Dealing with spawn campers

(Osl112) #1

Spawn camping sucks. I was playing a Stopwatch game on Trainyard earlier whereby the first half was a blast - it was a somewhat tight affair where my team (attacking) only just completing all objectives in the allotted time. However… as happens far too often on Stopwatch, people on the other team left at half time leading to my team spawn camping them to oblivion.

If I’m not mistaken, there are somewhat disadvantages to XP gain when playing against an unbalanced team (if someone could clarify what these disadvantages are, I’d be grateful). However, even asking not to spawn camp them for the benefit of getting the game rolling again, this didn’t stop a minority in a team of 7 against 3 making their lives a misery.

This got me curious - I’ve got a couple of questions for the community from this experience.

1) What would you have done in my situation? In other words, what is the best thing to do when your team is spawn camping the enemy?
- Should I have swapped team or should I maybe of joined in in the spawn killing myself as it is simply part of the game?

2) What would you do in the opposite situation? How do you guys deal with being spawn camped?

  • Rhino?

3) Lastly, what should SD do about spawn camping to stop it from happening as frequently?

  • Do certain maps require tweaks to stop spawn camping happening too frequently (I’m thinking Underground and Terminal)? Should there be a small invulnerability period?

Thoughts?

My opinion is as follows. I sucked it up and literally had a boring round on the sidelines in the end, just holding out near the objective whilst the rest of my team obliterated their spawn. It was kind of a waste of time - certainly not fun and I didn’t get anything out of it. Should I have changed team? Maybe, but that would mean dealing with being spawn killed… which isn’t much fun either. I probably would have held out if I was being spawn killed - I don’t like quitting games midway through. Not that I had much on my loadout to counter it…

What should SD do? I haven’t a clue - and that is kinda why I’m asking on what others’ opinions are. It is a problem - no one likes a negative experience… but I don’t like the imbalance that could be caused by tweaking spawns too heavily or adding an invulnerability period. Just my two cents.

(Ghosthree3) #2

There’s nothing wrong with spawn camping. The campers are at such a disadvantage that the only way the campee’s will struggle to kill them off is if they are either massively outskilled - in which case they’ll be raped just out of spawn even if they weren’t being spawncamped - or they have no clue what to do and keep mindlessly spawning and instantly firing their guns.

(Badger_Commander) #3

Battlefield dealt with this well by making it so you get no XP for killing people in their spawn.

(Osl112) #4

I’m not sure I agree. There’s plenty wrong with spawn camping imo - it really doesn’t add anything at all to the game. It gives those who are being camped and those who don’t wish to camp a really bad experience - nothing sucks more than feeling powerless to stop being one-shot by a Vassili as soon as you spawn. Even if they are killed not far out of spawn, at least they are given more than a split second to put up some kind of fight. That may still be a bad experience, but at least they are not totally powerless - if you know what I mean. Besides, I don’t think being spawn camped is only a plight of the unskilled - these guys were heavily (and rather unfairly) outnumbered. Perhaps a balancing issue?

Fair response though.

(Yak) #5

The problem with that is they’ll wait just outside spawn and kill you as you leave it.

(Badger_Commander) #6

Of course spawn camping is rubbish, as you say if you’re not given a chance to fight back then it’s not a fight it’s an execution. The argument of “well it’s the team’s fault for sucking” is ridiculous, even if you’re bad at the game you should be give a fair shot.

It’s a videogame for having fun not evolution, darwinism does not apply.

(Ghosthree3) #7

See this is what I was talking about when I said they have no clue what to do. As long as you don’t fire your gun you get like 4-5 seconds of complete invincibility when you spawn. That’s enough time to move around, line up your shots, have your enemies blow their clips. People can’t drop their invincibility the moment they spawn then die and complain they couldn’t do anything, it doesn’t work that way.

If there is spawn camping going on the issue is that the teams are unbalanced yes, even quite unbalanced teams rarely get spawn camped, only the truly unbalanced do.

(Dirmagnos) #8

I maintain same opinion as before regarding fix.
200% hp and dmg in immediate vicinity of spawn for spawning team, with bonus decreasing as player move further away from spawn. Lika spawn point aura.
With some limitations, like SR bonus decreases twice as fast.

(squiid) #9

I posted this on another post about spawn camping, I think just adding a 3 second time period where they are invulnerable to allow the team to push back spawn killers and put them on the respawn time to allow them to actually push the objective properly, but after all, spawn killing is caused due to unbalanced teams (Or so what I’ve seen). If one team is heavily better then the other (Like a 10 times difference) then spawn killing is almost inevitable, if it’s not at the spawn it’s 10 seconds from the spawn where they just get demolished at a choke point. I doubt that spawn camping won’t be addressed, it’s just when and how effective it really is.

(Badger_Commander) #10

The problem with that is they’ll wait just outside spawn and kill you as you leave it.[/quote]

Maybe but at least you’ll get a chance to orient yourself.

Also I thought the Brink solution of invincible auto turrets around spawn wasn’t a bad solution.

Yeah this is the larger issue, addressing it should remove most spawn camping.

(bontsa) #11

Definitely still considering spawncamp being purely team balance issue, sadly it can never be gotten fully rid of because chaos happens. Hence why I think proper approach to balancing teams would be fiddling with people’s mindset and encouraging for volunteerly switch between numberly uneven teams. Appealing enough one-time-per-match credit bonus, say 100, and maybe even a nice lil’ XP badge for the sportsmanny fella who switches team making 4on6 situation into 5on5 or so forth? Autobalance should be put into place too if none is found to be ballsy enough for such feat. Switch encouragement is still kind of a bandage solution, since it already requires situation where 2 or more people from opposing team have had enough of it, but well.

At very least uneven numbers should be announced server-side. I don’t mind switching team since I tend to play alone or with group of friends spread around on both teams, but I ain’t glued to the scoreboard. It’d be nice to see such unevenly situation before it turns into spawncamp, when it’s easier to fight back and actually do something.

Automated defences as thrown around here and there in these threads never appeal to me, because for example in Terminal that would absolutely nullify the ability for such high risk-high reward manouvers as calculating enemy spawn clock and slipping into Attacker spawn, flanking people in secondary objective gas generator room. Not that said action would always be hugely useful but you’ll get the point, such autoturret solution doesn’t fit into game’s flanky and fast-paced nature in my opinion.

Tutorial seems to be completely ignored judging from the amount of Skyhammers who have stuffed their ammopacks so far up in their own intestines they’re unable to share them, but that or some proper announce mechanic could make it more clear for players that they are indeed invincible at spawn and moving away from it for quite a few seconds until they get triggerhappy or perform actions.

(Jostabeere) #12

Aren’t there always two sides of the coin? The guys who kill at the spawn and the guys who let them being killed at their spawn? Many classes can easily clear the area infront of the spawn with explosives.

(Mescman) #13

If you play a fps game, there’s always a possibility that someone will be so much better than you that you won’t be able to do much. I don’t think i want to play a fps game where everyone gets aided so much that it’s always a guaranteed “fair game”.

(Nail) #14

don’t spawncamp, fall back and hold an objective

(SteelMailbox) #15

Only time I provoke spawncamp is when we need to push the last objective on chapel or when delivering the objective on trainyard and even those times I still prefer to hold them off after they spawned and got a bit of time to prepare for example: after they dropped down the ramp or trying to get through the doorway on terminal.

(GhostEntity) #16

I refuse to spawn camp and will never go close to the other teams spawn and will usually start a shuffle team vote HOWEVER I’ve never seen one of these votes ever pass. No one ever wants to shuffle when they’re on a power trip despite how much they all know how much its sucks to be camped.

(KangaJoo) #17

@Osl112 If I see some people on the enemy team leave at halftime I just switch during the warmup period and hope we get some more teammates. Haven’t been spawn camped yet. Actually the only time I have been spawn camped was when I played MM against 3 cheaters but me and my teammates just went AFK as soon as the match started (we knew they were cheaters from a prior match) so idk if that counts.

(Badger_Commander) #18

Nobody is talking about that though, just making it so you can spawn and not be instantly killed before you get a chance to do anything.

(B_Montiel) #19

Spawncamp is in my opinion mainly due to unbalanced teams, whether by skill or by numbers. The best solutions to address this is probably by putting an auto-balance, which is indeed very needed on public servers, and improve the voting system which is too narrow right now. It needs a full majority to pass, and this is a bit absurd because there’ll always be 30% of the players who won’t vote. If nobody wants to scramble the teams in an obvious unfair situation, then there’s no reason to stay on a server and you better find yourself another one to play on.

Putting band-aids like spawn god for longer period than there is already or whatever automated defences are incentives to troll around the enemy spawn. And they won’t resolve the unfairness of the game. If people can’t go spawnkill any more, they will stomp you 10 meters further which is not better.

Spawnkill is to me not an issue by itself. Better work on the origins of it.

(Ghosthree3) #20

Not the game’s fault people don’t know how it works.