The Mailbag

Remember, if you get tempted to send me a question or problem, DON'T! Check The Unofficial Quake II FAQ which is written and maintained by Richard Connery. He's worked very hard on it so people like me don't have to answer dumb questions. What's that you say? Your question isn't in the FAQ? Well, try the messageboard! There's a link in the frame. Lots of people will read your problem and try and answer it. Another good resource is the Gamer's Guide, which can be found on Blue's.

How do you prefer to play multiplayer?
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Various crap
submitted by r0tfish

I know this was the topic from last week, but what the hell, I'll toss in some comentary.

Camping is both ethical and non-ethical. It all depends on your skills. If you're a beginner, your first impulse would be to find a dark camp out and wait for unsuspecting passers by and take them out. I mean hey, this is what I did when I first began playing Quake1. I'm sure this is what most of you all did when you started playing.

But, in the rare case that you run across a camper WITH skills, then it's VERY unethical. The reason is that the person camping knows that he's pissing off the players around him, while he could be out doing the same as everybody else and using those skills instead of laming his way to the top of the frag chart. I once came across a camper at Abandon Q1 server, who was using his grapple hook to hang himself from the ceiling, and shower anyone running by with rockets. (he had EXCELLENT aim, I might add.) Then, when he was finished murdering some poor soul, he'd taunt them until they were so frustrated they'd just be easier targets. When you find a camper with skill, this is usually their attitude. This is what true camping is. A beginner with no skills who's just trying to figure out a way to see his name flash across the upper screen with his name in front is nothing to get whiny about.
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About this week's question... I just like regular old Deathmatch play. CTF is ok, RA2 is ok, but nothing beats an all, no holds barred, killfest. CTF2 is better than CTF1, but it just doesn't hold my interest like DM does. And RA2, well, I just don't care much for the maps this time around. It used to be that RA1 was ALL I would play. The maps rocked, it was fast, and it was 1ON1. This teamplay RA is just crap. It kind of defeats the whole purpose. Well that's just my opinion.

Hold up - "when you find a camper with skills...this is what true camping is, a beginner with no skills...". Make up your mind! And if he was grappled to the ceiling, then to me that means he's a sitting duck regardless of what weapons he has and how good his aim is.

Which mulitplayer I prefer
submitted by Benrix

I enjoy playing CTF the most, using Loki's Minions CTF mod. Of all the CTF's I've tried this one is the best! I like RA 2 next and I still enjoy DM every now and then. I think I still enjoy classic Quake DM's as much as I like Q2 DM's. No matter how many times I play DM in classic Quake it's always a little different and its always fun.

How do I like mutiplayer?
submitted by Travis101

First off I'd like to say great job on the mailbag, some of the posts are damn funny. . .but anyway. My computer isn't the greatest thing in the world for Quake2 multiplayer over the internet so I stick to the next best thing, The Eraser! THE greatest Bot ever invented. I play about 2 hours a day against 5-6 different Erasers! It's great fun! (Now if Ridah could code them to play JailBreak or some other mods...)

Well said...I just tried out the eraser the other day and I must say I was impressed as well.

What mod?
submitted by SoulTaker

Werd. Well, I use to like plain DM but that got boring, then I went to CTF and that got boring, so I deceided to try LMCTF (Loki's Minion CTF for the newbies) and I really liked it. With, the main thing, you can grapple and shoot at the same time. Most of the levels are cool (a few small ones though), you can have different skins (for the skin freaks who are addicted), the radio menu is pretty cool unless some llama keeps hitting enter in that menu. Sometimes the skins are hard to tell on which team they are because of the lighting but I emailed the maker of LMCTF (forgot his name) and he said they will probably (in the next release) have new skins that you will be able to tell which team they are on. And, one last thing I know I am writing alot, is that llamas (hhmm.. sounds repetitive) can switch teams so then its like 3 on 10 and the other lamers dont wanna switch to the team with the 3 but after that level it evens them out.

Cap that Flag!
submitted by Matt Firewalker

The only multi-player I give a bean about is CTF. THAT requires skill. Deathmatch is fun and all but there's no organization to it. You just shoot at anything that moves until it becomes a liquid. CTF is organized and great fun. Teamwork and all that good stuph fits in, and you can think up some nifty defensive and offensive strategies. OF course, who doesn't like a few bouts of chaos now and then? :oP

How do you prefer your deathmatch?
submitted by pLuTo

Straight out death match all the way! It is the way Quake II was made to be played, (or definately should be played in my opinion)!

I don't like CTF, because it doesn't seem you get rewarded enough for trying to get the flag. I always try to get the flag, so I barely ever get any frags. People never do good team work, Q2 is just too fast paced a game to organize team work for a CTF game. So if I die carrying the flag, my teammates are never there to pick it up, they are off just doing regular deathmatch, not trying for the flag.

Rocket Arenas are cool, I think they are ok, it is just that they get kinda old. I got sick of constantly blasting people with rocket launchers! So regular DM ruelz! But if other people want to play their stuff, that's fine too, it's just I won't be playing with them! :-)

To each his own, but I think you're missing out on one of the best mods if you don't give Rocket Arena another chance...

Stuff
submitted by [N]sin (not [R]sin :)

I read that you were in need of more e-mails for the bag, so I decided to try to help you out.

One thing that I found interesting in this weeks bag is that some people actually take religion seriously in the Quake community. I guess that shouldn't be surprising, considering how big of an issue religion is in our society and history, but to most of us the idea of taking religion seriously to the extent of calling others Satanists seems foreign. I think people need to realize that players use names such as 'sin' (my name) 'Satanic', 'bEElzebUb', and '666' over names like maybe 'The Virgin Mary', 'Jesus Christ', or 'Moses' not because they are into evil or Satanism, but just because it sounds cool. If people cannot accept that, I would suggest that they stay away from the gaming community entirely, because they will receive a lot of negative responses.

About the Question of the week, I have always liked straight-up DM more than any other style of QuakeII. I do play variations of that though, and I have gotten incredibly into Rocket Arena 2 this past week. What I like about RA2, is that it simplifies the game to 1 on 1 or team games and still keeps the regular DM aspect to it. It doesn't add runes, or new weapons, or some other extra thing, it is still regular DM, just in an organized fashion instead of everyone going around killing each other (which is definitely cool also). I occasionally play a few rounds of Capture the Flag, but that whole theme gets old to me pretty quickly. Some would argue that CTF takes more skill because it is more than just killing, which may or may not be true, but I am not interested in using that kind of skill in playing that kind of game, I just want to kill people. I really want to try out that LMCTF mod, but I don't see myself downloading 17 megs on my 28.8 connection for a mod that I'm not really into.

Oh yeah, I noticed you calling me '[R] sin' in the bag before last. You had me confused with [R]Korn (who I know as the ex-leader of clan Rage) when I am [N]sin of clan nails. No big deal...but get it right!

I'll make sure to beat up Paubo for you when he gets back :)

Enduring Arguments et al
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Camping and Names
submitted by Overkill

First off I would like to touch upon the subject of camping, I say that if anyone wants to camp, let them! I personnaly get more frags off of campers than I do any other players. The only time I hate campers, is when they sit at a spawn point. The other point is that if someone has a problem with your name (because it ticks u off or something), who the hell cares! What is more important to u, a name, or playing the game?!

Camping
submitted by _DiNo_[WM]

Hi everyone - thanks for a great site:)
Re Camping:
I can understand the arguements for and against it, but in my experience camping ruins a straight game of DM for all players. I personally don't mind them, but any newbie playing online for the first time might not come back to the server, thinking that Q2 online is just about hiding and taking cheap shots.
On some mods (CTF for instance) camping is not frowned upon - in fact, it's part of the game (base defense, protecting vital map areas for your flag carrier to run through), so I guess it all depends on the MOD, the situation and the players you're up against.
Take RA2 for instance - in the Pickup Team game, you sometimes are thrown into a situation where you *have* to camp if you're the only surviving member of your team and are up against three or four oposition members. I've played on many server, met many people online and 99% of them are very sporting and curtious when you play well, but I think it's the 1% that give camping and sniping a bad name.
Anyway, I've said my piece - feel free to flame etc at will :)

No more camping crap
submitted by Mr. Baldy

Camping this, camping that...It's all a bunch of crap. It's one of the only thing that keeps these mailbags going. If no one sends sutff about camping, then the site has to change their color scheme to get feedback. But enough for one second with all this camping bs...There's one thing you will need to remember:

There are campers...there will always be campers...there's nothing you can do about it....so give up on it for one second. I doubt sending in a few letters to some mailbags will help anything. There's nothing you can do about them, but they'll always be a minority in the Quake 2 community. I'd say if you really hate campers, just kill the fagat. Then, everyone, except the camper, with give you some NS, nice shots, and a ton of other stuff. There's nothing better than bagging the worst camper alive with a well-placed railgun shot

A-freaking-men. I agree, I think it's about time we dropped the camping subject anyway.

blah, Server Crahsers and stuff, whatever...
submitted by Amberion

(omitted quote from last week about a server-crasher who overflowed everyone by flooding text - z)

Uh, how about the command "msg 3" which will remove all text from your view. I don't know if that's a command sent to the server, in which case the server would stop sending the text, or client side, in which case the client just doesn't display it, so perhaps someone should give it a try. In any case, people like that should be totally ignored. I'm serious! Act like they don't exist. Oh, sure, frag them, but don't give them the satisfaction of knowing you're pissed off. They WILL go away, trust me. People like that thrive on attention, and if you don't give it to them, they get pissed. I mean REALLY pissed. And if their intention is to stop the game, don't let them. Continue playing, as if nothing is happening. Eventually, an admin will come on and ban him.

I don't know whether "msg 3" is server or client, but you're right, it sounds like it's worth a try. And Amberion is absolutely right about ignoring them, believe me it DOES work.

Miscellaneous Stuff
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Q2FE vs. Quake Server Starter
submitted by Jim Lewis

Quake2 Server Front-End's design has been copied and mocked in another front-end called Quake Server Starter... We actually never knew the front-end existed until we got major lamer email from Pdev braging about how his Front-End ruled and ours sucked.

With this in hand, we surfed strait to Pdev's page and downloaded his front-end. Needless to say, the installer did not work.... We had to uncompress the files manually... Only to find that our design was copied to a "T"... Its one thing to release a product.. Competition is a way of life and gives us that edge to produce better software.. But just plain lamers copying our design and pass it off as a "Working Product" is even worse.

--Web Plug---Q2FE is on the edge of releasing version 3.0 ... Coded in C++ it almost looks like the popular gamespy interface with many of configuration options!! Our website will be totally remodified Saturday night with screenshots of the upcoming release...

Quake II Server Front-End!! Get it at http://www.quake2.com/q2fe

IRC Chat! http://www.rastaworld.com
IRC Server irc.rastaworld.com

LPBs - do we ruin play?
submitted by Eva-Unit 1

While I was playing on a random server (gamespy) , I started to get harrased by two other players, both members of a clan (That I won't name) that specializes in "telling the truth", that is, annoy the $hit out of people with low pings. (I averaged about 30). The two of them sat there for about 45 minutes, just harrasing people with low pings, but me especially, presumably because I won about 6 levels straight. rah for me. The basic complaint put forwards by these two wackos is that because I had a low ping, I didn't need any real skill to play, and that I'm a spoiled kid with toys. (I'm 18, I pay for my cable modem).

Obviously these two are just lame people who like to whine to make up for the fact that they're no good, but their complaints raised a question. Do you think that people with low pings (100 or less) ruin the game for those with average or high ones? I can say that my play didn't really improve that much when i went from modem to cable.. my scores were about the same, the game just ran smoother.

I'd like to hear from both sides on this. People with low pings, do you find that you win out against people with high pings? Do those of you with high pings feel that we're 'cheating', or that we're disrupting play somehow?

Your letter raises some interesting questions...as a HPB, I can honestly say that I don't USUALLY feel resentment towards LPBs - sometimes if I'm really lagged and an LPB is tearin it up with the railgun I will get mad. But I don't feel that an LPB ruins play. If you have the money to pay for a high-speed connection, then is should be your right to do so without being harrassed...people who have a serious problem with those whose pings are better than theirs should download a bot and play offline with no ping at all...it'll make the experience better for all of us.

LPBs - Quake II Timelimit and Fraglimit
submitted by Beev

In my humble opinion, perhaps the single most important aspect of a Quake II Deathmatch is fast-paced gameplay. It is for this reason that I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with servers using HUGE values for their fraglimit and timelimit. After an initial burst of action as a new level begins, the action slows as many of the better players simply become bored by playing on the same level for extended periods of time. Id's servers (as they should) seem to have captured the true spirit of the game, using a fraglimit of 30 and a timelimit of 10, while others have opted for much lengthier games. One such server is PC Gamer's, which recently changed from a timelimit of 20 to one of 30, and changed their fraglimit to 40. Despite having four more players (16) than Id's servers, the games on the PC Gamer server are interminable. I have noticed a general trend in this direction on many deathmatch servers, and believe that, for gameplay to remain challenging and exciting, it must be reversed.

And so ends my term as substitute mailbag guy, as Paubo will return in time for next week. I hope I didn't screw it up too badly :). If I didn't post your mail, then you didn't read the guidelines! Remember, technical questions will go straight to my trash can. I will try to post submissions which contain ONLY VALID OPINIONS. Read on for the guidlines...

Guidelines

Don't send me specific hardware questions; mail them to the respective companies' technical support.
Don't send me specific gameplay questions like how to finish a certain level.
Don't send me specific problems you're having; mail them to id Software instead.
Don't send me questions about a specific mod; mail them to the mod author.

The Mailbag deals with opinions, not specific questions. Also, I don't reply directly so you'll need to check The Bag each week. If I happen to grin at your submission you are free to send another. Use it to show I was wrong; if you don't send other logic arguments or facts I will grin a lot harder. Send them to mailbag@quake2.com.

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