I've came back to QW after long time. I feel like f***** dinosaur or something. Times has changed in first person shooters world. Now i look back to heyday of deathmatch games - period from Doom to Quake 3 - and wondering what the hell happened?!
Todays market is dominated by casual friendly, slow fps games. I think it all started with CS, but CS was (is) million times better than recent Call Of Duty or Battlefield games. Even less realistic games, like Crysis 2 are made this way. Slow player movement (sprint button doesn't help, it's still slow), shallow gameplay, and domination of hitscan guns.
Combat skill is nonexistent. Aim is everything. It comes down to who pulls trigger faster, as death is nearly instant. In Quake games meeting of players from two opposite teams means usually (if they are both on the same level on skill and one isn't lacking health) ballet of rockets, jumping, and strafing. In these "realistic" shooters it goes like this: players stop to aim down the sights, pew pew pew, and after two seconds max one falls down. Usually the one who pulled trigger later.
Forget map and item control - nowadays, you start with loadout. There's no need to worry about armor and health ( it regenerates), no need to care about ammo, no need to "lock" the map to win. Of course there are gametypes with pickup items, but these are less popular. One level of depth is missing... it's like playing Q3 or QL iCA over and over. Only without strafejumping and running turned off.
The fact fps games are developed for consoles doesn't help either. Gamepad is one of worse options for fps games - seriously, trackball, touchpad and drawing tablet are better for them, and these aren't made for gaming. But to the point - slow and imprecise movement of crosshair means gameplay must be adjusted to it. Have you tried Quake Arena Arcade on XBLA? It doesn't have autoaim, and gameplay is the same as PC version of Q3. Result is you can't hit s**** with RG or LG on medium and long range, midairs and prediction shots (especially long range) are almost impossible. Strafejumping? Forget about it. Decent player can adjust to inferior controls but game will still play like parody of Quake... New games must adjust to these shortcomings of control input, to play somewhat acceptable - so they are slower, and filled with instahit weapons that kill within milliseconds. Also have autoaim (or "aim assistance" as console gamers call it).
Don't get me wrong - these things are good on console. But PC ports are left with the same design (minus autoaim) and gameplay, and have m+k controls. This produces ridiculous results - games are too easy, be it singleplayer or multiplayer... Some devs try to cripple mouse aiming - see Dead Space - to save their game from being too easy. It's stupid and cheap way of solving problem, and i don't like it, but most devs don't bother at all. Have you played PC version of Halo? I picked it up few years ago to see what the hype was about and played on Legendary (i heard it was so hardcore and ass kicking so i was curious) - died ONCE during entire play through. It was when Elites with swords first showed up, i didn't saw first one (spawned behind me). Elite AI was decent, but they were too damn easy to take out - strip shield with plasma then few shots to the head. Hunters were a joke - circle strafe and one pistol shot to exposed part - wtf?! I felt like i would have MUCH harder time playing with gamepad, but mouse made this game too easy and boring. I finished it to see if there are any challenges, spec ops elites were only minor upgrade over standard ones, and flood parts were easier than later Doom levels. Blah.
What did go wrong? Quake 3 was hyper-popular after release. Unreal Tournament too. These games were strong years after their release, but it seems no worth successor showed up. Painkiller was promising but it didn't delivered. Q4 was one of few decent "old formula" games and bring some fresh elements, but failed to be new Q3, some time later last big budget "classic" shooter, UT3, failed too. Quakelive is HUGE step back for Q3 community - most of updates included in CPMA client and ioquake3 go down the drain. It's gameplay is less polished (jumping over items...) and also dumbed down compared to vQ3. Community created games, like Open Arena, Aftershock, Warsow, Nexuiz (or whatever it's called right now), Alien Arena - are ghost towns with small loyal playerbase. Warsow is perhaps best example of how times changed - it was hardcore fps similar to cpma at first, then more and more tweaks were made to make it easier for new players, to attract them - simple movement, stun (sad, Warsow one on one fights were unique and dynamic with all this wall bouncing), more toned art style, better graphics, more objective based gametypes, weaker weapons... all of this, and it didn't helped. Many loyal players left the game after "dumbicitation". I was hyped about it a 0.32 times, it had perfect fast paced gameplay - then 0.4 versions came out and were mess, 0.5 too, 0.6 is somewhat better but still shadow of what wsw could become.
Quakes aren't in better shape. Q3 scene is in agony (last attempt to ressurect it, fraglove, failed to make change), Q2 and QW are closed enclaves, don't know how things are in Q4 but i think no better. Quakelive failed to be as popular as everyone predicted - it have dedicated playerbase, and constant flow of newcomers, but is still small. What happened? I think it was mixture of many things - communities elitism, shift from PC to consoles when developing fps games, people who grown up with quake/ut games giving up gaming, and growing number of new ones who were once "CS kiddies".
It's sad really. I think we, competitive fps fans, are dying breed. Question is, which game will last longest in reality dominated by casual friendly shooters. I hope Quakeworld. Or at least one of Quakes or their clones...
Todays market is dominated by casual friendly, slow fps games. I think it all started with CS, but CS was (is) million times better than recent Call Of Duty or Battlefield games. Even less realistic games, like Crysis 2 are made this way. Slow player movement (sprint button doesn't help, it's still slow), shallow gameplay, and domination of hitscan guns.
Combat skill is nonexistent. Aim is everything. It comes down to who pulls trigger faster, as death is nearly instant. In Quake games meeting of players from two opposite teams means usually (if they are both on the same level on skill and one isn't lacking health) ballet of rockets, jumping, and strafing. In these "realistic" shooters it goes like this: players stop to aim down the sights, pew pew pew, and after two seconds max one falls down. Usually the one who pulled trigger later.
Forget map and item control - nowadays, you start with loadout. There's no need to worry about armor and health ( it regenerates), no need to care about ammo, no need to "lock" the map to win. Of course there are gametypes with pickup items, but these are less popular. One level of depth is missing... it's like playing Q3 or QL iCA over and over. Only without strafejumping and running turned off.
The fact fps games are developed for consoles doesn't help either. Gamepad is one of worse options for fps games - seriously, trackball, touchpad and drawing tablet are better for them, and these aren't made for gaming. But to the point - slow and imprecise movement of crosshair means gameplay must be adjusted to it. Have you tried Quake Arena Arcade on XBLA? It doesn't have autoaim, and gameplay is the same as PC version of Q3. Result is you can't hit s**** with RG or LG on medium and long range, midairs and prediction shots (especially long range) are almost impossible. Strafejumping? Forget about it. Decent player can adjust to inferior controls but game will still play like parody of Quake... New games must adjust to these shortcomings of control input, to play somewhat acceptable - so they are slower, and filled with instahit weapons that kill within milliseconds. Also have autoaim (or "aim assistance" as console gamers call it).
Don't get me wrong - these things are good on console. But PC ports are left with the same design (minus autoaim) and gameplay, and have m+k controls. This produces ridiculous results - games are too easy, be it singleplayer or multiplayer... Some devs try to cripple mouse aiming - see Dead Space - to save their game from being too easy. It's stupid and cheap way of solving problem, and i don't like it, but most devs don't bother at all. Have you played PC version of Halo? I picked it up few years ago to see what the hype was about and played on Legendary (i heard it was so hardcore and ass kicking so i was curious) - died ONCE during entire play through. It was when Elites with swords first showed up, i didn't saw first one (spawned behind me). Elite AI was decent, but they were too damn easy to take out - strip shield with plasma then few shots to the head. Hunters were a joke - circle strafe and one pistol shot to exposed part - wtf?! I felt like i would have MUCH harder time playing with gamepad, but mouse made this game too easy and boring. I finished it to see if there are any challenges, spec ops elites were only minor upgrade over standard ones, and flood parts were easier than later Doom levels. Blah.
What did go wrong? Quake 3 was hyper-popular after release. Unreal Tournament too. These games were strong years after their release, but it seems no worth successor showed up. Painkiller was promising but it didn't delivered. Q4 was one of few decent "old formula" games and bring some fresh elements, but failed to be new Q3, some time later last big budget "classic" shooter, UT3, failed too. Quakelive is HUGE step back for Q3 community - most of updates included in CPMA client and ioquake3 go down the drain. It's gameplay is less polished (jumping over items...) and also dumbed down compared to vQ3. Community created games, like Open Arena, Aftershock, Warsow, Nexuiz (or whatever it's called right now), Alien Arena - are ghost towns with small loyal playerbase. Warsow is perhaps best example of how times changed - it was hardcore fps similar to cpma at first, then more and more tweaks were made to make it easier for new players, to attract them - simple movement, stun (sad, Warsow one on one fights were unique and dynamic with all this wall bouncing), more toned art style, better graphics, more objective based gametypes, weaker weapons... all of this, and it didn't helped. Many loyal players left the game after "dumbicitation". I was hyped about it a 0.32 times, it had perfect fast paced gameplay - then 0.4 versions came out and were mess, 0.5 too, 0.6 is somewhat better but still shadow of what wsw could become.
Quakes aren't in better shape. Q3 scene is in agony (last attempt to ressurect it, fraglove, failed to make change), Q2 and QW are closed enclaves, don't know how things are in Q4 but i think no better. Quakelive failed to be as popular as everyone predicted - it have dedicated playerbase, and constant flow of newcomers, but is still small. What happened? I think it was mixture of many things - communities elitism, shift from PC to consoles when developing fps games, people who grown up with quake/ut games giving up gaming, and growing number of new ones who were once "CS kiddies".
It's sad really. I think we, competitive fps fans, are dying breed. Question is, which game will last longest in reality dominated by casual friendly shooters. I hope Quakeworld. Or at least one of Quakes or their clones...
News