[EDIT]: I HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT THERE IS AN NDA IMPOSED ON PEOPLE WHO PLAY IN THE CLOSED BETA. TO STRICTLY FOLLOW THAT RULE, MOST OF THE DISCUSSIONS HERE WOULD BE BASED ON FIRST LOOKS ON GAMEPLAY VIDEOS AND THE LIKE.
Okay so around 1:40ish GMT +8 I was messing around the net until I saw Quake: Champions. So I was wondering, for the “more game aged” people here, like what are your thoughts? Do you think Quake is going into the right direction?
Quick background for other people, Quake is an arena shooter. It’s fast paced and accuracy means a lot. Most people tend to agree that Quake 3 is the height of the game.
From what I heard, Quake Live was basically Quake 3 but in arguably “better” graphics with the same gameplay but it didn’t kick off well due to whatever were the reasons at the time. And then they did that huge update were people were arguing it became to “newbie-friendly” (which is still up for debate on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing).
Quake: Champions is currently on a “Closed Beta” which means absolutely no sense because you can just go to the site I linked you, sign up, and then get a key. I haven’t installed the game yet (because I can’t find a system requirements so I won’t even try). The game would be free in launch OR you can buy it. It kinda follows the SMITE way of either “play this game for free and buy the champions using in-game money OR buy this and get everything day 1”.
Also, quick background on me and Quake, I never grew up with Quake. My brother introduced it to me in the early 2010s (obviously years after its hay day) and though I still believe that it’s a good game, it’s not for me (I’m more of a CS or UT guy).
So yeah, thoughts anyone?
I played the original Quake for many, many years back then and I hold to this day that the first one was the best. Q2 was never quite right in my opinion, something about the character models and the physics made me feel ungainly, far too tall and something was just off about how the character moved. Q3 was better and closer in feel to the original but at least at the start it came off as very gimmicky and at that point Unreal tournament existed and was itself a better arena shooter in my opinion, especially if you enjoyed gimmicks. Never got into quake live.
The quake champions closed beta is clearly a closed beta, they just have not reached their desired participation levels yet, so getting access is easy. The system requirements can be found in the Bethesda client you have to run it through.
Min: i3-530, 4GB RAM, GeForce 630/Radeon R7-240
Rec: i5-3330, 8GB RAM, GeForce GTX 670
Pretty much 7-5 year old stuff, so you probably don’t have to worry
As for my opinions on the game, have not played it yet as the servers are only open on weekends so I only know what I’ve seen from their trailers and launch reveals. Not particularly fond of the idea of the game having “champions” with special abilities and stuff, this moba crap is poisoning everything now. If you’re going to make fast paced skill based arena shooter then the point should be player skill and an encounter between two players should not be decided based on which ‘abilities’ you have on cooldown or not.
But I’ll give it a proper whirl this weekend and then wont tell you anything about it since I had to sign an NDA when I signed up for the Closed Beta.
Oh there is an NDA? Well looks like I have to edit the title then.
I find it really stupid that you have to run the Bethesda Client just to find out the system requirements of the game. Whatever happened to actually putting it on the site?
I’m also not fond of the champions thing because as you’ve implied, Quake is a fast paced skill based arena shooter and that should be the main focus and not let character stats affect how good you can do while fragging people around the map.
Also. can we all stop just for a sec and discuss quickly “Moba Champions Thingamafucker” concepts? I like how the game industry thinks this is a “marvelous concept” that makes money. Uhm guys, this isn’t a new concept. Remember back when - platformer games/fighting games/action games/rpgs/adeventure games - let you choose a character to play? (and I mean a legit premade, no custom character). If anything this “Moba Champions Thingamafucker” is a “modernized” (not really imho) take on characters, stats, and abilities and is being shoved in (with their goddamn lootcrates) random games just to say “we added depth guys!!!”.
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They released the NDA so I think we can speak freely now.
I’ve played 4 matches so far and the game itself is pretty good, I like the overall game feel. It reminds me of Unreal tournament more than it does Quake though.
I am however not very impressed with the whole loot box malarkey and unlockable skins, hell even skin colour variants are unlocked. I’ve opened 3 loot boxes now and I’ve gotten colours in each of them and they’re really plain shit nothing worth even bothering with. There are full alternate models to unlock as well though but I’m guessing those will be rare. But worst of course is that you’re going to have to unlock the damn characters with one of two currencies, one of which I’m guessing has an exchange rate with USD.
The MOBA issue I spoke about in the earlier post is certainly there, more so in the stat differences between the champions than so much in skills. Each hero has one active skill and one or two passive ones. The main marine dude has something sort of like a grenade but you can also use it to teleport with, there’s a neon woman who can turn invisible/invulnerable for a few seconds and will ‘telefrag’ anyone she appears inside of when it ends.
Health, speed and armour differences are quite large between them though and while I haven’t performed well enough to be able to tell the impact those stats have on the game some has twice the max health pool to others so that ought to matter.
I’ll probably play it over the beta weekends and maybe I’ll take a liking to it, if it remains free to play after launch it might be something to dip into now and then. But I’m suspecting the whole currency grind and unlocking shit is going to be more of a deterrent than incentive.