Dude I wanna thank you for making this a poll. If I had seen a majority of people say they preferred the game w/o spawners and campers.... I would maybe have re-thought my commitment to my favorite game of all time. THANK GOD most people are voting TACTICS over EGO.
Somewhere very quickly this got changed into a thread about Hexer mostly, but my points mainly address the CTF point of view, which I think was the OP's main concern:
It is not a shame to get killed. It is a shame when you get killed over and over by the same guy using the same tactic over and over on you. And it is a DAMN shame when YOU refuse to adapt to his WINNING tactic, and find a way to reverse him to make his tactic a LOSING one... thereby forcing HIM to adapt to YOU. A little bit of Chess would help teach you this (I knowes, Chess sounds boring and slow, a pastime for Russians, prison inmates and the elderly, but it's a classic game for a reason and the reason is that it teaches the basics of WAR. Last level of Noob Hell is when you spend your time criticizing him for beating you, when your time would be better spent Learning How To Play. Unfortunately, this is clearly where 70% of soldat players get stuck.
For those CTF noobs out there, some simple advice:
Spawners love noobs that keep spawning with Barret or M79, with those longass startup times. Quit it. Grab an Mp5 or Knife vs Spawners these are my favorite antispawner weapons. Try them out, then try your own anti-spawner tactics.
Campers are... (ffs this is so basic, I can't believe I'm explaining it to you)... they're Campers! You know where they are, where they'll be, and what kind of weapon they have! Once they've killed you once, they are basically wearing a 'Kill me!' sign around their neck.
Hmm, trying to be helpful here... if you cant outsnipe a barret then pull Minimi... it binks the **** out of em. Stay on the ground with this weapon when you can, and trust in your bink... dont try to dodge, just stay stable and trust in your own accuracy and minimi megabink... he will miss and die. With practice this can be done at even short ranges. VS M79's, with any weapon, the main key is to make sure he fires first. And misses. Work him with your crazy agility, force him to fire first. Then you got easy meat.
Adapt or die. Tactics are countered with better tactics. Crying never won a match in all the years i've been playing Soldat and I don't expect that crying will ever become an 'official' part of Soldat. (Lovely thing about this game BTW, you can mod it and serve it anyway u like, just in case you hadn't noticed). Maybe some people could just get together and write a script that rewarded crying and flaming and *****ing... if anyone ever does do that mod, please lemme know cuz I'd love to checkitout.
Nuff sed, and please re-read the above posts by the other people, much wisdom was given there, just wanted to underline it.
Err... if you have time, play a little Chess or read Sun Tzu. Even the cheap-o 'Cliff Notes' version of Art Of War can really open your mind.