With every release of a major death match game we see yet another retail game that does not ship with suitable features for serious competitive play. Previous games have required the community's support in order to thrive and live on. As a result, they are still being played to this day because of the great content that was released free of charge from the fans. Quake 4 at release is no different from previous games, and it needs a great deal of work to make it into a viable competitive gaming platform with longevity.

The core game that Raven and id have put together holds an incredible amount of promise. Overall the movement and the weapons are similar to Quake 3, which is considered by most to be the best competitive death match of all time. The basic game play mechanics are there and are screaming to be unlocked into a fun and meaningful experience. But the game is still not anywhere close to a level suitable for professional gaming.

One of the most obvious problems with Quake 4 is the quality of the maps. There are only a few maps with a suitable layout that can be worked into a decent, competitive map. With the railgun being so overpowered, the maps need to be designed in a way to decrease the absolute domination with this weapon. The vanilla version of Quake 3 had a few maps with a suitable design, but extremely questionable item placement. This led to the creation of "pro" versions of these stock maps that created a friendlier and fairer competitive environment. A similar practice arose in the Unreal Tournament series where the community would re-work the design of the maps to fit into league play. Most maps out of retail have been created to appeal to the masses and are not set up for a competitive game. If they were, a mapper would not do something such as put every single important item in one small area. You can see an example of this in the map Over the Edge (remake of the popular Quake 2 map, The Edge). The entire map consists of 2 yellow armors and 1 mega-health. One of the yellow armors is within a single jump away from the mega-health in a single small room. Step outside this room and jump to another staircase and you can quickly get the second yellow armor and have complete control of every single important item in the map. Over the Edge is one of the maps that holds potential for competitive play, but will never be accepted in its current state.

There is good news for the future of Quake 4 maps, however. Currently there are many mapping projects in the works, including Teddy's remix Project and a 1v1 mapping competition run by VIA and Doom3world. In addition to these important projects, many promising maps have been made and released as betas by map makers, including Prison Abuse, Phrantic, Galang, and Bliptourney1. Pro versions are already in the works for some maps such as No Doctors, which has been tested by known pro gamers. Popular maps from previous games are also being made such as the infamous DM6, but most of the community seems to want new maps and not remakes of past successful maps. Considering that the community, in a matter of weeks, has made better maps than Raven and id could manage, the future for the maps in Quake 4 competitive play is looking positive.

Other features are necessary for death match games such as bright skins, good demo support, force enemy models, and other small game play preferences and control optimizations (an exact number for sensitivity and FOV instead of a slider in the GUI are two examples) and are seldom included upon release. So what is the current community doing at the moment to fill the gaps? One of the great things about the promise of worldwide big-money events is the fact that it should motivate the mod community to make the best content that they possibly can. Everyone wants to see their map or competitive mod used in a CPL competition. But with this comes another problem that some might not consider. Since everyone wants a piece of this e-glory, people are creating their own mods with their own intentions, and a dozen community developers end up making more or less the same thing.