ElPatron said:
Eclectic Dreck said:
In the modern era of gaming, the only common example of camping tends to be in the form of snipers.
The problem is that any decent game has ways to defeat snipers. Heck, in BF2 you can just go prone and take potshots all day or run around trying to get the best angles - but the people are dying because they are putting themselves into your line of sight AND because their snipers aren't helping the team at all.
Snipers as campers isn't a pretty big deal. The big deal is people with submachine guns crouching on corners.
Here is where the oft quoted pithy remark "It's a legitimate strategy" comes into play. While the sniper could conceivably offer some tactical advantage, most games as you point out do not really favor the sniper. While they might certainly get kills and rarely suffer death in the line of duty, they are not, as a rule,
useful. A combination of a general lack of skill, difficulty of shot, movement of targets, abundant cover in and around points of tactical or strategic importance and so forth all conspire to ensure that the average sniper's only impact on the battlefield is as an agent of random murder. It is
this feature that makes the sniper a camper. Their position is chosen to maximize the chances of said murder and minimize the odds of counter attack - a position that can only rarely be exploited to a useful end. It thus becomes little more than a form of griefing where one can point to their K/D ratio of greater than 1:1 and shout it was a legitimate strategy all while ignoring that their actions offered so little support that even randomly dispersing health and ammunition would have conferred a better advantage.
By contrast, the person with the SMG around a corner is playing a wholly different game. By that very definition, they have chosen terrain of tactical utility as it is presumably one where the enemy is inclined to trespass. They have deliberately placed themselves where the enemy will pass and they engage at close range. While you might point out that such games offer plenty of options to deal with a sniper, there are even more available to one who would dislodge such a person. In Battlefield alone, if one knows such a thing is happening, it can be countered by the use of any of a number of tactical options: the hand grenade (designed just for this moment), the shotgun (more effective in this circumstance), any true armored vehicle or C4 (a surprising number of buildings can be destroyed), or the tried and true tactic of overwhelming numbers (only the most oafish squad facing a veteran player would fail that one).
The bottom line is simply this: there are plenty of ways people might choose to define camping but you see a relatively common theme. It has nothing to do with choice of weapon but rather choice of location. Choosing to occupy a space the enemy is going to cross is a sound tactical choice. You deny them that lane of travel. Choosing to sit 500 meters from a battle and plink denies nothing and generally accomplishes
less.
And, given that most modern games do not require players to collect weapons, if the only objective is a bodycount then there is no such thing as camping. Any choice in player action that maximizes the chance of inflicting casualties while minimizing the odds of becoming one is a sound tactical decision.
