id Software’s Tim Willits revealed that Quake Champions will be a free-to-play title, though in order to gain access to all champions, players will have to purchase the Champions Pack. In its free-to-play version, gamers will be able to play as only one Champion, the Ranger.
Naturally, this was to be expected. In fact, we – and I’m pretty sure every other gamer – immediately thought of this business model the the moment id Software announced that Quake Champions would feature different characters. The only difference with the business model of every other F2P game is that Quake Champions will not allow you to purchase specific/individual Champions only.
As Tim Willits told Polygon:
“At its core, it’s a free-to-play game,” Willits said, “with the option to buy the Champion Pack and just get in and play with all the Champions. There are a number of Quake players that just want to play their Quake, right? And they are familiar with the business model of our previous games, and they are totally fine. ‘I want to buy the game. I want to start playing. I want to have access to all the Champions.’
But then we also understand that we want to get as many people into the game as possible, especially outside of North America and Western Europe, where we have a massive fan base. So we want to have the flexibility to have a free-to-play option for those people.”
All maps will be available to all players, whether they are playing the free-to-play version or not. In addition, all players will compete in the same brackets.
Furthermore, those that will be using the free-to-play version will be able to pay the in-game currency, called favor, to play other Champions for a finite period of time.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Now, how did I know it would be F2P.
On the other hand, “Quake Champions will not allow you to purchase specific/individual Champions only.” I’ll admit, I did not see that coming. What the f*ck?
“In an interview last week, Willits said that players who want to can play a single character, a Champion named Ranger, for free.”
So, if you don’t spend the (I’m assuming) $50/$60 / €50/€60 to buy the Champion’s Pack, what the f*ck do you play with, exactly? A guy called Ranger with either no special abilities what-so-ever, or, even worse, one, single, boring-as-f*ck ability? This stinks of “generic character designed specifically to entice you into paying.”
Players who buy the Champion Pack — the de-facto full-price version of the game — will get Ranger and all the other Champions that the game launches with. Everyone else will be able to pay the in-game currency, called favor, to play other Champions for a finite period of time.
“I don’t want to use the word rent,” Willits said. “You do spend favor to have access to them for a limited amount of time, yes. But you don’t spend any real money on it.”
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OH YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SH*TTING ME.
So, you thought that was hilarious? Wait for this next part, it’s just beautiful;
“Ultimately, the free-to-play community will be competing on an even playing field with paying players. Each Champion’s skills will be different and complementary in a rock-paper-scissors kind of way, but they’ll be available to everyone. That will help make sure that Quake Champions retains the kind of skill-based gameplay that made the franchise one of the original esports.”
“We do feel it’s more approachable,” Willits said, “and we feel that with our team game modes, and then especially our dual mode, that we can fill a hole that’s missing in esports today.
Yeah, I’m just going to go now. Good luck with your bullsh*t, ZeniMax-Bethesda-id Software, you’re going to need it real soon ^^
P.S. Thanks for the laughs John, but next time, more funny quotes in the main post, please, don’t make me go digging for them myself 🙁 😛
That second part makes no sense from their end, if the field is supposedly even, then why the hell are we even paying for the gamer at all?.
This whole recent turn of events screams their lust for casual money. They know the franchise, after all these years will be quite niche, so instead they set their eyes on the stereotypical crowd that doesn’t care about them, yet they care to take their money, like a love hate relationship that has a very short lifespan and fuse.
People in the gaming industry seem to be born stupid, like those kind of people that think their short term>long term are right screwed in the head if they think having a long term success and userbase that follows you for years, is somehow worse than the other crowd that will drop you like a hat without a second thought (just look at the mobile casual crowd when they dropped Nintendo and the Wii, which Nintendo still desperately wants back so bad).
Pretty much. If they’re lucky & the Beta doesn’t crash the game’s reputation (as it likely will), & they push enough positive press, they’ll make some money at the start, before this tanks harder than EVOLVE & dies even faster, assuming they don’t finally accept the epic mistake they’re making, admit it, & finally do what needs to be done, in the end.
Yeah it’s amazing how after all these years, the industry suits still haven’t realised that this is a long game, not a short one. Hell, even Hollywood’s pushing Cinematic Universes for everything they can think of right now, & reboot trilogies for everything else, ffs, but these guys, nope!
Reboot. Oh, it died? Too bad. NEXT!
That’s the big issues with the suits though, they all come from another industry that thrives and exists on the short game alone, but the games industry doesn’t work like that at all, just look at how we judge our games and how time passes that much quicker in the games industry than say the film/music one. Five years ago we were playing Skyrim, now fast forward to today and Skyrim looks pretty damn dated and other games at the time that we regarded as masterpieces in the visual arts.
Games and styles age that much faster in this industry, which is why playing the long game gives you better chances of long term success over constant good, bad, good, good, bad, good, bad, bad types of short games.
Exactly. Now if only someone “up there” would finally understand that.
I mean, wow, even the independent studios are losing track of that, or so it seems to me, at least.
Bethesda games always look dated
“Players who buy the Champion Pack — the de-facto full-price version
of the game — will get Ranger and all the other Champions that the game
launches with.”
The pack doesn’t even include characters that come after launch and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if new characters were only sold individually at outrageous prices or in RNG loot boxes. These free2play games are all the same.
Absolutely exactly.
What’s the guarantee they won’t pull an EVOLVE & introduce a “Champions Pack The Second” 6 months in? There is none.
“how did I know it would be”
So you think you are some sort of special something ? dumba**s.
Yup.
😀
Essentially you can spend in game currency to rent the other
heroeschampions right? So what is going to happen when the inevitable DLC comes?I’m sure that the F2Players can’t have access it, but the ones that pay the DLC will, how is that is going to be balanced?
Unless they can buy the DLC, and at that point you ask, “why buying heroes isn’t allowed but DLC is”?
“So what is going to happen when the inevitable DLC comes?”
EVOLVE Season Pass: Year 2.
Quake Champions: Champions Pack The Second?
The only hope is that custom game will be the only thing people pay attention and care about, otherwise I can’t see longevity in this game.
Pretty much.
The problem is, I can really see id Software trying to push Quake Champions as the next Quake eSports game, Champions & all, which will kill the competitive scene.
Not to mention if there’s no Mods, which they still haven’t said a word about.
Most likely.
As always I hope to be wrong, but the situation seems dire.
(Oh well, my favorite one is the “medievil” Quake so personally not much of a loss tbh, but I would sure like to see a different “scene” regarding MP)
Also, needless to say, this time they’ll have to be proper mod tools, not SnapMap 2.0, assuming they actually do anything in that regard, in the end.
I mean, seriously, it’s like these people don’t even understand what made Quake so popular, especially Q3A, which they’re most definitely modelling Champions after.
And at this point, I’m starting to wonder; if you yelled the TOTALLY F*CKING OBVIOUS right into their faces, would they, then, understand what the f*ck it is that they’re doing wrong?
I’ve read somewhere something about snapmap, is off the table, at least for now.
They know what made it popular, but it also made it kinda of a niche, and in going for the old model and the skill based gameplay will attract only a certain number of people/fans and if that number are not, uh let’s say,CS:GO or Overwatch numbers then publishers will try to do what they can to attract the highest number they can get, hence the “generic” template we see in many games nowadays.
Yeah they said they won’t do SnapMap, but they also said if they do mod tools, it’ll be after launch, which, considering their business model, makes sense, even if it is a giant “F*ck You.”
Sure, but this Overwatch ripoff is one of the dumbest ways they could go about it, & they’re not even making it optional, they’re actually trying to force it down our throats, like we asked them for it, or something.
But are not forcing it (there is no need to buy the game, right?), they are just merely doing the awful thing of using a well known and classic franchise name and doing a makeover despite the baggage and following of what that name carry and implies.
This is the part I tell “move on”, this isn’t made for the fans of the old days anymore. That’s the prime part of what makes things a issue. If anything showed up until now didn’t sway you into it, then it doesn’t sway you into it. Sad and difficult to let things go, but there isn’t much to do at this point. This isn’t made for you.
I used to believe that complaining would do good in changing things up, but in this industry it requires massive & collective effort (and that’s not going to happen soon). We just need to let things go and unfortunately die, and learn from these mistakes and try and do better in the future. :
If it doesn’t happen… Oh well, I was never a optimistic anyway. 😛
Sadly true. This is most likely going to keep going until overwhelming negativity during the beta forces them to reconsider, or until it launches & subsequently crashes & burns like the EPIC FAIL! it undoubtedly is, at which point (most likely) they’ll either abandon the franchise completely, in perpetuity, or, actually admit they made a mistake, & openly repent for it with a proper sequel-reboot (least likely).
Most unfortunate of all, though, nobody seems to actually be learning anything from any of this, with maybe the exception of IO, which actually rebooted Hitman into something worthy of being considered a Blood Money sequel, albeit, a Blood Money sequel with a massive side of Square Peggings bullsh*t attached to it.
Oh, sh*t, they’re totally going to do cosmetic micro-transactions, separate from the “Champions Pass”, aren’t they……..
Yes, they will, in some form of loot box. I think that the news about that are already out.
Nothing official (yet), but I did find this;
“Job posting at id Software points to microtransaction focus for Quake Champions”
“seeking an exceptional monetisation designer with a passion for making sticky systems for successful games”.
“The candidate will collaborate with the design team, analytics group, marketing, and tech department to develop, optimise, and tune fun and compelling monetisation features as well as other related sticky systems.”
Bethesda never commented, though the site says they reached out, so I’m guessing they want to keep that under wraps for as long as possible. Or, at least for the time being, since the article is dated to December 2016.
Oh, it is totally not under wraps, skimming through the webz and you can find videos of the loot box system with skins popping out and some discussion about the different currencies (soft currency used for “rent”, hard currency used to “buy”, and as you can imagine different grind levels for both( that is new to me)).
So, it’s all there already.
Oh, sh*t.
Ow.
So then, it’s “official” already.
Damn.
Great find, sir. Nothing ‘tunes’ the ‘fun’ factor in videogames more than a ‘monetisation designer’! smh
Nah guys, you are missing a pretty good point for this game. It let’s you play for free, agree with a character – Ranger, we all now it’s going to be a solid fast paced fps. If you like the game you buy it like a “Champions Pack” and enjoy the game further with different chars. I think it’s good since I did not expect it to be a F2P. More people to see online at least even if it’s going to be the rangers 😀
They realy want this game to faill 🙁
Why?
1. Huge focus on Champions
2. They are ignoring community feedback
3. Now this F2P bullcrap witch microtransactions.
Ok, so how about you just don’t play it at all? Why hope the game will fail? Other people might look forward to this. The reasons you listed are reasons the game probably will fail, though I don’t see how hoping it will solves anything. If it succeeds, it’s better for everyone.
Are you sure you’re actually reading what he says? I don’t see him saying that he personally hopes the game fails. As a matter of fact, he was expressing sadness over how the direction the developers are taking this might cause the game to fail.
Wait a minute. I swear that comment said “I really want this game to fail” before…
But i want this game to be good. I played all quake games and i have 200h in quake live on steam soo i know how this game should look.
But if it fails it will cease to be anything.
Honestly? Good riddance.
If they can’t do it right, then they shouldn’t be doing it at all, rather than destroying the IP through a terrifyingly bad reboot-sequel. Sadly, nobody can see through the $$ sign haze anymore, so they don’t care about how much damage they’re doing to IPs anymore, in favour of how much money they could potentially earn from the endeavour, instead.
Plus, their last reboot came off well, which has only strengthened their thickheadedness, if anything.
Or, seeing the success of DOOM (2016), they will reboot Quake similarly.
We can only hope though.
Arguably, this is the DOOM reboot, & when it fails, they’ll abandon the IP completely, instead of trying again, in my opinion, but that is just me.
iD wants that Overwatch money, hence “champions”.
Well, those who plays F2P shooters (part 1 of their target market) will ignore it, given that only one free “hero” and no rotating roster. I predict this will be that Hawken thing all over again: everyone come to check out what’s the deal, roll with the only free (i.e. crappy) microwave-oven mech for a couple of rounds, get repeatly pounded into dirt by those who paid or grinded to get better gear, get bored quickly, and move on.
On the other hand, old Quake fans (part 2 of their target market) want to burn down their office building.
Time to stop following this game…and move on!
Q3A FOREVER!!! The best MP FPS Arena shooter!
Gotta get that huge casual money amarite?, screw those who just want a full packaged Quake game.
You guys should check out Reflex Arena.
Reflex Arena!
/Respect.
The only true Quake 3 sequel, to date, including this Champions joke. Actually, come to think of it, this is probably the one good thing about Champions, in its current state; it won’t draw attention away from RA, which would, sadly, shrivel up & die if a proper Quake 3 sequel were in the works courtesy of id Software.
I don’t see a competition between the two games. Reflex is for the CPM crowd, it was never meant to be the second coming of arena FPS, it’s a niche game for people who liked CPM and want to have a modern game that plays like CPM.
Meanwhile Champions is for the Quake3/Live audience plus Overwatch playing casuals (they hope). I think QC is salvagable as “the mainstream arena FPS”. It has no competitor at all. I don’t count UT, that game is permanently in development hell no matter what Epic say or think they are doing. So yeah, if you want a modern CPM you play Reflex, if you want a modern Quake 3 vanilla you play QC classic mode.
And as for the Champion ability stuff, I have two thoughts on that:
1) It’s not fundamentally a bad idea, combining fighting game “characters” with arena FPS. Not at all a bad idea.
2) Their business model however leaves me doubtful. I really don’t think F2P brings in the kind of playerbase QC needs. It didn’t work for QL so why would it work for QC? That’s why i was hoping they would just have some confidence and release it for 40 bucks. Overwatch is a success. Doom was a success. FPS players are willing to spend money. F2P is a mistake in my eyes.
Yeah, QC should stand a chance if they do the right moves, since it has no competition, though I’m standing worried about the eSports side of it, considering the Champions.
They must think Quake Live failed because they didn’t advertise it enough, or some such. Remember how they never gave us mod tools with that one, either? Exactly. Same thing now, “maybe, post launch.” F*ck knows how the video game development industry thinks at this point.
As for the “characters”; the problem is special skills means doing a rock-paper-scissors balancing act which, for one thing, means an uneven playing field, by the very nature of such a system, & which for another thing, very few, at best, are capable of sustaining well, especially in the long term. Blizzard, for example, will eventually fail to, as they always do, & id doesn’t even have the experience they need for this to work properly, as it seriously needs to, from the get-go.
They might succeed, but that’s unlikely, & even if they do get lucky & they figure out how to make it work with the baseline champions, once the DLC champions start pouring in, they’ll have to constantly re-balance everything to keep it stable, until at some point in time they eventually fail, & either break someone completely, or, even worse, overpower them to a ridiculous degree.
>They must think Quake Live failed because they didn’t advertise it enough
To be fair that’s a big part of it. The other part is re-releasing a game with barely improved graphics on its 10 year anniversary and expecting it to bring in masses of new players. QL has graphics comparable to Half Life 2 and that’s at its prettier moments. Of course it couldn’t look much better because it had to run fast or it would have ended like Quake 4… there’s really a whole lot you can do wrong making and launching and maintaining an arena FPS.
Nicely put 😛
Also, they updated the original Q3 Engine, rather than remaking the entire thing over in a new one, so either way, it could only have been improved so much in the end (visually).
Also the limited mods integration. Like, it’s great, you’ve added proper server settings, etc. but where’s Defrag? Oh, no Defrag…… Even after years of us asking for Defrag. Okay, f*ck you too, then.
too bad no one plays it 🙁
Give it some time, Rocket League was once a minor nothing too 😛
nah its dead. Its been out for a long time.
Only in Early Access, now it’s officially out, & with Quake Champions being what it is, no doubt it’s going to gain more attention as a result, being the proper Quake 3 sequel that QC isn’t.
Arguably.
The game is dead, hasnt been updated for a while and nobody is playing it. The other game Toxikk, still get regular updates and has a competitive 1vs1 league and nobody paid attention to it. Arena FPS players are hard to please…
It literally just got updated on February 20th, not sure what you’re on about.
Toxikk is good, but it plays more like UT than Quake. What with Epic’s UT sequel-reboot-remake combo thing still advancing, it’s not surprising that it would draw attention away, honestly.
Sad, but not surprising.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2to9Pb0DOM
Its a 20 min long video but I find it very informative.
If its a TL:DR for you. Quake Champions can never reach the level of CS:GO, Overwatch or Dota 2. Unless ID software destroys what makes Quake, Quake. A hardcore skill based FPS with a steep learning curve.
Nice, thanks.
Even if they do, however, it’s most likely still not going to, since Quake Champions is, at the end of the day, an Overwatch clone, rather than something actually original &/or unique. Which is the crux of the problem; Quake Champions, in its current state, is just BAD, regardless of what they intend to do with it, or not.
That, & the fact that they’re not called Blizzard “We Can Sell You Anything, While Wiping Our Ass*s With You” Entertainment.
Rocket League at it’s lowest has more players than this has now. Toxikk is basically free to play and that game is dead too. Quake Champions will probably be the only successful arena shooter since it won’t be as unforgiving to new players as these are.
Quake has always been easy to learn, but difficult to master. If they lower the “entry bar”, they’ll destroy “Quake” & replace it with “Champions”, much like the guy in the video that cody linked details.
Also, Rocket Arena features extensive tutorials (as did Quake Live, so QC probably will as well), which should be a boon to new players, at least. Yes, I know, it’s not much, but short of destroying Classic Quake, there’s nothing id Software can do, & if they believe that by destroying Classic Quake, this will take off like Team Fortress 2 (which was originally designed to be something of a Quake clone) even with the historic players refusing to touch it in droves, then they’ve been snorting far too much coke, is all I can say for them, really.
I think I’ll stick to Unreal Tournament 2004.
Agreed. Still playing it with my mates. Our maps roster is exclusively comprised of community made maps, not to mention community weapons mods (Ballistic Weapons and UT2341) and community made skins. Hell the Rocker Racoon skin which is extremely detailed was made in 2014. UT2004 was 10 years at that point. This new cheap ripoff bearing the name of another great multiplayer FPS of old will never get this level of commitment and reverence from players. Shame on you, after singleplayer campaign of DOOM I thought that you were reborn somewhat.
I remember when gaming wasn’t so confusing. You’d buy a game and get everything and could play at your discretion.
This confirm it, Arena FPS are dead…