how to keep aq2 alive?

[Hawk]

As I was reading this topic I started wondering if aq2 is really dying and I'm just one of those die-hards refusing it?



If we go back in time when aq2 was at it's best, what did make it the best, if it's because there were no other "realistic" games.. we're screwed, but if there was another reason, there should be something we could do about it, since we, after all, is the community.



Since we can't go back in time I'd say it's better to take a look at what's wrong these days, and do something about it, so write your suggestions here, and be serious please





Tournaments: Always fun, keep 'em coming I wouldn't mind seeing some 2on2 tournaments either, since there seems to be a lot of quad teams around these days, and yes, I'm aware that there is a 2on2 ladder on aq2suomi



Clanwars: Even though it has "war" in it's name doesn't mean people have to be rude to eachother, we're all people (except Westelindh who's some kind of beast)



People: Same here, it's true that other scenes fight as well, but with a community as small as this, compared to others. Making everyone your enemy won't help it



Finish people: It's true that the finnish community is the biggest aq2 community, but why is it? could some fin comment on this?



"Rasicm": Too many people have problems with people that's not from their own country, way to often when I'm playing on non-swedish servers(are there any swedish without weaponbans?), I'm getting flamed because I'm a swede "go play on some swedish server", "swedish people are gay" etc.. Maybe I just never understood the point of rasicm, but it can't be that this many people are accualy rasicts.. I hope



Cheats: Everyone hates cheats, so lets not cheat. If you want to cheat, go play cs, everyone else there cheats so they'll welcome you with open arms. We don't need to destroy this already small community by making people not want to play.



Attitude: A problem that seems to be growing on trees, why is having a "looking-down-on-other-people" attitude so cool? I'd rather be happy and smile



That's all I can think of for now...



... oh and also



Highlander: to make clanwars more fun, I remember back in the days there was a tournament called Highlander, where you were only allowed to have one weapon of each kind in the team, doesn't sound like much, but if you never tried it, do, it's a big difference in tactics and gameplay



Weaponwars: This is very time consuming, last time I saw this was ages ago when M.I played one vs Stafs, and I think we played 14 maps, and the cw took three hours, basicly there are seven weapons in the game, and each team picks a map for each weapon, eg rok - sniper, kumanru - akimbo etc, but why not make an alteration of this, and say just one or two maps each, and the team that picks the map picks the weapon(and preferly not just m4/sniper all the time



Uh.. hope anyone reads this, feels like I wrote to much, but lets try to make this more fun?



oh and btw, if you're just going to reply to say that I have to much time, I'm a geek etc, don't. I already know this and you'll just be wasting your time telling me

[birdie]

Finish people: It's true that the finnish community is the biggest aq2 community, but why is it? could some fin comment on this?





Highlander: to make clanwars more fun, I remember back in the days there was a tournament called Highlander, where you were only allowed to have one weapon of each kind in the team, doesn't sound like much, but if you never tried it, do, it's a big difference in tactics and gameplay

Atleast we know what is the good game

Most of our players have started because their irl friend have played aq2 and recommended that to their irl friends.



And i think it's much easier to start aq2 in finland, for example:

newbie goes to aq2suomi.com and asks 'how can i start playing aq2?!!'

Then bunch of ppl tells him url's of packets he needs to start aq2.

And we have channel #aq2suomi where we help as good as we can.





There is highlander tournament once in a year, admined by zakath & co.

Though i've played many hl matches outside of that and i really have to say it is worth of a try

[Flunx]

Brilliant post Hawk!



Have you tried to get one of your mates to start playing?

Here are some examples of my mates whining and me answering.



"WTF is up with the sucky graphics?"

- Idiots! It's not all about graphics!



"How unreal! look at the crazy guy jumping from roof to roof"

- If you want realism go outside and play IRL. AQ2 has the perfect balance.



"Why play this crappy game when you can play CS"

- Because this game actually requires some skills when it comes to aiming. I've played both AQ2 and CS. You don't hit where the crosshair is.



"But you do! You just have to stand still!"

- Yeah, let's all camp now!



"AQ2 is too fast"

- You're to slow, camper.





People in general don't want to play a old game with sucky graphics even though it's got the best gameplay ever.

A few more people would take a closer look at AQ2 if the graphics were enhanced. But it's like playstation and nintendo. Where playstation is the new and "cool" console. Whilst nintendo is the old classic quality console



*back to topic*

The problem is that AQ2 is too unfriendly against noobs.

Even with the new clients and downloads which are supposed to make it easier, there are still people who don't know how to read the readme.txt and bother to learn how to the game.

I really think everyone should try and get their mates to start playing AQ2 and help them along.

Mission impossible?

AQ2 needs to be updated. Not recreated like RQ3.

[blissard]

my friend played cs all the time, and i kept saying cs sucked, and aq2 was teh bomb. so after a lot of nagging he finally gave aq a try (this was last year, and the man is 22). he's rather addicted by now

[emu]

Flunx is right about the hostility against noobs. i often play on tnx, and there has actulley been a huge increase among newbies trying the game. If they stand still or have trouble jumping a ledge and decides not to do it. they get flamed. I really hate that seing it makes them feel unwanted.



I think that we should get a gangsters server up and play those good ol' maps as teacher and blockwar I even think gangsters would be fun in cw's. instead of it standing "offical" on sites all the time, maby you could see "CTB" or "gangsters" and simular ? maby a clan is best at gangsters and some are best at normal cws ?

[Den]

hostility against noobs is in every game

[Repsaj]

I must admit I get angry with newbies too sometimes, but then I recall I was/am newbie (once) and forget about it.



And ofcourse the cheating has to go...but thats impossible...

[Jazzie]

I read an article on a similar problem in the quakeworld scene. I agree with the article that the main reason why people don't want to start playing aq2 (not menetioning things as graphics) is that they simply stand no chance against the guys that have been playing this game for 5-6 years. AQ2 gaming has evolved so much from the start to now that it's now a game which requires extreme skills to manage. Perhaps, people who regularly play other strafejumpgames (quake1,2,3) could start playing aq2, but I think that without a proper ground to stand on (read coming from cs) people will give up almost before they've even tried.



And I quite like the fact that the community is pretty small. You "know" sort of every player in your vicinity. We just have to keep it this big so that it won't shrink even more, then it's starting to get rough.

[Rallu]

Good points you made there Hawk.



I believe that games future lies in n00b friendliness. I have tried to get the cap little bit smaller with my aq2install. It's just making everything alone is way too time consuming.



For n00b making install thing is not just 'put everything in one zip make it public'. You need to think with every file that is it needed and if you're going to put it in install you need to document it well...



But then... It's nice to see n00bs on server hailing me and telling how nice my install... while older players flame him from camping dammit those idiots who flame... I usually teach those n00bs how they can even move around.



What we need is group of dedicated players who like to develop this game to state which is good for everyone. It would be definetly a boost for future of our belowed AQ



what we need is:

-one who writes _good_ manual

-one who helps to make q2demo tutorials for manual

-one who makes install packet from it (me me! )

-one who chooses _good_ & most played maps from huge choice

-one who gets all 32bit textures to those selected maps

-one who gets 32bit textures to all models (player and weapon)

-one who makes way too good and user frienly config generator (I know spectre has one, but isn't good enough)

-one who makes website groovy enough

-one who makes easy to use match find thingy. gsbot is ready, but not everyone knows how to use irc. But it could be solved with good manual (and I have bot ready that can do everything that gsbot can do)

-and most important: One who leads all this thing



Reason why I'm leaving client editing out from this is that its way too time consuming actual help is quite low.



After making packet like that we could have our big community! \o/ With nasty tournaments and stuff.



(nooo.... clanwar -> have to end this here)



-Rallu

(My new campaign: BAN NOCHEAT FROM ALL TOURNAMENTS!)

[Hawk]

if you don't feel like reading all this text, just read the conclusion



A while ago I had some great(?) ideas on how to make it more newbie friendly, but my programming skills doesn't reach beyond php so I kind of gave up with it, but what I had in mind was (before I even knew what Steam was), some kind of application that will just run in a small window, where you can set up whatever aq2 stuff, and a serverlist

This would make it easy to get started for anyone, looking at counter-strike today it's even easier to get started as a total newbie now than it was a few years ago. After installing steam(which was a mess tbh), it was pretty obvious what kind of options I had, clicking the Options button gave me full control of setting up everything. I configure my controls and save, and I click the Servers button, and there I am, playing cs and all..



It's true though, that it's not just the newbie friendlieness that scared people away, but the level of competition that the newbies has to face as soon as they figure out how to join a server.



Recently one of my cs playing friends has started playing aq2, and he's become pretty good in just around three months now, so the problem isn't really the aim, I'm guessing that anyone from any game would have aim basics, it doesn't really take long to learn how to handle weapons decent in a new game (except for me in cs). I'd say the main problem is the movement, cs players that never had any excperience from strafejumping will most likely feel outmanouvered pretty fast, and figuring out strafejumps by yourself can take a while.. i'd say it took me 2 years or something



Conclusion

I kind of lost my point there and got carried away by the subject, but what I'm trying to say is, maybe we really should go with the idea Devirus posted a few months ago, with the aq2 school (for free though ), for newbies to be able to keep up with the pace of the averege aq2 player these days he has three options:



1. Play aq2 on public servers until he figures out everything by himeself <-- this person will most likely give up aq2 pretty soon



2. Read tutorials on how to move and do jumps <-- works, but it's still hard if you don't have any basics



3. Have someone show you how it's done <-- I've accualy helped tons of people over the years, some get it, some don't, but if I would start playing a game where the averege level is this high I'd prefer if someone would show me some hints too





ok omg geeee I have to stop getting carried away, can't even remember why i started writing this by now ;P

[Masa^]

I think some sort of public demo storage would help newbies A LOT. Like one in aq2suomi. And propably a clanlist wouldnt be bad idea either.

[mirror]

uhm nice thread





concerning the page, we got aq2world.net (soon or so hehe)





but getting new players in a game like this is really really difficult. as ppl already mentioned, the skill lvl is very high, so it quite takes a while to get in. another reason is that most ppl (at least in ger) wanna be pro gamers one day, and that not possible with aq2.. so they stay with their cs.



the only reason why they could prefer aq2 is maybe the game itself. so ppl should try to get friends playing aq etc.. but that takes really mucho time. well i thought about how getting new players, too, but till now i couldnt find a real answer.



conclusion -> none

[Sovnig]

I agree with hawk

I started playing this game december 2001, and that was when a lot of people were rather experienced, I wouln't have any chance to learn the game as fast as I did if I didn't play vs Sir_vive as often as I could, he taught me the tricks I needed to know and stuff, so I think an "aq2-school" or something would be very nice. That way the newbies won't be so much by themselves either, and they'd get to know more people easier, and discover that the aq2community is the greatest one out there!



Would be nice if we could get an easy installer up on the aq2world.net as soon as it gets up, with a guide to IRC too, and a channel called #aq2.eu or something where newbies could come and ask for anything.

[Sovnig]

We just need some way to promote aq2 and the aq2world.net website too then btw..



//Edit: Oh yeah, and somewhere newbs could gather and form clans would be nice too

[Zak]

Great Thread



I totally agree with Jazzie, it´s not the attitude towards newbies, I think it really is too hard for a new Guy to play against Guys who play aq2 since 5 or 6 years. They will mostly feel like a "Freefrag". Playing all those Maps there are for aq2 needs a lot of Experience in my mind (learning all Spawns, safe Ways etc).



So the conclusion to me is, that new Players will get disappointed quite fast, and perhaps then think "What the Hell, this Game has crappy Graphics, is way too fast, let´s play CS"



Just my 2 pence

Zak