Quake Live coming to Steam

[Neon_Knight]

Quake Live, a free-to-play first-person shooter from id Software, will show up on Steam "very, very soon," Bethesda Softworks vice president Pete Hines announced today at QuakeCon.

Further details on the game were not announced.

Quake Live was released in 2010. The title has since transitioned to a standalone downloadable game, dropping support for Linux and Mac and moving to Windows only. It's available for free, though players can choose to pay a subscription fee for access to more features and play modes.

The standalone launcher for Quake Live launched earlier this year.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/17/5914057/quake-live-to-steam-launch

Today we are thrilled to announce that we are bringing Quake Live to Steam. Upon release, players will have the option of porting their Quake Live account to their Steam account, allowing you to play and update the game entirely through the Steam interface. We will also be supporting subscriptions through Steam, in 2 and 12 month increments, which can be paid with any payment method currently supported through Steam.

We still have a lot planned as we develop towards our Steam re-launch. First up for launch sometime this summer is a refresh of some of the site's design elements. Users will be greeted by a new, simplified Welcome page. From here, you'll be able to quickly get into a match through our new Play Now button, which will automatically find and connect to the best public server running out of a few selected gametypes. This makes getting into a game and playing super quick; we've found you can go from clicking on the game, to firing your weapon in under 20 seconds. No queues, no waiting, just fragging.

The match browser has received a few visual changes. We've merged down the two current browser designs into one new view that offers more info at a glance, and makes better use of the available space. We've completely removed the right column to allow more room for the browser, and the chat has moved into a collapsible tray.

Sometime after that we will launch an update that for the first time in Quake Live's history, will bring about some big gameplay changes. We want to ensure that FPS fans who check out the game on Steam have more fun in their first match than the current gameplay systems allow. We're not talking too much about specific changes yet, especially since the changes need to be taken as one whole package in order to be effective, but we will be iterating internally over the next few weeks to see what works.

We're excited about the next few months of Quake Live's future, and can't wait until we start getting everything out into the players' hands.

http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showthread.php?37332-Quake-Live-Coming-to-Steam

[fromhell]

I wonder what those "big gameplay changes" will be.  Anything "big" would most likely fall in OA's NOTTODO, making OA more of a preserving game.


default brightmodels and no textures?

[andrewj]

slower player movement, no strafe jumping, more weapon nerfing?

and how long until a Steam account is required?

[fromhell]

They'll probably move it to Steamworks entirely given how that is worded like some sort of migration plan.


Also, OA isn't coming to steam.  Just thought i'd repeat that.  Pressure reasons, from both Steam's denizens and the GNU community.


Because I can predict the outcome of being on steam:

"this game worse than bad rat's"
"clicked on setup, player, and the angelyss. i fapped  6/10 its ok"
"CLEAN UP STEAM *link to totalbiscuit video of "Cleaning up steam" DEATH TO SHOVELWARE!"
"the creator is a misogynist and i am a sjw and the creator needs to die"
"this game is a pay2win!!!"
"sad copy of quake live"
"add me friends for playing naruto crack version's" (as the game's 'popularity' are due to pirates hijacking its appId)


and GNU / Debian / and some other mailing list relevant to the interest:

"OpenArena is non-Free"
"OpenArena is Defective by Design for using a proprietary platform"
"ClosedArena because you have no right to run this alleged Free Software"
"Steam is evil locked down wall garden and OpenArena is closed in it"
"OA is perverted shit ran by a pervert who is in bed with Gabe Newell.  Download ioquake3 and install from your Quake3 disc or Steam install.  It is your only option."


etc.


Quake Live won't get this treatment, because well, it's a variation upon the real legit thing people know about from 1999 or the many console versions.

[Suicizer]

http://www.quakelive.com/#!news/site_news/37858

Quake Live Update - August 27, 2014 SITE NEWS | Aug 27, 2014 | SyncError

Last month at QuakeCon we announced that Quake Live would be coming to Steam and with that expansion take on some new gameplay changes and features. At that time, we did not have many specifics to share as we were poised to keep an open mind as to what our future would look like, and wanted to see how we could introduce a wider audience to the game we so dearly love. Quake is a masterful game of skill, often compared to Chess by its veteran players. However, with that depth has come a challenge to welcome and capture new players long enough for them to discover the joy to be found in what many consider the finest Deathmatch game ever made.

For some of us that joy is simply nostalgia of our early days, an introduction to online FPS that ushered in a new era of gaming. For many it is a love of mastery, striving to become better in a competitive world that seems to have no upper bounds. It is a game of limitless growth where the movement, strategy, and perfection of aim seem to be an extension of our human selves where hard work, dedication, and confidence can translate into a measurable improvement that brings a great pride to our players. While Quake will always be a home to the competitive base, we have often longed for a wider audience who could experience, appreciate, and fall in love with all that it has to offer.

For new players, it has been quite clear what the greatest barriers are: effectiveness on spawn, movement, and item control. These elements on several levels also make our game great, so we wanted to see what could be done to make the game a more enjoyable experience, all while teaching players a bit of the meta-game depth.
We tested several ideas including granting players better starting weapons and compared that to the lessons learned in Clan Arena where players get to try out various weapons and see their effectiveness each round. We found that providing the player one single "primary" weapon of their choice in addition to letting them have a bit more freedom as to which "secondary" they spawn with allows players to try out various weapons and become more effective on spawn which has been the key complaint of newcomers. Meanwhile we still want to highly encourage picking up weapons throughout the arena, so we have minimized the amount of ammo granted on spawn so that players will continue to roam and gather both weapons and ammo. Allowing the new behavior of choosing some starting weapons greatly improved the experience in modes such as FFA and TDM and helped make some of the more chaotic modes like Domination quite enjoyable. Hence, Domination will now be ran publicly for all to play.

Additionally we wanted to find a way to teach players a few core bits of information concerning item timing. We have introduced item timers, present transparently in the world (not on your HUD), that all relay item respawn information under the following design guidelines: Each item timer has a radial display divided into slices. Elapsed time is drawn as solid slices. Each slice represents 5 seconds. Active regions are represented by blinking slices that blink once per second. The timers should adequately teach players when an item is about to respawn or when it is better to move along even without this knowledge. And as players continue to play, they will begin to understand exactly how much time elapses per slice and can begin utilizing the timer indicator in coordination with their match timer to know when items will become available. To both minimize visual noise that the timers could incur and to prevent an unnecessary flood of information throughout the world, item timers are only visible while in close proximity, gently fading in as you approach.

The final hurdle for new players to overcome was strafe jumping. We wanted to preserve strafe jumping as is, as both its intentional use and its subtle influences as you traverse the map are what make Quake feel incredibly smooth and responsive. For many of us, learning strafe jumping came naturally or for long time players was simply the foundation of our FPS experience. But we wanted to assist players and provide them with a simpler means of movement to allow them to keep up the pace as they overtime learn to more fully benefit from strafing. A basic "bunny" and auto-hop mechanic has been introduced that allows players to simply hold forward and jump to build up some speed. However, because the new bunnyjumping only provides a limited amount of accel gain, and is only effective on straightaways, players will still need to learn strafe jumping over time – we hope that this new mechanic will allow both general movement and gameplay to become more accessible encouraging them to continue to play so that they may over time become more accustom to the finer side of Quake.

But ultimately these changes have not been introduced for the new player alone. We feel that these elements overall help bring Quake one step closer to being a modern shooter, while still holding true to our roots of remaining an incredibly fast paced old school shooter. We've had a lot of fun with these new additions, and hope that you learn to appreciate them.

For players who have taken great pride in becoming skilled in our more challenging areas such as competitive Duel, we hope that running our FFA and Teamplay servers with these new, fun, and accessible mechanics that we can begin to build a larger base of players who could then try their luck at the Classic Duel experience. Here players will have to shed their new skin and play under slightly more challenging conditions, but ones that we know have proven themselves true in the e-sports arena.

Sincerely,
The Quake Live Team

These new changes have been encapsulated within the default Quake Live ruleset:

New Quake Live Ruleset

    Players may now hold jump to continuously jump.
    Players may now hold forward and jump to 'bunny hop', allowing them to slowly gain up to 2x their base movement speed.
    Introduced Loadouts in select modes; allowing players to select one Primary Weapon (hmg, rl, lg, rg) and one Secondary Weapon (sg, gl, pg, mg).
    Added the command "weapon toggle" to toggle between your Primary and Secondary weapons. Defaults to "f" for new users.
    Unified weapon respawn time to 5 seconds across all game modes.
    Unified friendly fire, disabled across all game modes.
    Added global Ammo Packs, in lieu of weapon specific ammo, where each pack grants you a small amount of ammo for each weapon in your inventory.
    Reduced ammo respawn time from 40 seconds to 10 seconds.
    Added in-world item timers for "major" items, including armors, megahealth, power-ups, and medkit.
    Items have taller pickup collision boxes, so that players will not miss items as they jump over them.
    Added Power-up Spawn POIs, that appear 10 seconds before a power-up spawns.
    Added Power-up POIs, that indicate when an available power-up is available in the arena.


For players who wish to largely avoid the new major changes, the legacy style of play has been preserved within a "Classic" ruleset. All of our public Duel servers run in Classic mode. Subscribers may host additional classic servers using our "Create Match" feature. This includes the launching of Standard Classic servers, which any player may freely join.

In addition to our major ruleset changes, the following global game changes have been made:

General Game Changes

    Added a new weapon, the Heavy Machinegun (HMG).
    Lightning Gun now does 6 damage per cell across all rulesets, or 120 damage per second.
    New higher resolution font added.
    Widescreen Support for huds (see default huds for implementation examples).
    New in-game UI (menu and loading screens).
    Disabled the pk3 encryption. Paks can now be opened like a zip file; maps load up to 25% faster.
    Added flagstand POIs in CTF.
    Enabled self-kills with an additional 1 second respawn penalty.
    Quad firing sound reduced on high rate of fire weapons: mg, pg, cg, hmg.
    Added damage number indicators for damage dealt, can be customized by various color styles and enabled or disabled per weapon.
    Fixed a bug in that could cause the best weapon selection to fail.
    Machinegun now drops to grant users mg ammo.
    Infected zombies now have air control and can double jump.
    Fixed the CHEATS ENABLED notification on the map loading screen from lagging behind its proper state.
    Reduced the default amount of player movement bobbing.
    Reduced the default amount of damage kick movement.
    By default, don't show weapons you don't have in inventory on your weaponbar.
    By default, bob major items when simpleitems are enabled.
    Prevent broken shader image on crosshair '30', '60', '90', which would equate to crosshair "none" as the cycle repeats.
    Bots now randomly select loadouts, when applicable.
    Greatly reduced multiple pickups prediction errors.
    Removed the option to move to FreeCam while dead in elimination based gametypes.
    The PQL ruleset has been renamed 'Turbo'.
    Stonekeep map layout slightly modified.
    Trimmed out 19 maps will be added back later after being updated. (Arena Gate, Bloodlust, Colbat Station, Concrete Palace, Dies Irae, Double Impact, Eviscerated, Focal Point, Forgotten, Golgotha Core, Hell's Gate Redux, Hero's Keep, Power Station, Proving Grounds, Sacellum, Solid, Sorrow, Space Camp, Spillway, Terminal Heights, Terminus)


Create Match Features

    Ruleset selections (Quake Live, Turbo, Classic) are all available for standard servers.
    Now support custom values of starting ammo in AD, CA, DOM, and RR.
    Added optional Double Jump physics player movement mechanic.


Arena Changes

    Removed Team Arena Runes from all maps.
    Proxy Launcher removed from all maps.
    Chaingun and Nailgun removed from several maps.
    Heavy Machinegun added to several maps, some depending on ruleset or mode.

Seems like OA is going to be the only pure Quake 3 game...

[fromhell]

The 2 weapon limit sounds painful to read.

[Neon_Knight]

Call of Quake... who would have thought...

[Neon_Knight]

They've also stripped the TA weapons and items from all the maps.

[PopeJo]

The 2 weapon limit sounds painful to read.

the text is misleading. its not a limit. the amount of weapons you can carry hasn't been limited.
instead you spawn with two weapons and little ammo (eg. 5 rockets fro RL, 50 cells for LG) which you can select before joining the game instead of everyone spawning with the fixed MG.
that's all.

the update is not much of a game changer actually. the lowered LG dmg is akward, because lower dmg -> lower knockback -> harder to pin down enemies.
public FFA is still the same random fun and the pro's (who played a 125fps cup yesterday) didn't show any performance drop either.

also, you can still play on "classic" servers, if you find the changes revolting.

all in all, imho that update is not worth the rage and hype it was made up to be ...

[Suicizer]

The 2 weapon limit sounds painful to read.

the text is misleading. its not a limit. the amount of weapons you can carry hasn't been limited.
instead you spawn with two weapons and little ammo (eg. 5 rockets fro RL, 50 cells for LG) which you can select before joining the game instead of everyone spawning with the fixed MG.
that's all.

the update is not much of a game changer actually. the lowered LG dmg is akward, because lower dmg -> lower knockback -> harder to pin down enemies.
public FFA is still the same random fun and the pro's (who played a 125fps cup yesterday) didn't show any performance drop either.

also, you can still play on "classic" servers, if you find the changes revolting.

all in all, imho that update is not worth the rage and hype it was made up to be ...

It may look like it's nothing, but the impact of spawning with 2 chosen weapons (HMG, RL, LG or RG and SG, GL, PG or MG) has a huge impact of moving across the map. You have to be even more careful than you should previously as any opponent can deal some serious damage right after spawning. That's why armours and the MH have lost their value a bit (although not fully) and the powerups have increased their values (if you take the quad back in the old days and you only carry an MG then it's a nice boost but pretty chanceless against opponents with some proper armour and weapons).

[special]

still better than shit

[befno]

QL sucks now. Sucks almost as much as OA.

[fromhell]

There's a new announcer voice.







 

[Suicizer]

There's a new announcer voice.







 

Aaaaargh 

[fromhell]

Steam store page up

[fromhell]

It just launched, and judging by the Steam screenshot hub it looks like it's suffering from EA launch syndrome

[fromhell]

The next Quake Live update will be the FINAL Quake Live update and it'll gain a workshop for maps and models.


so keep an eye out if your stuff creeps up there

[PopeJo]

QuakeLive will soon become steam exclusive. http://www.quakelive.com/#!news/site_news/41345
players will be able to host their own servers and can ad their own content in limited ways (new maps, playermodels, stuff like that). but
1. quakelive will never become open source ( http://www.esreality.com/post/2776781/ql-steam-switch-q-a-with-syncerror/ )
2. the great statistics QL has offered will be gone

so OpenArena will remain the open alternative. Maybe we'll see a small raise in player numbers again 

[fromhell]

Trying the beta a bit they do have the standard weapon and death statistics.

Also there's still some issues, like still not supporting ultra-widescreen.


The menu layout is CSGO/DOTA2ish, which is fine but isn't something OA3 will ever mimic some of the text is too damn small though. like the console

[fromhell]

The update finally released


and now Quake Live is no longer free for new players - it' costs $9.99USD

[Suicizer]

The update finally released


and now Quake Live is no longer free for new players - it' costs $9.99USD

Such a shame =(.
And that while I am about halfway there of a remake of hiddenfortress.

[.Luke]

The workshop and classic rule-set had me interested, until I read that it became Steam exclusive and has a price tag; makes sense of the use of DRM now. (Still a bit strange since PK3s are no longer encrypted.)

I wouldn't mind dropping $10 on an updated Quake III, but not if I have to launch Steam. I only use the client to install games that are DRM free and can be launched without Steam. Otherwise, I buy entirely on GoG. If Quake Live turns out to not necessarily need Steam too, I'll change my mind.

This makes me glad OpenArena not only exists, it allows me to run the original QIII copy I have as a mod. No logins, no nerfs; just a quick round of fun with insanely smart bots. I need to play OA online more often, though. (Real players are full of surprises, and sometimes they've given me nice competitive tips too.)

[Suicizer]

The only benefit actually is that you pay €10,- just once (for now), instead of €4,- each month for pro membership.

[fromhell]

Heads up- several OA maps appeared on the workshop and source requests seem ignored

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=716307426
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=720512831
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=720594731
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=720705634
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=720723924
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=721024543

Also there's an accusation of OA rippnig off Q3 levels which is definitely misinformation as if this were karmic justice or something.

[Gig]

Well, the information they provided seems very small.

However, requests for sources are just from 12 hours ago... let's give them the time to reply.
Also, instead of just writing "source", what about a proper phrase like "in order to comply with GPLv2 license of OpenArena stuff, you have to include source files or links to them"? I don't have a Steam account, I can't post there.

PS: how does installing extra maps in ql work? Can prople look into pk3 files and read readme-licensing files there?

PPS: someone please tell the guy commenting about q3 maps ripoffs that some openarena maps are remakes of some q3 maps, but those listed there are not of those. So his saying those maps went q3a->oa->ql is wrong.