Tim Willits calls Quake 3 his biggest failure

Post by **Cory** » Sat May 21, 2005 1:15 am

fuck companies that dumb down games for casual players
quake3 is great the way it is
my major complaint about WoW is that it is almost impossible to be a power gamer, its too casual gamer oriented.

Post by **Duhard** » Sat May 21, 2005 1:16 am

hmmm...I think I understand now...

Hollenshead said that Willits is the best q4 player at the office but we all know how fucking pathetic Willits was at q3...he's always been a fucking joke at q3 and now he's really good at q4?

q4 multiplayer will be a noobified q3 experience...in other words, quake 3 without the great stuff.

Something's wrong when a company considers it's greatest achievement a "failure"...explains a lot about things to come at id.

They must have fired the wrong guy...I think they fired some fag during the development of q3...bingo.

Post by **Duhard** » Sat May 21, 2005 1:17 am

I don't play games to be "casual"...I play to crush and smash.

Willits needs to go :icon10:

Post by **corsair** » Sat May 21, 2005 1:31 am

never thought I'd say this, but willits is not worth a capital W and sucks for having his thoughts...

picmip value is totaly irrelevant if the map's geometry is done fancily, quake 3 is/was great, just like 1 and 2.. he musnt forget that quake is all about arcade-shooting, which is just too fast for common "OMFGIMCASUAL" people, and the games next to their fast playability, were made to sell the engine...

id is going downhil... quite fast...

Post by **[xeno]Julios** » Sat May 21, 2005 1:47 am

regardless of what one thinks of willits, I will always reserve some admiration for his creative genius in designing q2dm1

Post by **DooMer** » Sat May 21, 2005 3:05 am

I dont think q3 sold as well as id's other games. I remember carmack saying it wasnt their biggest success. Everything before it at least had a singleplayer, plus with UT coming out a month before it, and is much easier to play, its not that hard to imagine why. I think he used the term failure, because it was the question asked.

Post by **Duhard** » Sat May 21, 2005 4:36 am

"Just after I read his comment I asked the guys in #quakecon on ETG for their opinions of his comment. Everyone pretty much said he's referring to the lack of the mass appeal Quake3 had on gamers. While it became a very popular game, and still is popular today, it never matched up with a games such as Halo or Counter-Strike. Quake3's lack of a single player portion hurt it with main stream gamers. Also, in late 1999 when Quake3 was released, the amount of people with 3D accelerator video cards and high speed internet access was far less them it is today. It almost seems Quake3 was before its time. I've e-mailed Tim for a clarification of his comments."

...after reading the esr article I understand why he said that but at first I thought he was referring to the engine not being newbie friendly because of the extreme level of skill it can unleash. The q3 engine is the best engine there is imho but the whole console commands and fps settings scared off the noobs and they ran away to UT.

Still, DooM 3 sold lots of copies and nobody plays it.

Post by **Duhard** » Sat May 21, 2005 4:43 am

Besides, if he really wants q4 to feel "competitive" like q3, I suggest he starts working on the item layout aspect because putting the mh besides the ra on q3dm6 wasn't too "competitive" if you ask me...the real problem with Tim is that he can make excellent maps but he doesn't know how they should be played.

Post by **Duhard** » Sat May 21, 2005 4:56 am

[xeno]Julios wrote:regardless of what one thinks of willits, I will always reserve some admiration for his creative genius in designing q2dm1

I thought Paul Jacquays was the guy making the maps for id...well I know he did q3tourney4...at least that's what he said in one of his emails.

Well thank you Paul!

Post by **ajerara** » Sat May 21, 2005 7:58 am

I always liked how the maps in Q3 are really well optimized. This info doesn't bode well for Q4 if they are going to dumb it down for the masses. UT is a lot easier but that makes it more boring if it's too easy. After you are able to play Q3 fairly well, you can play most other FPS games really well because it's generally easier to hit people in other games. I'm looing forward to Q4 but i hope I'm not going to be disappointed. I expect it to be hard.

Post by **Geebs** » Sat May 21, 2005 9:40 am

It's odd that someone with a piece of shit like Doom3 on his CV could call the best deathmatch game out there a failure. I started on UT because, basically, the graphics and music were a shitload better than Q3a. But even though I'm not a hardcore player, Q3 just felt much better to play from the start.

Post by **Denz** » Sat May 21, 2005 10:58 am

All developers have been concentrating on the SP part of the game and not the MP.. Hell the MP is like an after thought. But not Q3 it was designed with MP in mind.

That's how all games should be. I have games I bought 5 years ago and I have no idea what their names are but Quake 3 stayed alive just because it was a great MP game.

In SP games the level of competition is always the same, but in MP games the level is always changing with each player. That's what makes it stay alive for so long, no matter what q3 is different every time you play it.

Post by **ilum0s** » Sat May 21, 2005 11:36 am

Denz wrote:All developers have been concentrating on the SP part of the game and not the MP.. Hell the MP is like an after thought. But not Q3 it was designed with MP in mind.

That's how all games should be. I have games I bought 5 years ago and I have no idea what their names are but Quake 3 stayed alive just because it was a great MP game.

In SP games the level of competition is always the same, but in MP games the level is always changing with each player. That's what makes it stay alive for so long, no matter what q3 is different every time you play it.

Exactly, even if the SP in Quake 3 was absolutely astounding (and the MP wasn't great at all) it wouldn't have lasted the 6 odd years that it has because of the simple fact that a game is a hell of a lot more fun when playing with other real people. I'm still of the mind that Quake 3 was, and is the best deathmatch tool ever created.

Post by **Don Carlos** » Sat May 21, 2005 1:05 pm

Duhard, Willits was a very good quake 3 player
One of the best in the office infact. Todd H was
awesome when i played him too

Post by **^misantropia^** » Sat May 21, 2005 1:33 pm

Duhard wrote:I thought Paul Jacquays was the guy making the maps for id...

He mostly does the modelling and, occasionally, a little mapping.

Post by **phantasmagoria** » Sat May 21, 2005 1:48 pm

he left id, and he mainly did maps.

Post by **Grudge** » Sat May 21, 2005 2:00 pm

But the more casual gamers, and other people who actually have money, found playing next to impossible.

Casual gamer (who also have money) don't play FPS games. Period. They play sports games on a console. If you want to make money you'll buy a sports franchise and make a game from it.

One could claim that Halo is an exception though, but that's the only one. Most console players don't play Halo either.

Post by **[xeno]Julios** » Sat May 21, 2005 2:28 pm

Duhard wrote:
[xeno]Julios wrote:regardless of what one thinks of willits, I will always reserve some admiration for his creative genius in designing q2dm1
I thought Paul Jacquays was the guy making the maps for id...well I know he did q3tourney4...at least that's what he said in one of his emails.

Well thank you Paul!

http://encycl.opentopia.com/term/Q2DM1

"Q2DM1, also known as The Edge, is the first Deathmatch level of Quake II.

It was designed by Tim Willits of id Software in 1998."

Post by **^misantropia^** » Sat May 21, 2005 2:31 pm

phantasmagoria wrote:he left id, and he mainly did maps.

Damn, I mixed up Paul Jaquays and Paul Steed (again) which is rather stupid because the former still posts at map-center. My bad.

Post by **Cory** » Sun May 22, 2005 2:59 am

Duhard wrote:hmmm...I think I understand now...

Hollenshead said that Willits is the best q4 player at the office but we all know how fucking pathetic Willits was at q3...he's always been a fucking joke at q3 and now he's really good at q4?

q4 multiplayer will be a noobified q3 experience...in other words, quake 3 without the great stuff.

Something's wrong when a company considers it's greatest achievement a "failure"...explains a lot about things to come at id.

They must have fired the wrong guy...I think they fired some fag during the development of q3...bingo.

its because games that are easier sell more, and play more
(counter strike)
quake3 is for hardcore gamers, unfortunately hardcore gamers probably comprise less than 10% of all players.

its hard to be a hardcore gamer because for every one of us, there are 30 casual gamers that want to be able to play a game once every week and rank #1 on the server

Post by **Geebs** » Sun May 22, 2005 9:46 am

Sorry, that's a bunch of horseshit.

Post by **iambowelfish** » Sun May 22, 2005 3:41 pm

But people *did* play Q3 casually.

Perhaps not online, but there was plenty of softcore fun to be had against the bots.

In fact Q3 is great for casual gaming, because you don't need to know how much time you have. You can play for 5 minutes or 3 hours.

True, I think that the standard of online play may have scared some people off, but there were enough interesting items that a certain element of chance was introduced, enabling the opportunistic noob to gain some consolation. I think it compares favourably to dull, predictable skill based FPS games and mods in this respect.

The only thing that I can see putting the casual gamer off was that it was only easy to learn if you had already played FPSs.