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

Camping can take two main forms in games: being related to Combat or being related to Collecting. Both require players to be able to do No-Ops without strong direct negative gameplay effects since otherwise players would prefer performing other activities.

For Combat aspects, creating the possibility of Camping consists of designing weapons and locations that support the activity. The weapons typically need to be powerful and able to work at a long range but do not have to be fast as campers are usual well-prepared. The locations should be difficult to reach, e.g. Galleries, Sniper Locations, or Strongholds. However, Camping can also be interesting to do because of the nature of the areas observed. This may make areas near any Strategic Locations potential areas for Camping, but Spawn Points are probably extra interesting since they give a chance at attacking newly inserted Avatars. This form of Spawn Camping can however be disliked since it can give rise to Repeated Domination (sometimes this is called base raping). Combat-related Camping can be discouraged by making otherwise nice areas to watch into Safe Havens. Another way to counter Camping, this time based upon the nature of the Camping locations, is to provide Flanking Routes.

Camping related to Collecting is mainly regulated by how often Spawn Points produce the game elements that are to be collected. It can be made more difficult by the presence of Enemies.

Interface Aspects

One of the prerequisites for countering Camping is knowing where "campers" are. This can be supported through giving players means of having Game State Overviews. If giving all players this does work too greatly against the pattern, it can be given only to some players as privileged abilities (as is done for commanders in Battlefield 2).

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.

Can Instantiate

Repeated Domination, Downtime, Strategic Planning

with Multiplayer Games

Social Interaction

Can Modulate

Combat, Collecting

Potentially Conflicting With

Safe Havens

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

Enemies, 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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