Can we talk about spawns?

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

In short, H5 spawns are some of the worst spawns I’ve seen in any video game. They remind me of the early COD games when they hadn’t quite dialed in how to do them correctly. It’s terrible.

I have played dozens of games on almost every map, especially the player-made maps in ranked they’re awful with spawns, and in every game I will spawn in getting shot by an enemy multiple times. The problem is 100x worse on small maps like Truth and seems to be mitigated fairly well on larger maps like Coliseum, but not much else. The game seems to prioritize spawning on your team, but half the time it just drops you into the enemy line of fire with nowhere to go. When it doesn’t spawn you on teammates, it spawns you across the map from your team where you are almost immediately singled-out and killed because you’ve essentially spawned in enemy territory.

There’s a combination of spawn areas on maps, but the game HAS to fix it’s algorithm to match the fast-paced play style H5 has compared to previous Halos. It feels like the same code used in H3 is still being used now, but that doesn’t work with the advanced movement system shoved into H5. There’s always been the tactic of “forcing spawns” in certain areas, especially the higher up in ranked you get, but the game seems to have a horrendous time managing any capable spawn placements at all. You either end up on a teammate getting shot or isolated in enemy territory where you’re sure to get double or triple teamed. H5 has made some solid changes to improve gameplay over the years, but this one issue has persisted since launch and it’s infuriating.

As I mentioned above, the problem is even more exaggerated on player-made maps in the current rotation. I’m talking Echelon, Fissure, Russet, etc. All of these routinely spawn people within enemy sight-lines and it makes playlists like SWAT nearly unplayable. You’re lucky if your average life is more than 20 seconds. I’ve actually reached out to some of the makers of those maps and even they agree they can’t do much better than what’s there because of the underlying issue with H5 spawns. I know 343 is probably neck-deep in Infinite right now, but it’d be nice to see some updates to balance the spawns and gameplay a little more to the current-gen game.

  • Beef
2

I hate to say it, but being spawn trapped is 100% of the time your teammates doing. Lots of expert players preach map control and staying alive as two very important aspects to Halo. There are lots of things your teammate is doing that is getting you crappy spawns. I remember in particular one match of Team Snipers on Halo 3 I was getting spawn killed over and over on Standoff because my teammates were just walking outside out of cover the entire game, therefore I would spawn right next to him. Another stupid thing your team is doing is constantly rushing the other team and not staying as a unit. When they do this, it creates a domino effect of each person on the team getting team killed one by one, and this eventually leads to the other team catching you and your team spawning and just destroying you every time.

Long story short: if your teammates suck at moving in a map and don’t take cover or stay alive when they need to, you’re gonna get some bad spawns.

I do agree that a lot of the SWAT spawns are pretty unfair because there are people who constantly spawn in and get shot instantly. I’ve advocated that a .5 second spawn protection would help with the problem seeing as how the spawns are always going to remain the same. However, that thread got trolled and shot down by players who don’t even play SWAT and I was basically told to “git good” by gold and plat players regardless of me playing SWAT at an onyx/champ level and experiencing the problem first hand by players who memorize exactly where each spawn is.

3

> 2535448062173159;2:
> I hate to say it, but being spawn trapped is 100% of the time your teammates doing. Lots of expert players preach map control and staying alive as two very important aspects to Halo. There are lots of things your teammate is doing that is getting you crappy spawns. I remember in particular one match of Team Snipers on Halo 3 I was getting spawn killed over and over on Standoff because my teammates were just walking outside out of cover the entire game, therefore I would spawn right next to him. Another stupid thing your team is doing is constantly rushing the other team and not staying as a unit. When they do this, it creates a domino effect of each person on the team getting team killed one by one, and this eventually leads to the other team catching you and your team spawning and just destroying you every time.
>
> Long story short: if your teammates suck at moving in a map and don’t take cover or stay alive when they need to, you’re gonna get some bad spawns.
>
> I do agree that a lot of the SWAT spawns are pretty unfair because there are people who constantly spawn in and get shot instantly. I’ve advocated that a .5 second spawn protection would help with the problem seeing as how the spawns are always going to remain the same. However, that thread got trolled and shot down by players who don’t even play SWAT and I was basically told to “git good” by gold and plat players regardless of me playing SWAT at an onyx/champ level and experiencing the problem first hand by players who memorize exactly where each spawn is.

I agree about the teammates to an extent, but at times there’s really no way to control the spawns. Even going back and watching HCS tourneys, you can see players popping into places that just make no sense. To extend your thought though, if the ONLY people who are capable of not having horrible spawns are professional players, then you need to rethink the way you do spawns.

Not to cater too much to the casual base, but to be fair they’re 99% of the player base. I shouldn’t have to play the game for 1000 hours and know the mechanics like I wrote them myself to be able to get a decent spawn. It’s poor game design at that point.

4

Not to necro my own post here, but I wanted to write down my thoughts on how the spawns in H5 seem to work, and how they NEED to work to compensate for things…

So, in the current game, it seems like spawns work in the way below albeit this will be a super basic structure.

(Player dies) - death. obviously.
(Check open spawn points/areas on map)/(Check if friendlies in combat or not) - eliminate options of friendlies actively in combat as spawn points.
(Check friendly positions)/(Check enemy positions) - basic check run to see where players on map are.
(Choose to spawn on friendly or in spawn area) - choice of area spawn or team spawn.
(Spawn with .5s screen fade-in) - fade-in here for rendering sake I’d suspect.

Super basic, but it’s what I’ve gotten from playing games so far. The big problem here is the second step (check enemy positions). It seems the game only references the current position of players in a static sense. Meaning it only gets the position, but not what direction they are facing or what direction they’re moving. This is where the issue comes in on small maps like Truth, Regret, and almost all player-made maps. I think they need to add a line(s) that references the DIRECTION that players are moving to compensate for the insane movement in the game itself. If you’re only checking position, but not movement, then the amount of time from when the code runs to the spawn-in is enough time for enemies to move across the map and get within a sight line of you. It should probably looks something like this, again mine is basic.

(Player dies) - death.
(Check open spawn points/areas)/(Check what friendlies in combat) - eliminate spawning on friendlies in combat within x seconds.
(Check friendly locations and movement direction) - where is your team collapsing? adjust.
(Check enemy locations and movement direction) - where is the enemy collapsing? adjust.
(Choose whether to spawn in area or directly on teammate) - final decision based on others above.
(Spawn with .5s fade-in) - love to eliminate fade-in, but likely not possible.

Yes I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this the past few days. It’s the game designer in me and it could be an idiot but… hey I tried.

EDIT 1: Oh and if you’re thinking “but enemies could just run the other way after the check”, yes they could. However doing so breaks them out of sprint, requires input from player, getting back up to sprint speed, etc. It’d be within the realm of acceptance if they did that I think.

EDIT 2: The equation also needs to take into account the average human reaction time. Somewhere around ~1 second for people to spawn in, see where they spawned, get bearings and go, etc. Even running into an enemy within 2s of spawn is annoying, but at least I have a fair chance of shooting back in that scenario. I’m trying to fix the “no-win” scenarios where you’re spawning physically into bullets/sight lines.

5

If I remember correctly, H5’s spawn system is a scoring system where certain actions add or remove spawn influence.

If an enemy is standing in a spawn volume, looking at a spawn point through transparent or no object, or if a grenade or other explosive is on the ground or has been, then the spawn influence is decreased.
If a teammate is in a spawn volume, it will increase spawn influence. But if a teammate looks at a spawn, it will decrease the spawn influence.

With the addition of weapon pads, I believe they also influence spawns away from an area. So that contributes to some weird spawns.