I wasn’t thinking about the money they get from sales. They still provide services for this game and that’s costing them money but it can’t be much.
Don’t know how this works exactly and who’s paying for what, but there’s a server that game servers communicate with (so they show up in the game browser) and there’s still a server that collects the stats from ranked servers.
I could probably run the whole thing on my local PC if it weren’t for my lousy connection.
Besides that, there’s probably some sort of contract with a couple of GSPs who have the right to provide ranked servers. They may make a bit of money out of this (Activision I mean) but it can’t be much. 30 Ranked servers at let’s say $30 dollar per month would mean a bit more then $10,000 per year and that’s the revenue, which is not the same as profit. Activision might get a part of this, but even the total amount would be peanuts for a company of that size.
I would love to get rid of the restrictions on ranked servers and that would be my ultimate goal. I wish we could run a server where we could pick our own maps and change things on certain maps to provide for better games and still be ranked. That’s what the new players seem to go for.
Wolfenstein’s backing and being free are what contributed to W:ET’s success, the custom community then cannibalised it by churning out unplayable goofy and downright racist servers running mods.
It’s not about the quality of the custom content, it’s about the accessibility. If you start a game of ETQW right now you’re ensured you’re getting what you pay for, what you expect without having to wait to download something, then restart the game into a different mode without having an idea what exactly you’re getting yourself into.
I realize that ranked servers is something that a lot of people seem to like and new players seem to go for those. People want to rank up etc, I have my personal opinion on that, but that isn’t really relevant, I realize the importance of it, I’m a member of a clan that runs a ranked server…
[QUOTE=DrFunkenstein;379193]I realize that ranked servers is something that a lot of people seem to like and new players seem to go for those. People want to rank up etc, I have my personal opinion on that, but that isn’t really relevant, I realize the importance of it, I’m a member of a clan that runs a ranked server…
I just want to get rid of the restrictions.
Dr. Funkenstein[/QUOTE]
It’s not the ranks, it’s the quality insurance. If there was a similar quality seal without statistics then people would get that as well. Not because they hate custom content, but because custom content has hurdles lying in front of itself before you get to play. You need to invest time into it before you get something out of it while ranked servers simply mean instant action and the certainty of great games.
The biggest hurdle for downloadable content is not the quality seal, that would sort itself out in the end. The biggest hurdle is that you can’t run a custom map on a ranked server, which means practically no one ever plays them. The second thing that bugs me is that you can’t change anything to your liking with the stock maps and the current campaigns. You just have to deal with the restrictions that came with the game if you want to run a viable server. And the term viable is used very loosely here, cough.
The biggest hurdle is the game restart and the megatexture download. Second to that comes the quality control, it’s impressive what’s being done by solo modders, you can see enormous effort, skill and creativity went into the custom content, but it just cannot beat a professional team with a big budgetwho know what they’re doing in a few years worth of full-time devotion. It would be a completely unfair comparison.
Can you elaborate on this please? You’ve said this a few times now and just want to know what exactly do you mean by this.
In terms of detail my own work could be better but in terms of gameplay I think I’ve managed to get at least 3 maps that play great.
Mord’ matched SD’s level of detail in my opinion with ATW3 and with the current mapscript edits and entity hacks it plays quite well now also.
Also Hoggin beats the **** out of all ET:QW maps custom or stock put together.
Megatexture downloads were overcome by the modding community also as did the restarts to some extent (1 restart instead of 13).
ET:QW has a fairly good bunch of perfectly playable and enjoyable custom maps that cater for all types of players, I can count all the truly terrible ones on one hand with fingers to spare. Unlike ET, ET:QW is harder to mod, therefore those who’ve stuck around know what they are doing to some extent and as a result the quality overall is better than the trash that is released daily for ET.
If ET:QW didn’t have ranked I don’t think custom content would have got out of hand like it did with ET, simply because it’s harder, any idiot could make some funny coloured hats or mines in ET by editing a few images an calling it a do. ET:QW is vastly different, most of the assets in the pk4s are compressed or compiled versions which you can’t really open or edit, the compressed texture names also are hashes or something rather than their real names so you haven’t a clue what is what without trial and error, you also need to download plugin for photoshop to view them. It’s a real pain in the arse.
You also have the restart business, is a server going to run a simple texture mod, assuming they can get one working, if it requires their regular players to constantly have to restart the engine for a new skin? Nope, not if they want to retain those players they wont. Same goes for crap maps, mappers have to make sure their maps are of a certain quality to make sure they get played, restarts are a bit of a pain and no one is going to put up with them for sub par maps.
Anyway all that was really needed was a new filter in the server browser, custom content.
Can you elaborate on this please? You’ve said this a few times now and just want to know what exactly do you mean by this.
Sure, a big part lies in the amount of testing cycles a map can go through. Within the confines of a developer you can keep on releasing rough drafts get them tested right away, find out the weak points, back to the drawing board and adjust it. A singular map maker can’t afford this. Where a developper team happily plays in grey prefabs, an amateur map maker first needs to make the map somewhat visually appealing to some extend to draw in testers and to prevent testers from becoming distracted by the low graphics (a notion that professional developers understand and thus don’t need the cosmetics).
You make maps from scratch and you get about four or five significantly different versions maximum, and that will take months. That’s something developpers can do within weeks or even days. They sketch, test, sketch, test sketch, test some more then see how they can make it look better.
And even with just a few maps being sub par, I think there’s more than that -Again, not making value judgements on the authors as they did far more than I could ever hope to dream of.- it will discourage players as they risk wasting their time and with a small playerbase that’s something ETQW can’t afford any longer.
I’m all for SD giving their seal of approval to a few, putting them into an official update and make them ranked. An editor’s choice edition so to speak. Epic did it with all of their Unreal Tournament games and Valve and Blizzard are pioneering a whole new industry of custom content. It seems like a fair standard right? If a developer is willing to tie their name to the content, then it’s good enough to be included in the game.
When the player base is healthy enough custom mappers can approach their work in a similar manner.
In ET my latest map I’m working on I had about 3 different layout iterations on paper before I began work on the map, each version was passed to a selection of top players for comment and revisions where made till we were all comfortable with the layout.
I then blocked out the first stage, no detail, just purely the layout, it was then private tested, feedback was given, amendments were made. The turn around from testing one version to the next was about a 4 days, circumstances permitting. A month later we came to a mutual agreement that the first stage layout didn’t work as well as we had hoped.
I scrapped the first stage and went back to the drawing board. Repeated the planning process with a new layout then began work on the map when it was finalised. A few test versions later we were much happier with the first stage and work began on the second stage using the initial plan. Some details were added to the first stage at this point.
Again the second stage didn’t go to plan but faired better than the initial first stage so there was only relatively minor changes that had to be made, objective locations, spawn positions route lengths and such, luckily I didn’t have to start again, again. Each change was tested individually over the course of a few weeks.
Unfortunately for this project I had decided to enter it into the doomed TLR/SAGE mapping competition and had to release a public beta, the publically released map lacked a lot of detail and wasn’t well received thanks in part, luckily some of the public knew why it was the case and i managed to get a bit of genuine feedback from a larger audience.
The competition was called off and work on the project has halted…
When I started work on Maridia I was able to use a similar method of working but maps afterwards I couldn’t due to the declining player population, it’s probably why Maridia is the better map compared to later ones.
You’re right to point out all that stuff is important to make a great map but it’s not beyond the reach of amateurs who can muster up the right people to support their project. Shoutout to Zak
Also worth noting that professionals don’t always get it right despite their superior resources and full time commitment, take a look at that game released a few month back, Brink I think it was called
Also worth noting that professionals don’t always get it right despite their superior resources and full time commitment, take a look at that game released a few month back, Brink I think it was called
That’s the biggest advantage modders have over professionals, they aren’t constrained by selling games to their grandmothers.
As I recall, a lot of development studios/staffing were once modders??? Nothing wrong with custom content, but a game should have a good system of crossing between both pure/custom cleanly.
Made my day.