Pronounced My-Key-On: by Michael Quach

When I started off with Rainbow Six as my first first person shooter on the PC, I had no inkling of this game mechanic called "respawn." When you died in the game, you had to wait until the end of the match. Depending on the map and type of players, it could take one minute to the end or in some cases, 20 minutes. This is where I learned about patience as all the dead players talked amongst themselves and watched as their last teammates get lost within the map and keep passing by each other without noticing. There would be talks about nice shots, tactics, and general everyday life during these afterdeath waiting periods.

As I continued my first person shooting career, I moved onto Delta Force series which introduced me to elements such as medics, spawn camping, and most importantly, the "Press Spacebar to respawn or wait for a medic" popup. I was amazed at the idea of being able to be brought back to life and how it made so much sense to me. The Delta Force series is about large groups of people battling other large groups of people while in Rainbow Six it was just your squad vs another squad with limited numbers on a small contained area and not a battlefield. Essentially, on the battlefield between factions, the leaders would not just send in some small unit, they would send their army to battle it out and continue to send in reinforcements so that the battle can be won.

I continued my FPS career through the years and when I hit Team Fortress 2, that was the first time I came across people complaining about respawning. "Respawns are TOOOOOOOOO LOONNGGG!!!!!," "Valve should balance the game for instant respawns, it makes the game better!" "Respawn timers were put in because Valve is too lazy to make good maps!" were the arguments I heard against timers.

It just doesn’t make any sense for me. Respawn time is there for you to observe your team, learn from their movements and strategy on where to go, what to do, and to celebrate awesome kills that people perform. Respawn time is also the perfect time to get up, stretch, relax, or use the bathroom. In an Arstechnica article I read, (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/02/study-fps-deaths-provide-sweet-relief-to-victims.ars) , there was a study into the effects of killing and dying in the videogame, "James Bond 007: Nightfire," and the study showed that with each kill a person got without dying, their stress increased while being killed gave them relief. I would say this mirrors my response in every shooter I play. When I kill another player, it adds to my kill streak, I become fixated on keeping my kill streak high and staying alive. I become even more paranoid of everyone around me, and I notice this happen to other players as well. As their kill streaks increase, they retreat out of battle faster and faster in fear of losing their awesome streak.

I always value each one of my deaths in any multiplayer game. I think back about my actions and how I would have handled it differently instead of staying stuck in the past about what should have or could have happen. I imagine the new scenario and practice it so I can change my timing. One example I would use is with the airblast on the pyro. With the Demo/Soldier update, I have dramatically increased my airblast reflection rates after many deaths and trying to understand when each soldier fires their load off and what is the best time to reflect.

Personally, I hate instant respawn in all first person shooter style games. For one, it doesn’t give me any sense of consequence for doing a foolish action that gets me killed and the game just says “It’s ok, now get back out there and do it again and again. ”I always feel like there is this pressure on me to move as fast as I can as soon as I spawn and I keep my body and senses in the "fight or flight" mode for an extended period of time. The body thinks there’s a threat everywhere, your heart starts beating, chemicals start filling your body and your brain shuts off non-vital processes of your body. Eventually, your body will deteriorate from this heightened state of alert and now things become more serious as video games start having a detrimental effect on your body.

To my readers, what kind of respawn mechanics do you like? Instant vs timer?

Games with one life are also fine

Never knew that Demigod could be such a hostile game. Me, Nayrhyno, and a random get a 3 vs 3 going on. The random claims it’s too laggy for him and quits in the first 5 minutes so Nay and I were left with just the AI. Apparently, two other players on the enemy team were new to the game and didn’t know what to do. Their teammate, Casper, raged hard on them in the public chat. I don’t know what he said in their team chat but I no doubt he was quite acidic.

I guess the Unclean Beast player just got pissed at being yelled at all the time and just spent the game running into us to die. He even killed himself with ooze and no health regen to keep him alive.

Another fail on their part as they don’t notice the uncapped celerity flag.

Games like this just makes me crack up.

This is what makes Demigod fun. In his all pubber game I joined, my team of 2 Sednas and 1 Erebus were pushed back to our Citadel by their Erebus, Torchbearer and Queen of Thorns. For the majority of the time, we could not put a dent into them and they would always chase us away from the flags.

Eventually, we got pushed back, both our portals capped with locks, most of our towers dead, minotaurs, archers, priests, angels, and catapults coming out from all sides and not one of us with any Area of Effect damage attacks. All seemed lost but the enemy Demigods fell victim one by one at the front steps of our citadel as we ganged up on each one. Our citadel constantly bombarded but we were able to hold off the waves long enough that each time the health went down to 10,000, we were able to push back to get some warscore.

Eventually while the enemy were all respawning, we pushed all the way to their portals and our giants took care of the rest. The biggest folly I see in the enemy’s gameplay was that they never upgraded their towers or creeps so it was relatively easy to push back and hold off the creeps while our creeps had two levels of upgrades in armor and damage. Most of the time, games of Demigod just starts steamrolling so comebacks or stalls are very rare, but when it happens, boy is it fun.