First off let me preface by saying I think you guys are doing a great job overall, solid game. There are still a few mechanics that I need work, and one in particular that is flat out broken.
I realise there have been a million other threads about this, but clearly there needs to be some more voices to help you guys understand the depths of just how bad this is as a mechanic.
Spawn protection in most other shooters is generally measured as a fraction of a second - half a second is about the norm, and for good reason - it gives players a chance to get their bearings and fight back against a camping enemy (since its about ~double normal human reaction times). Without turning them into what we have now, entire squads of invincible soldiers gunning down everything in sight before they finally become mortal like the rest of us.
Honestly it wouldn’t be an issue if you only had spawn protection from your base spawn points, you’re so far out of the fight you can’t really do anything, but honestly the fact that you get spawn protection from built spawn locations too made my mind break a little bit. At first I thought it had to be some sort of bug, some sort of netcode mistake that was causing me to empty entire magazines into people only to have them laugh it off. Then a friend told me that it was the spawn mechanic and honestly I would have preferred that it was dodgy hit reg than an intended game mechanic.
The consequences are obvious, it makes it very hard to rush a building with a spawn point in it with no angle to get close enough to lob a grenade in without being shot. The problem being that controlling spawn points is one of the biggest factors towards winning that your team gets, so having spawn points that can be created near the front lines, and are incredibly hard to kill due to spawn immunity is an incredible bonus. A single spawn point can turn the game around if not dealt with, and in the right place it is very hard to deal with.
To anyone thinking - why don’t you abuse this mechanic for yourself? I will, don’t worry, I find abusing broken game mechanics to be one of the best ways to get dev’s to change them, so I’ll be spawn immunity rushing objective buildings for easy wins with my mates. Laughing as enemies bounce lead off my soldiers with iron bodies as I torch them all with my flamer and giggle because I know the person fighting me is going to be incredibly angry at such a cheap mechanic - but if it’s in the game it can be used and must be changed.
Potential fixes include changing spawn immunity to have a massively reduced duration when spawning off a beacon, removing spawn immunity the second anyone in the squad fires or even starts moving, or gets a certain distance away from the spawn beacon. You could also give people with spawn protection increased damage reduction instead of immunity so they can take another shot without dying but someone pouring machine gun fire isn’t going to feel like their entire existence is useless.