What: Weekly AGR Sessions
Where: tastyspleen.net:26666
When: Saturday AND Sundays 23:00 GMT. Convert this to your timezone here.
Who: True TF Warriors.
Why: To face your greatest challenge!
MAP SCHEDULE = 2night2, z7
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Newbies: please log on to the server BEFORE the Session begins to confirm your registration, and to make sure there are no technical issues. If it says “you are NOT registered”, email me.
AGR VENTRILLO SERVER
[NOTE: Ventrillo has now been phased out. Here’s a link on how to use AGR Voice2Demo]
Just drive a dagger through my damn heart, why don’t you?
When people ask me what my favorite video game is, I still tell them Custom TF. Ever since I first played it. I just now remembered my wonder and amazement when I first played it and realized I could build whatever class I wanted. Not every game was something to write home about, but something new was always happening, some combination I hadn’t seen before.
Then there were those rare games where it seemed like everyone was fighting with every ounce of their might, and the teamwork was just *perfect*. Those were games where every time there was a brief pause in the action we were just gushing to each other, and when there was banter it was lighthearted. Every moment of those games, the TRUE matches, those games made 99 “meh” games worth it.
*Sigh*
I can’t remember when CustomTF changed for me. Did it change for me, or did the little aggravations I had with the game just wear me down?
The first time I quit when I realized I was just playing out the groundhog day of being sniped from across well6. When the realization hit me, my anger and drive to play vanished, replaced by disappointment in the design of a game that allowed a person to “win” that way.
After a hiatus of I-don’t-know-how-long, I came back to find (though I didn’t realize it at the time) a completely different atmosphere. It seemed like there was a lot more trash talk and other spam and there was less >friendly< banter; the jibes felt more mean-spirited.
I know now that I was focusing my anger in the wrong direction, trying to fight for certain gameplay elements to be changed and doing my best to convince people of how great things would be if changed. Looking back, the change in the general attitude was probably what was bothering me more than anything else. The second time I stopped playing for several months before coming back.
The last time I was back with a renewed determination, "I'm not going to let those cheating bastards get me down! I'm just going to do my best and play my heart out.", I told myself. The transition was like having put down a backpack that weighed 15 pounds, and returning and picking it up to realize it weighed 50 pounds.
I began missing the session a lot more frequently because I found that more often than not, I would end a session REGRETTING having played. I was tired of hearing people argue, tired of hearing people badmouth OMC and one another, just tired of all the bullshit.
I finally decided that the cons of playing my favorite game outweighed the pros. A big part of it was certain elements of the "community".
I was one of the people asking for OMC to unsubscribe me from the emails, and he kindly (he has always been kind) refused.
Thinking about OMC's speech today, a thought occurred to me about CustomTF. Remember when I mentioned my recollection of the amazement I felt when I first realized I had at my fingertips all of these options for how to build my class? Well, options are popular, and if you look at gaming, it's easy to see that one of the strong trends is to give players options to customize to suit their preferred playstyle.
I have no doubt that CustomTF was one of the trailblazers in the options department, but nowadays customization isn't an unusual feature. While at first that might appear to be a lethal blow to CusTF's prospects, I feel confident we can break ground in other areas and get people to notice how much fun the game can be.
Part 1: Punish the motherfuckers.
If your server empties, we're done. It sounds like it's close enough already. If a motherfucker makes an appearance on the server to inflict motherfuckery upon others, PUNISH THE MOTHERFUCKER IMMEDIATELY. I say this in such a crass way in order to emphasize it's importance (but also for a chuckle). DON'T REVERSE BANS ON MOTHERFUCKERS. Don't need no water; let the motherfucker burn. If you can't stand to catapult someone off the server, find someone you can trust and give them the authority to enforce the rules.
Expand on Doomface.
When someone gets hit with a grenade, it isn't just their face that looks tore up. This is going to take some artwork, but it will be worth it. Also- listen, you don't have to get real…grody…(here I am talking about a game with gibs)with the graphics to get the point across. If it looks like a guy's pants are soaked in blood and you see the white of bone in spots, yeah, clearly he's had the fuck beat out of his legs.
Stop Adding and Start Tuning.
It isn't going to be easy…but then, it never is, is it? There's always someone unhappy with the way things are, sometimes said parties just have to suck it up and deal with the fact they are going to be one-shotted across the map by a "sniper". However-
HOWEVER- when everyone (91%+) says, "Welp, that's fucking stupid.", it's time to start taking notes and suggestions and thinking of ways to better the gameplay experience. Focusing on fine-tuning of existing features can be as refreshing as brand new features.
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
CusomTF has a lot of options. Most of these options are viable and see frequent use. Polls need to be taken to find out what options are most popular, and then what you do is take the items that are rarely used and look for interesting ways to combine them together for increased value without having to spend a lot of time fiddling with the fine-tuning.
Not to shamelessly plug my own ideas, but the armor and legspeed menus could be combined to reduce the amount of menus you have to flip through, making customization slightly faster. There are other tweaks that can be done this way to make it easier to recustom, especially if you look into combining certain items and abilities (Do we need a chaplain AND a crusader? Would it hurt to combine sprint and berserk? That's just a couple ideas of many).
I want you to know I'm still around and I still care about CusTF even though I haven't been playing it.
I've been on a kick lately with League Of Legends and when I'm not doing that I'm usually playing Warframe (lots of fun, atmosphere kinda reminds me of DooM for some reason).
Be well, guys.
Well said there Beltan. I feel the same about most of it, but I refuse to quit over the ones that cry and complain all the time. TF has just about had it and I really don’t see why the few that are left would even waste game time on trash talk. They are the final killers of the game and I wish they would leave the game and go to another server and waste time somewhere else and when they get done, then come back and play or just not come back. As I’m writing this I’m listening to OMC’s video message. I’ll say this OMC, I don’t get people who make commments about any game when they don’t play any at all or so little it doesn’t make a difference. I do think you need to look into doing something like switching up between mods or something in order to gain players and not always AGR possibly. I’ve stated other ideas to you and really I rarely see you do much with someone else’s ideas so I just don’t bring it up anymore.
KOP
You know me, relentless with ideas and suggestions even when I don’t drop by any more. TBH though, I’m all for a serious cleanup of the menus in order to make the game quicker and easier for everyone.
I am one of those who never plays (but remains on the mailing list despite asking to be removed – hehe)
I thought both you guys make good points.
I just want to caution the suggestion of removing least popular items*. There many be a tiny minority of people who enjoy playing with the unique items. I, personally, would really hate it if stuff that I like was removed (Tranq) was removed in favour of mauser (WHICH, if it still exists, I HATE) or something which is popular due to its strength instead of its fun or the enjoyment of the skill required to use it.
Anyway, just came here out of curiosity. I survived Quake World (but not the real world)!
I didn’t mean to imply that anything should be removed entirely.
I think it would be really cool and efficient to combine some of them together, though. For example, stealth + scanner jammer. Some of the items and their upgrades could go ahead and be included together, too, like the jet boots and it’s upgrade, and the airfist and it’s upgrade.
Part of my reasoning is to simplify the lists, that way customizing is faster and ‘cleaner’. I think you could save at least a few pages just by organizing the options better.
Daz you should come and play at least sometimes. I agree with you on removal of items too. There are some I never use but others might be good at using it and it wouldn’t be fair. I even play mega sometimes because I’m into the game and not the mod types. I’m not as good in mega and I hate bunnyhoppers flying all over the place, but I still play it in support of the game. I just wish some from mega would play just to keep the game alive and vice versa. I have nothing against any mod in Quake or any players in any mod but sure wish everyone would play sometimes, even if they aren’t as good in one mod as another or even if they don’t like it as much. It still helps if everyone just supported the games regardless of mods.
OMC,
Sunday’s game has to be a big clue on why others would rather play somewhere else. Someone deserves The Cry Baby of TF award. Geez the whiners kill the game more than anything. At least on the Mega servers, no one complains about anything. It must drive whiners nuts in real games, because they can’t keep up with all the whining they need to do when there’s more players. I bet they can’t type and play as fast as my kid can texting hahaha.
Yea, luckily the Session had ended by that point anyway, so it was more ‘post Session’ rant, probably triggered by how all present were in the mood for another game, but we didn’t have the numbers today.
What drove me nuts was, he didn’t bother reading the Installing AGRv4 for older clients info, instead he hacked his EZQuake install by ‘renaming’ certain files(!), and assumed that this is what everyone else did! Therefore I was the ‘bad guy’ who ‘forced’ people to use FTE2, which he later admitted he had ‘never tried’! *facepalm*
Btw, I was just about to suggest we move the Sessions back to Sunday, but yesterday (Saturday’s AGR Session) was the ‘big one’ this weekend, so once again we don’t have a clear winner.
Quakeworld has long been in decline, there is no debating that but servers like XS4ALL Quakeworld regularly gets over 7-10 players almost every night >>> https://www.gametracker.com/search/qw/
It’s still the most active server out of all QW servers which includes Tastyspleen’s AGR and MTF servers
Yes I agree attracting new players is a good base to operate from but I still regularly see in the last weeks and months that players do, will and have dropped consistently because they connect from other places with clients (ez, fuh, steam etc) that AGR isn’t 100% compatible with.
It’s good what you are intending to do here OMC but it’s a little difficult to swallow when certainly in the past players have been dropping from AGR because they are being effectively forced to use a cutting edge FTE client from what some unknown FTP website…