 per day, I guess nQuake "steals" some downloads now. Which is a good thing ofc.

If that's true then it sounds like we have an incredibly bad record at guiding the players to the right places? Or they are all playing bots offline :p

Even if "only" half of those 9500 are unique downloads it's a lot compared to the size of the community.

As i said, click and play client might helps.

Then what? First server they try will probably be xs4all ffa and ffa there is far from attractive to newcomers.

I say improve the ffa server, remove maps like e4m3, make map cycles dependent on player count, remove all maps from pak1.pak anyway so that it works without warezing / buying the game.. Getting raped by 4 invisible quaders in e4m3 or playing dm4 with 20 ppl is fun only to small minority of the players.

For an active scene, an active 1on1 section is needed. All the waiting and whatnot will really discourage new players. If the 1on1 scene is active enough, enough will spill over to 4on4.

The following is a bit of a project, but I know I'd love it and I know others would. A 1on1 ladder system like the one in warcraft 3. You just queue up to play, and the system will pair you up with a user of similar rank. This would have to be built in to the client, and everything should be very automatic. It is the easy access and possibility of tight games, regardless of skill level, that is important. You should not have to worry about server or other hassles, just play a random map against a random player around your skill level.

I had an idea of doing this for my master's thesis in computer science, but I didn't .

The most important is, as blaze just mentined, click and play.