Camping -- How To Get Players To Stop Being Cub Scouts And Go Be Space Ninjas

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

If DE's additions to the game seem built to break CC/4 spam and camping, I think it's safe to say DE doesn't intend for players to camp

Wrong. If they didn't intend for players to camp then why do all the endless mission types require you to babysit various stationary objects (e.g. Defense pod, interception stations, life support capsules)?

[SickoSike]

There is no problem with camping in this game, everyone has their ways of playing this game, and the tools Digital Extreme gave us allowed us to have fun in this game, while also be able to utilize areas where camping is necessary due to the point of how bad the weighted RNG is in this game. It would be border-insane to try to not camp while farming for the very resources you need or parts you might be looking for because the numbers are rather insane for some parts (and mods) to drop and many people find it a lot more convenient and more efficient to camp because you can have all enemies crowd up in one area with all the resources you'd probably miss while running around.

Camping has been a major factor and issue along with debates in this game because of the way the sheer broken game mechanics reward's it's players on how they interact and play with the game, it's sad to honestly see the fact that camping/macroing in a same position for a long time rewards players more than those who try to make an effort to have fun and be rewarded in a less matter because the most efficient way can be boring for some people and to that I'd have to honestly say it's some serious unhealthy game play not when it comes to camping, but rather exploiting the game.

However, camping is just a method to speed things up to success (just like rushing a mission is with capture missions or sabotage) and having some decent good loot along with more survivability as you work with your team to cooperate and be able to tackle challenges that most teams would not be able to do past 40 minutes in an endless mission and that shouldn't be a problem except most of these methods are borderline exploit. I'll give you a brief history about these issues.

The infamous Greedy Pull Mag: Mag was (still is) popular to be of use when E Gate was first accepted and discovered and abused because she was able to pull all energy orbs, resources, credits, rare materials and mods to the rest of the team while they were able enhance their own ability to stay in one specific loot cave spot. She slowly became a bush fire after that...she was one of the warframes that slowly pushed Players to be able to manipulate the RNG system into their favor, despite after the Developers hot-fixed the tile spawn on e-gate on March 12, 2015, when players saw that they were able to have this type of control for the first time in their hands after the Viver exploit (which involved Syndicates having reputation be tied to experience...) It soon became inevitable for many Veterans and old players alike at the time, that the core system of the game was broken, and DE hasn't found a way to work it's issue to fixing the problems with this game, and rather instead of focusing some of the main areas that hurt the player base, they decide to try to band-aid some issues like removing the interception mission from Viver in Eris and replacing it back to the same design with Eris being fully infested node. After the Reputation system was fixed many players found the most easy and efficient way to farm up your reputation points and that was the Excalibur buff when they removed his LoS on his radial javelin and up came a team meta born with Draco being introduced and most widely played and asked for in recruiting chat and ultimately this led to a series of nerfs and large uprising of anger and salt between players and DE, eventually the augment mod greedy pull was nerfed to only pull resources exclusively to Mag now.

The Excalibur Nerf DE soon took action against the reputation farming in update 15ish when his javelins were reverted back to LoS which then soon resulted into having the team needing to make a re-work for him after many people brought up pitchforks and torches and did not appreciate Digital Extremes for leaving this huge context out on the community that they had stealth nerfed him. This had created a whole lot of shenanigans between players and developers and it brought up a lot of salt and a sense of belligerence among players with different opinions on how the game should be played. Everyone should and can be able to voice their opinions on how we all want to improve the quality and the performance of this game, I am now specifically stating this to everyone who feels offended on how people are honestly not taking suggestions well in themselves to understand that this is a feedback thread, please respect everyone's opinions even if their opinions are against in what you feel is set to be in stone, but it's not. This game is open beta, and we all still have a long way to go for this game to become fully complete and be able to give our hands to clap to DE for making an awesome game.

Draco: This very specific mission in Ceres, I honestly don't even know how to put it, it was a combination of everything, you could Rep farm in Draco, you could farm fusion cores, Orokin cells, T4 Keys that were very good such as T4 Defense and survivals and most importantly you are able to still power level your weapons in a mere 20 minute run up to level 30 for what it would take regular players to legitimately level their equipment roughly double or triple the amount of time in normal game play, it's still the one map people favorably go to daily because it is widely known, many players appreciate the crutch level game play of simply using Mesa with Trinity now since Gmag can no longer sustain other warframes. It slowly became an issue with many players because this type of camping was indeed and ultimately not healthy for players to abuse all the time, sadly in my opinion I feel that warframes should not be pointed at for the bad excuse of core game play warframe encourages in the first place. Since the Excalibur nerf, Mesa came rolling in to fill up his place. Since Gmag is nerfed now Trinity comes to her place to fill her role of a sustaining energy to Mesa. And it all boils down to this.. no matter how hard people try to fix camping and exploiting a specific mission or tile, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A LOOT CAVE due to the sheer fact that the weighted RNG that's being implemented at the very moment is very poor along reward system that advocates players to find a more and easier method to get around the large grind walls, time walls and rare resources all at once. And in order to discourage the current exploits that revolves around the issues with camping with some players is to buff up the reward for players more than just staying in one spot and doing a mass amount of killings in one concentrated area... and the problem is not with us players, DE has allowed the meta to take in and create a habit among all players to take advantage of the spawn system and the exploits that follows with it.

if you have time take a look at this video 

  Edited July 27, 2015 by MikeTheAshmigo

[Fifield]

A couple more great posts by Mike & Littleman.

I've done a bit of research and whilst there were echos of complancency with Vauban (May 2013), update 10 in Sept 2013 is what caused most of the problems.  It brought both Nekros (without whom camping would be impossible) and the Mods from Orokin Vault.  The latter included large range,  efficiency, power strength and duration possibilities.  There's no way DE playtested all that.*

 

We saw DE clamp down on Viver about 14 months later,  then E Gate more recently, and Draco repeatedly.

So I don't think DE deliberately created camping and exploit farming in U10, but rather they screwed up and have been fixing that mistake ever since.

Also whilst Defense is not quite the same as camping, the same sorts of skills are generally needed.

*This is nearly (ie from memory) a direct quote from last DevStream "I asked for feedback on whether the shotguns buff was OP and all they said was it was fun.  So let's have some fun and we can worry about balance later."

 

[(XBOX)ShapelessHorr0r]

Great comment.  This thread isn't about blaming players though but about helping DE improve the game.

From what I remember, the Frost remake makes him more mobile.  Valkyr can do whatever she wants as long as it's not run into a nullifier shield -- so that's a nice buff for her.  Limbo has several useful turtling skills.  Nyx can distract unlimited enemies long enough for team to get through. Nova can make enemies much less dangerous.  So that's 4 underused frames that might get picked up in the new meta.

That was simply a copy/paste. I know you're directing this towards DE.

As for those frames, Valkyr and nova are heavily used. Nyx's chaos has a psuedo cooldown mechanic that's tied to duration not to mention it must be recast with each batch of enemies (hence why compacting them via camping is so useful). Not sure about limbo aside from everyone finding him beyond annoying. Frost's remakes won't change much really especially since the globe is getting a buff.

[Fifield]

Hardly ever see Valkyr, she certainly isn't used on PC much -- just doesn't fit the CC meta.

 

Nova got an indirect nerf from slowing of Defense missions.  She needs a nerf more than a buff so this is more about seeing her have a legitimate gameplay use for once.

Frost's final Snowglobe rework hasn't been revealed.  They may make him ridiculously OP or they may remove the invulnerability or something.  But what they have announced is that the Snowglobe will push enemies out, making it better for turtling.

[Slaviar]

People camp because it's most effective way of getting as much as you can from Void missions. Going longer than 60 mins in T3/4S is hard without camping and defence waves pass much quicker.

i like doing normal runs at Void. But then I took an arrow in the knee saw Ember Prime helmet on 3rd C...

[Phatose]

All we need is a few enemies who are very powerful when players are clumped up tight together.

 

For example, a corpus with an Amprex.  The amprex has a 100% magnetic proc chance - but only on the chain lightning, not the main target.  If you're not right next to another tenno, there is no chance you'll get procced.  If you're all bunched up (and probably watching youtube from a tenno RV), 3/4 of your squad is going to have their energy completely drained, their powers turned off for a few moments, and their HUDs scrambled.

 

All of a sudden the advantages of tight camping have a very major downside.

 

Heck, could just give enemies magnetic grenades with a loud warning. 

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

All we need is a few enemies who are very powerful when players are clumped up tight together.

 

For example, a corpus with an Amprex.  The amprex has a 100% magnetic proc chance - but only on the chain lightning, not the main target.  If you're not right next to another tenno, there is no chance you'll get procced.  If you're all bunched up (and probably watching youtube from a tenno RV), 3/4 of your squad is going to have their energy completely drained, their powers turned off for a few moments, and their HUDs scrambled.

 

All of a sudden the advantages of tight camping have a very major downside.

 

Heck, could just give enemies magnetic grenades with a loud warning. 

No.  The problem with that is it punishes players for being close, even when that is what they should be doing (e.g. reviving teammates, staying close to the defense pod). 

 

You need to stop trying to punish players for playing effectively. Start trying to change the core gameplay so it promotes what you want it to instead.

 

i.e. If you don't want people to camp then don't make a mission where you need to camp around a (set of) point(s) to defend them then punish players when they do just that.

 

Instead, remove life support from survival.  Make it an exterminate style mission instead, when you get life support not as random drops, but with every kill. Enemies always show up on the map in this mode. Getting back to back kills causes a combo guage to keep filling.  When the combo guage is empty the mission ends. If you camp, the enemies won't have time to get to you before your combo guage drains significantly. 

 

Give it better rewards for the longer you go. BOOM!!! No more camping without having to punish the players. More carrot; less stick.

[Otaiken]

Some people seem to think that if DE improved the drop rates/RNG/etc. people would simply stop camping. Which is ridiculous notion.

 

DE is not stupid, they can see how players play their game. And they see the ever increasing efficiency with which players grind through that content. The solution? Even harsher RNG, even more diluted reward pools.

 

So campers claim that they camp because DE is so unfair with the RNG and DE can't do anything about RNG until they find a way to stop players grinding at such efficiency. Because if they loosened up now then people would STILL camp and farm and get the stuff even faster.

 

So much for enforcing preffered playstyle on everybody huh? The A******s that engage in their ulta-efficient farming "playstyle" force DE to tighten the RNG grip in turn making the damn experience worse for people that don't do such stuff. So who exactly is affecting who here?

 

I certainly wish DE luck in resolving this whole mess (though in part their fault) and have absolutely zero sympathy for p42w for 60 minutes in a tube crowd. Cause there's is camping (as in staying in one room) and then there is borderline botting kind of "camping".

 

And when you see some of the first replies on a feedback thread (on a feedback forum) being "OMG you FASCIST" and "LOL l2p m8." (In a nutshell) you know you're in for a well balanced discussion filled with constructive feedback. You see those people in every thread even slightly brushing on the whole "camping" thing and the defence brigade comes in and starts flinging mud "For freeeeedoooom of playeeeers.", pre-emptively defending against the horde of fascist anti-camping barbarians... that curiously fail to come every time. Scared them off did ya fellas?

Edited July 28, 2015 by LocoWithGun

[blazinvire]

I'm all for the extra/side objectives -and possibly a tweaking of enemy spawn coding- as I kind of like camping but also kind of want to do stuff if I feel like it.  Running about in Survival for example is rather punishing as the enemy spawns get so scattered it makes it 10x as tedious.

 

Like it'd be great if we had a mini-sabotage in the mission, blow something up to draw more attention so the tenno operative can do something, almost like the wanted level system in GTA and such.

The enemies seem like they're throwing soldiers at the Tenno out of obligation rather than any real need to get them off the ship...

 

"Sir! Four Tenno are camping on the ship!"

"...What are they doing?"

"They're just standing there."

"...Uh... Okay..."

[RafaelFuchs]

No.  The problem with that is it punishes players for being close, even when that is what they should be doing (e.g. reviving teammates, staying close to the defense pod). 

 

You need to stop trying to punish players for playing effectively. Start trying to change the core gameplay so it promotes what you want it to instead.

 

i.e. If you don't want people to camp then don't make a mission where you need to camp around a (set of) point(s) to defend them then punish players when they do just that.

 

Instead, remove life support from survival.  Make it an exterminate style mission instead, when you get life support not as random drops, but with every kill. Enemies always show up on the map in this mode. Getting back to back kills causes a combo gauge to keep filling.  When the combo gauge is empty the mission ends. If you camp, the enemies won't have time to get to you before your combo gauge drains significantly. 

 

Give it better rewards for the longer you go. BOOM!!! No more camping without having to punish the players. More carrot; less stick.

To clarify, so basically replace the life support system with a pseudo combo system that's based off collecting these marks of sorts that's basically confirming the kill? If so, that's a really cool idea, but it wouldn't really heavily impact camping that much. I think secondary objectives on top of this would be much more impactful without nullifying camping. It would make it so the mission wouldn't be so stagnant and RNG plagued. It would also get players to move around more, but the current enemies and their scaling are huge issues that would cause a lot of problems. I'm sure players would still figure out ways to do it though because i can think of a few offhand that would make secondary objectives feasible to complete in a mission with infinite scaling while still having a stationary tactic. 

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

To clarify, so basically replace the life support system with a pseudo combo system that's based off collecting these marks of sorts that's basically confirming the kill? If so, that's a really cool idea, but it wouldn't really heavily impact camping that much. I think secondary objectives on top of this would be much more impactful without nullifying camping. It would make it so the mission wouldn't be so stagnant and RNG plagued. It would also get players to move around more, but the current enemies and their scaling are huge issues that would cause a lot of problems. I'm sure players would still figure out ways to do it though because i can think of a few offhand that would make secondary objectives feasible to complete in a mission with infinite scaling while still having a stationary tactic. 

The idea would be to keep a combo going by getting constant kills. If you camp your combo meter runs out and the mission ends. You would have to run to the new enemy spawns if you wanted to keep the combo going, so camping would be impossible by design without players feeling punished for it.

[RafaelFuchs]

The idea would be to keep a combo going by getting constant kills. If you camp your combo meter runs out and the mission ends. You would have to run to the new enemy spawns if you wanted to keep the combo going, so camping would be impossible by design without players feeling punished for it.

So, would the groups get marked and how would the spawning work? (not looking for set in stone numbers or anything) 

[TenshuYuusha]

The idea would be to keep a combo going by getting constant kills. If you camp your combo meter runs out and the mission ends. You would have to run to the new enemy spawns if you wanted to keep the combo going, so camping would be impossible by design without players feeling punished for it.

Kinda sounds like The Mercenaries mode for the modern RE games, which sounds pretty cool.

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

Kinda sounds like The Mercenaries mode for the modern RE games, which sounds pretty cool.

I loved the Mercenary mode in RE4, so that might have inspired the idea.

Edited July 28, 2015 by (PS4)DesecratedFlame

[-dicht.Amducias-]

DE have been racking their brains for probably several man-years (sorry Rebecca) how to best do this. What follows are two options:

Option 1

Players camp because they don't have to move. In order to camp, teams are dependant on farming life support drops*. To restrict camping, restrict the life support drops.

Option 2

Change the reward design in Survival from time-based to location-based. Instead of staying in one spot for hours, minibosses in different areas of the Orokin Ship will drop the Prime parts.

* See next comment re: Loki

No we camp not because we have to search for lifesupport, we do because splitting up fucks the spawn into partitions of 1/4

Also the mini bosses dont encourage movement, if one spawns, one moves out of the Camping spot runs to the boss one shots him and comes back

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

So, would the groups get marked and how would the spawning work? (not looking for set in stone numbers or anything) 

I assume marking would work the same way as it works with Exterminates.

 

Spawning could be played with. I was thinking waves of low level grunts up to heavies.  After the heavy wave you get a reward. If you chose to keep going then the enemies level up, you get a drop chance multiplier for things like galium or nuerodes (stackable with boosters), and you would get your combo meter filled by 25% for free when you beat the heavy wave.

 

You can go as long as you like, but it keeps getting harder because enemy levels are rising, making them not only harder to beat and not die to, but to kill them fast enough for your combo meter not to run out.  Losing your combo would not make you fail the mission, but it would make you extract instantly.

[-dicht.Amducias-]

Both options will encourage turtling, similar to the 3rd stage of the raid ie under Frost's SnowGlobe.

Turtling in 3rd phase lol

[Fifield]

Some people seem to think that if DE improved the drop rates/RNG/etc. people would simply stop camping. Which is ridiculous notion.

 

DE is not stupid, they can see how players play their game. And they see the ever increasing efficiency with which players grind through that content. The solution? Even harsher RNG, even more diluted reward pools.

 

So campers claim that they camp because DE is so unfair with the RNG and DE can't do anything about RNG until they find a way to stop players grinding at such efficiency. Because if they loosened up now then people would STILL camp and farm and get the stuff even faster.

 

Spot on.

 

So much for enforcing preffered playstyle on everybody huh? The A******s that engage in their ulta-efficient farming "playstyle" force DE to tighten the RNG grip in turn making the damn experience worse for people that don't do such stuff. So who exactly is affecting who here?

 

I certainly wish DE luck in resolving this whole mess (though in part their fault) and have absolutely zero sympathy for p42w for 60 minutes in a tube crowd. Cause there's is camping (as in staying in one room) and then there is borderline botting kind of "camping".

 

And when you see some of the first replies on a feedback thread (on a feedback forum) being "OMG you FASCIST" and "LOL l2p m8." (In a nutshell) you know you're in for a well balanced discussion filled with constructive feedback. You see those people in every thread even slightly brushing on the whole "camping" thing and the defence brigade comes in and starts flinging mud "For freeeeedoooom of playeeeers.", pre-emptively defending against the horde of fascist anti-camping barbarians... that curiously fail to come every time. Scared them off did ya fellas?

 

"ZOMG Stop trying to encouraging me to have fun playing this game"

Seriously though, there are a couple of things going on there.

Firstly, this subforum is the only one full of seriously disgruntled players.  Go compare it with the other ones in the Feedback category.  Complaining in an non-constructive way is unique to this one.

 

Part of the problem is that DE don't distinguish between 'complaining' vs creative helpful suggestions.  If it's not in one of the other categories (many of which get so little traffic they don't work), it all gets lumped in here.  That means, anyone who likes criticising -- particularly if they're addicted to Warframe but are bored from playing it too much -- comes here.

I was testing this here:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/496217-nobody-else-excited-about-sharkwing/

 

In a thread aiming at the neutral/optimistic players, still got a 50/50 mix.  Neutral/optimistic players are actually a minority here!

 

 

Here's the other thing.  I posted about this a while ago.  When Parkour 2.0 comes in, those who've played the longest are going to be screwed for hours trying to unlearn coptering et al (expect hate threads).

Video games change our brains.  PvE grindy video games encourage us to look for efficient ways of doing things.  We become conditioned to value efficiency over gameplay. Hands up if you don't farm Draco.

 

Believe it or not, many players think the grind is the game.  They complain about it, sure,  and that's why Warframe is known as a grindfest in and outside of the community, even though it's perfectly possible to play for months without grinding.

 

Viver was before my time but if you look at E-Gate, at least 60% of people posting about it here wanted to keep that BS.  Incredible.

 

The only thing to do is not take the disgruntled players seriously.  And lobby DE for a better feedback forum.

Edited July 28, 2015 by Fifield

[-dicht.Amducias-]

Spot on.

"ZOMG Stop trying to encouraging me to have fun playing this game"

Seriously though, there are a couple of things going on there.

Firstly, this subforum is the only one full of seriously disgruntled players. Go compare it with the other ones in the Feedback category. Complaining in an non-constructive way is unique to this one.

Part of the problem is that DE don't distinguish between 'complaining' vs creative helpful suggestions. If it's not in one of the other categories (many of which get so little traffic they don't work), it all gets lumped in here. That means, anyone who likes criticising -- particularly if they're addicted to Warframe but are bored from playing it too much -- comes here.

I was testing this here:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/496217-nobody-else-excited-about-sharkwing/

In a thread aiming at the neutral/optimistic players, still got a 50/50 mix. Neutral/optimistic players are actually a minority here!

Here's the other thing. I posted about this a while ago. When Parkour 2.0 comes in, those who've played the longest are going to be screwed for hours trying to unlearn coptering et al (expect hate threads).

Video games change our brains. PvE grindy video games encourage us to look for efficient ways of doing things. We become conditioned to value efficiency over gameplay. Hands up if you don't farm Draco.

Believe it or not, many players think the grind is the game. They complain about it, sure, and that's why Warframe is known as a grindfest in and outside of the community, even though it's perfectly possible to play for months without grinding.

Viver was before my time but if you look at E-Gate, at least 60% of people posting about it here wanted to keep that BS. Incredible.

The only thing to do is not take the disgruntled players seriously. And lobby DE for a better feedback forum.

Warframe is a grindfest.. to play without grind / for fun u need to grind before to either max ur equipment or get the equipment u have fun with

[Inez]

 

 

Spot on.

 

 

 

"ZOMG Stop trying to encouraging me to have fun playing this game"

Seriously though, there are a couple of things going on there.

Firstly, this subforum is the only one full of seriously disgruntled players.  Go compare it with the other ones in the Feedback category.  Complaining in an non-constructive way is unique to this one.

 

Part of the problem is that DE don't distinguish between 'complaining' vs creative helpful suggestions.  If it's not in one of the other categories (many of which get so little traffic they don't work), it all gets lumped in here.  That means, anyone who likes criticising -- particularly if they're addicted to Warframe but are bored from playing it too much -- comes here.

I was testing this here:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/496217-nobody-else-excited-about-sharkwing/

 

In a thread aiming at the neutral/optimistic players, still got a 50/50 mix.  Neutral/optimistic players are actually a minority here!

 

 

Here's the other thing.  I posted about this a while ago.  When Parkour 2.0 comes in, those who've played the longest are going to be screwed for hours trying to unlearn coptering et al (expect hate threads).

Video games change our brains.  PvE grindy video games encourage us to look for efficient ways of doing things.  We become conditioned to value efficiency over gameplay. Hands up if you don't farm Draco.

 

Believe it or not, many players think the grind is the game.  They complain about it, sure,  and that's why Warframe is known as a grindfest in and outside of the community, even though it's perfectly possible to play for months without grinding.

 

Viver was before my time but if you look at E-Gate, at least 60% of people posting about it here wanted to keep that BS.  Incredible.

 

The only thing to do is not take the disgruntled players seriously.  And lobby DE for a better feedback forum.

 

 

Not sure if the irony was intended, but YOU are the disgruntled player here.

 

The vast majority of players in game either want to or don't mind camping.

 

Your 'constructive' feedback is for something people don't want fixed.

[Fifield]

 

Not sure if the irony was intended, but YOU are the disgruntled player here.

 

Really, so who's the one making the personal attack on someone for trying to improve the game design?  LOL

Also, tell me why I should take you seriously.  I'm truly interested in what you come up with.

Edited July 28, 2015 by Fifield

[Marthrym]

 

 

 

 

Really, so who's the one making the personal attack on someone for trying to improve the game design?  LOL

Also, tell me why I should take you seriously.  I'm truly interested in what you come up with.

 

Again, that's your personal opinion of what "better game design" is. It's not the better design. That's the problem here. You can't tell other players how they should or shouldn't play. You can't tell other players what they should or shouldn't like. You have your likes and dislikes, they have theirs. You need to accept it. Yeah I know, it's not really possible, but try at least. Don't outright dismiss other people's opinions simply because they differ from yours. Disagree all you want, no problem with that, but don't say "tell me why I should take you seriously" if you want to be taken seriously yourself.^^'

 

The more DE dilutes droptables, the more players seek efficient ways to farm, and vice-versa. Everyone is to blame. And no one. It's a vicious circle. I don't know who started it or when, and I couldn't care less. The one thing that matters is that we find a sweet spot where players don't feel cheated by RNG and DE don't feel they need to dilute more. We should focus on that instead. Lotus knows how much brain matter we'll need to make it happen...

[Fifield]

Again, that's your personal opinion of what "better game design" is. It's not the better design. That's the problem here.

 

Wrong again.  If we can be objective about anything, Warframe's ideal gameplay of run & gun is objectively better game design than people sitting in a virtual sewer for 2 hours doing nothing but shooting in the same direction and pressing '3' ('4' for Loki) every 2 seconds.

The rest of your comment was equally irrelevant.

[Phatose]

No.  The problem with that is it punishes players for being close, even when that is what they should be doing (e.g. reviving teammates, staying close to the defense pod). 

 

You need to stop trying to punish players for playing effectively. Start trying to change the core gameplay so it promotes what you want it to instead.

 

i.e. If you don't want people to camp then don't make a mission where you need to camp around a (set of) point(s) to defend them then punish players when they do just that.

 

Instead, remove life support from survival.  Make it an exterminate style mission instead, when you get life support not as random drops, but with every kill. Enemies always show up on the map in this mode. Getting back to back kills causes a combo guage to keep filling.  When the combo guage is empty the mission ends. If you camp, the enemies won't have time to get to you before your combo guage drains significantly. 

 

Give it better rewards for the longer you go. BOOM!!! No more camping without having to punish the players. More carrot; less stick.

 

Are you sure we're talking about the same things?  I'm talking specifically about "4 tenno in the end of a tiny little shaft, or all staying so close together they can fit into a snow globe from a frost with no range extenders."   Staying in one large room for spawns isn't the same as that.

 

 

If this isn't a misunderstanding of that, then I'm going to have to disagree with you there on every single point.

 

One:  What you describe as 'what they should be doing' is not what they should be doing.  Defending a point is not the same thing as "Clustering into as tight a ball as possible".  Reviving a player is not equal to "Rushing blindly to a downed teammate, not taking any care to check the abilities of enemies nearby and figuring out if it it's safe to do this".

 

What you're describing is not "What they should be doing".  It "The default easiest way to accomplish said task under the current paradigm".  Change the paradigm, and it changes the easiest method to be far more interesting - it doesn't punish them for doing what they're supposed to do, because what they're supposed to do hasn't changed, and it was never 'cluster together tightly' to begin with.

 

And no, we don't punish players for playing effectively.  But when that playing effectively is incredibly dull for all the players involved, we change what playing effectively is so it's less dull.  Post change, players can still play effectively - it's just the playing effectively and "hiding in a corner" are no longer the same thing. 

 

We don't have to change the missions at all, since the tight, stacked in a tiny little bubble camping behavior that's the issue was never the goal.   It was simply the path of least resistance to that goal, and giving it more resistance is not changing that goal.

 

The goal of game design should be to make the path of least resistance as interesting as possible.  Making the current path of least resistance require additional actions - and more interesting behavior - isn't punishing players for being efficient.  It's redefining the most efficient path to make it less dull.   That is a priority design goal.

 

And no, better rewards wouldn't make players stop camping.  The path of least resistance is still the path they're going to take, and it's going to continue to be camping as long as camping is more effective then any other option.  They'll just camp and get their rewards more quickly.