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Meaningful Death

Discussion in 'Ask the Team' started by Siveon, Dec 1, 2013.

  1. Siveon Siveon Subordinate

    If there is one thing that I hate in PS2 is how meaningless dieing is due to the teleports and fast respawns. The only reason not to die is if you care about K/D, otherwise killing your self is even much faster than re-deploying as a transportation method.

    An example:
    You see a base being guarded by 7 players, you could kill all of them and die only to achieve nothing since they respawn within a few seconds.

    PS2 has so many ways to spawn(squad deploy,beacon drop-pod, instant-action drop-pod, mobile spawns) that it demeans support to a point where healing, giving ammo or transporting players around isn't worth it because you'll just spawn with full HP and ammo nearby. This is also why base capturing is nothing but a spawn camp in said game.

    I believe that death should be avoided and such it should come with penalties, even if its just the travel time to get back into battle but something. Maybe bases that are under attack can only spawn a limited number of players per X amount of time, or maybe you cant even spawn there are are forced to walk or get a transport from the next nearest base.

    I would very much like to hear what theories the developers and the community have thought about regarding this subject.
  2. Joram Joram Well-Known Member


    I would like a ticket system once one of the capture points is taken from the defenders, it will be really nice if the ammount of respawns was linked to the number of enemy players at the base. And i don't know how this will work, but if we have a mobile spawn system (similar to sunderers in PS2) i will like a ticket system to the attackers to...
  3. REDWUN Active Member

    Since making troop transports mobile respawn points is now the norm with most fps's, maybe they should only have a limited amount of respawns before having to resupply at a friendly base. We also could have different units have different ticket "prices" according to type and load-out.
  4. REDWUN Active Member

    And since the OP was originally talking about bases:
    Give each base a limited pool of respawns that refills according to the number of friendly bases or territories neighbouring it, and when completely cut-off, the base can't replenish it's resources. Making it unable to spawn infantry or vehicles.

    Another cool idea: When spawning a mobile respawn point from a base, it's costs would be more than the ticket points the transports has, and when resupplying, it takes tickets away from the base.
  5. theCrow theCrow Subordinate

    A poignant concern. Nothing so aggravating as clearing out a base like a badass only to die to a landmine around a blind corner, then by the time you're back, every enemy has re-spawned and dug in, plus they know your tricks. I can't say that I've read much about what the developers have been doing, so I don't know their opinions on the subject. I suppose doing a hardcore king-of-the-hill rule could work. Basically, whoever controls a certain point (say, a capture point in a base) either has no respawn (which I don't really like in this context) or an extremely lengthy respawn timer. This makes it so you may have the excellent, entrenched defending position, but the attackers have the benefit of having, say, a three second respawn compared to a defender's 15+ second timer, which keeps getting longer if you keep dying without getting a kill or three. As such, a well-defended point could be held indefinitely (health and ammo allowing) but a good play by the attackers or bad teamwork by the defenders give the aggressors a substantial advantage. It also encourages an aggressive play style because if defenders go 1 for 1 in kills-to-deaths, they lose. The big downside, however, is the defenders have a big risk but little reward, so I suppose this really only works well if the longer you're defending or the more kills you rack up from a defensive position, then more reward you get, like maybe a limited defense buff that refreshes on kills and intensifies for every ten kills without a death or a terminator armor drop or each kill decreases your respawn timer or something that encourages high KDRs for defenders. (And by all means, if there is another glaring weakness to this idea, please point it out because it looks pretty solid from where I'm standing.)
  6. MikeyC MikeyC666 Active Member

    This respawn system can be tied into the supply system that is in another thread, if a base runs out of supply from respawns then no-one can respawn from that base anymore until it gets re-supplied.

    Same concept applies to troop-transports that re-supply troops with extra ammo, while a respawn costs much more supply and drains the transport's supply much faster.
  7. Do something similar to the Planetside 1 ANT system that requires bases to constantly be refueled/resupplied to keep spawning, vehicle production and defences online.

    If only they had included this in Planetside 2...The strategic gameplay wouldn't be so utterly terrible.
  8. Rasczak Rasczak Subordinate

    Logistics would definitely go a long way towards making death meaningful, and making all the ammo in your loadout cost supplies on spawn would both encourage strategic thinking and serve as an additional balancing mechanic.

    Not only would more zergy armies be able to spawn faster, but they would also be able to get more respawns from each delivery of supplies. This would give them staying power in aggregate that they otherwise would not have individually.

    A simpler mechanic that can also add meaning is simply have a decently long respawn, which incrementally increases with death but decreases when certain objectives are achieved. People will care a lot more about death if they have to wait 30 seconds to respawn rather than 10. They'll care even more if each death adds +3 seconds up to a cap of ~75-90, and they need to take an objective to reset it or perform a teamwork task to reduce it.

    Of course, spawn-camping itself is a symptom of static, indestructible spawn points. When those exist, camping is the most efficient way to cut off enemy reinforcements and so they will do it. When spawn points are destructible, destroying the point is the most efficient way to cut off reinforcements (because now you're free to do something else, like guard the cap or hunt the next spawn) and so people will do that instead.
  9. I mentioned a something on how to avoid this recently on the Drop-pod thread, but it essentially consists of not being able to drop for free on a contested territory, and if you choose to drop you'd have to spend requisition to drop and it wouldn't be instant. Plus, they could have something like a 30 second or one minute deployment cooldown, so you'd respawn in your base instantly, but you couldn't drop until you had "another drop-pod prepared" or something. Therefore you could get back in the game right away, but you just couldn't fight for a minute or so.

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