Scott Jund's take on being tunneled
I thought it was a pretty good video and, in my opinion, most people playing survivor are in the they want a bit of gens, bit of being chased, bit of a break from being chased off hook, repeat.
I'm in that group too but I do have to admit I like stacking OTR with DS for the satisfaction of knowing that if I'm tunneled I'm extremely annoying to tunnel and there's a very good chance the Killer threw the entire game to get me.
Also, the build mentioned of OTR, Overcome and Quick and Quiet sounds pretty cool.
Comments
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I see where Scott is coming from however, when I'm playing as survivor I much prefer stealth game-play. The chase is something to escape, and the escape is the point of fun for myself. Similar to how in an intense game of whatever, the game itself is stressful, but the victory is the release.
Besides, I also don't enjoy being the only one in my group interacting with the killer. And maybe Scott doesn't play with friends often, but at least for myself the enjoyment of the group takes precedent over my sole joy. Otherwise, I would just opt to play solo queue, equip a few perks like Distortion, Sole Survivor, Left Behind, etc. and just cruise through escapes.
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Yeah i always got confused when people said being tunneled was 'denying to play the game' and then turn around and say the chase was the most fun part of the game and gens were boring.
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The fact that a solo queue player is forced to use half his perks on OTR and DS just so he can de-incentivize tunneling means that solo queue players only have 2 slots to use for everything else they need. That's a sad state of affairs for solo-queue.
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Not really; it's not a necessity. It's just something I do for fun in the case I get tunneled. I just like punishing tunnelers by making them throw the match if they really want me.
It's more accurate, in my opinion, to say OTR is a necessity unless you want to throw about half of your matches.
That probably wouldn't be necessary in most games if the basekit BT was raised to about 20 seconds as that would ensure that if you really want to tunnel it's pretty much guaranteed you're throwing the match.
Even in that case, I'd still probably equip OTR just because, after the patch, I can actually do something about it when tunneled and most of the Killers I face have problems catching me in the first 20 seconds anyway especially with the new Haste buff.
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I found myself agreeing with the comments of this video.
I like watching/listening to Scott's commentaries on the game. I find myself agreeing with him on most areas of game balance, and often share his concerns about what is updated and when, but he doesn't play the game for the same reason I do.
I play survivor to escape. I like the mental gymnastics required to assess the most optimal task I can be doing, with the limited information I've been provided. Holding M1 on a generator might be boring, but the entire time my mind is analyzing the situation and thinking 2-3 steps ahead about where I need to be.
When a killer tunnels me, I'm stripped of my ability to strategically help my team escape. All I can do at that point is flex my hours on the killer, and hope I have enough resources to make them regret chasing me in the first place. Personally, I don't think there is a very high skill ceiling in looping the killer, so I get less satisfaction out of taking the killer on a 5-gen chases than I do strategically choosing what to work on and where/when.
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The problem with his take is that he literally plays this for a living and he just memes around when playing survivor. Some of his self-imposed challenges made him that kind of survivor very few would like as a teammate, if you know what I mean.
He goes in there with a mindset completely different from the casual gamer who's investing their free time for leisure. While definitely no one deserve to win without effort and knowledge, every player would at least like to have a shot at an enjoyable experience.
It's also a completely different way from how he approaches the game when he plays killer, where he actually tries to win, even when he tried challenges.
Secondly, his take about soloq is just shy of ignorant. Saying soloq was miserable pre-patch (true) to downplay the sentiment that now it's even MORE miserable, just completely misses the mark of why people are upset. Imagine you get beat up barefist by someone every day, but you push through it. Then, one day they show up with a baseball bat. Are you gonna say you should put up with the latter just because you did with the former and because both are miserable anyway? That's the essence of his argument.
Thirdly, the problem is not tunneling by itself. The issue is more complex. The problem with survivor gameplay is that most of what you do post 6.1.0 feels inconsequential to the outcome of the match and the interaction with the killer is flimsy and predictable and the remainder is to hold down a button.
There's camping first, where no one literally gets to do anything but hold m1, hang on hook, or 1-for-1/get grabbed. Then comes the actual tunneling, that most of the time doesn't translate to chase interaction as Scott tried to suggest, because of either overly oppressive antiloop or simply getting easily bloodlusted. In either case, the tunnel doesn't add gameplay. It's just a rehook simulator. And finally, there's the actual gen repairing that with the bloated repair time and with the plethora of regression just feel like an inane exercise, while someone else gets camptunned.
Finally, unless I understand what he said wrong, or the perk is bugged again, but Overcome is the single worst exhaustion perk you can pick if you want to avoid getting tunneled. You literally have no exhaustion after getting unhooked and as soon as the killer realized that's what you're running in your first chase, that paints a giant bullseye on your back saying "please, eliminate me."
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I agree with Scott. The most fun part of the game is chases, yet, they made gens take longer and chases shorter because of the increased gen times and buffed basekit for killers in chase.
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If they're healed it isnt tunneling. They had time to heal.
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Not liking doing and gens and disliking being tunneled can both be true at once. I happen to prefer chases as I find gens boring and monotonous, however, being tunneled means you don't get to engage in all other aspects of the match i.e. being altruistic and helping other teammates, totem searching, etc. I like to be chased, but when you're being tunneled it denies you the opportunity to reset and have a breather as being chased can be quite intense. Also, 9/10 times you get tunneled you end up being sacrificed (which is worse since the DS/OTR end game nerfs) so it also denies you, most of the time, the opportunity to escape the trial.
Being chased is fun. Being chased 24/7 and taking all the heat off the killer knowing they want you out of the game is not fun. There's a difference.
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Chases are definitely fun, but being chased the entire match is not as fun in my opinion. This is because I have fun playing a support role when playing survivor. I like healing and buffing my teammates with perks. There probably aren't a ton of people like me that find fun in that kind of thing, but people generally have different ways of playing that they find fun and that's okay.
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Oh i kind of get it. Being chased is fun but knowing that you will get sacrificed soon tains that fun. Like a last meal kind of deal.
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Exactly that! It feels like a lot of effort when you know you're probably not going to escape anyway. Plus, being tunelled is just unfun, especially when killers do it straight off the back of a unhook. You don't even have time to heal and reset, and when the killer finally sacrifices you you wonder why they threw a whole match just to get you out of the game.
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Exactly. What makes survivor more enjoyable than killer to be is that I don't have to be on the entire game. Sure doing gens/totems is not exactly a riot, but I can sort of shut my brain off for a bit before I have to take any aggro. If you're just getting tunneled. Sure you're having the most fun in chases, but there is no break besides the time you're on the hook. And it's relatively short lived and then boom, unhooked, bt hit, and back to hoping to get to a loop.
Also, I don't need to win every match, but I do want to play a bit. When you get tunneled, you're very much likely going to play a shorter game.
That said, I usually don't get worked up about tunneling unless I'm playing swf. That's also annoying. Cool. I got rekt by a strong tunneler, now I can sit around and wait another six minutes before the game ends. Another minute or two of my teammates using the restroom after or changing their load out. Another minute or two of lobby time. It sucks. As a solo player, you can just move on to the next game quicker at least.
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I have respect for scott and he's a funny man. This opinion though has been the toughest take ever. I don't think most can get on board with it.
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If I am in a lobby where I need to "throw the game" to get a survivor out... That is probably why I tunneled. DS does not annoy me, I wholly expect it (I used to eat it early intentionally because of the end game exploit). Admittedly Off the Record is slightly annoying, but it would be even more annoying in a game I am trying to play fair. So the point is kind of moot.
Someone body blocked me with that trash while on stage 2 and just expected me to continue playing fair for some reason, they did not realize I was at 8 stacks of Save the Best for Last and they left the game VERY shortly after that little stunt (queue the Megamind, "no DS?) Maybe they wanted it, idk. I do not understand survivors.
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Scott doesn't take into account that most people play survivor not just for the sake of playing survivor at this very moment, but also for a more long term gratification in form of completed challenges, daily rituals and bloodpoints which can't be earned in huge quantities if you're being tunneled all the game.
Not to mention that most people don't tend to play this game as a job so much, their ability to play it allows them to last a long time while being tunnelled instead of just dying even faster.
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This sums up much of my thoughts as well. Being chased is a fun "part" of the game, but whether it's the fun-est part of the game is up for debate and even so there's a limit to it.
The planning and moment to moment decision making makes up a chunk of that fun too.
And besides, even if we were to say that it is the fun-est part of the game, too much of something is not good.
Just because I love eating burgers, does not mean I "only" want to eat burgers. And that's all tunneling is from the survivor perspective, with the added awful bonus that you don't get to play the game for very long.
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Perfectly explained!
Also to Scott's point, yes being chased can be fun and in the long run, you will learn from it. However, when this is happening games in a row because this tactic is now very easy and common it ruins all the fun. It's no fun leaving match after match getting face-camped and then being tunneled to death, with the killer literally ignoring the other survivors. Nor is it fun to have the absolute bare minimum of BP's because you spent getting chased all game long and barely did any of the other side objectives to earn as much BP as possible.
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Also, the developers made chases way shorter because of all the chasing buffs Killers got. So even though chasing is the most fun part of the game, the developers pretty much got rid of most of the chase mechanics that survivors had. Killers attack faster, bloodlust happens faster, killer break pallets faster, Dead Hard was pretty much removed.
Sure the top tier players can still loop killers but mid tier players just go down instantly, you just removed the ability for mid-tier players to perform chases that last any amount of time.
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It's true that if you're being tunneled and killed early it's likely that you're not very good. My response is...so what? Should having one bad player on a team doom the rest of the survivors to certain defeat? This isn't Dota. We're all here to have a good time.
Incentives should be aligned so that the most effective way to play is also fair. Right now the best strategy for a killer who wants to win is to pick out the weakest survivor and get them out of the game as fast as possible. Nobody feels good about that, not even most killers. Flashlight-clicking neon-clothed survivors who love being chased are not the ones complaining on the forums, and they are a small minority of the player base.
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If you believe killers should get incentives to not camp, then you also believe that survivors should get incentives to not suicide on hook/DC?
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Again, I don't personally find chases to be the fun-est part of the game. I was speaking for the sake of argument.
And I agree with most of the changes made to killer for this patch, even with the present consequences.
I do however, think that Behavior should have taken more dramatic steps to handle camping and tunneling alongside these changes. So that even with a multitude of killer buffs, the game remains fun for all most of the time.
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I think the gripes about tunneling are actually deflections from being gripes about mid match player elimination. It’s not that the survivor is getting chase that they dislike, it’s that the ultimate result is they get eliminated in the middle of the match and everybody else gets to keep playing. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with so called tunneling, it’s simply that inevitably someone gets downed two or three times in a row and booted from play and that midgame elimination is generally speaking a problematic design for that reason.
So there’s not really a solution per se to tunneling that wouldn’t basically involve getting rid of mid match player elimination. As long as people can be booted from the game there will always be a lot of complaints about how it was unfair they got “tunneled” out first. The most the game can probably do is try and steer killers to not immediately attack someone right after an unhook.
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My teammates have been going down so fast it feels like they must all be throwing. I rarely have LOS on the chase, so I can't imagine that is whats happening, but boy is it a struggle. Far too many games I've played where the killer has 5-6 hooks and I've yet to complete a single generator.
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Camping is guaranteeing a kill while suicide on hook is giving up on the match, they are not the same thing.
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This is more a question of what works. You obviously believe penalties work to prevent unwanted behavior. So why not use penalties to prevent camping-at-gen-5, just like you do for DCs? Is it really fair that you give incentives to one side and punishments to the other side.
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"He goes in there with a mindset completely different from the casual gamer who's investing their free time for leisure."
This is a great point, thank you. I like Scott and I appreciate his mindset, but it's not for everyone, particularly people who only have so much free time to play DBD or who only want to log in to play a couple games only to end up being ruthlessly tunneled.
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I think some others have mentioned, but he's missing the part that makes people upset.
Getting chased is fun. Getting chased by the killer is fun. But, as much as people make fun of the developers for this, at some point you want to win by escaping. You want those chases and macro plays to actually result in a tangible reward.
Tunneling can be frustrating for both the person tunneled and the other 3 people.
For the tunneled person, sometimes they want to be able to reset to get to full health. Or they want a break from chasing. Or they want to be able to position themselves in a place that's advantageous. Or they're playing with friends and they don't want to sit out playing the game for 5 minutes because they got tunneled and now have to watch their friends play. Or they want to feel like their actions were a "win" and the game doesn't treat it as one. Cool, you outplayed the killer and allowed your teammates to escape. Why can't you escape too?
For the ones not being tunneled, they don't get an opportunity to be chased or they have to risk completely throwing the game because they tried to take hits for the person being tunneled instead of rushing generators. Then, after the first person gets tunneled out, nothing that they do really matters if there's 3 or more generators. For them to have any chance at escaping, they effectively have to run the killer for 3 generators. If you're running the killer for 3 generators when there are only 3 people in the game, then matchmaking screwed up. A 4v1 game shouldn't require a person to be able to 1v1 the killer to counter an incredibly easy strategy.
I feel like this patch is really good in a lot of ways. If the killer plays in a certain way, distributing chases between different survivors and applying pressure to different areas of the map, I think the game has a lot going for it and feels like a breath of fresh air considering that now you see more than just Dead Hard to a pallet or everyone running BT. The problem is that while this is true, the problems that existed before this patch that made it unfun in certain games still exist. Killers got a lot of quality of life changes in this patch and I think people were expecting more QoL changes for survivor. But all they effectively got was a worse version of basekit BT and a DS that now can't even properly do its one job.
I think it's more just that disappointment. I'm not sure anything is very different from before.
For the record, I really don't like that DS is effectively the only deterrence to tunneling in this game. In my opinion, OTR/BT aren't really deterrences to tunneling. You just give them one extra slap and then start chasing them again. If we want to talk about secondary objectives, I'd rather DS be a secondary objective like an item similar to Sadako's tape. Something like, "There's one or two knives in the trial for you to find. If you find it, you get the equivalent of DS the perk." That way if a killer is tunneling you can go find a knife, give it to the person being tunneled, and then they get to use it once. Maybe make it a real item the killer can see. If the killer slugs someone with the knife for 20 seconds, the knife breaks or disappears. Keep the 3 second stun. This allows the killer to play around the knife, makes anti-slugging perks better, and the killer can just always decide to pick up the person anyway since having the knife would have involved one of the people doing a secondary objective like a totem. Maybe a stupid idea, but it would be nice if there was some way for the non-tunneled survivors to effectively play around tunneling that didn't just involve body blocking.
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I think I'm a mid tier survivor but I think the difference between my experience and others is, for whatever reason, my MMR is correct. I escaped roughly 55% of the time pre patch and I escape roughly 55% of the time post patch. That suggests to me my MMR has settled where it should be as that's close to the 50% goal.
My opinion is that it would be more accurate to say taking DS and DH has been replaced by taking at least OTR and probably an exhaustion perk you're good at. OTR has saved me far more than pre patch DS ever did.
Personally, for changes in the future I'd like to see the base BT duration increased significantly (to 15 to 20 seconds thereabouts) with the addition of Conspicious Actions removing Endurance and the perk Kinship buffed.
I don't think that would be onerous to Killers (and I say that as someone who does play both sides regularly) as, with Conspicuous Actions added, you can't do anything to progress the game and a buffed Kinship could be worked to only affect Killers essentially facecamping. That would probably help because, as @dugman stated, mid- match elimination can be problematic. Most people don't have a problem with being eliminated eventually, they just want to play the game first though.
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I wasn't defending it, I do agree that incentives would be nice, the only thing that kept me plaing survivor in the first days was the bp bonus now I don't even bother.
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That's because "We want to be chased all game! That's what's fun!" was a lie told by Survivors way back when.
Back before patch 1.4.0 Looping was nowhere near as powerful as it is today. In Patch 1.4.0 the developers re-sized the Survivors hit boxes to be smaller, in order to help Survivors not get hit out in the open so easy, and to help compensate for latency issues. This had an unintentional effect, as Survivors found out they could now hug objects much tighter than before. This, in turn, meant they could run around objects in tighter, and therefore, faster circles than Killers could. Before this, you could get MAYBE one Loop out of a Pallet. Instead of the usual 2-3 now, before having to drop it. Thus, Looping as it is known today was born. This, by all accounts, makes Looping an Exploit as it fits the definition of video game exploits.
See Link here -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_exploit
Survivors, still reeling from the loss of true Infinites, took to this like fish to water. The developers planned to fix it at first, but quickly decided to leave it in the game and try to balance around it due to pressure from their Survivor player base. The majority player base of Survivor Mains just couldn't win without having something that was blatantly game breaking to abuse. Most Survivors then told the biggest lie in the games history : "We want to be chased all game! That's what's fun!" In order to protect this new exploit. The developers caved, and have been struggling to re-balance the game for its inclusion ever since.
Killers were simply ill-equipped to deal with Looping and Stealth. This is why Killers now have a PLETHORA of aura reading perks, add ons, powers, and abilities. This was also the reason Bloodlust was shoehorned into the game. It was a band-aid mechanic to try to help killers against looping being so overpowering. The developers gave the Survivors what they wanted, to be chased all game and let them have their loops. They are simply trying to give both sides what they want. Killers the power to be able to stand up to Looping, Survivors the game play they wanted. Though truth is, neither side is very happy. In short : Killers are getting the balance they wanted (I say getting cause they still aren't there yet). However, not the game play they want. Survivors got the game play they wanted, but not the balance they want (as in being OP as hell).
(In case anyone is wondering, the above is a copy paste I typed up 4 years ago.)
Now, being chased all game isn't so much fun. All because it's not an automatic win, seeing as the game is FINALLY being balanced for Looping, and the 2nd chance Crutch perk meta is nerfed. It goes to show, I knew what many Survivors were REALLY thinking way back when. Being chased all game is fun, but for many survivors, it's only fun if they win. If they loose because of it, then it's "not fun." Many Survivors have a long standing record of using "X is/isn't fun" as a weapon, to browbeat the developers into changing the game so the balance is in their favor.
The biggest issue now with camping/tunneling is many Survivors are so used to being able to Loop, blow all their 2nd chance perks, AND STILL SURVIVE, they are mad they can't now. If one person has to die, ONE PERSON DIES. Many Survivors still consider DBD a 1v1 FOUR TIMES OVER, not a 1v4. Which is completely backwards. Many have developed a "Hero Complex", being able to "beat the killer" and still escape. Sure, you can't kill the killer, but having the Killer chase you all game and still getting out is "beating the killer". Now that it usually doesn't happen, they aren't happy about it.
I've been playing a lot of Survivor and doing decently. However my biggest problem is team mates. I'm solo Queue and there are two major factors that play into any loss I may get.
Firstly : Rage Quitting. Some Survivors are just ANGRY AS HELL and are purposely throwing the match and disconnecting or "offing themselves" on their first hook. Some are simply doing it to artificially inflate kill rates, to skew the developers data in order to get buffs so they can "Hero" and often times bully killers again.
Secondly : Simply playing stupid because they are so used to old meta plays. They try to do stupid hook saves in the killers face, ungodly amount of hook trades, rushing a gen while injured when the killer is nearby cause they are used to "Press E to avoid hit or make it to safe Loop", you name it. They CONTINUE to play like they are a "Hero" that can just keep taking smacks over and over.
Instead of taking solace in the fact they wasted a good amount of the killers time, and they really helped their team, they are only concerned about themselves. This "MeMeMe" mentality is because they are used to being a "Hero", not a scared weak Survivor.
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so his take on the matter is: "I like getting tunneled so there's nothing wrong with tunneling"
BS
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Thus, Looping as it is known today was born. This, by all accounts, makes Looping an Exploit as it fits the definition of video game exploits.
Looping is not an exploit.
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Yes, it is. It was only turned into core gameplay after pressure from Survivors. Why do you think Bloodlust was added into the game? Why do you think Killers have so many Aura Reading perks now as well as Killer Instinct? All added as a way to reduce Stealth gameplay because "That's not fun being immersed" and "we want to be chased all game." It has always been an exploit, and hence why the game has massive changed since it came out.
Go ahead, look up the patch notes.
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You nailed it perfectly.
I would like to add saying "but the fun part of this game is being chased by the Killer" is not a valid argument in the case of tunneling, either you bring OTR, the rescuer uses BT or the superfun chase against the Killer will end in exactly 5 seconds because when someone tunnels off hook you dont have any headstart at all, Killer is right there waiting for the unhook and is breathing down your neck right from the start until he counts to 5 or he notices you are starting to run at normal pace.
Scott Jund does have a lot of game knowledge and usually is very good a pointing flaring problems at the game but I believe in this case he missed the point entirely.
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There's some good points in there, but I also think he's missing some things.
1) The survivor's game is not solely divided between doing gens and getting chased. Sometimes there'll be totems to wipe out, there'll be people to pull off hooks and heal, and sometimes you'll have to stealth your way around a killer. Gameplay is more varied than gens and chases, at least for survivors.
2) While it's true that a killer that wants you dead will be able to kill you if he tunnels hard enough, the problem with tunnelling is that it is both boring/frustrating to go up against *and unbelievably powerful*. The same goes for camping. These methods are so popular because they are almost always the best/easiest way to win.
3) This also means that, while removing tunnelling isn't possible (Without fundamentally breaking something, as he says), it is possible to burden it with countermeasures to the point where it becomes less viable. That is the entire reason why DS was so popular, and why OTR is going to have to take over from it. The point of these perks isn't to make tunnelling impossible, but to make it less brutally efficient. To that end, I honestly think that DS should be made baseline.
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Just a side note I like OTR better than BT for solo queue because, before, I was gambling if the unhooker had BT. Now I can guarantee I'll have Endurance straight off hook and be harder to find. Since it works for both unhooks it's more useful than DS as well.
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Agreed. His whole argument seems like being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, which is par for the course.
The entire counterplay around camping and tunneling (gens and DS) was nerfed. So it's completely asinine when someone asks what changed about solo queue.
It seems like he doesn't always consider that people approach survivor on a more competitive level and see escapes as the goal. And tunneling/camping are frustrating because the counterplay involves a combination of objectives, perks, teammates/matchmaking. And the one being camped/tunneled doesn't have a ton of agency over those things.
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Oh God please don't discuss that here I know my opinion is the minority
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I don't think it's just here, tho
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I think pretty much all of Scott's commentary since the patch release has been totally on point, and I agree that survivor with zero killer interaction would be horribly dull.
But one thing not accounted for here, and is one area where the feedback of those who play the game for a living falls short is that the vast majority of people just aren't as good as they are.
Even as a killer main, Scott is a good enough surv that being tunneled out is likely a process that will take a good portion (or virtually all) of a game. For most survs against a decent+ killer, being tunneled out of a game might be a matter of only 3-4 minutes. Or less, if your team farms you.
That is not fun.
But I am not sure what can be done about it. As he says, and as we all know, if a killer is determined to tunnel you out even at the cost of the game, it's going to happen (unless you are on a strong SWF).
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Oh I know, I'm just tired of people twisting that video into "Scott is okay with tunneling" despite saying several times in the video I know it's not good for the game.
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finding a way to punish a killer who kills a survivor with zero hooks on anyone else might be a good way to look at it.
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Did you seriously ignore everything else in their reply, including the explanation for why they said looping was an exploit, just to go for this?
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wait wait, if looping was an exploit and not meant to be in the game, what was the normal gameplay mechanic to use when the killer spots you and begin to chase you? run in a straight line and lasting 10 sec?
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While I agree with the general sentiment of "being repeatedly chased is good if you enjoy chases and you should enjoy chases if you play DbD because that is its most exciting and engaging gameplay aspect" and have argued as much myself in the past, I see multiple issues with his take here.
First, he glosses over the fact that being tunnelled right off hook regularly does not provide the tunnelled survivor with an actual chase. He mentions Nurse with stacked range add-ons as if that were the only instance where a survivor can't do much of anything to prevent ending right back up on the hook, but there's a ton of scenarios that result in the same thing, taking much of any agency and interactiveness out of the equation:
- For one thing, the unhooked survivor is injured, which already puts them at a tremendous disadvantage in a chase scenario as opposed to starting a chase healthy. Not only are they leaving pools of blood and sending out cries of pain with which the killer can track them, making mindgames and stealth-jukes much less feasible, but they obviously cannot take a hit without going down, and this absence of having what is usually a built-in Exhaustion perk in the form of the hit sprint and killer hit slowdown as well as just the leeway to take more risks due to having a "free" hit is significant.
- If the tunnelled survivor does not have Off The Record equipped (or the unhooking survivor Borrowed Time), it is often incredibly easy for the killer to simply wait out the 5 seconds of base Endurance and down the survivor then, bodyblocking them to keep them from getting anywhere if need be. 5 * 4 meter is only 20m, that can already be dicey in terms of finding a (safe) window or pallet in general (all the more so given that the killer will be riding your back), but you have to add on top of this the fact that survivors will usually be hooked close to where they went down, i. e. where they likely already used pallets. Then apart from basic bodyblocking, there are killer abilities that can further make these 5 seconds irrelevant, such as Clown's bottles, Slinger's spear, Pinhead's chains. And of course, for the years and years prior to the recent update these 5 seconds of base Endurance didn't even exist.
- If the survivor does have OTR/the unhooker BT, it's also not like the distance gained from that hit will reliably result in a fair chase scenario. Even against a pure M1 killer, that is merely ~14m distance to catch up over. Now consider the killer having Save The Best For Last, which can cut the distance down further by a good 4m. The tunnelled survivor in this scenario is rarely getting anywhere, and depending on the hook location is just guaranteed to go down again.
- Then there's a plethora of killer abilities that will make the distance gained from the Endurance hit matter even less. Nurse obviously doesn't care about that distance whatsoever. Neither does Blight. Spirit can catch up quickly too. Huntress can just hatchet the survivor first, and then M1 them seconds later. Clown can gas the hook, hit the unhooked survivor and then gas them again, also catching up to them in seconds. If Plague has Corrupt Purge, the unhooked survivor is not getting anywhere. Same for Oni in Blood Fury. Leatherface can potentially eat Endurance and down the survivor in 1 chainsaw attack. Trickster melts through Endurance. Legion can use Feral Frenzy to stab the survivor, catch up to them, and cancel Frenzy. Slinger and Pyramid Head can get them on range. Twins just send out Victor. And so on.
So already it is obvious that equating "tunnelling" with "repeated chase scenarios" is dishonest. It's odd that Scott does this so casually here, given that "farming off hook" has been a longstanding meme about one of the worst offenders in terms of bad game design with DbD.
Next, he doesn't consider the fact that you yourself might not and very regularly in fact will not be the player that is getting tunnelled. So by his own argument, if being chased is the thing you should want most out of this game, the killer literally refusing to chase anyone but one survivor until they are dead is obviously not good for the game. But more than that, even if you yourself are good at chases, your random teammates regularly absolutely will not be. And so even ignoring that even a good player regularly cannot do much of anything to prevent going down again shortly after having been unhooked, a not-good player will get tunnelled out very quickly. And if you are left with 3 survivors and only few gens done, the chances of success collapse. Which leads me to my next point:
Losing isn't fun. Scott might actually not care about himself and other players in his survivor games dying, but he does care about killing survivors in his killer matches. So the concept of caring about winning and not liking losing is not foreign to him. Tunnelling is an issue for many people because either they themselves die to it quickly, or their teammates do, which then also often seals their own fate. Tunnelling is a very effective killing strategy, alongside camping it is in fact the most effective killing strategy, it is objectively optimal gameplay if your goal is to kill as many survivors as possible as reliably as possible, and tournament play too makes this very obvious. I'm not sure why Scott pretends like it isn't, surely he is aware of the DoucheBat series, or of course of his own NegaScott thing, where they will camp and tunnel with a vengeance and win even more decisively than they otherwise already most of the time do, 4ks at 4-5 gens galore. The argument then of course is that tunnelling (and camping) is simply too effective a strategy from the public match perspective where random survivors get absolutely demolished by it constantly, most of all solo survivors of course.
Sure you can say "just enjoy the chases even if you die and lose", and sure for some people (including myself, if only to certain extents) that's fair enough, but that's just not what most people want, they actually want to escape, and they get frustrated if they die all the time. Particularly so of course if it's to camping and tunnelling, which often simply do not leave much in the way of player agency or any gameplay altogether for the player on the receiving end. Which is even more understandably frustrating for players that do not play this game for a living and can't just go to their next match in their 8-hour playing session, but where those terrible games are among the few rounds they might get to play at all.
Lastly, he says there's nothing that can really be done about tunnelling that wouldn't upset the basic game balance of the killer being able to secure at least 1 kill on someone. Of course, as he also mentions there could be fundamental changes to the game that do achieve this (such as making it so the killer simply wins by getting X amount of hooks, and nobody getting sacrificed until that amount is reached), but there's absolutely things that can be done to make tunnelling (and camping) less effective of a strategy, and if that does upset the game balance, provide compensatory buffs to other aspects of killer gameplay. Decisive Strike could do something again, for one thing. The unhook Endurance could last 10-20 seconds, and even be replaced with the unhook invincibility, such that a tunnelled survivor has both that and the Endurance from OTR. Unhooked survivors could be healthy. The unhook Haste could last 60 seconds. Gen repair speeds could be increased whenever the killer is chasing the survivor most recently unhooked, and decreased whenever they are chasing anyone else. The aura of the most-recently-unhooked survivor could be revealed to all other survivors for as long as they are injured, enabling those other survivors to take hits for them, lure the killer away from them, heal them, position for save plays (e. g. flashlight/pallet/sabo saves). Remove hook grabs. Basekit Kindred. Increase gen repair speeds if the killer is within a certain range of a hooked survivor, and decrease them if the killer is chasing any survivor while another survivor is hooked, with that decrease in repair speed getting greater the farer away from the hook that chase is happening. Give killers power-ups based on how many survivors have hook states, and power-downs if a survivor is sacrificed with none (or only one) of the other survivors having hook states. These powers could apply to movement speed, pallet breaking and window vaulting speeds, hit recovery times, gen regression, information provided, and so on. As could any general killer buffs shipped to compensate for any of these or other camp/tunnel nerfs.
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Not the same person, but iirc, I remember hearing that pallets were supposed to be a distraction and used to END chases, not continue them.
Yes... a distraction. You were supposed to (potentially) stun the Killer with a pallet and then manage to lose the Killer within the time of them breaking it or getting stunned by it.
EDIT: Also, pallets weren't supposed to be looped around either. I remember hearing that the concept of looping wasn't supposed to exist, and that matches up with what this person is saying.
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You put yourself under the lights you are bound to get scrutiny from the comunity, its like being a political comentator and not expecting people supporting/criticizing your positions.
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Yeah but its really weird when I make a personal piece on my thoughts on tunneling and then people tell me that my own feelings on tunneling are wrong. Some weird ass gaslighting. You're supposed to not 100% agree with me because you're not me. I'm not making a statement to be scrutinized to begin with.
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the thing is, you could say: "TO ME I love getting tunneled, but I get why people don't like it"
Instead you said: "I love being tunneled, if you don't like it, you don't like the game"
that's not a personal place on your thoughts, that's you judging the people who doesn't agre with you.
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