Get. Out. Of. THE $!#% SPAWN ROOM.

Its getting way, way worse, player behaviour is sliding.

I was at a biolab the other day and the dim-bulbs were setting up their engie turrets, snipers and MAXs inside the spawn room before the enemy had actually entered the lab. They just sat in spawn and watched the enemy destroy the gen, then the SCU, then commenced their spawndoor farming for 10 minutes. Out of about 20 of us, only 3-4 actually tried to defend the lab.

Was disgraceful cowardice. Then after I /yell for them to get moving I get whining /tells about how I should shut up and let them farm.

I start spawn camping when the SCU is gone with no chance to be repaired.
Then it's cheese time until i redeploy when the timer hits 10 seconds.
You don't want me to camp ? Don't destroy the SCU.

I have been shot in the back enough times trying to repair the SCU, that I have absolutely NO REMORSE for getting cheap kills from behind the shield.

Shooting a guy with repair tool in hand or stabilizing a generator is much cheesier than spawn shield shooting.

As much as i think this would help stop cowards from sitting around, it only makes this game (which already greatly favors offensive groups) even more favorable. Once the defenders are stuck in their spawn, thats about it. In order to fight back, you would have to toss your life on the line.
allowing the attackers to find more advantageous firing points, and leaving the defensive a few blatant spots to peek out of.

i would like this if spawn rooms were more diverse and had tunnels/escape routs, to make defending a little less predictable for attackers.

The amount of times I see it happen in bio labs in particular is ridiculous. All you've got to do is change to light assault and take to the roof. 9 times out of 10 you'll be able to break out of the spawn trap, and then you can either attack a capture point or just farm a bunch of kills from a better position. Get enough light assaults breaking out and it causes absolute chaos for the attackers attempting to set up a spawn trap, and then the other defenders can actually break out of the spawn room...except they are too busy sitting there wondering 'where are the people to shoot at?'.


It amazes me how few people change to light assault to break out of a spawn camp. Even those people who are actually trying to break out but get mowed down by the attackers who are camping them. Credit to them they are at least trying, but if it's not working then try light assault before giving up.

I'm afraid that kind of dynamic just produces extremely stale gameplay. You get a bunch of defenders sitting with their guns pointed at a door and a group of attackers dieing running through it over and over again until they finally have the numbers to overwhelm them. It's not satisfying because it requires little skill and has no challenge.

Spawn rooms always have 3 or 4 exits, it's never stopped anyone from camping them.

I totally agree with the OP. But, I think that the blame lands on the players who worry more about their K/D than the objectives. I've been guilty of that once or twice. I'm sure that many of us have. It's natural, when a game keeps track of K/D as a statistic and emphasizes the killing of other players or the destruction of enemy vehicles over taking objectives.

Am I saying take away K/D? Nope. I could care less. But, like it or not, it does affect a player's psychology and the game will be played much more conservatively when K/D is measured.

Will someone on a kill streak want to rush out into the enemy gun lines to push the objective, or save their base from being capped? Heck no! They're going to sit safely behind their shields and wipe out as many players as they can to pad their K/D and gain as much XP as they can. I don't blame them.

There are no long term rewards for trying to break out of spawn to die heroically like a clown. Killing enemies from inside the spawn meanwhile is a nice shot term reward for getting some xp before losing it to a zerg.

There are often times where the defender (usually outnumbered) loses the base on purpose where they can earn a whole lot more xp than being in an attacking zerg merely just getting xp for capturing it. (not during alerts though)

This is the problem with random people.

I can tell you an example from about a week ago.

Mekala tech was about 1 minute away from getting capped. We had randoms pushing out of the main spawn and the SCU went down.

My outfit/platoon leader called everyone to get back to the spawn, get engies and group up. We went to the tunnels, flew to the loading bay, rushed for the SCU gen. Not once we did meet any opposition. The enemies didn't even bother to have guards at the tech plant because all they saw was 2 platoons of random players trying desperately farm kills at the spawn room. They didn't think we stand a chance.

Anyway we repaired the SCU gen in 1 second, capped the point back (Again, nobody around). We then split the engies and rushed for the shield generators. Around this time the enemy appearently got disoriented enough and they pulled people to stop us. Just enough for the randoms to get a boost in morale, push out of the spawn and repair the SCU.

We mopped up, pushed them back to a single forward post, farmed the **** out of them for a while and then capped it.

Things like these make me feel awesome, but disgruntled at the same time about the fact that players don't even have the brain capability to FLANK. A single engi could have pretty much done all this.


I could tell you many more examples of a massive zerg getting flanked by 3 guys, because nobody bothered to even turn around and spot the enemies let alone kill them to prevent them from destroying the entire force.

It's the people outside the spawn room trying to camp people leaving the spawn room that are responsible for the problem.

People camp inside spawn room because they get easy free kills shooting stupid people trying to camp the spawn room doors.

In the end its a self correcting problem as eventually people outside of spawn room will stop being stupid. that will result in less kills for those inside spawn room.

Until then play infiltrator and heavy assault if you're inside spawn room. Play medic if outside just and learn to not expose yourself to Rez the idiots who died in really bad spots.

The problem is that the spawn rooms have too much view to the outside, making it lucrative to just sit in there and farm INSTEAD of preparing defenses for the next base, or retaking it from outside.

If the attackers stay out of the way, then the defenders can just break out by surprise, unopposed.

It's not a self-correcting problem.

Base redesign is the only solution. When there are 10 times the enemy outside a tiny spawn room you have little chance of fighting back. In many cases a biodome fight is over before it begins.

Small bases - underground tunnels the enemy can't get into with multiple exits out of rockfaces uptop etc.
Biodomes - suspend the spawn room below the main bubble and add multiple routes up top.

Neither side would be able to cover so many exits effectively, making camping on both sides worthless. Defenders are forced to fight or just redeploy (which is also fine as they'd be doing something useful elsewhere). Attackers wouldn't be able to cover all spawn room exits effectively from a camping position. If there were 10 ways into the biodome from below and 30+ enemy, a small squad could easily break out of a single exit.

If spawn rooms had less view then it would simply shift balance to the otherside of the equation. You go from people camping from the inside of spawn room dominating the area around spawn room to those camping the outside of spawn room dominating the the area. Because spawn room is most likely defenders only spawn point and is in a fixed position compared to a attacking forces hidden spawn points the current balance of defenders have the advantage around there spawn point seems to be correct to me.

The camping problem is fixed once attackers stop being stupid and getting needlessly killed.

Ask yourself do you die less often the you used to when camping spawn rooms from the outside? If the answer is yes then like me and many others as well this problem is self correcting. Once more people stop doing stupid things the problem will vanish because there will no longer be a reward for camping from the inside of a spawn room.

I thought I tried that once, and the turret fire wouldn't go through the shield. Then again, I didn't know you could fire through the skylights at hovering aircraft. I guess I need spawn camping lessons.

Well, while in general you're right, as stated thousand times before: It's not the casual player who should be blamed it's the game and base design.

I myself focus heavily on defending bases. I always try to spawn at any base which is currently under attack. And i wished more would do so also and actually try to defend a base (i.e. get out of the room and fight). But often i find myself more or less alone facing a full platoon on enemies camping the spawn building. So what i do? Do i try to push through the camping hordes and die heroically in 0.000001 seconds? No, in such situations i camp also and give every enemy who is a bit to greedy a warm welcome out of the safety of the spawn room.

It's hilarious if it wouldn't be so tragic: the attacking force is so greedy to get cheap kills that pretty soon all caution is thrown over board and players literally stack in front of each other in order to get the kill before their team mates. And by doing so they're utterly exposing themselves to everyone camping in the spawn room. And while cheap kills are - well - cheap kills, defenders now also just camp.

So it's not only the defenders who should be blamed (also also not only the game/base design) but also every spawn camping attacker with all their greed!

To this day I still don't understand why people are so damn stupid. Why do they run up and press their balls against an invulnerable shield to get them shot off? It was invulnerable the last 10x times, chances are its still invulnerable this time.

It would be absolutely terrible for the game. No attacking force would make any progress whatsoever. You would have to attack uncontested facilities if you wanted to take any territory.

Land changes hands frequently, while easy and risk free kills and certs are more permanent. With pop imbalances on many servers, can't expect players not to take advantage of a base that's basically already lost to farm the less cautious attackers running past the spawn room.

THIS


Also, capping bases has no purpose anyways. They will get uncapped minutes later and in days they will have switched ownership a hundred of times. Unless you are 80% on that continent and go for a continent lock for a bonus (that will last hours untill they recap it that night/get deleted on a minor update - I'm fine with deleting ownership at GU's since map also rotates and huge and difficult to get benefits like the Indar ones doesn't stay forever because of just 1 good night but not on minor patches) there's absolutely no reason to lose certs while trying to delay the unavoidable. That is, fighting for a base when you can't go for the whole continent lock because you aren't 80% and that will get capped later with no benefit for you. Farming however gives you certs. In fact you make more certs defending a base than attacking one.

It's pure greed and also of course boredom. But doing so they actually begging for being shot out of the swam rooms. And they also deserve to die in such a cheap way since they are so ignorant, dumb and/or greedy. Worst scenario is always seconds before a base is flipping. All of a sudden attackers seem to quadruple in numbers and prepare to kill the remaining two defenders in the spawn room: "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 ... 30 attackers rush spawn room. Result: 3 dead defenders, one suicide and two regular kills. 6 dead attackers, 3 from AI trap (mines/TNT) and another 3 due to TA/TK". Always the same, always ....