Camping

The "activity" of staying in one location of a game world for extended periods of time waiting for opportunities to appear there.

This pattern is a still a stub.

Some areas in games are so advantageous to players that they can form the game tactics on being in that area and letting players and game events come to them. This usually is combined with performing a small range of actions and waiting for the opportunity to do them.

Examples

Many multiplayer First-Person Shooters have Camping as part of their gameplay regardless of if this is explicitly design for or not. Especially the presence of sniping weapons and locations with good overview but which are difficult to reach can make Camping common. To counter this, Battlefield 2 and later games in the Battlefield series allows commanders to locate players on overview maps and can effectively direct airstrikes against those Camping. While Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory have levels designed for Camping, e.g. seawall battery, the game also has mortars which can be used for dislodging "campers".

Camping occurs in World of Warcraft and other Category:Massively Multiplayer Online Games when they contain Quests or instances that only can be accessed at certain intervals or when enough players are co-located.

Using the pattern

Creating the possibility of Camping consist of designing weapons and locations that support the activity. The weapons are typically powerful but do not have to be fast as campers are usual well-prepared. The locations should be difficult to reach, in practice being Inaccessible Areas except through the line of fire from the camper.

Making Camping difficult or impossible in a game simply consist of making the game design not contain the prerequisites for Camping.

Spawn Camping (also called base raping)

Consequences

Camping requires that players have Strategic Knowledge of weapons and locations in the Game World, especially Inaccessible Areas. Further, it forces them to wait for events to occur which they can react to, making them do No-Ops.

The possibility for Camping in a game lessens the incentives for Varied Gameplay and may disrupt Player Balance if other players have no or little chance of disrupting the Camping activity. Camping is especially prone to disrupt game balance when the area watched is a Spawn Point as Spawning players have little possibilities to organize. However, in Team Play the Spawn Points themselves may be design to support Camping to let the team control an extended area based around the Spawn Point.

Camping requires the same kind of actions that are required to succeed with Stealth goals and can easily be designed to be part of such goals. They can also be designed as being part of Guard goals when the guarding does not require movement.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Repeated Domination, Downtime, Strategic Planning

with Multiplayer Games

Social Interaction

Can Modulate

Combat, Collecting

Can Be Instantiated By

No-Ops, Galleries, Safe Havens, Sniper Locations, Spawn Points, Strategic Locations, Strongholds

Can Be Modulated By

Flanking Routes, Game State Overviews

Possible Closure Effects

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Potentially Conflicting With

Safe Havens

History

An updated version of the pattern Camping that was part of the original collection in the book Patterns in Game Design.

Acknowledgements

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