I played Q3 years ago as a young lad, and later would play it off and on when it was still free to download and play. Well I figured, the memories of the game were a lot of fun, I'll cough up 15 bucks to enjoy it again. But I was met with a rude awakening. Either the optimization for modern hardware is shit, or the game was just always shit and I just never noticed it.

For starters, the objective of the game is summed up very easily with this statement "find the rocket launcher, kill people." Every other gun is shit compared to the rocket launcher, everyone kills you with the rocket launcher. Is your opponent 2 inches away? Oh you have a shotgun?! GREAT! Until your opponent pulls out a rocket launcher and blasts you while your shotgun might as well be shooting Nerf darts. Where's the balance? I remember playing railgun only servers years ago, how fun. Not anymore.

The mouse controls are utter shit. When first starting up, my mouse would stutter on the menu screen making it a pain in the ass to even launch into a game. I found out this is because modern mice use higher polling rates, and Q3 doesn't like that. So I went and lowered mine, and it works better in the menus, but in game it's garbage. I have tried multiple DPI's on my mouse, and in game sensitivity settings and it's either: A) You fucking turn at the speed of light, or B) You're a snail. I even went into RegEdit and disabled forced mouse acceleration completely, it still sucks. Not to mention that 20% of the time I click to shoot, the game does nothing at all, my weapon just doesn't fire. Also when I aim dead onto someone with say the lightning gun (I know, shame on me for not using rockets!) and I am in close range, I'll hit them and then next thing you know it stops registering hits. I am aimed right at the fucking guy but for whatever reason the game only wants to register it as a hit when it wants to, just the way it treats my mouse clicks.

Maps that need to be downloaded mostly just freeze up during the download process forcing you to quit. I tried joining the same server 5 times today. EVERY time it would get to a certain DL percentage, and just stop downloading. What a pain in the ass.

I know I'm going to get hate and I'm just being a salty bitch. But I remember so many good times on this game with friends playing via LAN, or playing online. It was my most played PC game during my younger years next to CS 1.6. But I could still play 1.6 and enjoy it, this game is quite the opposite.

Ya, you made the mistake of buying Quake3 when you shoud have bought QuakeLive. Oldschool people will rave about Q3 (with some good reason), but really QL is what it became for modern hardware (although windows 10's scaling has caused a bug and issues for new players).

If you want to stick with Q3 you should use a different engine, something like ioQuake3 or Quake3e and then you can use "in_mouse 3" for proper Raw input. But as for fixing the download issues, this is a big reason I can never recommend Q3 for multiplayer, and makes the whole experience horrid. And yes the menu and options is a mess, QL fixes all of this.

So, Quake Live is pretty much Quake 3 more user friendly (and unfortunately less moddable). I think you're being salty about the rockets though, Q3 Railgun is hella good strong :) QL's weapons are well balanced as they've had a long time to get balanced, but you will probably feel like it's RL is overpowered if you think Q3's is.

Man, I didn't even know a thing about Quake Live, and now I wish I went with that. I think my mouse issues probably have to do with hardware. I mean I used a standard ball mouse when I used to play years ago, but it worked fine, controls felt fine. But with a modern mouse, it just wants to give me issues.

I also didn't know about those other engines. I'm going to look into those for sure. I'm not opposed to just switching over to Live, but I don't want to give up hope on Q3 just yet. Such a fun game back in the day, I just want to relive that experience.

Well, Quake Champions is in the limelight right now though. But that name might be taboo round ere.

Q3 will provide a better bot experience imo. But if you're interested in online multiplayer, Quake Live is about half the price of Q3, and still has plenty of players online, see: https://ql.syncore.org for a server list to see what it's like in your region.

Q3 has the name and nostalgia, that unfortunately hides QuakeLive. Many people have made this mistake :(

The Railgun was by far the most effective weapon.

That's the benefit of being able to change just about any configuration in Quake engine.
I have Q3 and QL, and they both play the same. No complaints, performance is amazing.
Sounds like you need to learn to setup your hardware and software properly. There's really nothing to complain about if you have the options to change DPI and sensitivity. Most will use around 900dpi, and low sensitivity. You should be able to make a 360* turn without moving your arm.

You just don't know how to set up Q3 properly. It just takes some googling around to figure this out.

I tried Googling the mouse issue, and was just told to disable acceleration. I'll try looking into it more though.

Edit: Okay, after dropping in game sens to 1, and running my mouse at 800 dpi, it's a lot better. Now I just need to get used to it since lately I've been playing CSGO where low sensitivity is pretty much preferred.

If you haven't already, google some more to see how to change the game to 1920x1080. It's much more enjoyable to me that way.

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I am mostly playing Quake champions since its technically what got me into Quake.
(Late I know, I was too much into CS)

The amount of fun that it has given me peaked my interest in playing all of the other versions.

I have a working version of every Quake installed on my PC right now, you are welcome to PM me if you have any questions,I would be happy to help.

I also have a discord channel we can use for easier communication.

Couple things to note:

Quake champions is the most popular game right now but it is in beta. The game definitely needs some work but I have high hopes.

Quake Live is the one with the second highest population and it's also the one that performs the BEST- feels flawless.

The Quake live community is mostly Clan arena (rocket arena) and a smaller Duel community.

Quake 3 has a smaller population but it definitely has a community. Visit www.cromctf.com for one of the main hubs.

The server lists can be confusing because bots count as players but I assure you that there are always actual people playing.

Players are mostly playing FFA but there are also organized CTF games and several freezetag servers.

(You may also not be able to see all the servers if your version doesn't have the right lists installed, you can always visit www.quakeservers.net)

Quake 2 has a hardcore community that plays every night but IMO Q2 is the worst feeling of all the Quakes - again that is just my opinion.

Quakeworld and NetQuake both have small communities (of sub 50 people) but they play regularly.

Quake 4 is the least populated of all the quakes with only 1 server that has players from time to time.

Also, the engines that were mentioned before are basically free versions of Quake 3, if you happened to have purchased Q3 on steam and you haven't played over 2 hours you can most likely refund the game and buy Quake live.

technical difficulties are on your end. Running the game fine on a modern win 10 rig.

As for your gameplay notes, sounds like you are just very rusty and not in the mood to put in the hours to get skilled again.

I had the same happen several times I tried playing q3 out of nostalgia. had similar salty conclusions as yours, because it's tough to play after gamepad centric shooters of today.

But 3 days ago I really got into the zone and went through the whole game on nightmare in these 3 days. I couldn't put the game down and 3k+ kills later, finally beat xaero on nightmare. gonna check out online next.