It's all relative... To me more drastic changes would be e.g. changing the damage that a weapon does per unit of ammo, changing the position of key items (rl/lg/powerups/armours etc), being more extreme with my suggested changes (e.g. max rox 20)
If a change had zero effect, there would be no point in doing it.

Some of the changes are not so subtle (e.g. self damage), hence I said "mostly" Things like adding shells on dm2 I don't think is a game changer, and not even necessary, just remember thinking it a couple of times when I ran out of ammo and then getting annoyed at empty packs getting hoovered :p

I don't expect any of these ideas to get implemented at this stage, but I think it is an interesting debate. Some ideas might suck, but it wouldn't be brainstorming without that... Some of my thought process is below

-An extra spawn on dm3, I would be really interested to see how that played out. It just feels like 6 spawns is too few for a map of that size, and I'd like to see how it would impact on strategy. I thought perhaps water spawn might be one to try because it wouldn't massively impact on initial powerup race or quads, and I also like the idea of a spawn that isn't easy to control. It would change the map (which I consider the best as it is now) but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be interesting.
-SNG starting ammo is 15 shots, which feels really little (no weapon has a lower total damage output from starting ammo, and it is projectile not hitscan/radius). On most maps this doesn't really matter as ammo is often nearby, but it is more noticeable in FFA (dmm3 so acquired often but lots of players so the ammo is often missing)

Map tweaking was something that has been done with custom maps, such as the CMT series, ExMyTDM series, ztndm3q, blessed etc. The slight irony is that arguably the community should be best placed to propose tweaks to core maps having played them so extensively compared to customs (i.e. making proposals based on extensive playtime and position of knowledge, rather than gut feelings based on maybe a dozen rounds or so).

e1m2 just seems like a map that could be enhanced structurally without doing major changes. So I'm talking about just trimming some of the linear edges, rather than putting extra teleporters and item placements in like some TDM maps did. I actually really enjoy the gameplay there, but the SP origins mean there a few too many irrelevant sections..

Here are two ideas I steal without shame from Quake Live.

A better time out/pause system.

Many servers don't allow pause. The logic behind withholding this feature is that some people would abuse it. And this is true. Some people would. But maybe there are ways to mitigate the abuse.

PAUSE could become a voteable command during a match. (IE, in the middle of a duel, "Player A votes to pause." The pause doesn't go into effect until Player B agrees).

Or TIME OUT is only allowed by each team once per game, with a countdown of 60 seconds or so.

While there are a few troll-ish players who I can see abusing the feature, I'd trust the vast majority to use it appropriately. As a rule, I'd rather give players the option to pause if someone knocks on their door, or their PL spikes to 90, or a teammate goes AFK, because that stuff ruins games.


A forfeit/concede option.

Garbage Time is boring. If a player wants to concede a match, let them. Voting to "break" isn't good enough because (a) it requires the winning player to agree (why?), (b) some servers erase demos of aborted matches, and (c) it has a tinge of bad sportsmanship.

In duels, typing concede (or forfeit) should immediately end the match without erasing the MVD file. There should be no shame in conceding a game that is no longer win-able.

In team games, either a majority of players on the losing team or all players on the losing team would need to vote to concede. Since five votes are needed with the current "break" system, what sometimes happens is that all players on the losing team type "break", but no one on the winning team does because they are busy trying to get first place on the frag board. This is a waste of time. If the losing team no longer wants to play, the match should end.

Someone could make a case that pausing ruins games too. Why not just vote break if someone knocks on your door? Or go to the door, come back and keep playing if you can?

We already have live streamed tournament games slowing to a crawl as the players argue about how to sort out ping differences. Would you like to see those same players pause mid-game and collect their thoughts during the finals of duelmania (because someone decided they had lagged momentarily)? If you want to see a really extreme example of pausing/delays tainting the results of a game, check out the grand finals of street fighter 4 at EVO 2015.



If people could single-handedly abort matches, you would see a lot more bad sportsmanship than you do right now. As it stands, they have to let the other person win the game that they deserve to win, or leave in disgrace (disconnect from the server etc). Or...if the two players are able to communicate like adults they can break and play again. I see no problem with that :^]

Here is a ktx patch to add /concede.

I made the rules very similar to yours. To summarize:

• In duel the game ends immediately when any player types /concede.
• In team games, if the majority of players on any team /concede, that team concedes.
• Demos are saved and match stats are output in conceded games.

Some things I considered but did not do:

• Add server setting to disable concede entirely.
• Allowing players to choose in-game concede settings (concede allowed, disallowed, only allowed in second half)
• In duel having both players agree... but I don't want one player to trick the other player into conceding...
• Show in lastscores when games were breaked / conceded (didn't investigate that code path)
• Drop concede player's score to -99, since technically a player can /concede if they are ahead

When I play with friends we want to pause all the time. Most of the servers we play on have disabled pause though...

I think this was aimed at 4on4 mixes. I'd rather see a /kick <player> or /sub <player> vote mechanism to kick players / request a replacement. Problem with /sub is that a spec could see enemy locations and items, so that would be harder to "legitimize", but that basically never matters.



Tournaments should have pause rules.

Anyways, in a small community like quakeworld if you earn a bad reputation people just won't play with you. Players that abuse features like this would just get kicked. Nothing stops a single player from 50 x /kill and ruining their team. Nothing stops a single player from blocking the last spot in a mix.

In Dota2 it works like this:

• When hitting the pause-button, a 3 second countdown is displayed for all players, and then the game is paused. The pausing player is now on a cooldown (don't know for how long) before he can pause again.

• Any player can, after a ~5 second grace period from when the pause started, resume the game with the pause button.

• Any other player (not on a cooldown) can pause again.

I think this works well. Why re-ivent the wheel? Just finetune values and we're set with a working pause functionality!

I'm not a fan of the concede functionality. First off I can't see it being used in tournaments at all. It will fuck up frags/kills scores that might have an impact.

I can't see that there's a problem with typing break and an explanation in a 1on1 if the game needs to be aborted? Hasn't been a problem so far.
Basically the only use-case is mix games where the teams are really bad. People also tend to want to break out of rage because the scores are 100-10 after some minutes on dm2, although the final score is far from settled... Functionality like this just encourages people to give up instead of trying harder.

IMO we don't need more aborted games, it's really demotivating to break a game.

I agree, concede should not be possible in smackdown ruleset or something like that.

Frag differences are very important in tournaments like EQL. Also stats are interesting, avarage frags/game and so on. Concede would mess that up completely.

EDIT: I do however want to point to my other thread, since developers seem to read this one (hint dimman ) -> http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/topic/6720/

These are some horrible ideas... no offense.



There are decent custom maps already around that people don't play... messy, spinev2 and skull come to mind for 1on1.

It is worth noting that there is at least 20 dm4 variations and none of them play as good as the original. The only worthwhile one which I've ever seen was done by povohat and the lava was simply replaced with slime. Any other changes to the gameplay ruin the brutal beauty of the map.

As was already stated, breaking a game causes servers to skip saving the demo (and skip game stats). Fixing that is as trivial as changing a 1 to a 0 (see `vote_check_break` calling `EndMatch`). I can think of more than one game where I've sat around with an AFK player / disconnected player just so I could download a demo.

On a related note. Here is a patch that adds many of EQL's interesting end game stats (Top Dmg, Best Boomstick %, Top RL Killer). I had meant to open up a thread asking for fun suggestions of end game stats (like last red, top axes, most red spawns, etc), but I don't yet have the free time.

And if you check you will see that I say nothing against that, but then that's the issue to fix

Getting to the top of the scoreboard before breaking is never a waste of time!

I just quoted you saying "Hasn't been a problem so far" and I pointed out a problem.

Anyways I agree, fix is easy. Untested patch.

I was going to suggest another tweak today, but then I came back to all this.


Awesome! I hope server admins implement this. But since the community can never agree an anything, it would be better to include the "concede allowed/disallowed" command as well.



Do you have any evidence to support that prediction? Forfeits have been a part of Quake Live since 2011 without any dire consequences to sportsmanship. Furthermore, we are a small community, and thus less prone to trollish behavior.



I don't gain any satisfaction by forcing my opponent to play through Garbage Time, nor from compelling him to "leave in disgrace." Garbage Time is no fun for spectators, either. There is a reason stadiums empty out towards the end of blowout football games.



Valid point. I agree that concede would not work for 4v4 tournaments (unless another way to rank teams was used).

Duel tournaments are a different story. As a spectator, is it really that fun to watch a close, tense match turn into a casual, +forward frag fest once the outcome is clear? (see: Duelmania - Rikoll v. Bulat DM4). I don't think so. Yet it happens so often.



Typing "break" has an aroma of bad sportsmanship to it. So players don't do it very often, especially in duels. Maybe it's a psychological thing. Maybe it's because aborting a match feels more disrespectful than conceding a match. Maybe it's because the server acts like the match never happened. Whatever the case, it's almost never done in duels (compare to Quake Live, where it is common and accepted for a player to forfeit in the closing minutes of a decided match).

I can only think of one important QW tournament (Aerowalk by Besmella) where a player conceded by typing "break." Locust typed "break" in the final versus Rikoll. Some people on the QTV complained that Locust was being a sore loser by typing break. That's ridiculous. He knew Rikoll had an insurmountable lead, and conceded in the most reasonable way the server allowed. Nothing sore about it.



Let's net forget that probably over 95% of 4v4's played are mix games. Maybe 25% of those have very uneven teams? That's a significant amount of games where "concede" would come into play.



I agree, some people give up too early. But they give up whether the game ends or not. They go AFK. Or they only half pay attention. Or they start sabotaging their team. Once they give up, it's game over - whether the match is aborted or not. Might as well end it.

I've been thinking about /concede, and wondered if it could be based on number of frags the person is down by and time remaining? This would stop people from using it to break a game early to stop another player getting confidence for the next map.

We already have slow-spawn times of five seconds, so we could make it (fragdiff + 1) * slowspawn_time? The /concede command would then only work when the map is out of the player's ability to win, rather than just rage-quitting because they don't like the map and are five frags down in the first minute.

This is just thinking for duels obviously, not sure about other formats.

Dirtbox resurrects my in-game item editor idea to tell me that...

The point of the item editor would be to empower players to tweak items as they see fit. It's irrelevant whether you approve of specific examples. Players would experiment with whatever interests them. Perhaps new, compelling item configurations would gain popularity over time.

Maybe you could even think of some good ones to go along with your criticism of mine.

Also: variety can be an end in itself. Think of great jazz musicians, who are able to take a standard piece of music and, through on-the-fly improvisation, alter its structure, tempo, and dynamics in compelling ways. Mastery allows one to break the rules. Are we all "masters"? No. But most of us are intimately familiar with TB5. We understand the ebb and flow of, say, a DM3 game. We can infer the perturbations to that ebb and flow which would occur if an item were to be moved, its timing changed, or a spawn point added. I find ideas like that interesting for the same reason I'm fascinated by Mozart's variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" (Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star). Changing rules and conventions can yield surprising results.


That said, even though my specific item-editing ideas were off the top of my head, I'll defend a few of them.

You didn't like my idea to decrease rocket pack size in the DM4 MH room, saying...

I don't think five fewer rockets makes it much harder to exit the MH room. If you spawn there, you're starting with ten rockets instead of fifteen. That seems like enough. The benefit of decreasing available rockets is that it makes it harder to camp in there. The large ammo pack makes it possible to indiscriminately spam the entrance - a skill-less way to slow the pace of the game. A small ammo pack would at least force the camper to predict when his opponent is going to pop around the corner, and use the smaller amount of rockets in a more discriminate manner.

You also disliked my idea to remove the GL from DM4...

DM4 is my favorite map. I enjoy its challenging topography, its brutal asymmetry, and yes, even most of its spam-heavy game play. But many players hate DM4. One thing they seem to hate is how grenade spam can drastically slow the pace of play, forcing players to wait for extended periods of time at the MH or RA rooms. Some people just don't have the disposition to enjoy camping it out in RA for 2 minutes if they need to. Removing the GL would decrease camping and increase the speed of play. If some players want that, then whatever. Good for them.

Finally, you disliked my idea of lowering the ring respawn time on DM3...

Isn't it obvious that de-synching the ring spawn time from pent would make it harder to keep track of? I love the idea. The point of the ring is to give a player an element of surprise. But everyone knows when to expect the ring: at the same time pent is up. De-synch the two, and things become more complicated. If a team in control forgets about the ring, they'd leave the out-of-control team a great opportunity. An unexpected ring could easily be used to steal an RA, quad, or even pent. Or the out-of-control team might decide to make a play for a ring spawn before attempting to challenge for quad. There are many complex scenarios that could play out which are not possible with the 5-min spawn time.

I'd love to see a ring added on E1M2 for similar reasons. It's an under-utilized, under-appreciated powerup.

Nice arguments sned. I'm ok with your proposed changes, but gl =)


This can be widely accepted without complaints imo

Yikes Powerups can completely change a map. I'm more in favour of "more maps" over "adjusting existing maps" but can see both points of view.

A while back, I made changes to KTX & mvdsv to allow map options such as "dm6$alt1" etc, so these ideas could be tested and the original maps left alone as just "dm6". Unfortunately it's caught up in other mvdsv changes to allow standard mods & ktx to be supported by same binary - I'll see if I can get this finished off & submitted.

Alternatively, create a new map from scratch that makes good use of the ring, like cracking a RA area lockdown on DM6

First go at implementing this now up on a test server (not suitable for official games) at meag-qw01.cloudapp.net.

This is running a version of mvdsv which can run PR1 & PR2 mods in 64bit, which hopefully means nothing to players, but needs tested before it went anywhere near a proper server. Alternative .ent files can be stored on the server, if named mapname#description.ent they'll be votable by the players as though ordinary maps. This means typing "dm2" always gives you standard dm2, and you have to explicitly pick alternative entity layouts. Hopefully this is a good compromise between those wanting to try variations, while keeping the classic maps... classic.

Currently available for selection are:

• dm6#mushi - no upper cells, green armour is now yellow. Should maybe replace the upper cells with something else instead, to keep sound?
• dm2#sng - nailgun replaced with sng, also shells available opposite sng & at bottom of stairs at low rl
• dm2#nonails - nailgun replaced with sg, all nail packs replaced with shells. might be better for team games.

I've also made modifications to hoonymode (hopefully not breaking anything else in the meantime), so the .ent file can be used to set details of the spawns, and initial item timings. The idea (courtesy of Dopeskillz) being that a particular situation can be played over and over. Examples so far:

• dm2#hoony1 - from LocKtar vs Murzik Thunderdome game: Locktar has just picked up the second mega at GL, Murzik has 200R/100 and is at RA/mega room. Round length 90 seconds. Allows practise of being stocked up and attacking/defending RA/mega.
• dm6#hoony1 - from GT vs BuLaT, Duelmania finals. Bulat has just scored the telefrag of the century, and is fully stacked at GA, but GT spawned beneath RA and it spawns in just over five seconds (mega spawns around +22 seconds). Round length 90 seconds, on a draw the GT-spawning player gets the win. Allows practise of racing from GA to RA, or just stop GT player getting LG, and try and win it from there.

The round lengths are set in the .ent file but could be disabled - just don't someone picking hoonymode then one point taking five minutes to complete. When a round is a draw and no default winner set, both players get a frag unless they're at the minimum number of frags to win the game (so we get closer to winning if the first round is a draw). Pre-game you'll get sequential spawns and be told in the console what items you receive if spawning there, so you can /kill to see how the map is configured (you'll also get told the name of your next spawn during the countdown... not sure if it breaks hoonymode too much to actually spawn you at that location but stop you moving during countdown, similar to race mode?).

If anyone wants to give it a shot, testing time & feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'm away now until Monday but will try and address any problems then. Again, this is a bit experimental at the moment, please don't try to play any official/meaningful games on that server.

This is fantastic! I unfortunately won't get a chance to use the test server any time soon, but I look forward to hearing about any progress - as well as contributing my own .ent file customizations at some point. Your work is much appreciated!

On a separate note, I wanted to return to last month's PAUSE command debate to throw my weight behind BPS's idea (below). It is the most reasonable solution, IMO.

I think this is maybe overcomplicating a bit, and in most cases players who want to concede do so before it is 'mathematically impossible' for them to win. The slowspawn calculation would probably mean games having to last a lot longer because that logic is based on the presumption that a player would immediately frag their opponent the instant they respawn. If they are trailing by 20 frags then realistically on normal maps they are not going to make 20 instant spawn frags, sooner or later the opponent will spawn somewhere it takes several seconds at least to kill them. It also doesn't take into consideration the fact you have to kill the opponent first, so e.g. if you are playing dm2 and the opponent has 200/200/rl and is playing very defensive to defend their 15 frag lead, even getting that first kill may take a while. You know the game is done even if theoretically you could frag them 15 times in a row.

That said, we want to avoid /concede being a unilateral break with no conditions to avoid abuse in non-tournament games. I would say maybe the game should have been running for a minimum of half the timelimit, but this is quite arbitrary.

To be honest, the more I think about it the more I come back to the best option being for it to behave like break - both players must agree but the only difference is the MVD isn't purged.

Yes that's the point, i.e. you can't look straight up or down, and players have learned how to play that way. So e.g. if I stand at spot X, push the mouse fully forward/back and shoot, I know where that shot will land.

If you change it to a 90 degree angle instead, my shot won't go where it does today for the same mouse movement.

I loved reading this, all the suggestions and thought put into it. Did any of this ever get implemented, like changes to LG, tweaks to iD maps, idrive, 90 degree pitch?