My multi-faceted interview! › kot (Polski Smak)!

[img|right]http://www.pedobear.co.uk/files/images/kot.JPG[/img]kot is another ET player rising from humble beginnings. I personally remember first seeing kot when he played for Polewka against my team in Warleagues, all the way down in the Echo 1 group! Needless to say, we got hammered and it wasn't a pleasant experience for me D:. I feel a lot better now however, knowing that kot went onto great teams such as netrunners and dignitas, competing in a number of European Allstar competitions as well! If I had an ego, I would lay claim that I had a helping hand in nurturing this young talent into the online and LAN hero he has become today! It's just a good thing I don't have such an ego. :P

We've all seen kot's strong views about ET:QW on Crossfire, so it will be interesting to see what he has planned for the future.

Well known for playing ET for a long time obviously, you're also famed on crossfire for having a strong, negative opinion about Quake Wars. I assume that you've played the game, what is it about it that you find so bad to give you such an opinion? Many ET players have made the move across and more importantly, people from your own dignitas side. Considering that at one point, you all enjoyed playing hardcore ET, how can a squad of players have such different feelings toward this new game?

It takes about a minute to get from your spawn to the objective on some maps and I don't really find that entertaining. Many ET players that have moved to ET:QW don't really like the game as far as I know, but they play it because they can win some easy money there. If it turned out that anyone actually likes it, I'd be surprised. I'm not sure and you'd have to ask them to know for sure, I can't find any other reasonable explanation though. I simply can't imagine how any of them could like that game.

Looking at the alternatives for the ex-ET player, there isn't a lot of major competitive options. Apart from Quake Wars, the only obvious one is CoD4. Do you find for yourself that CoD4 could be an attractive competitive option and if so, what is it about CoD4 that you find so appealing comparing it to mainly, Quake Wars?

I've only played some single player missions so far and I have to admit that the game seems promising. It is way smoother than ET:QW and it has the potential to attract players from different games. From what I heard the entire CoD2 community is going to switch to CoD4 and I know of quite many ET players that will give it a try as well. I can't say if I will move on to CoD before I try the multi player, the game is not so similar to ET from what I've seen and I have never played CoD2 before so I'm not sure if I'll like it. However, if it'll be fun to play and I will find some nice people to play with, I might start playing it more seriously.

Most ET players don't like the idea of a community made up from lots of different players coming from a massive variety of games. You on the other hand, seem to be enthusiastic for the change. How do you feel the development of CoD4 will go, considering so many different types of gamers will be playing the game?

It's hard to tell, I don't really know many people from other communities, but I guess that CoD2 players will decide about that, at least for the time being. I think that ET players might become good at that game pretty quickly though, so their opinion will have to be taken into consideration as well as soon as they catch up with CoD players. However, my enthusiasm is not so strong as you might think it is and I don't really expect CoD4 to be a superb game. I also doubt that it'll get even remotely close to ET in terms of the quality of the game itself. I'm just a little bored with ET having played it for years and the cheating scum you encounter basically every single time you play doesn't make it better, that's why I'm going to try CoD4.

So if you combine the two factors that you've played ET for a very long time and also the fact the the scene seems to be bursting with cheaters, the choice was kind of made by itself. With that in mind, are you moving to CoD4 more of the fact that ET has turned into this"monster" or is it more to do with the fact that CoD4 seems fresh and new?

As you said yourself, it's kind of a combination of both. It's not so fun to play ET anymore when 4 in 5 games are against cheaters :c That's only a rough estimate of course but I believe that it's not so far from truth. As for now - I'm not really moving to CoD4, I will just buy it and try it. If it's good enough I'll see what I'll do. I'm not even sure if I will have the time to play because of some other commitments, so I'm not really planning anything, but if I do and CoD4 will be playable, I might move on to it.

It's interesting what you said about CoD4 though. You don't seem to have massive expectations of the game. Fair enough, you've yet to play the multi player so it's a little biased for me to make assumptions right now but you seem to be moving to CoD4 because there is a lack of any other competing games on the market that really "excite" you enough to play those games like you played ET.

What are you hoping for the future of competitive gaming? Are you one of those people that say "Oh boy, I hope RTCW2 is good! D:" or are you looking for something new and original from online gaming?

As much as I like the style of ET, I doubt it could become any larger than it got so far. It's unlikely to get some proper support and the number of cheaters expanding exponentially isn't helping the case either. I guess that if I don't want to end up playing ET for the next 5 years, I have to find myself a new game to play. I'd certainly like to see something fresh with potential to become a mainstream game coming as I'm pretty tired with Counter Strike dominating the team based shooters field and I'd like to see some faster game getting the attention of the public. As far as RTCW2 is concerned, after Splash Damage released ET:QW I don't want to keep my hopes up about it anymore, since it might turn out to be a complete failure just as well. Of course, it might also be a great game, but I must admit that I'm not very optimistic about it. All games that have been released recently are pretty bad in terms of game play and can hardly be compared to older titles.

So there aren't any specific features you would like to see in future games? Like, if you could choose certain aspects to be added for new games, could you think of anything that could really improve competitive gaming for the community it was aimed at and more particularly, for you?

While I don't really have any special demands as long as the game is fun to play, there are some special features I particularly like and would like to see in future games. The thing that I like the most is the movement in games based on Quake 3 engine, I really like the concept of strafe jumping and I wish all developers implemented that in their games. The other thing that I want to see is a decent netcode, a thing that people making games seem to forget about way too often. Last, but not least, I'd like to be able to hit where I actually aim at, ridiculous weapon spread doesn't make games any better.

Decent netcode has been mentioned and it would nice to see a game released ready made for the gaming community.

Thanks very much for the interview.

It was a pleasure. :-)

Would you like to say hello to anyone?

Shout outs to buzka and sol!