Instead of respawn delay, valve developers call it a respawn wave. And if you have to explain something over and over, maybe something is wrong with the whole concept.

From the release of Team Fortress 2 I have disliked and voiced my opinion against the respawn delay, or “respawn wave” as valve developers call it. This is one of the main reasons why I do not play the game, expect on servers that have disabled the delay. If I wanted to wait to respawn, I would play counter strike. But this is not counter strike, its supposed to be team fortress.

Team fortress is a past paced, intense form of game play. The only thing I can compare it to is old school Quakeworld from the late 1990s. The fast action and non-stop intensity is what has drawn untold scores of players to Team Fortress Classic and Fortress-Forever.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1872

[quote]

We found respawn waves were a good solution to several problems.

* They provide a reward for the team that’s doing well, in that if they wipe out a significant amount of the enemy team they’re rewarded with a short grace period in which they can achieve objectives. Without them, we found teams felt like they’d been penalized when they cleared the enemy off the last capture point, only to have them all return immediately.
* They group respawning players together into squads, increasing the chances of strangers working together, or at the very least, moving to the frontline while maintaining some proximity to one another. Strangers aren’t pushed together into groups when everyone respawns instantly, and we’ve seen that proximity to team mates is a fundamental requirement for impromptu teamwork.
* They provide some ebb & flow in the pacing of the battle. Without some cooldown inbetween the moments of intense combat at the frontline, many players felt fatigued much more quickly. In particular, some attack/defense maps feel almost completely static without respawn waves. That lack of progress, in either direction, was a big factor in players finding the gameplay monotonous.

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Posted under Game Industry, Team Fortress 2

From the Games Industry.biz Website comes an interesting article. “Interesting” might not be the correct term, its more along the lines of sad, or out of touch with reality.

The opening paragraph start like this - “Frontier founder and creator of Elite, David Braben, has said that he thinks HMV’s move into selling pre-owned games is “shocking”, and that the increasing emphasis on the pre-owned market is a serious threat to the games industry.”

Lets use a little comparison, what if there were no used car lots? Thats right, lets think about this just for a second - what if every time someone needed another car, they were forced into buying a new car. This would be great for car companies, but it would be a poor financial decision for the car owner.

Now lets think about what happens when a car company makes a car that nobody wants - the used car sector is flooded with trade ins.

Now lets think about what happens when a car company makes a quality product that everyone wants - the used car sector will dry up. Simply because people will keep the car and not trade it in.

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Posted under Game Industry