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What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

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TheEndsOfInvention
Posts: 20

What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#1 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 2:56 pm

I know you hoary old vets will probably be shaking your grizzled beards/teef at this. I know now isn't the time to sort out game flow or to be tweaking maps or classes or to generally be nitpicking about much when we should be thankful we have a WAR at all.

That being said however. Camping sucks. For everyone. I've been on both sides and honestly - winning is worse. If you're losing you can just leave. If you're winning you feel obliged to stay and squeeze out a few RR, desperately spamming anyone who doesn't know better.

The way I see it is:
A small advantage in SCs quickly snowballs into a massive rout (there's so much damage on the field relative to small health pools that if even one healer or tank messes up or goes down that's it, no room for mistakes).
Then you chase the enemy into their camp and surround them until the time runs out.
The odd player might try to get your team to back off but it never happens.
I'd say this happens... what... eight times out of ten?

It's my experience that it doesn't take teamwork to force a rout. It just takes slightly more damage or healing than your enemy. But that it does take teamwork to break a camp.
So when an uncoordinated team is camped they haven't got an answer. They're surrounded, all the enemy can see all of them while they can't see all the enemy, enemies' local healing/DPS will always outmatch theirs.

So, my questions to you...

Are we ok with this?
Were we ok with this in the original WAR?
Did the original devs do anything about it?
What, as a lone player or with a couple of friends, can I do to hopefully break a camp?
Last edited by TheEndsOfInvention on Wed Jan 14, 2015 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I am Twonk the Shaman, Twitch the Sorceress and Abnorma the Obvious Witch Elf

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Azarael
Posts: 5332

Re: What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#2 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 3:07 pm

Camping is caused by the following factors:

- Lack of incentive to win (end XP/Renown is not implemented correctly, it should not be a 30% bonus to earned XP/Renown, it should be a flat amount per tier, modified by the number of points gained/500)

- Buffs being removed on death (which seems to be interfering with Resurrection Sickness, making it very difficult to break being camped because whoever you kill is back up in 3 seconds flat)

- Lack of scenario balancing. I heard that scenarios SHOULD be balanced, but we're not seeing it in practice. If the scenario queue worked like this:
  • Allow minimum players for scenario start to enter SC
  • Delay
  • Allow further players to join the scenario only if the number of players on the side they're attempting to join is less than the minimum required to start the scenario or the opposition's playercount. If it is not, they must wait until someone from the opposite realm is also waiting to enter the scenario, and both players receive a pop simultaneously.
then I don't see how scenarios would end up becoming numerically unbalanced. Unfortunately, the queue system's allowing of a player to both cancel their entry and delay it still makes this approach unreliable.

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TheEndsOfInvention
Posts: 20

Re: What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#3 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 3:42 pm

Oh crap, I got all armchair-Napoleon and forgot about basic stuff like buffs not reapplying!

Yeah, RoR SCs are even worse, ofc, bugs and broken stuff make camping even more common. No complaints from me on that front - it'll happen when it happens :)

I was really talking more about the basic design of SCs, despite the bugs it's like the classes and maps and mechanics all conspire to give one side a massive, unassailable advantage that, seemingly, wasn't designed out (with cannons in camps, larger more concealed spawns or even cheesy stuff like painfields.)

Is that just the way it was in WAR? Is there no way to rush or bomb or otherwise break a camp?
I am Twonk the Shaman, Twitch the Sorceress and Abnorma the Obvious Witch Elf

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Azarael
Posts: 5332

Re: What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#4 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 3:51 pm

SCs are always going to be vulnerable to camping because the spawns are static. You can apply cannons to the spawns, but all that will really do is push the camping point further out. To stop camping, the incentive to camp must be removed, and this is very difficult to do with the area control scenarios such as Gates of Ekrund and Nordenwatch. Once you've controlled the BOs, the best tactical option is simply to block the enemy's spawn. Multiple spawns with the ability to select which spawn to use would help, as players could mass and charge the foe campers at one of the spawns, but without the ability to modify the maps, solutions are limited.

Honestly, resurrection is a major component of this issue. A team under siege would normally be able to beat a besieging team whose spawnpoint is further away by attrition, as their reinforce rate is faster, but resurrection totally neutralises this advantage and makes death too cheap for campers.

Sulorie
Posts: 7219

Re: What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#5 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:14 pm

It's the same what people say when getting camped in RvR. People have to use the map. Most SC spawns are actually big enough to offer different ways.
GoE Order spawn is pretty obvious and still people stand on that platform and wait instead taking the less guarded upper path.
Dying is no option.

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tazdingo
Posts: 1200

Re: What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#6 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:22 pm

i think most experienced players in those situations want to pull back but they also don't want to let their team down. if all he high lvl healers and tanks pull back and the guys trying to pick people off at spawn don't notice/listen they're gonna get massacred

almost feels like you have a duty to stick around and help those ppl cause some just don't listen, and if they do go down when you seperate, the enemy now has a much easier time of beating those of you who did fall back, and with a now divided force and lopsided spawns it could lead to defeat even if you intially rolled them

all anyone can do about it is be one of those who does get back and lets the enemy out, and hope this becomes common behaviour

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Azarael
Posts: 5332

Re: What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#7 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:36 pm

tazdingo wrote:i think most experienced players in those situations want to pull back but they also don't want to let their team down. if all he high lvl healers and tanks pull back and the guys trying to pick people off at spawn don't notice/listen they're gonna get massacred
We do this on Order and are pretty unrepentant about it. First we say "pull back" into chat, and if anyone doesn't pull back, they get left behind and die. Pretty soon they learn to pull back - very funny how that works :)

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Tesq
Posts: 5704

Re: What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#8 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:42 pm

indeed camp it should be save spot for loosing faction, when you can prepare a counter atttck with out any fear, if the problem is not able to do that, than that's not camp foult, if it's that rdps can still if you will in camp and that can occure in some sc "barriers" like those on city sitances + guards would solve the problems
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Luth
Posts: 2840

Re: What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#9 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 5:25 pm

Imo the camping in scenarios is caused mainly because of:

- too much renown for kills, far too less renown for winning the sc; you get sc winpoints for killing enemies
- in CtF SCs: flags don't uncapture from self after a time when there is no player around
- in bomb carrier SCs: bomb mechanics are too simple; tank is picking the bomb up and is tanking away the selfdamage + carries the bomb slow but steady around
- the players are generally not forced by the game, to move away from one spot (not necessarily the spawnpoint). As far as i remember, the only scenario that forced players to think and move was Khaines Embrace.

I think the big problem is, that the mythic devs just designed some different scenario variants with mechanics that are mostly interesting, but didn't think far enough that they need to "force" the players to use the mechanics.
When masses of people are thrown together randomly, the hive mind seems to order them, to always use the shortest/easiest path to success (maximising renown).
So imho the players must be forced by a higher will (teh game itself!), or need to be lured with more renown to use the more complex SC mechanics instead of mindlessly farming enemies. :)

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Azarael
Posts: 5332

Re: What causes camping in SCs? How can we make it stop?

Post#10 » Sun Jan 11, 2015 5:29 pm

Agreed. Players are all about maximising reward, whether material (renown/XP/items/etc) or immaterial (fun from playing the game). Catering to that is the best way to solve the problem.

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