Share your Status / What's on your mind?

[Xolvix 49]

For someone who hasn't played Quake Champions, how different (or similar) is it to say Quake 3? I don't player multiplayer games much anymore for many reasons, but I am curious about anything that keeps one of my favorite game series alive. On the other hand, I was under the impression QC is more or less on life support at this point

[peter_spy 1538]

9 minutes ago, Xolvix said:

On the other hand, I was under the impression QC is more or less on life support at this point

That is a common narrative on Steam forums, but I'm not sure whether that's true. I mean there are always people when I play. Sometimes it's just me + bots, but it's not a majority of cases.

The gameplay and pacing is similar to Q3, slightly slower I think, and you can also use character skills (can be turned off if you don't like it).

[STiFU 732]

6 hours ago, Xolvix said:

For someone who hasn't played Quake Champions, how different (or similar) is it to say Quake 3? I don't player multiplayer games much anymore for many reasons, but I am curious about anything that keeps one of my favorite game series alive. On the other hand, I was under the impression QC is more or less on life support at this point

Regarding the movement and weapons, you will feel right at home. Everything feels on point, you're gonna love it. The Grenade launcher has been replaced by the Tribolt, which will feel awkward at first, but it actually has some good use cases that make it more useful than the previous grenade launcher.

The new thing about QC are the champions, which you can rather quickly unlock just by playing. It's a free2play title, but you can of course also instantly unlock all champions via money. However, NO pay2win mechanics are involved!! Each champion has an active ability and a few passive abilities, which make for interesting gameplay changes, depending on the champion matchup. Some notable passive abilities: Doom Slayer has double jump, Ranger has significantly reduced self-damage (rocket jumps), Nyx can wall-jump, Slash has crouch-sliding (as in Quake 4). If you've got some experience with various Q3 mods, you will know that there are also some with a different movement physics called CPM, where you have a lot of air-control. There are a two champions that actually use that movement physic: Anarki and Sorlag.

The player count is comparatively low, yes, but it's steady, so it's not like the game is dying. Also, remember that some people do not play via steam, but via bethesda launcher, so the steam concurrent players statistics is not representative of actual player counts. When I queue for a game, I usually find a match within 30 secs.

If you want to give it a shot, I recommend to start with one of the heavy champions like Scalebearer or Sorlag, especially in team-modes where you can usually not get your hands on enough armor or the mega health even. Aside from their higher starting health and armor, they also come with an incredibly useful toolset. In my oppinion, light champions really make no sense in team-modes at all, except if you play incredibly fast ones like Slash. Playing slash good is incredibly difficult, 'though.

Finally, I would just like to add that the game is not hard to learn and it's really well balanced. So, have fun!  Just don't go ahead and try to learn all champions, right away. I still haven't to this day, even though I already have 100h of game-time clocked in.

[peter_spy 1538]

A colleague who lived in the state capital, had his immediate family living basically in the same quarter. They decided to throw a family party, since they haven't seen each other in a while, and they felt everyone should be fine (despite very high infection / mortality rate in the region). Both him and his father were admitted to the local hospital several days after. Father died 2 days ago. He died yesterday.

Seriously, take care of yourselves. Even if you don't believe in covid or wearing masks, it's better to treat it like Pascal's wager.

[STiFU 732]

We're considering building a house in my father's back-garden, which as of now had not been planned as a building area. Now, one would think, hey we'll just quickly ask the city whether we are allowed to build something there, but nooooo, I forgot about german burocracy. We apparently have to to hand in an detailed inquiry with a description of our planned construction and that inquiry costs 500 €. That's a lot of money when there is a legitimate chance that they simply say "no, you can't build there"...

[Diego 198]

I hate this kind of stuff. I get it that there must be limits to what people can do in their own property to ensure the neighbor's rights are preserved, but every government will seize the opportunity to go well beyond that goal while extorting as much as possible.

[peter_spy 1538]

Um, how about consulting an architect? Maybe that's cheaper?

[STiFU 732]

12 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

Um, how about consulting an architect? Maybe that's cheaper?

Actually, my cousin is handling all that stuff and he is in fact an architect.

[peter_spy 1538]

On the second thought, that might have more to do with German Building Law. In Poland, you have different plot types, built, unbuilt, utitity, etc. To build a house, you need to have a building plot / site.

[STiFU 732]

I just ordered a Lego Technic set because I was feeling blue and wanted to look forward to something fun. I figured, I'll build the model, disassemble it again and put it all back in the box, so I can give it to my son in 10 years as a present.  

[Anderson 318]

Always wondered how fast does one type compared to other people. Apparently touch typing is a contest thing and there's even a multiplayer for this "type" of thing at https://play.typeracer.com/

60-80 words/minute is my average typing speed. My best record is 99 words/minute thus far. It's impressive how there are people who can upon type 140-150 on any normal day. The world record is currently 216 words/minute according to my Google search. Reminds me of that video game "The Typing of the Dead" as if people were born with keyboards attached to their bodies.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Anderson

[Kurshok 64]

I miss some old TV shows from my past that I used to like. I found out they have fan groups who wish they'd be rebooted too. So that's cool. Been trying to stay sane and not bored out of my mind during this corona bullshit.

[revelator 262]

atleast it seems the vaccine is on track been reading a lot of books lately.

[Kurshok 64]

I miss eating at this chinese place at the edge of town. I don't eat there not because its chinese and the whole virus thing started in China, that would be stupid, but because I don't trust eating inside restaurants during this.

[Jedi_Wannabe 216]

51 minutes ago, revelator said:

atleast it seems the vaccine is on track been reading a lot of books lately.

Me too. Most recent was Roadside Picnic, upon which S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is based. Ashamed I never got around to it until this pandemic, seemed kinda fitting tho. Written by a couple of Soviet brothers who were I guess kinda famous, but what I found particularly interesting is in its original form it was highly censored. The copy I got was recently retranslated with a nice forward by the surviving Strugatksy brother.

[revelator 262]

29 minutes ago, Jedi_Wannabe said:

The copy I got was recently retranslated with a nice forward by the surviving Strugatksy brother.

Hah cool find

[Jedi_Wannabe 216]

38 minutes ago, revelator said:

Hah cool find

By recent I mean like 2013.  The story behind this story is interesting in and of itself, with about a billion different versions but I think according to the forward, this one is the definitive version. It was cheap too. Original prints definitely not; relics from Soviet propaganda kinda like artifacts from the Zone itself

[Kurshok 64]

I decided to look up some old YouTube gaming videos on Oblivion I liked from over a decade ago. Anyone remember the Oblivion mod "Pickman's Model", meant to add a Lovecraftian questline and house to the game with new monsters?

[revelator 262]

Silently cursing that edge of nowhere was only made for VR :x damn that game looks good.

[Xolvix 49]

On 12/6/2020 at 4:16 PM, Jedi_Wannabe said:

Me too. Most recent was Roadside Picnic, upon which S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is based.

 

[STiFU 732]

Quake Pro League Finals are on this weekend, if anybody cares for that... @Xolvix @peter_spy maybe?  

[peter_spy 1538]

@STiFU I just got info on a winter update for QC, one new map and TLY CTF version!

[peter_spy 1538]

Maybe we should have a "What are you playing right now (except TDM)?" thread, because I don't know where to post it

Anyway, I bought Gears (of War) 5 on a midweeek madness sale. Don't know what I was thinking. This review sums up my impressions nicely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qv7wdUun-g

[STiFU 732]

I also recently played it and I actually kinda liked it. The visuals were incredible in some scenes and well, the action is just over the top. The finales of each of the four Acts were 100% epic! But other than that, the gameplay really did not carry too much.

It's basically like Resident Evil 6. Gameplay is kind of stupid, but the action is stupidly over the top, which one can enjoy... or not!

[peter_spy 1538]

To me it's kind of weird they didn't figure out the essence of this game yet. The movement/shooting mechanics has been solid for quite a while, the story isn't even hilariously bad and could be cut easily. They try to mix so many things, the space-opera melodrama, BLM references, while still trying to stay Bayhem and dudebro-friendly. If they thought it would somehow blend into some nice popcultural coctail a la Joss Whedon (or Hideo Kojima), they failed miserably. It takes much, much better writing to do this properly.

But, it's surprising to me that even the level design is outdated. They still do this tank-on-rails, thing with tons of invisible walls everywhere, and just as in Thief 4, they have point-of-no-return doors, while also encouraging exploration with collectibles. And they still divide gameplay into hard exploration or combat sections, with the gong sound and characters announcing that the combat has ended. I always found it dumb, since GoW has the SF horror aspect, and it's pretty much butchered because of this (even if it's more like Starship Troopers, not Aliens).

They had so many years to iterate on this, and they did almost nothing (except the graphics).

Edited December 19, 2020 by peter_spy