Thoughts on Dirty bombs Spawn system

(Grissi) #1

Hey everyone, welcome to this simple post about the spawn system.

I recently started playing and I must say this is first time for a quite awhile I have seen a high potential fps game. This game not only has the ability to be really accessable to beginners it also has the depth to be quite a competitive fps game (something that has been lacking in the recent years). So good job to the devs for their works so far.

Even though the game is filled with strengths there is one thing that worries me a little bit. I have been playing a lot of public and pugs recently and I have noticed that the tactical part of the game sometimes suffers because how fast you can spawn in some situations. This can create situations where the game feels more like a deathmatch rather than a coordinated and team based game, removing the great feel of each player live matters. After studying the game mechanics a bit I belive the issue lies with the spawn system and I hope that I can bring some light to the reasons why.

Currently when the first players falls in your team a 20 second timer starts creating the next wave spawn. Now the biggest issue with this wave spawn system is that its not uncommon that even if you manage to do amazingly coordinated play and wipe the other team they can get spawned again instnatly not giving you any chance to use your advantage. Simply put the spawn system lacks a minimum waiting time after a player dies until the next one spawns.
This also effect situations where a push fails and you have 2 players left on the field vs 5 oppoments. If each insuvital player life would matter these players would fall back to safety and wait for the rest of the players to get into postition before trying again. However if they know that they will spawn within 5-7 sec after death they can try a suicide rush with no drawnback to it. If it fails they will simply spawn with the group anyway and continue normally.

Now there are many ways to approach this possible issue and the biggest question is what kind of spawn system would work well for both public play and competitive play. After speaking to some people and checking how other games have done their spawn waves I think the team fortress 2 system would fit this game the best, this is how it works:

There are basically 2 spawn waves, lets say both of them spawn players every 30 seconds. When a game starts one of the waves starts at 30 seconds while the other one starts at 15 seconds. Both of them counts down to 0 and then return to their native 30 seconds. Every time they reach 0 they spawn a new wave.
This mean player dies he will always join the que that is above/equal to 15 seconds, meaning he has a minimum spawn time of 15 sec. This allows us to keep the spawn waves for public play and at the same time give both teams chance to use their advantage after successful plays. This system is also easily scalable and really simple to work with.

There are other solutions I saw like increasing the spawn wave time for each induvital player that dies in your team, but that might cause some issues in higher populated servers.

These are at least the highlights I have found but I would love to hear what the rest of you guys think, do you agree with this issue and how would you approach it if yes?

PS: Lets keep this nice and civil.

(Kendle) #2

Maybe a search on the subject would’ve saved you creating this thread. The spawn system on Objective (Casual) servers is different from Stopwatch (Veteran), and neither are true wave spawns, but they’re working on it, and we’ve all been [strike]whining about[/strike] calling for it for a long time. :slight_smile:

(Grissi) #3

Would love to hear then how the wave spawns actually work in the current build. Using the search function can be bit unreliably in a game that is in alpha sinceI don’t know if people are discussing the same system or an older version.

(Protekt1) #4

I’m pretty confused at your description of the spawn system of TF2.

Here is my idea on a general purpose minimum spawn time, assuming that is even desirable which I don’t think it is (I’ll wait to make judgment on that).

You have a 20s wave (wave 1), followed by a 5 second wave (wave 2). Wave 1 starts ticking down after wave 2 and the process follows infinitely (so to be clear - wave 1 then wave 2 then wave 1 then wave 2, forever). If you die during the last 5 seconds of wave 1, you spawn during the wave 2. As a result, making you wait at least 5 seconds and the total wave timer is about 25 seconds since if you die during wave 2 you must wait the full timer.

For defense you can alter easily to make wave 2 last 10s and if you die during the last 10s of wave 1 then you must wait for wave 2. As a result you’d wait a minimum of 10s and put the total wave timer to about 30s.

All timing could be modified of course.

(Kendle) #5

In Objective mode you spawn a fixed time after you die, simple. No wave, just die, wait a bit, spawn, go back kill the guy who thought killing you gave him time to complete the objective :mad:

In Stopwatch mode, a spawn wave comes around every 25s for defense, 15s for attack (I think, might have changed recently). You spawn when the next wave comes, assuming you’ve tapped out (elected to re-spawn). If you don’t choose to re-spawn you stay in-capped until you do. This is the contentious bit. We (most of us) want the waves to be true waves, if you miss one you have to wait for the next. Currently if you miss a wave you spawn as soon as you choose thereafter.

Most of us would also like longer waves (RTCW and ET had longer waves), but SD seem to think today’s gamer’s are too impatient to wait more than 20/25s.

We also want a timer on the HUD to tell us when the next wave is. Pretty worthless having a wave spawn system and not having the tool(s) to use it.

edit: here’s a Dev post on the subject :-

http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/37288-spawntimer?p=462496&viewfull=1#post462496

(ailmanki) #6

While ET had longer waves, and in competition this is still today basically as you describe it. But in public, its a hole other world. Spawnwaves are mostly reduced to 7-15 seconds. Well I am not saying its good or not, but at the moment the most successfull public servers have usually a drastically reduced respawn time. Second but, they also usually have 30+ players. And depending from my perspective, the teams are really noobish and not doing what they should be doing, it more seems like they are collecting XP’s, kinda selfish.

So I had say something is wrong with this spawn system from ET :slight_smile:
While for competition it created a interesting thing. Since spawnwaves had a fixed time, players ‘knew’ the enemies respawn time.
In original ET (etmain), it was possible to go inside enemy spawn, and time a dynamite - so it goes off when the enemies spawn, this has been fixed with respawn invulnereability.

Overall I very much like your suggestion Grissi. Every 30 seconds a spawnwave, but you have yourself a 15 second timer where your simply dead. Now 30/15 might be to long, but the basic Idea is great I think. I would more like to see the original spawntimes we already have, with 7 seconds personal timer.

(twincannon) #7

He is talking about stopwatch. I think it’s pretty much globally agreed, as you said, that the OBJ “casual” timing difference needs to go. It’s not even helpful for pubs, in fact it only punishes inexperienced players, making it less casual - ironically.

As for SW spawn timer, I dunno, I don’t have much of an opinion on it… since you can see when the enemy spawns you can pretty much time their spawns if you give it enough thought and know when you need to go for the objective and when you need to set up a camp. Objective based games like this are always about knowing when your window of opportunity is, and I think this is generally fine how it’s done here. It is frustrating to kill someone only for them to instant-spawn but I guess I’m used to that at this point.

The only changes I would really like to see happen are showing your teams spawn on the HUD, and (if this is actually the case, I know we tested a little bit) if the spawn timers actually don’t start until the first death, this really needs to be fixed so that they’re always rolling. Very very silly to have gameplay where a medic can kill a teammate and revive him just to start the spawn timer.

We have the “each death adds to the spawn timer” in dystopia and it works really well aside from the maybe strange emergent gameplay of suiciding purely to manipulate the spawn timer (since sometimes adding a few seconds is more valuable than letting it roll over back to a full spawn timer).

(rline) #8

I think this is a great idea. I played TF2 competitively for about 3 years and the spawn wave system is very balanced. The same spawn system is used for public and competitive play, with the exception of scaling based on server population (handled automatically by the game). For reference, here is how it works: http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Respawn_times

The two most popular maps in that list are Granary and Badlands. Since Control Point mode is the most popular competitive mode in TF2 (as opposed to attack/defense) your min/max spawn timer depends on how many control points your team has. So, in Extraction, there could be a different minimum and maximum spawn time for each team (attack/defense).

Using Grissi’s example, you could have the following:

Minimum Spawn Time for Attackers: 10
Maximum Spawn Time for Attackers: 20

Minimum Spawn Time for Defenders: 15
Maximum Spawn Time for Defenders: 30

Please keep in mind that these values can be easily changed. With this system, you have a much better chance of exploiting a player numbers advantage.

(Bitey) #9

[QUOTE=twincannon;467434]
We have the “each death adds to the spawn timer” in dystopia and it works really well aside from the maybe strange emergent gameplay of suiciding purely to manipulate the spawn timer (since sometimes adding a few seconds is more valuable than letting it roll over back to a full spawn timer).[/QUOTE]

The dystopia system is a really advanced way of spawn control that adds a complex variable of gameplay. One thing to note about Dystopia is that each class added it’s own amount to the spawn time. Ontop of that a 15 second cycling wave spawn was also utilized so that each team starts with a 15 second wave that resets. Another good note about the dystopia system is that it was a purely attack/defense game with asymmetrical maps. This adds another reason why the system could potentially work inside of dirty bomb.

**In public games of dystopia, attackers are given an advantage. Every 15 second cycle, the attacking side spawn timer and class death time addation are slowly reduced over time by a ratio. Eventually you can end up with an 7.5 second spawntimer or lower, and by that point each class death is halved. It really helps the attackers make sure they make progress as a game goes on. Each objective capped on dystopia however would reset that attackers spawn timer to it’s default settings.

Dystopia system- 15 second wave spawn cycle equal for both teams.

[ul]
[li]light: adds 3 seconds to spawn timer[/li][li]medium: adds 4 second to spawn timer[/li][li]heavy: adds 6 seconds to spawn timer[/li][/ul]

The only thing I see issue with a Dystopia system is that originally classes from that game are worth different amounts as seen above. I do think however that Extration could get away with just 4-8 seconds added to the spawn timer per death of each class. That way you still have a wave spawn, and to add another layer of ‘saftey’ against brutally long spawns, you can have a maximum capped spawn time. This setup could work both in pubs and competitve play, provided you merely give you’re teams spawn times in a small hud element.

Here is a small Dystopia-system spawntimer example:

attacker: cycling 15 second spawn time.

[ul]
[li]Each death adds 4(adjustable) seconds to the spawn time, and caps at 20 seconds maximum wait.[/li][/ul]

Defenders: Cycling 20 second spawn timer

[ul]
[li]Each death adds 6(adjustable) seconds to the spawn timer caps at 25 seconds.[/li][/ul]

This is just a rough implementation of a dystopia setup :smiley: Hope that clears up Twincannon post.

(attack) #10

looks confusing :0.

(Hundopercent) #11

It sounds more confusing than it really is. I’m still not a fan of 2 spawn waves but anything is better than the current system so I am open to trying it.

I believe the setup would need to be 10/20 for O 15/30 for D

Attack - To try and make more sense of it, there are 2 waves. If you die within the 10 seconds, you will be added to the 20 second wave. If you die within the 11 - 20 second range you will stay in that wave. This will also give /kill an even stronger penalty which I believe some people wanted.

I’m willing to test though I would still prefer a 20 O 30 D true spawn wave for competitive play. I know this won’t happen because we want to keep pub and comp as close as possible but I like having a blue face. :slight_smile:

(acutepuppy) #12

Good games recently, Grissi! Spawn points, captures, and waves are all really important to the game.

The main issue I see with a minimum/max spawn time, is it will break up spawn waves, to where you have two people dead, but only one of them can spawn in 4 seconds.

I think it would be really cool if a team timer started with the first death in their spawn wave.

(Grissi) #13

Every single mechanic in a game are important, even the smallest ones. I understand that fact pretty well :).

But I believe that one of the strengths of that kind of spawn to make sure players don’t want to die at any point. This means when the fighting is going bad you actually have to do a tactical retreat to wait for the re-group. This also gives the opposing team a chance to make a decision to push their advantage or not. If your last teammates allow themselves to over commit to a losing fight the punishment will be that you have to wait longer before you can regroup with the rest. Sounds pretty sound for a competitive mechanic and does not really hurt the public play.

This will ofc be true for both teams not just the attacking one, the defenders might also be forced to give up their position to be able to group up with the rest of the team effectively.

(nailzor) #14

The current patch does not have working spawn waves. If your body is not gibbed you have the option to spawn at anytime you wish (after waiting for your counter to reach 0 of course).

A real spawn wave system would ensure that you can only spawn every 20/30 seconds, or whatever the time may be, and not have the option to spawn at will.

(montheponies) #15

Got to say most of the above ideas look, at least on paper, overly complex.

The purpose of the spawnwave is to have team members spawn together. The current SW system breaks that slightly with the ability to rejoin anytime after the initial timer has ticked over. This has two disadvantages, the first obviously being you can spawn out of sequence with your team mates and the second that you arent forced to make a choice - in the past if you sat waiting for a revive you had to weigh up whether help would come before you got gibbed.

Personally I’m happy to try out anything, but dont really see the problem with starting with a default 20s Offense 30s Defense (map settable), with fixed spawn waves with no out of sequence deployments and the timer ticking from a random position from the getgo. Oh and this should be shown on the HUD, while taking away the current ability to see exactly what state the other team are in…

(Hundopercent) #16

[QUOTE=montheponies;467515]Got to say most of the above ideas look, at least on paper, overly complex.

The purpose of the spawnwave is to have team members spawn together. The current SW system breaks that slightly with the ability to rejoin anytime after the initial timer has ticked over. This has two disadvantages, the first obviously being you can spawn out of sequence with your team mates and the second that you arent forced to make a choice - in the past if you sat waiting for a revive you had to weigh up whether help would come before you got gibbed.

Personally I’m happy to try out anything, but dont really see the problem with starting with a default 20s Offense 30s Defense (map settable), with fixed spawn waves with no out of sequence deployments and the timer ticking from a random position from the getgo. Oh and this should be shown on the HUD, while taking away the current ability to see exactly what state the other team are in…[/QUOTE]

SD has clearly stated that fixed spawn waves is only good for comp play and they do not want to take this approach.

As for starting the spawn wave when someone dies, that’s easily exploitable. There is also skill in timing waves. That’s why fixed times are a healthy approach.

(Kendle) #17

Which is why I still think we need 2 game modes, SW for comp, Obj for pub, and they can have different spawn mechanics.

I know the off-pat answer is “we want pub and comp to be the same”, but they’re not the same, and never will be. Team sizes are different for a start, various leagues will almost certainly have various rules that distinguish pub play from comp play, there are 101 things that happen in organised matches that don’t on pubs, and vice-versa, so what harm does it do to have the different spawn mechanics for Obj and SW? Having it so will do no more to differentiate the 2 modes than all the other things that already differentiate the 2 modes.

(1-800-NOTHING) #18

[QUOTE=Kendle;467555]Which is why I still think we need 2 game modes, SW for comp, Obj for pub, and they can have different spawn mechanics.

I know the off-pat answer is “we want pub and comp to be the same”, but they’re not the same, and never will be. Team sizes are different for a start, various leagues will almost certainly have various rules that distinguish pub play from comp play, there are 101 things that happen in organised matches that don’t on pubs, and vice-versa, so what harm does it do to have the different spawn mechanics for Obj and SW? Having it so will do no more to differentiate the 2 modes than all the other things that already differentiate the 2 modes.[/QUOTE]
well, there’s 3 modes, though: obj, sw and tdm.
personally i’d like to see the current sw wave system (but with the attacker/defender times adjusted) for obj, the current obj/tdm wave for tdm, and proper spawn waves for sw.

i think having modes that feel distinctly different could be a selling point (aka. uniqueness/variety) rather than a drawback (aka. confusing for noobs).
in fact, i’d argue that it’s more confusing/dissatisfying when different game modes are too similar.

(montheponies) #19

[QUOTE=strychzilla;467546]SD has clearly stated that fixed spawn waves is only good for comp play and they do not want to take this approach.
[/QUOTE]

I’m fairly sure Anti said that they still wanted to trial fixed spawnwaves on the Obj server. Honestly dont recall them saying this was completely off the table.

(Smooth) #20

We’ll probably be introducing the SW spawn system to OBJ fairly soon. Not quite the next update but likely the one after that.