The quake tragedy

[Laval]

Let me tell you ID how to get back into the business. Take quake pretty much exactly like it is now, throw it in some fancy as **** new engine with super duper lights and ****, add in a new gun to make things a touch more interesting, but not something as dumb as that nail or mine whatever gun or those other stupid guns no one cares about. Add in something that has a place and a purpose. Look at UT for inspiration because you clearly have no ****ing inspiration of your own. Throw in an XP system to reward players with progression like any popular game these days and then throw in a matchmaking system as good as Blizzards or LoL/hon or whatever on top of dedicated server supprt. Throw in mod tools, Call it quake 5 and be proud to be ID again.

As if. They dont give a damn about PCs anymore. Listen to one of Carmacks long rants at Quake Con. Its all "blah blah blah Consoles are universal blah blah blah we messed up Rage for PC, but its your fault for having a PC blah blah blah listen to me talk about code but all i care about is cash blah blah blah Doom gets a sequel but Quake dosent, even though its being said at QUAKE CON, not DOOM 3 CON.


ids parent company only cares about wizards dragons and other crackpot **** like that. id is dead, so is Quake, all we got left is QL.

[Laval]

$48 is one sub + being able to invite 5 more people (so kind of 6 subs total) + being able to spawn servers all over the world (you won't believe how expensive is to do that. If you use it frequently it's thousands of dollars for $48 and those give you 6 subs too).
So yeah, it's $24 and with that you really get absolutely nothing in other games using this business model.}, let alone what $48 gets you.
And if you can't pay $24 or $48 there's something wrong anyway. Hint: money gets you things and everyone works for money. No one goes to the supermarket and starts a riot because apples cost money, but just buy it and if they can't afford it well bad luck.

Well people would eat more french fries and vodka if those were free. And seems like you didn't open the 2 links posted on this thread: QL is more alive than ever since 2010, and content was lacking a lot by that time. The only mod that suffered was duel, because there's no free ztn 24/7, and it went from 4.5k to 3.5k daily matches (qlranks, which is now fixed so it tracks accurately) so it didn't exactly die.

You can play UT if you want, with the 5 remaining players. Or hf participating in their "competitive environment"....in which they are happy they got 1 (one) tournament with prizes as a rare exception happening soon. Or any of the fast paced fps genre: all are dead except QL, which isn't by any means if you look at the said 2 links (it's almost cs-like competitive activity, and that's another genre anyway).

The key part is "other games using this business model". What about games using the "pay once and own for life model"? Look at the COD series. Fanboys there pay 50$ a year too. Except they get to keep the game they bought, and for a year, they got servers with millions and millions of people.

QL. 50$ for a year, to host servers for the 1,000 or so people worldwide that still play this. And none of them want to have fun, they just want to prove that they are all that. Good at a dead game, impressive. What a deal, i wonder why people arent lining up to spend 50$ a year.

[Chibers]

Go back to being gone, Laval.

[OmeK]

yea, and is free too.

[megaman3]

The key part is "other games using this business model". What about games using the "pay once and own for life model"? Look at the COD series. Fanboys there pay 50$ a year too. Except they get to keep the game they bought, and for a year, they got servers with millions and millions of people.

QL. 50$ for a year, to host servers for the 1,000 or so people worldwide that still play this. And none of them want to have fun, they just want to prove that they are all that. Good at a dead game, impressive. What a deal, i wonder why people arent lining up to spend 50$ a year.

Can't compare both models because......well, they are different. I know these are not the greatest examples, but it's like paying a house upfront instead of taking a loan (upfront is way cheaper), or buying a new car against a used one (2 years = 40% less) and so on: it's just different.

Pricing in videogames is a huge part of it, and the rise of the "freemium" and subscriptions models is crucial in pc gaming. Actually it is making the transition to consoles, with CoD Elite and bf3 premium (their players cry a lot too and more so since they pay the game + a sub).
Also CoD kids don't get dedicated servers, so all things considered they are getting screwed up in comparison to us.

QL players are not used to it since almost everyone pirated q3, but they will have to because now less and less games can be pirated without missing the official multiplayer portion of it. It's just a transition period.

According to qlranks and the activity posted on the previous page, there are several thousands of people playing QL. Just to put an example, in the pro tournaments played in this year's quakecon (lan) there were about 250 participants and that's a NA based event (NA is like 5% of europe in quake activity lol). That event had more than 5k concurrent viewers, probably 10k but didn't watch it entirely lol.
Qlranks says there are a bit more than 100k active players and that data is from like a year ago. Shouldn't have decreased much according to all the info we have.

And I agree about the last part of your first post but in a more positive way: yes id software is not what used to be (no pc company is) and all we have left is QL. That's the reason why I encourage people to support the game, whether by buying subs or anything else (again the 2 links): this is the last game of the genre, unless 2gd's reborn pulls it off and that won't be released in 2013 (they don't even have funding yet so they can start working).
I don't care about id software's financials or what happens to the people in charge of the QL project. I just want people to keep playing (1) and that the game is still available in first place (2. If they have loses they will shut it down) so I can play now and keep playing whenever I want to in the next 2 years (yep 2gd).

[DoktorTeeth]

If you want something good for free, write it yourself

[Shase]

$48 is one sub + being able to invite 5 more people (so kind of 6 subs total) + being able to spawn servers all over the world (you won't believe how expensive is to do that. If you use it frequently it's thousands of dollars for $48 and those give you 6 subs too).

What! Come on, thats so naive. The servers are not spawned as new servers, the "servers" that you create are simply games hosted on machines that have been set up as Quake live servers, it is the same as hosting a custom match in starcraft. All it costs is the bandwidth that you use, the same as any other server, how would any servers survive so long if they were like you think??

And if you can't pay $24 or $48 there's something wrong anyway.

Why stop there? Why not pay $100, if you're working and can't afford $100 there's also something very wrong, or what about the WoW pricing model, people pay that just fine so why not $12 a month for QL too? This is basically what youre saying "I don't mind paying $10 for a something thats worth $1 because its still affordable". And in your example of the apple, if I go to 1 store and they are charging me $4 for an apple as opposed to 50c, I don't not buy it because I can't afford the apple, I go to another store and buy it for a reasonable price because $4 for an apple is a *&@!!$ rip-off.

And please stop the arguments about the player base being large people, I mean gzuz, a couple hundred to a few thousand players across the entire world playing at any time and you talk about things being fine and this business model working great? Are you kidding me? Wake up, quake is legendary, this series should be the biggest title at major events, it should be watched by tens of thousands of people and hundreds of thousands to MILLIONS of players should be competing in all game types, THATS what quake deserves, but this community is satsified because they have 3 full servers to choose from, i mean what in holy lucifer are you guys smoking??

[ShaZe]

First, creating a new Quake wouldn't solve any problems; Nobody want a quake with fancier graphics because nobody care about the graphics, we all want the gameplay, and guess what, the gameplay is and has always been perfect.

Secondly, yes, I would agree that their buisness model might not be the best but what do you want. Do you know any good way to sell a live service for an FPS based on competition were you can't use the most common micro-transaction system since nobody want skins or any sort of game advantages for the paying players.

The only way they can make it work so far is allowing more content to be available for the paying userbase. Since 95% of the game was already available for the free users, it was kind of hard to make that happen wasn't it?

It probably doesn help either that a lots of players are just plain cheap and would like to have everything handed to them on a silver plater, yes, just like you.

- Support the game by contributing, playing or doing whatever else you can.
- Instead of whining, what about remaining calm and giving multiples suggestions of way to improve the current service instead of instantly assuming that the only thing you could come with was the absolute way to make the game better and whine about everything else.
- You aren't forced to pay 24$, 48$ or any absurd amount of money, they have added monthly options. If you can't afford 2$ for the game you like, you probably can't afford doing any other hobby you like either, have fun with your life.

[railthru]

My 7am 2c... QL is a 'gameplay' based game that is being marketed as a 'content' based game. Free players should have limited time of gameplay, eg. 90 mins per day for free perhaps? Prem should have unlimited time. Pro unlimited time plus content and anyone can join spawned servers. That way everyone has to pay if they want to use the service for a substantial amount of time and extra content is paid for by choice.

[ShaZe]

My 7am 2c... QL is a 'gameplay' based game that is being marketed as a 'content' based game. Free players should have limited time of gameplay, eg. 90 mins per day for free perhaps? Prem should have unlimited time. Pro unlimited time plus content and anyone can join spawned servers. That way everyone has to pay if they want to use the service for a substantial amount of time and extra content is paid for by choice.

Pretty neat idea to limit the gameplay time. The limitation would have to be tweaked a little bit so that the last active match can be finished before kicking out the player to prevent any problem with team-based games and stats. It would also prevent in some kind of way the high amount of mid-game quits as people would want to get the most of their game.

It would allow people to build up some addiction and allow a way to fix it.

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