respawn, be or not to be?

[chaplainDMK 10]

The majority will go away soon i hope :o

Im not a very hardcore gamer, but boy did i get my blood presure up in OFP on no respawn missions when i had a tank on my head and had a shot up leg...

Its way more adrenaline filled then

Spawn

Kill

Kill

Die

Spawn

Kill

Die

Spawn

Kill

Kill

Kill

Kill (rampage )

Die

Spawn

Die etc...

[galzohar 31]

The server administrator will most likely not even try them. You know what it would be like for an administrator that wanted to try every mission someone he doesn't know makes? The only hope is that someone that can actually get his missions not buggy and get them on servers will make good ones.

Currently the tools are just not easy enough to use for someone with an awesome idea to go ahead and make it happen.

[Casus_Belli 10]

Is there any way to turn off the respawn in the demo mission, Valley of Death? Personally, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to play a game like this with a respawn function. Completely ruins a fantastic game; may as well be kids running around saying bang bang you're dead, count to 20 and get up again. That's how we played it when I was nine.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

My idea of a 'perfect' respawn system would be this:

* Instant respawn at base, but you're put in 'jail'.

* You are set loose when enough people in jail, or:

* When a variable timer has elapsed. Timer will be based on:

* If you're killed a lot, timer increase. If you play safe, timer decreases.

The idea is to reward gamers who play safe, and punish the Rambo players who couldn't care less about death and respawn. Trust me, a player who have to wait 20 minutes for respawn will rather leave the server. And you're allowed to have freak accidents without ruining your day. You could even combine it with limited number of respawns/revives as per revive script.

In my view it is a decent balance between hardcore no respawn with full penalty and insta respawn with no penalty. I think it would even work well with magic teleportation like in Domination. It lowers the 'get there' time, yet you are penalized for not being careful.

[whisper 0]

Difficult matter when you see the larger scale BI has put int A1/A2. Meaning games are now way longer, OR you don't take advantage of the engine.

I know about organizations who no matter what won't put respawn in place, it happens that some of their player die in the first few minutes of the game (usually fatal incident during the cargo phase), for a game that last somethign around 1 or 2 hours, + all the time needed to prepare and synchronise the whole thing before start. Well, the guys are dead, they'll watch TV...

That's taking full advantage of the engine, while playing in hardcore mode. You should be prepared to such event when willing to play at these settings.

Good system by CarlGustaffa above! Or for example in PvP, you could set up some multi-objectives attack defense, without respawn for each objective, waiting for it to resolve, then you respawn the dead guys for the next objective.

Multiple objectives permit to use more the possible scale of the game, but you don't have to wait for the whole game to end to play again

[swe 10]

Yes, carlqustaffa, the jail-idea sounds intresting. As whispere says, dieing in an accident one min in the game éhen the game plays in 5 fps is not do funny. But hhe jail idea has to be combined with ip-ban during the jail visit, and when the game passes an arranged time, the death is.. well death for the round.

[Casus_Belli 10]

There is no middle ground. If you have a system that includes any kind of respawn, you cannot claim to have anything resembling a serious simulation. It's very simple: no respawn = interesting simulation; respawn = silly kids game. The whole point about small- or medium-unit tactics is that you have to use and conserve what you have.

[whisper 0]

There is no middle ground. If you have a system that includes any kind of respawn, you cannot claim to have anything resembling a serious simulation. It's very simple: no respawn = interesting simulation; respawn = silly kids game. The whole point about small- or medium-unit tactics is that you have to use and conserve what you have.

** sigh **

"I know better than thou!"

[swe 10]

casius belli, i agree to that aswell. But future af this game, and the way it will develpop on the net is not upp to one of us, but more like politics where one has to compromize.

The jail idea sounds way better than the 10-second-respawn-ruin-the-tactics-totaly-game

[galzohar 31]

No respawn games would require making smaller missions that last no longer than 5-10 minutes. Don't get me wrong, I'd like those kinds of missions very much, but if you really want to make a mission of a large scale you're either going to have respawns or going to have a very long wait period plus probably only using a small portion of the mission (because most people are dead by the time you get to the later parts, it's the nature of even combat, most people will end up dead unless one side sucks).

If you want large scale and playable at the same time, you NEED respawns, which definitely ruins the experience, but can be done in a way that won't ruin the experience completely. However it needs to be very carefully designed and tested - just tossing some ideas and implementing them will probably result in very poor gameplay and very poor realism at the same time.

[swe 10]

5-10 minutes, then this game will be like CS. Id say that 30 min sounds more reasonable. Ill be happy to wait 10 min (ill die about 20 min into the round), and at the same time plan my next round (over ts) with some ppl that also have died

[Master gamawa 0]

I used to play without respawn in LAN games and it was very intense and at the same time VERY FRUSTRATING!

When I discovered how to respawn the game became fun but... not scary at all.

I am still torn. It's going to suck if I die a minute before finishing the mission.

[Casus_Belli 10]

I used to play without respawn in LAN games and it was very intense and at the same time VERY FRUSTRATING!

When I discovered how to respawn the game became fun but... not scary at all.

I am still torn. It's going to suck if I die a minute before finishing the mission.

Well yes, that's why it's scary. To me if it's not scary (or at least a convincing illusion of scary) it's not fun. It's called warfare, y'know? It's dangerous? Everybody's got their own preferences, but I really can't see the point of respawning. Sure, there's a chance you'll get killed early on. If you're me, it's a very good chance! But isn't that the whole point? I guess I'm talking mainly about the single-player game, but I think it holds in MMO games as well. You might prefer to play around like a bunch of kids at a laser park, but don't try to pretend it's anything other than that. I really have no problem with that, but it would be nice to have the other option for serious thoughtful play as well. What happens in the single player campaign? And what is CP?

---------- Post added at 01:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:43 PM ----------

Oh by the way, does anyone know of a way to disable respawning in the Death Valley scen in the Demo?

[galzohar 31]

5-10 minutes, then this game will be like CS. Id say that 30 min sounds more reasonable. Ill be happy to wait 10 min (ill die about 20 min into the round), and at the same time plan my next round (over ts) with some ppl that also have died

Think about it - if on a regular basis you die 20 minutes into the round the this only means you spend almost 20 minutes with no action before you die and then 10 minutes after. So you're waiting more like 30 minutes (minus the small timeframe in which you actually fight and die).

In a balanced PvP (and/or realistic) game at least 1/2 the time a fight will result in you dying before you kill anything. If nobody's dying it's not really a fight, so you can't really say you've been doing much interesting stuff for those 20 minutes. Maybe not as boring as being dead, but not a whole lot more interesting.

The proof to my claims lays in that in practice nobody made a successful (=people want to play it) balanced PvP (and/or realistic) mission that lasts 30 minutes with no respawns.

10 minutes sounds like a short time, but when the mission starts where you're already in position to attack the main (and single) objective and spend minimal time before actual fighting starts, 10 minutes will feel like an eternity.

IRL an entire company-level (~100 attackers) battle drill doesn't last more than 30-60 minutes, and that's with a LOT of dead time waiting for other teams to get into position, waiting for mortars to soften your targets first etc - actual time I (as an M4A1 marksman) spent actually shooting/attacking stuff lasted no more than ~2 minutes, plus a few more minutes of traveling from 1 objective to another. Rest of the time was waiting. To top it all off, since it's a drill most people don't "get shot" (only a few are declared as "shot" once in a while to drill medivacing them), or else the average fighting time of a single soldier would be even lower.

I don't know how true it is, but they say the average lifespan of an infantryman in an actual modern war is 7 seconds.

[the chief 15]

Hi SWE,

We at Phoenix Soldiers play all our missions with no respawning. We use tactics and training to help us achieve our mission objectives. We also use a 50% casualty rule, where we restart the mission when we hit this level of casualties. Its been working for us for 10 years of tatical gaming.

Try it out for yourself with us.

Teamspeak - pxs.servegame.org

Website - www.phoenixsoldiers.com

Game server tracker - http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/72.26.196.58:2302/

[galzohar 31]

Hi SWE,

We at Phoenix Soldiers play all our missions with no respawning. We use tactics and training to help us achieve our mission objectives. We also use a 50% casualty rule, where we restart the mission when we hit this level of casualties. Its been working for us for 10 years of tatical gaming.

Try it out for yourself with us.

Teamspeak - pxs.servegame.org

Website - www.phoenixsoldiers.com

Game server tracker - http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/72.26.196.58:2302/

That's COOP though, no? The real challenge is to make PvP work with no respawns. COOP is easy to make work with no respawns if the missions aren't overly difficult.

[KingN 251]

That's COOP though, no? The real challenge is to make PvP work with no respawns. COOP is easy to make work with no respawns if the missions aren't overly difficult.

Actually the coop missions I loved most in OFP was those long and hard ones that you tried to play through with your mates. Really makes your adrenaline flow trying to watch your six and survive the long adventure. Miss those kind of missions, hope I could get to play some of those in arma 2 in the near future once again.

But Phoenix Soldiers sounds like a good server for some nice games alright. :)

Edited July 4, 2009 by King Nothing

[galzohar 31]

You can't have long and hard at the same time. Hard by definition means you're very likely to die fast, and if not in the first engagement then in the second and if not then in the 3rd... You get the idea - if it's hard you can't survive long and if you can survive long it's not hard. If you respawn then it's even more of a mess.

Some people consider "requires knowing the mission inside out" as "hard". I don't. "Hard" for me is when it's hard regardless of how well you know the mission.

[OrLoK 20]

hello all

As im not a PvPer I may be out of my depth here, so bear with me.

It may be possible to make a game where, once you are hit and killed when you next re-spawn, you re-spawn weapon-less and unable to use mounted weapons or take gunner positions.

This means that you're still "in-game" but effectively have to take up a support role...

There are similar restrictions in other game modes so perhaps it's possible?

Also, it was mentioned that a non respawnable map would encourage "camping"? Great! I've always failed to see the "wrongness" in camping and recommend it to all my friends.

There's nothing nicer than the feeling of taking up a nice protected spot and have the enemy wallk into your killzone.

After all, All is fair in love and war? isn't it?

rgds

LoK

[galzohar 31]

"Camping" really depends on the mission. If it's a silly TDM, then camping completely destroys it. If it's an assault mission, then camping is by all means a viable strategy, as there is always at least 1 side that will lose if they camp (because their mission is to attack and they're not performing it).

Any system with respawns is still a respawn system. It doesn't matter how sophisticated you try to make it - it's still respawns (though if you make players practically useless when respawning, it's practically like having no respawns).

[Inkompetent 0]

Well, added on the topic of respawning: How about missions with only one side that gets to respawn?

Generally it is by strategists adviced to have three times as many attackers as there are defenders to have a good chance of a decisive victory. However most missions I see are designed for equal numbers on both sides.

What about a mission then that are designed for equal numbers, but where the defenders aren't allowed to respawn, but the attackers are (possibly with either limitations on the respawning, or with a fairly strict mission timer)? Could be wave respawning or whatever for the attackers to avoid a small, constant stream of people and instead make a dozen or two come at once.

Wouldn't this be one thing to make respawns viable, rather than designing a mission for 20v40 (which unless the server is full will never ever be balanced since on public servers people never balance out teams if they are assymetrical)?