After an infected player has been killed, they should be able free roam the map in a spectator-lite mode to choose their next respawn location - similar to player-controlled Special Infected in L4D. Obviously, they should not be allowed to respawn within x distance of any given player.
A system like this would help alleviate the spawn camping, and give the infected a little wiggle room about how they make their next approach. Currently, it’s not exactly fair to respawn only to instantly get a bullet through the head, and also because some survivor players are more than happy to pile on the TNT at known respawn points.
I really like the your idea of adding strategic respawn options for Infected, however there are a few problems I see:
If there is a restriction on how close you can respawn, usual camp spots will be more powerful when all the humans bundle together because you wouldn’t be able to spawn in the middle of them. The current spawns are evenly spread to prevent this.
Less Experienced players would waste a lot of time in the ‘free roam spawn selection’ mode, leading to the infected team having less members on the field overall.
The random spawn selection adds to the chaotic feeling of Virus, and this could negate that.
One big issue your suggestion would definitely alleviate is when you’re the only infected and you spawn on the opposite end of the map just to waste a good half minute running head first into a Plasma Rifle/Double Barrel alt-fire and flak gun buffet.
Camping/huddling together somehow needs to be discouraged and penalised/punished. The game logic could respond to this by starting the next round with more than one infected, maybe have one of them spawn enraged.
See point #3.
Put a time limit on the respawn spectator mode. They are forced to respawn at one of the fixed spawn points when the timer runs out. If you are killed as an infected, you re-enter spectator mode at the spot where you died.
As for your final point, there needs to be fewer sniper corridors and more cover for vulnerable infected. Maybe even go full Among Us with the addition of ventilation shafts.
Hospital is by far the worst offender for sniper corridors.
I was thinking that, to counter camping a bit, either A. when the first infected is enraged or B. when a while has passed since the last survivor was infected, infected could spawn closer to survivors until another one is infected
One of the suggestions for Virus I’ve been thinking about is to make enragement not limited to one infected, but increase the number of deaths requried to get the rage per number of players infected, something like 2 deaths per infected player up to about 5 infected.
I think a lot of the issues with the idea brought up in this thread could be alleviated in a timer on the screen. You could be given a map of where all the survivors are at death, and see that you’re respawning at a random location in 5 seconds.
With that, you’re free to select a location manually in those 5 seconds, but you waste any time fiddling in a map screen if you just want to respawn at random, normally. The only other issue I would have with this is it would take a good amount of work to implement for each map - but in theory, I love the idea.