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Eric please stop spawnpoint camping


Desplain

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I don't think Eric is good enough at GSF to camp spawn points.

 

But if he is, he should definitely do it.

 

While this reply is tongue-in-cheek, the title of the thread clearly shows how little the OP actually knows about GSF development, and Eric Musco's job in particular. And I don't say that to belittle the OP, but rather to point out that Eric Musco can do nothing to prevent, stop, or disincentivize the behavior the OP is trying to alter.

 

Maybe you want the "agony to be over", but maybe other people need the flight time/experience, which they aren't getting if they're being pelted before even getting their bearings coming out of hyperspace. If you want to get it over with, just 'Exit Battle'. Sorry you think asking for a few seconds of breathing time for outmatched pilots to do something is too much trouble, but then that's exactly why the GSF community remains as small as it is.

 

As far as "moving the camp further out", I think that's just fine, because it gives a chance for the weaker team to get to the terrain for some cover, instead of being mined and railgun sniped out in the open.

 

Everyone "needs" the flight time and experience, but no one gets much in the way of "rewards" if they can't get medals. The only way to get a medal in TDM is by dealing damage or repairing damage (assists and kills are a directly related to dealing damage.) Now, I suppose you could definitely get Mechanic and Savior medals and their associated achievements by parking a T2B in a nook of the cap ship and heal the players that are being spawn camped, and I guess that's ok. But, you will STILL get a non-contributor message unless your railgun sentry drone hits an enemy or an enemy player naively comes close enough to trigger a seeker mine. Hence, it all goes back to dealing damage.

 

The point is, if the players on the camped team don't even have enough wherewithal to choose a different spawn point to get away and under cover to then deal damage, they'll never get any of the "flight time and experience" you think they will be able to get because of some gimmick that disincentivizes spawn camping.

 

I definitely don't think turning on cap ship turrets, even with the conditions in Verain's post, will really change the root problem. Maybe a temporary invincibility (not invisibility) that expires immediately if you use a system ability or fire either of your weapon systems and otherwise after a brief time measured in seconds would help, and I guess that's worth discussing, though I doubt it would achieve what you are hoping for. I mean, if a player has enough wherewithal to hop in a T1S, barrel roll to a gunship, use DF, and shoot a rocket pod at an enemy vessel within the time frame of the invincibility buff, just to score enough damage to hopefully earn a medal, then they probably aren't really all that bothered by spawn camping overall. I mean that's a level of player knowledge already above most wildly outmatched spawn camped teams. You and I probably already have that level of knowledge and we also know to choose a different spawn and can probably get a few points of damage off against a superior team without a proposed invincibility.

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Eh, I think it's fine to treat Eric like an interface to the devs, because I think that's kinda part of his job. If OP had said "please pass this request along to your dev team" it would be more correct, but, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

I overall strongly agree with your points about camped teams. The reason I bring up differing rulesets for when the score disparity is great is because any ruleset that doesn't obey such logic will ultimately be exploited by good teams. If you put some rule in place that encourages a team to play on their cap ship, you will at best ultimately have teams that try to play on opposite sides of the map, even if they aren't explicitly trying to exploit that mechanic in any fashion. Meanwhile, something that slows down a crush by a bit may trap players in a game with hopeless teammates, but it may also generate a bit more play if the totally outmatched team gets to form up a bit sometimes. The problem with it being cap ship turrets specifically is that if the game is like 40-3 and you have capship turrets defending you with the enemy team hanging out just out of line, you are more likely to simply never leave the capship, except potentially to clear non-contributing, making the game go to time- and that would be in no one's best interest.

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I don't honestly think ship turrets are a good idea... and I don't think invincibility or invisibility is a worthwhile thing to explore as a fix.

 

...first, I don't really think that we can apply a handicap only some of the time, eg: when one team is losing. If I'm chasing someone, and they retreat to their capital ship, I need (or, I feel like I deserve) to know how the game rules apply, consistently. Either the capital ship has turrets, or will expel me, or throw up a forcefield ALL the time... or NONE of the time.

 

But... people have pointed out that spawn camping "shouldn't" be a thing (despite the fact that it IS a thing), because you can just spawn at a different point.

 

bruh.

 

BRUH.

 

....do you think we don't KNOW this?

 

...because we KNOW this.

 

Being invincible or invisible for 6 seconds has no functional difference than just spawning somewhere else... and we're already doing that. When true spawn camping is going on, what's going on is you've got a coordinated group that has pushed all the way to the capital ships... and drifts between them killing ships as they spawn. Of course you spawn as far away as possible... but, ultimately, the name of the game is Total Death Match, and spawning far away or not... you have to deal with the spawn camp... which I think of as a roving ball of death. If you get within that 15 to 20K range they're already formulating how to end your existence. Their gunships are aiming, and whichever ship is best suited to eviscerating you -or ships, because they're coordinating, are already peeling off to blow you up.

 

It was said earlier in the thread, and it's still entirely true... the problem isn't spawn camping. Spawn camping is a symptom of the actual problem... and that's mismatched groups. One premade plus decent Puggers will wreck a group of solo-queue flyers, no matter how good they are. Two premades working together are kinda unstoppable, short of other premades.

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I wonder if an Underdog mechanic might not be the solution to what ails us.

 

Basically at a certain point of score disparity like -10-15 and then a second stage -20-25 or similar on DOM marches a sort of in our most desperate hour thing kicks in giving the losing team a sight buff equal to all 4 power ups not much maybe a couple percentage points worth of boost compared to the standard power up but still a bit of a boost to really amp up the competition.

 

so if a DO boosts damage like 50% just for comparison purposes then the under dog mechanic rank 1 is a small 5% boost to damage, while the yellow gives a refill of ammo and boosts weapons power pool by a 5% or so margin and so on and so forth.

 

then the second tier boosts further maybe by 7-10% really ramping up how desperately the losing team is fighting harder and harder against their seemingly unbeatable foe.

 

these are just place holder numbers FYI not going to deep into specifics or the larger math but that might be a solution that benefits everyone.

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An "underdog" mechanic sounds really bad. Generally, if a team is bad, it should just lose, and the game shouldn't spend time trying to help the losing team. If you look throughout sports, board games, card games, and other video games, those mechanics are both rare and frankly despised- they mess up what is otherwise a good game. In games that really go all out with them- Mario Kart is the big one normally- sometimes players will actually attempt to get the benefits of being in a worse place to get a better item to use near the end, and in general this kind of gamesmanship (ex: you have goals besides winning) is both a distraction and actually increases the gap between good and very good players (the top players usually have all the knowledge of how to exploit the mechanic).

 

Some games will have a thing that LOOKS like an underdog mechanic, but isn't. For instance, a moba might have a rule that gives you a powerup when you lose some portion of your map, and in the duration of that buff you are able to fight back unevenly. This is usually only an underdog mechanic in appearance: if you make optimal use of the buff, reverse your losses, and then inflict equivalent casualty on the enemy team, then they get the buff. The end result of a mechanic like this is to encourage the game to have an ebb and flow of attack and defense, not to actually help a team that is losing.

 

I'm a big fan of trying to add handicaps in situations where the NUMBERS are off, but when it comes down to skill, communication, etc, the game should not be rewarding the losing team at all. They got to that bad score because they are that much worse: they deserve to lose.

 

The entire reason I bring up the idea of something that allows the weaker and worse team to form back up as a group is simple: the rewards for battering a team back to capship seem to be a snowball mechanic as written, and one that is absent in many GSF games that are still honestly stomps. The better and stronger team is already getting a lot of rewards for getting kills, including map control for powerups and general positioning: when spawn camping is happening, it seems that the skill difference is amplified. Additionally, I've played games with anti spawn-camp mechanics, and the lesser team still gets totally stomped, they are just often able to have coherent encounters as they are destroyed. The problem is setting it up such that it doesn't become a mechanic that will help a worse team win, because worse teams are not supposed to win, while also preventing it from being something that slows down a game meaningfully. In the ground game, these mechanics often take the form of "you spawn on a cliff, and everyone has to leave the cliff at the same time". A mechanic in GSF like that would look like a bubble that forces an invincible non-combat state until such time as the "spawn wave" happens- with many disadvantages for that.

 

The fact that all potential mechanics involve serious development to tweak the experience of a hopelessly outmatched team is probably why we haven't seen anything in this direction at all- even assuming that the developers consider it any kind of issue at all. I think it is one, albeit minor.

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I could not get behind that. I've been in matches where the other side has come behind from a large deficit. I was in a shipyards TDM once and my team was up by 16 or 17. Then I unfortunately had a disconnect as my computer crashed. I rebooted asap and by the time I had gotten back in and queued up, I was actually backfilled into that same match and we had lost by two. What had seemed like a sure thing was quickly evaporated.

 

In DOM, the game is only truly lost if the losing team is incapable of pulling off a three cap, or at least keeping the other sats neutral. I've been in a Denon match exactly like that where we were dominating and then somehow ended up losing at the end 1000-9xx because we lost both our sats and the enemy was able to keep one neutral.

 

So no, I can't support a mercy rule.

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I don't think anyone has an issue with the current setup for Dom. In Dom, it is reasonable to create a safe zone for spawning, because all of the interactions with the game objectives are far from the safe spawn points (some are close to unguarded spawn points, of course). If a team is badly outmatched in Dom, they can flit back and forth between the cap ship and the enemy wall, doing damage as they can and continuing to make attempts to push out and grab a satellite: meanwhile, the game will end quickly enough, and with a brutal score befitting a three-cap.

 

My understanding is that this discussion about TDM, where the ships themselves are the objectives, and talking about whether a case where one team is mostly unable to escape their spawn points, even if individual players can.

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My geezer memory is failing me,

 

didn't REAL spawn camping used to be a (very rare) thing in GSF?

 

 

The whole, "We can fly bombers into the hanger of their cap ship and use mines to insta-gib them as they spawn," thing.

 

I seem to recall a comment in voice once to the effect of, "I wish we could have campfires in here." The idea being that if you had a campfire emote and maybe some marshmallows or s'mores you'd be able to camp the enemy spawn while camping in the enemy cap ship hangar. Which would be twice as much camping and therefore twice as good, (or twice as evil if you're on the team getting camped, especially if on the same voice channel as the campers).

 

I suspect that the complainers in this thread mostly haven't been playing long enough to have seen spawn camping in GSF.

 

It's a, "trust me I'm an old timer," thing, but really, if you've seen real spawn camping in GSF you're not gonna confuse merely having a really bad team in TDM with spawn camping. There's a big difference, even if you've never personally seen it.

 

Anyhow, with multiple spawn points and changes to mine mechanics, you can't really properly camp at all in TDM anymore. Concentrate forces enough for a sure kill at one or two spawn points and the third is almost guaranteed to be escapable with minimal effort.

 

You could maybe do it in a Kuat or Lost Shipyards Dom match, but mines respecting LOS would make it a lot harder than it used to be. Combination of interdiction and railgun drones and seeker mines? I think you'd still be at risk of a skilled pilot making it out past the blockade and starting to steal sats, at which point you'd have to have a scout that was significantly better or choose between camping or possibly losing the match despite most of the enemy being bottled up.

 

Basically camping is dead in GSF.

 

PUGs often sucking is probably eternal, but camping is dead.

 

It died quite a long time ago.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you for your comments.:)

 

I think camping isn't dead, today it has become worse.

 

We had several WZ with only one spawnpoint, is it Kuat Mesa domination?

 

Short time after the fight started they placed gunships and mines in a safe distance to the capital ship.

 

We couldn't even get one ship to the satellite!

 

Respawn --> kaboum --> flash of light --> dead.

 

Also there are some guys who think using aim bot is a nice way to win (on both sides)

 

Sometimes I think that all this is just a German server problem (played GSF on U.S. Server and it has been pretty nice).

Edited by Desplain
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The type of spawn camping you are describing is not spawn camping at all. Notably, you cannot die on your spawn in domination except in very rare circumstances that you aren't describing there. You can certainly have all three nodes denied you, should your team be completely ineffective against the other team, but your capital ship turrets will meaningfully defend against almost all threats, should you fall back to around 5k behind any of them (the turrets will shoot powerful shots up to 10km out, and enemy railguns can be 15km out). If your team together can't push past that, then there's no hope for you, but you still aren't spawn camped.

 

Spawn camping happens in TDM only, and it involves spawning directly into enemy munitions of some form- drones, mines, railguns, blasters, missile locks. All TDM maps offer three spawn points you can use to try to minimize this, but it can absolutely still happen.

 

I also very much doubt you are seeing aimbots in any form on any server. It isn't impossible, but the theoretical gain of an aimbot in GSF is minimal compared to other games. The cleverest of shots will have a high deflection penalty, and the shots without that wouldn't really be helped by one. I'm sure it is possible, but I've never seen a confirmed case of one. If you do, well, report them.

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  • 1 month later...
Quit queueing and see how fast they get bored.

 

They don't want to give you a good match, you aren't required to give them any match.

 

but that keeps ME from having a match too, which really is a lose for me...

German Server player here too...

But i think being camped at the spawnpoint goes away once pilots get better, die less and keep the fight in the middle of the field... being camped is thus due to sub-optimal pilotry from the camped team and not some flaw in game mechanics...

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but that keeps me from having a match too, which really is a lose for me...

German server player here too...

But i think being camped at the spawnpoint goes away once pilots get better, die less and keep the fight in the middle of the field... Being camped is thus due to sub-optimal pilotry from the camped team and not some flaw in game mechanics...

 

<3 <3 <3

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But i think being camped at the spawnpoint goes away once pilots get better, die less and keep the fight in the middle of the field... being camped is thus due to sub-optimal pilotry from the camped team and not some flaw in game mechanics...

 

But camping is in my opinion a *very* effective method of keeping people away from learning ...

 

I have no idea whether this is sheer sadism ( I think so ), or even on purpose - not to let new and better players grow up. It's like using a lawnmower to keep grass from growing.

 

Me, I'm always rather interested in psychology of behaviours, in "what makes people do things", and not at all in tactics. I only analyse tactics from a psychological standpoint. Which might make "tacticians" angry, but I always believe that tactics have a certain psychological effect, too. And people who don't see that are too naive fools in my opinion.

 

It's like with killstealing : It is a very effective method to make people NOT learn as well : You just deny them any production or release of hormones in the brauin or elsewhere that would be there if people would get their kills alol by themselves. Killstealing is a very effective method of denying people the making of NEW connections of brain cells whoich would come after a feeling / emotional impact 8plus logical connection ! ) which usually follows after a feeling of success / sense of an achievement. Killstealing denies people having a feeling of success - and thus no new learning connection (normally formed AFTer a feeling of success) are formed.

 

And now, please laugh at me.

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Alrik, we have explained to you before, in the thread about pitfalls/gripes of GSF, that assists count as much as kills, and there is no kill stealing in GSF. There isn't in the ground PVP game for that matter either, as long as you are in the same ops group.
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Alrik, we have explained to you before, in the thread about pitfalls/gripes of GSF, that assists count as much as kills, and there is no kill stealing in GSF. There isn't in the ground PVP game for that matter either, as long as you are in the same ops group.

You are correct but do not understand where they are coming from at all. Yes, kills and assists carry the same statistical weight when figuring KDA. However, that is completely irrelevant to the point they are making. They are referring to the chemicals that are released from the reward center of the brain and how those affect people's willingness to continue things as well as their perceived enjoyment in activities.

 

When you get an assist you get:

Brain Juice: Target explodes in front of you

Brain Juice: Positive integer on end game screen

 

When you get a kill you get:

Brain Juice: Target explodes in front of you

Brain Juice: Hud notification Player has killed target

Brain Juice: Positive integer on end game screen

Brain Juice: Higher ranking on end game screen due to its default sorting of kills.

 

So as you can see statistically kills are more valuable being that they carry twice the brain juice quotient.

Edited by Lendul
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Unless you are doing functional MRIs or LPs for neurotransmitter levels on novice and experienced GSF pilots, I don't think you can make any sort of conclusions about what is happening "statistically" with "brain juice." While interesting to consider, I don't anticipate getting NIH funding for that study any time soon. I think that your assumptions about how reward centers work during an assist versus a kill may be incomplete at best.

 

More importantly, if you approach the game with a team mindset, you become less concerned with how many kills you have and more concerned with how many times the other side dies. And by team mindset, I do not mean the actual act of reaching out to other players, getting on voice comms, and specifically forming a group and group queuing together. Rather I am referring to just the realization that you get that green victory UI, more requisition, more CXP, and more unassembled components, when you just focus on making sure the other side dies more than your side does.

 

Naturally these comments, from Alrik, you, and I, refer more to TDM than DOM, although generally speaking, if the enemy team is dying more than your team they probably aren't holding on to sats.

Edited by phalczen
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  • 2 weeks later...
If you can't defend your own spawn from being overrun, you deserve to be camped, IMHO. It's a legitimate tactic.

 

and if you repeatedly spawn camp people to the point that they do not want to play anymore more then you deserve to wait in longer queues, it's a legitimate causality chain

Edited by Lendul
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More importantly, if you approach the game with a team mindset, you become less concerned with how many kills you have and more concerned with how many times the other side dies.

 

I can agree to that, but maybe I'm too much egoistic, then ? When I believe that I should get the laurels one day as well ?

 

Do you know there WWII graves of the "unknown soldier" ? I feel pity for them, because no-one knows who they wrere. They did do something "for their team", but nobody knows who they actually were. They just died, and that's it, nameless. Without any sign.

 

Or at the Tour De France . There are always supporters. Who gets remembered by History ß It's always Alexander The Great, and NOT his nameless, countless soldiers.

 

Some of you have already fame lik Alexander The Great. You play within your own league.

 

I just wished I could get that fame as well, but I'm simply not good enough. And I really really don't want to be rememkbered in GSF history as "the unknown supporter". I really don't.

 

So I just don't play GSF anymore - except when a well-eaning guildy asks me.

 

and if you repeatedly spawn camp people to the point that they do not want to play anymore more then you deserve to wait in longer queues, it's a legitimate causality chain

 

I fully agree to that. And what i do hate is when people begin to whine about no matches popping up because of what they did : spawn-camping. "Oh, my gosh, how do they DARE to deny me having my fun with them ?"

Edited by AlrikFassbauer
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...

 

I think you're severely overestimating the importance of GSF if you think being good at it equals winning the Tour de France or being Alexander the Great.

 

However, I've seen you stating multiple times, going back over a year, that you're not good at GSF and/or aren't playing it anymore.

If you're not good at it, but want to be, then play more, practice, improve. Meaningfully investing time into something almost always leads to improvement - in games and also IRL.

If you stopped playing, why are you trying to guilt trip people on this forum for being good over and over? If you were giving constructive feedback, I would be okay with it, but a lot of your posts are just trying to find obscure reasons why good players aren't good people or similar things.

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...If you were giving constructive feedback, I would be okay with it, but a lot of your posts are just trying to find obscure reasons why good players aren't good people or similar things.

 

I was flying on DM one day, contributing but not topping the scoreboard, then I shot down this one guy and he spent the next two matches chasing me from one end of the map to the other. Alrik's posts on GSF remind me of that kind of obsession. He plays very little, and either always loses or chooses to forget the wins. Every post is about why GSF is bad and why the players are evil, though he uses different (non-relevant) historical or literary references every time.

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...

 

There is two ways to look at it. Either complain about someone chasing you, which is relatable, since that kind of behavior is not only dumb but also hurting the game - or enjoy the fact that you triggered someone into that behavior.

 

Here's where teamplay comes in handy. If that person is tunneling in just on you, get a friend to kill them, and vice versa. If someone is triggered into that behavior, chances are, he'll be triggered enough to stop queueing for the day after getting killed a few times more.

Edited by Danalon
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