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• I’d appreciate feedback. I’ll do a short introduction, an overview of some of the playstyles that I like (I’ll be including their strengths, their weaknesses), and why some killer players might lean one way or the other with regard to camping.
  Introduction:
  First off I’ll go ahead and say it: camping is part of the game. There is an economy of time and actions during a trial. If you want to kill all four survivors, I assume that there will be a total of 10 hooks that I need to land: 3 each for the first three survivors and one for the last survivor (the last hook cannot be escaped). Camping is one tool in a killer players toolbox and the solution to getting camped will never be an appeal to the killer players, asking for them to choose not to use a mechanic that is allowed in the game because the mechanic makes the game less fun for you. Camping is the same skill tier as a hadouken from Street Fighter. No one will get upset at a Ryu player for throwing a few hadoukens per match, or even many, providing that the player doesn’t only throw fireballs constantly. The entire match. Forever. Leaving you backed into a corner, only to be slowly roasted as your health meter and sanity  erode until you’re just a husk of a person holding a controller as your little brother cheeses his way to victory one flaming turd macchiato at a time. I get it survivor mains. That is frustrating. That is infuriating. That isn’t fun. Here’s the thing though: the game has counter-play options. A killer can be punished for camping. And, if a killer is a one trick pony that only has a good camping game, then you will win with at least three survivors every time. If you play as a team and counter the killer, then you’ll be making the game unfun for them, leading to either a change in play or a change in rank, both of which solve the camping problem for you. The killer won’t have to actually change anything if they are winning with cheese. The solution isn’t to ask politely for the killer players in the game to stop camping. Yes, asking why killers like to camp is exactly that and no one is fooled when you do that. The people who camp do it because it gets them wins. Survivors let them win with that strategy. The sooner that you accept that the rules to this game are exactly what is allowed in the game, no more no less, the better off you’ll be. Letting a killer win by camping is by far the surest way to incentivize camping. Now I’ll move on to some play styles I use and when I choose to camp (and how to shut it down. I don’t find camping fun when I’m getting counter played, but it’s a blast when my camping gets played into and I get a great win and loads of blood points and the survivor team gets next to none. That’s reality.)
  
   I’ll call one play style that I like the focus style. This style involves only damaging one survivor at a time until they are downed then hooked. At that point, I leave and patrol generators. I’m still camping the area because I want that survivor to be unhooked. You may not feel like you’re being camped because you don’t have the killer in your sight and the terror radius is off, but you are. I keep what I consider to be a “respectful” distance. I’m still camping you. When you get unhooked I know that I can come get you, do the one hit, and get a second hook before you can heal. The focus playstyle in dependent on unhooks. I know I’m being gen rushed. I want your overly altruistic team to come unhook you. I don’t want to wait the entire time of the hook sequence. I want to save that time and chase you down three times. The round gets easier to snowball as more kills are secured. This playstyle is dependent on securing an early kill though. If the killer gets sidetracked, game over: survivors win. This strategy works well against squads of survivors two or greater, allowing for constant unhooks, follow up attacks and rehooks, leading to a kill and so on. Note that this strategy’s efficiency is based on the number and frequency of unhooks, not hooks. The counter to this is to NOT UNHOOK the survivor, not get caught by the camping killer, and go gen rush away from the killer. If you’re caught in this strategy and you’re a survivor, you should be signaling for your team to get away and go gen rush. Choosing to go for unhooks plays into the focus style perfectly. That is the reason that camping is effective. If you’re playing solo, people are going to unhook you. That is the natural reaction. The screen shows you your teammate in red. It beckons. Come get me friend. The reason that killers camp is that it works. It works because survivors fail to see that the solution to camping comes from chess. When an opponent baits you in chess, sometimes the best counter is what’s called an apathy play. Ignoring the bait is far more damaging then trying to actively counter it because the killer has invested time and movement into the camping trap. Remember that just because the killer is being cordial and not standing in your face doesn’t mean you’re not being camped. The counter play to getting focused and hooked is apathy either way. Leave the killer alone and you will force them to have to either abandon the initial plan or commit to an all night camping session, which isn’t fun for the killer. The former yields a soft failure on the part of the killer and the latter yields complete failure for the killer if the team continues apathy or complete success for the killer if the team chooses to go unhook their teammate.Thats my point of view on why camping is fun and why it works. Now I’ll go over a non-camping strategy, and why camping is so common.
  
  I’ll call this strategy harassment. The strategy involves chasing survivors and doing as much damage to the team as a whole a possible without regard for hooks. That’s not to say that hooks aren’t used in the strategy. I’m saying that hooks take a lower precedent than causing damage to the team in aggregate. The idea here is that the accumulated pressure on the team by having one wound each and preferably mangled status and any other status effects to include bleed or whatever will make the team slower and less efficient and replace their generator time with healing time. The terror radius means something in this strategy if it’s working. The pressure’s on. You can’t afford to do generators because the killers on the move. That’s the idea. This strategy can make survivors clump up into groups of two or more specifically because they need healing. The killer will intentionally do maximum damage before downing survivors, hopefully making the remaining survivors choose between their life and the first hooked survivors life because ideally all the survivors have one wound unless they aren’t hooked when this strat is being used. The killer wants the survivors to be healing and not doing generators because they are tied up with the roving killer. The harassment strategy works on separated survivors, keeping them running around the map looking for each other instead of for generators because everyone is wounded. That’s the trade off. The killer doesn’t secure any kills as part of this strategy, and is in fact better off holding off downing targets until sufficient damage is done to make the remaining survivors have to make hard choices with regard to if they should save their teammate and get hooked or if they should heal and watch the clock get chewed down. This strategy is countered by altruism and solid solo play because the killer isn’t guarding the hook. If the killer doesn’t keep the pressure in the survivors they have a chance to recover and be at full health and possibly finish a generator. The killer may have up to 8 hooks and zero kills if they are up against a sufficiently prepared team of survivors. This strategy works best on isolated “lone wolf” survivor teams. That’s the crux of the harassment strategy though. The normal way that people play dead by daylight when they are even somewhat competent is the exact way that counters the roving harassment strategy. Clumps of survivors come to the hook and unhook  their teammate as the killer roves endlessly, all the while letting the generators pile up because the survivors are clumped up and not seperated like they should be if this strategy is going to be successful.
  
  Now I ask you, the reader, a question. Is the reason that you hate camping because you lose when you get camped? Asking a killer main to play harassment while all the while knowing full well that human nature will make your teammates hard counter that strategy without any additional work from your team is downright insulting. You can say that camping isn’t fun. Winning is fun. Killers want to win. Every time you are faced with a competent killer, as long as they aren’t making mistakes and the match is proceeding somewhat normally, each of your unhooks and rescues are calculated risks that are being allowed by the killer player. Keep in mind that whether you were “camped” or not is entirely in your head because, and I cannot overstate this, your unhook opportunity is intentionally provided by the killer. The killer knows that as soon as the terror radius is off the hooked survivor, that survivor is getting unhooked. The counter to this is for the team to fully commit to a gen rush on the other side of the map, open gate, then mob the hook or whatever it takes to get the last teammate back. If the teammate dies then the team of three should leave the map through the exit because they will win. If the killer is particularly nasty near the hook or has some kind of perk that gives you exposed or whatever, then the team need to cut thier losses and leave the fourth teammate. That’s the trade off. The team wins if they follow proper counter-play protocol. But that’s the thing. If your team only plays clump strategy that gets countered by camping super hard, and you get countered, and you get salty at the killer for playing the strategy that counters you, then, somehow decide that camping isn’t fun and flame the killer: you don’t want to play a competitive game. You want the killer to play like how you want them to play, not how they are going to win. You’re asking killer mains to just suck it up and run around the map. Hunting for solos. The killer main knows there aren’t any. The killer isn’t really playing the game then. The killer is just being the good natured older brother, holding that controller. Sucking up those hadoukens. I’m a killer main, and I am, frankly, sick of absorbing hadoukens because survivor mains can’t figure out how to play this game past basic tutorial difficulty. Get camped or get gud.
  

  in what fun do you killers get from camping for no reason? Comment by Barzaria December 5, 2018