I played a lot of TDM and CTF in the great IRC channel #nexuiz.pickup (advertising is good). Especially at 2v2TDM I think that it is imbalanced that the powerups are there from start on.

The reason behind that is easy: if you spawn next to quad with a weapon, its the nuts. The other team has no chance to interupt this. And that can easily give the team with the lucky spawn a 10-20 fraglead and mapcontrol. At CTF it is not such a bad story, as the spawns for blue or red team are more balanced. But even there it would be for sure a boost for the game- and teamplay.

A command to vote it on the servers would be great, so we can test it. I also hope it is not that hard to implement .. so this could be a quick "update"?

Some infos:
Powerups: Strength(quad), invisible, shield, speed (and if there are other kinds of real powerups).
This change has nothing to do with: armor, health, megahealth, weapons, etc.
The respawntime of the powerup will be the same as before: 2 minutes

If anyone has a better idea to solve that problem or completely disagree, feel free to write it down. Thanks!

i think that power-ups should spawn after the usual time delay after the start of the game. Having there right at the start just doesn't seem right.

I agree, they had this in ut2004, gives people time to get weapon and fight over stuff.

Vote, fixed time, 25 or 30 seconds into the match, makes people decide they have to go for the next items (armour or megahealth) or split to go to the quad, or both go and leave second spawning of items after start.

so for me I say 30 seconds, should of bought this up a long time ago, but good stuff Bundy.

30 seconds for me is good

In my opinion, powerups should always spawn randomly (not just initially), so looking at the clock or timers does not help.

To compensate, these items could spawn with a sound everyone can hear.

I agree, this should have been brought up earlier, how come no one thought it it?
Anyway, good thing you did Bundy. I agree completely. I also don't care if it is random spawn or fixed, I go with both, so I am also in favor of Div0's suggestion.

quad that spawns randomly could be a good idea if players can hear the spawning sound BEFORE it spawn... I was thinkin to a 5 seconds (or more?) sort of siren that ends when quad spawns effectively.

This way could be very exciting:
If a player is far from the spawn location, could try to go to get the quad, maybe with another player alrdy there, rdy to frag him.
If a player casually is near the spawn location and hear the sound it should pay attention on other players coming to steal him the quad.

Kind of defeats the purpose of fighting over the room/quad before it'd due to come though

Needs for sure some testing never really thought about it, it's maybe a good idea with the 30 seconds, but as i said, it needs testing. About random respawn time: baaad idea If you have problems with this timer users these days.. well Idk, it's their problem They should be disqualified from tourneys and ladder.

At start. Hands off my startup quad ffs.

I've voted for fixed time on start.
Not sure about the ingame spawn... k0jn has a point there, it's always exciting and fun to fight over for the quadroom. On the other hand, random spawns could give a twist to the gameplay.

I'd say, let both of them happen, and we should test it.

as bundy said it's more an issue in TDM then CTF, but I guess wouldn't hurt in CTF aswell?

Before this thread goes into flamewar again, let me introduce the words to everybody:

BRAINSTORMING, IDEAS, TOLERANCE, PLAYTEST

Got it? Good.

I agree that this is an issue that could be improved.

There are probably multiple ideas to "solve" it, but I like the random time after start idea.

Dokujisan wrote:I agree that this is an issue that could be improved.

There are probably multiple ideas to "solve" it, but I like the random time after start idea.

Same here. But I see nothing unfair in making it spawn after a fixed time. Though the respawn interval should definitely be a bit more random.

Mr. Bougo wrote:

Dokujisan wrote:I agree that this is an issue that could be improved.

There are probably multiple ideas to "solve" it, but I like the random time after start idea.

Same here. But I see nothing unfair in making it spawn after a fixed time. Though the respawn interval should definitely be a bit more random.

I think the same. With fixed spawn times the match is more likely to be won by skill rather than luck.

Repeatedly walking the very same path over and over again is no skill.

divVerent wrote:Repeatedly walking the very same path over and over again is no skill.

I agree. Then why not make everything spawn at random intervals?

divVerent wrote:Repeatedly walking the very same path over and over again is no skill.

Taking control of the map is by no means walking the same path repeatedly, as it depends on the situation, whether you prefer to be stacked all of the time, or prevent the enemy to grab the nex/rl, etc, everything fighting at the same time. That requires some skill.

I don't know. There are pros and cons:

We have timers, so in order to avoid these powerups shouldn't spawn at predefined time.
Powerups spawning randomly are bad, cause they will make someone luckier than other. (IMO, tournaments should be played without powerups).

What I would think would be the best is powerup spawning at random 60+-5 secs interval and people being informed by a message and a voice e.g. strength will spawn in 10 secs, so both teams would be able to fight for it or protect the area.

If decision would be that powerups spawn at constant delay then make timers official.

I think the results are very clear. Powerups shouldnt be there directly at the start. It is not clear when the first powerup should spawn, at a fixed time or random time. Another open question is (it wasnt voteable), should they respawn at a random time or not. I hope we can see some options to vote and test it in the near future. Thanks for voting.