Just played some COD at a friend’s house today. Played Team Death Match, and I noticed something. That game is a mess. People just spam all they have and rush in to everything carelessly, because they will re-spawn in a second if they die anyway. We also played Search And Destroy, and I noticed people are much more cautious and try to survive and play smart.
Halo has always had a small time limit on death, and I think that is what kept Halo from being the big mess that TDM in COD is. You still have to wait, not long, but you still have to stare at your timer as it goes down. It wasn’t much, it didn’t make people completely go serious mode, but it was enough to keep the game from becoming a big mess.
I also think the game gets boring quicker when there is no timer, its like the game is spoiling you with constant play, and no punishment for death.
The timer isn’t going away anytime soon, however the ability to instantly respawn or have a respawn timer will vary depending on the playlist and/or map. Like your CoD example, more casual gametypes will likely have the ability to “hit X to respawn” when you die, whereas more competitive gametypes will have a set timer. I can imagine this will carry over and be map-specific as well, whereas more CQC-type maps will have a timer, and BTB style maps will have instant. Just my speculation.
This is why me and a buddy call TDM in CoD “always one more”. Cause if you manage to kill 3 and start to relax, a 4th comes out and gets you. You kill 4, there’s a 5th. You kill all 6, and the first ones have already respawned and are back for more before you’ve even had the chance to reload and recover from the first time you killed them.
It’s one of my few concerns for halo 4, but if it’s managed by gametype and map size well it shouldn’t be a big deal.
> The timer isn’t going away anytime soon, however the ability to instantly respawn or have a respawn timer will vary depending on the playlist and/or map. Like your CoD example, more casual gametypes will likely have the ability to “hit X to respawn” when you die, whereas more competitive gametypes will have a set timer. I can imagine this will carry over and be map-specific as well, whereas more CQC-type maps will have a timer, and BTB style maps will have instant. Just my speculation.
I think it’ll also be useful when somebody goes AFK. Now they’ll just sit at a respawn screen until they get back instead of standing in the middle of the battlefield feeding the enemy’s score.
> I think it’ll also be useful when somebody goes AFK. Now they’ll just sit at a respawn screen until they get back instead of standing in the middle of the battlefield feeding the enemy’s score.
Except that the timer isn’t fully gone. It will still spawn you in when it counts down to zero, or you can choose to spawn in before the timer ends.
OP: The only time I would find Instant Spawns in Halo to be a problem is for betrayal and suicide pennalties. If you can instaspawn when you are supposed to be pennalized, then what was the point in getting the pennalty in the first place?