[SUGGESTION] Recent master branch update concerning spawning

Just because I was responding to your near ad-hominem attack doesn't mean I ignored everything you wrote. That's being a little bit dramatic.

No one said we're going with one option or the other - the verdict is not out yet.

I think at least in competitive modes (which we are considering here predominantly, if I am not mistaken) the respawn time might be a bit too short to make a decision where to spawn. And increasing the time would imho just increase the worth of the frag by itself which again is not the right way to go as far as I am concerned. Otherwise adding influence of the fragged in the location to respawn sounds like an interesting idea to me. But I doubt it can be implemented in a sanely usable way.

I truncated everyone's replies. This post is long but I decided it was gonna be worth it to make sure this doesn't get dismissed for the wrong reasons:

A treatise of the spawn choosing ("pick-it") system

I like spawn killing, but not easy or predictable spawn killing.

Sometimes the previous down player gets a worse spawn after a mutual frag, which is pretty much a "fuck you" to his face after going all the trouble of getting your opponent out of stack and so on..

When the system is random, it balances the luck factor for both players. It forces players to be aware at all time, of the worst things that can happen and oppositely the best things can happen. The player in control can still get spawn frags the better he is aware of different routes the players tend to take from different spawns and it sometimes puts players into awkward situations that require improvisation and experience to make the best of it. I've personally enjoyed this system (in Reversion cup servers) more than the predictable system where you always end up with a linear and a repetitive spree of conversion frags. And it's not even an advantage of map knowledge, rather spawn system knowledge. I don't see as much value in that.

This actually makes it sound like Smile might AGREE with a lot of the points I've made about the "pick-it" spawn system.
-there wouldn't be such a thing as an easy or guaranteed spawn frag but it wouldn't be impossible either
-no "fuck yous" at all, it was your own choice (although there is the question of who spawns first if it's a mutual which I will address later in this reply)(also I realize the "fu" might happen in the other direction: the person spawning in gets control because the other one can't get to certain items fast enough: this is worth addressing and I'll do that later in the post)
-luck factor is low AFAICS (ofc no player can perfectly predict what the other player will do)
-the chance of a long spree of conversions is very low, and the same patters won't repeat either (if that's what he was saying, not sure)
-no requirement for spawn system knowledge per se

I do enjoy spawn killing and I also believe it should definitely be a staple part of the game. Obviously prediction is a big part of duels such as, knowing spawn points, listening to pickup sounds, timing them, or shooting around a corner and calculating where the opponent might be. I don't see the fun or the skill or even the entertainment value of basically influencing pretty much where they spawn. I think having a system that allows for variety and some times uncertainty makes you be on your toes and allows for things that wouldn't normally happen.

-no influencing where your opponent spawns (at least in any simple or reliable ways)
-DEFINITELY variety and uncertainty
-also it's not about what you think about spawn killing at current when you haven't tried the alternative, maybe ppl will like it even more
-still benefits you to know the spawn points and the rest of prediction stays the same

Random spawns: http://stats.xonotic.org/game/419977
Spawn furthest: http://stats.xonotic.org/game/456918

-this stuff (while unrelated to what I'm saying) is good because it's empirical data that can be used to judge various options

I think that system should be made such way to avoid repetitive spawn killing of one player by another. I cant forget the blood-boiling experience of spawning 3 (!!!) times in a row in the same spawn, each time being identically spawn killed by the opponent.
I think that there should be a mechanism that would prevent a player from spawning in the same spawn as in the previous time, to both prevent getting repeatedly pwned or gaining an advantageous position again.

-as before, this is eliminated (unless you yourself wanted that spawn 3 times and your opponent read you somehow)

The question is whether we actually consider "spawn prediction" a skill that adds to the depth of the game.

-if you didn't like spawn prediction as a skill it will be de-emphasized or at least there's less "black magic" about it

No one likes to be in the receiving end of spawn killing, but spawn killing is a traditional and important game dynamic in a competitive arena shooter. The point of the spawn system was to make spawns fair, but not a leisure trip that you can just happily walk out of. Dying is supposed to hurt your game and progress, not to reward with an opportunity to come back even in score. I love to spawn kill, but not when it's pointlessly easy.

-I don't think "is a traditional and important game dynamic in a competitive arena shooter" is an argument at all. It's just making an observation: this is how it's been before. Judging by the popularity of such games we CAN infer it's not game-breaking to have it that way but we can't infer anything about what other alternatives are worth. So it's not saying much from a broader point of view. If you HAVE played games with "pick-it" spawns do tell us more, but this doesn't convey any of it.
-"point was to make spawns fair but not a leasure trip": okay, here's something to think about. But my answer (more detailed below) is maybe it just means you can't frag your opponent in as many situations as with random OR semi-forced spawns.

Just because I was responding to your near ad-hominem attack doesn't mean I ignored everything you wrote. That's being a little bit dramatic.

No one said we're going with one option or the other - the verdict is not out yet.

-I apologize: I didn't want to attack anyone's person. But I don't hesitate to be anti-authoritarian or iconoclastic. If someone has a greater experience than someone else, SURELY what that's supposed to mean is they're able to conjure better arguments, right? And those arguments will speak for themselves (ideally) without even knowing who wrote them (however sometimes it has to be evaluated what the person's own interests or perceived interests are if any - that's not insinuation btw, just generally). But the way you put it in the first reply made it sound like you'll "take his word for it" to exaggerate a bit.
-You may not have ignored what I wrote in general, but you certainly didn't acknowledge it in your reply either. That's all I could see.

I think at least in competitive modes (which we are considering here predominantly, if I am not mistaken) the respawn time might be a bit too short to make a decision where to spawn. And increasing the time would imho just increase the worth of the frag by itself which again is not the right way to go as far as I am concerned. Otherwise adding influence of the fragged in the location to respawn sounds like an interesting idea to me. But I doubt it can be implemented in a sanely usable way.

-"But I doubt it can be implemented in a sanely usable way." I can tell you're not a visionary. How long did you spend on that question? An attitude like that certainly kills creativity.
-What the exact implementation is is a bit too much detail at this point but I'll give you an example workaround for respawn time: I said 5 seconds...
1. If we're talking about competitive play (in competitive modes) there's no reason you can't get fast enough in making your choice and inputting it. You have to think on your feet the whole time in these games anyway.
2. Even if you miss the chance it'll spawn you SOMEWHERE and you can play on. If you're new to the system that's more than likely to happen several times. In fact it doesn't require you to use it AT ALL. Ignore it if you like. Then, when you're a bit more experienced you'll naturally start to realize how some spawns really seem to be better in some sense than others on average and it will become part of your playing at least as naturally as positional thinking and timing do.
3. You could also reward the respawning player with a faster respawn the faster they make their choice. However, if you're too hasty you might make a bad decision. The kill cam (for some reasons casters never mention it) that hovers you over your body also shows you which way your opponent is going, so you could use that knowledge as part of your decision-making.
4. There's always hidden option C, but not everyone can see it or even believes in it
-increasing the worth of a frag: yes, if you're allowed more time to roam the map and collect resources... however SmileScythe was worried about the opposite ("Dying is supposed to hurt your game and progress, not to reward with an opportunity to come back even in score.": these two could be balanced by the fact that even though you're left low, you'll have some time (at least those 5 seconds) to collect your bones and restock up so even if you don't get conversions you DID get the one point on the scoreboard, but the person who gets to choose their spawn point will probably not get randomly spawn-fragged even if they're left in a worse position overall (because starting stack and being denied items) and likelier to get fragged again. So in this scenario (theoretically) neither player will be likely to feel like they got screwed over by luck.

Implementation:
-so you could go with the 5 second idea, or you could increase this to a maximum of 10 seconds or give it an even wider range like 3-10 seconds.
means you're missing out on stuff BUT far less chance on getting spawn fragged, more ways to jux your opponent a little
-after you're dead you're immediately shown the respawn screen:
let's say you choose your spawn point either by clicking on something (if you're playing an FPS your mouse skills should be okay) or using a hotkey (numpad for instance) and clicking enter or fire to confirm it. This way you can choose your spawn position first and then spend a little time thinking when you want it to happen so it's safe.
the respawn screen itself requires the most effort coding and assets -wise, but remember this is also the superior way to even learn the spawns in the first place and bridges a gap between players who have done their "homework" and those who haven't... even after the first 3 or 5 duels you've SURELY memorized EVERY spawn point on a given map.
-if there's a mutual frag and both want the same spawn, whoever confirms their choice first gets that spawn (which interestingly gives the advantage to the player who got fragged FIRST, but then it's difficult to exploit this without a lot of skill, also I'll address "frag timing" more later)
if you try to confirm a spawn where your opponent just spawned the game either won't let you or it will send you to a random spawn point (if this was deemed a bad situation to happen a lot)

Can you exploit being able to choose your spawn?
-so the question is does this system sometimes reward you for having gotten fragged? Well let's study the case here...
-in QL and other games where you spawn far away from your opponent, you have to realize that this might allow you to get access to some item and actually win control by dying. It's ALREADY a thing... but it's a very high level thing, it's counter-intuitive at first. But let's say you know what you're doing. Then blowing yourself up or letting yourself be fragged (while inflicting damage) might also sometimes give you the advantage with this system, probably even more so than in the QL system. However, there are two things to keep in mind:
skilled players take this into account - they know when it's best to leave their opponent alive and when to get the frags. So they don't have to go for it when items are spawning elsewhere.
if we wanted to make self-killing (which loses you a point ofc) a bit less attractive an option, there COULD just be a different lower limit to the respawn timer, so not 3 seconds, maybe 5 or 6
another option is to make self-kills lose you 2 points instead of 1

Relatedly, can't you exploit the longer respawn time when you're up frags and you just want to delay spawns as much as you can?
-Yes, it seems if the upper limit is 10 seconds then this DOUBLES the amount of time you're able to waste at the end of match compared to QL (dunno what it is in Xonotic at current).
-I think it IS better for the game not to increase the "rubbish time" by this much...
-and this COULD be negated by making spawns happen faster (5 second cap) when there's 1 minute left or so. However I think this would benefit the player who had control for the last two minutes even though the effect wouldn't be as great without spawn forcing. Maybe a concession would have to be made here?
-Another alternative popping to mind is to give both players let's say only 1 minute total of "spawn delay time" (that is being used every time they haven't spawned withing 5 seconds) for the whole match, which they then choose when they want to spend, but still the max spawn time is 10 seconds.
-So I don't really have the perfect answer to this. If you were to just go with 5 secs to choose it removes the option for a tactical delay longer than that. Something to test.


So Does This Actually Remove Luck, accentuate it or what?
-Well, it might seem it's luck whether you guess the spawn or not (and conversely whether you get caught or not), but I'd like to think it isn't as much luck as a strictly random system is. I don't know how to compare it in this respect to the QL system (spawn in 50% of furthest spawn points from opponent)
-But someone might also think poker comes down to luck. However, in the long run it certainly doesn't! The best players in poker are able to formulate educated guesses about how their opponent thinks about the situation. They may be able to pick up tendencies. Hell, even rock-paper-scissors has a strategy to it, all based on how people tend to play (although ofc it's not a competitive game in the same sense)! I'd like to rely on this fact ADDED TO the spawn locations not all having the same intrinsic value in a given situation to guess that it will stop feeling like pure luck given some experience.
-This is also the reason I think I can counter someone's argument (this was on QL forums earlier on) that if you choose the "pick-it" system, it becomes a recursive and unnecessarily complex mind game. Player A has to respawn and they look at their options, one of which seems objectively to yield the best rewards. Then they think "but wait, doesn't my opponent anticipate this very move? So I have to choose something else". Then they think "but wait again, if they know I won't go for it, won't they go somewhere else instead? So I SHOULD choose this spawn" and so on and so on... So this suggests that ultimately the best strategy is to always take the conservative but safe choice which denies your opponent as many opportunities as possible.
-My counter is this: Poker players (again) deal with the same paradox - and most decisions (not necessarily the hero calls and epic folds you see highlighted) ARE indeed made based on a systematic evaluation of odds. In addition to that, they actually have way way more time to think about their plays, in an FPS you'll only have those 5-10 seconds to work the thing out (and start moving in the right direction even before that) so making this systematic evaluation every time is probably impossible. Also, you don't always have perfect information to go by, maybe you don't know if a certain item is spawning or not. What I'm saying is you STILL have to go by your gut feeling, which is how the best people play anyway. No time for thoughts other than for timing items. So no matter how complex the scenario appears, it comes down to just making a call that you're forced to make very quickly. I hope that makes sense.

Adding a few novel scenarios (or at least emphasizing them)
-like I mentioned earlier, there are times when Quake players (and presumably Xonotic) don't want to get the frag just then
-when you know you're allowing your opponent to actually CHOOSE where they spawn, and there's no way to force it to happen elsewhere, a system like this would further emphasize needing to judge when the right time is to get the frag, when you actually want to leave your opponent alive (on low health) and so. The right time, at first glance, is whenever you've got all the resources on the map, but the more you wait, the less frags you're actually getting. So it might be worth the risk of losing control to give the opponent some chances, just so if control DOES shift later they can't catch your lead any more. That's how I reason this thing.
-There might even be times when neither player wants to frag the other one, which sounds pretty exotic and interesting to me, if I read the effects correctly. I'd like to see that!

Ultimately the best reason I can see to do this (= to try it) is experimentation. This project at least has no commercial pressure on it, so why not? And to rehash, in my vision you can always just choose a random spawn (determined by whatever system) if you don't want to think about it.

EDIT:
Since I started to write this I spent some time thinking about someone's suggestion to let the player choose the specific spot at which to spawn. Mario then said this runs into some technical issues. However, I figured maybe the following could work:
Instead of doing it via spawn screen, you'd get to choose a spawn simply by hovering to it in spec mode. The same parameters (e.g. 3-10 seconds) still apply. This would allow you to follow your opponent around a bit, see what they're doing, maybe get an item timing... however the longer you wait, the closer to them you'll be forced to spawn. On some maps I predict there's windows and such that protect you from direct harm even if you're able to see what your opponent is doing through them... but maybe it's not a big problem.
In case this leads into getting stuck inside things, I want to suggest the following modification to the spec mode (or rather to create another version of it): give the spec mode camera the same hitbox the player normally has. Won't this prevent it from getting to invalid places completely (unless players are already able to do it?
If speccing players are getting too much information, maybe could drawing items and other players be temporarily disabled? Otherwise reducing the spec hovering speed? I don't want to get stuck in details here...

thought I was on r/battlefield for a moment there

-"But I doubt it can be implemented in a sanely usable way." I can tell you're not a visionary. How long did you spend on that question? An attitude like that certainly kills creativity.

Thank you for enlightening me about my personality.

While I agree adding an option to influence spawn position could add to the gameplay depth and remove some if not all of the luck elements of spawning, I still have my doubts on the implementation. As you remarked yourself an influencable respawn time could be exploited by the leading player, which has to be effectively countered. A movable spec-cam could tell you too much about the other player's next moves. A voting screen with all spawns would require touching all maps to make them compliant and could end up with confusing voting screens depending on the number of spawns. What I could think might work would be like three pre-defined respawn-rules to choose from by hotkey/voting screen (such as furthest spawn, some other feasible option to be invented, random spawn). It should not be possible to deliberately choose the closest spawn though (how frustrating would that be!) and I would be against influencing the respawn time in duels for the said reason.

Prove me wrong: to me a visionary is someone who possesses of this stuff:
-powerful imagination
-no unnecessary self-censorship (or ofc censorship of other people's ideas)
-no egotistical drive (at least not as main motivator for creativity but ofc it can well be there)
-appreciation of new ideas in favor of old ones, exploring them for its own sake

Your post mostly rehashes challenges that I already laid out apart from the 3-choice system you propose. That's not incredibly helpful. I already suggested a few workarounds but I think the main thing I didn't say is this - every time we use words like "counter, solve, address" there's a good chance how we're operating is we're changing the one variable (spawn system) and we're trying to then tinker with other variables until the sum or factor is restored to its old value. This is because if we abandon that, we suddenly have to reinvent everything in a sense. That's a different kind of gap to cross, like a meta-gap where you change not only the rules of the game, but the rules of changing the rules too if you see what I mean. So here we're looking at ways to e.g. prevent the end-of-match garbage time from growing any bigger, but what if we just accepted that it could be let to be there? What'll actually happen to our lives? Or if we accept that the vote screen (actually let's call it spawn screen) is going to have lots of (optional) stuff on it?

Even if you're not ready for that, why don't you at least accept them as trade-offs. That's what they're called. (I'm not addressing anyone in particular with that to be clear.) They could be bigger than this.

It hasn't been explicit in the conversation whether we're talking just about duel or about other modes too. How many spawn points are there in a big TDM map (official ones) at most? How about the biggest duel maps?

http://i.imgur.com/KllJV.jpg
Looks like Furious Heights from QL has 17 spawns. Apparently Memento Mori used a program called Deep Exploration, which is not free and also there was lots of manual work involved in creating the map. The blue dot BTW is not a spawn, it's the player's position. The red and green dots show where the enemy can spawn if the player is standing there. Anyway, the size of the dots indicates how high up the spawn is. There are two spawn points directly on top of each other.

So here's some more speculation if we had maps like this:
-I think the way to select the spawn from such a map would be simply to click at a circular space around each dot (bigger than the dot is to make it easier to hit them). If spawns are close to each other or overlap, the hitboxes have to be manually adjusted, but it can be made a rule that the top spawn click box is always on top of the dot while the bottom one is below it or so. Seeing as mouse skills are used very much in FPS games to begin with we shouldn't assume people can't click that accurately. Also the map can be scaled up...
-If the map was very complex (if this was done in a team mode), maybe two maps next to each other, one showing the bottom half and the other one the top half or something like that could be used.

However, I'm also wondering if we could get away with something different that I already mentioned: you could go to a map editor, and I'm assuming you could make it render the map from a given angle with the first wall removed so you can see inside it. You could also create a different mode of rendering the map, e.g. make spawn points look different and make them show through walls or whatever it takes. With a careful selection of the angle and with some manual adjustments maybe this would be all it takes to create a spawn map. Ofc afterwards you'd add the actual hit box data into the image.

A way to perhaps orient the player more (though I repeat no-one has to use this spawn system) would be to draw an indicator on the map showing where the player died, but I don't immediately see how to do that with a pre-rendered 3d map. With a 2d one you can take the player's coordinates and overlay a dot on the map based on that.

If there was more discussion on the best way to do all this, I would gladly help with the manual work.

This discussion has devolved to the point of absurdity.

LotBlind, thank you for your ideas. Unfortunately ideas are not implementations. If you'd like to code a proof-of-concept, please do so. We'll test it and provide feedback. I think you'll find that your imagination will quickly outpace what can be implemented feasibly.

Well, I'm not a coder. So I guess that's that. I'm not sad though, I've laid down a pretty good summary of the whole concept here that I can use later.

You're wrong about imagination though, it can also bring you easier solutions and offers you more alternatives to choose from.

Also just a second here: you call it "devolution" if someone actually pursues their ideas past the initial one paragraph ("how about we do this, what do you think"), putting quite a bit of work into it too, and being ready to put in more? If that's devolution you must come from opposites land.

If your idea is worth doing, you shouldn't have any problems convincing a developer to implement it even if you don't code yourself.

Halogene: In case what you meant by "can't see a sane way to implement it" you meant how to CODE it, I apologize, because I misunderstood you. I don't wanna comment on that.

Antibody: Are you talking about this game or in general? The one thing I'm not going to comment on is how to code it, and so that's my black spot. As for other games - there was another thread someone else started earlier with the same idea but that one got shot down (by Smile and others) for in-game reasons, not coding reasons. This is why I felt the idea wasn't being appreciated. And Smilescythe himself let us know he's been doing that for lots of other games he's been involved with, so guess why I felt a little pissed?

What's wrong with this (rough) implementation:
-take the part of the code that activates after you die, starting the respawn timer and generating the random number to determine your spawn (or whatever it currently does)
-create an if-clause that listens for inputs (keypad), so that if the player hits a key in the keypad within that time, you use the input to replace calling for the random number (I presume every spawn has a number from 0-X)
-Now the rest of the code runs normally.

If it's more complicated than that I give up.

With "sane way to implement" I meant "make it reasonably easy to use with technical efforts that are worth the benefit gained from it". Basically I see that the concept of the player influencing the respawn position could add to the gameplay depth, but I doubt we can manage to implement a solution that reduces the necessary complexity to an intuitively usable system while being implementable with reasonably low effort. Given the lack of development ressources as usual with open source projects it is hard to find people that implement more urgent stuff than this as is.

Okay, I see. If you wanted to explain any of the technical detail I'm listening simply cause I'm curious, but I can tell you're busy so feel free not to.

@LotBlind, what you are proposing requires a new during-the-game (as opposed to before/after-the-game) interface, which calls for quite some new code on top of what we have now. How do we present all choices to users? A menu like the voting? A spawn point screenshot like map voting screen? Move users through each spawn point quickly and wait for their confirmation keypress? What happens if the user presses nothing? What if somebody chooses a spawn point just to kill other players who passed by? Or wait until a second before Megahealth appears, and then spawn to snatch it?

All of that requires a lot of efforts to carefully think through, to design, and to code. It's just too different from what we have now. Since most players have learned to cope with spawn kill as part of the game, the cost to implement all that, compared to its gain, is very hard to justify.

On the other hand, having a fixed rule utilizing randomness or simple distance calculation is much simpler to implement because we don't need to worry about coming up with an interface that affects the game flow.

I'm not part of the core team, but I can really appreciate their careful prioritization of tasks, given that everyone is volunteering their own time and resources.

If you feel strongly about your vision, perhaps you can try to

• start a campaign to fund some kind of bounty (or fund it yourself)
  
• hire somebody to realize your vision by writing and submitting the code
  
• invest the time to learn to code Xonotic yourself
  

EDIT: I saw your message about listening to numkeys. Well, I am not sure that works either -- the client supposedly don't send the key codes, but the bound actions instead (and a lot of people bind numkeys to team play messages). So we would need to code that during that short window of respawning, we swap out the regular keybinds, or something of the same effects. I may be wrong in this, but again, somebody has to spend the time to design this process. The best way to understand the complexity here is to try to learn it yourself. I think you may find it rewarding, since you have a lot of nice ideas.

@BuddyFriendGuy

Thanks for your reply (for some reason I'm not getting notifications anymore). I've already addressed most of the points you mention in your first paragraph - and can envision more alternatives - but as for all the rest, as before, I am unable to comment.

The only thing I'm going to do with any of this is bring it up again if I feel like approaching another development project with similar goals. The idea is generally all I'm interested in. It doesn't matter to me if it doesn't get implemented in a given context, so long as it's not for the wrong reasons.

I've tried learning coding a few times, even did a few courses at uni. It comes down to energy. I get worn out before I get anywhere. That's why I'm doing what I think I'm best at anyway.

Okay, I think this might be the time to abandon this topic.