Respawning is one of the quintessential parts of any fast-paced video game, allowing players to come back to life at a checkpoint when they die or be revived by teammates in a team-based game. Now, a new Electronic Arts respawn system patent has been filed. However, there is a reason. As the patent itself explains:
“Players controlling eliminated characters have few reasons to remain engaged in the game, and those players often leave their games for a new round.”
So it seems like this new patent is in response to this trend in team-based shooters such as battle royales and other such titles, where players will likely die, then leave the game to try again somewhere else. Respawn items, if included in the game such as the patent says, can help players to stick around in the game, so long as they can keep getting revived. According to the patent, it would work like any other respawn item.
“…in response to using the respawn activation item at the respawn location, respawning the first character at the respawn location in the normal state.”
The Electronic Arts respawn system patent also makes a distinction of a “partially incapacitated” state, which appears to refer to a similar stance to being “downed” in other team based shooters, where players are knocked down and mortally wounded before actually being killed and can be brought back up by their teammates. In the patent, this would cost an item:
“The respawn system can generate a respawn activation item based at least in part in response to a preliminary defeat of a player to be made available for other players to acquire.”
Exactly how this would work in whatever battle royale games EA publishes remains to be seen; the items could be limited, or it could be that if a team is wiped out before being able to administer the item they would progress to fully-downed, but it’s likely that before they implement it they’ll iron out any kinks.
Either way, if you want to learn more about this new Electronic Arts respawn system patent, you can follow this link to read it for yourself.