“[ Quake Champions ] is definitely an arena shooter,” says Tim Willits, creative director at id Software. “It is a true skill-based arena shooter in the spirit of Quake. The champions are definitely an evolution of the [shooter] genre, and they are definitely something that adds to the overall game experience. But, at its core – and it’s important to note – it is Quake. Keeping that DNA, that essence of what Quake is, was always very important to us. I feel very confident that we have captured that Quake feel.”

“ Keeping that DNA, that essence of what Quake is, was always very important to us.

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“ Most of the pro players have definitely not gravitated towards one player.

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“ If we blow it with the pro players, then we’re not going to get any casual players.

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“ In hindsight, if I could go back 20 years to the original Quake, I would have pushed people not to play free-for-all.

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“ There’s no active ability that’s game-changer. There’s no superpower.

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In short, an arena shooter should have moderate lethality in the sense that there’s a sense of escapability on full health/armour, but weapon damage isn’t so low that the big guns feel like Nerf guns. It should be fast-paced and players should be incentivised to keep moving. Players need to spawn on an even footing (so, no loadouts, basically) where player skill trumps everything. Map control is paramount to success because weapons, armour, health, and abilities are collected from fixed positions. Finally, it should have an emphasis on verticality and three-dimensional combat.It’s important to note I haven’t yet played Quake Champions. Naturally, I’m curious. As a Quake fan, I want to play it. But I also want to be wrong about my misgivings. Hell, I want to believe in what id is selling. At this stage, though, it’s impossible to ignore the nagging feeling that there’s something not right about defining Quake Champions as an arena shooter.The challenge with Quake Champions, at least conceptually, is that the second part of the game’s title is already at ends with one core component of that arena-shooter summary: players spawning on even footing. By design, this new Quake’s titular champions are imbalanced, in that they spawn with different health values, movement speeds, and special abilities.“It’s a balance between speed, between armour,” says Willits. “If you’re harder to hit, you take less damage. We haven’t seen a big problem with it because it’s not over the top. It’s not drastic. It’s just enough to add that layer of challenge in design without changing the fundamental way you play.In my mind, the best champion is already the one that’s fastest and, by association, is also likely to have the smallest hitbox. Willits claims this isn’t the case, though. “If you play Nyx, you are a smaller target than if you play Sorlag,” says Willits. “But, so far in our testing, most of the pro players have definitely not gravitated towards one player. You would normally think, ‘Oh, everyone’s going to play Nyx.’ But that’s not really the case.”A lot of the goodwill that id Software is selling is the idea that old-school Quake fans are giving Champions two thumbs up. It came up multiple times during our interview. “We were at PAX East in Boston a few weeks ago, and we had a number of Quake fans come through the booth and play,” recalls Willits. “Some of them were just like you. ‘We get the Quake part, but we don’t get this other part.’ They sat down and they played it, and they’re like, ‘Yup, it feels like Quake.’”According to Willits, even the pro Quake players are raving about Champions. “From Rapha, who’s considered the best player in the US, to Evil, who’s considered the best Quake player in Russia, those guys were on stage playing Quake Champions, and they walked away saying, ‘Yeah, this is awesome. It feels like Quake, and the balance is good.’”“We do feel that if we can capture those really competitive hardcore streamers, pro players, they will build a community around themselves. That’s huge for us. We do believe that can pull people in that may have been playing other first-person shooters.”id has taken Quake Champions on the road with them, from the aforementioned PAX East, to a recent ESL event in Poland, and it was at QuakeCon last year. Pro players have been invited to closed-door play sessions to test the game and offer feedback. It hasn’t all been rosy, either.“Last year at QuakeCon, we had our new team game mode called Sacrifice,” says Willits. “We thought it was great. We went to the convention, they were like, ‘Yeah, it’s not going to work.’ We’re like, ‘All right,’ and we basically scrapped it. A few weeks ago, we were in Poland and we were like, ‘Hey, we fixed it. It’s awesome.’ They played it, and they’re like, ‘Nope, not quite.’ Now we’re working on the fourth iteration of it. When you throw away an entire game mode based on 60 pro players, that’s definitely listening to your community.”The idea is that, despite the champion abilities, individual player skill will trump everything else in Quake Champions. “The best players always still win,” says Willits. “We have John “ZeRo4” Hill, a competitive Quake player that’s been on the scene for years. He is an employee here. He still wins. The focus of the game is on skill. You may use the active abilities for an advantage, or you may use them to help you get out of a situation that you feel is a problem for you, but the best players still win, and that’s important.”It seems the intention behind the introduction of the champion abilities is to both offer an additional skill level to pro players, and to also encourage new players to take Quake Champions for a spin. “The active abilities do allow newer players, players that aren’t as familiar with Quake, to be successful, especially in team games, to allow them some satisfaction and to stay in the game,” argues Willits. “Quake has a legacy of being very intimidating as a game for new people. Players have evolved and become much better, so I’m not as worried about that anymore because games today are pretty fast, but the [champions’] active abilities do allow you to be successful.”Thankfully, this doesn’t mean that free-for-all and duel modes have been forgotten. “We have free-for-all in the game, but it is actually the least fun game mode,” says Willits. “In hindsight, if I could go back 20 years to the original Quake, I would have pushed people not to play free-for-all, because you have 15 people in a game, and you have 14 losers and one winner. If you come into a Quake free-for-all and you’ve never played Quake before, there’s a good chance you may not play again.“We definitely wanted to push people to team games because, obviously, you have a 50 percent chance at winning, which is definitely huge for people, but free-for-all is just so intimidating. It’s pretty hardcore. Though it will be there, it’s not something we encourage new people to try. Coming into the game, play Sacrifice or team deathmatch, pick a champion, walk into the pool slowly, don’t jump into the deep end.”For those hoping for custom modes in Quake Champions that allow players to create a prettier version of Quake III in terms of equal speed and health for characters, as well as the nullification of champion abilities, it might not be that simple. “We have our custom game mode that allows custom games to be tweaked up a little bit,” says Willits. “But we do believe that people will play the game as it is. You’ll be able to adjust some things, but we really discourage that. We do believe that once people play it, they’ll be like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’ Because you know what? If you want to play Quake where everyone is exactly the same and you’re all the same character, just play Quake Live. It’s still available. We’ll have our custom game modes, but we don’t think people will actually play like that”As for the other elements of an arena shooter, health, armour, and weapons all spawn at fixed locations, according to Willits. The more controversial change-up is that the collectable power-ups may also apply to nearby friendly players. “Currently [power-ups] give teammates a buff, but the jury is still out on whether people like it,” admits Willits. “Some people like it; some players don’t like it. One of the things that we’re going to test when we go into closed beta is whether or not we want to keep it.“There are a lot of folks that say they want everyone to get Quad [Damage], everyone on your team gets Quad. Then there are some people that are, like, ‘No, we’re okay with the slight buff that we have now.’ And there are some people that are like, ‘No, it’s got to be a single person.’ That is definitely something that we are going to be looking at when we move into closed beta. It could possibly change.”As someone agrees with the people in that last category, I hope it does change. Willits did confirm, however, that power-ups only spawn one at a time, so even if their power is shared in the final version of the game, teams won’t be able to stack them. It also sounds like it’ll be a risk/reward tactical decision for players as to whether an opponent is ready to use their ability.Because these abilities reportedly aren’t as gameplay-impacting as equivalents in shooters like Overwatch, they’ll be usable more regularly. “They’re normally around 30 to 45 seconds [between uses],” says Willits. “It depends on the champion. We adjust them based on balancing and making sure that they play right. Then, of course, we have pick-ups that can recharge your active ability. But there’s no active ability that’s game-changer. There’s no superpower. There’s nothing I can think of that inflicts as much damage as one of the great three [weapons]. For instance, you can’t stop a rocket with an active ability, unless you’re Nyx and you just disappear, but they are not to the extreme that you are imagining active abilities to be.”I’ve never wanted such a gut-wrenching initial impression of a game to be as wrong as I do with Quake Champions. Willits came close to convincing me a few times during the interview that the champions aren’t that big of a game-changer. That skill will always trump abilities. That this will still feel like Quake. But a big part of me is cringing at the prospect that my decade-long yearning for a new Quake game may be gibbed with Champions.In fairness, Willits has said a lot of the right things. Fans are naysayers until they play it. The pros thinks it’s awesome. Hell, the fact it’s being balanced with pro players in mind means Quake Champions will likely live or die on the blessing (or curse) of top-tier Quakers. Either way, some of us will have a taste of whether id (in collaboration with Saber Interactive) has boldly reintroduced the next evolution of the arena shooter when the Quake Champions closed beta goes live in the coming weeks.

Nathan Lawrence is a freelance writer based in Sydney and shooter specialist. Track him down on Twitter