Q3 Arena + Bots / ET + Bots = commercial game?

(evilsock) #1

Ok, I’ve had a copy of Q3 sat on my hard disk now for about a year doing nothing much. It’s not legit (as in it came from a ‘bonus’ pack with no CD-Key so you won’t see me online) but yesterday I finally got around to playing my way through it. I hadn’t realised just how close Elite Force was the the original Q3 tbh.

My question is this - Q3 is essentially an online multi-player game with bots that give you a chance to ‘train’ and hone your skills for the real thing (or that’s how it seems to me anyways) - the version I have includes ‘team arena’ also and is surprisingly good tbh.

Would ET have been viable as a commercial release if it had included both ET bots for the standard maps and also deathmatch bots (1v1’s etc to increase your combat skills)?

Seems to me that ET had the potential to be as big a game had it included these things tbh.

Now I realise that time contraints yada yada meant that it was released as it was (and I’m thankful for that) but in the future, would it be viable to have a final release of ET or it’s sucessor in this format?

I haven’t played Q3 online so I don’t have the comparison, but with all those bots and scrim practises available offline, wouldn’t it have meant that when a n00b came to play the game online there would already be a basic understanding of what was required in a map(s) or how the classes worked - helping to avoid the 6 months of ‘n00b hell’ that comes from having a game that must be played online ‘for real’ without that safety net?

I do remember how hard it was for id to get the bots working in the way that they do ( didn’t they recruit externally a guy from scandinavia to do them from the Quake community?) and how q3 was delayed for a year as a result, but it’d make a helluva good commercial game (imho) if ET or it’s sucessor was remade in this format.

(bani) #2

ET bots are extremely complex. Q3 deathmatch / CTF bots are dead simple in comparison. I’ve yet to see a game where class based bots were done well without tons of map-specific scripting (and basically geared for singleplayer, not bots + mp).

FWIW Q3 is a simple game, just aim and shoot other players. It takes a relatively long time to get into ET because its class and objective based.

I dont think bots would have helped much as any bots would have been pretty simpleminded so you’d get just as many noobalicious players as you do now.

(Kendle) #3

I don’t know whether ET would’ve been “commercially viable” had it had bots, but the lack of bots, and/or a single-player element, was the fundamental reason ET was given away free. Without bots / SP ET only has “incidental” value, i.e. to play it you need “someone else” to provide the servers on which to play. If “no-one else” provides those servers the game has pretty much zero value. Add bots and it does.

Whether it would’ve had enough value to be commercially viable I don’t know. I doubt it personally as I doubt they’d be much use, for the reasons Bani explains above.

(evilsock) #4

Interesting comments - I’ve played the WolfBot mod for RtCW and understand the points you both make. They are indeed far from perfect and very specific - just about good enough to have a bit of fun with, but in no way comparible to the real thing. Still, for the stock maps (which are the mainstay of ET to this day) you could have bot support maybe, but again, as prevously stated, I guess it’s some task to get the bots to be anything like human players.

Do you think the whole Q3 thing was a phenomena and unlikely to be seen again as gameplay becomes more challenging and complex?

(pgh) #5

Imo ET would not work with ‘bots’.

It wouldve maybe with AI (not just run point shoot) as in Call of Cuty where they hide, cover, attack/fallback etc… and then this of course would’ve meant the bots would have set classes and can only ‘defend’ as it’d still be a bitch to make them take on objectives and such at least in a challenging and adequate way. (see any decent euro clan using tactics :stuck_out_tongue: 4 in main 2 side and if it dont work maybe 3 side 3 back etc…)

evilsock, I highly recomend you check out this: http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=683295 . Its a Q3Tricking vid but the maker, who was also an ex hax0r/cheat coder apparently, had to basically screw the Q3 code to create. Shows you some insane stuff as much as it may just look like he had em set to ALWAYS hit…

(Fusen) #6

damn that movie is =OOO be good to see some nice team trickjumping movies for ET :confused:

(bani) #7

actually i suspect the fundamental reason(s) were:

  1. SP was nowhere near finished
  2. MP was 99% done
  3. SD’s time would be better spent on doom3

Hence the decision to nuke SP and release MP for free.

([!]Icon) #8

like Q3? try some Q3f. www.q3f.com =)

(pgh) #9

Rofl Icon… played it for 2 years solid already.

Check out http://etf.splashdamage.com :wink:

([!]Icon) #10

yeah, ive been waiting avidly for that. but last i heard it was going pretty slow.

(ildon) #11

But it’s going!@$% :slight_smile:

(pgh) #12

And i’ve had no invitation for testing yet… :stuck_out_tongue:

And now I have your attention - is Ghetto actually active in the team? In my honest opinion i’d get rid of him if he is… check any of the old posts from the Q3F Test Team forum if its still about (doubt it tho, if so, conc ones are a start). Im sure its easy to figure out that Q3F2 went the way that he wanted which was the typical all DM solly approach and look what happened.

([!]Icon) #13

man how i wish to be a ETF tester.