The Inherant Flaws In 3.0 Spawn System
taboofires
Join Date: 2002-11-24 Member: 9853Members
Join Date: 2002-11-24 Member: 9853Members
While the 3.0 B3 combat spawn system is certainly an improvement upon the beta 2 version, it is still inherantly flawed.
1) The 1/4 system works horrible for small teams, and way too well (for the spawnee) in large games. If you have a team of 4, and your whole team is dead, you are going to get spawn-camped, and there's nothing you can do about it. One at a time is not going to cut it. One large servers, the opposite is true: it becomes harder and harder to keep the other team in the spawn queue so you can actually kill the hive/cc. 1/4 team instead of the whole thing is obviously an improvement, but it's not going to get much better.
2) The time it takes to kill a power life form (onos, fade) or HA/JP is more than the time it takes for them to spawn. This allows the aggressive team to wage a war of attrition, keeping constant fighting in place, and slowly killing the hive or CC no matter how horribly they get slaughtered. This is at its worse with a JP/GL, as it takes a fair amount of chasing (more than about 8 seconds normally) to kill a JP at all, and they usually take the gorges out while they're attacking. This is normally balanced out by actually having to pay for the power of a JP/GL in classic, but no such means exists in combat.
Or, at least, it has been taken away. The only thing that made it even remotely possible to balance stronger equipment (or life forms) was making the player pay for them via spawn time.
And so, my proposal: Shotty, HMG, GL, JP, and HA all add to spawn times, in amounts based on how useful they are. Probably mines too, depending. A level 10 LA/lmg with scanner, MT, lots of upgrades, and a welder still spawns as fast as a level 1. No more than half the team spawns at once, but if two players will spawn within 2-3 seconds of each other, the first spawner will wait. Something equivalent happens with the kharaa.
Net effect: people spawn somewhat together, those who get the powerful stuff have to pay for it, those who help the team are not punished via spawn times, and nobody can mindlessly throw themselves at the enemy base with big guns to achieve victory.
Spawn times should be at least long enough for a jper/skulk to get from their base to the other + a few seconds, so that if one team is wiped out completely, they can make some progress toward destroying the hive/cc.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the whole point of removing the upgrade spawn-time penalty to make people spawn in waves, and encourage teamwork? If so, spawning in waves of 2 in an 8v8 game is hardly achieving that end.
1) The 1/4 system works horrible for small teams, and way too well (for the spawnee) in large games. If you have a team of 4, and your whole team is dead, you are going to get spawn-camped, and there's nothing you can do about it. One at a time is not going to cut it. One large servers, the opposite is true: it becomes harder and harder to keep the other team in the spawn queue so you can actually kill the hive/cc. 1/4 team instead of the whole thing is obviously an improvement, but it's not going to get much better.
2) The time it takes to kill a power life form (onos, fade) or HA/JP is more than the time it takes for them to spawn. This allows the aggressive team to wage a war of attrition, keeping constant fighting in place, and slowly killing the hive or CC no matter how horribly they get slaughtered. This is at its worse with a JP/GL, as it takes a fair amount of chasing (more than about 8 seconds normally) to kill a JP at all, and they usually take the gorges out while they're attacking. This is normally balanced out by actually having to pay for the power of a JP/GL in classic, but no such means exists in combat.
Or, at least, it has been taken away. The only thing that made it even remotely possible to balance stronger equipment (or life forms) was making the player pay for them via spawn time.
And so, my proposal: Shotty, HMG, GL, JP, and HA all add to spawn times, in amounts based on how useful they are. Probably mines too, depending. A level 10 LA/lmg with scanner, MT, lots of upgrades, and a welder still spawns as fast as a level 1. No more than half the team spawns at once, but if two players will spawn within 2-3 seconds of each other, the first spawner will wait. Something equivalent happens with the kharaa.
Net effect: people spawn somewhat together, those who get the powerful stuff have to pay for it, those who help the team are not punished via spawn times, and nobody can mindlessly throw themselves at the enemy base with big guns to achieve victory.
Spawn times should be at least long enough for a jper/skulk to get from their base to the other + a few seconds, so that if one team is wiped out completely, they can make some progress toward destroying the hive/cc.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the whole point of removing the upgrade spawn-time penalty to make people spawn in waves, and encourage teamwork? If so, spawning in waves of 2 in an 8v8 game is hardly achieving that end.
Comments
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Oh, and I've posted in so many other places, I think in the start game it should be a larger percent, and in the end game, only 1/4.
And they should probably also figure out the percent based on players. ::shrugs::