As most of you already know, I’ve been around Quake for what seems like an eternity. As a well known player in the community with vast playing experience in the CTF and CA realms, I feel something of this caliber has been long over due. We often speak of maps, mods, and gameplay, but we ignore the most vital component to keeping the engine running, the players.
We’re on the verge of doing some special things in Quake, adding new engines, a DM tourney in progress, and now a CTF tournament. So what is the purpose of ‘The Grunt Vault’ you ask?
It’s my obligation to contribute from my knowledge to people who want to continue playing Quake and get better at it (even if it’s just a hobby, and even if the game is long considered dead to some). The intention of The Grunt Vault is to introduce you, the reader, with our current player base. Each week, I will write a piece about one player of my choosing, their strengths, their weaknesses, overall style, and potential. The pieces I write are not meant to attack a single player, invoke arguments, or promote an ego battle, but you’re more than welcome to debate and trade thoughts peacefully. I want to help people familiarize themselves with the players who play this game, and for people coming back to feel that they know who they’re playing with.
With all that being said, the player I have chosen for the Grunt Vault first analysis ever is Spoon (sorry to pick on you Dave).
Spoon is one of the more well renowned players in Quake’s history (within the CA/CTF community), although I’m somewhat unfamiliar with his past, most people will remember him stemming from clan [GI] with Picklehead.
Although in his CTF days he wasn’t as well known, Spoon began playing CA more exclusively, he was particularly known with clan Iov under the leadership of Lennox; in Iov, Spoon would entrench himself as one of the best all around CA players to ever hit DM3’s bridges. Soon after Iov’s demise, Spoon moved over to DOOM and became part of their allstar studded lineup.
Today, he casually visits the Speaknow and CTF servers to play a pickup game here and there (as he becomes more comfortable putting his hand eye coordination skills on display as a cook)
His vast experience helped him win the CQL with Iov, and he lead the team in scores through many tough fought clan matches/scrimmages.
Spoon possesses an extremely elusive ability to stay unpredictable (where the predictable has become routine *cough*). Spoon rocket jumps quickly and moves around well, often keeping you guessing with his whereabouts, he uses sound to his advantage and you don’t often hearing him making many noises around the map, he has the ability to sneak up on you quite easily.
As most of Quakers already know, Spoon is arguably the best water beast (or mermaid, to your liking) to ever play the game. He moves around swiftly, and his direct rockets are very efficient. Spoon won’t let his prey escape his domain, as the originator of the quick popup shaft out of water, he pushes you back in or kills you instantly as you come out; as is, he’s over prone to try and pop up from the same similar spots in water to try and kill his opponents as they come out of water. If players are wise enough, they can fake him out by using a fake popup onto the bridge and staying in water, screwing up his timing, and then forcing him to bob up a 2nd time (by now you should have the quicker advantage to shaft first); I have used this myself and let’s say it’s helped me a ton against him in water. Although the percentages don’t always show it, Spoon actually has a very good shaft, if he’s on his game, his shaft is easily amongst the tops in Clan Arena, if he locks you, it’s usually over.
Furthermore, Spoon is very strong at mound, he has excellent timing, he knows when to come around, and he’ll often go the way you don’t expect him too if you’re sitting at mound anticipating his entry into the area, he really keeps you on your toes as far as your game goes, and for most players, that’s a good thing.
In my personal 1 on 1’s with him, it’s an all out RJ war, almost exclusively coming down to 5-4 in rounds each time (although I don’t advocate 1 o n 1 CA). It’s really more of a mental battle, like a chess match, then playing based on pure instinct (which is more likely when I play Cata, Tical, etc). With Spoon, you have to sense where he is based on your map knowledge, and he usually tries to stay one step ahead of you, which is what makes your match against him more intriguing. Couple that with his excellent rocket aim, and you’ll get hit a few times from your blindside before your wrist even moves. In close quarters, he can match you tat-a-tat, if you’re good at rocket jumping, he’ll out rocket jump you, if you have good aim, he’ll stay back and snipe you from different areas, lower your hp, then finish you off once he senses you have low HP. Spoon is not prone to over-aggressiveness, he’ll never chase you around the map unless he feels you really aren’t in a good position (health/map wise), he’s a tactile player who strategically breaks down his opponents and he learns your tendencies on the fly (as most great players do).
It becomes really difficult to list Spoon’s weaknesses, but if you had to pick one, it would be inconsistency with his shaft. When his shaft is on, he is an absolute force to be reckoned with, but when it’s off, he will lay back and try to rocket you from a distance, close quarters, and will more often than not retreat back to water as a haven to cover up for an off shaft day. Great Quake players should be able to capitalize on this perceived weakness, and be able to kill him more often.
As far as potential goes, there is really nothing more to be said, he is what he is and he doesn’t need to accomplish any more in Quake than he already has, if you catch him on the server, you should consider it a luxury to play against him (when he’s trying).
Is there any way you can collect statistics from all matches in a week if you own the server? It would be great if I could compile stats on a weekly basis, it would help add some substance to my analysis (especially efficiency, kills, deaths, etc).
For most Quake games yes. I've been running vsp on some of my q3a servers for a few months and I'm quite sure there's similar things for NQ. With vsp, you can tell it to reset the stats after a time period of your choice so 1 week ain't a problem, I used 4 then.
The info is simply parsed from the server logs so you can feed it with old logs, too.
Funny you should mention stats, i've been looking into it recently.
I believe a lot of information is excluded from the server log dump. Maybe its a server setting? that's just what i've seen.. If this information was available in the logs, that VSP application might be able towork- but I doubt it since each mod formats their stats differently. A Quake specific app with mod specific parsers would most likely be necessary.
I've talked to Baker about extracting this kind of information the same way we currently poll for other more basic server information, but it would involve a huge change to the server engine, as well as the mods which gather and provide this information.
I like what you wrote Tal, Dave and I used to 1v1 (CA) on a regular basis way back as well. RJ'ing all over DM3, we had nice collection of fast paced demos and airshot screenshots at one point.
Funny you should mention stats, i've been looking into it recently.
I believe a lot of information is excluded from the server log dump. Maybe its a server setting? that's just what i've seen.. If this information was available in the logs, that VSP application might be able towork- but I doubt it since each mod formats their stats differently. A Quake specific app with mod specific parsers would most likely be necessary.
I've talked to Baker about extracting this kind of information the same way we currently poll for other more basic server information, but it would involve a huge change to the server engine, as well as the mods which gather and provide this information.
I like what you wrote Tal, Dave and I used to 1v1 (CA) on a regular basis way back as well. RJ'ing all over DM3, we had nice collection of fast paced demos and airshot screenshots at one point.
Updated stats would keep people really interested in coming to this website. Leaderboards of some type, a place where you can gain analysis on who the best player is in what mod. Imagine if there was some sort of board where you can see DM player rankings along with their kills, deaths, suicides, kills with specific weapon, and %'s. A ctf leaderboard where you can see who capped and returned the most, defended and assisted the flag carrier, picked up the most quads, etc. There is no reason why we shouldn't be capable of compiling stats and feeding them from the server directly to here somehow.
Gamestatus is absolute trash, it would be groundbreaking for Quake if we can include a stat board here, and give more incentive for people to play various mods.
Nice article. I think the grunt vault is a great idea. You might want to even further this idea with a simple 10 question Q/A or interview with the player you pick out. That way players get to know the person a little better.
I enjoyed reading that and look forward to future reads.
How complementary, thanks Tal. And very accurate also, I wouldn't really disagree with anything you said. Especially about shafting, it has long been the most inconsistent part of my game. Very funny that I was the first to respond to your mysterious post earlier. It's much better than a severed head. Keep up the good work.
I've actually played more quake in the past week than in the past 6 months combined. Many games at speak, an airshot game with cata which is always fun, a ctf game on 2m8 which kicked ass, and even a f'in DM game which happens very rarely. I've seen very little shit talking and random juvenile BS that drove me away in the first place... if it keeps going this well I might be more of a regular around the servers again.
EDIT: oh yeah, I have to admit I don't think I was the originator of the pop out of water and shaft move. No idea who I saw do it first, pretty sure it wasn't me though.
