Why the anti-camp mechanic will actually make camping worse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSlaDMyYyEs&t=3059s Timestamp 57:07
On the recent dev stream there was a section that talked about a new anti-camp mechanic that was intended to counter face camping. A tactic where the killer stands directly in front of the hook as they way for the hooked survivor to die. The chat was very excited at the announcement of this and celebrated, perhaps a bit to early, at the death of face-camping Bubbas. I'm here to tell you that although the specific details of this mechanic hasn't been revealed yet, it will not stop killers from camping. And will actually make camping a stronger tactic.
Here's what we know about the anti-camp mechanic:
Hooked survivors will have a meter fill up if the killer remains within a certain proximity to the hook. And will be able to unhook themselves when the meter is full. The closer the killer is to the hook, the faster it fills up. If other survivors are within a certain proximity to the hook at the same time as the killer, the meter fills up slower. Survivors who unhook themselves still get the Endurance and Haste boost as normal. This mechanic is disabled during the end-game.
Some of you may be asking "We don't know the values for the anti-camp meter yet. How do you know that it won't counter camping?" Because it doesn't matter what values the devs decide to use, even if the survivor can unhook themselves if the killer spends 0.01 seconds next to the hook. In fact, that would likely help the killer more than the survivors! How would it help them? Well...
Why do killers camp?
Killers camp to secure a kills. Because it's usually easier to kill a survivor by preventing them from being saved from a hook, or being close enough to a hook that you can begin chasing them the moment they're saved, compared to letting them be saved, healed up, and having to find them again.
It is an objective fact that camping has always been an effective strategy for killers if used appropriately. Especially if the hooked survivor is close to gens with repair progress.
This is because it allows the killer to pressure the other survivors away from gens that they were repairing, and prevent anyone from safely unhooking the hooked survivor, at the same time. Otherwise known as: Proxy Camping. Where the killer doesn't stay close to the hook but also doesn't go far away from it either. Ensuring that no matter what decision the other survivors make, they'll be losing the game one way or another.
And this leads me back to the anti-camp mechanic and why it is ultimately a pointless mechanic that is unhealthy for the game. The most effective way for the killer to camp is to proxy camp, which involves them not staying near the hook, which in turn means that the anti-camp mechanic will not counter the most powerful form of camping in the game.
"But it will counter face camping!" some of you might say. No it won't. Remember when I said earlier that survivors being able to unhook themselves if the killer spends so much as 0.01 seconds close to the hook actually being a good thing for the killer? This is because it allows the killer to accelerate the camping process by immediately chasing the survivor off the hook and putting them back on. Since the hook timer is 60 seconds, if the killer manages to win the chase in less time than it would have taken to just wait for the hooked survivors hook stage to progress, they're getting the survivor closer to being killed faster than if they had camped.
This is especially true for killers that shred through health states and can all but ignore the endurance buff that unhooked survivors get. Such as Sprit, Nurse, Blight, Huntress, Trickster, Pinhead with the Original Pain add-on, and Leatherface.
You read that correctly. The killer that is most infamously known for face camping people to death would actually benefit from the devs anti-camp mechanic. It doesn't even matter if the hooked survivor waits until their hook stage is about to progress before unhooking themselves. Leatherface can easily tear through the survivor's endurance and likely keep up with them and down them within the same chainsaw rush. Especially if he's running his +duration add-ons.
If the devs implement this mechanic, even with the values tweaked to the best possible value, they'll be effectively buffing every single killers ability to camp. This is because...
The developers do not understand their own game.
And I'm very tired of them constantly adding band-aid fixes to problems inherit within their game's core design. If they really wanted to fix camping, they'd be looking at changing the objective system. We've had the same system for 7 years now. And camping and tunnelling has always been the most effective way to win the game as killer with this system.
This is just my opinion, but maybe instead of trying to introduce new mechanics to punish players who play effectively, they should change the most effective way to play their game so it's more fun for both sides.
Comments
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I think the issue here is not so much this measure, but the fact that Endurance does very little against the actual problematic campers.
If the survivor was just straight-up immune to any and all hits immediately after an unhook, plus the speed boost, at the very least the basement becomes escapable.
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That sounds extremely abusable. There shouldn't be a way for the survivors to become straight-up immune to getting hit. A mechanic like that would just be yet another band-aid on the problems inherit within the core design of the game.
If camping and tunnelling is to be addressed, it is the core design of the game that needs to change. Anything else will be superfluous at best and counter-productive at worst.
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Even if Killers can rehook survivors fairly quickly, it still prevents chainsaw killers from trading hooks. We also don't know if we can choose when to unhook ourselves, or if it is automatic. If we can choose, then you can just wait 59 seconds to unhook yourself and that is a net buff.
Leatherface will not be able to get more than 1 survivor at a time if this is implemented and you play correctly, currently 1 survivor is the minimum when a rescue is being done. Trying to argue that this is actually a buff to face-camping is such a massive reach.
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I'd agree about tunnelling being effective, but not camping. Camping ignores 3 survivors and leaves them free to sit on gens. When the additional 10 secs got added to the gens, I'd say this benefited camping as even if the camped person held on to the end, you wouldnt get as much gen progress done before they were sacrificed (to add, I don't get alot of campers in my games but I keep stats and it looks like most camping games I'm in end with a 2k).
We don't yet know how quick the meter fills, and did they say it's one time use only? I can't remember. But either way, being able to jump from the hook potentially buys the team some time. If it ends up being pointless against most of the killer roster, then they're more likely to probably change things around Endurance so survivors aren't just downed a second later and put on hook.
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if they wanna stop us from camping it's fine by i'm just gonna slug everyone and never hook now, hooking survivors was already meh before
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"Even if killers can rehook survivors fairly quickly, it still prevents chainsaw killers from trading hook..."
Not if they proxy camp. Which this mechanic does nothing to counter.
"Leatherface will not be able to get more than 1 survivor at a time if this is implemented and you play correctly, currently 1 survivor is the minimum when a rescue is being done. Trying to argue that this is actually a buff to face-camping is such a massive reach."
The whole point of camping a survivor on a hook is to trade the gen repairs that the other survivors are doing in exchange for getting a survivor out of the game. If someone is dumb enough to try and save someone from a face-camping Bubba then the game is already over. The correct play remains the same: do gens. Which the addition of this mechanic does not change since, again, proxy camping exists.
The only thing this mechanic changes is now the survivor on the hook can unhook themselves and get re-hooked and die faster if the killer is facecamping. Which is a buff to camping.
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No? Pain Resonance, No Way Out and BBQ&Chilli are some of the strongest killer perks in the game right now and all of them require you to get hooks. Slugging can be useful but doing it constantly is asking to be out-pressured over time if you aren't playing Condemn-only Sadako.
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The whole point of camping is to trade the repair progress of the other 3 survivors for getting 1 of them out of the game. Proxy camping still exists and is completely unhindered by the anti-camp mechanic. And since proxy camping is the most effective way to camp, this mechanic does absolutely nothing at best. At worst, the hooked survivor can unhook themselves in the killer's face early and die faster by being rehooked.
So camping is ultimately made stronger by this mechanic. Not weaker.
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Yeah, this measure is far from perfect, but in a situation where Bubba is facecamping and immediately re-downs and re-hooks the surv after they unhook themselves, it's still a net gain for the surv team because (assuming the surv dictates when they unhook themselves), the hooked surv can wait the full 59 seconds twice, unhook themselves, and even if chased down and re-hooked, it's still additional killer time wasted. Not much, but some.
Also assuming the self unhook would activate Dead Hard, there's a non-zero chance they can still get away, even against strong camping killers. All while bypassing a sure hook trade. Also, no other survs have to come for them, meaning less surv time is wasted when a teammate is being facecamped.
Add in Reassurance plays, and it can be played into a pretty big time sink for the killer. Resurrect DStrike and life could really be made difficult for face campers with this new setup.
The bigger long term issue is going to be that this will effectively teach face campers how to proxy camp, which is the stronger tactic.
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I've never, personally, seen proxy camping as an issue. Depending on what you mean by proxy - in my experience it's the killer coming and going from the hook frequently, never straying too far. This sort of camping is easy to work around when it comes to unhooking my team mates. It rarely requires hook trading, like face camping generally does. I don't think proxy camping needs any sort of preventative mechanic so the fact that this anti-camp mechanic doesnt affect it isn't an issue imo
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Anti camping and tunnelling perks are considered bandaids but this is an attempt of core mechanic change. We won’t be able to know for sure if it’ll be effective or abusable until PTB so will be interesting.
If Bubba’s the main concern, someone posted a good idea which was make him go into tantrum if his chainsaw put someone into deep wounds.
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pain res got nerfed into into the ground no way out requres you to hook all 4 survivors and bbq is just info
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BBQ one of the strongest killer perks in the game? That's a reach. It's a fairly weak but nice to have perk. When it comes to strength, there are probably 20-30 better perks killers can use.
I use it on pretty much every single killer because it reduces the time in between chases, which makes the game more fun for me but I'm under no illusion that it's one of the best killer perks.
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I'd argue that this isn't that bad though, no?
The system was designed and advertised as an anti-facecamp system, not an anti-camp system. The devs literally went out of their way to say that they didn't want to affect proxy camping with this change, because they understand that a lot of the time it's quite necessary (ie a gen is almost done nearby, you need to defend a totem, someone is running you nearby, etc). So with proxy camping being unchanged... That's literally what they were going for?
I don't see how it's a net buff to camping. It ensures that Kindred will become meta again for solo queue, so that players know to just stick to gens, but if a survivor is able to wait the 58 second mark before escaping, going down again, then being picked up and rehooked (all of which takes more than 2 seconds) completely for free then it's just more time guaranteed for the Survivor.
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Instead they should give insentives to go for more hooks. Punishing clusterfixes never gonna work, killers aren't stupid.
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The anti-camping mechanic will add a way to deal with camping BUT will improve the efficiency of tunneling.
So it will be a clear win/win for killers proxy camping : they will still proxy-camp, if the survivor does not self-unhook, it will change nothing, if the survivor self-unhook the killer will tunnel and the global camping/tunneling process will be faster and so more efficient.
The only way to prevent camping is that it should be a choice with a downside to it, which is not the case atm.
Killer camping -> gen progression is 30% faster.
Killer tunneling -> if the survivor is downed right after being unhooked without another survivors being downed before, 30% gen progression for 45 seconds (unless if it is a protective hit of course).
Thoise downsides are removed once there is only the equivalent of 1 complete gen left.
Everything else will never work. A killer camping/tunneling at 5-4-3 gens should get an instant loss 90% of the time.
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Endurance is actually doing nothing against tunnelling as well.
I wish they would add mechanic to make tunnel & camp less viable but without making it weapon for survivors (bodyblock).
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"Allows the killer to accelerate the camping process"
No it doesn't, it makes it take longer.
The survivor can wait until the last possible moment to unhook themselves, get hit immediately and trigger endurance (or not and waste at least 10 seconds of the killers time) forcing the killer into another chase until they can down them and get them back on the hook.
This can happen twice per survivor, greatly extending how long it takes to eliminate one survivor through facecamping.
The killer can still choose to camp, and can still successfully eliminate a survivor, but that's the point. It doesn't remove killer agency by preventing them from employing this valid tactic, but it does make it more costly, and less viable if you want multiple kills. It also gives the camped survivor some player agency, instead of hanging passively for 120 seconds, they can actively waste the killers time.
In every possible scenario, it will be more beneficial for a survivor to unhook themselves right before they transition a hook stage, than to stay on that hook through the transition. And survivors love 'stickin it' to 'toxic' killers, usually it's DCing before a hook, but now this'll be a new active tool they can use to do that, and net them more BP in the process.
Post edited by Seraphor on3 -
face camping is incredibly rare and its weird that the community is obsessed with something that almost never happens. ive played thousands of games of survivor probably and less than 1 percent has face camping. Im not playing in a different world than everyone else. Sure bubbas camp more than other killers but they also arent a killer you face all that often.
Everything gets exaggerated an incredible amount here, camping, tunneling, gen rushing doesnt happen even remotely to the degree everyone claims it does and I think the devs know this.
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Survivors tend to exaggerate what the killer is doing. If the killer hit them twice in a row, or they saw the killer twice within a minute, they're being tunnelled. If the killer came back to the hook 45 seconds later, they're camping, etc.
But I wouldn't say actual camping is 'incredibly rare' though. I experience it about every 10 games as a survivor. 10% might be uncommon, but not rare.
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perhaps for tunneling i can concede that but for facecamping no.
however, ironically i just played a game with a facecamping nemesis AND 2 griefing team mates.
In my experience a griefng team mate or 2 happens 5-10% of games where they body block you, lead killers to you ect. total wastes of matches and i do unalive myself in those matches even tho i generally am against doing such actions but when only 2 people on your team are actually playing the game whats the point
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I was thinking the timer should also affect hook progression making it slower the closer the killer is to hook & at the fastest point of unhook meter, stop hook progression completely. Make it to where that same timer can allow multiple hooks in same stage (within a set time limit of course) for no hook progress or BP or any other benefits to the killer. Then make 3 hooks in same stage actually break the hook for 60 seconds as well. That makes it pointless and even very detrimental to facecamp and removes all pressure facecamping could apply to the other survivors.
All that being said, that's very heavily weighted in the survivors favor & can be abused by simply staying by hook forcing the killer to be there. As such I believe the mechanic should turn off if the killer is actively in a chase & that if the hooked survivor dies on hook, the hook does NOT break. This would mean that the killer could possibly put you on the same hook and prevent the creation of zones without hooks. That would mean that the looping by hook couldn't be used to trigger this mechanic & would actually harm the survivor team.
Lastly the mechanics should 100% turn off during endgame. I don't mean collapse either, once all gens are powered even if the gates are not open yet. At that point, all bets are off.
The problem I see with this though, is it would most likely make endgame builds much more popular and people already get severely hated on for that. Thoughts?
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BHVR's motto for the last 7 years has been 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and it's incredibly annoying. They don't bother changing old mechanics to facilitate the players' needs but rather fulfill it through killers and perks. It's like adding icing on a stale cake, it's pointless since the cake is old and no amount of icing will change that.
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Exact same thing can be said about locker saves, but I don't see anyone on the killer side being "it was stupid to remove them, it happened 1/100 games" And I also never saw them as survivor prior to their removal.
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In my 800+ hours I’ve seen one locker save. I just can’t imagine they were common at all.
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"But it will counter face camping!" some of you might say. No it won't. Remember when I said earlier that survivors being able to unhook themselves if the killer spends so much as 0.01 seconds close to the hook actually being a good thing for the killer? This is because it allows the killer to accelerate the camping process by immediately chasing the survivor off the hook and putting them back on. Since the hook timer is 60 seconds, if the killer manages to win the chase in less time than it would have taken to just wait for the hooked survivors hook stage to progress, they're getting the survivor closer to being killed faster than if they had camped.
This is true only if you assume the player is forced to self-unhook the moment the bar fills. Given the text says "will be able to" and not "must" or "will immediately," it seems fair to say a survivor who is getting face-camped will be able to choose when to self-unhook, and will likely choose a time just before they hit struggle.
The proxy camping thing is true though
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Note: The devs never once talked about an anti-camping feature.
They always advertised this as an anti-facecamp feature. Proxy camping is cool.
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Anyone have an ETA on the anti-camp and hook-grab abolition in-game implementations?
Coinciding w the Nic Cage chapter release?
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They advertised it as anti-face camping, but the previewed solution went out to something like 16 yards away from a hooked survivor, which isn’t face camping at all.
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Some good points you’ve brought up.
As you mentioned I think the first core issue is what the game considers “winning”. As long as it’s about kills it encourages tunneling/camping. We need to put mmr increases about hooks rather than kills and change the objective. Hooking matches the lore better as well.
There also needs to be changes to make it more rewarding for the killer to spread hooks.
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I don't think I ever saw even an attempt of setting up a locker save, let alone someone succeeding in it outside of youtube that is.
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It's Kindred distance. If you're inside that, you're basically facecamping, just shy about it.
It's also said that it's speed depends on the distance - inside 5m is the max.
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Facecamping originally meant 0 inches from the survivor. As in the killer is so close to the hooked survivor’s face, that the killer is literally blocking other people from getting an unhook prompt.
Evolving the word facecamping, from “0 inches” to “16 meters” is such a horrible misuse of the language.
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I'm sorry for using the terminology of the developers instead of studying the traditionalist lingo.
Semantics aside, I think this upcoming change is great. It eliminates the cheapest forms of camping, while still leaving it a viable pressure tool - or even an entire playstyle for those who pick the right tools for it.
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Semantics are important, and it was a misuse of words for it to be called anti-face camping. The word "face" in "facecamping" meant the killer was directly up against the survivor's face! It's in the name. This isn't some obscure etymology of the word. At 16 meters away, the killer might not even be able to see the killer's face, and if the mechanic works through floors and ceiling, then the killer might be over 30+ seconds of travel time from the hooked survivor.
And the change is only good if killers get some help in finding someone else to chase. Otherwise, it would still often be the best strategy to stay by a hooked survivor, regardless of the consequences. What point is there in leaving a hooked survivor, for a CHANCE of finding someone else, when you are guaranteed to know where the hooked survivor is now? If the survivors are using voice comms, and the hooked survivor relays the killer's position to the rest of the SWF, they could easily hide far away from generators if the killer tries to leave the hooked survivor.
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But people could just wait until they are about to go second stage then unhook themselves, and this guarantees that the killer will waste more time before they get another hook stage so if you look at it like that of course this helps.
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theres a pretty big difference between face and proxy camping.
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And soon it will be defined by a game-mechanic.
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the game mechanic doesnt decide what face and proxy camping are, thats the communities job. The range just means its also punishing proxy camping the same way it does face.
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Of course. The community, or even every individual player can define the terms they use. We often experience it when we define tunneling or genrushing in every discussion when it's brought up.
Though when a feature called 'anti-facecamp' is introduced and it happens to function in a 16m radius around hooks, we might as well consider it a baseline, instead of for example the distance where a Switch player can still differentiate the facial expressions of a character.
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