I'll pass on the Quake... lol

If they make us pay, then I'm out. I'm barely in to begin with. And I'm definitely out, if this turns into a bunch of no-life Quake psychos slaughtering any newcomer who dares enter. Bye-bye fun.

Why is there alway such a backlash against competitive gamers/games?

God forbid a game be difficult enough for only some people to have mastered/be decent at. I thought openness to games being played as more than merely a dumb game was part of what Destructoid was all about.

I installed Quake 3 last week to see what it's like nowdays. I'm telling ya, it's like trying to join in on Counterstrike or StarCraft 2 now days. The only people who play it know every spawn point, every bullshit tactic, I played for an hour and deleted it.

Timmeh: Well isn't that sort of the division between casual FPSes like CoD, BF and competitive FPS like Q3 and CS? In the former, you can basically hop in knowing that the skill level and skill cap will be low.

By all accounts, QL will have a matchmaking system. You basically imply that it's not the best solution ("if they so wish"), but is there any other way to get what you want? I mean otherwise you might as well ask for everyone to suck at the game.

There's also a difference between the asshat that comes into bash newbs (single person with 5x) and the rest of the community. I think if you check out the Q3 and warsow communities, you will find that they are pretty helpful (especially since it's a dying genre) and that outside of helping new players, they typically choose to play people of their own skill level.

One point is that it's important to make the distinction between noob bashers and the competitive community. The other point is when someone is not good at a game/frustrated at it, their first reaction would be to label the game as bad, "twitch, brainless" and the people that play it as "psychos, no-lifes". Isn't that pretty childish?

Maybe you just aren't that good at it. Maybe the game isn't that fun if you aren't good at it. Besides most difficult games are hardly appealing if you aren't good (for example, many board games like chess and go).

There's going to be skill based match making. No reason to get all huffy.

Now if you had to pay for matchmaking..
Fresh meat! Mwahaha!

What the hell? Yeah, if I'm gonna have to pay for it, I'll buy Quake 3 somewhere for cheap. And don't dumb quake down, if you suck at it, it just makes you become better faster. It's not a casual game like UT.

1) There are all kinds of plans to have matchmaking in Quake Live, one look at the beta forums tells me that.

2) Another look at the beta forums and I noticed something else: Many, MANY threads made by competitive players including discussion on how to make Quake more accessible, beyond matchmaking, etc.

3) I'm 90% sure that the "premium service" talked about in that interview was just someone who didn't know how to say "pay for DLC", which, in all likelyhood, won't effect gameplay in any way.

Wow... I know I'm late to the party, but I have to say a few things about this one.

First:
<i>it’s near impossible to get a string of kills in Quake Live without drinking 20 Red Bulls and smearing cookie crumbs all over the front of your shirt</i>
Let's not stereotype gamers that play more than you since you're being stereotyped by non-gamers already. Seems hypocritical to complain about the ignorance of news outlets while you belittle someone that plays quake "pro style".

Second:
Why is there so much angst toward something hard. People complaining about not being able to enjoy q3 due to the large skill gap should just group themselves together with the ones that think it's cool to complain about gh3 having extra notes. If it's too hard for you, avoid it, but you'll be missing out on one of the greatest competition games ever.

Third:
It's free. It doesn't "run in your browser". Who cares what they change some time down the road, it's a new model and I'm sure it'll have it's share of tweaks.

In short, I can't fucking wait to jump in and see the stats and rankings and matchmaking for one of the greatest games!

@Amp

I could be wrong on that point, but I thought I read in multiple places that the browser just serves as a launcher and a frontend for the matchmaking, server finding, friend's list, and statistics. I'm not in the beta, though, so I've just gone on what I can piece together across multiple articles and any of my friends will tell you I don't read everything that's written some times. :p