Player Respawning:
Perhaps players could revive each other? But it would be a time consuming process, meaning that when one player dies the other will have to finish the firefight before jumping to player #1's aid. Or if there are more than two, then one player can revive whilst the other(s) cover him. There could perhaps be some sort of penalty for the person who died [such as starting with 50 health], so that staying alive still 'matters'. In the case of players who die in lava where their teammates cannot revive them, they would be respawned at the beginning of the level with the same penalties.

Monster Respawning:
I think monster respawning is a very cool idea, but it shouldn't be universal. That is to say, the level designer could set a 'respawn' flag on any monsters they want to be respawnable.

New monsters/The 'anger' problem:
What if there were a modified grunt, carrying two shotties that he can fire at seperate targets? Or a shambler that can fire a bolt of lightning from both hands/claws/paws at the same time and at different targets, allowing both players to be properly involved in the fight? That would allow for some kickass boss monsters too.

Pickups & sharing:
I like the idea of players being able to drop certain items for one another. Perhaps a simple graphical inventory navigated by the numpad, listing all the items could be used rather than a console command or key bind, to make it simpler.

Ending a level:
Perhaps in the interest of players sticking together, all living players would need to 'exit' the current level before a new one begins. Any player who exits becomes a spectator until every living player has completed the level.

A specially designed campaign:
I would love to see a specially designed Coop Quake Episode with levels geared towards teamplay and a story that revolves around a squad of soldiers, rather than the lone ranger in regular Quake.

On the issue of 'seriousness':
I don't think building a more advanced version of Q1 coop would stop it from being a "fun relaxing romp", so much as facilitate that fun and relaxation by providing a more polished experience. As it stands at the moment, there's little need for cooperative play in coop, so the temptation is often for the best player to run ahead and do everything first. If it's tweaked so that every player depends on one another nomatter what their skill, then -everybody- can have fun, and that's the point of coop isn't it? 

(that is all) 

Coop idea: currently, when you die, any other player can pick up your bag and get all your goodies.

sometimes when i'm playing i'll accidentally pick up my teammate's pack, which means he'll not have any ammo.

consider: Packs not only carry all the ammo you had before you died, but also all the weapons.
other players would be able to pick up ONLY the ammo in your pack, but the weapons would remain in it. only you would be able to pick up your own pack for weapons (and ammo if no one else took it already)

this means:
1. you don't need to go back all over the map searching for weapons (or if a map closes off certain areas with, say, the SNG, you could still get it back from your bag
2. other players can still use your supplies if they are running low on ammo during a fight.

obviously, if you died in lava/void, then your pack wouldn't be retrievable, but that would be true regardless.

opinions? 

The best thing for a coop mode is TO ACTUALLY HAVE IT FUCKING IMPLEMENTED IN A GAME INSTEAD OF THESE UBER-LINEAR TRAIN-TRACKED INTERACTIVE FUCKING MOVIES THAT GIVE YOU A GRAND TOTAL OF ONE - YES, ONE - GAMEPLAY OPTION, I.E. TO PLAY EXACTLY ON THE SAME FUCKING PATH EACH TIME.

etc. 

I guess Shambler just would like to see dedicated coop map instead of playing SP map in coop... and it's not a reason to shout ;P 

I'd like to see games that have a coop option as well as normal SP gameplay. 

Fairly regularly, as in, a few times a week, people in #darkplaces #qc and #qexpo will often go play on the netQuake server coop.runequake.com:26003

It is a coop netQuake mod which has weaponstay, player respawn and item respawn on, and it alters the enemies to be tougher but also fire different weapon types. However it also adds runes, which I know many would scoff at, but having someone with the medic rune and someone with the engineer rune keeping near the big gunners goes a long long way... Also, players can level up, which increases how much ammo and armor they respawn with. Some of the runes are risky to use as they can kill your teammates, but the game does a global bprint as a warning for such.

A players level is remembered by the game until they leave the server. It also has a map pack, filled with many custom sp maps, most of which were made by regulars here... and a hub map where people view a screenshot of the map and are given its name, filename, and name of the author.

It isnt orthodox Quake, but it is usually quite fun - I enjoyed roaming antedeluvian and adamantine cruelty with 4 other players.

no this post isnt a solution to coop design problems, its just pimping some fun coop =) 

svencoop for hl