I’m very surprised 20/30 is considered random, but 30/30 isn’t.
So you went up with the spawntimes - this is good. Game slowed down a little, insofar as being able to make an actual push: you take someone out, you can worry about your other flank for ~10sec.
The increased spawntimes were not adjusted AT ALL for the distance from spawn to obj?
Really? I mean… REALLY? Lets take a look at some examples.
Whitechapel last obj: Defense spawns, say, ~5sec from obj. Offense spawns 15-25sec from the obj. Lets add the 30sec spawn to both of these values, you get:
35sec real (time when not in fight, due to death) spawn time for defense
45-55sec real spawn time for offense
This is HUGE. Whitechapel was already very fullholdy on last obj, unless you had a few dedicated, and good, spawncampers on the attacker’s team. You almost never see it finished anymore, hell, the game barely even gets to that stage; cause this principle applies to first obj, and EV escort as well (lets pretend we can ignore the larger amount of spam, and how much easier it is to disable EV).
I can concede that this is much less important for scrims/gathers, where a team can push 5sec before spawn; actually giving advantage to the attackers (over the previous 20sec or so spawntimes). On pubs however, where eveyrone is just running and gunning; it made the objective a huge grindfest, nobody even tries to pick up the milk jug anymore.
Terminal last obj: defense needs ~10sec to obj, offense needs easily +20sec. Again: HUGE difference - map barely ever gets finished.
Dome first obj? I’m not even gonna go there…
Typically, offense has to clear out ~3 consecutive waves of defense to get an obj done, especially plants. (1-2 to clear obj, and 1-2 counter attack waves-assuming the defense is already bunkering the objective). With 20~sec spawns and ~20sec runtime to obj, on average you get a situation where offense waves constantly break over the defending team (just around the time the first wave was pushed off, the reinforcements come in), allowing to eventually punch a whole and get the obj done.
However, with ~30sec spawns, and ~20sec runtime you end up with each wave being cleared out, before the reinforcements come in. This means that only ever 3-4 players are fighting against 6, rinse-repeat => fullhold.
The whole point of forcing players to run on the map before getting to obj is (apart from the actual map dynamics, talking strictly objective here) to add a fixed amount of time before the reinforcements can contribute to the fight. This should ALWAYS be the primary way to balance the map! Why?
Distance from spawn disregards team organization: whether a scrim team is pushing, or random pubbers are running around: the influence of spawn distance on the map flow never changes. Different spawntimes on the other hand play very differently if your team is organized and pushes with a good timing, or if people just play k/d and want to ‘have at it’ asap. I understand you want to balance the game around competitive SW, but you need the pubbing experience to be enjoyable, if the game is to have any long-term value. Balancing via spawn distance allows you to address both.
On a ‘gut’ level I feel like there is much more wrong with balancing the map by just fiddling with spawntimes, but I’ll find some reasons later : P
Coming back to why 30 is better than 20:
- larger spawntimes make players little more reluctant to play TDM, you won’t kamikaze your way into 5 enemies, if you have 25sec spawn -> promotes setting up crossfires, and positional gameplay <- this is good.
- killing (and gibbing) players is more meaningful, if a sniper in a 6v6 game dropped a player at +20sec spawn, the opposing team just lost 15% of their firepower. Similarly, scoring epic multikills will drastically influence the next 30seconds or so, giving the fragging player a sense of accomplishment.
- reviving players is more meaningful: rather than have your teammate drop dead, you can keep your team alive - medics are more valuable <- very good. I’ve seen much more ‘helping up’ since the spawntimes are increased, even some of the classy k/d whores are now helping me up, which has NEVER happened before : P
- slows the game down a little. I honestly have a sense of deja vu here, but I think many players have already stated that the game is too fast. Not as far as movement, not even TTK (this can be argued, I’d say its okay, with a few weapon exceptions), but the intensity at which it is played. I saw some players remark that playing more than 20min gets very exhausting for them, as the constant pew-pew is too much for some people.
High-paced action can be extremely exciting, but it has to be paced! W:ET is just as fast, and maps in travel-time are not even bigger (lets not talk about maps : P ). Firefights are exciting, but you also have a few slower moments: team is building an oasis pump and sneaking through an underground. Tank is being slowly pushed up to the bridge on fuel dump. Allies are slowly bunkering-in Axis on goldrush bank stage. Gate is planted on supplydepot, and your team is slowly building up, ready to pounce as soon as it blows. Similarly, Axis are setting up crossfires and getting ready to defend, ammo/hp packs are dropped, mines are planted, people look at each other, making sure their backs are covered. It will all go to hell in 10 seconds, but for that 10-15sec, when your team was GETTING READY TO FIGHT: you felt like you were a part of something bigger.
High-paced action is good, but it runs opposite of players’ sense of teamplay. If people live-and-die by 20 seconds, how are you supposed to create an atmosphere of one team going against another? Its just everyone for themselves, pure TDM. I think this is also why people complain about objectives. Very few objectives give you a sense of your team accomplishing something together. Partially because there are no class-specific obj.
However, also because the game doesn’t encourage teamplay, it just punishes lack of it. If you don’t have any medics in your team - you will have a much harder time getting anything done. But hardly anybody wants to be a medic! Why bother, if you can hide for a bit and get full HP back up again?
Why care whether your teammate is an engineer, or a soldier? It doesn’t affect your gameplay AT ALL.
It is definitely true that teamplay holds huge sway over the game’s outcome, but there is very little indication on how to get there, and how to work as a team.
Teamplay is a skill, just like aiming is; and it needs to be taught/encouraged. Most players won’t be able to work as a team, even if they try. They need a little push. Very little ammo in W:ET was such a push. Forcing a time-bottleneck on the team is such a push as well. This could go on and on and on…
I think last patch headed in a good direction as far as buffing abilities; its nice that each merc has something meaningful on their tool belt. However, without the teamplay to back it up; you just ended up with QW-MCPstage-lite, where there is spam&spam with spam, on spam, frustrating many, many players endlessly
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) , however playing for the team can be seen as an investment from the individual player. They will only benefit from their investment if other players will reciprocate (I’ve revived more than one FOPS who just refused to give ammo, not much motivation to try to revive them again).