D3 MP & Q4 MP ... what is wrong with it?

(Joe999) #1

ok, let’s face it: doom 3 multiplayer didn’t go well, quake 4 multiplayer neither. and according to serverspy and csports both games are practically dead.

my question is: what do you think about it? what was wrong? who’s to blame? could it all have gone different?

in my opinion id software was too egoistic to believe that they can release games without asking the community first. there was absolutely no demo available for the public. imo if they would have released a demo they could have gotten feedback and with that improve gameplay. but that train has passed.

from www.idsoftware.com regarding the new patch:

… a ton of multiplayer specific fixes which have been requested by the community and discovered during our own gameplay.

imo it’s too late for that. people have moved on. wrong marketing imo.

what do you think? do you play any of both mentioned multiplayer games?

ps: if this critic doesn’t fit in here, feel free to delete it.

(Hakuryu) #2

Doom 3 multiplayer failed simply because it is the same old tired deathmatch and only supported 4 players imo. In the first days of online shooters it was fine to put out a deatmatch product because people weren’t sick of it, but today its sheer folly to think a game based on deathmatch will garner a large following. With so many teamplay titles ranging from 16-64 player battlegrounds, 4 player deathmatch just doesnt cut it.

I didnt even buy Quake 4 (after buying all other Quakes put out) also for the same reason. I just dont like deathmatch anymore. Without even trying the game, I can describe the multiplayer - know the maps and grab all the best weapons/pickups and camp them while killing any that come near… what fun is it to play a game I already know how to play (other than seeing the pretty graphics)?

(carnage) #3

having played the q4 multiplayer demo i actauly quite enjoyed it but after just a few rounds there wansnt realy a lot to keep it going. It basicaly just q3 with pretty graphics. Even a lot of the levels are q3 converts. Soon i ended up playing the team deathmatch which was a bit better but got very anoying when you were getting 12/30 kills and you still lost cos of 2 or 3 players who are draging your team down. And with no actuly physical objectives there was very little teamplay since the players werent focusing on a particular point

as Joe999 said in the past this was how fps came online alowing players to deathmatch but in todays market i think most players will be looking for something more developed

(Code6226) #4

Yeah, Quake4 made me sad. Quake3 Multiplayer with slightly updated graphics? That’s pathedic. I’m just sticking with Quake3.
I’m actually looking forward to Quake Wars being the Quake4 I hoped for (with awesome multiplayer).

I want more complexity and stratagy in my online games. I love unreal2 XMP with a passion, and I bought Unreal2 even though I found the single player game rather boring, just so I could play the multiplayer game with a good conscience. :slight_smile:

I liked C&C Renegade too, although I admit it had lots of problems and didn’t go far enough with the RTS FPS idea.

I’m sorry, but I don’t look at Quake for a single player game. Making Quake Wars a multiplayer only game is definately the way to go!

(fattakin) #5

People have moved on and Deathmatch games maybe arent as fun?

I just bought original copies of both games and havent played em online yet so cant judge. Im loving the single player on both!

(carnage) #6

in my opinion id software was too egoistic to believe that they can release games without asking the community first

if you read a few articles from designer you will hear a lot of talk about how difficult it is to have a totaly fresh idea for a game where inversters are much more likely to go for a tried and tested model. u just need to look at the number of sequil games to see this

although it seems to me that the fresh idas are where the player are going and not nesiserily to the flash graphics that ID seems to be riding on

hopefuly soon pupishers will see that to make the money they are going to have to go with the higher risk games and we will see much more diversity in online gaming

(B0rsuk) #7

My guess is that ID Software didn’t care about Doom3 multiplayer, while Raven simply screwed up with Q4. I still have my dusted GeForce2MX so it’s pretty clear I didn’t play any of those.

However I’m looking forward to Prey. It looks like single player will be quite a bit refreshing (with wallwalking, portals, gravity switches etc) and very weird. Multplayer is said to be classic Deathmatch, but with some crazy stuff added.

(Joe999) #8

i’m sceptic about the prey mp after i’ve seen the mp gameplay videos, but i’d be glad to get surprised when the game will be released.

(Lanz) #9

I hope it will be a great sp game though.

(Rhoades) #10

lol, i dont care about Prey, I care about Quake Wars. I mostly buy games just for the multiplayer aspect of them.

(SCDS_reyalP) #11

The way I see it MP was never a big focus for D3. I doubt the developers expected it to be a big MP success.

Q4, is explicitly a re-hash of q3 gameplay. That isn’t inherently a bad thing, but eyecandy alone isn’t enough to sustain a big player base. Especially true for the serious Q3 players, who are well known for not caring about eyecandy. Raven was in a fairly tough position with Q4 multiplayer, because they would have pissed off the Q3 player base if the gameplay was too different, but without new gameplay, there isn’t much reason to switch. IMO, it is quite possible that mods will bring new life to Q4.

Finally, both games put a huge load on servers. This means that it is more expensive to host (since you can’t run as many servers per box) and more likely that a server will be underpowered, and thus no fun to play on.

(Floris) #12

Yes mods where probably the main reason why I bought Quake 4 :moo:

(Salteh) #13

Mods were the reason I bought Quake 3 :slight_smile:
Mods like Q3F !
:banana:

(Jaquboss) #14

yeah you can do (almost) everything with Q4 and modding isn’t changed from q3 as much ( still ziped files, radiant…) but it also offer a lot of new
I think it is one of the best bases for mods ( if we are talking about engine )

(carnage) #15

yeah you can do (almost) everything with Q4 and modding isn’t changed from q3 as much ( still ziped files, radiant…) but it also offer a lot of new
I think it is one of the best bases for mods ( if we are talking about engine )

if your going to make a mod that is focused mainly indoor or in relativley small areas then its a good engine but i would wait for ETQW since i think that will get slighlty better performance and seems to be built for much bigger enviroments