The Quake 3 Scene in Ireland

Chubby

Zero:
complete newbies to the genre, not just to quake3, will always take a long time to learn the game and basic tactics. The Quake3 scene is dead cause there's not enough people playing it for 2 main reasons.

1). It's not newbie friendly. It's too easy for skilled players with low pings to dominate maps and games. It's no fun for newbies and it takes too long to get up to speed to be able to compete with veterans and there are other alternatives.

Other games like CS, UT, Tribes etc give newbies plenty of time to adjust and learn on random pub servers as most games are team games and not ffa where they run around like headless chickens and get blow up every few seconds. The other games are also offers more variety of gameplay to accommodate people who don't want to play ffa or deathmatch or team deathmatch.

2). People not new to the first person shooters are sick of deathmatches and rocket launchers etc. Some people want realism, some people want teamplay. Quake3 just offers nothing new so you get mostly old school qw players playing it along with some new blood while the majority of gamers and new gamers look at the other games.

Shiminay

It has to be said that Q3A is not as Newbie Friendly as (for example) UT. Didn't people notice that UT was voted a better game in so many mags/reviews primarily because of this.

It's a very serious game (at least it is the way we play here in Ireland) and maybe it detracts from the fun element somewhat - the proof is the craic we had playing QW again in the Generations leage last week. I for one had a ball and I got kicked around the place. QW and (Quake 1 in general) seemed to be much easier to get into than Q3A (can't speak for Q2 - don't play it).

---

All the best,

Offy

Firstly anyone whos a gamer wont have much trouble getting used to Q3, i dident find it very different to Q1.
Secondly Kharn thx for Q1 and QW, spent many a happy hour planing.

SantaHoe

From a newbie mindset, why would anyone want to play Q3 online with a 250ms ping, getting raped by a server of ninja LPBs, when you can have a rewarding game against the bots, where lag isn't an issue, and you can play opponents of equal skill.

I enjoy a good game of QW, Q2, Q3 online, but since IGN's Quake servers are usualy empty, I'd be forced to play on a forign server (and on a modem, forign pings are far from pretty - esp. with Q3).
And TBH, I can't be àrsed begging people in #quake.ie to have a game.

I'll join in a Quake session if I see one on, but most of the time the game's in progress and I don't know wether to join or not... so I just spec or leave.
Compare that to Half-Life (TF & CS), where you just join and jump in without anyone complaining.

I'd like to see a regular Q3-FFA server, so people can just jump in and play, without having to spec for 10mins.

---

Cake Fiend

Aye, back in the (relatively recent) days of quake3-1.ign.ie, a younfla could hop on a server and enjoy a bit of quick FFA without being told to F off because whoever was playing a duel or a TDM. The only problem is, the servers seem to be empty so often these days that you'd wonder if it would be worth the bother to have say games1 as an FFA server (with a duel/RA3 port) and vishnu as a TDM server (with a duel/promode port)

Although I'd love a bit of regular Red Rover...

---

Put 'em in your mouth and suck 'em
Clan Acid

m1ke

When q3 started out with a small 10 person ffa server back when the first iq3cl was being played it was quite regularly being played on... and full a lot of the time.... but then the novelty of it wore off and a lot of people that found themselves bein smacked down left for CS

Really the only way to enjoy quake3 is on isdn, in an active clan or two ... so you can play lots of clan games, league games and supplement the rest of ffas,clan arena etc.. on uk servers.... which can be quite decent.... unfortunately this is the only way to enjoy q3... its not like the old q2/q1 days of lots of games and no one knowing what ping was.

All you can do is get the very most out of q3 as you can.... and one day a game will come along and recreate a big decent scene in ireland.....

damo

*yawn*

CH

Well as a newB, i think Q3 in Ireland sux.

I want to play a bit of Q3, but the Irish servers are empty all the time (see THE DESTROYER's post on 'secret servers'), and my ping is unplayable on overseas servers.

From what i can tell, Q3 in Ireland is going nowhere. So its back to CS for me.

Illkillya

get gamespy

Zero

Originally posted by CH:
From what i can tell, Q3 in Ireland is going nowhere. So its back to CS for me.

Going nowhere? Give us a ring when the CS team manages to get into big European Finals, win a Fournations comp that brings them overseas with free hotels and beer. Team.ie has been to France, Scotland and London in less than 18 months, and have recognition now in Europe, and a lump of us now going to Cologne for the CPL.
The Q3 scene in Ireland might only have 40 odd players, but in my opinion it's the best one to be in, most of the lads are dead sound, when we meet up for beer the crack is savage, because the scene is smaller its more personal, we generally all get on. We might all be crusty old QW players, but when the Irish Q3 crowd go abroad or to a LAN, it turning more and more into a bunch of mates, which is cool.
Most importantly, Irish Q3 has a Sonic, how could play a game that doesn't have a Sonic? Have you no shame? May God have mercy on your soul.

Hawwwww-Click!

El_Presidente

Totaly agree.

As far as I am concerned the Irish Quake 3 scene may be small and it may be very hard to get net games going etc. but the average player is of a very high standard (just go onto a forigen ffa server to see what I mean)and when there is a meet up for a LAN or for the whole team3.ie thing everyone has a good laugh and plays some good games.

Hobbes

Originally posted by Zero:
Going nowhere? Give us a ring when the CS team manages to get into big European Finals....

lol hey CS hasn't even shipped yet (December) we'll see then.

Although I wouldn't worry about anyone getting anywhere. They would all complain doing something (like camping a bomb site, or playing a VIP) would ruin thier stats.

CH

OK, after the above post from Zero, id like to take my foot out of my mouth and confirm my Q3 newBness. Fair enough Q3 in Ireland is going places, and going there very well.

What i was trying to get across was that it's very hard to get a game on the Irish servers. So you have a small, but good group of gamers here in Ireland. Well thats the way its gona stay...small. If you read the post by 'the destroyer' about secret servers, some1 replyed saying that there are secret servers. Therefore if an intrested newB like myself cant get to play ppl (and improve) on the regular servers,then whats the point in me sticking around in Q3. Thats why i said 'back to CS', not to compare the two games or how well certain teams were doing.

Regards.

SheroN

Zero's points are valid...but what chance does a newbie have of going aboard for beer and the likes when he's playing against someone on a machine 2 times as fast as his...with a 10th of his ping and 4 years experience of playing similar games?..like im not gonna waste hundreds of quids to go to colonge to get smacked around by better players...the beer might be good..but i could go on the **** here 10 times over with the money i'd spend on that one **** up.
anyway...umm....

Hobbes

Good point Sheron. I think the main factor is those new players if they were to play against the more experienced straight off would probably quit or complain that they were being forced off the server.

Heck I still have nightmares playing CT. I never lived longer then 5 seconds, and that was only because most of them went to the bar to get some drinks in.

GreenHell

On the point about newbies I can remember coming into this community last christmas and playing in the iq3l and it was a great time to be getting involved in this commmunity the atmosphere was completely differant there was alot of energy in the community. Nows it completely changed I have only seen a handfull of new players arrive into the community and start playing q3. If you look at the players list for iq3cl you can only pick out a few new names and this is sad.

If you look at the half life side of the community I have seen loads of people entering new and being encouraged.

Q3 doesn't have the interest which cs/tf arouses but its still a good game + looking at 2 empty q3 servers every night compared to 4 full cs server and 2 full tf servers is a bit depressing

Bunny

Q3 requires a really fast machine and is almost unplayable on modem compared to UT, CS, etc.

On the flipside theres a whole bunch of us who don't have computers/connections who still manage to play it.