I cba to find appropriate quotes and annotate them.
WARNING WALL OF TEXT INCOMING!
So here goes:
Bottom line, camping works in all games. Play any first person shooter and good players generally run around, bad players tend to camp. But good players constantly get irritated by bad players because they get killed by them just because they are camping. I myself am not a big fan of campers, but even I camp to some degree to listen out for enemies and try and get thedrop on them.
Take CSS for example, you watch any mix and most of the time pros will camp and try to get a pick before they attack. Or they attack when they have greater numbers. If you try just running about and shooting like a nut, any good player will have you easily. That being said running about can catch people off guard, because it can allow you to get the first shot off, so it is all relative.
The difference is, in Killing Floor you have long range weapons, and specimens generally dont, and there are far fewer survivors than specimens. So if can keep them at range and kill them before they reach you, regardless of how you do it, you'll beat them everytime.
Camping and welding doors forces specimens to take the long way round to players, or break down the door, which gives players more time to kill the specimens. The difficulty of Killing Floor is killing them before they reach you, and when camping its the big threats that cause the most issue. However most of these big threats are faster than the player anyway. So moving around still doesn't give you the advantage against the big boys.
Quite simply camping is the best strategy in smaller maps. Maps like West London and Farm are big and open with plenty of room to maneouvuer, so keeping on the move can work, but on closed off narrow hallway maps like Biotics Lab, Offices and Manor keeping on the move doesn't work because its all too easy to get boxed in and surrounded. And that is what camping and welding avoids. It avoids getting surrounded.
Furthermore holding back a group behind a door forces them to bunch up, making it much easier tom gank them all together. Welding doors then having a pipe bomb and a couple of nades with the M79 will cause a massive amount of damage being inflicted very quickly. Support specialists also benefit from bunched up specimens, since they have massive penetration and scatter on their weapons too.
Welding admittedly isn't great for sharpshooters, but thats not what that class specialises in, and isn't how a SHAPRSHOOTER should really play, but other classes do benefit from welding and camping. However this strategy of welding also helps sharpshooters as well since they can now sit in a safe zone, keeping specimens at long range and pick them off as they see fit.
The fact is every strategy is relative. I personally am absolutely useless with the commando and die more often than not when playing one, and I'm not particularly hot with the Sharpshooter either. However other players are really good with them. In fact they are exceptional with them. I personally am much better at medic and the firebug, since medic speed allows me to pick things off slowly while avoiding damage, and the whole damage over time thing works for me.
This is where you get an adult opinion of things, since I used to be (and to an extent still am) rather stubborn, and would refuse to accept that I'm wrong if I honour my principles. So I understand that Nutterbutter may feel that welding and camping is cheap and boring and unskilled, but it DOES work, it simply cannot be argued that it does work, and work well.
And lets face it, in a real zombie apocalyspe you can be damned sure I will do whatever I have to to keep as many zombies as far away from me as possible
J*
