I do not wish to start a new thread, nor do I wish to hijack, but I do have a few questions.
I have an A10-7850K clocked at 4.5 GHz and a GTX 960. Will my frames be high enough for my 144Hz monitor? (With the usual, minimum settings for everything except for resolution) You may see the full details of my rig on my Steam profile. http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198082073940/
Most of my shooter experience has been from TF2. I have 7 seasons of experience in a small variety of gamemodes, with only minor success in the last one (team came 2nd in the lowest division in Australia). I have dabbled in Quake Live, but I do not think it is substantial enough or similar enough to mention beyond this sentence. Basically I have very limited arena shooter experience and none of my skills are transferable.
I did play a lot of Counter-Strike: Source during my childhood, however I only played the "real" game about 40% of the time, with the rest spent on various mods such as variations on Scouts and Knives, bhop maps, etc. One problem that I face in Counter-Strike and Quake, is the high skill range. You have the people at the bottom who do not know how to use a mouse, and do silly things such as trying to shoot whilst standing still (Quake specific), then at the top, you have people who have been playing since the 90s and have over 2 decades of experience headstart on you. I never truly found any groups of people who were of a similar skill level that you could have a fun game competing with.
The problem is lessened in TF2, since it is only 8 years old, but it is still there. Even in tight leagues where there are only 6-8 teams in a division, there is a punching bag team at the bottom, and a dominant, half bored team at the top. For reference, in the season my team came 2nd in, about 80% of the games played were straight rolls (5-0, 2 maps) with the only 3 map game being in the semi finals where my team (3rd seed) went against the 2nd seed team and won 4-3, 3-4, 4-3.
My question is, how far "behind" will I be compared to the CPMA veterans? If I do get this game, how hard will I have to work to achieve a low to moderate place in the skill ladder of Reflex?
Although the studio is Australian, how big is the Australian player base? Quake Live is lucky to have 1 or 2 servers populated in Australia or New Zealand at any one time.