That's a pretty solid view of the problem, IMO. The Strogg are a known quantity. As you said we know what they are, where they come from, where they live, etc.

There's little mystery.

Quake 1 and Doom were large heapings of WTF ... in a good way. 

If you want to put Strogg in a medieval castle I don't think that would bother me at all.

"Evil cyborgs from the future sent back in time to a medieval world to find the MacGuffin / erase history / do whatever"

There, that was easy - and that is literally as good and well-thought-out as the official plot to Quake. 

The plot of Unreal was literally "spacefaring aliens invade a low-tech medieval-like world", and no-one complained about that. 

Title of this game: Terrafusion

"It's all out FUTURE VS FANTASY as worlds collide!" 

If you think about it long enough, you can justify anything. Still, it's kinda nice when everything feels right without rationalization.

Unreal wasn't a medieval mod for a sci-fi game, it was like that from the beginning. No expectations, no archetypes, so we took everything for granted.

And it was still a little weird. Like someone took Quake's mess of ideas and tried to make it plausible. No wonder they dropped most of the fantasy elements in subsequent games. 

The idea that you should only make maps/mods for games that fit the expectations and theme of the original game is all wrong.

Subvert player expectations, do something surprising. I think I'd be much more interested in playing "Stroggs in Hell" than another warehouse map. 

I'm pretty sure this is going off at a tangent - I don't think mappers have much of a problem with the idea of doing something different to the original theme of a game - the problem is the availability of assets - and that it would involve a lot more work to create the required texture sets and assets to break free of the usual Quake 2 theme. 

The latter is boring, the former is hard to pull off without it looking forced.

I remember a wonderful conversion for a sci-fi game Marathon called Excalibur: Morgana something. In addition to eponymous Excalibur and Morgana le Fay, it features dinosaurs, spaceships, medieval knights, and an AI that's literally a reincarnation of Merlin. All possible thanks to time travel and magic, of course.

While the premise sounds hilariously goofy, I can't help but admit that it's a great adventure with a surprisingly captivating plot.

But it's a whole total conversion made by a group of dedicated people. A person willing to casually map something for a game is more likely to pick one of the existing themes that work well already.

The easiest theme to pull off in Q2 is a futuristic base. Q1 has a wider variety of themes out of the box, and is vague enough to tolerate deviations. I can understand the appeal. 

The Reckoning was nice, although a bit of a slog as you couldn't move a meter without someone trying to kill you. I dislike Ground Zero so far, though. Lackluster architecture, lackluster combat and confusing layout as well. 

I kinda disagree, the GZ brings some crazy great architecture. The combat on the other hand was as an unfair and boring as shit.
I did the maths and the most common "monsters" were the stupid turrets! 

was all of ground zero's good architecture in the second half then? I remember starting GZ in anticipation of a whole mission pack worth of Reckoning-level awesomeness and quitting after a few maps of total cdrom.com-level brushwork and gameplay. 

i can not remember exactly, with that all greatness of the GZ, but i do remember that i've been blown away with the level construction, aside to gameplay 

Since Ground Zero begins in a set of mines, I'd say that yes, the beginning looks pretty boring, especially compared to The Reckoning. Although I wouldn't call it incompetent:

http://i.imgur.com/Jye9nQM.png
http://i.imgur.com/7BqJpUG.png
http://i.imgur.com/qEha5Do.png
http://i.imgur.com/0U3FNp9.png

(the shots were made some time ago using a modified software renderer by qbism)

Despite the overabundance of crates, Ground Zero has its moments of purdiness, mostly because of the lighting:

http://i.imgur.com/wk7hSwf.png
http://i.imgur.com/xTChZ53.png
http://i.imgur.com/IiHtK3J.png

Also, that giant canyon that I won't spoil.

The main problem lies in the combat. I think they taught the AI to randomly attack the last place where the player was seen. Which means that the player will spend much more time camping behind cover, afraid to catch a random rocket from a small, hard to hit wall wart.

Dudes with grenade launchers are also very mean with this ability.

I also had the impression that the turrets can lead their shots. I mean, it's all "smart" and "realistic" and all, but I'm not sure it works very vell in a Quake game. 

I just realised that mexx did not make maps for The Reckoning but Zaero, the free mission pack (or at least eventually free).

So get that too. 

Well, so far the levels are uninspired and rather ugly at that, but I'm just at the start of it so it might perhaps get better.

One thing I dislike in Quake 2 in general: this repeated "COMPUTER UPDATED!" you get all the time - and very often when you are fighting for your life so you can't really take a break and hit F1 to calmly check out what it wants. Annoying. 

One thing I dislike in Quake 2 in general: this repeated "COMPUTER UPDATED!" you get all the time - and very often when you are fighting for your life so you can't really take a break and hit F1 to calmly check out what it wants. Annoying.

Just be grateful that it doesn't require you to read through a bunch of insipid emails which may or may not contain the locker codes to weapon stashes. 

"I'll just record this super secret passcode in a publicly accessible data recorder that I'll leave sitting out on my workbench ... that'll be fine." 

 

Plasma weapon to shoot open the locker. 

 

ijed ... Haha, yeah, that's something we've always just had to accept.

"This door is opened elsewhere"

Yeah ... but I have a rocket launcher. I ... OK, I'll go find the key. 

I'd use a mod that limits the "Computer updated!" audio to play just once. No wonder all other marines seem to have been killed with that ringing in their ears during combat. 

Well, killed or captured. 

This place is a mine of gold. :'3c

Btw, I still use this:

http://tastyspleen.net/~panjoo/rust/quake2tutorials.html 

want to play quake2 online? get it here for free http://q2s.tastyspleen.net

http://q2.dieslow.net/allmaps.zip

http://q2.dieslow.net/players.zip

railwarz discord - https://discord.gg/9uTMX92

http://q2.dieslow.net/alltextures.zip

some bright skins for ctf http://q2.dieslow.net/pak9.pak