Introducing Spawn Map Feature!

Hi, we got something new interesting on Champ's Duel: Spawn Map!

it's disabled by default, you have to vote for that:
vcall spawn_map

it doesn't work on hub however, but hub was designed for spawn kills anyway, all the other maps work.
come, try it!

here you can see it:
https://youtu.be/ok1Wxs7m9Ww?t=4m36s

This is a defeatist feature made for defeatists, with an illusion of opportunity to the one who dies a lot. I respect whoever put their effort and time into implementing this just for the fact that you're doing something, but unfortunately it's been put into the wrong area with a lack of understanding of Xonotic's metagame. The thought-out benefits of this feature are wrong and I don't think I can address this enough. Let me try and explain.

Spawn killing has very little to do with low-mid tier players having hard time getting anywhere in skill, or in general this game "not being fun". Feature like this will change absolutely nothing, sure you will maybe die 1 or 2 seconds later than you of would before. All you're doing here is redirecting the things players should be focusing on, you're telling people that they lose because spawn killing exists. This is what you got wrong in the conceptual state of this project. You're basically offering a feature that gives you an opportunity to make tactical decisions after you've DIED. Whereas those same decisions used to be made while you were giving it your all to not to DIE in first place. I know already EXACTLY (even without testing) how I would abuse this system. Given the opportunity, I would deliberately lure my opponent into a shitty place and lose a fight with a shitty stack and just snatch the items that I didn't deserve - all of that by simply spawning next to them. No matter how I see it, this is in my opinion the wrong way to play Xonotic or arena shooters in general.

But setting that aside for a while, let's assume you're a player who doesn't know how to abuse this system and simply thinks it prevents you from being shred to pieces.. If your opponent is dominating the map resources, it doesn't matter where you spawn. You will be in no position to fight for as long as you don't have the stack to do so. All you can and should do is run and dodge, until your opponent makes a mistake. This is what you'd do anyway even if you couldn't control your spawn, if you're looking at it this way - being in control of your spawns makes no difference whatsoever.

And I've got proof. Here's an example from the world cup: https://youtu.be/QsYGEO3T_BM?t=3h52m45s
^That goes on for the rest of the match. You see, what you count as spawn killing is not exactly whats happening there, but it might as well be. The situation that I'm in there is Fuse's equivalent of Aerowalk's instant spawn rape. Mossepo is on the run and whether he gets to run hundred meters or a one meter, it makes no difference because I'm faster and more tanked than him. At that point I could of won any fight even if my accuracy were worse than his.

When you die in Xonotic, it's not a "I'll get him this time" situation and it's not a "fresh start with full health" situation. When you die, it means you're fucked. Dying in Xonotic is meant to put you into unfavorable situation and the intensity of it depends on the experience and skill in various areas that your opponent has. Hate spawn killing? Play people of your own skill level or git gud, simple as that.

Current spawn system is not a luck based system, you always spawn in a general direction somewhere because your opponent is somewhere else in some other general direction. Learn to read the game and don't depend on this defeatist spawn system. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing against this feature because it'd be threatening to traditional Xonotic or anything. I don't find the existence of this feature threatening at all, because I'm confident it won't catch on simply because the only demographic of people who would find this feature good, are too impatient to making game changer decisions in first place. This becomes apparent from the fact that the only people who get spawn killed to the point of making these features are the players who rush into fights fresh off the spawn. LOL. The illusion of this feature's benefits will wear out fast as the reality steps in and those people would rather just spawn right away and it doesn't matter where.

To me, being able to control the respawn time within that 5 second time frame has pretty much solved the problem, has it not?

The idea for this feature doesn't revolve entirely around preventing spawn kills: https://gitlab.com/xonotic/xonotic-data....ssues/1745
The code already existed for Onslaught, where you can teleport between the control points, and even pick which control point you spawn near. Repurposing for other modes was quite easy.
Whether it will actually be useful or even used remains to be seen, but the option is nice to have.

Even if it isn't all that popular, this served a much greater purpose by uncovering a bug that's existed for years, in which you could basically wait as long as you wanted before re-spawning, even in duel.


As for the "defeatist" game play issues, I think it'd be better to take advice from someone who isn't an "elitist".

spawn map isn't supposed to replace anything, it's just an option to play with.

As for the "defeatist" game play issues, I think it'd be better to take advice from someone who isn't an "elitist".

"Don't fix something that ain't broken". With defeatism I mean the mentality of giving up on learning the mechanics and insisting shortcuts to people with this mentality, making the old way less relevant and less rewarding. This has nothing to do with elitism. You're meant to kick the ball in soccer, not pick it up and walk it pass the goalie. Other people have better stamina than you and can run longer and faster, you're not supposed to have robotic legs that help you keep up with others indefinitely. There's rules such as holding your opponents, you can block them but not hold and drag them by their clothes. Or is that too much elitism for you? ? Is it really that difficult to understand where I'm coming from? If you think people who don't know how to play this game are better for advice then I feel sorry for this community.

The idea for this feature doesn't revolve entirely around preventing spawn kills: https://gitlab.com/xonotic/xonotic-data....ssues/1745

I did not know that and I understand, but it changes nothing. You can still read what I said with an assumption that it was. Quoting from gitlab:

The purpose of this would be to reduce unnecessary randomness, decrease spawnfrags

This has been already solved long time ago. There's no randomness or luck in spawns anymore and like Halogene said, if you pay attention you can prevent getting spawnkilled by observing your opponent's moves and delaying the respawn. Spawn kills are almost a rarity now, even in Aerowalk. Of course, this depends on the player. If your tactic is to rush off a spawn then sure, you're gonna die. This is not a good tactic EVEN if you were in control where you spawned. Only way to make this a working tactic is if you had a spawnshield that lasted for many seconds, which again would be a wrong direction in my opinion.

From a gameplay perspective, it would create a bit of comeback power and remove a large source of unneeded variance in matches.

Does unneeded variance refer to randomness? Because again, that's not happening with the current spawn system. Everything happens for a reason and there's always a way to counter it. And as bizarre as it may sound, dying a couple times is one way to counter a situation as well. Here's an example of that: https://youtu.be/QsYGEO3T_BM?t=2h2m37s

^Here ZeroQL makes the mistake of following me and once I noticed that I hid myself to delay enough time for 100a to spawn and lead him into an inconvenient area from where once I die, I will spawn closer to 100a and be able to deny it from him. This was a deliberate choice which worked in my favor and which I also repeat here once more later in the same game: https://youtu.be/QsYGEO3T_BM?t=2h6m45s

So basically what I'm doing here is the same as what this "spawn choice" feature does, except I achieve this by controlling my opponent and the pace of the game. This should by no means be possible in literally every situation where you die. Because it dumbs down the purpose of decisions you made when you were alive and in some cases even rewards stupid decisions. How do I know it rewards stupid decisions? Because you can choose a spawn EVERY TIME that you die.

I think fun situations arise more often when you can actively decide to spawn in front of a low-health opponent and rush him with a shotgun+laser.

This defeats the purpose of staying alive. If every time you barely lose a fight, you can make a come back deliberately then there's no point in collecting resources in first place. You can sort of do this already though, not with shotgun+laser though, but with whatever non-spawn weapon you find. This also depends on your opponent, some people don't go down no matter what, because they're clever.. in which case you should obviously give up on that tactic. I think the issue here is that you haven't simply played the game enough to realize that.

There's nothing really to understand, it's intended as an optional feature for servers that want it, not to "fix" anything or replace any systems. If you don't want to play with it on his server, vote it off.

Oh, I'm not going to be using it and will be voting it off every time definitely. I know that. I'm just explaining my reasoning and why it doesn't work in case someone gets the idea to force this by default. My entire point is that whoever puts time into this feature for this specific purpose is wasting their time, whether or not it is to be an optional feature or not.

As stated before, it was not implemented to prevent spawn kills, and its original use is a great addition to the gameplay of modes with control points.
The use of it in duel is part of an experimental branch not currently planned for merge, Champion using and announcing it publicly has only stirred the flames of balance thread war.

I think that this is a splendid feature for domination or, possibly, assault game mode. Good to clarify that it is not intended to "fix" spawn killing, I don't see it fitting into official duel game mode as well.

Champion using and announcing it publicly has only stirred the flames of balance thread war.

This kid is pretty good at what he does, isn't he?