Player:arQon

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History

Most people think of arQon as the god of CPMA, as the lead programmer of CPMA most people thought decisions were his and his alone. When infact alot of arguing went on in the Challenge-World/Promode forums concerning various changes. arQon always wanted a more advanced approach and in some CPMA releases Promode 1 & 2 modes were developed.

arQon holds a news source on Promode.org the latest entry was placed 09/11/2005 and read:
ProMode Distilled
CPM is the longest-running "gameplay study" ever done in the FPS world. With the release of Q4 and thus the conceptual retirement of Q3, I thought I'd take a look back at the decisions we've made and the guidelines we've come up with over the last 5+ years.

It's important to remember that, at the time, nobody had ever done anything like this before. The only gameplay mods were "Total Conversions" (which essentially meant "realism" games, though there aren't enough inverted commas in the world to adequately express just how far from reality those games are). Somehow, it was always considered heresy to actually have even world-class players decide what good gameplay was, rather than a programmer who'd be lucky to only lose by 50 to an average clan player.

Quake 3 was the catalyst that made it all happen, for two reasons. The obvious one is that Q3 was deliberately "dumbed down" to appeal to people who WEREN'T any good at FPS games, but the more subtle aspect was that it didn't have a single-player component.

Gameplay is overwhelmingly holistic. The single biggest mistake that players and naive designers make, over and over again, is not realising that. The domino effect from almost ANY change is both pervasive and subtle, and the supposed silver bullet "quick fix" (i.e. the typical "just change this one thing and it'll all be perfect" comments that people make in forums / on ESR / etc) is invariably unconsidered and would actually do more harm than good. Good gameplay design is HARD. If you can't keep the big picture in your head and understand (or at the very least, SEE) all the interactions at once, all that happens is you shift the brokenness from one place to another.

I started talking about weapons here, but it turned into such a monster that it needs to be its own post, or possibly two. :P

Until I finish that up, I'll just clarify some of the terminology that you'll see later: In the design process, we consider strategy and tactics to mean two distinct things rather than using them interchangeably. Strategy is the "big picture" goals: what item to go for; where to ambush or intercept, and so on. Essentially, you as the General preparing for the next battle. Tactics are the smaller actions, generally within the context of combat: what weapon to use; whether to attack or retreat, and so on. Essentially, you as the Soldier FIGHTING the battle.

Future

arQon is currently part of the Quake4Maximiser team as a developer. Many believe due to arQon's roll in CPMA that he is the lead developer of Q4MAX, even though this is not the case many people have chosen Q4MAX over other competitive mods solely on arQon's interaction with it.