The godawful spawncamping issue - Page 4

PredatorFour · 2012-11-13, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

You will never see the epic comebacks from the original.

All that matters is Mass of players, and who camps better with tanks. Real fun there.

The people directing the game must be on a different planet to us (Auraxis

) They would surely of known it was going to turn out like this when designing the bases/worlds.

Planetside 1 had countless epic comebacks which you remember for years. If they don`t change this issue this game might not be around in years to come.

I`ve been racking my brain trying to think of a solution, one i just thought of would be to have some kind of automatic firing, indestructable turrets above the spawns that fire on camping enemies.

Shogun · 2012-11-13, 12:33 PM

i also think, that the spawnrooms should be moved into the bases like they were in ps1.

after all the spawnroom is one of the most vital rooms in a base, and any architect would place this vital room in a secure place.

spawncamping is always a funbreaker, it has to go, it´s not an option to have spawncamping as a normal part of every basecapture.
there will always be some kind of camping, and it´s natural in online shooters, but spawncamping is the worst way to camp. i have no problem with people successfully defending a chokepoint by camping on it, but there needs to be a chance to survive (like not rushing through the camped doorway all alone, but the only way to avoid a spawncamp is to spawn somewhere else and hope this new point isn´t camped as well.

MrBloodworth · 2012-11-13, 01:50 PM

And people wonder why I question if the Dev team spent any meaningful time with the original.

Sir fraggington · 2012-11-13, 02:47 PM

I said this earlier, and i am fully confident that this would solve the issue.
what bases need are exclusively spawn room accessible battlements, designed in a way to provide decent cover,
numerous vantage points over key areas, high ground and a good overview over the main control point(s) (if possible).

it is considerably harder to focus fire on one doorway, if you are taking fire from numerous positions.

Aaron · 2012-11-13, 02:51 PM

The main issue is probably the fact that the spawn room can be reached so easily. Literally, you can, with little resistance, waltz right over to the box-like building if you wanted to. I think that problem has been identified thus far.

In the original, the spawn was fortified and protected by the natural flow of defenders via the base stucture. This effect disallowed the enemy to easily bypass the main defensive force in reaching the spawn room. Of course, we don't want tunnels, but maybe the same effect can be achieved in a more spacious way.

Figment · 2012-11-13, 03:05 PM

Don't see why we wouldn't want tunnels?

I'd be all in favour of combinations of narrow and wide corridors. I mean, consider a hallway in PS1 like the long DSC basement from CC to Gen. That's a tunnel too. We're not just talking about narrow corridors the width of one or two people. Though if there are a couple pillboxes or something, I wouldn't mind the type of tunnels you had between bunkers in PS1 in those areas. But of course those aren't suited for general tunnel design. No, we can easily use tunnels the size of Bio Lab lobbies, any PS1 basements or stair well width at the least. That's easy enough to get through and easy enough to defend.

Look at the vehicle pad of PS1. There could have been some more cover for attackers to hop from cover to cover and a bit more flat terrain in front of the vehicle pad door, but all in all it was excellent fun to attack and defend. Please don't think of backdoor defense too soon as the only type of tunnel you can conceive.

Warshed · 2012-11-13, 05:46 PM

I find the problem to not be the spawn camping as much as peoples inability to assess defeat and turn it into a win. For instance, a smart outfit will realize they are lost, immediately go to the closest base, organize some vehicles and roll back to the base to attempt to retake. If they can be smart and focus on destroying the sunderers they will easily kick the defenders out through attrition, but what we got are people not organized who keep respawning at an obviously taken base and using the cover of the shields to take pot shots (all win with no risk). Those shields are ridiculous if you ask me and should never have been implimented. I understand pain mods in spawn rooms, but not impregnable spawn rooms. Its just bad.

Also maybe there should be a timer from the time the points are taken till the time the base caps and that determines when you get the points for capping a base, NOT just being there right when it caps as it currently is. Right now you just time your reaver exploits around base cap timing and you cash in big time on XP you never earned. Thats crazy!

Or what they do is they tally up the amount of kills one has gotten within the sphere of influence until the base caps and for every kill you get a bonus. You get no kills in the sphere of influence, you get no bonus and lastly you get the bonus regardless of being in the sphere of influence or not so you can leave the base and continue to conquer rather than waiting around. Once the base caps, you get your bonus regardless of where you are at. Bonus could be 25xp times base kills once base caps. So you get 25 kills during the battle you get 25 * 25 or 500 xp. You get 50 kills, you get 1000 xp.

Another way to stop spawn camping is you disable XP gains after certain conditions are met. For instance, if all points are captured and your force is 80% and the enemy force is 20% (4 to 1 odds) you only get 20% of the xp while the defenders get an 80% xp boost. This encourages people to come back to fight the attackers and increase the pop there (XP bonus) and it discourages the attackers from staying to camp (XP loss).

These are just ideas, but really. There are tons of ways to discourage spawn camping, it just takes some additional programming and flexibility.

Miir · 2012-11-13, 06:13 PM

Lots of good ideas in here related to this issue.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=49105

Crator · 2012-11-13, 06:37 PM

Originally Posted by Miir

Lots of good ideas in here related to this issue.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=49105

Meh, I'd rather the spawns be in a location that has some defensibility once you walk out out of them. If they were to put the SCU back in for all spawn locations they would need to put it near the spawns. If that's the case, why not just make the spawn tubes themselves have the ability to be destroyed, you know, like how it was in PS1?

Chewy · 2012-11-13, 06:43 PM

Another question/s I have for those that want less spawn camping, but find it a bit hard to word.

Do you think that defenders should always have a way to win?
Do think it is fair that attackers have to fight tooth and nail to keep or even get a spawn while defenders have a safe, worry free spawn at every base?

I agree that spawn camping can be a bad thing, but that needs to be looked at game by game. In most games you just can't spawn elsewhere or are placed in a random spot and in such games spawn camping is a very evil thing because there's nothing that can be done. But in PS2, defenders (not attackers) have spawn rooms where the player can't be killed in. You have all the time in the world in that room to think about what to do. I don't call that being spawn camped. As you can spawn and have time to think before choosing to go out into the fight.

Attackers on the other hand, are the ones that can get spawn camped. If the sundy is under fire any who spawn there can't fight back. Iv had fights that there wasn't time to even see what is shooting you, let alone get a shot/rocket off. THAT is spawn camping. To die without being able to fight back (minus extreme luck) on spawn is the definition of being spawn camped.

In short. Defenders get to choose to go into the grinder and get farmed. Attackers can't.

Crator · 2012-11-13, 06:49 PM

Originally Posted by Chewy

Do you think that defenders should always have a way to win?
Do think it is fair that attackers have to fight tooth and nail to keep or even get a spawn while defenders have a safe, worry free spawn at every base?

Well, my answer is no. But I defiantly think that vehicles have no business being able to camp the doors of spawn rooms. And the locations of spawns should be placed strategically in relation to the capture points so the defenders have a chance to fight back. For sure if the base is over run the ground troops will camp the spawns.

For instance, with the current situation, let's say you have a force that equals the attackers in the spawn room, you still loose cause the enemy has vehicles outside suppressing all of your troops which gives them no chance to even attempt to try and take back the capture point.

Now let's say we put the spawn room in a more defensible position, where vehicles can't camp it. And put the capture points closer to the spawn room as well. The attackers can still swarm the spawns and suppress the defenders, but at least the defenders have a chance to break out of the room and perhaps get close to the capture points to resecure them.

EDIT: I remember when Higby first started talking to the community about PS1 in relation to PS2 and said how he hated spawn camping. Little did he realize that it's pretty much inevitable if you want to allow some sort of defense to occur at a base. It's much worse in PS2 because both ground troops and vehicles can do it at the same time in a lot of locations.

Figment · 2012-11-13, 06:50 PM

Well Chewy, why do you think we wanted CLOAKED AMSes back?

Because we know that it saves a lot of untimely deaths. For both attackers and defenders alike.

Should or would defenders always get a chance? Of course not. We simply ask, for a better chance to do at least something. It could be done in PS1, so why wouldn't it be possible in PS2? Even if executed differently?

Chewy · 2012-11-13, 07:59 PM

Originally Posted by Crator

For instance, with the current situation, let's say you have a force that equals the attackers in the spawn room, you still loose cause the enemy has vehicles outside suppressing all of your troops which gives them no chance to even attempt to try and take back the capture point.

In that instance I would most likely fall back and call the base lost.

If there's vehicles and troops flooding your base then the attackers have either got lucky and hit the base before defenders set up, pushed into the base without loosing vehicles, or hacked the panel and spawned more vehicles after/during pushing the defenders out of the main building/s.

In all 3 of those the attackers earned to take the base and in my eyes should have the upper hand in holding that ground till defender reinforcements come to mop up.

Maybe this can be worked on by having a way for defenders to destroy attacking vehicles from greater distances. Base turrets are pure crap the way I see it now. They take so long to repair but are taken out very fast. Often before having the chance to counter snipe the tanks. Rockets and MAX AT weapons are just to damn slow moving to work at distance. Defenders need a better way to fight sniper tanks.

I say beef up turret HP by 3 times and see how it goes. 1 tank can out DPS a repair tool and will kill engis repairing a turret and it takes a long ass time rebuild one. So little worries about sneaky engies if you keep an eye out for the great glowing lights. Id leave the turret damage alone though, just buff the HP.

Dagron · 2012-11-13, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by Chewy

Do you think that defenders should always have a way to win?
Do think it is fair that attackers have to fight tooth and nail to keep or even get a spawn while defenders have a safe, worry free spawn at every base?

No, but tell me something, so far how many successful defenses have you seen? Once the shield gens are down, i haven't seen more than a couple (and gens seem to always drop in the first few minutes of an invasion). Attackers shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail any more than defenders... but they shouldn't have an easier time either.

In other words, this:

Originally Posted by Figment

Should or would defenders always get a chance? Of course not. We simply ask, for a better chance to do at least something.

Like i've been saying from the start, the problem is that the fight is over very quickly, and then attackers get stuck sitting around and defenders get stuck in a spawn room where they have all the time in the world to think what to do next... and their only alternatives are a few versions of "i give up".

If defenders at least had different places to come out of after the base is overrun, attackers wouldn't be all sitting next to each other around one building instagibbing everything that gets close to the doors - they'd be more spread around the base, maybe doing the same thing (depending on numbers), or maybe having more interesting fights trying to mop up the defense from their soon to be new base.

Hamma · 2012-11-14, 09:23 AM

Spawn "Camping" is a viable tactic to hold the enemy down while a base or outpost captures. I can't think of any scenario where they could possibly eliminate this. They have already done some things on some of the newer spawn buildings on Amerish.. but in the end this will never stop.