"Don't finish pls"

(Hyperg) #1

This is a line I’ve heard countless times in ET, mostly on Supply Depot, where the truck was inches away from mission end and the attacking team was busy spawncamping the defenders for 10 minutes.

This happened to some degree yesterday on London, where instead of escorting the EV, the attackers saw fit to spawncamp for ~5 minutes, while nobody touched the vehicle (I was in the attacking team, bored to my teeth).

I personally /quit a server where this happens, because I’m there to play an objective-based game. Take the objective away and my fun rate drops. I strongly belive I’m not the only one. If I wanna shoot ppl in the head for 10 minutes without the objective pressure, I find a TDM server.

Not sure how this situation can be enforced on the attacking team, given the fixed time scenario, but some sort of incentive would be awesome to focus the gameplay around the objective. I’ve got no problem whatsoever with spawncamping the defenders while a dude carries the vehicle, that’s how you do it in wars but that’s a diff thing altogether.

/discuss

(SinDonor) #2

Yep, happened early “today” for me here in the USA.

I don’t mind so much as this is an Alpha, and I need the practice plus it gives us extra time to find bugs. But in a released game, this sucks. I have no idea how to combat that. Perhaps make the last 50 yards “automatic” so the EV hones in on the final target and the only way it stops is if the defending team blows it up themselves.

Or, make it that the attacking team gets MORE exp and GC for winning faster than they would for all the extra kills during that same time. OR, on an OBJ game, players get no XP or GC for kills at all during the last leg, just for OBJ related things and time to finish.

But spawn camping sucks.

Perhaps we need a “mobile spawn VTOL drone” that is covered in turrets and rocket pods. Everytime there’s a new spawn for either team, the drone heads over to the spawn area and hovers there. ANY enemy that is in view and range gets blasted to smithereens. Might take some map balancing but as long as either team has some access to the exit routes out of the spawn, then it should work.

I like it. Make it so. Oh wait, I have no power to do that. Dammit.

(stealth6) #3

Just need to put an added bonus for extra time.

Next time we should just play on the stopwatch server :stuck_out_tongue: then wasting time like that is bad.

(Hyperg) #4

I’m not arguing against the “testing methodology” there :stuck_out_tongue: or even against the spawncamping, tho I agree with SinDonor, some proximity turrets or smth like ET:QW bases had would be interesting to have, at least to give the spawners a chance to group and breakout.

As for xp and such, you already get a decent amount for “sticking with the plan”, but I doubt that solves things, if it gets too unbalanced toward objective interaction, mostly because there’s a big difference between a team of spawncampers + 1 objective carrier and a team of spawncampers + no objective carriers.

I think that in the level graph, the edges towards defenders spawn should become increasingly higher in cost for the attackers, making them pointless to pursue (be it by def vantage points, or proximity turrets or devices). If that cost is properly balanced, it should give the attackers plenty of work to do in order to carry on with the objective, without getting “sidetracked” into griefing of any sorts. I wonder if the possibility of loosing the map proves to be a strong enough incentive to stop dragging arse anyway :slight_smile:

(Apples) #5

Well even when I get spawnraped I think it is more a players’ mentality problem than a “game is broken” thing, I mean why does a team get spawnraped, it is usually because the other team is too powerfull and the team are unbalanced in term of firepower. This can be solved if a) I get better at this game ^^ or b) some stackers admit it and switch team.

I think this come with a good admined server more than with a game improvement, though some sort of spawn protection would indeed be nice (Senethro planted a turret in our spawn at some point ^^, even if it wasnt really hard to knock it of, some guys lost one push because of that).

Another thing, timed respawn would make the spawncamping harder I guess, it will be easier to plan because all players will respawn at once, but one guy alone will have harder time to survive 5-6 opponents coming at him at once.

Peace

(tokamak) #6

That’s what she said!

(SinDonor) #7

NSFW-ish Tenacious D!

(zenstar) #8

One way exits with shooty holes and a moat (so the enemy can’t use the shooty holes).
If you get spawn camped you simply gather inside your fortress and gun down everything outside.

Either that or make teams invulnerable in their spawn area. If they step out they can get gunned down, but if you can be shot at from within your enemy’s spawn area then you need to back off.

Of course this would require some careful level design to stop exploitation (especially with snipers) and doesn’t stop them from camping just outside your safe zones, but at least it gives you an area to regroup.

(Hyperg) #9

Clearly she wasn’t an objective wh*re xDDD.

Again, I’m not pinning down the spawncamping on the board here. It’s the fact that in a certain phase, players can “choose” where to channel their efforts, objective or spawncamping. If the environment allows for that to happen, I’d say player mentality doesn’t take all the blame here :wink:

It’s a thin line between killing defenders around their spawn and “defending” the objective progress being made by the attackers. As long as the game crosses the line heavily into the latter, I’ve got no issues with it.

(Anti) #10

I was there for the London Bridge game and it wasn’t much fun. Only way I can to see to resolve this is to ensure that spawn camping and frag hunting isn’t the optimal way to play when compared to objectives. There are various things we can do over the coming months to ensure that.

(SinDonor) #11

Well then…

(.FROST.) #12

I’ve said that a couple times before, but mostly on ingame chat; so here I go again. I “confess”, that I was one of those guys wich deliberately spawn camped the defense. The reason for that is simple; I’m desperately in search of “my” class/class-variant. And since I can’t just change my weapon loadout, body type and sights, I have to figure out wich build fits me the best. Second reason(also related to shooting people in the face and not doing obj); some may say it’s fancy noob crap and numbers don’t say much, but I was also figuring out the best, mouse sensitivety.
I think yesterday I actually came to the conclusion I was searching for since I’ve installed DB; 2nd Engineer and mouse sensitivety at 33 with 1600dpi(and a lot of sleep, cause you reeeeally have to be fresh when you are going up against those semi-pros in the DB alpha. You are tired, then you are basically cannon fooder).

The objectives aren’t hard to understand(at least in theory), so I really don’t care(at least I haven’t), but now, since I got a good feeling for the movement and figured out my char I promise to concentrate myself much more on the objective in the future

(iwound) #13

definetley needs a few turrets for spawn protection. and a clear indictaion what is a spawn area, distressed yellow diagonal stripes decal on spawn area floor would do.

(zenstar) #14

It doesn’t really matter what you do to make spawn camping less optimal. If people can camp they will camp. For whatever reason they can come up with including (but not limited to) “because we can”.

The only way to stop spawn camping is by making it not possible.

And .Frost. : you didn’t need to spawn camp to do any of those things. I’m not blaming you for spawn camping, but it does further my point that making spawn camping less optimal isn’t going to stop it.

(.FROST.) #15

@Zenstar;

You are right and I didn’t made myself entirely clear. What I meant was, that I didn’t cared very much about the obj and tried to get head on with the enemy as often and successfuly as possible instead. When the EV was basically at their spawn site that came off as spawn camping by nature. And I just kept doing(going head on) so even though I knew I wasn’t contributing very much to the team.

But as I’ve said, now its objective time for me(though I’m still quite curious how a couple guys manage to get 40-50kills a match).

(rookie1) #16

I dont see how turrets will keep spawns safe …the other team just have to back up a bit and wait them at turrets off range…and like Apples said may be the other team was just too strong

(zenstar) #17

The camped team needs an area where they can regroup. It’s difficult to spawn camp when the entire team groups together and charges at once.

Also: think of the circumference of a circle and how many people you’ll need to guard that circumference without standing in the circle. The bigger the circle the more people you need or the further spread out they are and more likely to let things slip through.

Turrets are meant to create this safe area. If the safe area is big enough then you can’t trap the team inside it.

The spawn area needs to provide invulnerability to its team and there need to be enough escape routes that the attackers can’t fully trap the other team.

(H0RSE) #18

To counter spawncamping, just make the zones near each base “off limits” for the opposing team. If they enter the zone, they get a countdown timer to return to the map, or they get killed. Battlefield did this - the only problem was the zones were still too close to each team’s spawn.

You can also add the auto turrets that seem to help as well :slight_smile:

(.FROST.) #19

You could also solve the problem with more alternate routes in the first place. One additional passage can make all the difference. Brink’s CC Pier would’ve needed one more passage or outlook for the Sec(for counter sniping/camping) and it would’ve been a totally different map gameplay wise(at least around the first obj.).

Another way would be to place the spawns differently; but then again, you can’t have it more convenient, than spawning 80m away from the finish line. If you suck regardless, then you might have deserved to get camped.

PS: Something that DB certainly don’t need is more turrets. I mean, the mobile turrets are even more sharp shooting, than Brinks spawn turrets. And they have a far greater range/detection-area too.

(iwound) #20

you have at least 2 exits from spawn ending at different locations.