A typical UnFreeZe match

[tar]

Q3DM11, 53 pts., 54 % accuracy.

This is the typical UnFreeZe game:

It starts more or less relaxed while you really could frag multiple players alone without getting into too much stress. After 3-4 rounds some opponents used the chewing gum tactic by staying near 1 or 2 mates in order to get an advantage over singly attacking players. Thanks to the respawn settings it took the opponent team about 8-9 rounds to went full zerg mode (basically all opponents went to the chewing gum tactic) which makes it way harder to defeat them as they can always thaw their mates while the spared pack can attack further. Highlights are around minute 11:30 and after around minute 13:40 where the whole opponent team is packed together near RA waiting for the attackers. Guess what, my team adopted that tactic as well (which was also forced by that respawn settings after we lose, of course) and I became so bored by it that I went to a way more defensive rail-only mode (which in the end left me with an accuracy of 54 % ). Inbetween that spamming and railhiding bashing of which mostly the resulted frags can only be accounted to pure luck or the usual hide-behind-with-rail-and-steal-the-frag-behaviour both teams forgot their zerging behaviour for some short moments - only to meet again as a fresh zerg package after the next losing round. Hurray!

Seriously, there is something wrong when you are rewarded by permanently staying behind your fighting mates and frag stealing and simultaneously are instantly punished if you try to attack on your own - getting shot by your mates into 4 opponents who are already waiting for you. Therefore forget the statistics. At least, as long as they do not count damage (not frags!) per playing time (not online time!), for once.

[hurrenson]

Le sigh. #metoo
I don't really have an issue with "frag stealing" per se, if helps the team in the end. If it's just done to increase your own personal score, that's another story.
What really annoys me especially in the last weeks is the spamming of nades and rockets when one is in close combat with an enemy. If it wasn't spam but actual well aimed rockets, i maybe could live with that. But trying to aim while being shook and jerked around by friendly fire is not fun at all. Related to that i have the feeling that the occurrences of getting friendly fired into enemy fire and friendlies jumping into line of fire are increasing.

And yes, the pack mentality takes over quite a bit. But even if you try and move against the grain, take different routes... that only works to a degree. The limitations of map(s and) sizes and player numbers make certain strategies and plays more likely.

But over time the gameplay on the server changed, maybe it will develop further. Maybe with a coming version and some minor (maybe not even intended thing) stuff will change. We'll have to see.

Btw I personally would like a damage counter / score quite a bit.

[fernandinho1337]

hi

i am also in favour of a damager counter.

another thing to fix the zerg behaviour. maps are basically good. one thing that would make camping less attractive is to change weapon balance or item placement.
a few simple ideas:
1. enable quad damage on maps like dm7, dm11 and dm14 (i dont see big problems on other maps). therefore, it would help break the red armor campers and motivate them to move more around the map (to get quad). on dm14 quad would have to be where battleshield was at q3dm14tmp tdm. or you switch yellow and red armour and put quad at its original spawn. maybe activating battleshield and quad while moving armors where they were at q3dm14tmp tdm would be interesting too.
2. makes railgun weaker like in quakelive (damage 80).
3. disable railgun at spawn and make it a weapon that can be collected on the map (1 or 2 guns at max). therefore railcamping wont happen too much anymore. u have to rely more on close/ mid range weapons like rocket lg and pg

best regards

[adminless]

mmmm well as you can see it's definitively a complicated topic, this is, there's really no clear "solution". yes fer you have some good points there however is that, not that simple. I think quad won't suit at all here, it would simply break the game altogether, sooner than the later it would end up in the hands of the best players (ex. you) and then everything (the match) would be over from there (ex. you with a quad can easily wipe the whole enemy team alone for a couple of rounds and I don't think that it's a overstatement). yes, a custom item placement could improve a bit the issue but even so only to some degree once again after some time it would "broke" again in one way or another let alone all the time it would take to individually rearrange every item on every map and the stress this would cause to every player that it would have to learn them again each time, I don't even find this a practical "solution". probably your strongest point is direct your criticism towards the railgun, yes it's true that the railgun is probably a bit overpowered in Quake 3, specially in low latency (i.e. unlagged) games, but unfortunately like it or not that's the way it's and it has a strong following (to put a notable case tar for example) that I believe that it just cannot be "neglected" that easily so I believe that it's a important element to incorporate to the game but anyways although it's true it can be some sort of a "flaw" unless extreme cases (ex. plumse) I don't even think that is really what this issue is all about so I think that the appropriate policy here is rather to discourage/warn or ultimately ban such extreme (abusive) cases which in proportion won't even be significant than kinda "fuck up" the whole game for everybody basically.

so ultimately unfortunately as I see it that's the way this game is and I believe that the best approach for this is just leave it as is and start another different server/mod/ruleset as I've been commenting about recently (let's hope some days or a week to get started).

[fernandinho1337]

well i guess the unfreeze server matured and also its players. i guess a lot of things could be changed (i got even more ideas) but making a ctf mod would be a cool idea. it is a very fast forward type of game and it would be lots of fun. some defenders have to camp and the rest goes berzerk...would be awesome

[kos]

Random ideas on the topic:

I don't have a problem with people clustering together, that's the essence of team play. In pretty much any team game (counter-strike, pubg etc) teammates stay close, as they are stronger as a group. In my opinion, at the start of the round is better to stick to the pack, especially if you're not full HP and can be one shot. Once a few people are frozen, it's better to go solo to get better map coverage.

I usually find myself in the following scenarios:

1 vs 1: duel type encounters. classic quake aim & dance
1 vs many: kinda sucks when you spawn in the middle of an enemy pack but its a lot of fun when you manage to annihilate a pack of 3+ enemies
many vs many: total spam and chaos. some call it mindless but I enjoy it and quake unfreeze is probably the only game that can offer this. There are not many games that cram 20 players on a duel map.

Regarding weapons, I think its fine the way it is now. If spam becomes a problem the initial load-out should be reduced by eliminating the railgun, lightning gun, plasma and grenade launcher. So you would start with rocket launcher, shotgun and machine gun with limited ammo (10 rockets etc.) Or, and I'm not sure this is even possible, you should get two random weapons at start. In both scenarios the rest of the weapons could be picked up from the map.

My biggest request is to remove the Red Armor & Mega from all maps. It encourages camping and causes conflicts between members of the same team. Perhaps a couple of yellow armors spread across the map would work better. The quad would only aggravate this.