Post a Comment On: A Nod to Nothing

I learned a new phrase today, along the lines of learning that using rocket and grenade launchers were called noob tubes.  I was unfamiliar with the phrase "camping", despite doing it all day while playing Call of Duty, Black Ops.  On some of the maps, I've found favorite spots (I'm not saying where - Ming can't know), and I tend to hide there with a trip wire explosive covering my back.  My kill ratio has been in the 2-4 range in most of my recent games, so my spots are generally good ones by that indicator.  So... camping... which I should have understood from watching The Guild, is just staking out an area and waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to show up so you can kill them (or collect a bonus).  Per wikipedia:

"In most games, camping is a legitimate style of play. It often proves frustrating, particularly to newer players, as it rewards those who invest a considerable amount of time in the game (which allows them to know the layout of the maps and the best defensive positions); as well as those with accurate aim. Among some players, camping is considered tantamount to cheating, especially in deathmatch-type games.[2] The most common reason for this is that if every player camps, there will be no opportunities for players to come into conflict, and thus there will be no game at all. Those players choosing to camp are playing on the lack of patience in other players, counting on them to come after them first. In most deathmatch-type games that have both a time limit and a kill limit, Camping is a strategy centered around taking advantage of the time limit instead of the kill limit."

I also learned that there are types of camping.  For example, I don't mind basic camping, because you can work around it.  If you know the camping spots, you can learn ways to invade them. I do mind spawn camping, which is sitting around spawning locations waiting for someone to respawn (come back from the dead).  In the old Call of Duty you'd run up against teams that were experts at this and you'd end up dying 5-6 times in quick succession.  No fun at all.  And I'm ambivalent about "body camping", which is hiding next to a dead body lying on the ground.  According to wikipedia, some clans (groups of players) prohibit it.  But you see it happening all the time.  It's annoying when you're on the receiving end, but I just tell myself, "they probably shot a guy that was close to them and it's not their fault."  You have to look on the positive side sometimes.  And I don't have to worry much about base camping, or turtling, because I don't play Realtime Strategy or MMPORG's.  It's the idea that you fortify your base area so that you create the optimal situation for a counterattack, or just drag things out, perhaps until a new ringer shows up on your team.  But looking at it critically, perhaps base camping is the right term for capture the flag games and, again, you sort of expect it and you learn to deal with it by using new offensive strategies.

I'm not sure what kind of camping was going on in The Guild per the above descriptions.  It seems closest to spawn camping, but it looks like wikipedia calls it "corpse camping".  Sticking close to an area where you know someone will show up with reduced hit points and spell points, and then killing them over and over.  I remember when that used to happen in Telearena back in the BBS days.  So it obviously has a long history.  Buckwheat coded a call and response stream into his macro for Telearena just to account for corpse camping, although I think macro-ing your MMPORG nowadays would get you banned.