What about late joiners? People who join in the middle of the game, and are unlucky enough to spawn when theres only 15 seconds on the clock?
it is a great point.....it can see how it'd be considered "unfair" to late joiners, but if you extend the trader extra time or let them spawn closer to the trader just because they joined later, is that really fair for the other players? not really. also if you keep adding more time to the trader, think of how badly people could exploit that? i mean, demospam and weapon hording is already bad enough, adding more time would only make that worse, but i'd venture to say that in most pub games, the new players still wouldn't get any money from the other games because they'd rather horde more weapons or spam more pipebombs.
remember, when you join the server, you still have to actually click "ready" in order to spawn on the next wave, if you don't you'll stay in spec. you should be able to tell if the other players are already in "trader time" or in the middle of the wave. if there's only 15 seconds of trader time left and you are dumb enough to click "ready", fully realizing you're not going to make it to the trader in time, why should the other players be punished by your poor decision?
what about just adjusting the time allowed for "late joiners" to actually spawn in a wave? if you entered the server and there's less than say, 1/2 the allotted trader time left, then you can't ready up and must wait until the next wave. if it were at least half, on most stock maps that should still give you enough time to get to the trader and maybe do a quick auto-fill or allow somebody to drop a gun at the trader for you. granted, you may get seperated from the team for a little while, but that's the downside to making the mistake of joining late and readying up when you're not actually "ready". the team could always communicate to help you find them anyway.....
