Dealing with spawn campers

(piotr_fr) #61

I do sometimes push to the enemy’s spawn but only when i am solo and if my team spawncamp i do retreat.
I ve lost count of me waiting at the SUV.
Sometimes I switch to the losing outnumbered team.
Fun and fairplay above all!

(Daergar) #62

Since they removed the win requirements from the missions, I agree. Before? Well… :wink:

(K1X455) #63

Today, I was in a full public 8v8 Stopwatch game on Terminal Map and after the first half, 3 ppl left on our side for some reason, leaving only 5 of us on offense. We then slowly fell to the overwhelming force of 3xRhinos, 1xAura, 1xSparks, 1xArty, 1xFragger and 1xBushwhacker.

As soon as I press spacebar to spawn, I didn’t even get the chance to aim and I’m already dead. Same goes with the rest. I left that game because it’s not fun to get spawn camped while we’re on the offense

It’s really very very bad. It gets abused so something has to be done about it.

(greatFactory) #64

why not implement a game rule that makes it so that you can only spawncamp with 1 less players than the opposing team and if you do the game would count it as you leaving a backdoor unguarded and open up a shortcut to the objective

this would still allow spawncamp but would introduce an element of team play in spawncamping making it part of the game instead of the impossible task to get rid of it in a fair way
and if you are spawncamping with one less player than your opponents it is slightly harder and more fun…imho anyway

so whats the downside of a system like this? opinions?

(Ghosthree3) #65

How would that even be implemented properly.

(Yes) #66

There needs to be a system that checks every few minutes if a team has 2 or more players than their opponents and do automatically shuffle by skill. Nothing can really be done about skill differences in players though.

(Ghosthree3) #67

Nice for the game as a whole, really shit for individuals. People might have played really hard and earned their team their victory only to get swapped near the end and lose. Doesn’t really matter because there’s no real bonus to winning but it’d still be really shit.

(Yes) #68

Nice for the game as a whole, really shit for individuals. People might have played really hard and earned their team their victory only to get swapped near the end and lose. Doesn’t really matter because there’s no real bonus to winning but it’d still be really shit.[/quote]
Yeah, I’m kinda reaching. Winning might not give a bonus, but it’s nicer than losing, it would suck to have it taken away from you in the last minutes.

(Gi.Am) #69

Na an automatic shuffle to even out team numbers is needed imo. Casual allows people to come and go as they please, teams become uneven pretty quickly/often and filling out the holes takes too long. Unfortunaly you can’t relay on players to switch on their own (not blaming them if you are in the thick of battle you don’t realise that the teams are uneven).

How such a system could look like (based on old suggestions)

Server checks every spawnwave if one side is missing 2 players. If that is the case it sends out a warning that the teams are imbalanced and people will be forcefully switched if this persists after a set time (next spawnwave for example) . If a person switches voluntary at this point he could get a small bonus (xp - credits). if noone does it on their own someone will be forcefully switched over (could be fully random, based on points (tho I don’t like that)) the person who is selected (gets a message) and is switched on his next respawn (allowing him to select a merc).
To prevent that the system tries to rebalance when the loosing team is leaving a sinking ship. Autoshuffle is disabled, when the timer reaches a set low (say the last 1-2 minutes) .

(Ghosthree3) #70

If a forced auto switch were to be implemented it would have to switch the most recent person to join the server. If everyone on the stacked team was there since lobby I guess move the least useful people, moving the top players basically just flips the game which is pretty lame.

(Osl112) #71

Just a quick note on the prevalence of spawn camping - I’m in my first game of the day, stopwatch on trainyard and it has happened again. The attacking team were putting up a good fight but slowly left as time ticked down. With 4 minutes left on the clock, the enemy slowly reduced itself to a single person with people leaving. Again, I was left in the predicament - do I join the enemy team and get slaughtered or do I sit and do absolutely nothing. I guess I’m plagued with bad luck to have had this issue as often as I have.

As for the suggestions, I’m starting to think little tweaks to map design would do the trick. Adding second spawns may not fully prevent spawn camping from happening in the worst cases, but would help to alleviate at least the frequency of the issue somewhat. My issue with the turret inclusion argument is that I’m uncertain as to how that would be implemented whereby spawns move - I assume there would be some kind of time delay on the turrets but on maps such as Underground where spawns are somewhat aggressive, it may artificially push a team forward or back. And as for the forfeit option - I don’t agree that this should be implemented for the reasons I mentioned earlier. I just don’t agree with the idea of giving players an escape clause to stop trying.

(IcySkyz) #72

I have no problem spawn camping if its equal members of both parties, eg. 7 vs 7. But if its unbalanced teams , eg 7 vs 3, then yes there is a problem.

Rather than DEALING with Spawn Camping, the question should be: HOW did you end up being spawn camped?
One of the most common reasons is a bunch of your team mates LEFT. Leaving Comp matches NEED to be stricter.

Easy Solution: ENFORCE tougher penalties for leaving comp

  1. LOCK comp for 24 HOURS
  2. MERCS that are in your CURRENT squad are LOCKED for 24 hours in both comp and pub playing
(Osl112) #73

[quote=“IcySkyz;59902”]I have no problem spawn camping if its equal members of both parties, eg. 7 vs 7. But if its unbalanced teams , eg 7 vs 3, then yes there is a problem.

Rather than DEALING with Spawn Camping, the question should be: HOW did you end up being spawn camped?
One of the most common reasons is a bunch of your team mates LEFT. Leaving Comp matches NEED to be stricter.

Easy Solution: ENFORCE tougher penalties for leaving comp

  1. LOCK comp for 24 HOURS
  2. MERCS that are in your CURRENT squad are LOCKED for 24 hours in both comp and pub playing
    [/quote]

But what about casual? Should it be free reign? I’d argue not - spawn camping isn’t an enjoyable experience and thus does not help with player retention.

I’m starting to think that stopwatch is not a game mode suited to casual play at all.

(IcySkyz) #74

“But what about casual? Should it be free reign? I’d argue not - spawn camping isn’t an enjoyable experience and thus does not help with player retention.”

The reason why I say penalties for comp is b/c 1. Your using rank which many players deem important 2. There is no in/out movement of players. That is, once its locks in players, thats it. No one can join that match even if people leave.

But what about public? Well simply put, there is no regulation on it. Currently, there is no control over the players entering a pub game. In fact, the user chooses what matches he/she wants to play in. If the user ends up in a game where the opposing team is more skilled (which from time to time, will happen), it is hardly the fault of the game system as it doesn’t do any matching nor regulates users. If you want to end up regulating public servers, it will hardly be casual gameplay anymore (in my opinion).

“spawn camping isn’t an enjoyable experience”
I agree.

(Osl112) #75

[quote=“IcySkyz;59917”]“But what about casual? Should it be free reign? I’d argue not - spawn camping isn’t an enjoyable experience and thus does not help with player retention.”

The reason why I say penalties for comp is b/c 1. Your using rank which many players deem important 2. There is no in/out movement of players. That is, once its locks in players, thats it. No one can join that match even if people leave.

But what about public? Well simply put, there is no regulation on it. Currently, there is no control over the players entering a pub game. In fact, the user chooses what matches he/she wants to play in. If the user ends up in a game where the opposing team is more skilled (which from time to time, will happen), it is hardly the fault of the game system as it doesn’t do any matching nor regulates users. If you want to end up regulating public servers, it will hardly be casual gameplay anymore (in my opinion).

“spawn camping isn’t an enjoyable experience”
I agree. [/quote]

Completely agree on the comp part - never wished to refute that. In regards to the public argument however, I think something needs to be done but will agree that regulation (in the vein of stopping people leaving etc.) is not the right way to go about it. I think SD need to do something in order to keep it as fun for as many people as possible (preventing spawn camping) without strictly regulating people. Whether that is slight tweaks to map design to prevent spawn camping, adding more bonuses to newly spawning players or improving balancing options or getting people into lobbies quicker, I’m not sure. I quite like the first and third options, but admit that they also have clear downsides.