Well I mean, thanks for sharing your opinion but I think you're proving my point.
"Toxic" online communities are pretty much in every multiplayer-only game out there, it's a just a given - mute everyone and pretend they're all bots.
The issue with Quake is, it's impossible to have fun unless you're competent - and to get competent, you have to eat a lot of shit, with very little perspective of improving. It's not a didactic game by nature. People get discouraged when they lose - especially today in an age of overwhelming positive reinforcement and "awesome buttans". People have short attention spans. Quake - even watered-down Quake like QC - is a game that demands razor sharp attention and reflexes - for better or worse, the people who play these games regularly have been playing them for the better part of 15 years. There's a mountain to climb to even start.
The fact that you had fun with those blokes for awhile is great and all, but you have to realize it won't last. The only reason people stick with these types of games is if they want to get good at it. Getting good in a game where there's only you to blame for your loss is hard. People quit. They'll quit QL too.
Which brings me to my original point, who is this game for?
haha my bad, I didn't realize I was basically delivering a monologue
but yes I do agree with you.
About the shift in modern audience's interest in FPS, I think it's gaming industry's fault, mass audience these days want to be feeded instead of finding games by themselves, and especially since in this age people prefer games that they like to play with their friends rather than alone. The most common recommendation that I heard about Overwatch and PUBG is "only play it if you have some wingmen along" so developers start heavily catering to player groups rather than singular player. Quake and AFPS as a whole isn't like that, when you win, you win, when you lose, you lose, there's no middle ground like in popular team based games these days. The most popular multiplayer games atm are team-based, people only need to be above average to succeed in those games because you have your teammates that you can fall your back onto. It's not wrong to develop that mindset, but IMO it's a really dangerous mindset when people start injecting it into every other multiplayer game. That's why making sacrifice the main esport mode would be a really risky gamble for QC, it's not as fun to spectate as duel, the team-based gameplay revolves around the mode instead of personal gunplay which is a conflicting design decision to me. However because mass audience likes team-based games, Bethesda and Id kinda had to follow the trend.
A huge number of popular noob friendly multiplayer games = a huge number of players that don't mind switching games when they want to, because why learn when you can kick ass in other games right? Sadly those people will never see the satisfaction in getting good and kicking ass with their experience
I quit Overwatch solely because of that reason, the game feels weirdly unsatisfying whether I win or lose, victories don't bring the same impact as placing 1st in Quake Champions.
Another reason is, IMO, multiplayer FPS devs these days rely too much on other gimmicks more than the core aspect - shooting. I went to my aunt's house several weeks ago, saw cousin playing Infinite Warfare, sat down with him a bit and he showed me a bunch of crap that I couldn't comprehend, gun variants that are seperated by colors like borderlands, a robotic quartermaster that's supposed to delivers lootboxes? I dunno, he gave me the controller and I immediately went into a game without looking at those loadouts, I played like crap cuz I'm used to kbm and I killed some people, yay, game wasn't anything spectacular but that was pretty fun, cuz killing people online is always fun right? I finished match, and he was like "wait lemme check these gun variants, DUDE YOU UNLOCKED AN EPIC VARIANT THAT'S BADASS". Okay I guess, I looked at that "variant", apparently it allows the shotgun to reload faster if there's no ammo in the mag left, he tried out camos for it, apparently got some "crafting materials" too. At that point, I realized he spent more time in the menu that me in a match.
I couldn't help but thinking that the dev made a really unimpressive game that they had to shove so many unnecessary crap into it so it would appear to be a big, complex "AAA" title that everyone would praise how deep it is. I thought IW's gunplay was decent, but nothing really stood out from the last COD I played which was black ops 2 except that you can wallrun. You can tell that it's a game with high production value, however I wonder how much of those production value went into the game's core aspect and how much was put into cosmetics, customizations, progression system, gun variants and things like that. My cousin was
ecstatic about those things instead of shooting people, and it won't be a suprise if a huge audience of multiplayer FPS these days is into that aspect too. Quake Champions has cosmetic and lootbox similar to Overwatch, it has challenges that can give you favor and that's it. I like playing dress up for champions but I like fragging more and I can feel that most of the dev's effort goes into shooting first. I can imagine a lot of people shitting on AFPS because "THERE'S NO PROGRESSION BAR" as if they're treating FPS like some kinds of RPG where you get bigger and badder every time you level up, and that is awfully depressing.
Anyway, I think QC will find its own audience. It's champion concept makes the game feel fresh without getting into the way of classic gunplay too much, I mainly play Doom Slayer becuz I like his double jump rather than his active ability. It's still an arena FPS first and foremost and who knows, if Bethesda takes care of it well (which I doubt cuz their marketing for Doom was abysmal and simply missed the point of the game) maybe it will get a decent playerbase, not as big as other multiplayer behemoths but still find decent success. I believe there are a lot of people out there still looking for a game like QC (well I'm one of them
and apparently 20k ish owners on Steam too), people who are tired of Overwatch and those team-based games so maybe they will find fresh air from QC. I think veterans should at least give it a try with an open mindset too, I mean, more noobs to frag, why not? That's my speculation at the moment. Even if it won't last long, I'm still glad to be a part of it, wish I had gotten into Quake sooner
On an unrelated subject, I downloaded Quake Live last night (never bought it but it allowed me to download from store page for some reasons), tried some bot matches because couldn't find any server with less than 200 ping since I'm in Asia. Gotta say it was really fun, movement feels more fluid than QC (QC has this strange acceleration when you strafe), and QL's railgun has this punchy "PEW" that makes it sound like a crossbow. That plasma gun is way better than nailgun too, 10/10
