- About you:
Started playing some time in the middle/end of 1.1, I don't remember exactly. It's been somewhere in between two and three years if I remember correctly, which I might not. I was introduced to AC from an IRL friend. I played TOSOK on Ultratwintowers, and only got into official maps when I registered an account on the forum and discovered that maps deemed "bad quality" were almost universally shunned by the plurality of people who were actively developing and playing the game. Nowadays I like CTF on shine/sunset/gothic/ingress/werk. I'm 17, from the UK, and play for the Rising Cubers. I also represent them competitively in Cube 2: Sauerbraten, and I play Quake Live but just public CA and TDM games.
- Do you mostly play public matches or do you prefer clan competition? are you a regular 1vs1 player? Do you care about your ratio or your flags-per-minute value? Do you support team players even in just-for-fun games?:
In AC, it's all about playing competitively, because that's the only aspect of the game that can be challenging. Much like Waffles, I'd say that the teamwork aspect of the game is appealing, although I also like the theory and metagame behind duels and 1v1 games (talking about dm here, not surv which just serves to train aim). Statistics like ratio and flags-per-minute are not an indication of how well a player is performing, and I think this type of mentality needs to be broken in order to prevent the stagnation of the overall quality of teamwork in the game. A more pragmatic statistic to measure a player's contribution to a game would be damage dealt as opposed to score or frags (flags scored is okay).
- Community ties: where does AC community "happen" for you? only ingame, in the official forum, clan forums, IRC, mumble?:
The forum can be an interesting place for discussion. I check the forum regularly, and I idle on IRC, TS3 and mumble frequently. TS3 is by far the most popular method of communication amongst the competitive community and is often the best way to find games.
- Is it easy for you to get help with problems with the game? where do you get help? which problems could not be solved?:
I've found that posting a topic on the "help" forum (not from my personal experience but in general) just gives people an excuse to post crap or ignore the problem rather than actually help. I've had the best results by messaging people who I believed could impart some knowledge related to the problem I'm currently experiencing. jamz has been extremely helpful on multiple occasions.
- What do you think about the AC community? How could the community be made better? What would you like to contribute?:
Overall the community has a lot less problems than the majority of other games. That comes largely down to the fact that we're so small and a lot of the development team and moderators take such a strict stance on those who want to cause trouble. The community could be made better by everyone integrating more with each other as opposed to forming separate branches on IRC/TS3/etc and barely ever meeting each other.
- What do you like about AC?:
The simplistic gameplay, the nostalgia.
- What do you hate about AC?:
Hitscan aim isn't rewarded properly. Also the fact that brightskins are disabled - they are allowed and sometimes even encouraged in many other similar FPS games.
- Do you play on a laptop or a desktop? Does it have a dedicated graphics card or do you use chipset graphics? What average fps do you play at, and what screen resolution do you use? Do you use features like "reduced violence mode" or degraded textures? Do you use colored vests?:
I have played on a laptop before, but generally I play with my desktop. It has an AMD XFX R7950 3GB GPU running @ 1100MHz. I play with /texreduce but have some settings (such as blood/gibs/bulletholes) on. I'm using 1920x1080, and I cap at /maxfps 600. I use Primevil's skins, because I find it easier to focus my aim on a single colour rather than the default skins.
- Do you play with headphones or with a surround system or do you use the builtin speakers of your laptop?:
Headset. Steelseries Siberia Frost Blue v2.
- Where should AC development be headed to? what should the next release bring? would you like AC to concentrate on it's own classic gameplay or should it be molded to be more like another game (and what other game)? do you play other games of the cube family?:
Expanding on what Waffles said, it's important to make the distinction between changing the game to be the same as more popular games, and simply incorporating elements of how the more popular games are run. You'll notice that the majority of popular games have been centered around the competitive aspect and not public games. This is why games like Quake, CS, even Sauerbraten are still thriving. Competition attracts players, public games do not.
- One feature AC should add:
A better (maybe customizable?) user interface with a login system.
- One feature AC should remove:
ac_stellar
But seriously, there are maps that are rarely played in pubs and are laughed at by competitive folk. All that happened when they got added to the official package was that they received more negative attention - so they might as well be removed.
EDIT: Jesus Krayce, that shade of blue is horrific.
EDIT2: That's better. :D [also I fixed the formatting of my post]