I got this idea from the thread about the evo/credit economy.
I got the feeling that the purpose of that idea was to discourage feeding. But I think there should be simpler and more direct methods.
So, how about imposing longer delays before respawning for outstanding feeders (and telling them so)? It's not like their presence on the field is contributing anything, so they might as well just stay in the node buffer staring at the extra delay countdown.
Respawn delayed because of feeding, 0:19 left
This could be used to curtail all kinds of other unwanted behaviour. One that immediately springs to mind is TK. Both feeding and TK could in fact be made particular cases of the same kill/get killed equation. Go too far overboard in one direction and you get reprimanded.
Which of course brings us the the 3rd extreme: killing too much. This could be useful for instance on newbie training servers, when one player gets outstanding amount of kills compared to his team members, which may indicate he's not exactly a newbie or that the teams are extremely unbalanced.
A column could be added to the scores screen that would indicate if a player is currently respawn delayed and different icons for different reasons. Visible only for his own team, of course.
Types of unwanted behaviour which I'm not sure about:
* Destroying or hurting your own structures (aka structure TK). Not sure about this one because in some cases this can be a tactic in itself, such as making a turret explode near an alien or "deconning" a structure when no builder is nearby. And during enemy rushes it's sometimes hard not to shoot the wrong thing.
* Outstanding amount of missed shots. Except this might be difficult/impossible to estimate for the alien melee attacks, which are also used for moving around. They could help discipline trigger-happy humans who waste their ammo on nothing; I'm growing exasperated of pulse-rifle spammers, you have to watch out for them as much as you do for enemy goons. Then again, in some cases it's useful to create a fire barrage, and some types of weapons (chaingun, luci) are actually based on broad area coverage and involve a higher amount of (technically) missed shots.
* Camping (defined as too little movement or confined to a too small area). I personally don't think that camping should be punished in Trem, since by itself it does nothing to win the game. But it's true that limiting camping would make for more animated matches. Not sure about the quality of the result though. Simply being goaded into moving around for the heck of it doesn't seem very productive. There are valid uses for camping too, such as defender or builder.
Bottom line: respawn delay would be a nice middle ground between a gentle slap on the wrist and outright kicking/banning someone. You don't want certain kinds of people out there because they do more harm than good, so you simply limit their presence and give them a chance to learn.
Feedback would be very important for this reason. I'm thinking that once the server decides that a certain player currently meets the criteria for respawn delay, it should let him know somehow (icon on the HUD). So while the player is still alive he might see the error of his ways and try to do something about it so the respawn delay warning goes away.
