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JohnNy_cz

Age :39

Group: Member

Location: Czech Republic

Did spend a lot of time playing QW and developing ezQuake back in the day.

JohnNy_cz

Commentary / 21 Sep 2007, 19:10

My vision of QuakeWorld evolution

I've found myself writing a reply to one of those forum threads where people write their opinions on some new features in the game that affect gameplay. As the reply grew longer and longer I also found out that it doesn't apply only to that one specific feature, but applies to my whole attitude towards changes in QuakeWorld. Also my blog wasn't updated for a long time (shame!) so here is some material for all you QuakeWorld thinkers out there.

I think that when deciding if we want to accept some feature as a new standard, we only should look on how big is the enjoyment of those who like it and how big is the disappointment of those who are against it. That is, measure the overall temperature and in the end look if we are above or under the zero point.

Personally I just don't give a damn about all the philosophy you can see on forums. "It is like ...", "It makes the game more ...", "More skilled players will ... less skilled players will ...". Doh!
We all play this game because we enjoy it, not because some artificial philosophy behind the game is perfect by design. It's not.

I can accept if you say "I already do not like the game because these changes are too much, I'm already disappointed, it already feels stupid to play it." But saying "I think I will not like the game in 2 years because these changes are going in a direction I don't prefer" makes no sense to me. If we find that there's something that sucks about the game in 2 years, we will always be able to change it. That is, we will always be able to make a step back.
Like now there is dakoth who tries to establish an "oldschool" league but look how many ppl flame him to death because of that. (edit: he's not trying to establish any league, he's just asking for opinions, that's all)

As for voting: voting makes no sense in the plain allow/disallow form. For example If there are 10 people who find the change absolutely amazing and 11 people who just slightly do not enjoy it, the result "disallow" makes the game much less enjoyable (in overall) than it could be if we made the change happen. Next time we vote about another feature, those who were slightly for "disallow" will now be strongly for "allow", one man changes his stance and where are we? There were two possible changes that could make most people significantly more happy about the game, 49% because of the first feature, another 49% because of the other feature. But both of them got denied because of the allow/disallow vote.

This is my vision of how QuakeWorld should evolve. Going forward. Listen to players how much they like changes, not listen to all those philosophers. If you don't think this way, the only other logical stance is "do not change anything, let this game be as it is for ever". In my opinion, only these two approaches make sense and there is no other logical approach on how QuakeWorld should evolve, if it is about to evolve.

Originaly I was writing this as a reply to the teamoverlay experiences thread but I think it also applies to the neverending fakeshaft discussions and many others.

Comments

2007-09-21, 19:21

Ake Vader

I'll try to write a decent reply to this tomorrow. I just think we need a good standard in QW in order to survive. What do you think would happen if someone decided to "unban" offside in football again? Or if people played with different rules in Champions league/FA Cup/Premier League/Serie A/Whatever?

I'll try to write a more decent reply tomorrow as i'm heading out now. Cheers everyone, and i think it's a good column Johnny.

2007-09-21, 21:24

HangTime

An interesting argument.

One thing I believe you need to be aware of in regard to this topic is the influence that major leagues have. Typically 'controversial' changes such as new clients, fakeshaft, scripts etc etc usually have the arguments settled in the long term by what decisions are taken by the major leagues. For example the -ruleset smackdown implementation in fuhquake became a fairly de facto standard for a couple of years.

In fact, if I approach this from a philosophical viewpoint (such as that you dislike!), I could say that Quake mirrors reallife in this regard. The way a community/culture develops in the long run is largely dictated by rules and limitations laid down by whatever form of government or leadership they have. After a while, these laws are taken for granted and all the old arguments about whether they are good or bad are forgotten. In England the idea of an arranged marriage seems wrong, yet in some cultures it is perfectly natural.

2007-09-22, 05:26

Kalma

Wow, football analogy \o/ It's not long since offside rule was modified. They are checking and tweaking the rules all the time, trying to improve the game. Removing offside would be very drastic obviously and I don't see that as an analogy to anything that has been seriously suggested in QW...

Or perhaps introduction of proxies to QW is comparable to introduction of offside rule, as it happened early in the game's history. I can't see 4on4 being so popular without these aids that were introduced.

2007-09-22, 08:11

PEKTOPAHKY

From my point of view this feature would propably affect even the div0 teamplay in a good way, making it even more cultivated.
I don't personally play quake that much, but I wouldn't mind if teamplay would take some leaps forward.
Of course, it means that clans without div-000 superstars could make a good effort with just an incredible teamplay.

2007-09-22, 10:01

niclas

"Like now there is dakoth who tries to establish an "oldschool" league." you should read that thread again.

2007-09-22, 11:16

JohnNy_cz

niclas: Yeah, after being flamed to death he expressed himself like "this is just a poll, I'm not doing anything".

2007-09-22, 11:18

niclas

And its always been "just a poll"

2007-09-22, 20:03

dakoth

Quote:
Like now there is dakoth who tries to establish an "oldschool" league but look how many ppl flame him to death because of that.

Just to clarify, I never said I was starting/establishing any league. In fact, I think I clearly stated that the poll was purely for selfish reasons (to satisfy a curiousity - to 'test the waters' if you will).

If you don't believe me when I say that I never had the intention of truly starting anything, I can supply the logs from #gtg.qw that started the whole thing. You'll have to be able to read swedish though, or find someone to translate.

-----

As for the rest of the blog... well, it's nice in theory, but so was socialism. My point is that there's no way to truly gauge how "happy" someone is about a change. There's just "yes" and "no". Even if you put a hundred different answers to a poll - all ranging between different degrees of "yes" and "no", 90% of those answering that poll will either pick the "most yes" or "most no" alternatives they can, simply because it's the surest way of pushing through / denying the change in question.

Listening to players is important, though, I agree. I would surely rate such threads as the teamoverlay discussion you linked as being highly read-worthy, and I think we should have more discussions like that. But lets not fool ourselves into believing that we can truly base any truly significant decision on a post rife with both sides of the argument. Only if the change is CLEARLY supported (i.e. 90%+ posting think it's a great idea) should we ever push something through based purely on player feedback on a forum that more than half the gamers don't even read.

This is the internet after all. People will always exaggerate to get their point across.

2007-09-22, 21:25

JohnNy_cz

Jeez, sorry folks, I've edited the article so that the balance of the universe is back to normal again...

2007-09-24, 07:45

#10

Willgurht

Well voting works for a parliament, not for single issues. In most countries the people select leaders to decide for them (or the leaders select them selves). It might be the case that i only agree 60% with the fraction i gave my vote. But I gave em my vote because i think they will lead in the right direction.

Democracy where the people would vote in every single issue wouldn't be very effective.

2007-09-27, 15:16

#11

niomic

"Quake mirrors reallife in this regard"

Like Quake is an unreal universe somewhere that just happens to have analogous qualities when compared to Tellus's real life.

<3

2007-10-02, 15:59

#12

Ake Vader

Johnny wrote:

I think the above text applies perfectly to the fakeshaft discussion. I saw many players opposed to that feature, but it's still allowed as

a) the discussions have showed that it's not an especially critical ("harming"

feature.
b) new players might think the standard f*cked up shaft, compared to other games, is a pain
(and c) you can do the same with some custom hud elements :p)

I think a discussion like that is a very sound way to approach these things and i'm very happy with the fakeshaft reasonings that have been brought forward in the past for example.

The same kind of discussion has been going on for the team overlay and while many players might think it's "fun", it will still drastically change the skills required by members of a clan. This is where things gets messy with new features. Should we adopt any new feature without thinking about what the core QW gameplay is like? What if 51% thinks it's a BRILLIANT idea to add a railgun to the standard deathmatch too? (you never know with all the newbies!)

Where do we draw the line when it comes to these kinds of changes? When is the gametype still standard deathmatch and when is it some mod? I mean, you can still use all these new features - it's just that the best deathmatch clans won't be decided and crowned using that specific ruleset/mod (and if they won't, i think it's a waste of time to spend time and energy on such modifications, no offence).

Johnny wrote:

Personally I just don't give a damn about all the philosophy you can see on forums. "It is like ...", "It makes the game more ...", "More skilled players will ... less skilled players will ...". Doh!

What should we do if not use "philosophy" along with some playtesting and discussion?

Johnny wrote:

But saying "I think I will not like the game in 2 years because these changes are going in a direction I don't prefer" makes no sense to me. If we find that there's something that sucks about the game in 2 years, we will always be able to change it. That is, we will always be able to make a step back.

I can agree with you on this quote, but with such controversial features as the team overlay i'd rather see it tested in a official-but-non-official environment at first. Like EQL, but without being labeled as the standard ruleset and then clans can join if they want and everyone can see how the games work out.

Johnny wrote:

This is my vision of how QuakeWorld should evolve. Going forward. Listen to players how much they like changes, not listen to all those philosophers.

I'm not a player anymore!?

Isn't this how it has been done now and in the past?

Modified models sucked = ban
Timer scripts sucked = ban
Movement scripts sucked = ban
Took scripts sucked = ban
Advanced tp messages = allow

That list consists of more bans than allows, but that's probably because i have taken alot of new features in the game for granted that was allowed without as much discussion (read: they weren't as controversial). Seems like just because people say no to a new feature ONCE and try to provide good reasons behind their opinion, it's the end of the world, when we in fact have been quite good at adopting the new, less controversial, features that still preserves Quakeworld's core gameplay and skills required.

2007-10-05, 10:54

#13

JohnNy_cz

Ake Vader said he is worried about QuakeWorld having different rules for more competitions. I don't think that my attitude would lead to something like that. I suggest very simple way on how to decide on something, therefore it may lead to less variatons in rules in different leagues.
Ake Vader also suggested than allowing and disallowing some change over and over would make harm to the game. I can only agree with that.
Dakoth has an opinion that it's hard to read what the players think. It's easy to check in the yes/no case, but distinguishing something more then true or false is hard or near to impossible.
I have to add that my text wasn't intended for usuall players. It was aimed to people who are in the like HangTime said, government. Such people have the responsibility to make the decisions sensitively - so that they are sure how much someone does or doesn't like the change and also so that the scenario of taking back the decision doesn't happen too often. Hard job, I know. I consider that an open issue, challenge to the QW scene for future.

Ake, you are the admin in EQL, so why did you explicitly disallow teamoverlay and didn't let the teams to choose ("if both agree" system)?!

2007-10-05, 12:28

#14

Ake Vader

Johnny wrote:

Ake, you are the admin in EQL, so why did you explicitly disallow teamoverlay and didn't let the teams to choose ("if both agree" system)?!

For the record: i am no longer an EQL admin as i left the, in my eyes, sinking ship some weeks ago.

On topic: we could have used a system like you propose for many more features and rules that are in the game already, like maps for example - why not allow teams to play on any map there is as long as they agree on it? I just don't think such a system is good in the long run and i don't think it's very common in any competitive activity out there.

As for letting the community choose, well, i guess a public poll with all players in the league could be arranged or whatever, but in a way we already let the players choose - by concinving us through discussion about what is the right thing.

Johnny wrote:

have to add that my text wasn't intended for usuall players. It was aimed to people who are in the like HangTime said, government. Such people have the responsibility to make the decisions sensitively - so that they are sure how much someone does or doesn't like the change and also so that the scenario of taking back the decision doesn't happen too often.

This is very true, and it could be discussed whether certain people should be in a position to make these decisions...

Edited by Ake Vader on 05 Oct 07 @ 13:29CET

2007-10-08, 08:47

#15

marshall

And here i still wonder why there's no teamoverlay allowed