Nade/med-kit respawn system

[ginn]

Before ~1.4.2 (I don't remember the exact version either)
You consuming a kit would re-spawn the kit anywhere randomly among your team's designated nade/medkit spawn points. There were some points of contention due to this:
1. Kits would over time pile up in the back of each team's base on many maps, as the kits nearer the middle of the map were easier/faster to grab.
2. Flaggers would park themselves on the pile of medkits in the back of their base to make themselves harder to kill.
3. Shooting at someone defending a pile of their team's medkits (often the flagger) would create a frustrating rain of medkits falling down on them. This (along with point 2) made 1-hit kill weapons better than usual for hunting flaggers.
4. Someone entering an enemy base could quickly "steal" a lot of the enemy's kits by re-spawning them into their own base.
5. Defending teams (especially when they were leading with a few minutes to go) would bog down the game by camping at their kits' spawn points, continuously spamming nades along the alt. route and healing themselves.

Not all of these issues were equally frustrating though, and stealing from the enemy could partially combat the other points.

~1.4.2 to 1.6.8
Same as before, except that the kits' spawn would never be the same twice in a row. This meant that:
3. Issue solved (unless the kit spawns were heavily clumped).
5. Somewhat mitigated as defenders more often had to move around, and sometimes outside their base.

Since 1.6.9 (I think ExHunter made this change)
Consumed kits can now re-spawn anywhere, except that the kits' spawn would never be the same twice in a row. This is around the time I became an inactive fart, so I don't have much of an opinion how this works. I can only speculate:
4. Issue solved.
5. Issue solved.
6. A new issue would be that there's not much of a meta-game with the kit spawning any more.

Vote for whichever system you prefer, and motivate your opinion if you'd like. Votes are changeable.

I vote to revert back to 1.4.2 to 1.6.8 kit respawn system.
Reason being having med kits go to your opponents base instead of your own reduces strategical play, since there's no resource managing (think transferring nades from low to spawn on divi, moving meds away from flag on Death and DD). It can also give you a larger advantage if you manage your kits well and steal others, giving you extra ability to break through a strong defense, or putting up a strong defense yourself.


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EDIT By Furai: The next 8 or so posts were split from other thread.
Edited the OP to make more sense.
Cleaned up the thread from other off-topic comments.
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PLEASE
Revert nade/med-kit spawns to previous spawning method, where kits spawned to a random location on your teams side. Ask skoskav if you don't know what I mean.
It's essential to get good gameplay.

[Ygrek Starmagedon]

PLEASE
Revert nade/med-kit spawns to previous spawning method, where kits spawned to a random location on your teams side. Ask skoskav if you don't know what I mean.
It's essential to get good gameplay.

Yeah, I agree, now meds spawn in kinda weird way, it's unbalancing the gameplay in my opinion.

[L[0ne]R]

PLEASE
Revert nade/med-kit spawns to previous spawning method, where kits spawned to a random location on your teams side. Ask skoskav if you don't know what I mean.
It's essential to get good gameplay.

Yeah, I agree, now meds spawn in kinda weird way, it's unbalancing the gameplay in my opinion.

Don't know if we're thinking of the same thing here, but AFAIK the old spawning method was simply a bug. Grenades and medkits would spawn on *any* spawn point - player spawns, vest spawns, bonus kit spawns, etc. This was fixed so it works exactly like you would expect it to when you're making a map - medkits would only spawn from medkit spawners, and grenades would only spawn from grenade spawners.

Rather than introducing a bug back into the game, the maps should just be edited to include medkit and grenade spawners where you think they're needed. You can post about it in Default Map Discussion and mention which maps need which spawners and where.

[nosejj]

The only problem with medkits is that upon a restart of a map they aren't equally distributed to both bases. I notice it happening a lot on ctf_Dropdown where meds are crucial for the more defensive player in a 3vs3... Countless amount of time have we started it with a disadvantage of no medkits it all. That can easily tilt a game's score, making the medkit less team unable to create a strong attack.

im guessin that ginn means the "order" since that "medkit change" you cant really "steal" medkits and send them to your base as in previous versions...i recall in older version in 3v3 they would use that a lot .. like get player near the medkits and get some damage .. pick another .. repeat.. so u left the enemy base with no "resources" (i dont remember well but i guess it could be done with nades too)it added some tactical degree  since u had to take the medkits backs and take care of them.. xD

This does still exist, and I like this aspect. But what I said also still exists and it's a concern of mine. For example in official matches or gathers  when matches may be restarted a few times till the game really start, it can result in a disadvantage eventually.The "resource stealing" method is awesome imo, but not when it is not equally distributed in the beginning of a map.

[paintZoom]

im guessin that ginn means the "order"
since that "medkit change" you cant really "steal" medkits and send them to your base as in previous versions...

i recall in older version in 3v3 they would use that a lot .. like get player near the medkits and get some damage .. pick another .. repeat.. so u left the enemy base with no "resources" (i dont remember well but i guess it could be done with nades too)
it added some tactical degree  since u had to take the medkits backs and take care of them.. xD

[ginn]

PLEASE
Revert nade/med-kit spawns to previous spawning method, where kits spawned to a random location on your teams side. Ask skoskav if you don't know what I mean.
It's essential to get good gameplay.

Yeah, I agree, now meds spawn in kinda weird way, it's unbalancing the gameplay in my opinion.

Don't know if we're thinking of the same thing here, but AFAIK the old spawning method was simply a bug. Grenades and medkits would spawn on *any* spawn point - player spawns, vest spawns, bonus kit spawns, etc. This was fixed so it works exactly like you would expect it to when you're making a map - medkits would only spawn from medkit spawners, and grenades would only spawn from grenade spawners.

Rather than introducing a bug back into the game, the maps should just be edited to include medkit and grenade spawners where you think they're needed. You can post about it in Default Map Discussion and mention which maps need which spawners and where.

Even the buggy spawns were fine, they didn't really impact the game much. It really doesn't matter if that bug is reintroduced.
But, he also changed so that the med/nade-kits don't spawn on side of the map that were closest to the picker-ups team flag.

[Ygrek Starmagedon]

Even the buggy spawns were fine, they didn't really impact the game much. It really doesn't matter if that bug is reintroduced.
But, he also changed so that the med/nade-kits don't spawn on side of the map that were closest to the picker-ups team flag.

ginn meant to change that "stealing resources tactic" way of spawning kits, so they respawn in closest spawnpoint to the flag of player that took it (or smth like that xd). I think that better way would be to add option on server config to choose the way admin would want kits to spawn, ofc if adding smth like that is possible (but I think it is).

[ginn]

The "resource stealing" method is awesome imo, but not when it is not equally distributed in the beginning of a map.

I've never really been sure if they aren't distributed equally. I feel like some games my team spawned with no med-kits, but this is like 10-6 years ago so I can't really tell for sure.

Sometimes medkits spawns invisible, so that might be what you're seeing. You should really try to confirm it, by damaging yourself to then check if there's any invisible medkits laying around.

[urraka]

How about removing all randomness from kit (re)spawning? It can all be defined in the map. My suggestion would be:

- Each kit has a respawn delay value.
- Each kit has a group id and a well defined order.
- When map starts, all kits that are the first from a group spawn. When you pick up a kit, wait for kit delay, then next kit from kit group spawns.
- If delay value is negative kit doesn't spawn when map starts, first it waits for delay (this should help balance the bonus kits).

It would mean tweaking polyworks and also the maps to balance the kits, but I think this should work much better for competitive gameplay.

[ginn]

How about removing all randomness from kit (re)spawning? It can all be defined in the map. My suggestion would be:

- Each kit has a respawn delay value.
- Each kit has a group id and a well defined order.
- When map starts, all kits that are the first from a group spawn. When you pick up a kit, wait for kit delay, then next kit from kit group spawns.
- If delay value is negative kit doesn't spawn when map starts, first it waits for delay (this should help balance the bonus kits).

It would mean tweaking polyworks and also the maps to balance the kits, but I think this should work much better for competitive gameplay.

That would maybe be neat, but that would require a lot of work.

It would be neat if somebody actually made an argument for keeping the current kit respawn.