Okay, I feel like I have held my tongue in regards to this issue long enough.
Before I continue with this post I want to make it completely clear that at this point in time I have absolutely no idea what Splash Damage has in mind for the games spawn system. I would greatly appreciate if a Splash Damage staff member could reply to this post with what their plans are moving forward. I would assume that the spawn system is not remaining as is, but the fact that I have not seen any updates since joining the Alpha really concerns me.
The spawn system is core to many games; especially games like Extraction. I find it extremely fun to decide what I am going to do based on where I am and how much time is left until either I, or the enemy is spawning. Deciding whether or not to killout and spawn with your team, stay up and get a critical plant down, push on an enemy to ensure they are down for an entire spawn, and much more are both exciting and rewarding for players; it also makes for great and classic moments in the game. Knowing when I am going to spawn would make Extraction entirely more playable and fun. I can’t stand dying on a public server and having to wait 15 seconds to run back to the action for 5 seconds just to rinse and repeat.
On that note, with fixed spawn times the spawns should also happen in waves, not just tapping out to insta spawn after waiting a fixed time. It’s not fun, and I don’t see how this adds to the game in any way shape or form. Giving the players the responsibility to “choose” their penalty for dying (or not killing out for that matter), whether it be missing a plant, going down full, having to start something over, etc. sounds a lot more fun to me than “oh I died ill wait 15 seconds than go push out again not basing my actions on anything because hey if I die I die”.
My final concern is in relates to the data gathered by ECHO. Splash Damage is obviously utilizing ECHO extensively in the development of Extraction, and if such a basic and core element such as a spawn system isn’t even in place yet how on earth can the ECHO data be accurate? I feel that building upon a game using data without a correctly implemented spawn system is counter productive.
