Nems attempts to get back into Quake 3 (again).

[Nems]

I had made a thread about this years ago but I guess it got pruned and jettisoned into the internet void, never to be seen again. Ah well. :v

So I want to get back into Quake 3 Arena and its various free/open source derivatives (already have Open Arena downloaded and I plan on downloading Urban Terror as my Counter-Strike replacement [since my last attempt to get back into that franchise was a huge-ass mistake]). I was wondering:

1) Do people still play it online?
2) What are the differences between it and Quake Live (if any)?
3) Should I still give Quake Live a shot?
4) What are some good, fun gameplay mods that AREN'T CPMA or DeFRaG or focused on competitive gameplay?

Thanks in advance.

[wildweasel]

I'm still a big fan of Reaction Quake 3, which is a reimplementation of Action Quake 2 with some pretty fun levels. Since it's based on AQ2 and not AHL, it does not have the stunt-dive button or the wall-climbing, but the main mechanics of unique weapons/items, locational damage, and bandaging are still in full force.

[Zanieon]

Actually, Quake 3 still lurks around CTF and only that, Quake Live don't have much differences, however theres no DeFrag there, only Q3 has.

CPMA is optional for now, QL uses it for World-Tournaments like DreamHack or the QuakeCon itself.

Everything in a nutshell is that Quake 3 is now finally dying after 16 years of pure frenzy on it's servers, everyone is accepting in go play in Quake Live instead

[leileilol]

Q3A died before Quake Live materialized. It was already years buried in the "winners only" StopHavingFunGuys effect. Infact one motivation for OA's creation is to rejuvenate the lost vanilla casual experience that Q3A had in its peak during 2000. Many aggressive demands for "pro" cruft were ruled against during the creation of baseoa. because fuck glowstick atari land winner shooters im not making ezquakeworld 3 revising history that quake was an europe esport first before anything else


Recently (as in THESE LAST FEW MONTHS) Quake Live is repeating history with 'winner' players 'taking matters into their own hands' with zealous kicking bot scripts based on third-party calculated ELO, leading to QL's scene dying, but they deny the kickbot thing and blame the "patch changes" like the announcer... repeating history twice as Q3A used to have an ELO system built in 1.25 where players had a rating for a short time.


and FYI Urban Terror is NOT an open source game. It gets misinformed as so all around because it's a mod that could run without baseq3. Open source games don't get 'controversies' where their precious cgame/game qvm code is 'stolen'.


And finally I can't really recommend anything because of the whole CREATED OA bias thing. Play what you like. also some of oa's players are a shameful display of complete ingrate assholes. just putting that out there. a free pricetag always brings out the worst of an eternal september, so your choices are either no one, assholes, or assholes. I'm not saying they are acceptable but damn is it hard to motivate myself into creating

[Reactor]

I still play Quake 3 Arena, though mostly against bots. Back in the good old days, I was unstoppable if I had a Railgun (I used machinegun and railgun mostly, I was very bad with other weapons). Unfortunately many incompetent noobs, who can't even beat "I Can Win" bots, thought that it would be "awsum" to modify the game properties till nobody else than them has the chance of winning, give that "mod" some kind of sooper-dooper name, and play online by these rules. Since most of the online arenas are filled with flying, and shooting-thru-walls enemies, I stopped showing up online entirely, I have absolutely no motivation of struggling with cheaters, who would get fragged in nanoseconds under the original, official game rules. And besides, beating the computer is much harder IMHO, as the bots always know where you are, and they all have aimbots (figures!).

Most of the original maps were quite small, and blunt, so I decided to obtain new ones. I never tried Quake 3 map editing, but I always admired skillfull artists' work, and played millions of battles and duels on them. There were tons of sites with free Quake 3 maps - planetquake.com/lvl, quake3fucking!.com, quaked4life and so on - so I've managed to collect and obtain the best maps ever constructed. Here is my top 10, regardless of game mode:

1: Contortion (by Gonnakillya!)
2: Under the Hammer
3: A Hymn to the Rocket Launcher
4: Swiss Cheese Trickster
5: Rock'n'Roland
6: Estatica
7: Pass the map!
8: Drift away!
9: Necro-gate-Arcana
10: Tang01

[scalliano]

I've been playing Q3A again recently, against Hardcore bots on custom maps (how I used to play the majority of the time back in the day). I was a pro subscriber to QL for about two years, but found that I wasn't leet enough to be allowed to stay in a server for more than 10 seconds because I wasn't playing every waking minute/cheating/whatever, thus my interest waned sussing out how to get the QL maps and skins working in regular Q3TA probably contributed too - no, I won't share them anywhere. Finding new maps and skins was always the main draw for me anyway, and there are still new maps being produced (check out sites like LvL for the latest). My Q3A install currently sits at around 10GB and that isn't even everything. What sucks is that FilePlanet is no more, and many of the best mods were only ever hosted there.

Also, Generations Arena needs more love. Doom Warriors Rule!

[Nems]

ZDoom's multi-quote filter thing wrecked my post so gonna do this without the quotes. :u

@ Weasel I downloaded that and I'll definitely give it a shot. I never played Action Quake 2 or Action Half-Life so this is gonna be a new experience for me. Thanks!

@leileilol I had read up on the forms for Steam's Quake Live section and...yeah, I'm seeing the "stophavingfunguys" which is a huge deterrent for me. Don't get me wrong: I know there's assholes in every gaming community. However, there's the atypical trash-talking dudebro and then there's the guy(s) who deploy bot scripts to keep the new players out. I can ignore one and still play the game. The other, not so much.

With regards to Urban Terror, well that's shitty. Guess I'm gonna have to keep looking for another Counter-Strike replacement then. :V

I did enjoy what little I had played of OA back when I was in college (back when it was 0.8.5) so I'm stoked to see what all is new and what's changed since then.

@Reactor I'll definitely have to give those a shot. Thanks! I know once I get a feel for Q3A again I'm likely gonna hit Lvl hard with downloads (hope they still have the PS2 levels; Quake 3 Revolution was my first taste of Quake 3 Arena and the PS2 exclusive levels were memorable to me).

@scalliano How close is Generations Arena to reaching 1.0 status? I know they've been at .99f for a while. Hope everything is okay on their end. Also, the videos I've seen of Generations Arena are a lot closer to the experiences I had with Quake 3 Revolution (an absolute blast and a fun time) versus stuff like CPMA or DeFrag so that's a must-download for me too. I'll keep an eye out for you in game.

Thanks for the replies and suggestions guys.

[scalliano]

Updates over on Wirehead are few and far between, but they're still active. The mod has been at .99f for close to ten years now, but the official server is still up and running. Phoenix posted a maintenance update not long ago, so read into that what you will

[Reactor]

You're welcomed Nems be sure to write a short review about those maps I was yappin' about! I value your opinion very much.