See also:
- Audience-Alienating Premise: The game got hit with aspects of this since its announcement, primarily due to the integration of Hero Shooter aspects. On one hand, you have the notoriously purist and somewhat niche old guard of Quake fans who were disappointed by such a major shift from the expected fast-paced, player-dependent, high skill-ceiling arena shooter gameplay. On the other hand, potential newcomers that were expected to be brought in by the Hero Shooter aspects were unfamiliar with Quake, its universe, and the arena shooter gameplay it's known for, and were largely alienated by the relatively high skill floor when compared to contemporaries of the genre like Overwatch and Paladins. While the reception of Champions has been mixed-to-positive, its appeal has remained quite a niche.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: While he isn't exactly unknown in the Quake universe, Ranger has his good share of fans for being an extremely balanced character which encourages high mobility: the "Son of a Gun" passive allows him to take less damage from his own weapons, thus encouraging Rocket Jump, and his "Dire Orb" ability is basically the game's take on the Translocator. Not to mention that, well, he is the face of the franchise.
- Fanfic Fuel: Same deal as with Quake III: Arena. Most of the cast is Original Generation, not coming from any other game, and even those who do have histories which weren't explored in their home series. There's a lot of room for imagination.
- Good Bad Bugs:
- December '17 patch granted bunny hopping and forward acceleration to many champions and removed Clutch's dodging cooldown. This led to Clutch reaching Anarki-like and Visor-like speeds in a shorter time than them. A year later, everyone's movement abilities were streamlined and ability cooldown times unified, thus defeating the bug.
- Athena being able to use Strogg's Peeker to take a ride
. As one of the devs said on the September 28th stream, "It took 20 years, but finally, the humans and Strogg have found a way to cooperate".
- High-Tier Scrappy:
- The game's incarnation of Anarki was already disliked for his Badass Decay after an acceptable debut in Quake III: Arena. This game gave him the dreaded "Hovercraft Air Control" passive, which gives him a movement and air control found in Quake Live and the "Challenge Pro-Mode Arena" mod for III, thus turning him into a full-blown Fragile Speedster. Not content with that, Anarki also has the Stimpack ability, which heals him full and increases permanently his health by two units up to a maximum of 150, thus potentially turning him into a Lightning Bruiser. Along came the meme "choose Anarki, spam ADADADADAD".
- Blazkowicz's stats are quite average, so newer players who can't dodge easily probably won't see much results from him. What really pushes him into this is Dual Wield; simple yes, but one can't ignore that he can basically just double his damage outputnote on command, with meagre drawbacks in double ammo usage when ammo is easy to find. There's also his Regeneration ability; it's not much, obviously, but it can relieve pressure to find health packs and can mean all the difference in certain situations.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Arenas gave us a good impression of how Id characters would look with their own abilities way before this game was announced.
- The Doom³ marine, main protagonist, made its way somehow, as a Doom Slayer skin, with an optional helmet-less head accessory. He keeps Berserk as his ability.
- Ranger's Amulet of Concentrated Awesome, which he gives to Doom so he can teleport himself and was handwaved as being created with the same technology as the teleporters. In Champions Ranger's amulet (which allows him to do the same) is instead his "Dire Orb" ability and it's based off the same device he uses to destroy Shub-Niggurath at the end of Quake.
- In Wolfenstein: The New Order, Bobby Bram, a member of the Kreisau Circle who embarks in a suicide mission alongside B.J., has a keychain with the Q3A Rocket Launcher design, predating by three years B.J.'s appearance in this game.
- Nexuiz and Xonotic implemented a Nailgun with splash damage (the Hagar) before this game reworked the Super Nailgun (and the Tri-Bolt) as a Nailgun with splash damage.
- The first match in Quake III: Arena (both demo and Tier 1) takes place on a map with a statue of Visor. In the full Q3A game, Ranger is your opponent. Guess who were the first two characters announced for this game...
- Arenas gave us a good impression of how Id characters would look with their own abilities way before this game was announced.
- Memetic Mutation: B.J.'s scream.Explanation
- Older Than They Think:
- Loadouts?note In-game item spawn indicators? Beefed-up versions of the starting weapons?note Single-button-press strafing? All of those changes come from Quake Live. For some reason, these changes were ignored/accepted at worst.
- The mechanic of characters having different stats was previously featured in the single-player portion of Quake III Revolution, the obscure PS2 port of Quake III.
- Popular with Furries: Sorlag has earned this reputation, with a disturbing amount of comments in her reveal trailer involving her being a "Lizard-waifu" or something lewd. This is mainly due to her.... voice.
- The Scrappy: Most people dislike this game's incarnations of Anarki and Slash. Ranging from their personalities to their voices. And, in the case of Anarki, also the gameplay (see below), as Slash has a well-accepted crouch-sliding passive, and her "Plasma Trail" isn't overpowered enough to consider it a Game-Breaker.
- Scrappy Mechanic: The damage increase seen on the Railgun and Heavy Machine Gun when zooming in has been generally derided by the playerbase because it makes two weapons more difficult in a very artificial and clunky way that seems very counterintuitive to the way Quake is played. Doubly so for the Heavy Machine Gun, where its bullet spread regulates it to being a close-medium range weapon, with the zoom damage requiring one to zoom in on already close targets to use it at its most effective.
- Shocking Moments: The debut of B.J. Blazkowicz and the return of DOOM as the DOOM Slayer.
- Special Effects Failure: In the Early Access demo, Nyx's "Drop Wings" accessory for her "Cehma" costume goes through her arm.
- Tear Jerker: The lore entry for Daisy's Foot gets surprisingly sombre.Narration: "The left hind foot of Doom Slayer's pet rabbit, Daisy, killed by marauding demons when their invasion of Earth began. He carries it as a reminder of innocence lost, not for luck—after all, it wasn't lucky for Daisy."
- Uncertain Audience: The game ended up awkwardly sandwiched between a signature style of its franchise and the then-new hotness it was trying to replicate, and didn't quite grab fans of either. Quake multiplayer is known for its fast-paced, highly technical Arena Shooter gameplay beloved by its fans in large part because of its steep learning curve, with Champions' inclusion of Hero Shooter elements driving some of the old guard off, with many fans seeing it as a dumbing down player expression and making the challenges less rewarding. Meanwhile, expected newcomers were reluctant to join due to Champions still being more mechanically daunting when compared to more-accessible contemporaries like Overwatch and Paladins, as well as having an identity largely based around Quake and other id Software properties, which doesn't carry as much star power to modern audiences.
- Underused Game Mechanic: The Doom Slayer's lore scrolls all consist of text copied and pasted straight from the Slayer's Testaments from Doom (2016) with no variation when the developers could have easily merged all of them into a single scroll and thus made room for even more lore-building content related to the character.
- Win Back the Crowd: Following doubts about the game thanks to its new additions, Bethesda released raw gameplay footage, winning people over and easing the fears of many fans that it wouldn't be like the old Quake multiplayer.
