I've already looked at the wiki in which it says:
"If you are defeated you will wait in the rolling respawn queue. All players in the respawn queue will respawn at once after the respawn counter reaches zero"
I deduced that players have to wait in the 'respawn' line (as in queuing up at a fast food restaurant, waiting to be served) in order to come back into the game and thus, if you, theoretically, had no LD experience at all, you would assume that each and every player in the respawn line would receive a different time penalty.
You sometimes get situations, (observing your own team) in which packs of 2-4 players spawning at the same time even though those players had been defeated 3-5 seconds apart of each other. This clearly shows that not all players observe the respawning rule stated in the wiki as some players can get reduction in their time penalty while others have to fully serve out their time.
Additionally, players who are the first to be defeated at the beginning of a LD game also receive a longer time penalty even though that player is the first to be in the respawning queue.
I've also observed that players who are defeated through environmental hazards (explosives, traps, rock jellies, shadow-fire/lava and water <-- yes its possible to be felled by water) as well as status ailments (fire, shock, curse, freeze thawing) also receive a longer time penalty with no regards to the positioning of that player in the respawn queue.
What I'm asking (nicely; of course) is that for the community to devise a general guideline in which it would explain the penalty length during respawn. And if the guideline is good, move this post to the wiki editor department and hope for an update to the wiki ^w^
(Also, if you want to, tell me how you feel about the LD game mechanics? Especially when you are waiting impatiently to get back into the fray.)
I think from the start of the match there's a timer going from 25 -> 0, and maybe... two or three such timers overlapping each other? Such that it'll be like this:
Player 1 dies, Timer 1 at 8
3 seconds later player 2 dies, Timer 2 at 13
10 seconds later player 3 dies, catches 22 second revive as Timer 1 loops
CE reviving resets the timers, so if someone CE revives it would be like this
Time: 0:00 Player 1 dies, timer 1 at 8
Time: 0:05 Player 2 dies, Timer 2 at 18, CE Revive, Reset Timer 2 to 0:25
Time: 0:10 Player 3 dies, catches both timers at ~22 seconds, CE Revives, Reset either Timer to 25
Which causes a vicious cycle of CE reviving...
That's just my theory. It hasn't been proven or anything. But in conclusion, death and the method of death does not matter, only the timers do