Spawn Waves

(.Chris.) #241

That doesn’t make on bit of sense, of course you can complete an objective if there is one defender, you kill him…

True to some extent but you can compensate this with some defensive bias in the map.

I fail to see a problem with this, you know what happens if you die when the timer is at 20s, you wait 20s therefore you wouldn’t typically try something stupid like pushing out alone, however the closer to the 0 mark you can be more daring and not get penalised as much, without spawn waves you will always have to wait the given time so it is always risky to push out therefore it’s preferable to stay close and camp the objective which is pretty boring.

They can control it by looking at the timer and basing their decisions on the severity of the potential penalty that will occur if they die at that moment.

Or they can send out two of their best shooters to their spawn and pick them off as they trickle out of the spawn, easy kills.

This applies to using spawn waves also…

They had different mindsets before…

(tokamak) #242

Pressing ‘K’ at the right time is being clever with an unelegant and external game mechanic. It’s only ‘smart play’ for as long as that mechanic exists. Once you remove it you don’t remove gameplay. You just replace the contrived gameplay for something much more profound. Rather than deciding whether or not you should die right now you’re faced with having to figure out how to hold a position against an overwhelming foe. That’s way more interesting than responding to a timer.

(BMXer) #243

i didnt even mention /kill… But thats cool if thats all you can think to do when your timer gets low. Free kill, bullets saved.

(.Chris.) #244

You make it out like everyone /killed when the timer got close to zero, this was not the case, it was always preferable to stay near the objective, why would you give up your foot hold at the objective.

(BMXer) #245

[QUOTE=Maca;432415]Rather than the question whether spawn waves and timers should be used, I’d be interested to hear people’s ideas about something that I think was once mentioned in this thread previously.
Should the enemy spawn timer be seen as well?
I personally think this could make the system more understandable for pub players. They might start thinking about it and start learning the comp mindset and importance of gibbing. Or is this entirely dumb? Thoughts about this from both pub and comp perspective.[/QUOTE]

This would be the equivalent of showing when the items spawn in quake live. Not cool IMO.
The information IS available to the other team IF they are able to obtain it AND have the skills to use it to their advantage. I don’t think it should be given away for free.

(tokamak) #246

If it’s always preferable then that mechanic wouldn’t be ‘used’ and it would be irrelevant whether or not you’d spawn in waves or individually.

(.Chris.) #247

If you wanted to push out and regain control of a choke point or liberate the attack’s forward spawn you would coordinate this with the spawn timer to limit the penalty to yourself in the event of you dying, you are marginalising the risk from breaking away from the objective area, however without spawn waves there is always the same risk involved no matter when you push out and that risk, when compared to the with spawn waves system is always worst case scenario.

(Hundopercent) #248

[QUOTE=tokamak;432372]As long as there’s one defender at the objective the attackers can’t complete it. It doesn’t really matter if there’s one, two, or the entire team standing around the objective, as long as it isn’t nobody the defenders are winning. This makes matters really absolute in nature. This means that the second an entire defending team is wiped out the attackers have basically won.

Attackers don’t have this responsibility, they’re free to attack whenever they want as long as they get it done in time. This means that the respawn wave is not an intrusive factor and because most players can’t be bothered to coordinate themselves it makes the attacks easier to control.

Whether or not one (or more) person is standing at the objective becomes really fickle when defenders spawn in waves. The respawn clock then determines a big part of the game. Many ET(QW) matches had last second saves or almost last second saves simply because the respawn timer allowed it. It basically means that matches got decided by the way the regular interval synchronised to the player actions in the game.

I think that’s a bad thing because it makes the defenders at the mercy of something they cannot control. I believe that a good shooter should minimalise the weight of uncontrollable factors. Giving defenders individual timers means that attackers can’t just kill players and hope the respawn timer is against them. They actually need to kill players within a strict window starting from their first kill because as soon as they make that first kill the reinforcement timer starts counting.

This means that killing defenders is not enough. An effective attack lands the kills as shortly after each other as possible in order to allow for the objective guy to do his thing.

What I like the most about this is that it makes the roles of each teams more distinct. Attackers and defenders both need to have a completely different mindset in the way they approach combat simply because the game no longer regulates it for them.[/QUOTE]

I understand what you’re saying but there is nothing fun about watching or playing back to back full holds on D.

(tokamak) #249

Whether or not a map frequently results in full holds depends on many other factors. Individual timers simply make defenders more in control of the situation than they would be when they would spawn in waves. Individual timers don’t make it easier to defend, they only make the defence less down to an external factor which can be viewed as chance.

What you’re saying is that the only time the spawn timer is advantageous to a defending team is when they start behaving like attackers.

Besides that those situations are relatively rare and besides that it’s yet another way of ‘playing the system’ rather than the actual game I think that your point only illustrates the need for solidifying the roles of the attackers and the defenders better.

(ImageOmega) #250

I’m all for testing out spawn waves. Hey, that is what the alpha is for after all, right? =]

(tokamak) #251

It’s definitely worth testing out different systems if we can think of them. The wave vs wave system however is something we’ve been testing for ten years now.

(INF3RN0) #252

Plain and simple defensive spawn timers allowed for mistakes made by defenders to be punished and reward attackers. Having your whole team die out and be stuck on the same spawn wave meant that offense had a much better chance of securing and completing the objective, rather than continually fighting off an endless flow of defense. I think that spawn waves on all sides will really benefit the game play and help lessen the TDM feeling surrounding the objectives. Dynamic spawn timers were the next step in development, which is where we should be heading.

(tokamak) #253

Individual timers can be turned dynamic just like with spawn waves.

(SockDog) #254

What about the idea that someone threw out there about the first person to die triggering the 20 second (or whatever) spawn timer and then all those who died after would spawn at that timer’s completion. How would this impact strategies, it seems it would certainly override the ability to predict spawn timers. Could it be abused easily or would it remove a reliance on timing spawns as a means to push one way or another?

(tokamak) #255

The most important point against individual timers right now is that defenders don’t enjoy the level of automatic organisation that comes with spawning in waves. This means that individual timers are mainly a good thing for teams that are either highly skilled or have superb communication (which is usually both)

And the idea was good but still a bit too rough. If you make the intervals even shorter so you cluster everyone who dies within a window of 5 seconds spawn together with the dude who died first (and make him spawn after 15 seconds) then that way you still get to have a sense of some organisation without it leading to very odd stuff.

It would also solve the sensitivity of spawn killing without detracting much from the gradual reinforcement value for defenders.

(INF3RN0) #256

Without significant importance on the spawns as a group people are much more inclined to keep throwing themselves into the other team with little thought in mind other than to get a few kills, die, and do it all over again. I don’t see strategy being rewarded like that.

(HellToupee) #257

Thats down to spawn length its very short so that even with wave spawn on attack you often spawn alone anyway.

(Hundopercent) #258

Fixed it for you.

(scre4m.) #259

individual spawn time are for deathmatch.

I dont see any point in not having spawn waves, as it makes game more teamplay-based and organised on pub as well as in comp.

(Kendle) #260

Spawn waves are a tried and tested mechanic that’s worked fine for the last 12 years (a bit like wheels that are circular rather than oval), and 90% of people are in favour of retaining them, yet we’re still arguing, after 13 pages? Really?

SD, why have you not yet (re)implemented spawn waves?