Wed Jul 07, 2010 9:38 pm by sky_lark
I don't really like it, the level maker placed spawns in certain spots for a reason. Same with the placeable portal.
The main problem with placeable spawns is simple: It encourages suicide. As it is I'm more or less on the side of "for suiciding", as there are several cons to doing it. Nevertheless, I don't want to do it constantly, and I don't think a feature should encourage it - people would be dying more to try and land in the spawn zone if they missed it the first time. Or if a team member radioed out, "help at enemy base" people might stop what they're doing, die, and go to help.
Which is why custom portals seem to fix the problem. Or does it? People would still die, a little less though. Although I suppose it's very similar to the current issue, dying to go somewhere else. With portals, you just don't have to die multiple times to try and get lucky and spawn in the right place.
This brings up a different problem though. When I'm battling an enemy at our base, I like to think we have the advantage. We likely have turrets, laserbeams, and loadouts, plus spawn zones that will bring in support. This is an interesting part of any game - different parts of the level have different advantages to various teams. Portals would essentially kill that. Suddenly, an influx of enemy players would be able to infiltrate that safety spot. What if a both teams had portals at opposite bases? It'd just be a back and forth play, completely abandoning the rest of the map. Sure, sure, somebody can destroy it. But somebody can merely bring it right back.
Think about it this way. Player A brings in a piece of the link and places it at the edge of the enemy base. Player A then radios to the team to use this. It's faster and players don't have to worry about battling outside defenses. This is a problem already - players are now relying on the portals to play the game. And suddenly players boasting full health and energy have access into the enemy's base.
So they begin launching their attacks. Right about now most enemy players are probably scattered across the map and the home team scores a point or two. Once the enemy team is combatting the home team, there's still a problem. Location of the portal.
It's not as easy as you might think (without testing). Because the battle is not at the portal zone, enemy players would have to more or less follow the stream of incoming players, dodge attacks by the home team, and located a small icon. OK, so they finally destroy it. Link over. However, one of the home team players simply goes to another side of the base and places another! Back at square one! By now, the enemy team has probably a link up and running and the game goes on.
I'm sure my description has flaws, but c'mon. Going against the level design and placing physical portals, injecting into once guarded sections of the map... just doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
A couple ideas would be to make a one-way portal or if one portal is destroyed, then both portals are destroyed. But that's just a small improvement.
tl;dr: Custom portals and spawn points would change the gameplay drastically, allowing players to bypass some of the more uncomfortable aspects of the game, and overall creating a more disappointing experience. Phew! Big words!
