Hit up other quake / FPS forums with a promo-type thread?

[omix2]

Has anything thought about doing a "come back to quake" type thing, where you start a thread in similar FPS games forums. Maybe a video of some good CTF footage, a video of some good DM footage on dm6, put them up on youtube and then either embed on the thread or post the links, post the link to the free gl proquake download and explain all of the configurations necessary in one easy paragraph, and list the currently active servers or give the link to the serverlist, and also to the IRC channel.

Some forums of games:
Quake 4, Quake 3, UT2k3, UT2k4, Doom 3, IGN, CS, COD4.

Anywhere where there might be old quakers lurking.

[Solecord]

We did that when we launched quakeone.com to promote the website and I think it worked pretty well. We got lots of people stopping over to check the site out. We should definately do this again but I'm not sure how many people will actually load up Quake and start playing again. It's worth a shot though.

[omix2]

I think there is still a decent community of DM / CTF players in all of the other games who understand the basic principles of these two mods, and quake isn't flashy or anything but its the bare essentials and the guns are nice compared to some "plasma gun" bullshit.

[Dreadful]

Actually, I was just thinking about this today at work. And not to long ago I started making a QuakeOne Myspace page to use for promotion. I didn't really get anything done with it, and I only became friends with maybe one or two persons. Maybe I will work on it a little more, but web design is not really my area of expertise. If anyone would like to volunteer to work on it, I would gladly start requesting friends to the page.

Myspace.com/playquakeone

[Baker]

Some of the community on these forums is currently full of anger and hostility, some are doing the best they can to help this community stay alive (And I give them Much Gratitude and a Good Job), and the rest don't care or are not around that often. Even on the servers its hard to go one night without being harassed, or hear harassment about something or towards someone.

How do you get past this ^^^ type of problem?

Say you attract 10 new players the first day, they get called noobs and insulted before they even get a handle on the game. How many would last a week?

The main problem is that while Quake is a really great game, a somewhat sizeable minority of players excel at running off new players and making them feel unwelcome.

[Dreadful]

For one, we could start to encourage new players when we notice them, and try to help them feel welcomed in this community.
Another would be that someone could start a server for newbs where they would be more comfortable until they are able to play with the more aggressive players.

[Baker]

For one, we could start to encourage new players when we notice them, and try to help them feel welcomed in this community.
Another would be that someone could start a server for newbs where they would be more comfortable until they are able to play with the more aggressive players.

I think the harassment thing is almost unique to Clan Arena.

There is a lot of idle time, so people talk. And some players like to have their fun by pointing out the 1 guy with 2 frags when everyone else has 5+.

I think the competitive feel in Clan Arena is that everyone IS watching you. So if you suck, or can't rocket jump or play really wimpy, the entire mod is sort of built to find entertainment in the "differently-abled Quakers".

Honestly, assuming the above is correct I don't see how Clan Arena can be the ideal vehicle for growing a player base.

In an free for all deathmatch game or a team deathmatch game, people don't have time to talk.

But FFA deathmatch requires custom maps and team deathmatch is certainly no way to start out new players.

Clan Arena should in theory be an ideal game for new players because it is essentially a sort of practice mode mod, really. But the plenty of time to talk thing causes a problem.

If someone ever came up with a decent plan .... sigh.

This game is so great, it's entertaining and because it is so fundamental it never gets old. Chess and poker have been around hundreds of years, Quake has that kind of greatness.

But it has a structural problem that seems hard to get a handle on.

[omix2]

Mods like CTF, RA, and DM would bring people in with their strategic gameplay, competitiveness, and overall fun. The problem is all of the above are dead. And there you have your reason why quake is dead.

A great public mod that would bring people in is Head Hunters. Also dead.

[Solecord]

Mods like CTF, RA, and DM would bring people in with their strategic gameplay, competitiveness, and overall fun. The problem is all of the above are dead. And there you have your reason why quake is dead.

A great public mod that would bring people in is Head Hunters. Also dead.

The only way to bring these back from the dead is to get on a server and play them. Regular CTF games were going for awhile every weekend. I haven't been playing recently due to several issues so I don't know how regular these games are anymore, but if we somehow use the site to promote the fact that there's regular CTF games on the weekend or weekday (whatever) it could draw some people in to the game.

Also, just an idea, aside from promoting outside the site, what about promoting to the current members as well? There are currently 999 users registered on the forums as the time of this post. vBulletin has a the ability to mass send an email to all users. Perhaps I could start sending out promo emails listing certain times a game is going to take plcae (like we used to have CTF Thursdays). If we can get a bunch of people to commit to playing a specific mod on a certain time or between a certain time frame we could use that to promote the mod and perhaps get people to jump in the game that way. Once they start playing perhaps they'll stick around the community?

Just a thought...

[Dreadful]

Great ideas, Sole. I think in addition, to help promote, we could designate certain nights to a certain mod. And add some sort of a catch. We could try to get everyone together and have a good ole' time. CA Mondays and Fridays, CTF on Tuesdays and Thursdays, DM on Saturdays and Wednesdays and Runes, HeadHunters, FvF, etc.

Edit: That way it will sort of draw everybody to one mod. Everybody will get their fair share of play with plenty of other people, and give everybody a chance to see what mod they prefer.

[scolbert]

I recently started playing out of random curiosity about 2 weeks ago. I hadn't played much since 99 and I was surprised to see there was some activity (through this website). I played a lot of ctf during the heyday of the "League of Capture." (97-9 I was hoping there would be more ctf pickup games, or even DM pickup games, but unfortunately it seems like there are only CA pickup games. I think it would benefit the cause if there was more of a movement in that direction, because that is what everyone used to play when quake was popular.

[Solecord]

Hey welcome to the forums... like I said in an earlier post, we did have steady weekly CTF games going on. We'd play on pub ctf servers and then move to 3wav servers... fun times.

[omix2]

That is a good idea. We cajn start by designating 2 nights to CTF, 2 nights to DM, and whatever else. I don't think we would need to designate nights for CA because everyone already plays that. }

You could put a big quake calendar on the front page and also send out reminder emails for what night it is and what mod it is that night.

[Yellow No. 5]

Pimping out quake on other sites is a good idea, but I think we should all wait until there everything is in place, as far as a easy downloadable client that either contains the gpl'ed maps or can auto-download them.

[Baker]

Pimping out quake on other sites is a good idea, but I think we should all wait until there everything is in place, as far as a easy downloadable client that either contains the gpl'ed maps or can auto-download them.

We all need to get together and do a plan and execute it.

I can't see this working out unless Yellow, me, Rook, Phenom, Bam, Solecord, Dreadful (the people that run the servers, make/test the mods, do the engines) all get together and come up with a single plan and vow to stick to it.

And then talk with the peeps (the Omicrons, Frenzys, and everyone else who wants to rebuild this mofo) to get the player backing to see it through.

If we get newbies and lose them or if they get molestered or gang-banged by the elite players on the servers, they sure aren't going to stick around.

We have to find a way to keep them. This was not as hard 2 years ago as it will be now. Two years ago we had exciting ideas going on and places new players could have fun (RQuake, Bomber on Edge/Sanity/Q3DM6qw, we tried DM+, we had the QuakeOne maps pack).

DM3 and a crusty old ProQuake of any kind will NOT get new players.