my opinion on respawn: in public server or semi public server (TG atm) if you dont have respawn, youll never see high player numbers. For some players this is totally acceptable and they prefer small groups of players? However for me coming from PR background where we regularly have TG server and many other servers full with 30 vs 30 and "missions" lasting 2+ hours, seeing 1 hour missions and only 20-30 players tops is, well, underwhelming. My hop for arma2 is to be able to play large scale, COMBINED ARMS combat sim. Having 30 players on a server at a time to me doesn't seem large scale, and you cant possible have much armor/cas support with those low numbers. This game can potentially support 80-100 players, however to get to those numbers you need respawn or you wont ever retain the players on the server to stick around once they die. Join in Progress is key to keeping player population up, since players will have to disconnect, crash or whatever, there is so many circumstances that happen beyond your control in game, that having no respawn usually hinders the mission more than it helps IMO. You only need to play a couple no-respawn missions where the lead elements crash or have to leave to understand what I mean by this.

Plain and simple I think respawn is required in order to gain a large player population, unfortunately all the respawn missions Ive seen currently for arma2 simply dont have any system built in that enables a good player behavior, and vanilla arma2 does not leave you with any real options other than to design your own system. If there is no punishment for death, than certainly thats a bad thing but I think you can still have respawn with join in progress and have consequences for death that would mean player behavior changes for the better.

If TG was to use only no-respawn missions, I think you'd see player numbers always low and never able to play with a large amount of players unless on a specific event. I'd like TG ArmA2 to get as popular as the PR server - - - 60+ players on at a time with well organized play in both coop AND tvt. With no respawn missions, your shooting yourself in the foot trying to build server pop when as soon as players start dying they start leaving, and joining players join and disconnect after waiting 15 min for a mission to end thats taking way too long.

Especially in tvt, having no respawn = very limited appeal. its always a syndrome of "our team killed 10 of them, they killed 15 of us, blabla" knowing exactly how many enemy left is hardly realistic and it resembles more of counterstrike match than a real life operation. I'd love to play an epic long round of TVT in ArmA2 3+ hours (PR players think kashan desert or kozelsk, except with arma2 view distance, weapon lethality and large scale map size). I think arma2 truly has potential to be amazing for alot of players, but here at tg it needs to attract and build more squad leaders and its hard to get experience in playing when these new guys are sitting there waiting for a mission to end or cant get into the server because its 18/18 slots.F