Editorial: TEAM Fortress

I’ve been a huge fan of Team Fortress 2 over the past eleven months, but lately have just not gotten the bug to play. Game time has been limited to screwing around on private listen servers, testing out maps, pushing class limits, making amusing videos, etc. Valve has been doing all they can to hold a strong following with the consistent class updates and new achievements; hell, they even have an official game blog for it so no pointing fingers at them.

I’ve concluded that my recent sluggishness toward joining a server is due to the rampant lack of teamwork during game play. People are just not working together or even trying for it. As an Engie, I often sit on or around my nest and have seen on countless maps my teammates pass by one by one by one and get killed off one by one by one only to respawn and start the solo lemming cycle all over again. These battles never seem to get anywhere and often end in a stalemate which only ends when the map is voted to change. The only time a team seems to win is when they (by absolute pure luck) all die together, spawn together, and stay together.

I simply could not figure out what could be done about this single-minded mentality until I read a recent entry by Valve developer Robin Walker, where he explains the usefulness of respawn waves. Following is an excerpt:

We found respawn waves were a good solution to several problems.

  • They provide a reward for the team that’s doing well, in that if they wipe out a significant amount of the enemy team they’re rewarded with a short grace period in which they can achieve objectives. Without them, we found teams felt like they’d been penalized when they cleared the enemy off the last capture point, only to have them all return immediately.
  • They group respawning players together into squads, increasing the chances of strangers working together, or at the very least, moving to the frontline while maintaining some proximity to one another. Strangers aren’t pushed together into groups when everyone respawns instantly, and we’ve seen that proximity to team mates is a fundamental requirement for impromptu teamwork.
  • They provide some ebb & flow in the pacing of the battle. Without some cooldown inbetween the moments of intense combat at the frontline, many players felt fatigued much more quickly. In particular, some attack/defense maps feel almost completely static without respawn waves. That lack of progress, in either direction, was a big factor in players finding the gameplay monotonous.
  • The spectator camera seen while waiting to respawn gives players some time to observe their team mates. This provides a minor help to teamwork, allowing players to see what other members of their team are up to. More importantly, we’ve seen that new players learn a lot of advanced techniques by spectating better players. This is one of the reasons why the spectator camera tries to find a team mate who’s playing the same class as you.

This explanation seems to make a great deal of sense as I currently play on servers with modified respawn times. Over the next few weeks, I will definetly be trying out some standard respawn servers to see if there are any team improvements.

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