Woooo! Engaging Gameplay That Should Totally Be Promoted!
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But this is where you're making a mistake: You're talking about STOPPING the killer from camping/tunnelling. In your previous post, you were talking about 'disincentivising'. They're different things. Any time people talk about the latter, the former gets argued against.
Reassurance should go back to its pre-nerf state. DS can be 10 seconds without risk. You can amp up the baseline.
The problem with Camping/Tunnelling is that these tactics are incredibly easy to employ by the killers, and really hard to counterplay for the survivors. If these tactics just get weakened, that's a disincentive. Yes, there will still be trolls. But at least people don't resort to them as cheap strats that solo play has little to no counter to.
Disincentivising them is super easy and has been done in the past. But these 'disincentives' just got nerfed to crap.
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My point is that disincentives don't work if the killer doesn't care about losing. Which in most cases like the Bubba here they don't. He hits on hook, facecamps and ignores the other survivors letting them do gens. That's an almost guaranteed loss. The disincentives put in place are to make it so such an action IS potentially game losing, not game winning, but if the killer isn't fussed about winning they have no effect. For some players ruining another person's experience is for them a win eg: Pigs who sat in front of boxes from the get go on the off chance that one person is unable to get their trap off and dies. They lose, but enjoy the fact they ensured one person couldn't escape because it's 'funny'.
In these cases toxic behaviour can't be discouraged. The only solution is to stop it outright but that's an impossible solution without royally screwing up the gameplay balance (making unhooked survivors invincible for instance could easily be abused by competent SWFs).
I don't mean to argue. We're both coming from the same place. But I feel the devs are owed a tiny amount of credit in that this is a problem they cannot solve outright. It is down to the players themselves to decide that playing through a match normally is more fun than throwing it just for the sake of ruining one person's experience. If the killer does care about winning then by all means disincentives can be effective. The ten second base kit BT has already done me wonders in reducing tunnelling, and although it does not stop it completely it makes tunnelling a much more punishing play if the tunnelled survivor is competent in chase. DS should be reverted to five seconds as it is too situational to warrant being weak if you manage to get use out of it. OtR is a solid anti-tunnelling choice. There are viable disincentives available that can make committing to a tunnel game losing for the killer. But if they don't care about losing, these disincentives don't work. But that's out of the developer's hands.
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"But I feel the devs are owed a tiny amount of credit in that this is a problem they cannot solve outright."
I disagree.
Because it's one thing to not be able to physically stop someone from playing to expressly ruin another's fun, but it's another to not work on disincentivising these tactics, and it's yet another to take as many steps as they do to incentivise them instead.
They added gen time, cut DS by 40%, made OTR incompatible with the one thing they did give survivors to combat this nonsense, and when they came up with a perk that could actually hardcore damage camping, they neutered it before it could get out of PTB, specifically on its ability to counter camping!
They're encouraging camping and tunnelling. That's a step worse than not being able to stop people from actively choosing to ruin the game.
Which, by the by, they could also rule a reportable offense.
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Camping already has a really strong disincentive. When you camp a survivor you are completely ignoring the other three and are liable to lose the remaining gens. It's a game losing play if the survivors don't play into it. And Reassurance, even in it's nerfed state, gives that camped survivor an extra 30 seconds on the hook. That's an effect that isn't to be sneezed at and gives the hooked survivor more of a chance of being saved even while the team focuses gens. It's still a disincentive, just not one that's as obviously strong.
Gen times were increased because killers felt gens were being completed too quickly, not to strengthen camping. It's a knock on effect in that it happens to benefit camping by giving the killer more time to camp a survivor out. But literally anything that the devs add that makes the gates take longer for the survivors to power will benefit camping. It's difficult to design around because of that.
I agree on DS. I have no idea why they gutted the stun time. It was good the way it was.
OtR is solid for killers that decide to wait out your BT or if you manage to put a good amount of distance from them off the hook but they still target you. It's perfectly viable for anti-tunnelling. Reassurance still counters camping but requires your whole team to run the perk to get a similar duration to the PTB version. On it's own it can give a camped survivor an extra 30 seconds for each hook stage. That's an extra whole minute if they are camped from first to death hook. That's incredibly strong for a single perk slot and makes a save much more possible while still allowing your team to prioritise gens.
And as much as I hate to say it, camping and tunnelling are viable strategies. They suck for the person involved big time but can be used as a means to regain pressure or secure a kill. But it's widely argued as to when these strategies are needed or even needed at all in some games. If you've lost a few gens and there is a survivor on death hook you may tunnel them out so as to make the remaining gens easier to defend. Or if you manage to hook a survivor in your 3 gen you'll camp them because you have nowhere else to be as a killer. Making them reportable just makes the killer experience worse. With all the people that say that you tunnel and camp when they don't know the actual meaning of the words, can you imagine how many reports killers would get on a daily basis? Killers would get driven off the game in droves if they were paranoid of getting reported every game.
My problem is when the killer does camp or tunnel when they obviously don't need to. Like this Bubba, four gens left, two hooks, game is still in his favor and he camps and throws any pressure he could have out the window. Just because he wants the Steve to not have fun. That's the distinction between killers who camp/tunnel because they have to swing the game versus killers that do it to ruin your experience. If it is understandable why they are doing it it becomes a lot harder to label the action as toxic.
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