It’s been said elsewhere, but it bears repeating: The respawn timers in Warzone Firefight are a massive buzzkill. You’re in a pitched battle with a level boss, when suddenly – oh. I suppose I’m sitting here doing nothing for the next 30 seconds. Dum de dum.
It wouldn’t be so bad if so many of the bosses and their henchmen didn’t have instant-kill weaponry, meaning that the game actually encourages players to avoid fighting the level bosses, rather than encouraging players to achieve the objective. That’s just not good game design, and neither is a gametype in which players can be forced to spend whole****minutes of an entire match doing absolutely nothing rather than having fun playing.
The timer wasn’t part of the Beta, and it seemed to work just great, so I’m not sure what convinced 343i that it needed to make a change, and I’m especially not sure what conviced 343i that this was the specific change it needed. Warzone Firefight is perhaps the best part of Halo 5 so far, and this needs to be fixed to make it a truly epic gametype.
Some suggestions:
- Insert a REVIVAL card into the REQ system. Get killed, play a REVIVAL and respawn instantly. Put it in with the BOOST cards.
- Allow teammate revival, just like in the campaign. The mechanic (and programming) are already part of the game. Revive a teammate and get rewarded with match points, a boost to REQ progress, whatever.
- Disable the respawn timer in the last minute of match (or round). Nothing in H5 Firefight sucks worse than getting killed in the last minute during the final push to kill the level boss and then having to simply sit there and watch the match timer tick away.
- Respawn closer to the action. Ever sit out 30 seconds, and then it takes another 30 seconds to get remotely close to the action? That’s a one minute respawn penalty, not 30 seconds.
- Put in teammate cams, so you can switch POVs and keep up with the action during your respawn penalty, just like in regular matchmaking. Again, something that’s already part of the game and a well-established mechanic.
- Reduce or eliminate the respawn timers and penalize player deaths some other way – players lose match points, receive reduced REQ level or energy progress, whatever. I’d rather be stuck running around with loadout weapons because I lost some REQ energy than sitting doing nothing while I watch my respawn timer count down.