firstly, i am massively in favour of having it on in the getquad tournament. with that said, i can also understand why people think it's a better/purer experience to have it off.

the reality is that this is a 24 year old game, and this is a tournament being played for fun. i do not think that having it on will change many (any?) match results, and almost certainly none of any real consequence. however, it will certainly mean that the weaker teams have more fun and are more likely to enter future tournaments. in team australia we are trying very hard to improve in all facets of the game, but i know all too well that having this setting on/off will be the difference between losing maps to better teams by 100 frags, or by 200+.

hey guys,

I don't know how the teamoverlay is really going to influence results of the top teams, but from the perspective of us aussies, we are VERY INEXPERIENCED in team dm in comparison to euro's. Teamoverlay makes the game a LOT more accessible for us.
We haven't had years of teamplay communication experience like you guys.
I think its safe to say that this year in Australia has been the most 4on4 since the early 2000's, and even then I reckon we would have played maybe 1-2 4on4 games per week ON AVERAGE AS AN ENTIRE COUNTRY.

Think about that.
Every day there are 4on4 pickups in euro servers, but aussies are figuratively squeezing blood out of rocks to get 8 in a server and /ready

You can tell us its a crutch but at the end of the day we are still hopping around on 1 leg, so let us have the damn crutch - I don't know how long this small revival of QW in australia is going to last, but teamoverlay is certainly helping us get more enjoyment from it.

xoxo

I don't have a problem with it. I'm pro team overlay. I get most my info from voice and seeing/hearing what is happening in game anyway. In fact, I'm extremely guilty of not even looking at it when i should.

I see the arguments put forward by both sides but I really don't see any problem with it being used as the norm. Concise voice comms remain just as important even with it enabled.

I think if both teams agree to have it turned off then they can have it turned off. Otherwise it should be allowed by default.

Just add a 'ruleset' that can be used when BOTH teams agree to not use it/ have it disabled.

(Edited 2020-09-15, 16:03)

The problem with teamoverlay is that people that refuse to use it get a disadvantage against player who uses it.
And if a mate in the team doesn't report it really ruins the game.

Teamoverlay ON is my vote, been playing since 96 but recently returned after a long break, Been using teamoverlay ever since and it is alot better for team play.

I'd go as far as saying I would rather not play/ give a walk over than play with teamoverlay off .

I understand your point of view and addressed it in the opening comment (2). I haven't seen a rebuttal to it by anyone that believes in the "spoon feed" argument. Again, to me this very idea is false; players can likely already get this level of information with sufficient config changes for players on their team. Ironically such useful information would likely be blocked by client and server side spam limitations today... I recall teams nearly 15 years ago doing something similar to achieve this.



This doesn't seem productive. I can only assume you're talking about me though, in which case your characterization of me beheading the arguments indicates the arguments against are easily dismantled!



I don't even know how to respond to this.

We should be modernising Quakeworld as much as possible to make it more accessible to new players. Allowing teamoverlay is a no brainer.

Well said yeti.

Does anyone believe that having team overlay on would actually change any of the upcoming tournament results?

The disadvantage is purely your choice. Currently, nobody else gets a choice.

Do you happen to know where to get config files that make this happen? I want to see constant and continuous automatic reporting from every player printed at a fixed location.


Do you really think that teamoverlay is the magical feature that separates EU (I think we should speak of Europe or Europe + Russia if you will, but not of EU) teams from the rest? Do you really believe that teams from other regions are otherwise (strategy, tactics, game sense, aim, movement etc.) able to catch up with us but somehow mm2 messaging is just impossible to handle for them?


Disagreed. A big part of what makes Quakeworld so great is the fact that it's not very accessible to 2020 new players. Quakeworld is an extremely brutal game of skill with a very steep learning curve that just doesn't cater wide audience in 2020. Based on the comments on this very thread and on the comments I've received in Discord, allowing teamoverlay is certainly not a no brainer.

Sadly I do not have such a config.

I recall watching games in the past where the full team reported status consistently every 5 seconds (4 messages at the top like clockwork) which ultimately achieved the same affect as teamoverlay. Years later I figured that just evolved into teamoverlay. I'm not sure what mechanism they used, and perhaps that was not using the ezQuake client. Looking at ezQuake briefly, triggers are disabled by rulesets, but `Macro_Time` (e.g. "$time" in ezQuake) has `H:M` granularity and is allowed. If it was extended to include seconds (maybe something that may have been available 15 years ago?) it would probably be trivial to get something working for a team that doesn't violate rulesets. Or, without a client change, this could be achieved with any software or hardware solution to just press a key every N seconds (a web search provides compelling results) where the team "synchronizes their watches" before a game.

For a half backed solution on a fixed location, I just checked and it would be trivial to configure a jump/fire key to report status at the same time and not trigger any ruleset violations. Though that is obviously more jumbled in its output across a team. But if you have a teammate who doesn't report you can modify their config to report nearly consistently where before they never reported. I have spent close to zero time customizing my hud (I use scr_newhud 0) but my understanding is the best that ezQuake can provide today for a fixed location is that you can separate talk messages from kill messages, and deduplication of status messages. So as long as there is no in game chat (achievable via /ignore of players) than you can get a fixed location for team messages (still the potential for jumble).

This is with me spending ~15 minutes imagining how it could be done (as I stated before, this is already nicely implemented as /teamoverlay =)

FWIW I agree with Milton here. I do not think making Quake more accessible to new players is a good reason to enable the feature, and that is why I did not include it as one of my original arguments. I personally don't find it realistic to expect many new players and the existing base of new players seems small (maybe AU sees the opposite given their recent growth!). I find teamoverlay interesting because it is one used by players across all skill levels and (by my observation) a large enough set of players to warrant a discussion.

Agreed. However, I don't think it's productive to play with one hand tied behind our backs just because it's more difficult. Harder doesn't always mean better. Maybe you and a few others who have mastered that skill prefer playing that way, but the rest of us actually find the game more enjoyable with teamoverlay enabled, even if it makes communication easier.

I would like to see some stats on the matter before making statements like "a few others". Teamoverlay might make communication easier in the way that you have some of the information available to you automatically at all times and thus there's no need to clutter your voice or mm2 feed with that information. On the other hand one could argue that instead of making communication easier, teamoverlay actually lessens the amount of communication needed and in some cases (e.g. random 2on2s) gets rid of it completely. Some will say that's a good thing but I disagree.



One of your initial arguments was:

And I'm just challenging that argument. I'm no config guru so there very well might be something I don't know, but I haven't seen or heard of (before what you just stated) a solution that would work like teamoverlay does. FWIW I think If such a solution exists it should not be allowed.

One fundamental challenge that I haven't seen solved in mm2 messages is that you have one stream of mm2 messages (filtered or not) and you need to be able to process all the information coming through that stream. If a team decided to bind report to each and every button they use then all the other messages would get lost in the spam. Using voice faces similar challenges and players need to decide what information is worth sharing and what is not. Both require a lot of skill and practice and should stay that way in my opinion.

I am pro overlay.

I understand both arguments - but the biggest one that flies under the radar is the "lost [3 enemies]" bind that you do not see, but that is shared to your entire team. That has been getting used for years and years without any of the anti-overlay people kicking up a fuss, and using it to their advantage - and whether they argue they "actually pay attention to that bind" any 4on4 demo you watch it is one of the most common binds used. This one is sharing ENEMY LOCATION info (far worse and far more cheaty/wall-hack than sharing team mate information)

e.g. I get an RL on DM2 and walk to quad and the guy at quad shoots me with 1 shot and kills me from around a corner and my bind to my teammates goes "Lost Quad, 4 enemies". My entire team knows that if the low RL is about to spawn, they can wait for it uncontested as they know that 4 enemies were at quad at that time.

I can understand those that have built their 4on4 around the not having team overlay seeing it give advantage to teams that use it based on hearing a sound in a part of a map and excluding your team mates from that location with the overlay and spamming it. But the exact same thing goes for the Lost command in the above scenario, where I could be a teammate of the guy who dies and see the lost quad [4 enemies] and have been at big with a stack and our team is losing by 3 with 10 seconds to go and I can spam at will hammering into that area knowing the report of a teammate just told me that 4 enemies are there (hiding to hold the lead and win) and my teammate didn't even see them.

Maybe a delay in the location on the overlay is a good compromise - but I like it being on and sort of follow yeti's sentiment.

For all the nuances of 4on4, seeing a bunch of MM2 spam continually of the same nature, and arguing to 'keep it that way' when it can be centralized and streamlined when it's team mate info, not enemy - I don't see why we're holding back such a good modernisation.

Wow yeah this is a great point that I honestly haven't considered. I have watched demos back and seen information I didn't expect n the # of enemies. I see that this is common in "help" binds and you can just `say_team "%e"` and have your teammates tell you if enemies are nearby you. That's a form of apparently legal wallhack in all of today's accepted "tournament rulesets". Imagine searching for hidden players in sng on dm3 in the last minute of a close game...

Look for (`Ruleset_BlockPlayerCountMacros` in ezQuake sorce) I see that only the "MTFL" disallows this, and it isn't even mentioned on the ruleset comparison wiki:
https://github.com/ezQuake/ezquake-source/wiki/Rulesets

FWIW this is not something exploitable by teamoverlay.

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Yep, I agree, that is something I'm trying to hear from the other side. Few people seem to be speaking up publically yet I hear rumors of all kinds of discussion happening "privately"...



This is one argument. Lets hold back this modernization because the ability to read a stream of mm2 messages requires "a lot of skill and practice" and some feel that is important.

I didn't realize that some players view the ability to essentially read quickly is a valuable aspect of qw. Perhaps my teammates and I should flood the messagemode chat with trash messages to affect the enemy team parsing a message stream (harming only those enemies that don't configure their setup properly). But even the admission that voice faces "similar challenges" kinda makes it clear to me that the more valuable part involved in teamplay is simply making good decisions. Even with teamoverlay I will still ask my teammates questions to get better information than their status / overlay would provide. Shouldn't we value better decision making more so than a comparison between multiple versions of imperfect information (with and without overlay)?

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Valid criticism. You may be correct, it may not be perfectly emulated. Though I think my overall point here still stands, if you can get say 90% of the way there, then is the last 10% really what makes the feature considered illegal?

The issue with team overlay is not that it's sharing teammate status, it's that it's done automatically and in realtime. You are not sharing your status, the team overlay is sharing your status. Even enemy locations need to be reported and interpreted by a teammate to be useful (teamplay! ).

Good point - this is a hangover from qizmo/cheapo not doing visibility testing, so just showing how many players were sent in the last packet. Difficult to fix now without tournament admins demanding everyone use newer versions, because anyone using a fixed client (by testing if you could point at each enemy, for instance) would be at a disadvantage.

(have added it in now - missed the explicit check of the ruleset name when making the page)

Searching for hidden players in the last minute of a close game is relatively chaotic at best and communicating such things would be extremely cumbersome. I can't believe that you find this feasible but reporting using mm2 unbearable.

I don't know if any changes have been made to the number of enemies -reporting over the years but back in the day I found it to be pretty unreliable. A mate reporting "lost xyz with 3 enemies" where xyz wasn't very close to my location while I had two enemies on my screen. That was in 4on4. I've happily ignored the number since and would consider it good riddance.

For feasibility, a few have said teamoverlay allows an equivalent of wall hacking without any evidence of it actually being used as such, so I'm drawing a comparison. As a user of teamoverlay for years I have a handful of times (probably as many as non-teamoverlay from regular status reports) used the information in the overlay to deduce enemy location that was not obvious from gamesense otherwise, but even then the information is unreliable (e.g. did a teammate just rocket jump or are they under attack? is the person at platforms under attack or in lava?) and it is often extremely temporal or redundant. For another data point, I've seen numerous players trigger point binds at items in order to help determine if an item is there or not.



Does the hyperbole help? I don't recall saying anything like mm2 being unbearable and wouldn't want anyone to read what you wrote and think I actually believe that. I use mm2 myself so how could I find it unbearable? I've been maintaining that teamoverlay is easier and commonplace (4), but also better for the game (3), so I'd like to see it accepted as such.

Thanks meag! Responsive as always!

Easier? Yes.
Is it a good thing? No.
Commonplace? Where? in NA and AU? It certainly isn't in EU, which makes it not commonplace, because NA+AU scene is smaller than EU.
Better for the game? That is purely your subjective opinion which numerous people have opposed in this very thread.

You could make the same statement about loc files. You're not sharing your location, the loc does all the work. Same with %h and %a and %e, etc. So mm2 that inserts your info is okay, but cleaning it up and moving it to a different side of the screen is not.

Everyone has a subjective opinion but opinions can be changed with data and reasoned discussion. An open-minded person can come here and read the arguments for and against and come to their own conclusion ("opinion" ), or better yet add to the discussion if they have a view not yet represented ("as numerous people have done in this very thread" ). Thankfully a little dissent / opposition does not nullify an argument =)

I believe I have already considered and responded to the other points you made in your comment.

EDIT: Formatting

The difference is that loc is shared after you press the button. With teamoverlay you are not pressing any buttons.

Ok, how about item timers? Using your guys logic, it should be perfectly OK to enable team item timers. Whenever someone from your team picks up an item, a countdown appears on the screen for that item. It literally works in exactly the same way as teamoverlay - provides you with real-time updates of information regardless if it was actually provided by a teammate or not. If you are making one step towards "automating" the game communication, what logic exactly prohibits you from taking a 2nd, 3rd e.t.c.?

While the clients can seperate death messages from team messages, im sure we can agree
that reading a mm2 chat while playing is way more chaotic and much harder to paint a picture of whats really going on, than having teamoverlay ON with static streamlined info. Just see picture how easy it is to read locations.
Reading the map without teamoverlay and knowing whats going on on the other side, surely should be seen as a skill imo.


I dont share this opinion. I actually think it ruins the teamplay.
The picture says i can shoot wherever i want in water, because i know none of my teammates are around. I dont have to get any info from my teammates, sounds or anything.


- definitely.

I thought it was a fair assessment to make since you find the matter important enough to start a thread about replacing them with teamoverlay and getting rid of this "antiquated skill". My apologies for being mistaken.




Do the hyperbole and half truths help?

I'm not making the same statement about locs and teamplay macros as they've been pretty much standard in 4on4 for the last 20 years, so I'm not sure how that would make sense.

Personally I'd probably be fine with an overlay if it was just a matter of moving things to a separate part of the screen, i.e. the information was not automatically updated.

Again, that is not my opinion, that may be your interpretation but that is not what I'm saying. I use mm2, I think it has value when it has value. I don't think teamoverlay replaces it.



These each contain, both at this point and in the following pages, plenty of clarifying and supporting text and I stand by each of these positions. Arguments tend to have subtleness and I do think the headline may help open the eyes of some readers.

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Though at this point it is getting too frustrating to continue to discuss this on the forums. Instead of discussing arguments I'm left with text like the above which doesn't appear to add anything of value to the conversation.

Non-tournament players are voicing strong opinions, which is great, but they aren't even affected. By my reading nobody supporting disabling teamoverlay has been willing to admit they think it will change a single game outcome while a few arguing for enabling it have suggested based on experience that it won't. By my reading o this thread those that have voiced their favor far outnumber those that haven't, especially when considering players in the upcoming tournament.

Put simply, QW teamplay is not "ruin"ed by teamoverlay, something played with on a near daily basis around the world. None of the opposing views put forward match my experience or compel me to think differently. If you hold such a viewpoint that is fine, but I see no more point in continuing to discuss this on the forums.

If you like you can message me on discord, perhaps a more direct channel of communication will feel less toxic.

Yes, I agree, Bogo. Forums discussions tend to be a little cold. But it's not really about what Milton wants so it's pointless taking him into room 101 for a "discussion"..

I suggest you look into starting a poll and having everybody vote on whether teamoverlay should be on by default. I don't think this forum supports polls but I'm pretty sure there's other poll websites out there.

And maybe include the option for people to vote to have teamoverlay removed. Because I'd definitely vote to have it removed along with messagemode2. But I admit that I"m probably unusual in regards to Quake. Although I suspect most new players to Quakeworld wouldn't want to have to fixate on a stream of messages or teamoverlay for 20 minutes. Although the chances of a new player lasting more than two weeks in Quakeworld before demoralized by the learning curve are very slim. Especially in team play where new euro players are constantly asked or told to go spectate.