How to properly nerf Camping and Tunnling in the upcoming patch
First the positives: The upcoming patch for DBD has a lot of great changes. This is easily the biggest patch DBD has ever received, and having all these balance changes and the meta shake up is something DBD really needs. I am also sure this patch took a lot of work, so it's certainly impressive.
With that said, the biggest issue with this new patch is the fact that, when it comes to basekit changes, survivors were kind of left out this time around. The changes to killer, besides the bloodlust buff, are all fantastic.
The 10 seconds time increase of gens is particularly big. In theory, this adds 50 seconds on top of survivors objectives, which is almost another full minute. However, once in game, you'll notice it will be even more impactful, because good killer players will be able to get even more out of this change, when applying proper map pressure, and that will lead the extra objective time to further accumulate. It's not a complete rarity to have a generator pop right before you can intercept it.
All the other buffs for killers are also great, especially some of the chase buffs, since those help M1 killers in particular. The one exception being the bloodlust buff.
Sadly, survivors didn't get the same treatement. With killers having their frustrations addressed, survivors should be getting the same. But the 5 second endurance and haste status effect after being unhooked just won't cut it, not even close. Even worse is the fact that, because gen times are being increased, camping is actually being buffed, which is beyond bad.
So in the following I am going to list all changes the game absolutely needs as well when the patch goes live, and I hope the devs will be able to make these improvements, or I fear the game will not be in a good spot for a while, until these issues are addressed:
- Increase the endurance and haste status effect duration after being unhooked from 5 to 12 seconds
- It has to be at least 10 seconds, but 12 would be even better in my opinion. With BT the effect would last 22 seconds, but that is fine, because tunneling, and staying near hooks, needs to be both encouraged and discouraged. It's as simple as that. Unless of course you are yearning for those juicy 20 minute killer queue times.
- Another effect I would really wish to see is to have survivors unhooked not leave any scratchmarks, pools of blood, and not make any grunts of pain during this duration, so survivors that were unhooked have a better chance of actually escaping
- Increase the hook phase duration from 60 seconds to 80 seconds
- This one is probably the most important one of all. Since gen times are increased, the hook phase timers also need to be increased. Now somebody did the math, and in order to keep the hook phase and gen time ratio pretty much the same as it is now, the hook phase would need to be increased to approximately 67 seconds. However, that's NOT what needs to be done. Now that killers are getting so many nice buffs, BHVR absolutely has to take advantage of that and actually nerf camping, finally, after like 6 freaking years. It's beyond unfun to go against, and it takes almost no skill at all. I do not know any other online pvp game that has such an effective strategy that takes so, so little skill. The only thing even remotely close I can think of is Bastion in the lower ranks of Overwatch, and even that is barely a valid comparison
- Remove hook grabs
- For obvious reasons. There is no reason this insanely outdated mechanic is still in the game, it just makes it unnecessarily difficult to unhook another survivor, and more importantly, it hurts newer players far more. A few people have argued that survivors shouldn't be safe when unhooking in front of a killer, but they still wouldn't be. The killer is still able to injure the unhooking survivor normally, especially with the nice M1 cooldown reduction, and if the killer has just a few braincells, they will often simply be able to trade. But again, there is no reason to give killers such effective tools for something as skillless as camping.
- Revert the DS stun duration nerf
- What a terrible, terrible nerf. I am not a fan of the end game deactivation, because survivors should have a fair chance of getting a 4 man escape, but if the endurance and haste status effect duration is increased, I don't think this would be too bad. The stun duration decrease however is absolutely awful. Against killers like Blight and Nurse, it will be almost useless. There is no way on earth this can make it into the live game.
These changes will 100% need to happen, and hopefully together with the other changes in the midchapter patch. Sadly I am not that optimistic that will happen. But if it won't, I fear a fair amount of survivor players, especially solo queue players, will leave the game, at least until these issues have been resolved.
This patch has some other issues as well, especially certain perks being overnerfed, like Self Care, Ruin, Spine Chill or the already mentioned DS, and some perks being overbuffed, like Overcharge, Eruption or Off the Record. But by far the biggest problem with this upcoming patch is that the basekit changes only address the killer frustrations properly, not the survivor frustrations.
Comments
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No thank you. How about you see how the basekit BT+haste effect works out before you suggest huge, sweeping survivor buffs? It's gonna be way more effective than you think. And they didn't increase hook stages cuz regression perks were nerfed. You can't have both.
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Honestly, I wanted to write something about that today, after I really had a completely insane situation. First of all, I am definitely not a pro and probably somewhere in the middle or lower MMR. This morning I played about 10 rounds, I was found relatively often first, looped the killer for 1-2 generators and of those 10 rounds I ended up hooked and facecamped 6x. I lost one round due to Noed, which is okay but still took quite little skill. I don't know why but since a few weeks this happens more and more. The killer tunnels someone out of the game at 0 or 1 generators already, which is then as good as unwinnable, or the first player on the hook gets camped. All in all, the number of "unfun" situations in my games increases extremely and my desire to play goes down accordingly. Especially since the SBMM system makes the whole thing even worse. Teammates kill themselves or disconnect when they are camped, reducing the probability for the rest to escape to almost 0. Not escaping = less MMR = worse teammates = more dcs/suicides.
I think the proposed changes from the user above me are all good. I don't understand the DS nerf either, because that's the only perk that is remotely likely to prevent an "unfun" situation, and especially with a tunneling Nurse, even 5 seconds (effectively 4, since you fall off the shoulder first) is hardly time for significant distance.
To make camping unattractive, like other users on the forum, I would suggest that the other survivors get a drastic boost to generator repair, after a cooldown of course, to allow the killer to get off the hook. To this of course, not even if the killer is in a chase near the hook. Also, the generators that have already been repaired would have to be taken into account, as camping can be quite understandable or necessary in the later game. But camping should not be a strategy in the early game that effectively makes it impossible for at least one participant to take part in the round.
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Change 2 is way too much, I think 65-70 seconds per Hook Stage would be enough.
Other than that, I think the amount of progress lost upon kicking a Generator should be 5%. 2.5% is too little
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I mean I am definitely curious to see how effective the basekit BT will be, but yeah, most people seem to agree that 5 seconds won't be enough, and I don't think that's a crazy theory, seeing as we already have a 12 second BT in the game right now which we can compare to. Killers will often just be able to wait those 5 seconds out. In the end, it will maybe help out the extremely experienced survivor teams, but for most teams, 5 seconds won't be nearly enough.
Also, some slowdown perks were nerfed, but that is still not as impactful as the extra 10 seconds on every gen. Not to mention Deadlock, which is the best camping slowdown perk, isn't getting a nerf. So camping has been buffed clearly. There is absolutely no way around increasing the hook phase timer. Killers are getting their frustrations addressed, so survivors should get tunneling and camping addressed as well.
I honestly don't know what to tell you if you actually think that only one side should be getting good changes. Camping needs to be finally nerfed, not buffed, and also not kept the same, it needs to be nerfed, now that killers normal gameplay is getting buffed. There is no good reason for the devs not do that, and I hope they realise this fast enough, or we'll most likely have a large drop in survivor players, with killer queue times sky rocketing.
And I don't want to have to wait in 20 minute queue times either just to play killer.
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I would rather have the hook bleed out speed decreased a lot whenever the killer is near the hooked survivor. But I guess increasing gen repair speed would also work.
But that seems like it will be to complex of a mechanic to still implement quickly. Simply increasing the hook phase duration to 80 seconds or so should be much easier and quicker to do. So I hope that's what BHVR is going for.
And yes, camping and tunneling are beyond unfun to go against, and are definitely demotivating for survivor players. These strategies have to be addressed no doubt, especially now that killers are getting buffs.
The fact that some people are against this just blows my mind, and indicates that they probably only play killer at all.
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Good ides but I would say hook state should last 70s as the 80s is bit too much. Ds change was stupid it's only bad killers who conplained about the perk and if all 4 survivors are alive in endgame like you said I think they deserve chance to escape. Instead what devs did they should made the nerfed ds basekit and the perk would make stun last maybe 6s and work at endgame. I also think it should disable drop of bloods and scratch mark for 10s so then it would really work like an antitunnel perk. Also I would add survivors secondary objectives to find part for gens and killer could also try to stop that somewhat so then the game would not be gen simulator for survivors as much.
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Why do killers tunnel and camp? Obviously because we're all just a bunch of sweaty tryhards, that abuse strategies that give us free wins and also allow us to ruin your experience in a match. Seriously, why do you think tunneling and camping is that prominent? It's because these are the most efficient tools a killer has to create pressure and get the upper hand! The moment the killer is not going for a survivor, this survivor sits on a gen. After hooking someone the killer needs to traverse the map and make their way to the other survivors. When camping, the killer actually uses this little flaw against the survivors by forcing them to leave the gens and go for the unhook, making their way to the killer and NOT the other way around. It's not fun for the survivors, I know that, but it is often the only chance the killer has to keep up the pressure.
There is also an equivalent strategy that survivors use. It's called "committing". You risk putting yourself at a potential disadvantage in order to achieve something that cannot be revoked by the other side. The real problem I see with camping is, that it is a better option then leaving the hook in many situations, since the killer doesn't get anything for NOT camping.
It's the same for tunneling with the equivalent of focussing on ONE objective at a time. No one forbids you from grouping up on a gen or coming back there after the killer is gone. Again in both ways the player tries to achieve something irrevocable that might turn the game in their favor. Is there any mechanic in the game that rewards the killer for not tunneling, aside from Grim Embrace?
You can punish killers for following these strategies all you want as long as you give them something in return. Otherwise you just break the game's balance even more.
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You have never played at high MMR and it shows with a statement like :" Increase the hook phase duration from 60 seconds to 80 seconds".
Do you know what happened the last time we increased time to kill on hook? It changed survivors from trying to get quick rescues to - using the extra time to rush generators. Every time a generator is completed it makes killers realize the game is almost over so they need to wait by someone on a hook to force stage 2 or maybe camp them to death.
The survivor objective can be completed in 3 minutes by a tournament level SWF. The objective can be completed in 4 minutes by "old school" red rank survivors without voice coms. Until killers have tools that are more effective than camping/tunneling that will be the strategy.
Consider for a moment a typical DBD chase. You spend 20 seconds looking for a survivor(late game this becomes map travel time). You chase them for 10 seconds and get a hit. You wipe your weapon for 3 seconds. You chase them for a minimum of 20 seconds and hit them again. You wipe your weapon for 3 seconds. You pick up the survivor and carry them to a hook - this takes 10-15 seconds on average. Upon hooking a survivor you have spent 20+10+3+20+3+15 seconds = 71 seconds. And then they take more time to die on the hook.
At high levels of play this leaves 9 seconds for the killer to reach a generator and stop the survivors from completing it. Hope you had scourge to reduce the progress by 15% and hope you have pop to reduce it by another 25% when you get there - oh wait both of those perks are dead in the rework.
What you actually need to discourage camping is to make the survivor bleed out very quickly if the killer is far away OR have all generators take longer to repair if someone is on a hook.
Imagine for example if the survivor time to die on hook were reduced by 10 seconds per stage if the killer is more than 16m away from a hook. You would be forced as a survivor to rescue much sooner.
Imagine if hooking a survivor stopped all generator repair for 10 seconds as a base kit feature. This would give the killer theoretical time to walk over to a generator and use Pop.
Imagine a base kit feature that blocks one generator for each person on a hook - if the killer is beyond 16m. This would literally force one player off a generator.
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No, 65-70 seconds won't cut it. As I explained in my post, that would just make camping similarly effetcive as it is now. At least it wouldn't be buffed anymore, but it also wouldn't be nerfed.
And it absolutely needs to be nerfed. Now that killers are getting some very nice buffs, survivors should finally get camping and tunneling nerfed. It's extremely important.
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