What are some alternatives to respawn timers in multiplayer games?

Give certain weapons/skills a cooldown period after respawning, so they can get right back into the game if they choose but can't go guns blazing.

>>387232331
Was just gonna say this.

"Back up arriving" timers; as in everyone who has died can come back at the same time, during set intervals.

Then there's the CS' hardcore system:
No respawning whatsoever during a match.

Battlefield's medics.

>>387232331
You mean like restricting the ability to do damage? Like in a Battlefield game, you can't shoot for the respawn timer but you can position/run around?

>>387232442
That's what Red Orchestra does. It means some people wait the full time though, and some just get lucky. Does that really solve the problem? I might opt for it but idk.

>>387232128
>Obviously they're there to punish death and give the other team time to complete an objective
If the game is heavily team and objective based, then you don't really have an alternative to making players wait it out a bit through various means unless you want it to be a complete clusterfuck. remember insta-spawn 2fort servers and how nothing would ever get done?

>alternative to respawn timers
You mean they get an instant respawn every time?

>>387232128
>but it seems shitty to make players wait for an arbitrary countdown.
Nope. People just need to stop being ADHD fucks, or go play some oldschool Arena shooters instead.

>>387232442
Group revives have the added benefit of retards not trickling in one by one.

>>387232871
It's not about being ADHD. Waiting, doing literally nothing, isn't fun. It makes shit suspenseful, which is awesome, the highs are higher, but the lows are lower. You should try to raise the highs (without becoming numb) and remove the lows.

>>387232128
Permadeath.

>>387233087
removing the lows devalues the highs

>>387233087
>Waiting, doing literally nothing, isn't fun
>it makes shit suspenseful
way to contradict yourself in a same sentence.
if you don't like said system, play some other game.

>>387233087
It would make you play more carefully knowing you have to wait longer to play again

>>387233308
To a degree, def. But you can keep pushing the highs to be higher and more frequent. Starting an entire NES game like Ninja Gaiden over from the beginning when you ran out of lives made it tense af, but it wasn't that fun when you ran out. Checkpoints like in the Souls games are a much better solution for example.

>>387233505
Yeah, but people aren't more careful. They're not lemmings run-straight-in, but yeah.

>>387233650
After playing a bunch of tf2 no respawn, trying to win a game really sucks. Pushing a defence is a bit easier but can also be hard if you don't seem to make a dent in the attack.
Constantly contesting the final point is shitty.
You need some sort of downtime in order to allow for pushes/defences to succeed and feel worthwhile

>>387232128
Obviously varying in implementation depending on the type of game, but you could have 2+ "fronts" that fighting is occuring on, separated by either distance or even instances. Upon death, the timer only applies to the "front" you expired in.

Alternatively, have less important support roles that can be performed whilst waiting for the next respawn that give small bonuses to your team, like moving munitions or something analogous.

Games I play the timers are usually less than ten seconds. That's more than lenient, considering you went and did the only thing you are supposed to avoid in the game. There absolutely should be some sort of drawback to dying in a game about killing, and there absolutely should be time for you curse your enemy and sip your beer and collect yourself.

Taking a few seconds to scan the map and decide what to do next is good. Without a timer, doing these things would be seen as a waste of valuable time and people would probably play worse and more inflexibly. And when you blink from place to place, that's disorienting and it's going to take a few seconds to figure out your situation anyway.

I think some arbitrarity is in order in competitive games, but an alternative could be a minigame or Warioware-style microgame. Tapping in a reinforce command, a la Helldivers, or in a game like Titanfall or Section 8, guiding a jumper between flak bursts on your way to the map might be a good way to make those few seconds more interesting -- if there is nothing to do while the timer ticks like changing loadout or watching the map.