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Contents:
-Intro
-Respawn System
-Brief History
-Imbalance in Quake
-Increase the Balance?
-Reinvent the Spawn
-Conclusion

Thursday, 07 December 2000 -
The Respawn System ? comment
In a Q3A 1on1 (I'll mostly talk about Q3A), you play 15 minutes (usually, rarely to a frag limit). During the game, you will get fragged by your opponent and then you respawn somewhere on the map with the default weapon set and no armour.

The respawn is obviously necessary for the game to continue. You have to come back somehow or the game will be over. But the mere fact that you come back changes the game dramatically, because (1) you lose most of your gear and (2) you arrive at one of a number of random respawn points. Suddenly the game balance has been changed.

It works out as something like a "penalty" for "losing the point" - you have "lost the advantage". You are now not only one frag down, but you are also more vulnerable to giving away another. Now you have to employ a different set of skills to "get back into the game". You must try to restrict your loss to just that one frag or you will fall too far behind (or conversely, lose your lead).

The art of surviving a respawn and regaining control of the map is one of the things that makes Quake challenging and interesting. You must avoid your opponent while you try to grab some armour and a decent weapon. Being "in control of the map" your opponent will have the advantage in territory, armour and health, and their objective will be to cash in on that before you can catch up.

Your situation can vary with map design. In an open map you might spawn in full view of your opponent, in which case you may have barely a moment or so to either escape or maybe hurt them a bit before you die, so that when you respawn again you will have more of a chance. Depending on what weapons are lying around, you might have a chance of retaking the map if you can hit them before they tank up.

In a closed map, you might respawn on the "weak side" of the map, and you *should* have some time to "kit up" before you attempt to take your opponent on. You then have a couple of options to take control of the map from your opponent - you can either try to catch them by surprise with a "first strike", thus reducing their armor/health to a value closer to your own and making the rest of the fight "fair", or you can try to sneak past them and steal the power items without even putting up a fight. In both cases, the objective is to redress the balance somehow, winning back the point and control of the map.

That's the theory, anyway. However, in practice it doesn't always work out that way.

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