[quote1199982253=chinaonnitrous1]
I usually click around and watch what other people are doing, or watch enemy spies and their antics...
Its not that bad.
But 10 seconds definatly helps.
20 seconds is a super killer if theres no teleports setup.
[/quote1199982253]
chinaonnitrous1 brings up excellent points here that I think people have missed. The period of time is a penalty, an opportunity, and an incentive all in one. It is a penalty in that dying has a cost, and that cost is that you are removed from the game and your role to the team for X number of seconds. It is an opportunity in that it allows you to look at what your other teammates are doing so that you can have an increased awareness when you spawn. You could potentially see a weakness that will allow you to guide your team into victory if you pay attention. It could also allow you to warn some teammates about a spy or flanking enemy that you noticed and they didn't. It is an incentive in the way that it creates an additional need for good engineers. Good engineers help teammates stay alive and avoid that "timeout" penalty of death by providing dispensers in order to restock ammo or gain health and by creating advanced "safe zones" that a friendly under fire can retreat to in order to seek automatic defense from a sentry. Engineers also help reduce the pain of that penalty by setting up teleporters that reduce the time it takes to get back in the action.
The penalty of death also provides incentive for players to become better. If that penalty of death is harsh, they will be more cautious while moving towards goals and will be more aggressive when backed into corners. I think we can all agree that a player who has learned how to stay alive in a pinch is much more valuable to a team than a player who dies needlessly.
Putting all those incentives and penalties aside, the most important thing the variable respawn timers do is the following: create a balance between the advancement of attackers and the reinforcement of defenders.
Think of dustbowl on a server with 12 players on each team. If the attacking team kills off one enemy every 2 seconds, that 20 second timer will still allow there to be a continuous flow of enemies. If that timer is reduced to 10 seconds, the attacking team will be faced with a continuous flow of enemies even if they kill one enemy per second. So, when an attacking force hits hard and levels the entire defending team in ten seconds, they have earned that ten seconds of relief from the defenders. It takes that kind of coordination and effort to achieve the goal. If you remove that timer, the attackers have an unfair burden of facing a war of attrition. They will run out of ammo as they face the unending sea of attackers.
That's not to say that an attacking force could never win in those circumstances. Good teams are capable of anything. What it does say is that it shifts the balance of attackers versus defenders strongly in favor of the defenders. There will be those that say that it won't shift the balance since the attackers will have their respawn timer either reduced or eliminated. While that will cause them to spawn faster, that does not remove the time it takes to travel back to the capture point.
Keep in mind, not only does this respawn timer work in favor of the attacker, it works in favor of the defender as well. If the defending team does a great job defending an attack by killing most of the attacking force, they should be rewarded with a reasonable amount of relief in order to set up new defenses, repair damaged ones, or restock and heal.
Now I know that I'm talking purely attack/defense maps. I talk about those since I prefer Dustbowl and Gravelpit over the other maps. That isn't to say that respawn timers don't have a place in the other maps. If you successfully break through the defenses in the enemy's base on 2fort, your attacking team should be rewarded with enough time to be able to attempt to grab the intel and escape. Why should the attacking team be faced with the burden of successfully breaking through a defending force two, three, or more times per attack run?
TLDR: I think the respawn timers are a necessary element to foster the type of gameplay that TF2 has.
