Quake champions

[V F]

See Quake Champions has gone Free to Play.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/611500/Quake_Champions/

 

[Hades]

Right, I finally, finally, got around to playing this for the first time tonight and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's the first game of Quake I've played in maybe 5 or 6 years so I was obviously a little rusty. But I still got a few good kills. My first railgun kill was a pleasure

I think I need a new GPU though as I had to turn it right down to play it.

New GPU and new mouse needed I think

 

[DrToffnar]

Right, I finally, finally, got around to playing this for the first time tonight and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's the first game of Quake I've played in maybe 5 or 6 years so I was obviously a little rusty. But I still got a few good kills. My first railgun kill was a pleasure

I think I need a new GPU though as I had to turn it right down to play it.

New GPU and new mouse needed I think

Same here bud. Was sold on it completely in less then 10 minutes. The flow of the combat feels spot on and I can't remember the last game where the gun fights felt this exciting.

 

[Hades]

Same here bud. Was sold on it completely in less then 10 minutes. The flow of the combat feels spot on and I can't remember the last game where the gun fights felt this exciting.

My son saw me play it and wanted a game. He's utterly addicted to Fortnight and nothing has managed to pry him off of that. But within a few minutes he had a big grin on his face and I couldn't get the PC back off him again.

 

[dreigns]

Its a shame being an old q2 / q3 player I found the hit detection bad on this no idea way they can't get it right but being hit by a rail a meter behind is bad don't get me wrong I enjoyed it for half a day before I started to get annoyed by it.

 

[DrToffnar]

I'm not really seeing the same hit scan or box issues most others here seem to notice. Only thing I've really been able to notice is the occasional lag spike.

Saying that, I've never played any Quake prior to this one (don't shoot me) so couldn't possibly comment on how they played in comparison.

 

[Drollic]

That clawz guy really does know how to use the rail. Watched the 2v2 final and 1v1. Rapha constantly calling whilst playing at the highest level is almost brain melting.

 

[TheCybermonkey]

Had a crack at this yesterday.

Quite enjoyed it but looked a bit dated to me, but I’ve been playing Doom so it’s a different style I guess.

Everything was very sharp and it didn’t look bad , but I guess I wasexpecting it to look prettier. This was on ultra.

Was only a couple of games , so could have been I was on some naff maps aswell.

 

[Hades]

Had a crack at this yesterday.

Quite enjoyed it but looked a bit dated to me, but I’ve been playing Doom so it’s a different style I guess.

Everything was very sharp and it didn’t look bad , but I guess I wasexpecting it to look prettier. This was on ultra.

Was only a couple of games , so could have been I was on some naff maps aswell.

I've turned mine right down. Quake for me was never about looks but gameplay. If I can get a slightly better fps with lower setting sI'll take them.

 

[Rroff]

I'm not really seeing the same hit scan or box issues most others here seem to notice. Only thing I've really been able to notice is the occasional lag spike.

Saying that, I've never played any Quake prior to this one (don't shoot me) so couldn't possibly comment on how they played in comparison.

One thing I find a bit irritating is that if you have an actual low ping it isn't actually as good as playing some of the older quake games on a low ping with their limit client prediction and no lag compensation and a lot of that comes down to backwards reconciliation that makes an insignificant improvement for people on an already poor connection/not having a great experience but penalises those who do have a good connection while everyone in the middle ground pretty much has the same experience as ever.

 

[sirp]

it does not look as good as some other newish games, but plays well enough.

 

[Hades]

What would I need to upgrade to get this to run smoother? It's fine most of the time but in major firefights it bogs down. My computer is fairly old so I'm not complaining. But what should I target first for an upgrade... CPU or GPU? I don't care about quality of graphics apart from preferring native resolution for railgun accuracy. Everything else can be set to low.

Resolution: 2560 x 1200
CPU: 3930K
GPU: AMD 290
RAM: I have crap loads so it's not that 48gb

Thanks.

 

[Rroff]

Wouldn't have thought it would run badly on that - though I've not tried the latest builds - I ran it a bit on my 780GHz at 1440p without any slow down to speak of. Can't imagine the 3930K is holding it back though I've not played it on a CPU that wasn't clocked past 4GHz so if you were at stock maybe it would benefit from more CPU power.

The biggest overall benefit to that system would probably be a GPU upgrade though - something like a 980ti or 1070 would massively improve gaming performance.

 

[Hades]

Thanks.

 

[Drollic]

I think looks wise it's pretty much perfect. Modern enough to look reasonably good with nice artwork whilst remaining not too taxing to run so more players can hopefully enjoy nice high frame rates which benefit these types of game.

 

[G-MAN2004]

Just when I thought I was doing pretty good at this game, I go and watch a Toxjq vid and lose all hope...

This dude is insane.

 

[V F]

Doesn't this prove how badly broken this game truly is if people are having to resort to this stuff. Including messing with HPET/Microsoft Visual C++.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/300963885
Starting at 17:46, it's quite a long section and ends about 56:03.



Then you read this stuff... a lot of problems and freaky issues starts to make sense.

https://www.reddit.com/r/QuakeChampions/comments/8urdb2/the_games_netcode_is_getting_better_but/

https://clips.twitch.tv/PolitePlainRaisinTBTacoLeft

https://bethesda.net/community/topi...eople-are-still-complaining-about-the-netcode

Here is a simplified explanation:
QC apparently uses buffered netcode and it has a 50-80ms or larger input buffer..

In simplified terms this means that the client sends it's input (key presses, mouse angles etc), the server puts the input into the buffer.

When the buffer is filled or has hit a time limit the server starts to perform physics and update player positions.

The buffer also delays viewing angles, which is why you see some people doing damage to you with their back turned to you shooting into the distance.

The reason why they buffer at all is because they can interpolate between frames easier and smooth out jittery players movement before sending it out.

Here is why it breaks:
Client Side Hit Detection:

QC uses client side hit detection for hitscan weapons and direct hits from projectiles and abilities.

Basically the client sends a packet saying you hit someone, the server then checks if the other person is alive/eligible to be hit and then applies the damage, knockback etc.

The reason why this is an issue is because how the clients predicted movement and how extrapolation affects things.

While the buffer gives everyone a delay on their movement.. it also causes a giant offset between how you and your shots are perceived by other clients.

As your damage is not dependent on the server syncing things together and is processed immedietly (it does not wait for the input buffer) you get situations were lagged players(and none lagged) will be able to jump into a room and start doing damage to you before the server has even started sending out player position updates, this is why some people kill you in half a second with lg, or where you have rails/rockets appearing out of thin air.

The extrapolation issue:

The buffer delay causes simulated positions to be pushed TOO FAR ahead, if someone takes 1 step toward a corner your client will simulate 4-8 steps before the server update comes in and corrects it, this will allow players to hit you in positions you were never really on. In this case you take a step toward a corner and stop behind cover, your position however keeps going on the enemies screen and gives him an opportunity to hit you before it gets corrected.

This is caused by the buffer but can happen even in games where no buffer is used,

In QL,CS/CSGO etc it causes shots to not register as the server position differed to much and hadn't been corrected yet (this is why high tickrate is needed to get the updates out faster, and is also why it doesn't happen on lan.. while in QC however it does).

The biggest difference here is that the issue in QL,CS etc is caused by bad connections, packet jitter,packet loss etc. In qc it's caused by how the netcode is designed and cannot be avoided.

Projectiles and buffered movement:

The reason why you feel everything is delayed, is because everything is delayed.

In QC's case the buffer and client side hit detection causes situations where you will walk out of the way of incoming projectile fire and still be hit by it despite having 10ping.

1. QC predicts projectiles and uses that predicted projectiles position to determine if something hits or not.
   
   
2. As the rocket positions are delayed/skewed they will ALWAYS be offset even further by the input buffer. This results in projectiles flying past you on your screen and then somehow hitting you anyway.
   
   
3. As they are offset you can not dodge projectiles with any level of consistency as they will behave differently depending on the shooters framerate,latency and network conditions, as well as your own.
   

Why doesn't this happen in other quake titles?!:

1. Input was processed the moment it reaches the server, there is no inherit delay from buffers etc.
   
   
2. They did not use client side hit detection and relied on a method called backwards reconcilliation, as well as client side extrapolation which pretty much means that the client tries to compensate for HIS OWN latency by pushing opponents forward or backwards a bit on the client. (in q3,q4 case this is commonly known as timenudge)
   

This honestly really needs to be a bigger topic and people really have to understand just how bad this is.

Not only because of the issues above but also because there are other games that use a similar netcode that have implemented this SO MUCH BETTER and do not suffer from these problems (it's not an amazon issue -_-).

It also allows for hackers/cheaters as well as abusers to get away with a lot more than they should so on top of it all competitive integrity is at risk too.

It's just poor implementation across the board and needs to be fixed properly, just realize that right now it's just a string of bandaid's holding things together.

 

[Rroff]

Yeah it is horrible and similar to what BF4 does though they've not really fully shown the difference between the way stock Q3 works, lag compensation used traditionally in later titles and the history buffer style used in some more recent games. Unfortunately some seem to think it more fair a system as well but really it is just horrible.

Quake 3 engine BTW uses a built in slight delay for interpolation - default 50ms IIRC though it could be reduced and/or some mods implemented ways to effectively offset it related to the timenudge cvar.

I really hope developers go back to a similar system as implemented by Haste http://www.ra.is/unlagged/ though in some cases it can mean you can shoot someone slightly behind them and still get valid hits and hence a slight amount of taking damage after going into cover it largely eliminates a lot of the other issues and means most of the time you hit what you are shooting at.

Between that and the lack of ability to hop on and off servers frequented by regulars at will I've ended up not bothering with the game much despite quite enjoying it the times when it did all come together without too many issues.

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Just when I thought I was doing pretty good at this game, I go and watch a Toxjq vid and lose all hope...

This dude is insane.

How is his speed getting into the 600+ range? What am I missing here? His aim is great but his movement is ... just wow.

 

[Rroff]

How is his speed getting into the 600+ range? What am I missing here? His aim is great but his movement is ... just wow.

Some champions have different speed caps and acceleration to different speeds possible. There is a bit of a knack to both maintaining momentum and building it via movement as well.