Quake Wars and Quake 4 MUST have forced-updates, heres why

(Latrosicarius) #1

Dear Splash Damage,

Quake III Arena was the greatest multiplayer game of it’s time. But it’s time ended quicker than it should have because of one major flaw–optional updates.

When the game was first released, everyone was playing one single version. Everyone in the player population could see and join all the available servers. But then one day, a patch came out. Some people decided to update, others did not. This formed a schism between the once united player pool and created two incompatible versions of Quake III Arena.

Soon more updates arrived. Casual patching split the population up even further until the master server listing looked like a ghost town.

Please, Splash Damage, don’t let the same fate destroy Quake 4 and Quake Wars! Give them a chance to hold their own against their competing games. No one wants to buy a game that will be dead in a year. Please. Implement a mandatory updating system for online play.

Thank you for listening.
That is all.

(Cerebrate) #2

In the likes of WarCraft III? I suppose those who don’t update the game aren’t very serious about it–more into single-player and such, but I could be wrong.

(carnage) #3

i would dissagree with that

about a year ago i was still into the rtcw scene but i played on the 1.3 patch when the majority of the players were on 1.41

With only about 10 servers and ide gess about 100 players, but was a nice little comunity very easy to find a good match, also most noobs had left the patch and only decent player remined. So was nice and above all very easy to find a match with no downloads or full of noobish player

(fattakin) #4

I would like it i think, having every server available to every player sounds ideal. And fixing any bugs etc.

(Sick Boy) #5

I think an ingame message telling you there’s a new update is good enough, maybe with a button to download and install the update.

There have been updates for other games that broke stuff or changed gameplay slightly, so choice is good I suppose. Especially when updates break mods, and you have to wait a while for your favourite mod to be updated.

(Cerebrate) #6

I second that. Not as intrusive as with the 2.60 where you had to click each time you opened ET.

(Floris) #7

I’ve never really moved with ET, I’m still playing ET 2.55 (Which some people forgot that it excisted)
There are about 100 servers and 1000 players, a very tight community and at least one of your servers gets full :slight_smile:

(Cerebrate) #8

Eh, why exactly?

(Sauron|EFG) #9

Auto-updating servers sounds bad to me, and I’d rather have control over which version I use on my client as well (so that I can upgrate when my favourite servers have been updated).

I do agree that getting people to upgrade is usually a good thing though. Maybe displaying information about how many more servers/players there are on the new version would help…

“80% of the ET:QW players are running a newer version than you, and you can’t play with them unless you install the latest patch. Loser!” :smiley:

(Well, maybe the last part isn’t necessary. :wink: )

(Nail) #10

imho, I think people play “unpatched” to exploit the bugs that the patches fix

(fattakin) #11

because it makes them think they have big willies in a land of little people?

(SCDS_reyalP) #12

There is a cvar that turns that off. Of course, having a “don’t bug me again” option on the dialog would be nice.

I think both sides of the argument have merit. Communities do get fragmented by the patches, but being forced to upgrade also sucks.

There is usually a lag time between a patch being released and mods being updated to support it. If upgrades were forced, this would be a problem.

OTOH, it is pretty shocking that there are still 500+ people playing the buggy mess that ET 1.0 is.

I don’t buy the idea that having different versions caused the “death” of Q3. With ~1900 players on right now (according to ASE), I’d say it isn’t dead yet. Q3 is on the downward trend of its natural lifecycle, and having everyone one on the same version wouldn’t have greatly extended it.

(Cerebrate) #13

Some play ETPro 2.0.7 too.

(Latrosicarius) #14

You all have many good points of view. But I think we can all agree that there should AT LEAST be an in-game button that will allow you to upgrade in one click. Remember, if you just play single-player, you won’t have to update like Steam makes you do for HL2.

Personally, I still would prefer an auto-update feature, because small, private communities of friends can still occur through the use of clans, which the average person would tend to do anyway if he/she was serious about playing. Also, it’s a better to choose what people you want to play with by joining a good clan, than to form your acquantances with people who would otherwise not be your friends, simply because everyone else migrated to the new version and they are the only ones left to play with. You can find more people with your common interests with clans, but it’s less common to do so by just “bumping into” random people online.

The ONLY thing optional patches will do to a community is split it up. It will never enlarge it. What if your community only mostly survives the migration. Mostly is not good enough–you will still lose some good people with every patch. By the way, if any of you feel strongly about not losing your friends online whenever a patch comes out, for goodness’ sake, please attract the attention of a mod, who might be able to relay this message to an employee of Splash Damage.

(Salteh) #15

The mods are employees of Splash Damage.
Splasher read these forums too… no need to ‘relay messages’ :smiley: :smiley:
A one-click update button sounds ok…

(SCDS_reyalP) #16

There has been no mention of single player for ET:QW.

Steam is a good example of forced updates being a royal pain in the ass (don’t get me wrong, it’s a a good idea in many ways, but the implementation is somewhat lacking). Something like steam also requires a large amount of infrastructure and work on the part of the developer and publisher. X developer/months spent on makinga a steamalike means that many less months spent fixing bugs in the game itself.

One less drastic option would be to stop the masters from listing older versions at some point. People who really wanted to stay on that version could still do so (to the point of setting up their own masters if they wanted), but it probably encourage the people who simply don’t know or don’t care to upgrade. Obviously, you would want this combined with in game notification, so people don’t just assume the whole game died one day :moo:

It would also allow for a period of overlap, which is desirable for leagues and modders.

(ouroboro) #17

i been wondering why the rtcw master seems to have been down forever

see: http://games.activision.com/games/wolfenstein/ - upper right corner. also http://archive.gamespy.com/stats/ hasn’t shown it in ages.

is id trying to nudge rtcw players away maybe?

(SCDS_reyalP) #18

the rtcw master still seems to work (in game and pathfinder) so I’d say its more likely to be sloppy work on ATVI and gamespys part.

(Latrosicarius) #19

A few of you have excelently pointed out major concern. Namely, were I a modder or an server admin, I would definitly appreciate an “update news” page on the game’s homepage so I could read the details about the upcomming patch well before it get’s auto-patched. And for certain, have a MOTD in the game itself that says “HEY EVERYBODY, THERE WILL BE A PATCH COMMING SOON, READ THE TECHNICAL DETAILS HERE [link]”

SCDS_reyalP, for ET:QW all information we have says it will be multiplayer-only… which certainly not a bad thing. But for other games like Quake 4 (which I do realize Splash Damage is not developing, but you get the point), you should not be forced to patch when only playing in an offline mode. Only when you connect online should you have to download the patch. This way, people without/with slow internet connections will still not be hastled to update if they are only interested in playing the missions. I realize that while a Steam-like program may be ideal for me, it turns into a huge obstacle for those people who play offline and don’t want to connect to the Internet every time they start up the game.

(ouroboro) #20

ok cool. i don’t have it installed atm so i was worried :frowning: