What is the best respawn system?

[NotAI]

In immersive rpgs (and action open world games too), suppose enemies and monsters must respawn eventually, what is the best way?

Split off from another thread.

Line-of-sight spawning, as in Cyberpunk 2077, and apparently Chernobyl 2, where it looks for places the player is not looking at NOW and respawns hostiles there...is really bad. Especially when it glitches.

Taking the Chernobyl 2, for example, my preference might be to just instead pick 20 points in the world. Let these be fixed spawn points, where players can't go for plausible ingame reasons, but can clearly see as traversable.... Like behind radiation that is quietly turned off for NPCs spawning there......

So bandits periodically come over the hill every hour or so.......just walk down.....can't farm 'em because the hill is irradiated. Dogs run over to eat bodies every 2 hours.

Fixed or not?

Or is the better system using chapters and respawning only at chapter changes, after main quest progression, like in Gothic 2?

[wndrbr]

Never liked respawning enemies.

[rusty_shackleford]

Gothic games where the world changes drastically after finishing a chapter.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Respawning enemies are unimmersive, especially when they are humanoids.

[J1M]

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

[Xenich]

In immersive rpgs (and action open world games too), suppose enemies and monsters must respawn eventually, what is the best way?

Split off from another thread.

Line-of-sight spawning, as in Cyberpunk 2077, and apparently Chernobyl 2, where it looks for places the player is not looking at NOW and respawns hostiles there...is really bad. Especially when it glitches.

Taking the Chernobyl 2, for example, my preference might be to just instead pick 20 points in the world. Let these be fixed spawn points, where players can't go for plausible ingame reasons, but can clearly see as traversable.... Like behind radiation that is quietly turned off for NPCs spawning there......

So bandits periodically come over the hill every hour or so.......just walk down.....can't farm 'em because the hill is irradiated. Dogs run over to eat bodies every 2 hours.

Fixed or not?

Or is the better system using chapters and respawning only at chapter changes, after main quest progression, like in Gothic 2?

I think generic respawning is a bit low effort. I would rather see well thought out scripted respawning based on triggers and story progressions throughout the world.

So, you clean out one location, then move on and later on as you are at another location it triggers a script that repopulates a previous location with some reasonable explanation.

as an example, you clear out a check point, then move on to another area, this triggers a script where a truck spawns heading to the check point, sees the bodies or nobody there and people jump out, investigate, secure the check point, etc...

It has been a long time, but I think some of the Farcry games toyed with various approaches to this.

[J1M]

When it is incorporated into the game design, as it was in say, Blackrock Depths when WoW had a level cap of 55, respawning creates some interesting gameplay.

[Element]

Never liked respawning enemies.

In a game like Stalker you need them since otherwise you'd wind up with an empty map with the main gameplay loop going out of the window.

I think respawning is ok in an open world game provided the respawning happens sufficiently far away from you with no guarantees that the enemy immediately aggros. You can simply pretend that the world is large and you you're chancing upon new fauna that is migrating into the area.

[Xenich]

Never liked respawning enemies.

In a game like Stalker you need them since otherwise you'd wind up with an empty map with the main gameplay loop going out of the window.

I think respawning is ok in an open world game provided the respawning happens sufficiently far away from you with no guarantees that the enemy immediately aggros. You can simply pretend that the world is large and you you're chancing upon new fauna that is migrating into the area.

If you think about it, open world is really just zones, instances, etc... all connected to function as a whole. The benefit of segregation is that you can specify a linear progression for the player and once they complete that, you move on to another closed area.

With the open world, you now have to consider the dynamic of them all working together in a logical fashion so an extra layer of that interaction has to be considered if you want the world to seem realistic.

Wasn't it WoW that added a type of localized phasing for this? I think this is not a bad approach (if implemented seamlessly) where areas of the world are handled like their own instances and function accordingly based on the player approaching various areas. If you design the phases to interact with each other logically and with reasonable explanations for their repopulation as well as accounting for the players location when various repopulations occur, you can create a very dynamic environment that creates a more "believable" open world the player is interacting with.

The key I think to avoid cheesing would be always tracking the player in relation to phases to insure triggers don't happen in a way that the player sees it in a manner that is artificial.

[rusty_shackleford]

Crimson Desert launched with no(?) respawning enemies, then added them later in patches(?)
Really feel like this is an area a lot of games could improve in.

[stormvermin]

Crimson Desert launched with no(?) respawning enemies, then added them later in patches(?)
Really feel like this is an area a lot of games could improve in.

Almost. Enemies in strongholds (enemy bases) didn't respawn once the base was liberated (as many can then be used for expedition mission production) but still respawn in the open world. Obviously as you said, that's no longer the case but it's optional and allows the player to decide the rate at which strongholds become re-occupied, ranging from almost unnoticeable to the entire map is reoccupied.