Honestly I didn´t want to post anything more about this, but unfortunately it is a big topic again.
So first of all, I would like to invite all of you, to think more then just one step ahead. Simple example of how people really doesn´t bother thinking further ahead and make suggestions and root for them for months, just because they are different from what is known, is a spawnsystem that is triggered upon death.
We all agree, that the old system of ET/ETQW gave the game unique game mechanics and I am not saying they are the BEST but they are just better compared to what currently is being suggested and discussed. I will focus on two of them, and give 1 at max 2 EASY examples, so that really everyone can understand of what they really root for…:
- fast adjustment to team line up - even without objective classes, what are you going to do when your team is attacking an indoor objective after an outdoor objective? ALLWAYS waste the first attack with the sniper and artillery mercs, without any ability to respawn quickly, making a fluent progres to the next objective impossible? Simple example of how this mechanic would change and make the current game play even worse: If you want your team to be able to re spawn and progress fluently to the next objective, you actually have to send one of you dying, so that he can trigger the spawn… I don´t understand why finishing an objective with 5 guys should be punished with not being able to respawn while an attack that actually lets someone “die” can re spawn perfectly. I am not going to cover what happens when you run out of ammo or health during a defense… I am pretty sure everyone can imagine how “natural” it feels to send someone from your team to get killed so that a spawn timer is triggered and your team gets the ability to resupply itself or readjust the lineup…
+Ability to time pushes, re spawns etc. Keeping an eye on the spawn timer all the time not only allowed you to swap classes very efficiently in order to suit the current game situation (and I am not going to mention all of them, sorry) but also allowed yourself and your team to time your attacks in a way that you get the smallest re spawn, the enemy gets the biggest one, or the team is even split into two different spawn times. And yeah, this will be also possible with a spawn system that is triggered upon death and it will for sure make unorganized teams and pub play progress much faster. For me however, the pub play, is something I don´t tunnel vision on objectives, I play it simply for fun and try out different mercs and stuff… I don´t need a mechanic that makes the pub feel like a competition especially if it will totally destroy any kind of serious competition. Why would it destroy competition you ask? Well, that´s something we will need to think about in more then just one step. I am going to give you one easy example, of how this change would make some game mechanics so awkward that it hurts me to just imagine that (probably smart) people are rooting for this so heavily. It is simply insane much overpowered attacks would be. I am considering that defenders re spawn time is longer then the attackers in the following example. Blind assumption indeed, and currently not in the game, but I guess it will be, and even if not it doesn´t really change anything unless the spawn time will be 10 seconds, making it a grind anyways. Now all you need to do, is a simple two wave push stragedy, you send one of your guys aggressively, dying fast triggering the spawn… you wait for the half of the spawn time, just rush the objective gib 2 or even only one of the defenders (triggering full spawn time), respawn almost instantly (stretching the difference of the spawn by a huge amount), and attack now with 5 guys vs. a defense of 3 or 4 people at max. This is something that will happen in every single game where people use some of there brain, and there is NO way to defend against it. It is very easy to do, and requires very little skill, because the ammount of things you need to consider and how long you really need to care about the spawntimer isn´t even close to what you need to do playing with a constant ticking spawn timer. You could work around this issue with different spawn times, making them equal and what not (maybe even the defenders would end up being op) but the game would suffer from the same stupid “core gameplay” of who kills the first guy, is in a disadvantage, because the next enemy spawn wave will come so much earlier then yours… there is no way someone can tell me this is a solid, healthy game mechanic that will make anything better. And please keep in mind, this is something I came up within a couple of seconds. There are probably many other “interesting ways” to abuse such a mechanic.
So why do we need this change now? I am not saying that different ideas about different game aspects are bad. I just would like to see people to think of how the game play would evolve with certain changes beyond the initial idea that leads to a new suggestion (like making kills more meaningful was the a good intial idea of the triggered spawn upon death spawn system). After all many ideas are something different indeed, and may work out for some areas, but will certainly be devastating for so many different things in the meantime… For me changes like those, are something you do out of of frustration, where people don´t know what to do and just try anything that is different… like old grand mums hit the television when it doesn´t work anymore or people vote for strange parties in the next election, just because they are unhappy with the current situation…
