Multiplayer in FPS games means something very different today as compared to the mid '90s boomer shooter heyday. The era of classic Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike 1.6, and Half-Life Deathmatch has all but ed – it's Black Ops 6, Counter-Strike 2, and Rainbow Six Siege that rule the genre now. But if you miss fast-paced deathmatches, arena-based combat, and the golden epoch of the frag, Bethesda and id Software's underloved shooter Quake Champions may well be worth another look, thanks to a transformative new test build that makes it feel that little bit closer to its FPS ancestors.
FPS games, it's struggled to maintain a player base. As of this writing, just 169 people are playing Quake Champions, down from an all-time peak of 17,000 six years ago. However, things could be about to change. A just-released test version, available to play right now, implements a few crucial changes to the Bethesda-published shooter, and makes it feel closer to a '90s classic.
As outlined by Adam 'SyncError' Pyle, Quake Champions' lead designer, the latest public test build introduces revamped versions of two classic game modes, Team Deathmatch and Capture The Flag. There are some smart tweaks to overall balancing here – the flag in CTF now has a larger pick-up radius, and active abilities are blocked now when collecting it, to make flag-carrying players more vulnerable – but most importantly, the test version of Quake Champions now allows for friendly fire.
It might seem like a small change, but when capturing the rhythm of old-school shooters like Unreal Tournament and of course Quake itself, friendly fire is a must. As it stands, this feature is still in the testing phase, and if you hit one of your comrades, you will only deal 50% of the damage compared to when you shoot an enemy. Nevertheless, it's potentially an early sign of how Quake Champions is being transformed for the better.
And Pyle hints at more to come. The developer says that they may introduce game modes with no frag limits, allowing for more classically flavored time-limit-only matches. The latest test build also changes the time of weapon pick-up respawns to 30 seconds, though Pyle says it is currently "very unknown" as to whether weapon drops – i.e, when you kill a player, you can collect their weapon – will be added. You could do this in Quake 2 and Quake Live (an updated version of Quake 3 Arena), but, so far, not in Champions.
"It's all a little in progress at the moment," Pyle says, "but one of my goals this update is to provide more options in custom games and then be able to remove a lot of the game mode selections. The friendly fire option won't alter any collision behaviors, so if you would normally bull rush through a teammate, you still would through them."
Quake Champions is still a free Steam game and available to play right here. If you're searching for an arena-style, multiplayer boomer shooter, this could just be the one.
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