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So, what is considered camping to players? / Is camping considered unfair or cheating?

So I read somewhere that camping was a strategy, but I have seen many people say it is cheating/cheap/unfair. Recently I have been switching between survivor and killer due to to how long it takes to find a match as survivor (at least on ps4), and am currently enjoying Huntress. When I play Huntress, after I hook a survivor I search the general area and if I am suspicious that there is a survivor nearby I stay in that area and don't leave. I never have stood directly in front of the survivor, and always am looking around rocks and corners and such, but I never let the hooked survivor out of my sight for long. The last game I played I did this and hooked all survivors and one messaged me saying "I suppose you can't win unless you camp?" I didn't know this was camping.

So was I camping or playing unfairly, or was I playing okay? If this is camping, I wanna change up my playstyle so everybody can have fun.

Thanks for any replies!

Comments

  • wontonsoup04
    wontonsoup04 Member Posts: 12

    Camping isn't against and rules, though you do earn less points for it. I think if you hook someone, you have x seconds to get x meters away, or you start to get a points penalty. But if they are trying to unhook someone right in front of you, it's fair game. When I play killer and hook someone, I usually break a pallet nearby if they dropped one, kick a gen if it's close, then go back to my regular patrol for a few seconds before guessing when a survivor is going for a save, then I turn back for a quick check, and if I see no scratch marks leading anywhere to near that hook, I just go back to the regular patrol.

  • Cheers
    Cheers Member Posts: 3,426

    As you said, camping is a strategy. You do you, everyone has their own playstyle.

  • PigMainClaudette
    PigMainClaudette Member Posts: 3,842

    If it's quick check it's fine. If you're constantly within Kindred range, then that's just unfair.

    It's not bannable, but it does hurt ranking. Biggest thing is that it just sucks most for the person on hook. Other survivors see what's going on and go "Whelp. Gens are gonna get done!" Then the killer goes "good thing I guaranteed that kill!" and the vicious cycle continues.


    If you see a survivor running at you, then it's free game. They brought it on themselves. Just don't make it a natural strategy for you.

  • Quol
    Quol Member Posts: 694

    It's not cheating and a viable strategy. In general camping is when you are close enough to the hooked that you can instantly run over and prevent a rescue or down the rescuer. So if you were close enough that you could rush over to stop a unhook then yes you were camping, but you won't get banned or anything over it.

    But it's not well liked for a couple reasons.

    • The hooked survivor can't play the game and after 2 min of boredom will most likely lose the match with 3k bloodpoints and a depip
    • The other survivors can't go for any saves without a good chance of them getting hooked.
    • It's one of the best ways to make the match only 3 survivors at the cost of 1-2 gens which for any experienced killer is an ez win.
    • It ruins the 'fun' of the game, no chases, no hunting, no pvp of any kind. Just a walking simulator.
  • Speavy
    Speavy Member Posts: 58
    edited April 2020

    Its called proxy camp, you stay in the close area of the hooked survivour but its not a real camp like face camping which is the worst.

    Its a solid tactic if you knew someone is near by and want to get them. Don't listen to salty survivours, if you know someone is there why leave?

    Its just the survivours made up rule book that says its camping. Honestly they think if you are on the same map as they when you hook them its still camping.

  • LALYTHIA
    LALYTHIA Member Posts: 1,656

    There is a difference between Camping (when you literally stand in front of the survivor and watch them die) and Proxy Camping (when you leave the hook, but stay in a small radius to either tunnel the hooked survivor when they get off or attack the off-hooker).

    Proxy Camping does feel cheap and lazy to survivors. There are four main objectives to this game for both sides. When you hook 1 person and proxy camp them, you aren't applying any gen pressure/breaking gens. You aren't hunting down survivors and initiating new chases. You are simply using the hooked person as bait to trade them for another survivor.

    What happens during an off-hook also determines the level of salt a survivor will have about it. Whether or not you want to cause/accept that salt is up to you. If you tunnel the person being off-hooked to down them and re-hook them, you should keep in mind you are ruining their match and probably are going to cause them to de-pip outside of their control and get very few points. This sucks. While it's not against the game rules, it understandably is upsetting.

    If you run in and attack the off-hooker, while being the preferably thing to do over tunneling the person getting off-hooked, you're still going to get people upset about it because it essentially means every person who goes for a save is just going to hook trade. If you are within a close enough range to run back before they can complete an off-hook animation, they have to take a hit in order to save and once they do, you will be able to down them at the hook. No chase points. Just a trade. Half the fun of this game is good chases, and its also how you generate points. Again, it just feels cheap and lazy to be robbed of this aspect of the game and be incapacitated from doing your objectives as survivor because you wanted you teammate to have a chance to play the game too.

    Camping is also a lot less viable against Survive With Friends teams. They will likely have info perks and they will have comms. So instead of off-hooking, they will focus gens and let the hooked person die. In those cases, you will get very few points and probably depip. So while any form of camping can be effective against a group of random survivors, you may find this strategy more challenging against higher ranked SWF.

    I never camp/tunnel/slug as killer. I would rather hone my actually skills and abilities as killer...especially as Huntress. She is my fave. So I want to be engaging in chases. Figuring out mind games. Improving my hatchet accuracy and timing. And I'm not doing that if I'm running mindless circles around the hook radius waiting for an easy target.

    But, as stated above, how you choose to play is completely up to you. If you don't care about others enjoyment of the game...and are more interested in focusing on your personal enjoyment and progression...you do you. I would recommend closing out of post-game chat pretty quickly though. LOL

    If you do care about whether or not others have fun in the game, just play it by ear. If you're going against a strong team and they're popping 2-3 gens by the time you get one person on a hook...use a proxy camp tactic to put pressure on them. Slug the off-hooked person and go after the off-hooker so they have less bodies doing gens but can get the guy who was off-hooked up and he can get back in the game while you get another hook. If you are dominating a team and have several hooks under your belt by the time they have completed a single gen...go patrol generators instead of proxying the hook and give them a little breathing room to reset. I always try and play against people the way I would want someone to play against me in the current situation.

    Lastly, the camping issue really goes out the window after the last gen is completed. If the last gen gets done and you have someone on the hook, or get someone on the hook, no one can really blame you for defending it...you don't have anything else to do besides secure your kill. Will it make people salty? Yes. Will you probably hear about it in post-game chat? Yes. But coming from a survivor main - it's understandable.

  • sulaiman
    sulaiman Member Posts: 3,219

    well, i had two interesting games about that today.

    First game, i hook a survivor, use bbq and see another one, and run to him to the other side of the map. He runs straight at me, and we meet at the middle of the map. Then he sees he is in a chase with me, he runs all the way to the hook and loops me around it until i get him down. The survivors claimed it was camping.

    Second one, i play hag, and hook someone in the clinic in the middle room. I go on patrol, turn around the corner, there is a survivor. i hit him, he runs to the middle, wastes both pallets, and run around the corner, where i am bodyblocked by the next survivor. I hit him, and guess what, he runs to the middle, up the stairs, down the stairs, turns a corner, and guess what, i found the last survivor. hit him, guess where he goes, but he makes it short before he finally runs away from the middle. I follow him, and after the first two survivors have healed up, they finally save the hooked one in the last moment.

    Usually i hook someone, turn around and there are scratch marks all over, and when i look for that one, its camping too.


    And dont get me wrong, there are games where i do camp, and i dont think anything is wrong with it. but in my opinion, i was not, while the survivors in both games claimed differently.

    What do you think? was it camping, and if it was, what should i have done?

  • BigBrainMegMain
    BigBrainMegMain Member Posts: 3,826

    It's an awful feeling when it happens to you.

    Pray you have an efficient team. =/

  • EarthToGravity
    EarthToGravity Member Posts: 96

    I do hunt down survivors and break gens after I hook someone. I only stay in the area if something makes me suspicious, like if I see scratch marks or hear cries of pain/crows, and even then I still go around and break nearby gens, search around rocks and inside lockers.

    When I play survivor, what I do happens 70% of the time. I actually find it fun coming up with strategies to get the survivor off of the hook, and usually get hit once. ("Proxy camping" not facecamping, facecamped survivors are nearly impossible to rescue)

    I also luckily have ps4 so I don't need to deal with post game chat.

  • TunnelVision
    TunnelVision Member Posts: 1,375

    If camping is cheating then so is SWF.

  • LALYTHIA
    LALYTHIA Member Posts: 1,656

    That really doesn't sound all that bad. The comment about keeping the hooked survivor in your eyesight most of the time does make it sound like you probably come right back to the hook when a person is getting off hooked and that causes the irritation I mentioned above. Either the off-hooked person is tunneled, which pisses people off or the off-hooker having to take it, which also pisses people off. At the end of the day though, some people will never be pleased. Some people take losing a match way too personally. Sometimes it's just that they've had a string of bad opponents, so anything you do is going to trigger them. LOL If you're not getting a lot of messages in that regard, you're probably doing just fine by the survivor community. They would message you a lot more if you were playing like an a-hole. 😂

  • BreadLord
    BreadLord Member Posts: 274

    camping is when you are still on the map

  • Fibijean
    Fibijean Member Posts: 8,342
    edited April 2020

    What you did was camping. Yes, it is a legitimate, and often quite effective, strategy, particularly against overly altruistic survivor teams. Whether it's unfair depends on who you ask, but no sensible person would call it cheating.

    Camping can be frustrating to play against, but it is very much counterable in most cases if the survivors play their cards right. The problem is, most survivors are so used to following a particular playstyle that they genuinely don't know what to do when a killer plays in a way that forces them to adapt. Because they can't adapt, they lose, and then they feel understandably upset because the situation they were in felt unwinnable. (The mistake that many make is not reflecting on what they themselves could have done differently but immediately jumping to the assumption that because it felt unwinnable or unfair, that means it was unwinnable or unfair, and the killer and/or the game itself are to blame, but that's another discussion.)

    Point being, camping isn't fun for most survivors, even those that know how to counter it. There may be a select minority that enjoy the additional challenge, but those are the exception, not the rule. However, as the killer, you shouldn't let that stop you from employing it as a have more fun by doing it. Sometimes, when people are competing in a game, one side does a thing in service of their objective that the other side doesn't like very much. That's the nature of the game, and it's practically inevitable. So although you are free to make allowances to make sure the survivors have as enjoyable a time as possible if you want to (and many killers do), you are under no obligation to do so, and you definitely shouldn't let anyone try to make you feel bad for playing how you want to play regardless of which option you choose.