i think climbing the ladders should be improved,
i have no problems in climbing the ladder up, but i do have allot of problems if i wanna climb the ladder down,

now see this picture:


i suggest when your in front of a ladder like near the "B zone" players should see an action icon, just like when u in front of a "free climbing erea"
if u select the action icon, u automaticly put yourself in a climbing position, this is very possible, because its the same like the free climbing feature,

but the most difficult and complex part is when u wanna climb the ladder down,
allot of players fail to climb down quite oftenly, devs could also implement an action icon if a player stands near the "A zone", if he selects the action icon he could automaticly put him self in climbing position on the ladder, exactly like the free climbing feature, this will ease up the players when they wanna climb down the ladder with out having to fail,

the problem is, that it will look unrealistic,

if u climb a ladder up or down u see this:


as u can see, the third person model isnt holding anything, it looks like hes holding an invisible ladder, witch is highly unrealistic,

the solution is simple, now take at look at this example i made:


as u can see, the top of the ladder in the "A zone/red zone" has 2 frames allowing the 3rd person model to hold the 2 frames when they are on the top, like most real life ladders, they have 2 grip frames on the end of the top of the ladder, its for safety reasons,

now what i wanna suggest to improve the realism, is when ever u near the "A zone/top of the ladder" u should see an action icon, like i said just like the free climbing feature, and every time u select the action icon, players should see a short cut scene/animation, now i will give u details how the cutscene/animation should look like,
when a player stand near the "A zone" the player will see an action icon, if he activates that, the player who activated it will automaticly turn around 180 degree's backwards, and automaticly step backwards, and automaticly hide the weopon and holding the 2 frames with both hands, and automaticly put one step down on the ladder, "from first person view", and this should be all automaticly every time u select the action icon when your near the top of the ladder in attempt to climb the ladder down, now the third person cut scene/animation, should look basicly be the same like the first person view but in third person view ofcourse, so the devs would need to animate the models for "getting on the ladder to climb down" cut scene/animation too,

now lets say if a player is down the ladder, climbing up the ladder and trying to get off the ladder when he reached the top of the ladder, well all the animations should be basicly the same like when u wanna climb on the ladder when your on the top of the ladder, except that the animation is reversed, and the part where u "turn around 180 degree's" should be skipped, so the devs could use the same animation for climbing off/and climbing on/ the ladder, except that the climbing off the ladder is reversed from the climbing on the ladder cut scene/animation, and the climbing off the ladder cut scene/animation shouldnt have the "turning around 180 degree's" part,

i hope u guys understand what i mean, if u dont understand something, just ask, and i will try my best to explain it more clear,

Yes we have gone over this several times. We all want better ladder animations. We know the ones we have now are really ugly. However there really isnt much of anything we can do about it. That is the reason why idSoftware never had any ladders in Quake3 to begin with, it's just impossible with Quake3engine's model and animation format and limitation.

The problem isnt making it work that way but actually getting the game to work that way.

i think the devs should disable climbing drain pipes, it looks horrible, the climbing animation wasnt ment for climbing on pipes it was made for climbing ladders, if the model is climbing on a pipe in TCe you will see that the hands and legs of the third person model arent touching the pipe at all, hes basically flying, it is unrealistic, i prefer the free climbing feature, and if the devs wanna keep the climbing pipe feature i suggest to make a new climbing animation for climbing the pipes, i know its for the gameplay, but dont sacrifice too much for the gameplay if it ruins the game design, but thats my opinion,

The only problem is to do that, they would have to add an entity type to the mapping system, and chances are, it would be ignored for the ladder entity anyway.

In anycase the pipes should actually use free climbing, as for the thirdperson model animations, theres nothing we can do about it with because of the engine.