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.

Most memorable Quake/Quake2 experience
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Most memorable experience...
submitted by r0tfish

That's an easy one. My most memorable Quake (1) experience was hands down the time I managed to axe gib a guy.

I was playing at Claustrophobopolis, and I was chasing a guy with my rocket launcher down that hallway with the sliding panels on the floor that gave way to a pool of lava. He managed to evaid all my rocket fire, and made it to an RL of his own. So we proceeded to have a little rocket fight, and right after about his second shot, I ran out of ammo. I knew he must have been low on health, but I also knew he had a few rockets left, so I high tailed it up the stairs and headed for the megahealth and mega-armor around the bend, but instead, after I saw that he hadn't moved much, I whipped out my axe, leaped out from behind and above him, and landed about a foot from him. I chopped once, and he simply fell apart. I couldn't believe it. It felt like my name deserved to be gold plated. HEHE I thought that possibly somebody had hit him with some buckshot, and that was what caused him to gib, but no, there was my name, and along with it, "AXE MURDERED". It was a triumph. He didn't really believe it either, and told me that I must have been cheating.

Believe me or not, that was, with good reason, my most memorable experience.

Ax-gib - I didn't think that was possible! Well, I guess it must be, if you did it...

Memorable Q2 Experience...
submitted by Krusty

There I was lurking in the Detention Centre... There's this area that has a hollow square just inside a door leading from a courtyard with a quad damage icon in it, protected by two red lasers which can be turned off by a button on the wall in the next room. (see attached pic.for a shot of the area). I'm crouching beside the lasers which were still activated, making plans for a pair of Gladiators I spied in the next room, when a Berserker comes out from the room to my right, and hits me so hard that he knocks me OVER the red lasers and into the little room with the quad damage icon. So I got the quad damage. Hooray for me. Trouble is, the lasers are still active, and there's no way to jump over/crawl under the lasers. And I don't think anyone is coming to rescue me :(

hehe...

most memorable quake2 experience
submitted by SlamChild

Well, OK. First of all, I'm a kid playing Quake 2 so you probably have different views then me. OK, here it is: It was the first day I had Quake 2, and I was marveling over everything, and let my mom shoot a Strogg with the super shotgun at point blank range! The look on her face and her vocalization of disgust will never be forgotten. Other than that, when I cheated to get to the last level, and there those buttons with the lasers shining on them from those towers. First I started BFGing those towers, and nothing happened. Then I Rail Gunned them. Nothing happened. I hit the first button and saved my game. Then when I hit the second button, I was reduced to -10 health!!!! And I had invincibility mode on. This was last night, and it drew a silent stream of, um, cries of anger.

Hmm... not sure I know the area you're talking about. And your story leads me to believe that you thought you were invulnerable, but weren't really, since I don't think there are many ways to get killed while invulnerable.

Memorable Quake Experience...
submitted by DiNo

Hi again - thanks for posting my last Mailbag email :)
Memorable experiences? Easy - after spending three months playing Q2 using the software rendering, I finally managed to persuade my bank manager to extend my overdraft to the amount of a Righteous 3DFX card - the first game online after seeing the stunning GFX was probably the best of my Q2 playing career so far :)
I know 3DFX isn't the be-all and end-all of PC gaming - when I was the Editor of a fairly prominent PC magazine (PC Power), I used to advise many people to steer clear of 3DFX cards unless their money was buring a serious hole in their pocket. Now, I think you *have* to think about purchasing one sooner, if not later. Many games run very well without 3DFX, but I know I speak for many people when I say that buying a 3DFX card added a new twist to Quake2 :)

Well, some of you are probably asking for MY most memorable experience, so here goes. In Quake2, it's a tie between the first time I ever played it, and the first time I ever played it in 3DFX mode. See, I was not following any of the Quake2 hype at all, because for most of 1996, I was absolutely ADDICTED to Team Fortress. I still play it now and then. All of a sudden, boom, the Quake2 demo is released. I d/l it. I play it. Whoa! It's, like, science fiction!
When I first got my 3dfx card, about a week after I got the game, I picked up my game from where I'd last saved it. That happened to be the torture chambers, which IMO has the best use of coloured lighting in the whole game. I was totally amazed.
Finally, my most memorable Quake experience was when I first got the game. I had no idea what to expect... I had just got my computer a few weeks ago so I wasn't into the PC Magazines and all that, so again it was total surprise. Walking through the slipgate complex, and later e1m2, the total feeling of combined wonder and fear is something that will stay with me for a long tmie.

What's Ping got to do with it?
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LBPs and HPBs
submitted by Mugwum

I didn't know people had problems with LPBs, but let's make them feel better.....

id? Next game - stick in a thing that automatically sets ping to 500 just to make it fair on lame losers, who can't handle it.

On second thoughts, who cares?

Some people use HPB for High-Ping Bastard, but many others prefer HPW: High Ping Whiner. Sometimes, it's a more accurate description.

Re:LBP-Do We Ruin Play?
submitted by Jeremy carrollMugwum

>>>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?
-----Clipping From Previous Mailing-------
I think that when an LPB is on the server that it makes me wanna play even better to take him\her out.It just gives yah a kind of feeling inside of yah when you frag someone with a ping of like 30 when you have one of like 300.That gives yah the feeling that you have some skill.I have nothing against an LPB.I see it this way,If you dont have the skillz to play on the same server as an LPB then dont play on that server.Its as simple as that.Just my two-bits.

*****Feeling Free to Flame me,Agree with me or the such*******

I have to agree with you: when playing Rocket Arena, if I can beat some guy who as one tenth the ping I do in a railgun war just once, then it's worth all of the pain of getting my ass beaten in every other match.

lpb's
submitted by [DSC] Wafflestomp

I am writing in regards of the lpb question last week. I too am a "lpb" and quite often get complaints. I hate it when people ass you have no skill. The worst is when I had a ping of 85 and everyone else was around 150-175. I had 73 kills and the closest person had 42, they just kept calling me an lpb and said my favorite quote "if I had you connection I'd....", man, we get no respect. People, its just part of the game. How do lpb's ruin the game for you? I still get demolished quite often. It takes skill not ping. Ping does help, but if you have the skills, no problem. Frag on!

LPB's do have a natural advantage over those of us with the common modem connection. Most of the time, it's no big deal, but if you meet a really good LPB who gets ahold of a railgun then it could get annoying. I sometimes, rarely, get mad and feel as though I can't compete. I am seldom one to complain, though, and have not yet found an LPB who has shoved it in my face after killing me for the twelfth time in a row.

Miscellaneous Stuff
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[no subject]
submitted by r0tfish

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.

=============================================

My mind was made up perfectly. You just misinterpreted it. And hell no it doesn't make him an easy target. Think about it... the level in which I encountered this guy was the Cistern, which if you played Quake1 you would know is a dark level. He would hang himself say, above a popular respawn point or weapon such as the RL, wait for people to come by, and let a few rockets fly. If you're in an intense fire fight with some guy, and suddenly some asshole appropriately named The Camper showers you with a few rockets, there's no way you're going to escape that. And any smart camper knows that even if you do have excellent aim, people are going to catch on eventually and hunt you down. So this guy moved around the map and evaided most everybody's attempts at his pack, in turn gaining a win. If you're telling me YOU would have done better, then you can let Paubo take over again, 'cause you sound a little conceited. :-|

That is entirely zero's fault - apparantly he mistook the period for a comma of something stupid like that... I guess he was in a hurry. Bad zero, bad! Re: the grappling camper, zero's point was that he has no room to evade, so you should be able to kill him easily... but you are probably right, if he had good reflexes and knew the level well enough to become invisible, then he could be quite the terror...

Quake2
submitted by EvolFish

I've found out from playing single and multiplayer Quake 2, that all the things the books and strategy guides say are definetely never right. The guns, enemies, and all that other stuff is over rated. For instance, the BFG10K is only useful for taking out big, slow enemies. Rather than shoothing a tank with the BFG, blast your chaingun in it's face. Also, the only time that I use the grenade launcher is when I chunk it in a hole to kill whatever is down there. I chose the chaingun, super shotgun, and hyper blaster over all them other weapons. It is so frustrating to try to kill a Gunner chunking grenades at you and a Berserker pounding at your head with the rail gun wich is never accurate enough. For all of the beginners in Quake 2, don't worry about what the books say, any Strogg is simple. Now human players on the other hand are harder. They have higher IQ's than the Quake 2 monsters.

It's all a matter of taste... I find the BFG to be the best for clearing out rooms full of enemies smaller than tanks. I find the grenade launcher incredibly useful for taking on bosses (by firing around corners while circle-strafing), firing at enemies on lower ground (about 6 grenades in a random pattern will kill just about anything), firing down stairs, and at enemies chasing you. I whip out the railgun any time I see a monster and he doesn't see me - It's a free shot and a guaranteed hit. Like I said, personal taste.

Er...whatever
submitted by Richard Connery

Hello Paubo, Zero, everyone,

About the 'heat I took while I was Satanic'. Yes, it was just seven letters thus a name. People have the right to be offended, it's just our decision to keep it or find another one, Nosferatu, Beelzebub, Rotfish (Hi again) is changing is nick. I changed, many will not. Christians say "we welcome any different religions so we can enlighten them" but by the reactions some of us got they don't seem very friendly at all. Yes, religion is a "VERY touchy subject" and that's why I think it should be discussed, otherwise we'll always have this tabu subject in our lives.

Americans, spelling, etc. I like correct spelling, many ppl do not. Hey just drop it, okay? Don't rub at someone's nose he's a bad speller or you'll be an annoying bastard. And for all you know-it-all-smarty-pants I always criticised the spelling when I ran the mailbag but because of fun not at personal attacks. And some of us (like we Europeans) learnt UK English not US so we do spell colours, favourite, armour and say lift instead of elevator, I can't imagine a more pitiful world where everybody spoke the same way. It's like making fun of a particular accent your very own country has.

Oh and btw, America is the domination power in the world (I agree) but remember if it wasn't for the rest of the world America wouldn't be as strong as it is now. I'm not even going to bother to mention the problems US ppl have to deal with for being "at the cutting edge of civilisation".

Not wanting just to rant on previous posts here my two cents on this week's question:

My most memorable Classic Quake experience was when I first gibbed myself with a rocket laucher. Had to recap for a few seconds before I realised what had happened. About Quake II is without a doubt the processing plant level where we have to shut down all marine-crushing machinery. Sigh, that level was hell, I would even get nightmares for not being able to rescue my fellow marines. Quake II should have that feature. Perhaps teleport them out of danger to be treated :).

Richard Connery
http://www.planetquake.com/q2faq/

Psst: it's spelled 'taboo', not 'tabu'...
That is the sort of thing I don't do :). I wasn't criticizing people's spelling, just the way they, as Americans, happened to spell some words. I was just trying to liven things up a bit - many people got offended, even though I was only joking around... sorry, sorry, guess I should just keep my big mouth shut from now on!
I too found the processing plant quite an amazing level... you know the company has done its job when you think about a part of their product during the day and dream about it at night.

Guess that's it, another week out of the way... 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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