Is Quake Champions any good? Are people still playing it?

[Yourfacedotcom]

I played (what I think was) the beta when it came out. I did enjoy the movement and shooting but haven't really kept up with it since. I know it it uses "heroes" of sorts, each having some unique ability, so the game isn't like true Quake MP, but I'm still interested. Any opinions? Is it balanced? Is there a decent player base? Is unlocking champions a real pain in the ass?

[qdash]

I still playing it because todays FPS genre has no good sci-fi FPS games with "balls". Too bad id killed Doom '16 multiplayer years ago. :(

[Tetzlaff]

Yes, it's good. I often play CTF. The Champions mechanic makes teamplay more interesting.

[Chow Yun Thin]

I just watch streamers play it. It seems fast-paced like previous Quakes. Just don't expect new champions or maps because their devs up and left to make the World War Z game, leaving just one guy to fix bugs and update their battlepass system with new cosmetics. A lot of missteps behind the scenes in the past made player retention a pipe dream.

[Mr. Freeze]

I dropped it last year. AFAIK the content releases slowed to an absolute crawl and the game is more or less dead at this point. When I played it it had no real momentum behind it and the playerbase was erratic at best, absent at worst. 

[xvertigox]

It's (arguably) shit and basically dead. Diabotical will be awesome so hang out for that if you're craving an afps.

[amackert]

It's all right. The biggest issue is the long wait times between matches for traditional deathmatch play. It's very inconsistent. Sometimes I'm waiting two minutes between matches, but then immediately after I'll wait 10. There is no server browser/list, you're at the mercy of the matchmaking system.

 

I got fed up with the wait times the other week and downloaded Epic's Unreal Tournament alpha just for grins. It turns out there's still a pretty active community and I have been able to find games quickly and easily. Much less downtime between rounds means I've been playing it more recently. It's still free on the Epic store. It's not particularly polished but is a ton of fun, I do recommend checking it out.

 

Back to Quake Champions, I generally prefer traditional deathmatch and I find it the weakest of the Quakes in that area (pretending like Quake IV doesn't exist). The different character abilities and character stats makes for somewhat unbalanced gameplay. The funny thing about that is that on the flip side, all the weapons feel like they've been made to be too balanced. They all feel homogenized, like it almost doesn't matter what I'm using. The rocket launcher in particular doesn't have that "oomph" it once did and it doesn't feel like it does the damage it used to. Another gripe I have is many of the arenas are also too small for the eight player matches. This normally wouldn't be an issue, but the game refuses to load you up onto a server unless eight players are found. It's annoying.

 

There is a mode that remove the Champion abilities and gives everyone equal stats, but they made the baffling decision to give you unlimited ammo and relegate your weapons to the rocket launcher, lightning gun and rail gun, making for fights that aren't particularly dynamic.

 

I do recommend trying it (especially since it's free?), but there have been some questionable design choices made in my opinion.

[Yourfacedotcom]

Thanks for the the replies, good info here. Seems to be about what I expected. I will install it and give it a shot sometime this weekend and try my luck on getting into a game. I did check out a stream on Twitch, there were about 6 people broadcasting it and I think the highest viewer count was something like 46. It seemed all the streamers were playing 2v2.

 

It's unfortunate, I think it looks awesome. I'm actually cool with the Champion mechanic in theory with this sort of fast paced arena style gameplay, but it should definitely have proper settings available for Deathmatch and TDM play. Too many things went wrong with the soft launch of this game but I think there is still an audience that exists and can even grow for these arena shooters again. I think Doom Eternal has a shot at doing this right and hopefully can help kickstart some new interest in the genre.

[amackert]

I've been streaming it these last few weeks as well. I have been told by viewers that you're much more likely to find a game if you do team deathmatch.

[Yourfacedotcom]

I installed it and got in to some matches within a couple minutes for TDM and DM. Getting rekt, but enjoying myself.