Wave Spawns - 2019

Introduction

The new spawn system is working well. Fights rage on every open front; giving planetmans choice about where and how they fight. Each fight is an appropriate size; helping with performance and generating more battles. Offence is supported by the spawn system as well as defence; encouraging change in the front lines and giving us different bases to fight over each night.

And yet the spawn system which has proven to be a game changer is not achieving everything it could. With a minor tweak it can support teamwork, and that is something the game is sorely lacking.

Apex Legends has proven that a group that spawns together fights together, and Planetside’s spawn system does not do this. Go to any spawn point and wait. Observe that the vast majority of players head off on their own towards the spawn point, only to get picked off as they leave the spawn or when they reach the point and face a group of entrenched enemies.

If a group wants to spawn into an area together they all have individual timers to fight, disrupting their coordination and forcing them to wait around if they do want to act as a group.

Now other games have a solution to this; they spawn groups together all at once. Apex Legends does this but on a very small scale, but then so does every FPS that only gives you one life to lose, Counterstrike as an example.

However on Auraxis’ vast battlefields a single life would simply not work so how could we regulate spawning when everyone dies at different times and in different places?

One answer is wave spawning, and that is what I am arguing the case for as being the next step in the recent spawn overhaul.

Details

How it would work is that individual player’s spawn timers would be replaced by spawn timers which are dependent on the actual spawn point. Every point would spawn all players that have chosen to spawn there at set intervals, no matter when they died beforehand.

The recent spawn changes could be factored in, with specific spawns being blocked out or delayed for the same reasons. This change would apply to all spawn points; deployed Sunderers, spawn beacons and hard spawns in bases. It should also apply for instant action and squad spawns.

Benefits

This would mean that players naturally group up and move as a team towards the cap point from the spawn, giving them more chance of success as they support each other and at the very least give the dug in enemy more targets to shoot at. This would make fights less “busy” as the wave of players would naturally protect each other’s flanks, forming a front line where opposing waves meet, instead of small skirmishes.

It would make farming spawns harder to do as there are more targets thereby insulating new players from the harshness of chaotic battlefields, hopefully making them stick with the game up and over the initial difficulty curve.

It would give lulls in combat if one side manages to wipe out all of an enemy wave, allowing them to push up and take ground, helping to shift the battle line and progress through the base.

It could also add to the atmosphere of the game by giving players others to push besides and drop pod in with without any real coordination needed. With more players nearby doing the same thing squads could also form more fluidly with squad leaders sending out invites to those around them using the Q menu.

All in all it should give everyone a better experience, bar those who enjoy farming single foes trickling into their sights from their spawn which probably is not an ideal gameplay loop.

Issues

Now wave spawning has been mentioned as something that is a possibility with the spawn overhaul but Wrel recently said that he is not sure if it going to make it into the game. I argue that it should be because of the teamwork benefits I have mentioned above, however there are a few issues that should be addressed.

First is that in chaotic situations beacons, squad spawns and Sunderers can become available and then get destroyed within seconds, so when placed there should be a grace period of 10s or so when any spawns on those are instant, or with a very short delay beyond existing tier 2/3 spawns if applicable.

Second with my total lack of technical experience I wonder if spawning potentially dozens of players at once could affect server performance, so that would have to be checked.

Third the length of timers would have to go through a period of adjustment – I would start off with double the current spawn delay as then the average everyone has to wait would be the same as currently with half waiting longer, half less. From this I would work down as I imagine it would be felt to be too long.

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