First of all, i think i should introduce myself as I've magically appeared from no where.
A quick click on my profile will let you know that i'm an admin on this site and i've been a member on this site for nearly 9 months. What it doesn't tell you is this:
I started about 7 years ago running Gran Tursimo racing leagues for piggyback interactive. I then discovered a game called RTCW and i fell in love. My first serious clan in RTCW was called the phenomina and the leader of this clan was called TosspoT who is around here somewhere apparently. We then joined the multi gaming outfit void where we had the best times playing RTCW ever. Whilst i was with void, i ran all of the Blueyonder leagues and tournaments which were all hailed as a success! I was then approached by a team called omg! and was offered a place in their ranks. I played along side ninjai, darv, jak, shad, frog and salvor (which are all legends i might add) and this is where i really learned how much i loved the competitive aspect of the game. I finally ended up playing RTCW for a clan called UniCon. We were sponsored by the UniCon LAN centre and the team consisted of half the omg! squad, and a handful of players from allgunsblazing. This is the team i attended the infamous wolfcon LAN with which was ran by the man himself, TosspoT! RTCW sadly died a premature death and i was still hungry for more..
Call of Duty was my next stop, and oh how i warmed to this game. The less i go into my CoD clan history the better, any former TAG cod players will know why ;) I played for Inifinity-eSports along with the majority of the old UniCon RTCW squad. Whilst playing CoD, we noticed that there were no community sites like we had in RTCW, so we decided to make one. cod-nation.com was spawned and was the number one cod site in the world for it's entire duration. Whilst running cod-nation i decided to run a tournament as again, there was nothing for CoD at the time. The top teams in europe came together to compete in the tourney. We had shoutcasting from iTg and it ran perfectly from start to finish. I was also responsible for pointing out to the CoD devs just how badly made their game was by producing clipping videos on every map. They tried to fix the clipping issues and failed badly so i stopped playing. Bear with me, i really wanna let you people know what i'm about :P
Next up was allgunsblazing.net - a multigaming community ran by the same people who were behind cod-nation.com. This is where i started with my WoW "career" which only recently came to a close. I played WoW since the american beta, right through to alpha testing the new expansion and then playing the expansion in retail. I'm still part of my beloved guild (i don't care if that sounds gay!) Affliction who are currently rocking the PvE department. I had a brief stint in Nihilum where we worked mega hard ripping Naxx apart and i was in the world first Kel'Thuzad kill. I was also a staple part of the warrior community, especially when the NDA got lifted on the expansion beta. Those warriors who followed the forums and remember Penn from nihilum, that was me :P
Now we have this place, back to crossfire, my roots. I've been planning a come back for a long time, and i'm finally getting back into the swing of things. Quake Wars is my weapon of choice as you may have noticed and now you've had a snippet of my life story, on with the show!
What's Quake Wars like then?
First of all, i really have to point out that this is an early beta build we're all playing. It has some bugs, it runs slow on a lot of low spec PC's and it has a tendency to crash. This is all part of beta testing, you either love it or you hate it. This public beta is all about optimising and tweaking game code, net code and finalising any balancing issues. This is why all of your good quality feedback is needed. Please post any feedback you have on the Fileplanet forums which you will have access to via your beta sign up email.
I've been playing the game for 5 days now and i can safely say i now know the map properly, and have mastered 2 classes, the strogg technician and the strogg constructor. I have only ever played the GDF as a medic briefly so i can't really comment too much on that. Forgetting the odd drop in FPS, the movement feels very solid. Even though the movement is very different, old RTCW trick jumpers should be able to pick the movement up instantly and be able to literally fly across the map at high speeds. One thing i'm not sure everyone has realised yet though is that you must strafe with your knife/spikes out if you want to gain any kind of speed. Strafing with a gun out is very possible and is preferable at times, but everybody knows you run faster with a knife, right?
I can't shoot anything!
Anyone who has played a quake 3 engine game will notice this straight away. I will start by telling you all that Splash Damage already have a fix that has worked wonders for their internal test build and will be a massive improvement on the current hit detection and prediction. It is still very playable, even in it's current form so i cannot wait to try the new build out with optimised hit detection. It should give us a much better idea of what the final game will feel like.
How will it be played?
Right now all the servers are playing 12 vs 12 with all vehicles enabled. This is great for public play but no way will it be viable for clan play. Playing the beta gives you a great introduction of how the game objectives, classes and weapons work. What it doesn't do is allow us to determine how competitive matches will be played. I have my own theory about how it's best to be played but the community will need time with a near final build to finalise anything.
Strogg and GDF, what classes?
As i said earlier, i've had a lot of experience playing the strogg as a technician (medic). Strogg medics are very, very different to RTCW and ET medics. The GDF medics are very similar however. Strogg medics carry stroyent which provide ammo and health to themselves and fellow strogg. The downside is that it takes roughly 3 seconds to revive fallen strogg. Strogg medics can also create spawn hosts. Spawn hosts are created by pressing action on a fallen GDF body. If successful, a bunch of spikes will stick up from the body. You then need to activate the host by pressing action and the spikes will go down. You will now spawn at that location on your next deployment. Sound overpowered? GDF medics can destroy spawn hosts with 2 successful hits with their revive paddles which should be a priority for all GDF medics. GDF medic revives are instant and they carry health packs. They can however call in a supply crate by throwing a smoke grenade onto the desired location. I'll leave the constructor details for another time as i've hardly played engineer as the GDF.
But it has vehicles!
Quake Wars is new, It's not ET and it's not battlefield. This is very important to remember whilst playing, especially to you ET players! This beta is a great chance to see how vehicles affect general game play. Travel vehicles such as the Icarus, Husky, Hog and Armadillo are harmless and could easily stay in for competitive play. Tanks, APC's, aircraft and MECH WALKERS will be hard to incorporate into competitive scenarios though as their sheer fire power can decimate infantry in milliseconds. Personally, i think ETQW could easily be played without any vehicles at all but once again, we'll have to wait for a near final build to see if any vehicle changes get made.
Final thoughts
Without going into dissertation like lengths, that's about all i could conjur up for now. You now all know a little about me and can hopefully see that Quake Wars will be my main focus here at crossfire. Quake Wars is shaping up to be a great game. So to everyone who is currently on the beta, i beg you to actually give it a chance. Play it for a couple of days, try out the brand new classes and just enjoy yourself! I come from a competitive RTCW background and i love it to bits, i see no reason why you shouldn't enjoy it too! I've got big things planned for Quake Wars in the future so if you do decide to play it, you know you'll have this community to play it with!
I'd just like to add that new information regarding the Public Beta will be announced on Monday, so stay tuned!
Links: Community Site - Official Site
A quick click on my profile will let you know that i'm an admin on this site and i've been a member on this site for nearly 9 months. What it doesn't tell you is this:
I started about 7 years ago running Gran Tursimo racing leagues for piggyback interactive. I then discovered a game called RTCW and i fell in love. My first serious clan in RTCW was called the phenomina and the leader of this clan was called TosspoT who is around here somewhere apparently. We then joined the multi gaming outfit void where we had the best times playing RTCW ever. Whilst i was with void, i ran all of the Blueyonder leagues and tournaments which were all hailed as a success! I was then approached by a team called omg! and was offered a place in their ranks. I played along side ninjai, darv, jak, shad, frog and salvor (which are all legends i might add) and this is where i really learned how much i loved the competitive aspect of the game. I finally ended up playing RTCW for a clan called UniCon. We were sponsored by the UniCon LAN centre and the team consisted of half the omg! squad, and a handful of players from allgunsblazing. This is the team i attended the infamous wolfcon LAN with which was ran by the man himself, TosspoT! RTCW sadly died a premature death and i was still hungry for more..
Call of Duty was my next stop, and oh how i warmed to this game. The less i go into my CoD clan history the better, any former TAG cod players will know why ;) I played for Inifinity-eSports along with the majority of the old UniCon RTCW squad. Whilst playing CoD, we noticed that there were no community sites like we had in RTCW, so we decided to make one. cod-nation.com was spawned and was the number one cod site in the world for it's entire duration. Whilst running cod-nation i decided to run a tournament as again, there was nothing for CoD at the time. The top teams in europe came together to compete in the tourney. We had shoutcasting from iTg and it ran perfectly from start to finish. I was also responsible for pointing out to the CoD devs just how badly made their game was by producing clipping videos on every map. They tried to fix the clipping issues and failed badly so i stopped playing. Bear with me, i really wanna let you people know what i'm about :P
Next up was allgunsblazing.net - a multigaming community ran by the same people who were behind cod-nation.com. This is where i started with my WoW "career" which only recently came to a close. I played WoW since the american beta, right through to alpha testing the new expansion and then playing the expansion in retail. I'm still part of my beloved guild (i don't care if that sounds gay!) Affliction who are currently rocking the PvE department. I had a brief stint in Nihilum where we worked mega hard ripping Naxx apart and i was in the world first Kel'Thuzad kill. I was also a staple part of the warrior community, especially when the NDA got lifted on the expansion beta. Those warriors who followed the forums and remember Penn from nihilum, that was me :P
Now we have this place, back to crossfire, my roots. I've been planning a come back for a long time, and i'm finally getting back into the swing of things. Quake Wars is my weapon of choice as you may have noticed and now you've had a snippet of my life story, on with the show!
What's Quake Wars like then?
First of all, i really have to point out that this is an early beta build we're all playing. It has some bugs, it runs slow on a lot of low spec PC's and it has a tendency to crash. This is all part of beta testing, you either love it or you hate it. This public beta is all about optimising and tweaking game code, net code and finalising any balancing issues. This is why all of your good quality feedback is needed. Please post any feedback you have on the Fileplanet forums which you will have access to via your beta sign up email.
I've been playing the game for 5 days now and i can safely say i now know the map properly, and have mastered 2 classes, the strogg technician and the strogg constructor. I have only ever played the GDF as a medic briefly so i can't really comment too much on that. Forgetting the odd drop in FPS, the movement feels very solid. Even though the movement is very different, old RTCW trick jumpers should be able to pick the movement up instantly and be able to literally fly across the map at high speeds. One thing i'm not sure everyone has realised yet though is that you must strafe with your knife/spikes out if you want to gain any kind of speed. Strafing with a gun out is very possible and is preferable at times, but everybody knows you run faster with a knife, right?
I can't shoot anything!
Anyone who has played a quake 3 engine game will notice this straight away. I will start by telling you all that Splash Damage already have a fix that has worked wonders for their internal test build and will be a massive improvement on the current hit detection and prediction. It is still very playable, even in it's current form so i cannot wait to try the new build out with optimised hit detection. It should give us a much better idea of what the final game will feel like.
How will it be played?
Right now all the servers are playing 12 vs 12 with all vehicles enabled. This is great for public play but no way will it be viable for clan play. Playing the beta gives you a great introduction of how the game objectives, classes and weapons work. What it doesn't do is allow us to determine how competitive matches will be played. I have my own theory about how it's best to be played but the community will need time with a near final build to finalise anything.
Strogg and GDF, what classes?
As i said earlier, i've had a lot of experience playing the strogg as a technician (medic). Strogg medics are very, very different to RTCW and ET medics. The GDF medics are very similar however. Strogg medics carry stroyent which provide ammo and health to themselves and fellow strogg. The downside is that it takes roughly 3 seconds to revive fallen strogg. Strogg medics can also create spawn hosts. Spawn hosts are created by pressing action on a fallen GDF body. If successful, a bunch of spikes will stick up from the body. You then need to activate the host by pressing action and the spikes will go down. You will now spawn at that location on your next deployment. Sound overpowered? GDF medics can destroy spawn hosts with 2 successful hits with their revive paddles which should be a priority for all GDF medics. GDF medic revives are instant and they carry health packs. They can however call in a supply crate by throwing a smoke grenade onto the desired location. I'll leave the constructor details for another time as i've hardly played engineer as the GDF.
But it has vehicles!
Quake Wars is new, It's not ET and it's not battlefield. This is very important to remember whilst playing, especially to you ET players! This beta is a great chance to see how vehicles affect general game play. Travel vehicles such as the Icarus, Husky, Hog and Armadillo are harmless and could easily stay in for competitive play. Tanks, APC's, aircraft and MECH WALKERS will be hard to incorporate into competitive scenarios though as their sheer fire power can decimate infantry in milliseconds. Personally, i think ETQW could easily be played without any vehicles at all but once again, we'll have to wait for a near final build to see if any vehicle changes get made.
Final thoughts
Without going into dissertation like lengths, that's about all i could conjur up for now. You now all know a little about me and can hopefully see that Quake Wars will be my main focus here at crossfire. Quake Wars is shaping up to be a great game. So to everyone who is currently on the beta, i beg you to actually give it a chance. Play it for a couple of days, try out the brand new classes and just enjoy yourself! I come from a competitive RTCW background and i love it to bits, i see no reason why you shouldn't enjoy it too! I've got big things planned for Quake Wars in the future so if you do decide to play it, you know you'll have this community to play it with!
I'd just like to add that new information regarding the Public Beta will be announced on Monday, so stay tuned!
Links: Community Site - Official Site
God some of those videos I remember of the feral druid vs you in the expansion and shadow priest how at first how badly over powered a lot of other classes were good stuff ;)
Now i'll read the rest of the article...
Interesting info but the medic stuff seems overly complicated I really hope in the future medics can only revive and give packs any sort of calling in ammo is overpowered, and differences between both allies/axis or strogg/gda is going to make it very hard to balance *see paladins and shamans in horde vs alliance WoW* so I hope things are made the same on each side in competeitve play.
Damn i shouldnt have quit! :P
just kidding mate <3
just compare me with senji - before i went inactive i had better equip than him, he now owns 3 t5 pieces
reaching blacksmithing 375 today btw!
priceless to see that proccing with 2k+ white three times in a second on a clothguy
unexpected :>
hf
Half a column to introduce yourself, ego at work ? Seemed solid for the rest of it though.
You have no idea what the word "community" means, now gtfo of my internet.
I lost all respect for you, fucking cunt.
I gave all mine away, for free, to people who asked nicely.
Secondly, I didn't even knew you had respect for me so nothing lost there.
And thirdly, I gave all my keys away for free too.
keep up the good work penn!
Interesting article though, I was actually thinking keeping the transport vehicles in a game like this might be very interesting (I can just imagine tactics involving sending 3 guys round the back of the base in an APC, while the enemy tries to rocket-snipe it - as I've not played the beta I have no idea if that's realistic though).
Only a few of your great ideas, keep them to yourself in the future!!! <333
(Not that I'd be against it if there were, they certainly add a fun dimension to games if used cleverly - can make the battlefield four dimensional).
The only thing I'm worried about is whiney ET players who play the BETA when its common knowledge that balancing isnt finished and decide that the game is forever unplayable.
but still the monster panzer is overpowered.
imo the icarus jetpack weapon (that thing that throws mines on your face) should be removed... but keep the jetpack it's fun :)
and also the constructor plazma mines or wtvr they are also overpowerd, you can spam them as much as you like and build wtvr you want at the same time (and fucking instand kill...)
Beside this it's great game had fun playing it for 2 days 10 hours total :)
8vs8 infantry only (or something like that)
(i haven't played it tho D:)
I'm on a laptop so gaming is a no-no yet I'll give it a try and hope this thing will run. Anyone running it on a laptop? I have Intel dual thingy 1.8ghz, 8600M GS, 2gigs of ram. 5400rpm h/d (which is the bottleneck) so it should run properly right?
Isn't quakewars on the doom3 engine?
quote: "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is being developed by Splash Damage for the PC using a modified version of id Software's Doom 3 engine and MegaTexture rendering technology."
Less vehicules, maybe even none :]
Reduce spread, but according to your article it will be better when the final game is released.
And the hitsounds are to soft (maybe there is a setting for this?)
It would suck to be played like this competatively imo :<
ET still > QW
Too many functions. Good games are simple games (few functions).
Rtcw: Very basic yet amazing. Four classes, simple guns and let's get the documents.
ET: More useless crap added but still ok.
QW: Way too fucking many useless things.
Ow and I doubt it's smart to cap the FPS. Lot of people will dislike the game as a result of the FPS cap. Yes it's beta but it's also try before you buy. Dislike this and a lot won't download the demo and definately not buy the full game.
Played Stroggs now too. Their Medics > other medics. Game isn't meant for competition, that's obvious. However some nice tactics can be used. A lot of variation but that's one problem: too much variation. When people get to know the game 70% is useless.
I agree that vehicles may be useless for competitive play. They could also be balanced by the time the game is released and actually be a big part of competitive play.
I remember what ET looked like and how many had to be removed for it to be suitable. QW even has more function which I don't think add anything. So they need to be removed for competition so it's fair to say it's not a competition game.
Can you also name the specific "functions" that are not suitable please.
Mines. I haven't been engineer but there seem to be two types of mines and indoor they can be planted everywhere (?). This ruins the game. The better team will never be able to loose, if someone slips through he will be mined. That was already horrible in ET but that definitely didn't improve if it didn't worsen either.
Maps. Way too big. They could fix this by setting times for objectives. There are times now but all you get when you manage to defend the objective is some XP (YAYYYYYY!) and the time will restart. Set short times for objectives if it isn't reached you have lost. Otherwise, in case of a draw, one round takes 40 mins. I don't have much time to spare so that's ridiculous.
Objectives: there are way too many. There are three steps. What's wrong with just one main objective which you can complete without having to do anything else? Side objectives will make it easier to complete it but they don't have to be completed.
The request the allied medic can make for ammo and health. No one is gonna wait for that in competition. The big guns also just take time. If they are setup that just delays the game. Delaying the game is bad mmmkay?
Reviving. It's ridiculous the allied medic can revive in a second while the strogg medics need an hour. Strogg medic can give himself ammo and medpacks which makes him a rambomachine while the allied medic only has medpacks.
Only real good thing I've seen so far: Soldiers, they actually have a purpose now besides panzer.
I'm with you on the vehicles. I really think they will have to be disabled for serious competitive play. The problem is that it may split the community which is very very bad so we'll have to see how they are balanced in the final version.
Mines mines mines. The first game i played i noticed how over powered mines are. I wanted to disable mines for the i3d cup but it didn't happen.
In regards to time limits, 20 minutes is too long, simple as that. I wanted the i3d cup to run 12 minute times but that got thrown out too :/
I don't agree on the maps though. The first reason is that we have only got access to one of them which from what i've heard and seen is one of the most open maps too. Once people know the map inside out and with focused infantry play during competitive matches, the maps will not be too big.
The objectives are the reason the large maps work too. Focused objectives split the map up and will hopefully mean that all the action is in the territory of the objective.
Field ops can give ammo. GDF are very similar to RTCW/ET play. I do agree with you about the strogg technicians though. With the story up/down command, technicians are solo monsters let alone with a whole team to back them up. I still think their revive should be lowered to at least 1 second too. In it's current form it will be nigh on impossible to revive a team mate in a fire fight.
So guess what's left ;-)
those bloody walkin robot monsters of the stroggs are nearly unbeatable, infantry is dead within secs.
strogg reviving sucks cock for sure, half of the time would be enough IMHO.
if anyone asks why, if there is an organized gdf squad of 5 players is fighting against 5 strogg or something (just an example) gdfs can revive so much quicker and will bash the stroggs within in seconds.
also nice that things are gonna change on low spec machines (tho it runs on my 2,5 ghz with 7600 at 20-30 with the shitiest config which makes it look like crap)
ah yeah, and some of the good old cvars could work as well ;)
nice read!
anyways. fun to see that you're back and did what the clever of us did, meaning leaving wow for this awsome game!
btw.. you should really try the gdf some more.. and you'll notice how overpowered an strogg defence can be with their 2 cyclones and spawn hosts of doom :s hoping we'll get rid of them when it comes to competitive gaming :p
Hope to play with you/against you in ETQW!
Preferably with you so I can TK you. :)
Please say you still have THE KEYBOARD.
It'll be just like old times. :)