I posted this on the blog "the future of ezquake" :

Well some above here mentioned that new players wont play and get owned. Now that is a fact no matter what you do with the client. Making a total new and great single player thing with PR will of course get some new players but they will still get owned when they try it online.

What it really comes down to is to attract new/more players. Doing a quakeword live (like q3 live) will probably help some.

But from my experience the alfa and omega is about having fun when you play and not get pwnd. What is fun is to play equals...rite?

So how do you do that?

Well I tried to tell certain weak admins like 10 years ago that if you go down the TB3 road this game will end up dead. I'm not going to say I told you so. We all know i love kenya but thats not the issue here, the issue is having fun when you play.

THIS IS ABOVE EVERYTHING

So if winning is fun and loosing hard is not, then yeah, we really need to start from scratch. Well, TB3 aint starting from scratch, i can tell you that.

For me this is really simple; In order to attract some more players, and then some more, and then some more, and then some more....you need to offer them something. Not only the client, but content. You got different kinds of content. You got qw.nu...and what else? Some youtube videos? Ok that is nice, at least for me who know this game!

But for new players? Not sure. Also the new players are told by us what maps to play. "These are the maps we play...so you have to play this....you can not choose for yourself...unless you want to play all alone".

So how long you want them to play TB3 then to get where we oldtimers are?

Why on earth did we make the handicap feature for example? It is useless, no one uses it. Why? The handicap feature was meant to even things out? For fun yes? I guess owning noobs is more important than grow a community?

Just look at todays 4v4 league; salvation. Now what is that? Its a mix league really. So what has TB3 mixes done for us these last years? Well, "new" players that came in lets say 5-6 years ago got introduced to 4v4 on TB3 only and was told: "play mix games and you get better! play play play!" So they do that. Also they watch demos of the best players making tons of frags. "Wow, I also want to be like that!".

So what did this do for qw?

Well, after 17 years of qw, there is only the salvation div. 1 teams that got, lets say: "good" teamplay.

The div. 2 teams suck pretty much at the teamplay stuff roaming around ffa/mix style.

Why?

Because we told them to. It's our own fault.

If we for example had told the "rookies" to do something else, maybe we still would have a decent amount of active clans? Lets say we would have a CTF league for the rookies, where they could learn the basic stuff of teamplay; Defend, Attack....COMMUNICATE! Just an example... I spec salvation div. 2 these days and i cant believe how much players still suck at teamplay. Its like the game is still only 2-3 years old.

Now why do I use these arguments (tb3 and teamplay) ?

I will tell you why:

Clans are what make the community big/strong. YOU DONT GET CLANS doing TB3 mixes! Clans are formed because people have something in common, they want to play together because they want to work together. You dont work together in mix games because you dont have anything in common with the guys you play with. Also the game doesnt mean anything for the team, except for yourself getting the most frags you possibly can...because that is fun for YOU.

Now this is not what i call team building. You dont get more clans this way.

In order to get more stable teams you need to have something to fight for, together. Not to play with someone that pisses you off. When you get a group of players that want to fight for something together, then you will get a clan. And only then.

In the early days lesser skilled clans could challenge much better clans and have some fun. Why? Because they could choose their kenya and have some fun, they had a shot at glory...at least for 20 mins. Dont you come tell me anything else. That was some fun shit. Sure, someone will always whine, but that was also some of the charm with qw; whine and drama. I dont see any more whine and drama these days, so i had to make some drama of my own and tell the captain of Rikoll2, Xenic, to fuck off, for being an useless captain. Also i congratulated Rikoll on his choice of captain. /Link got bored with life.

But enuff of that, we dont want drama do we, that might just spawn some attention!

But back to what i want to make a point of: CONTENT!

Back in the days when i started to make daily reports on the games being played in NQR (i guess it was nqr3 or nqr4...cant remember), in all divisions, suddenly the community started to grow. Suddenly the div. 6 players got to read about themselves. Now that was pretty cool for a rookie, to read about themselves. So the lower divisions had good activity...they where having fun and they got good content. Rock on! Div. 1 was ofc still a bit lame those days, as usual, with lots of WOs and delayed games etc; it was all about winning. Whine and drama.

So to sum it up, if you want more players/clans to keep develop qw, then we need to take a few steps back and rethink what we are doing. We dont need an ownage qw.nu site, we dont need some elite leauge, we dont need some great client....what we need is to bring the fun back in the game and to add content to that fun. Then you will seed something that will grow, maybe slow, but for sure it will grow.

Then you add the guy that made 5 custom maps for the qw community in 3 months and made Slackers and Legeartis do playoff games in NQR vs eachother on kenya to run the whole shit... and I can promise you one thing: All uphill from now on (well...we are at rock bottom soon so that wont be so hard will it?)

So if some of you great coders can work with me for a week or two, i will save this game from going down the tb3 abyss and die out. We need more choice of freedom, we need to reward activity and we need to give the players who play CONTENT on the game THEY are playing....not what WE think they should play.

If just one of you who can code can get your head out of your ass, wake up and PM me, I will get you more players to this game.

...or underestimate me...again.

Peace

What a goddamn huge enormous monstrous wall of TEXT. Ack!

I understand your frustration, however it usually doesn't help insulting the people you ask for help. With that attitude perhaps its you who should get your head out of your ass and do something useful, like learn-programming-motherfucker and produce something useful instead of a big text-blob.

I think its up to the big amount of players who currently or never contributed shit to the community to step up, not throw shit at us who actually do stuff already :-)

Oh and I already gave you a tip (twice) about someone to contact for it, have you done that? I guess not since I also said contact me again if doesn't turn out good.

lol dimman

First of all, i never insulted anyone and did not mean to do so....try to look at it with a smile and some humor plz For those who felt insulted...should i say sorry or say go check your head? (another joke!!).

Second, i would never insult ANYONE who contributes to the qw-scene, lol, that would be an ass-stupid act I was a contributor myself so that would be like eating my own pine.

Now i want to contribute again, thats what i was trying to say. And ultimatly i would learn how to php myself if no one steps up, but it will take much longer time.

Just saying

Peace

...and i took your tip before i posted this :>

Hehe, apparantly the site doesn't accept :-) as smiley, without dash was fine, that's why the smile seemed to be missing

Hehe, I didn't take it too seriously (I guess the programming motherfucker joke isn't funny if you haven't heard about it...), however I kind of had a point with it. The last things you say is that "i'd do it myself but it would take longer time*, now we're starting to sound like paradoks, who's had about 15 years to learn something productive but still can't do html/php/mysql/C etc ..

It will take some time in the beginning to learn, but in the end it probably benefits both yourself and the community. If more people were to just jump into it and be more _doers_, you could actually be of some help in the future too without being dependant on someone else

I will never give up on quake... So in 50 years from now, there will be one server up, with one player on it (me) so please feel free to drop by for a 1on1.

Thats true dimman

But you also got different kind of contributors. You got coders and programmers who of course are 100% needed, and you got "community" guys that boosts enthusiasm to others, doing lots of different stuff.

And at the moment it looks like the qw.nu site might need a "news-updater" dude

With an active 4v4 community it is of course easier to make news, i understand that.

So everyone is needed to make the train go forward, we all got different skillset and we all should do what we do best. If you leave everything to just a small group it dies faster.

The news coverage (and even some notices for div2) of last season salvation was a great boost for me atleast.
Live commentary to demos, monday recaps, blog posts, news items etc. etc. keeps the flow going even when there are no games currently playing.

Generally, I think what we need is people who take the time to do these off-game things.
However, with the average age of the current player base - time is getting more hard to find compared to when we were all 16.

Video streaming with commentators, talkshows about tournaments and coverage in writing is whats most needed now. Not new maps.

This is so hot!! Welcome back Link

- Just email me ip and I will join.

More coverage/news/reads is needed. I could write. What should I write? Sassa, will you come back to write qwnews again?

Good read Link!




Thats absolutely true. As you said, Salvation had nice coverage on previous seasons also - which made it much more interesting than it is now (season 3) imo.
What can be done to improve the coverage?
What about crowdsourcing? in other words, let everyone contribute. Someone who saw a div 3 game should be allowed to easily write a public report about that game. This would "descentralize" the coverage and would be an incentive for ppl to write (and read!) about what matters to them.



That's bold. It will only work if you respond to what players really want (which is, as u said, TO HAVE FUN in their own way).

We need other gamemodes,
we need more coverage,
we need more involvement from the communty (thats a major problem imo, there are much more players that just play than the ones that write in the forum)
we need contextualized stats,
we need variety!

what are we gonna do about it ? =)

QW will not attract many new players. It's down to the ones who are active today to stay active, basically. And maybe get more old-timers back, speaking as a 90s gamer returning, as we were pretty dedicated back then, and that doesn't just go away. Don't underestimate the effect of the nostagia trip! Plus QW is like riding a bike (minus some air control and speed jump stuff that have developed in my absence).

Being very rusty and after more than 10 years, it's still fun every single time to play a mix game, even though I usually end up low/lowest on the scoreboard. (Thanks to you guys for letting me play even though I drag my teams down most of the time.) More rusty old-timers would be fun, especially for us who aren't that skilled. But after being back for a couple of weeks now, I will say this: If you're not in div 1 or div 2 of the draft now, there's not much more than mix games to play. (Dunno if there are other comps out of season atm.) A div 3 would be fun, but we weren't enough players this year I guess.

So: Some rookie competitions would be cool.

Btw: Are there other tournaments, or is salvation the only one still active (except QHLAN)?

Well i am not gonna do this into a map issue again, been there done that, its part of why i left the scene for years, but the truth is that not only me left because of this reason. Many found things boring with so "little variety" in the game. The guys running the community back then was more directed to how to perfect the game, getting better and better on TB3. I still remember Hangtime's words: "I cant get enough of dm3, I still learn things about that map even though I have been playing it constantly for 6-7 years" ...using that argument ofc to tb3's benefit.

So we made that choice and lost players on the way, when in fact you had room for more. We can only blame ourselves. Its too easy to say "qw died because qw-players got older and got real life issues". These qw'ers still got internet and a PC and are for sure spending time on Inet don't you think? They just don't use it on qw. I already spoken to some oldtimers that will suit up again if they can get more variety. You don't need much to start a fire, sometimes a spark is enough.

Everyone seems to agree we need more news stuff etc, not surprising. The best content we can do, imo, is content made on the games that are played. This is like a snowball effect; if you start to do some coverage/report on all games being played, others will follow. And those others are the players themselves, that after a while will think its cool to report on their own games, when they see how it could be done. This content is way much more important to spark activity than some talkshow about the games or commentary, as for now this is mainly for the hardcore players. I think that "div. 6 players" likes to PLAY before they watch what other players do. Having said that, the talkshow/commentary bit could also be done with lesser skilled clans, when players think its cool to do it themselves. Its like dimman says; players need to do this stuff themselves. But they have to WANT to do it.

News/content about the games are also way much better if you got something juicy to write about, when real clans with a history clash together, rather than some mix-league put together to save the game I still remember the old nqr-days when players started to PM me on IRC everyday going: "omg where is that daily gamereport!"

So then we are back to the question how to get more clans...and i already answered that; need more variety, reward activity and some dedicated admins.

Someone here said: "we dont need more maps". Well lets look at that then shall we...lets say we invite some quake3 (quake live) clans to a qw 4 v 4 ladder with every option available. Nowdays many q3 maps are ported to quake, rite? Well cool, then we could get some q3 players playing qw on maps they already know? Maybe we can get 2-3 q3 clans to do that? for fun? And maybe those 2-3 clans just might spread the word a little if they think this ladder is a cool thing? "Omg Quake1 Quad-RL on q3dm6! Hey guys you gotta try this out!". Then we could get like....5 more clans and 30 more players....in a short period of time?

This was just an example, there are A LOT of things we could accomplish if we just are more open minded and more creative. The elite-tb3 will never die, it will be the top spot place to be anyway and the premier league, no matter how many odd or strange games we got in qw. We just need to open up some doors again and invite players into it.

What do we got to loose?

Nothing

Thank you VV-Dustman for proving my point

I will never forgot the e1m3/e4m3 games we had on LANs....it was legendary

Now how much do you think you would drag your team down on e4m3? )))))))

Cheers,
[DP] Lincoln

- Just email me ip and I will join. (2)
=P

I think the whole "clan concept" is no longer attractive for the average QW player, who is ~25-35 years old and has a job and probably even a real life. In the 90s and early '00s that was different. Players had time and the motivation to compete in a way and feel connected to a bunch of enthusiasts with the same interest.

So what is the "clan concept" that, according to you, are not for the 25-35 years old with a "real life" ?

I would rather use my time on qw, than on some lame realityshow on TV for example, or watch politicians tell lies on the news.

But hey, thats me.

Does that mean i don't have a "real life" ?

Well, we wont know for sure until we offer them something will we.

Me, myself and I, was never a fan of the Clan concept, in fact I had join AL (Aliens) clan since the beginning, and untill today (like 14 years later) i'm still with "AL." in my nickname (AL.Kernell).
This was one (I think THE) of the first clan here in my homecity, and most of the players were friends, and we never participate in championships, couse we were so many...
The real point of the clan was to identify the addicted players, who used to make Lans every weekend...

I always HATED the little clans who always wanted to play together agains mixed-noobs. Always with the excuse: - We wanna practice!

I think CLANS (in general) only brings separation, specially for the newcomers.

Well call it a clan or a team or whatever you want.

For me its about 4v4 teamplay. In order for me have fun doing that i need to play with the same dudes. Its really not so hard for me to execute IRC, teamspeak and qw

But it might be hard for others...who knows

What I mean by "clan concept" is the seriousness we had in mind when we referred to the term "clan". Maybe it's difficult to explain by me. But just think back when you were younger (I know that you're a bit older, Link, but even in your 30s you qualified to some degree ;-)) and being in a clan meant something to you, there was some sort of seriousness. It mattered whether you and your team would stand a chance at next night's game vs some other bunch of players. You spent minutes or maybe hours thinking of strategies and map choices for the next official map. You watched demos of opponents and analyzed them for gaps in their teamplay. You had clan skins, a website to maintain, follow the leagues, read about hardware news, improve your config, hang on IRC and much more. There was something "around" the game which kept you busy for weeks if you liked, 24h non-stop on a day, just to learn more about Quake and experience some sort of fun you gathered in some sort of Quake(world).
I'm not saying that sort of enthusiasm doesn't exist anymore. There still are people like that but they have become rare, very rare. A good clan and league needed caretakers, organisers and participants. The problem I see nowadays is that most caretakers are also organisers and also participants at the same time - and not too many simple participants. The best players write the news articles about their own successes in some leagues which they also run by themselves on the newssite they run by themselves.

Maybe I drifted away a little, but to sum up: I think the player base that is serious enough to be interested in taking things seriously and form real clans as we used to have is too small.

Trust me, I'd love to see clans return. If I had one wish for next christmas, it'd be the return of TVS, CMF, FF, FS and many others to challenge SR. But I just don't think it's going to happen as clan life is time consuming and requires a lot of work. Time, which is spare to people around our average age.

By the way, it's great to have you back. I missed your controversial discussions.

Agreed. I'd like to log on and play 4on4 now and then, and that's basically it. It would be cool to play with more or less the same team every sunday, like on salvation, or some other tournament, or get a team and play friendly games with other teams, but mix is cool too. But I don't have time for more that the occasional 4on4 game.


Ah, the memories! We really ruled E4M3 for a while, until the better clans got enough practice on it.

I don't really mind playing DM2, DM3 and E1M2 again and again, I understand why we do it, and I agree with it. That said, a 4on4 tournament with self chosen maps - DM2, DM3 and E1M2 not being allowed, except maybe as the 3rd decider - would be a nice touch of variety! (One would need to limit the maps to choose from, tho, maps should be somewhat fitting for 4on4.) And it would give the lesser skilled QWers like myself a chance to get an upper hand against the better players at the «home map», and thus even it out a little. So at least one might have a chance of winning «at home», if not overall.

Still: I don't think we can escape the fact that DM2, DM3 and E1M2 4on4 is essentially what QW is today and has been since the late 90s. And I suspect the reason we are all still here / came back, is because we like it that way.

(Edited 2013-01-29, 22:59)

Regarding the map issue: To me it was a huge disappointment when all leagues had some sort of pool of 3-5 maps. I liked the home map concept (all exmy maps + possibly some customs) for fun leagues and TB3 for serious events.

From a player's perspective I loved to play e3m3, e1m5 etc. but did I want to see Slackers play TVS on these kind of maps in an "important" game? Definitely not.

Spot on, andy. A self chosen maps tournament would be cool for the fun and variety of it, and maybe we'll even get some unexpected winners etc. But not for the serious games.

Looking at the last EQL, EQL 15, i think a ladder is long overdue.

I dont think a new EQL/NQR system will do enough. Looking at the stats, only 7 teams managed to play 6 games or more. Thats pathetic. I can understand why a mix-league was created.

With the "freedom" of a laddersystem you will probably get more games going, if players are willing to do what it takes. Freedom of maps will get some more teams. Also, looking at some of the games in last EQL, i am really wondering if we developed at all:

SR - TPA 670 - 2
SD2 - TPA 628 - -3
FA - SD2 -1 - 581

wtf? I really thougt these times was over? what is fun with this?

I know that the best clans dont really like the laddersystem, because no one wants to play them. Understandably. So why not offer to play with handicap to even the playing field some more? If you have a system that rewards activity, that surely aint no problem? Maybe the best teams should just take this is a challenge and play the lesser good teams with handicap. This is what they do in golf btw in many amateur tournaments. I am not saying it should be like this in qw, but if this helps spawn activity, then the elite players should think about this to help themselves. Just saying.

Reading all of the above, i can at least think of 4 things to get more players/games/teams:

1. Laddersystem - play who you want when you want
2. More maps - getting back some oldtimers and some others
3. Play with handicap if others wont play you because of skill difference
4. Invite Q3 teams to the ladder with the argument: you can play your q3 map in qw also

Anyone else got something?

@Link: I think you're onto something, and surely a ladder will not hurt. How much it will help, and to what degree, remains to be seen.

Speaking for myself only here, I must say I truly miss the clan aspect of 4on4. To me, a mix based tournament is a very boring concept that have already lost my interest more or less. Misunderstand me correctly, I will still commit to what I've signed up for and do my best to win, and not run away at first sign of trouble (*kremt*). To me, team development is way more interesting than just playing an amount of games you can almost count on your fingers alone, and then close the chapter. A mix tournament will never be able to recreate what is truly magical about QW 4on4, try as it might.

Even steamrolling other teams with Fragomatic in EQL14, or getting boned by top teams with Chosen in EQL15, was a more enriching experience than playing these tight, to me meaningless, mix games compressed into a tournament system, where all your team development is thrown in the bin after these 4-6 official games.

I've also really missed more maps. Personally I find it amazing that people still want to play these same old maps over and over. I'm close to dead tired of them already, and I've been around for a shorter span than most, but admittingly been more active than most the time I've been around.

My fear is that the player base is simply too small to make a ladder successful, and that too many of "top" players that are too lazy to put in even 2-3 hours to learn a new map despite playing for several hours each week won't sign up for it. I'm also unsure it will spark that much interest as you seem to project, but I really hope I'm wrong about this point.

I hope you follow through with this, Link. I can garantuee that you will see my name in some list on some clan in your ladder if you do.

Agreed with Rikoll. The scene needs clan-action back again. Hell, even two-three top clans could motivate a whole community.. I mean remember tVS vs SR fights over several seasons, some upcoming new clans trying to push its way to the top (most of them atleast managed to make it above middle in div1) - BBB, Fusion, Quakeklan, Crazy 88 etc.

I also miss RocketZ and his blog about games! Where are you RocketZ?! Please come back.

We need, imo:
* More clan fights.
* More maps (but lets not overdo it instantly to like instantly add 10 maps to the main pool)
* More coverage (doesn't need to be professional stuff, just random people expressing opinions and thoughts about games, clients, whatever)

E4M3 FTW

Says the man who told me he was too lazy to learn qwenya duel maps 3 days ago

I agree with most of you people say, but I really don't think tdm will bring new players, it's way too hard as a rookie. Easier, more fun games modes should be tried.

Atm, QW is TDM. I don't agree with you. If you, when you are new, had the chance to easily hook up with a clan and start praccing other equally skilled clans and get help from your teammates, all would be great. Thats IMO what's needed.

Joining a clan, getting to know some new people, play together and get better, build a solid teamplay, now that's serious fun!