I'm not really asking a question, just throwing a couple of ideas around, and waiting to see if more can come. Spawn camping is when a player remains for a long enough time near a known spawn point (that is, a location where a monster or another player is known to appear), allowing him to quickly dispatch any spawning enemies, thus increasing his score cheaply and, in the case of a player spawning, at the cost of frustration on the part of his victim. Methods of spawn camping are various, but all imply the near-immediate death of the spawning player: laying mines at the spawn points, spamming grenades in the area, using shotguns/instand-kill weapons. I will only discuss the player - versus - player case here. This problem is especially important when spawn points are close to each other, because although the chance of a player to use a specific spawn location is low, if all spawn locations are grouped together this means the spawn camper will get to kill someone almost every time a player spawns. This happens a lot in team games where spawn locations are conveniently grouped up in a certain location for the team to reunite. Now, what are some methods that are already used by games to combat spawn camping? 1. Temporary invincibility when spawning: this one is a classic, and it works. It turns a player invulnerable for a few moments just after he spawns, so he can get out of the way of impending danger. The problem with this is that it breaks immersion in some cases, and also that it's a classic (for those of you striving for originality). 2. Shoving spawning players around: this one was used in Quake 3 Arena is some areas, where players that teleported using the static teleporters were shoved out of the way when they appeared on the other side. Their initial movement made them harder to hit. However, this has the obvious problem of disorienting the player when he spawns (besides, if the direction of the push is known, the spawn camper will simply choose the correct position to wait in). 3. Putting spawn locations in inaccessible areas: this was employed in Team Fortress by having rooms only accessible to one team (and, in Team Fortress Classic, guarded by an indestructible turret) where players could spawn and replenish their ammo. However, this requires additional level design constraints. 4. Spawning players together: in some games, players respawn in groups, rather than alone, allowing them to defeat lone spawn campers by simply being too many to be spawn killed. However, this will not work when half of the entire team is actually waiting for you to pop out. I'd like to propose an additonal solution: - Dead players that are allowed to respawn can move around in a given area inside their base. - They can also see other dead players and their location, as well as any enemies nearby. - When they choose to, they can spawn in the location they are currently in. This would have several advantages: first, it allows players not to be taken by surprise, as they can observe an area before spawning in it. Also, it allows group spawning in a given area by allowing coordination between dead players. Finally, it allows respawning players to see where spawn campers are, and spawn in a free area. What are your opinions on this method? Do you have other ideas concerning spawn camping?

After palying alot of ET recently there have been alot of games on Railgun where the allies have spawncamped the axis from the cargo yard (where the crane is ) so while they are not dircetly spawncamping (as in shooting the players in the hut as they spawn) All the axis team gets killed when they come out of the hut. also some allies have used air and artillery strikes on the hut. Your methods are good but I cannot think how to apply them toi this situation (which I find to be the worst spawncamping level ever :( )

i think the best course of action would be to have a moderator on each server to deal with complainiants and oversee that people are playing fairly. This of course would be very hard to do because youd need to find all these people to sit on these servers all day overseeing the game.

The problem with moderating is that sometimes spawnkilling is just par of the game. For instance, in the Half-Life mod Natural Selection, the goal is to destroy the other team's spawn locations, so basically when the main base is overrun by the enemy, players just find themselves spawning between the teeth/pellets of an enemy that was attacking the spawn location. Where does the difference lie between someone who willingly waits for the players to spawn, and someone who just was there when it happened?

Concerning the situation you describe, although I have never played it, it looks like an example of 3. gone bad: the axis have a "private" respawn location, but the configuration of which only makes things worse (I guess that's the main problem with method 3. anyway).

This issue could have been addressed at level design time by:
- Allowing the hut more accesses in separate areas or ways to go to other places without leaving their "private" area.
- Giving the axis more spawning areas, far from each other
- Giving the axis ways to shoot out of the hut without being too exposed.

If there are twenty holes a soldier can shoot at you from, you'd better not be standing there waiting for one to get out of the front door, especially if at least one will be out of your field of view.

How about a spawning room where there are x number of spawnpoints, but this would be indoors only. It would make the spawncamper have to look around.

Temporary invincibility is simple and Just Works. Its also great for coping with the temporary disorientation (and perhaps the need to hunt for a gun).

An interesting variation would be making spawned players invisible and gradually becomming more visible over the first 10 seconds or so.

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Original post by OrangyTang Temporary invincibility is simple and Just Works. Its also great for coping with the temporary disorientation (and perhaps the need to hunt for a gun). An interesting variation would be making spawned players invisible and gradually becomming more visible over the first 10 seconds or so.

I like that alot!

Personally, I think simply having a few spawn areas is good enough.

As long as the camper is killed quickly or forced to move on, I like that players are rewarded for making it that far into the enemy base. And as long as the game is a CTF style game where kills don't matter so much there's no great harm in having to respawn a few times getting rid of a camper.

I remember when Unreal-1 was being made, one the the features for muliplayer was romaing spawn points. Basically, it would look at what part of the map had no people around, and spawn you there. Unfotunatly it was never included in the final release.

Great post, but you're missing one solution - Permadeath.

Another possible solution (with ET specifically in mind): Automatic team shuffling in the case of excessive spawn camping. In my experience its almost always the case of a team full of inexperienced players or people simply with bad aim (me) that end up getting spawn raped. Calling shuffle votes does bugger all since spawn camping noobs is fun. Damn shame, but true. So what if excessive spawn camping is detected and a shuffle is forced?

The problem then becomes how do you detect it automatically?