One thing that used to frustrate me in Bad Company 2 was respawn invulnerability. Some people claim it doesn’t exist, but when I fire an AT4 at someone I expect it to kill them if there’s a direct impact (skip to 12m10s):
Having played the BF3 beta for a little while I’d encountered what I thought was respawn invulnerability a couple of time, but put it down to me just being paranoid about it. But no, it is in BF3 too!
I saw this video:
And considered that maybe it was dodgy hit registration on the shotgun because it’s not like that hasn’t happened before. But the video that proved it for me was from Geoff (sasbenjr)
In this video there are a couple of incidences of respawn invulnerability and Geoff confirms that it appears to be the case.
In terms of the respawn invincibility itself it seems that it’s also a perspective issue, with the player model appearing to the enemy momentarily before the actual player is spawned. That would explain why players spawning report being killed straight away. But here is where my problem with respawn invulnerability lies: the spawned player model is not only invulnerable, but they are also impervious.
This means that if they block your line of sight to the person they spawned off they are acting as a shield for that player. This is a problem when you flank a squad of buffoons and are taking them out with a weapn with a low ammo count. As soon as someone spawns in the middle of them and soaks up your bullets you can be left high and dry while the other players turn around to see where the shooting is coming from.
I don’t actually have a problem with respawn invulnerability as a concept. It’s useful for those that are being spawn trapped, but that to me, is the only time it should be happening. And if invulnerability needs to be in the game for those people who choose to spawn in to a dangerous situation then they should not be impervious and soak up all the bullets intended for their squad mates.
Check out my latest post on backslashgaming.com
David Nicol is a gamer, blogger, podcaster and video creator based in the UK. Find me on:
YouTube TheCheapKills
Twitter
Google Plus
