Not been here in a long long time,

I just picked up the quake champions beta and while it's ok - it's just not that good in my opinion. I still dabble in the very odd game of qw but even that has been awhile. It got me thinking as I normally do what's the point in new fps if you're a qw player, nothing ever comes close. (I generally play battlefield these days).

I've been marketing products and lead generation over Facebook for a few years now, made some big money with it too. I wouldn't mind having a go at bringing new players in just to see if it can even be done. What's the legality of the nquake package? is it fully legal or semi legal?

If I were to do this, someone other than me really needs to knock a better package together. While nquake is great it still (afaik) doesn't explain many things (such as weapon scripts - or have them on by default). A package which would somehow put a player in a newbie server whilst running an ad campaign, or set them up with a bot match and not have them having to type frogbot commands.

Something highly polished, I'd have to think over details but seeing as I don't play much anymore, input from other players would be better, I don't know. I don't even know if it would be worth it, I'd get a good idea how it's going after spending £500. A new trackable download package, and a tracked install would help immensely.

QW became part of me for half my life, just for the pure joy of it I'd be happy to do it

I just don't have the time to do anything else other than marketing what needs to be a well put together product/package

Thoughts?

chewz

I think it is a very very ambitious idea. good luck.

I think people no longer play QW because people no longer play QW. So I don't think that there's a solution to QW's lack of popularity these days. The reason why CS:GO is so popular is because CS:GO is popular. People view game statistics on Steam and see that CS:GO is the most popular FPS and so they all flock to it.

The next biggest problem I see with QW is the player model. So perhaps you could use the 5k to hire a programmer/graphic artist to update the player models?. But updating the models is a tricky issue because many players have become attached to fullbright skins. If you're a returning player and you want to compete then you're left no option but to also use fullbright skins. And it's very difficult to make a nice player model that looks good with fullbrights. r_bloom can make the fullbright models look okay but nobody uses r_bloom because of the performance impact. r_bloom also effects many other things like the bright areas of maps, which can look bad.

Possible solutions:

1. Attach a bunch of glow particles to the current player model to make it appear as though it's radiating light.

2. Add a shader that only blooms the player model.

3. Ban fullbrights and make a new player model.


Finally, the 3rd biggest problem I see with QW is the obsession with high frame rates and monitor refresh rates. This can turn people off. So rather than go buy new gear so they can compete they instead go play games with nice graphics and that run at a capped 60 fps for everybody.

(Edited 2017-04-07, 18:21)

But isnt it the same in CS:GO? people debating 60vs120hz all the time. Also witch mouse/keyboard/chair/computer/underwear the PROs are using.

I think its gonna be hard to get new players to QW. Sad but true. Maybe if there would be tournaments with prize money and stuff more players maybe would put some more time into it. But the fact that most QW players today is around their 20-30+ I just dont think the kids of today are intrested in our game.

Interesting idea!

My personal view with regards to nQuake is that it's a brilliant package but that its main problem is perhaps that it tries to do a bit too much at times, like under-the-hood magic in order to give a better user experience but which makes it harder to tailor because you don't really know what's going on at times. I don't agree that it needs advanced configuration though - why would new players even need weaponscripts when they would probably prefer to play with binds for each weapon instead of using weaponscripts, which is the case in 99,99% of the other games? The advanced configuration would probably come once they get hooked and are prepared to put in the time it takes to find out how things work anyway.
I would also switch off fullbrightskins by default (but keep "normal" brightskins) if presenting the game to new players for a modern, highly visible yet classic and coherent look.

The biggest problem is probably where to send players seeing as there's no matchmaking, but perhaps dedicated FFA servers filled up with very sucky bots would be a start.

There is so many things wrong with what you have said your post.

- There already IS a new player model that is updated with better animation etc. Look it up. Many people use it (I don't, but that is simply a personal preference thing).

- Fullbright skins have been standard even since the early times of QW which is 20 years ago. You could use all white or all red in software mode and it would be fullbright. All Arena based FPS games use fullbright skins

- Higher refresh rates and FPS isn't an 'obsession', it is a fact that it makes the game smoother.
Many people debate this and right now I will tell you exactly how to see it for yourself. Set your maxfps to 616 (one of the most popular settings used) and find an ammo box to look at. Move your mouse left and right back and forth and see how distorted, torn and unsmooth it becomes. Now set your fps to 1155fps and do the same thing. You will notice how much smoother it is and this is the same for all aspects of the game. Higher fps, smoother it is.

- You do not need a beefy or even modern PC to achieve high frame rates. Most people get bad fps due to bad configs. The configs that come with nQuake are extremely terrible at maintaining high FPS and most people base their configs on this. Many people double their FPS if they try my configuration. At QHLAN, with a single command, I was able to DOUBLE the fps that LocKtar was getting without has Quakeworld looking ANY different. In fact, I was going to do a blog post this weekend on how to build a dedicated QW PC on the smallest of budgets and maintain 1155fps at 1080p. I will still do that post, but here are the basic specs that you need:

* Intel Core i3-6100 or above (Disabling Hyperthreading the BIOS will give this CPU a big single threaded speed boost).
* 8GB of DDR4 2133 RAM. You could possibly even get away with 4GB
* Any SSD from the last 4 years but even on older platter based hard disk is probably fine.
* GeForce GTX 550 ti or above.
* Any monitor with 120hz or above whether it is CRT or LCD

You can build this entire PC for very little money. You don't need anything beefy or modern.

- 60fps and 60hz are fine for casual and console gamers but not for anyone who plays any fast paced Arena FPS if they want to be competitive.

+1 dirtbox


I strongly agree. Whenever I try and get someone to try this game, I end up zipping up my own personal install for them and giving them the choice between that and nQuake.

nQuake is a minimalist's nightmare. While it's good for the people that want what it offers (lots of prepackaged options for configs, textures etc with an installer / downloader), I feel it's offputting for equally as many people that want something barebones and to-the-point - but still a practical modern package with a good config, HUD etc.

I was brainstorming and quietly working on such a package myself, or rather I was focusing on making my personal one in a fashion that I could just upload somewhere and 'release' someday as a public nQuake alternative, but I kinda gave up on it, and it's since bloated out into a bit of a mess with no real choice aside from my own esoteric binds, hud, aliases etc. It's something I would be interested in maybe working on again, but there are without a doubt people in this community that would do a better job, and definitely should!


Depends who 'people' are, really. Arena FPS does have a modern and relevant (enough) crowd, but they basically exist on a spectrum between Quake Live and CPMA, or Unreal Tournament, and the many clones of these families of games (Reflex the obvious one). QW is simply not something that is in the picture of what modern AFPS players associate with Quake itself, let alone AFPS as a whole, but there is definitely a gap in the market for an AFPS that isn't dominated by the railgun (which has become THE defining weapon of Quake for the modern masses) or Q3 style w-strafing movement (clunky, inelegant, harder to learn and easier to master, but modern Quake's trademark movement style).


The reason CS:GO GOT so popular in the first place is because it's a pioneering modern eSport with a very heavily funded team-centric pro scene and an item economy (skins). A lot of people in the current generation are disillusioned with the eSports thing and want to go back to basics with just playing games for enjoyment, but there aren't many obvious options (which is where we can come in perhaps). The immediate choices are basically CS:GO / LoL tier eSports money laundering, or the other end of the spectrum with completely substanceless stream bait co-op survival and sandbox games.


It's all about stylizing it. You don't even need to go to such lengths as to create new models and assets, just pick good colour schemes. Minimal doesn't have to look shit, we just need someone with some understanding of design and aesthetics (and especially colour theory) to have a think about how to make the game look good through settings. bps springs to mind ;-D


Banning things like that is a slippery slope and has killed off / heavily weakened some very good competitive games (look at comp TF2). Forcing the game to be less visually clear in the name of making it 'fair' for the people that want to have dark skins, distracting textures, particles and fog everywhere does nothing for the casual players and makes the competitive ones annoyed.


Similar to my above point, capping performance in the name of making it an even playing field is something that just shits on everyone involved instead of helping anyone.

Modern competitive games such as CS:GO run like shit to sell stuff. The crappier your game is optimised, the more stuff your hardware sponsors can peddle to players to try and get the most minute of performance edges. Goes hand in hand with the above point about letting people turn visibility-hindering options off, they are usually also performance-hindering options.

Netcode is a good related point here. QW is great because if your connection is good, it feels wonderful. If you have no packet loss and a ping under 60 or so, you're never ever going to feel cheated by the netcode. The downside is that if you DO have high ping and / or packet loss, you're gonna have a really shitty time, and you're gonna feel really crippled playing against the guy with his crisp perfect hitreg and responsiveness.

CS:GO on the other hand, feels like you're playing with constant packet loss even if your connection is flawless. It's not uncommon to shoot someone in the face multiple times, see clientside blood everywhere and then die, only to find out that the server just didn't register any or all of the hits you made. (you can go back and look at the demos to confirm client hits afterward, thanks to the engine's debugging cvars). The result of this compromise is that having 100 ping or some packet loss doesnt really feel much different to having a flawless 30 aside from things happening a bit later.

My tangent on netcode is to make a broader point that compromising on performance just hurts the game in the end, unless you're just trying to run a business and capitalize on as many suckers as possible by making the game too inconsistent for skill differences to be obvious, or to con people into overspending on their hardware.


+1 to this idea, I'm heavily in favor of any and all options for vs bots modes. I think giving some TLC to Bloodfest could also be a good idea, maybe some kind of global score / stat tracking and leaderboards for a start. Things like this are good for newbies and veterans alike, variety is the spice of life, and having more options people can play by themselves or with any number / skill level / commitment level of friends is HUGE.

april 1st was a week ago

The only money qw needs is for events with a prizepool. Making it more competable.

I'm not sure prizepool money is the answer especially for someone who's never played before. I'm away at the moment just reading through the comments but it was no April fools, I'm serious about it but I don't have the time to be putting a perfect package together, I will make the time to reach out to people.

I guarantee I can drive downloads and get people opening the the package and playing with bots as a minimum. Some form of easy to do social share from the players who've already downloaded it would help too. A mini video captured of them fragging frogbots while quaded uploaded to their own fb account with some sort of message for friends to see. Or they hit a share button and a pre recorded clip gets linked from YT with a nice message and a download link.

Anyway if there's no point in trying I wont bother, it's nice to see theres still an active ffa server still but imagine bringing 1000 new players in, out of them maybe capturing 150-200 people who'll actively join in most nights. I could be dreaming but all I can say is im 100% confident I will drive downloads and have people open the game.

But the game/package needs to be well thought out, better than nquake.

I love the idea. Not sure why people are so negative. To make something like that happen, what you can do is put together a wishlist (like edit your first post pr create a new thread an update first post there) or a plan on how it should look like or what it should contain. If not on that level then be very precise and specify which problems it should solve. Executing from a to z on a list is much more likely to happen if there's a plan stan

Agreed - what is the plan?

I'm very interested and think I have something worthwhile to say / plan out in terms of A (not saying it has to be THE) package. Writing up a thread regarding that right now, so if you're also interested in working on that angle, keep an eye out.

The nQuake concept is legal, so it should be fine to advertise. I believe Id Sofware has even given it the thumbs up.

That can already be done from the menu.

A lot of time has already been spent on developing packages and making sure default configuration is beginner friendly and also good enough for serious gaming. This thread makes it sound like people don't play QW because they are only getting 500 FPS while they could be getting 1000 FPS or because the player model could be prettier. Riiight...

People don't play QW because there's nobody to play with and when there is you get owned 50:0. There's no match-making. Invest your money to get that done. People join tournaments because there's a chance that a group of people of equal skill will be there for you to play with for a short moment.

If there is anything to be developed to increase QW activity is a matchmaking feature.

It should give you multiple options of what game type, skill level, maximum ping you would like to play. It would be really nice if you could schedule this "state" so others could see when someone is willing to play a game that you're interested in playing as well.

Hi, I'm not sure this feature would be too helpful actually. About scheduling, people could already be scheduling games in this forum. A dedicated scheduling site would be more functional or easier, but that takes people away from this site, and this site is probably the best place for players to be. ?

About matchmaking, I read a post on esr today that mentions Starcraft2, and the so called ladder anxiety that players felt in that game. If we put together a matchmaking service for this game is it possible that people might be afraid to use it?
This is the link to that post.
http://esreality.com/post/2868532/the-future-of-quake-at-a-cost/#pid2868952

I think we need to set new player's expectations with qw, and highlight major features of the game and what it means to have those features. If you told me that quake had unique player physics and instant weapon switch, I wouldn't think twice about jumping in and trying the game without any familiarization or setup. I wouldn't realize that as a player that can't move, I have to practice to be able to move around the map in the standard way with the smooth moves I would see when spectating. I wouldn't realize that mousewheel or 1-8 for weapon binds is too slow for this game. But those are some effects of these game features.

Here are some specific suggestions I have for supporting new players in quake.

nQuake setup guide, for initial setup and trying the game. Stuff like, what does No Weapon. mean? Pictures showing how to save cfg, or use one from the net. Tips about the server browser, like, why did all the servers disappear? Guidance for specific servers to join, like servers running ktx and how to tell what kind of server you're on.

Practical playing guide, for example perhaps we should recommend people try and play tdm or ffa before duel, so they can be social and connected and choose to duel weaker, friendly players. I think we should encourage players to concede and disconnect if they want to stop playing a duel. It's better than just disconnecting. A concede option in the game could be interesting too, dropping players back to warmup. Keeps players in the server instead of leaving.

New maps are probably new player friendly since older players don't have the additional advantage of memorized map. I also think that new maps, without lg or with minimal lg ammo, could be extra new player friendly, because I assume the rl is easier to use than lg. That's my personal impression. I aim terribly.

We should work to highlight what makes qw stand out, things like, smooth engine, no railgun, movement, quick rox that spawn 50u in front of you, things like that. The idea being that people will read that info and be drawn to qw for it, as a change from whatever game they have been playing. With quek chamions is coming out and qw might reap some publicity being compared to it.

I want to work on things like this but I probably have no time for the next 3 weeks. I'm newish and semi ignorant anyways. Finally I am also curious about the nQuake revision that DOG_SACRIFICE is talking about.

edit, is it true the rocket spawns 50u in front of the player? I think I read that here but I can't find the info. I think it came up in a thread about the past when q2 came out, and players said the rox felt so slow.

It's here. The server immediately runs 50ms of physics on newly spawned missiles.

There's no point doing anything with matchmaking, there will never ever be enough players for that. The best you can hope for is to quickly throw them into a game with crappy bots to get a feel for it, and a small % of players will stick with it. Then have an easy/obvious option to join the active ffa server each night.

Or perhaps while running an advert campaign and gaining downloads have a message of the day type thing to enter some kind of noob tournament for free, with a small prizepool.

Is there any bright idea for a social hub or chat channel, that new players can come to as a group, and arrange games with each other? A twitch stream such as milton's? I think new players having a place to lounge and arrange games is the best way to solve the matchmaking issue.

I think we should solicit comments about this website before the ads launch. Here's one. There is a box on the main page of this site that says play quake. If u click it, you come to another page with an overview of resources for noobs. The first link on that page is rather inconspicuous, it's the word this as a hyperlink. It leads to some great info, a series of short guides about cfg and chatbinds. I've been casually learning about qw for a couple years now and I have never seen this guide until yesterday. This type of info is something new players will want after deciding they want to keep trying the game, and it needs to be more accessible.

Is there a better place to advertise than facebook?

Well we have irc for that already, or a discord room.

There is no better place to run ads other than Facebook for high targeted large volume. These people don't even know quakeworld exists so they're not exactly going to search for it, so search ads are out question.

The one other place which would work is YouTube. If a major youtuber was contacted and either paid or convinced to run a video explaining everything with dl links in description, that would drive serious volume.

There's a few I'd have in mind, could even be worth a shot to ask. Could use a grand to tempt them. But again, the package needs to be perfect being going down that route.

There's a UK guy called Ali a (or something like that) - he mainly does cod videos but noticed my kids watching him now with Pokemon videos. 8 million subs! Insane. He seems fairly approachable too.

Do we know if irc and discord are friendly enough for new players?

What about ads on twitch?

The youtube idea is interesting. We could hear the youtuber's perspective on the qw package as they produce their video.

I have a suggestion for another youtuber by the name of drift0r. His channel is focused on enumerating the technical stats of weapons in call of duty games, things like rate of fire and animation durations. So his content is generally specific and technical. But his channel is in a bit of a slump recently, he doesn't like the newest cod game and isn't covering it and so he's scrambling for content perhaps. Go back several months in his video history to his black ops III videos and compare those views with what he's been publishing this month. He said in a recent stream that his yt income was down 80% since the most recent call of duty came out and he decided not to do vids on it. So maybe he'll appreciate a new game to look into.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Drift0r/videos

His video, Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 In Depth: Sound Mechanics (Stealth Gameplay Essentials), was published three days ago and really shows the condition of his channel. Tellingly, he is doing a video on a singleplayer game, he mentions he's been compensated to make the vid, and he gets trashed in the comments. I think if we do approach drift0r we shouldn't offer compensation initially, so he won't say that he's been compensated to make a qw vid.

Or we can drop into his stream and spam $5 donations and make him read promotional messages about qw


I see a problem though. Who is this youtuber going to play with? Do we suggest that they bring their friends into the game and play with them?

I had a look at drift0r and yes he would be quite good. The more I think of youtube as a marketing approach the better it seems over facebook now. Many of their fans are loyal, and will also have the social proof aspect of the youtuber themselves suggesting they go download it. Although if the guy got trashed in comments for a paid promotion I'm not sure that would go down well.

I don't know the rules about this over youtube, if they have to announce it's a paid advertisement or what. It's not something that could ever be found out so I guess it depends on the youtuber. Ideally they want to say they got recommended this game and had to make a video about it blah blah

If we go the youtube route and I think we do, will get more bang for each buck and a ton of less work for me we need to come up with 10 youtubers to contact. I'd still happily run Facebook campaigns too. In my opinion youtubers to contact need to

-be a games channel (check for pc stuff)
-over 1m subs
-not announce the video is a paid ad
-fps type games?

I didn't really want to do this but it may make more sense to do it now and to let the youtuber mention it in the vid, a paid FFA competition on certain dates, prize pool of $500-1000 in total or something. I'd rather spend the money on the marketing itself but could put some for that. If anyone else wants to chip in for the prize money that's all good.

Not sure yet on what the video content should be, but probably a mixture of the youtuber themselves and some decent footage of an active qw player. Something which shows the intensity speed an frantic quad action - I don't mean some high quality dag def extreme type vid just footage of a ffa demo. I did say say ffa - doing a duel or some 4on4 may not capture the rawness of qw, especially someone who doesn't know what's going on.

You're right about who will youtuber play with, not so sure - maybe he would need some friends, maybe bots, maybe on the one busy ffa server we have but probably not the best idea.

As I keep saying before any of this though, we need a new package, a new installer and a decent starter config. I personally think you keep qw with:
-no picmip
-hd res and faithful textures (possibly the updated quake retexture project - I forget the name of it?)
-white enemyskins (or original player model in yellow or something. that new model someone made looks awful imo)
-faithful eyecandy, or close to it. Some of these fancy particle effects dont fit qw, and already look dated themselves. rl explosion is an exception though)
-proper quad glow not this quad outline thing
-decent, readable, modern font
-Can someone fill random non used ffa servers with bots? people must know the owners? some kind of script which sticks 4/5 bots in server and removes them one at a time when human joins.
-create 2 new servers name them noob friendly or something, again fill with bots

One thing which would really change the look is the menu screen, I'm not sure if this is even changeable but the menu screen. Something along the lines of the quake live menu. Static background, fresh layout, modern looking. Font not some old style gothic looking thing, even though that is qw. Needs a modern look. Like I say is this really changeable anyway?

While we're talking of configs I have a question. Everytime I start ezquake I have to manually set the refresh rate to 144. It always sets back to 60 each startup. Should I be adding something in the command line? What is the command?

Also what is the best maxfps to use with 144hz? This is also something which noobs can deal without. Everything needs to be simplified and quick for them.

download my config, it is uploaded to qw.nu and it will get you great fps. it is recommended you use a multiple of 77 as your fps and as high as possible that your pc can run stable. most people either use 616, 770, 1001 or 1155

As far as drift0r is concerned, I was pointing out that he's trying new things on his channel with sponsored vids of a singleplayer game. There's another one up today and I doubt people are happy to see it. I see blood in the water. I think he might be open to trying new things, which is good because I think qw is sort of a difficult try. drift0r says that he announces when he's been compensated to make a vid. I think we could just ask him if he would be interested in trying qw, no compensation.

I don't think gameplay with bots is compelling. Of course there are hardly any players in NA. We need a process that gets new and curious players connected and playing.

What about a sort of weeklong qw festival? Start with some configuration vids and streams, move to server commands and match setup, have some dude upload a mapping and development vid, and hold an offbeat 3v3 tournament at the end.

We are going to have the opportunity to step into the publicity from quek champions, and the differences of qw compared with other quake games will stand out sharper than ever. I do think there's motivation to try qw, and I think there is a general fps audience too, with overwatch and csgo being popular. We just need a process for new players, or groups of new players, to come into the game.

chewz have you given any though to how quake champions might affect things? If QC is popular and reaches new audiences, those people will have an easier time coming into qw because they won't be starting cold. But it will take time for them to play qc, and then be willing to try the alternative qw.

Where are you at on this chewz? Personally I think the nquake package and overall setup we have here at qwnu is fine and the overwhelming problem is that there's nobody to play with . . .

Getting people to the forums is the best, it contains the links to everything else.