How does one go about finding a q3 server these days? Preferably

>>3101891
OpenArena is still active. It's basically Quake 3 with different maps.

>>3101906
This. Or Quake Live. It's basically Quake 3 but with a bunch of 12 year olds playing it (so essentially just like you remember). Q3A is dead and has been for a while.

I can still find a Doom or Quake (original) game now and then, but those communities are far more loyal. I think there are a few UT servers still up too. Quake 3? Nada.

Well I find it hard to believe that nobody plays CPMA or even Q3 anymore.

The public servers are empty, that's a fact. But is it due to the fact that everyone has migrated to QL or is there still and active scene in fragmented communities? I feel like somewhere out there, fun is being had on private servers, I just need to know how to get there.

Alternately, is OA a good place for tourneyfags?

Is... Quake Live? I left in disgust after all that announcer change, dumbing down scandal. But if there is still a community of tourneyfags in QL that run servers without all this newbie shit, just good old pro matches, than I'll feel right at home. Just need to know that before I fish out the 10 bucks.

Any sort of servers that Q3A has that look populated are usually filled with spectator bots.

>>3102428

Yup. Can you believe just how Quake-starved I am? Let me tell you a little story of loneliness and despair so I can bump this sad thread filled with an echo of fun deathmatches from the past.

When I decided to go back quaking after a long break, I was surely excited, but I also felt a bit of anxiety. Can I still go against those people? After all, it's been a while and I'm very out of practice.

In my naivety, I imagined those public severs would still be filled with the most seasoned veterans, those who have been loyal to the game for close to two decades, honing their skills with ralexed elation and a sharp focus like it's 1999.

Sure enough, they were gone. Somewhere out there, taking overtime or not getting enough sleep, courtesy of a newborn daughter. And here am I, staring at an empty server list, forever doomed to duel with nightmare Klesk and his insectile scripts.

But then I saw an instagib duel on The Longest Yard. A feeling of desolation gave way to a relief, like the one you feel when you see a couple of long time not seen friends. I may have never known those guys, but, in a way, they were my long time buddies.

When I joined the server, one of them immediately spectated, as if he was happy to see a new face and eager to see what the new opponent can do. I couldn't disappoint my old buddies, so I braced to give it my best.

To my surprise, and great satisfaction, I won 10-6. I still got it! I spent the next half an hour joyfully sniping away at my rival, occasionally tapping 't' to chat:

>'gg'

>move more

>it's more important to dodge first and shoot later

>see, where you stop moving for a second to aim - that's where you're vulnerable, buddy

>you really need to start learning how to aim while strafing if you want to improve

>

>

>

>you're a bot, arent you?

>bend me over and fuck me dead

>...

>you're a shit eating bot

>and I'm one old dumb fucking twat

>>3101992
>(so essentially just like you remember).
What? Quake 3 Arena was never "a bunch of 12 year olds". Completely untrue.

I used to love Quake Live but it's turned to complete cancer on many levels, I should have quit long before I did.

Have you checked Gametracker? I just reinstalled and I was able to get into a game with active people on one of the "CROM" servers last night.

https://www.gametracker.com/search/q3/US/

Just play Quake Live, it's the best version of Q3

>>3102625
Towards the end of it's life it was full of try-hard faggots trying to be the next Fatal1ty. That's what I meant.

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>>3102614
Damn that depressing...

>>3102614
Have you tried getting some people together here, or elsewhere, for a game?
Q3A is old now. You cannot expect fun to fall into your lap like it's glory days, you have to put some effort in to make the fun happen.

>>3101891
Finding a server, you say? Is Gamespy still a thing? Are there any server browser alternatives to it? If not I guess you're stuck with that shit in-game browser.

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:(

>>3102420
CPM is dead because Reflex, which is shit, came out and split the community, which was only like 20 players to begin with.

QL is shit too. Its all CA and FFA servers with instant weapon spawn and literally 20+ player caps.

>>3103738

no servers free of instant weapon spawn / dumbed down movement?

sadly this>>3103738
OP,
Play TF2. It has the same mechanics and weapons but split into classes and slowed down significantly but at least it's not dead.
There's also new UT which is pretty rad.

You could buy reflex since it's a cpma clone but I wouldn't seeing that the community consists of cpma vets you'll get demolished 100-0.

>>3104280
Nope, literally every FFA server has weapons on instant spawn. Why? Because every FFA server's playercap is 26. Maps that could alleviate a tiny bit of the huge amount of fucktardedness of that never, ever get voted in either.

16+ player DM6, Almost Lost, ZTN, all day, every day? Yep, that's what FFA is now. What's more insane is that there is a steady "community" of people who play that shit exclusively, for multiple hours a day. I'm not sure what kind of malfunction someone has to have to find sitting on LG spawn and farming people who can't aim or move well for multiple hours a day fun.

>>3104342
No one plays anything other than duel in Reflex because somehow half of the game's players got lured in from TF2 and bought the idea that duel is FPS Chess For Intellectuals. Not that duel doesn't own, but the Reflex community has no interest in anything else and in turn development does not focus on anything team related, leaving modes like TDM and CTF lacking maps and critical features like ammo boxes or some kind of backpack system.

Other problems that are still present:
-no way to force item timers off literally more than a year after the devs said that they were going to include a feature to do so

-wall clipping was removed because it's evidently too "unintuitive" or some shit but they added triple jumps and in turn most maps are a mess with no true strong positions to hold because there's abundant triple jump spots

-sounds, while placeholder, are the worst I have ever heard

-modding tools or even serverside scripting will probably never happen because the devs have delusions of grandeur about making this The First True Big "Arena FPS" Of The eSports Era and as such every player must have the exact same singular experience (which is also why virtually no customization is allowed for graphics options -- hilarious considering the game's performance)

>>3104401

Who the fuck plays quake for FFA anyway? Join a CA server, it's what the game is about

>>3104410
FFA with 8-10 players and regular weapon spawns is fun and you can use it to practice for modes that matter ie duel, TDM, and CTF.

CA is worse now than it ever has been before because elo was thrown out in favor of glicko, which does ratings calculations FFA-style, even in team games. So, now that winning/losing isn't taken into account in ratings calculations, CA is a hilarious prisoner's dilemma nightmare of people baiting each other to try and get the highest damage spread and screaming at/trying to votekick teammates who don't act as their personal damage sponge lol

>>3104342
>>3104445

well, that sucks

To rescue a falling thread: out of the options we have, would you guys recommend Open Arena, Quake Live or Reflex the most? Why?

>>3103738
>with instant weapon spawn

Where do you even find these? I play in Europe and have found only a few of them since the paid update hit. Don't even remember well when I played on one.

>20+ player caps.
Most I see are 16 player servers. Only a fifth seems to be over 20.

>>3101891
Tried e+ yet?
It's like quake live, but you get full configurability

>>3107257

Holy shit! This seems to be where everyone is. They even have some tournament the day after tomorrow and clan chatrooms and everything. Fuck yeah!

Are the Open Arena and Q3 versions compatible, i.e. can common matches be held?
That would be a great move to unite some of the fragmented community. There seem to be different servers though.

If both versions aren't compatible, can the q3 version be played with no cd-key?

>>3107257
E+? Excessive Plus? Or is this some new client I never heard of?

>>3107889

a mod for q3 and Open Arena

>>3102614
And you wonder why jumpretardy shooters went their way of the dodo. You find the only populated server and what you do? Shitpost like a 12 year old high on carbonated drinks. You really deserve that.

>>3108518

say what? literally, what the fuck do you mean by that?

I just play against bots whenever I need my Q3 fix. It's sad that no one plays the vanilla game anymore, but then again, it's almost 20 years old.

OP, the fact is that most people have moved to QL even though it is a flawed client. It is still possible to find games on Q3A and games are always being arranged (check IRC), and if you live in Europe it's pretty easy to get a CPMA game.

But the best way to play vanilla Quake 3 now is Quake Live. People on here bitch about it because they are no longer active Quake players; active Quake players play on QL.

>>3106781
Quake Live because it is still basically just Q3A.

>>3101992
>Q3A is dead and has been for a while.
What a waste of a nifty fast inverse square root function.

>>3101891
If Q3's default server browser is down find an alternative master server and put it in your hosts file.

I'm not sure how up to date these are but I have # is comment and thus disabled. Thus they're all disabled except for qtracker and they all have a comment stating where the ips are from in case they go down.

63.144.111.10 master.quake3arena.com # master.qtracker.com
#69.9.170.50 master.quake3arena.com # master.quake3arena.com
#209.212.157.150 master.quake3arena.com
#176.9.53.212 master.quake3arena.com # master.ioquake3.org:27950 in DE
#148.251.48.139 master.quake3arena.com # master0.excessiveplus.net:27950 in DE
#69.9.170.50 master.quake3arena.com # master.maverickservers.com:27950 in US

With that noted, you can also use maxbrowse which is an external server browser and it still works.

>>3101992
>It's basically Quake 3 but with a bunch of 12 year olds playing it
Except for the movement differences, the weapon balance differences, and netcode differences that make it terrible to play. It's Q3 in the same way that CPMA freezetag is VQ3.

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>>3108828
You can try to get in on whatevers left. The +n are bots, but there's people still playing.

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>>3102614

>>3108813
>Quake Live because it is still basically just Q3A.
Is there a good list anywhere of all the differences between Q3A and QL?

>>3109314

This is why /vr/ doesn't get invited to parties

>>3109321
Rail does 80 damage instead of 100.
Grenades and rockets have a splash distribution that greater rewards direct hits.
LG does a uniform 6 damage at all ranges instead of 6-7-8.
There is an additional weapon called the HMG that nobody uses and the Team Arena weapons are in but disabled in almost all cases.

QL includes a giant number of maps in comparison to Q3A but is strictly not compatible with any of the mods for the latter. Many of these maps have had item locations changed for balance (boot up dm6 in both versions for a quick example). In addition, many Team Arena maps have had their Team Arena features removed, making them appropriate for playing.

The netcode is far better for players with low ping (no more timenudge).

>>3110582
>The netcode is far better for players with low ping (no more timenudge).
No it's not.

>>3110771
There is a fair amount of material about this on the web and I don't care much to beat this thoroughly dead horse. The myths about QL's supposedly inferior netcode have been debunked time and again, especially as it pertains to players pinging below 70ms.

If you actually want to learn about this problem, google it.

>>3110582
Timenudge is most definitely present in the current QL client.

>>3111407
It is present but does nothing unless your ping is very high.

>>3107557
>can the q3 version be played with no cd-key?
Yes, but not over the internet.

>>3111351
>The myths about QL's supposedly inferior netcode have been debunked time and again, especially as it pertains to players pinging below 70ms.

No amount of "debunking" will make it true when it's simply not the case. You can write all the false garbage you want but rails and even shotguns miss and have hit beeps and no actual damage at all done to the player and it happens consistently consistently in QL at low and high ping but rails and shotties never falsely miss their marks at any playable ping in Q3A it speaks for itself. What actually happens is the more important and the fact of the matter is that QL has shit netcode.

If you want to learn about the problem, play the fucking game.

>>3111885
QL's hit confirm has no false positives or no false negatives. It is subject to server latency. If you didn't hear a noise, you missed; if the noise is delayed, you're lagging. This is easily testible. Give it a shot.

>>3111831
This is wrong. Theres a server side variable that tells whether you need a legit key to play on a server.

>>3112118
And then there's when it makes a noise but doesn't damage. This is easily testible. Give it a shot.

>>3112410
Sure.

Like I said, these claims have been discussed to death and they're all not true. I'm not going to argue with you over information that is patently false. I have thousands of hours logged in QL and I've never once had a false positive or negative. If you play on a high latency server you will see that the response time of the noise becomes sluggish; that's because the sound is based on the server's conclusion of whether you hit or not.

>>3112337
Yeah, I'm just making the assumption that all internet servers use that. I suppose there's nothing stopping someone hosting one without it.

>>3112410
>testible
You could have at least put a (sic) there.

>>3113520
You keep suggesting latency but it's not latency on a low ping server. And I didn't even need thousands of hours to get false positives. You not noticing false positives doesn't mean they don't exist, but noticing false positives does mean they do.

But no, I agree. Don't bother arguing. You just called an actual fact false so I really don't give a fuck. It is what it is.

>>3114646
False positives on rails would be really noticeable since the opponent's health would be wildly different than what you're expecting it to be, and I have, again, never experienced a single one. I've lived on two different continents and gone through countless internet service providers over the course of my Quake Live playing career without ever having an issue.

False positives on LG would be far less noticeable but, as I mentioned previously, the way that the client confirms hits is well-documented and false positives/negatives are fundamentally impossible so I'm pretty sure they don't happen, either.

Your last post makes little sense. What would the problem be on low ping servers?

>>3110582
In other words, they fucked with the weapon balance and made the grenade launcher even more useless than it was before. Lovely.

>>3114694
The grenade launcher is about as useful as it's always been. It's not a one on one weapon, and for spam it's just as scary as it was in Q3A since you're more likely than before to take a lot of damage from a wayward grenade.

The change to LG reflects the fact that there are far more low latency players than there were when Q3A was released, meaning that there are more players hitting higher accuracies with the LG. As a result, the LG is completely dominant in midrange fights in all game modes and that's still true with the LG doing 6-6-6. It just means that you have a better chance with RL, PG, SG or even RG in such a situation if your aim is true.

The rail nerf is probably the most consequential and it's still not a big change. In TDM you are less likely to kill freshly spawned players, and that's basically it. It is as much a defining weapon in CTF and duel doing an instantaneous 80 damage as it was doing 100.

The sum of the changes is that the LG and RG are slightly worse while every other weapon is slightly better. The aggregate impact, however, is very tiny, and people play QL almost exactly like they played Q3A. Maybe there are some situations where people feel compelled to use rockets where they weren't before, but that's hardly a reason to discount the entire client.

>>3114672

Are there still fun CA games of ~4 players that didn't turn to cancer?

Are there still fun oldschool duels without the dumbed down bunnyhopping and default weapons?

Should I spend my 10 bucks or am I in for a lot of disappointment?

>>3115240

CA of 4-8 players, I mean none of that crowded chaos on maps that are way too small for that.

>>3115240
>>3115241
CA is always the most popular game mode and provided you're decent at it it's not hard to find a good game.

I don't know anyone who actually uses autohop since it only increases your speed to around ~500 and it takes forever to do so. It also might be disabled in duel by default but I'm not sure since I turned it off as soon as they added it.

People don't use loadouts or any of the other crap that they added a couple of years ago and the HMG is only on certain (non-duel) maps.

If by "default weapons" you mean Q3A balance like 100 rail and 6-7-8 LG, then no. It is very, very rare to see people use the Q3A weapon damages even though there's an option to do so. The fact is that QL's weapon balance changes were actually seen as an improvement for most people, especially the weaker LG.

I think it's worth at least $10. It is still, fundamentally, Quake 3, which is an incredible game.

>>3108813

Where do I find CPMA games? I've looked in the obvious places, even the IRC is dead.

>>3115859

By default weapons I meant loadouts. Might check it out eventually in the weekend, after all, a Steam refund is always an option.

>>3115859
I don't know why some people make a big deal out of the HMG; it's pretty fun to use and it's less accurate than the MG and LG so it's not even a good weapon. There's pretty much no reason to pull it out except for entertainment; it's good for finishing players off if you feel lazy and your aim sucks but you could do that better with SG, MG or rockets as long as you're aiming carefully.

>>3115897
I'm not European so I don't know the channel to be honest. I have seen people ask for and get CPM duels, however.

Nobody uses loadouts and they cannot be used in duel even if for some reason someone did want to use them.

>>3115241
Yeah 4v4 CA servers are common among better players, and it's not hard to find duels.

>>3116026
The people who make a big deal out of it are by and large the purists who quit playing Quake a long time ago because the rail does slightly less damage than it used to.

The HMG replaces the MG wholesale in CA and is pretty decent in TDM since it's usually easier to get than the big 3. That's basically it. Its DPS isn't good enough to be a game-changer in CTF or FFA and the impact on CA is tiny since there are more effective weapons at all ranges. Overall, I like the addition and I view it mostly as a way for them to remove the considerably less balanced CG from team arena maps.

>>3115859
did they bring the old announcer back? that little addition had nothing to do with logic for a change.

>>3114672
You seem to pick up on words but have trouble reading. We've already discussed the points you made and repeating yourself over and over doesn't make your experience any more authoritative to countering experience.

>>3116891
Your claim can be summed up in two of your posts:
>>3114646
>>3112410

You are, in these two posts, claiming two things. First, you are claiming that it is possible for Quake Live to record a false positive. Second, you are claiming that it the possibility of this happening is not tied to latency.

Now, I mentioned several times in this thread that you can google this and learn pretty quickly that this is actually not possible because of how Quake's netcode works -- the client doesn't confirm hits by itself but waits for information from the server to do so -- but you've chosen not to do that and instead continue to fill up this thread with misinformation. Sure. Fine.

Here's an even easier way to provide even one shred of evidence that what you're claiming is both possible and true. There are, right now, THOUSANDS of youtube videos of duels recorded both in live format and in demo playback. I implore you to find a single example of what you're claiming is common enough to be a reason not to use the client.

Or you can just admit that you're wrong since you will never find a single example because it's actually impossible.

>>3101891
There are a few playing 1.16n, but they are mostly railers (noghost). Lurking forums like quake3world should give you a hint about where you might find them.

iirc, cpma has a channel in quakenet (irc), they can give you pointers too.

>>3108861
>>3101891
{CROM} servers are always filled with people playing, but they are vanilla. Also, fuck space maps.

Opinions on Reflex?

>>3101891
#uscpmpickup
#cpmduel
#cpmpickup
on quakenet

>>3119173

dead though

bump for carnage

And how's Warsow?

>>3124923
Warsow has great movement options and it looks great, but the game is practically dead.

Xonotic is also great and has some really nice weapon balance (outside of the MG being shit), but almost all the servers are empty. That said, whenever I join an empty server I get a four or more people joining me in less than five minutes.

>>3126361

Well there's about 3 populated games of Warsow everytime I join. Just like Openarena which currently has this daily instagib CTF and not much else.

All those quake clones collectively are quite active, but individually each of them is on the verge of dying. Those arena shooters just came in too many variations, wish everyone just agreed on what the best one is and stuck with it.

>>3126580
Quake Live is, in some regions, working with a playerbase that borders on acceptable but I agree with the premise as a whole. It's a small community that is suffering because it is heavily fragmented.

But I don't know if we can expect this to ever change. I think the learning curve is far too serious for most people and the time commitment it takes to be decent at Quake (and Quakelikes) is quite big, even compared to other arena shooters. It also exposes hardware flaws that mostly go ignored by other games/genres, like input lag and connection quality.

>>3126580
>wish everyone just agreed on what the best one is and stuck with it.
That's why Quake Live was a fucking golden idea. What made it collapse is because they treated it like it was going to be this ongoing money-generator with a team of devs that would get salaries from it. It's this modern capitalistic world - everything has to be some "enterprise" generating work. All they should have done was set Quake Live up and then left it alone forever with a few people at its head for organization and administration. If I was John Carmack I would feel like Quake was my baby and this is how it would live on even after it was dead, and pay for it to stay up with my own money if I had to instead of going for quick cash grabs. I was all in favour for continuing to subscribe to keep it up, NOT to pay phony new "developers" to mess with it.

>>3128864
They tried exactly what you're proposing for years and it lost money every year. I don't disagree with you that what they're doing now is worse than what they were doing before but what they were doing before also didn't make money.

>>3128953
As I was trying to explain, they had this team of "developers" working on various "mods" and "improvements" and others working on marketing and so on the whole time. If they had cut them out and relied on subscription alone, and people were told their subscription was going to the upkeep of the servers, then everything would be fine. It was the people that had to be paid that ruined it. Everyone should have had to subscribe from the start and the cost should have been very, very low, like $2 a month. The free people were mostly anti-social people and cheapskates that made the community worse. The fraction who paid were keeping all those people there. Maybe a free trial per account would have been a good idea. It doesn't have to make money, all it has to do is break even. It just goes to show how little Carmack cares about Quake and respect for the community that he wouldn't even keep it up just because it wasn't making money. How do you think community servers stay up except that people donate to them? You think that they wouldn't do that for Quake Live also if given a chance? It's the same thing except centralizing and creating an official Quake place instead of ruinous fragmentation.

>>3129048
For the vast majority of its existence, Quake Live was propped up by a single paid employee and a handful of volunteers. Similarly, up until around 2014 or so the only content addition to QL was in the form of maps, most of which were either made for free/by SyncError or imported from another source. The team got larger after id had already tried to make money off of just selling Q3A again for several years, and it wasn't really all that much larger.

Premium cost like, less than $5 a month. I bought a pro subscription every year and I think it cost me around $100 a year.

I need to emphasize again, however, that I recognize that pretty much every major change they made when the team did expand was a bad one, except the removal of Team Arena elements from otherwise good maps.

>>3119157

seconding, might not be retro, but it's surely relevant