Rune Central

One of the differences I've noticed between RQ and RQP, is that with RQP just about every player has 100 health, 200 armor and all weapons and some invincible rune.

Every RQP fight, even with a not so good player, tends to involve shooting them about 20 times.

With the resurgence of the Shmack server, I've realized that I like having to earn my armor, pay attention to health, but really enjoy the strategy.

But something else I admittedly like is being able to frag most of the participants with a single rocket, and really if I am going to fragged I'd rather have it happen quickly so I can respawn (hopefully at a better location).

But something I wonder about? Do the not so good players like being fragged faster? Or do they not mind?

[I've been pinging up a lot lately to make things more interesting.]

Great to see you back, Baker!

I agree, in a normal FFA game, gathering and keeping armor, health, and ammo are important strategy elements. If you take them out, there's really no incentive to stay alive because then you'll respawn full... so you can let a creampuff kill you with no penalty. I guess maybe that's another strategy to use, but I prefer the challenge of staying alive myself, as opposed to picking your spots to let someone kill you.

It's good in round-based games like RA, though, because there is no continuity beyond death – When one dies the round restarts.

That reminds me of a question I had... I'm sure you've noticed the new draw (tie match) feature in RA mode. I love it because of the "shot at the buzzer" feel to it. However, when one player kills the other but also kills himself, then the one who kills himself actually loses. Also, when both players kill themselves, then the one who died last is the winner. Shouldn't those situations also end in a draw?

I used to not make too much of an effort to stay alive (I might willingly engage in a fight just to lose it if my health sucked), but lately I've put an increased focus on survival.

I've noticed that if you establish a reputation that you are annoying to try to frag, some of the players capable of doing so don't bother pursuing you if after a few times they discover that it is too much work.

This allows you to sometimes not be challenged/pursued when you are low on health.



I may not have played it before that feature was added.

I do like the shot at the buzzer feel, nothing makes me happier than being fragged just to discover my final rocket connected and that the round was a draw.

I will say this: I never played the non-RQized version of RA, but I'd bet Slot's version is vastly superior.

This is the one of the best developments in Quake 1 history. I really like the fact one can be an observer and be in queue, among other things and I like the twist of being able to have a hook or not. (I don't care for the hook, but I don't mind it either and makes some of the more complicated levels playable.)

You must not visit SINGED much because you lose all weapons (except pea shooter) and your rune when the map changes.

Did you mean RQ and IHOC? I know you spawn with all weapons and some armor at IHOC.

I was there this morning.

But with RQP, most of the boring runes are gone meaning every player has an almighty rune of some sort (half damage, zen, jack, lumber jack, health).

On an RQP server, if I can dig thru the runes and have big health/armor and all weapons faster than running the level. Just pick up and drops some runes.

Even though Shmack has tons of runes sitting around, it takes forever to find an ideal rune, which is nice because often you settle for something different.

I'm excluding E1M7 -- your all time favorite level -- and DM2 / DM4 / START from the equation. Those levels are so small that no one has time to dig through a rune pile.

(Yes I know, runes are scarce at Singed, but still if you drop one and then pick it up again, it is a different rune. Repeat this process a few times and you don't even need to run the map to find stuff. This isn't a complaint, I am just pondering which approach the average players like.)

I didn't see it as a complaint. I like the idea of servers being set up differently... how boring would it be if all of the servers had the same settings. =/


I'm not sure what the average players like, but according to recent stats Shmack is the busiest server and SINGED is 2nd busiest. (If you use number of player names as a proxy -- we all know some people use many names.)

We've all seen server traffic make erratic changes over the years for no good reason so it is difficult to peg what the average player really likes.

Negative! In that case, the round is a draw.

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Slot Zero

Hmm, I could be wrong on that then. I guess the times that I thought both were killing themselves, they were really situations when one killed the other player and self.

This actually goes against the strategy of needing to stay alive. How many times have you joined a game too late to make a run, but found a good rune then tried to play it safe until the map switches?

It's nice when you are the one who spawns by the pent... but not so nice for everyone else.

So you support the idea that all servers should be set up the same?

Absolutely not. Good point.

Now that I really think about it, that feature (item loss at level change) just places more strategic importance on the "mad dash for cash" at the beginning of maps. You usually see it on other servers with power-ups, but at Singed you also have to grab some armor and weapons. Nothing sucks more than having pent with only a peashooter!