Spawncamping Is Inevitable

Population imbalance is the problem. If there is unstoppable zerg advancing through the lane then fighting is pointless as you will only die over and over again. On the other hand if defenders choose to redeploy to some other lane then they will most likely create another imbalance and spawn camping in that lane.

IMHO population imbalance needs fixing, not necessarily spawncamping itself.

Not-solved and then you will introduce even bigger defensive issues. The biggest and most impact-full is you would completely eliminate the ability for the defenders to organize and coordinate a multiplayer push out of a central location. This change would also reduce the effectiveness of none grouped players as they will not be lost in the noise or caught up in the tide as the organized player push out, but would be picked off individually as they drop in out of the sky, for all of the attackers to see.

Spawn camping is the topic, which generally means the attackers are already in a tactical superior position, outnumber the defenders and often have a dominate vehicle positioning. Forcing the defenders to not only drop in individually, then make their way to a vehicle terminal, then spawn the AMS, so that players can deploy on the AMS, so they can hop out and switch to MAXes, so that they can then mount an attack on a base or tower that is already under attack is not going to work in the least bit.

Sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree your solution would be worse then the nominal problem of spawn camping currently is. If you do not want to be spawn camped redeploy to a different location.

Spawn camping is the result of the attacker out positioning the defender, it could be made more difficult for attackers by giving the defenders multiple directions in which to leave the spawn area or teleport to from with in the spawn room. Having a spawn room, with a teleporter that leads to another building, which has another teleporter, which leads to another building with a teleporter that leads back to the spawn room, would force attackers to split their forces to cover multiple points of exit. Thus the defenders could teleport around to different buildings and then pick the one with the least amount of attackers camping and make their push out from there.

Lets say there are 100 Attackers and 50 defenders. If each spawn room was linked to three other buildings via teleporters scattered around the base, then at best the attackers even with a 2:1 advantage if they wanted to camp each building would be forced to split their forces 3 ways, meaning optimally they would have 33 players covering each building. If the 50 defenders then coordinated their forces they could pick one of the 3 buildings and focus their push from there which would allow 50 defenders to push out against 33 attackers.

Solving population imbalances or breaking up zergs is next to impossible. You need to alter your tactics, holding ground is no longer the goal, but rather bleeding them as you tactfully retreat. I think that is the beauty of this game, not every fight is fair and square 50 vs 50, many times you may be up against 2:1 odds, so winning is not always the goal or even an option, but rather bleeding the attackers as you tactfully retreat, which for me can be as fun if not more fun. But if winning and holding ground is the only way you are going to get enjoyment, then yes pop imbalances and zergs can be a huge issue. Just like spawn camping is, when all the one needs to do to avoid being spawn camped is spawn somewhere else and change your objective.

I love setting up kill boxes with my squad as the zerg approaches, then falling back to do it again and again. You are not going to be able to hold the ground vs the zerg, but you can wreck them as they attack and keep doing it, until the rest of your empire takes notices and joins the fight or the zerg starts to break up and move down different paths, then you can start to hold & gain ground again.

Spawning queues. Nuff said.

1. Give every base at least 3 different spawnrooms, connected by teleporters
2. Hit people in the face with s.th. heavy that only use the main spawn room and complain it's camped
3. Make all spawnroomdoors/-windows reflect damage done to them from the outside (if fired at from vehicle, damage the person not the vehicle)

If we define spawncamping as any death near a spawn, then sure it's inevitable.

Otherwise, spawncamping is literally impossible without the camped player's cooperation. How are you going to camp someone who spawns at a different base? You can't. They're going to spawn at some other base (and if you try to camp the next base, they'll spawn further back until they're spawning warpgate), and come back with combat vehicles to resecure the base.

Smart players are impossible to spawncamp.

You know what is result of what? Zergs that avoid each other. Smart players redeploy and then create imbalance on different lane which again leads to spawncamping.

Or you can deploy in a base back and organize defenses but what is the point if zerg outnumbers you 2:1?

There's nothing wrong with spawn camping other than it's really boring.

Hmm.. Doesn't your last line make your entire point meaningless? Let me tell you a secret - "The playerbase is NOT smart". It's a shocker, isn't it? Spawncamping is inevitable for the most of the players. That's it.

That's a gross mis-statement of the point. There is a difference between being a "smart player" and being a cowardly player who abandons a base to be lost. Your "solution" basically amounts to "being willing to say, "eh, frag it, this situation is broken so I am taking my ball and going home" and then calling it tactical brilliance. It's not. It's heaving a sigh of surrender in the face of a broken game situation.

The spawn-outhouse design facilitates and exacerbates this, however. If you had two or more spawns with small nearby gens that could be attacked so you could shut down the one-way invincible shields, you'd actually have something to fight over. The defenders could play for time and the attackers could eventually get in and gun the b*stards in their tubes, as we did or old. It would be *fun.*

If you want to end spawn camping then the easiest way is to give defenders such a broad range of ways to deploy that there's no easy way to just surround one building and own the base. Here's one:

Give each base more than one spawn room, and design spawn rooms so that they have teleporters to each other AND to various strategic points around the base.

Example: include teleporters with exits in a safe spot right next to every single turret in the base; directly to vehicle and aircraft pads; and directly to generator rooms, SCU spots, etc. Seriously, you have teleporter technology but don't use it to connect your troops to the tactically and stragetically important places on your base?

Here's another idea for solving spawn camping: a new infiltrator item:

Short Range Spawn Beacon.

Make it an unlockable item like a new grenade type. Make it deploy like a squad spawn beacon.

Level 1: Can only be used by friendly troops a spawn room in the region where it is placed. Can only be placed up to 100 meters from spawn room.
Level 2: Increase placement range to 200 meters from friendly spawn room in same region.
Level 3: Increase placement range to 300 meters from friendly spawn room in same region.
Level 4: Increase placement range to anywhere in friendly region.
Level 5: Can be used as spawn point by anyone in that region who could normally spawn in that region (like a Sunderer) without them having to start in a spawn room.
Level 6: Can be placed in enemy regions that are eligible for capture (adjacent to friendly region with spawn room).

It should not have resupply capabilities, nor class-swapping capabilities, nor be mobile. If you want those characteristics get a Sunderer.

It should be destroyable like a sensor dart.

It should have an exclusion zone like a deployed Sunderer so only a certain number can be effectively used, and should be subject to the Sunderer exclusion zone as well. If a friendly Sunderer deploys in a spot that would cause an exclusion zone conflict the beacon either turns off or despawns.

In essence it would work like a squad beacon but not be limited to just the squad; it would have range and exclusion zone limitations; it would be class specific to the Infiltrator.

Yes, that is true. I think that as long as we have spawn rooms in the game there will be spawn camping in the game.

However, the thing which I think you have not realized yet is that the spawn camping itself is not a problem. It's just that the PS2 gameplay seems to be practically nothing but spawn camping. It's the core of the gameplay! All we do in the game is to move from one spawn room to the other and have this "tug-of-war" type brawl-thing where the empire which has shorter distance from the spawns to the capture point and/or larger numbers will win. Well, if not always then 90% of the time. It's so freaking boring.

The question is how could SOE change the game so that the spawn camping wouldn't be dominating the gameplay anymore? Spawn camping could still exist, but it would happen, say, only once in an hour.

The solution is something which has been written in the forums hundreds of times already and it's a shameless rip off from PS1. I'm talking about the stupid outposts. There were no outposts in PS1. If those would be gone in PS2 as well then we would be fighting over considerably fewer facilities. Get rid of the ******** death zone which circles the entire map. It has shrunk the supposed 8km by 8km map sizes to 6km by 6km for absolutely no reason at all. Then move the bases that are left in the map further apart from each other. The ones near the edge of the map could be moved right next to the sea. This extra space in between bases would open up the landscape for proper vehicle battles which would have to rely on Sunderer spawns. So instead of camping spawns we'd be fighting over Sunderers until the battle moves close enough to the enemy base. It would be hell of a lot more satisfying, not to mention exciting, to have this kind of dynamic battle rather than sitting at a stupid spawn room four times in an hour.

Bring back cap point influence - I'll say it again and again and again. Make the area radius larger, but require a certain percentage of the attacker's population in the hex to be influencing cap points or a base capture will go slowly, very very slowly!

Make it dynamic as well on spawn hiding defenders - if too much of your pop is in the spawn room, then the attacker caps the base faster.

Basically, penalize defenders who hide too many in spawns, and penalize attackers that don't defend the cap points.

Why is this thread necessary?

Anyone that plays the game for 10 minutes will realize the inevitability of camping.

It's built into the mechanics of the game. From actual game-play "choices" to the map design.

Any game that has essentially unlimited resources, a spawn location, fixed or mobile, readily available at all times and a base every few meters is destined for such things.

Actually, if you want to discourage spawn killing, just make spawn kills not reward a kill. Now everyone will leave you be for a few seconds so they don't risk losing the opportunity to get a kill.

Quite frequently I come back from that rear base to kill the enemy sunderer with ESF/MBT/Lib, so uh...sorry but you're just wrong.

Contrary to your belief, offering up your face to the enemy bullets is not the best way to save that base.

Threads like these are basically asking, "Change the game so I can't be camped anymore."

My post is basically saying, "Change your decision-making process and you can't be camped anymore."

Not at all, because unless there are 2 other bases you could hit while you're losing the base you stopped spawning at, you're quite likely to come back to that base and attack them (this time in a useful vehicle instead of as a useless, farmable infantryman.)

If their force outnumbers you 2:1 then yeah you probably shouldn't have been defending that base in the first place and should join up with teammates instead of trying to suicide.