I full-heartedly support a complete hit-timer system, like the one introduced on PC Era in 2003 that I highlighted above.
The operative word is complete; as in, it's got both the freeze(to benefit the person firing the shot), and the hit recovery (to benefit the person getting hit).
They worked together to maintain balance in a fight, and discourage spamming.
As I said before, the hit timer on iEra is only halfway complete.
I think they're afraid to add a quarter-second freeze upon being hit in fear of negative player review; it's one of those things that should have came with the rest of the server when iEra was released.
Then people wouldn't know any different; we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Another thing I don't like about iEra's hit timer is that it varies from gun to gun. It was meant to be the same for every bullet on the server.
I understand where they're coming from-- they're trying to make it another "gun stat" to promote gun variability.
However, gun variability should only be within a realm that the gun has reasonable control over.
In regard to the bullet, the only job the gun has is to set the spread which controls the field of possible trajectory, as well as the damage and the timeout between subsequent shots. The control stops there.
From the second the bullet leaves a gun's barrel, these variables have already been determined, and the bullet is no longer a variable subordinate to the gun.
At this point, the bullet is on it's own. Therefore, it should be delivered with consistency; otherwise, players are given a game that feels unstable.
The hit timer should be the same regardless of location or gun, to preserve this consistency.
"Stacked Damage", in my opinion, is one of the worst ideas to come to the server.
I think PBP users and the victims alike would prefer that the gun did 8 damage, not stacked.
It's like they hired Jimmy Newtron for a day, and trusted every "brain blast" he came up with.