The Prevalence of Tunnelling?
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Tunneling is simply targeting a recently unhooked survivor within a certain time-frame.
This time-frame varies for every person you ask, but there are definitely solutions that encompass a large swath of problems because of tunneling.
Yes people will still complain, but this shouldn't be relevant because most players are rational.
The reason I state to stop bringing up killer players is because it should be a given that killer would have to be compensated for losing the best strategy for winning.
The truth of why tunneling hasn't been addressed yet is because bhvr knows their profits aren't in danger so they're taking their time coming up with a low-cost, low-effort solution to implement.
People are grossly overthinking the problem because of BHVR's radio silence on the topic making it seem more complex than it is.
You'd be surprised how many "unsolvable" issues would be fixed very fast if this game had a serious competitor.
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Didn't mind any of the three, but I enjoyed the rework.
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I've never said they can't improve things, but a lot of people want to 'fix' tunneling by making it impossible, rather than by making it less rewarding. There is no way to do that without either survivors weaponising invulnerability, or completely redesigning the format of the game from the ground up.
And DBD has had several competitors, they all had vastly worse and less balanced systems that were even more prone to one sided abuse than DBD and it's tunneling problem.
Oh and…
most players are rational
I beg to differ.
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So there were basically 2 main ideas i have floated around here that would address tunneling. The first is to heavily heavily discourage it, the second is to make it literally completely impossible, while requiring some heavy balance changes for both sides.
1st idea:
- Remove the 4% mechanic (its dumb, gives survivors a way avoid the DC penalty at worst, and at best it completely turns the game around due to pure RNG, causing a killer to lose for something they had no control over because the game decided to give them a completely skill-less 4% at that moment)
- Things like deliverance can stay, same with the sable perk for basement unhooks, but you'd have to rework stuff like slippery meat and the luck mechanic. (probably rework luck to give you rarer items in chests or something)
- Survivors now share the FIRST hook state. But keep the second and 3rd hooks as their individual hooks.
- What this means is that when you hook a survivor once, and then hook that same survivor again, they still are on the 1st hook stage. Because the 1st hook stage is shared among all survivors.
- This does a few things:
- Tunneling becomes heavily discouraged, because you have to burn through 6 hook states to kill someone, meaning you can't "tunnel someone out early"
- Camping becomes heavily discouraged, because if you camp someone, it will take a full 6 hook states and 6 minutes for the person to die. 3 survivors should be able to finish 5 gens before 6 minutes with the killer not defending them.
- Because only the first hook state is shared, if you end up with a bad teammate who burns through your teams hooks "quickly" you won't feel cheated and die instantly, so you are still guaranteed at least 2 hooks to die, giving you a "second chance" in a chase.
- Survivors can't avoid the DC penalty anymore to get out a match they don't like.
Now, this problem WOULD address tunneling in that it discourages it, but as many have pointed out, they keep "discouraging" things, but it doesn't actually stop people from doin them. People who want to tunnel are still gonna tunnel. So my personal preference is to make it literally 100% totally IMPOSSIBLE to tunnel. So…
2nd idea:
- Remove the basekit BT
- Remove the Anti facecamp mechanic
- Rework a perks like BT, second wind, etc. With this mechanic i'd also rework the anti-tunnel ones like OTR and DS because they'd be pretty OP combined with the idea.
- When a survivor is unhooked they gain a new status effect called "Ethereal" for 30 seconds, that effectively works like the survivor version of the spirit's power. While Ethereal:
- The survivor is invisible to the killer
- The survivor makes 0 noise from the killer perspective
- The survivor leaves no scratch marks
- The survivor leaves no pools of blood
- The survivor sees the aura of all their teammates.
- The survivor moves at 200% movement speed
- The survivor has no hitbox
- The survivor is unaffected by any perks (whether they be their teammates, their own, or the killers)
- The survivor is unaffected by any killer power (hag traps don't do anything or trigger, they can walk over trapper traps etc.)
- The survivor is unable to perform a conspicuous action (no repairing gens, healing, or literally anything)
- When the effect wears off, the survivor is automatically healed to the "Healthy state" and any killer power (plague, wesker, etc.) is removed from them.
- To address camping, instead of the complicated AFC mechanic that the survivors don't know if they are building it, or how close the killer is. Simply do this (read closely because it might sound complicated):
- If the killer is within 16 meters of a hook for more than 5 seconds (with maybe a 5 second grace period to walk away) the survivor on the hook is automatically teleported to the hook that is closest to another survivor that is furthest from the killer. This happens even if another survivor is nearby, no more "it moves slower if another survivor is nearby"
- This does a few things:
- Tunneling becomes quite literally IMPOSSIBLE. The survivor basically does not exist for 30 seconds, and they are able to go anywhere they want on the map, and after they are out, they are fully healed. So even if the killer does come across them, it is a proper, reset chase. You can't tunnel what you can't see or interact with.
- The killer now KNOWS that the survivor they have hooked, is now not only on the hook, meaning they are not on a gen, but then for 30 seconds AFTER they are unhooked, they are also unable to be on a gen. This makes it work kind of like pig's power in a sense. Good pigs don't go after people who have traps on their head, they go after other people because they KNOW the ones with traps aren't doing gens. So you have this idea in your mind that a survivor who has been hooked is now on a "time out' giving you time to go after other survivors
- Camping in this method also becomes nearly IMPOSSIBLE. Because if you get too close for just a few seconds, the survivor is automatically teleported to the closest hook to the survivor that is furthest from the killer. This means that even if the killer was trying to camp, by the time they ran to the new hook the survivor teleported to, the other survivor should have been able to unhook them. Meaning that the survivor who was unhooked, is now safe from the killer for at least 30 seconds.
The 2nd method would completely make tunneling impossible from a gameplay perspective. But, it likely needs some tweaks. Generally it is assumed that tunneling is "required" in a lot of situations, so maybe 30 seconds is not enough of a "time out" for the survivor to also get fully healed. Perhaps that number needs to be longer. Or perhaps the survivor also gets a debuff to their gen repair speeds for a bit after it wears off. Or perhaps 30 seconds is just too long, and it needs to be shorter. Either way, a lot of tweaking needs to be done with the numbers, but the fundamental mechanic is to make tunneling impossible.
Also you'd probably need to buff wesker and plague a bit as their power kind of relies on the idea that it continues to work after a survivor is unhooked. You'd also probably need to have all of this apply to pyramid head cages as well. You'd also probably have to adjust pig's traps in some way as well in order to account for this mechanic. There's minor things that would need to be done to several killers basically to deal with this.
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The truth is, if you are killer playing against decent survivor(s) that know how to loop and prolonged chases as long as possible, and waste so much of the Killer's precious time in defending Generators; of course, the best play would be to go back to survivor A (or B also) again, as they proving themselves as the weak link of the survivor side of that match and see it as a golden opportunity to secure a easy kill and make the pace of the game much easier for the killer.
Obviously agaisnt SWF that are coordinating with each other and know how to protect each other with stack meta perks and experience to overcome the one killer; it is not easy to tunnel and win every single time. But for those rare moments in which the swfs make a blunders and a bunch of mistakes, and makes it easier for the killer to turn a 4v1, into a 3v1 then 2v1 and finally 1v1; by then, the killer is at his prime in strength. But survivors are only at the peak and overpowered state, when they take advantage of their 4v1 numbers advantage, stacking meta perks, and their ability to communicate and tell important information about the killer they are facing and what they are doing at all times.
Of course, alots of playerbase, especially survivors mains can make all kinds of biased statements and their definitions of tunnelling. It can be as stupid as "the killer went after me again" despite the fact that the Survivor intentionally ran up to the killer and bodyblock them from hitting their teammates that rescue them or their teammates went into "immersive mode" and that injured survivor is the only one running around in the open freely.
When I play killer most often, as soloQ survivors playing is miserable for me at times and I earned more BP this way; I usually do not resort to tunnelling unless the Survivors make it clear they want to be tunnelling and do some of the most ridiculous plays that end up flopping miserable and getting back on the hook as a result of their plunder. When I play killer, I am a opportunist that will take advantage of any mistakes the survivor makes. Not all the time, if I have specific challenges that doesn't require me to secure sacrifice and kills all the time or adept Achievements. But at the end of the day, I treat certain tunneling as killer's valuable strategy to put map pressure and changes the tides of the game side from survivors to killer if executed right. It is more often easier done in soloQ then swf, as soloQ lacks the information or even the equal experience to understand whom has been hooked once and twice and when it would be a good idea to take their place and trade hooks if necessary. If a player has Zero hooks and another teammates is on death hook when caught again, it would be wise to let the take their dying teammates place and be on the hook to protect them long enough to keep the generator repairs going.
It is also why I feel like basekit Borrowed Time Iis a stupid idea, as killers can simple hit the Survivors again after the protection or wait out the timer. If anything, if the devs truly care about tunneling; they could simply offer a limited time "No Hit/body Collison" protection to the unhooked survivor, so that the killer simple cannot harm the survivor at all, until they do any conspicuous actions. As well as maybe very limited time aura reading on the survivor that rescue the hook survivor, to encourage healthy hook exchanges. Maybe even a basekit killer Buff of some kind to encourage and reward killers for seeking different survivor and hooking them, like for Example basekit mini Pop goes the Weasel. Another quality of life improvement changes for soloQ, is important information to get the killer attention and engage in chase with them, while letting your teammates heal up and do objectives. Also a solid nerf for swfs and experience Survivors is map Rebalancing making sure maps offerings are completely scrap for favoring one side.
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so what's the point here if we said it doesn't happen a lot does that make it a healthy game style ?
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Genrushing doesn't happen, at all. This is coming from a 70% of the time killer player, I've seen real genrushing probably once ever, and it ended in a 3k. Gen rushing is ignoring healing, looping, or even unhooking to prioritize just doing gens instead. It's potentially the dumbest and worst strategy in the game, which is why nobody ever does it lol.
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He did take that into account. In the video he actually mentions multiple times that his data came from ANYONE being tunneled, not just him.
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There were massive methodology flaws. First off the poll asked 'how often are you tunneled?', not someone tunneled in your match. That means Tunneling can actually occur up to 4 times more often than his numbers suggest if each Survivor is taking turns being a tunnel victim, or the exact number if somehow only the participant was the only person getting tunneled. Combined with what some people estimated to be ~25% tunnel rates (on themselves only), that means it theoretically can happen every match (25%*4=100%).
Plus for his testing he was far too lose with what he didn't count as tunneling. I remember watching a string of 10 games he did, and 2 of them most certainly included a tunneling Killer that he didn't count for one reason or another, and then counted the 1 that was the obvious Blight at 5-gens styled tunnel.
Finally some people distinguish tunneling into 2 sub-categories: "tunneling off-hook" and "tunneling out of the game". About half of his matches (out of the 10 or so I saw) had "tunneling off-hook", or hooking the Survivor before they had a chance to do a CA post-unhook. So if someone was saying "Killers are tunneling every other game" then that still is an accurate statement as well.
For an example, I answered his poll with 0-20% in 11pm to 6am category, but only because it asked 'how often are you tunneled?' I probably get tunneled 1/8 games (12.5%), but that is also shared with my team in being 4/8 all together. That means I have a more accurate tunnel rate of half my games being ruined because a Killer tunnels with the intent to have one Survivor be their first 3 hooks. That is likely heavily driven due to 'degen-hours', but I gotta say that VPN Killers from 8-timezones out are the larger driver of this behavior. It's like they already know they are doing the wrong thing (VPNing for lagvantage), and intend on taking every advantage they can. It is so bad that I am better served by waiting out a DC timer if a see a Killer with a red-bar. I don't do that, but the game shouldn't be so poorly designed that quitting is the only winning move (for your sanity).1 -
Are we just going to ignore that as he said in the video he polled the community and 97% agreed with his definition of tunneling being explicitly going for only 1 person and no one else? Or am I missing something?
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wdym he explicitly stated he took into account whenever anyone got tunneled not just him to avoid the very thing you're accusing him of.
Did you actually watch the video?
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Yeah players just thinking they got tunneled when they didn't is a major problem in this discussion.
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No it's not. That's why you think you see tunneling more, you're considering something that's not tunneling tunneling.
Again 97% of those that got polled agreed with his definition of tunneling being explicitly going for only 1 person and no one else.
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I honestly don't have the mental energy (or physical) to explain my point of view, nor do I think that this discussion will do anything for us
Apologies.
Post edited by Pulsar on0 -
Well until you explain either why you're right against the majority or why I'm wrong you're argument as it stands is incorrect.
That's fine with me.
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I might do it later but I'm honestly so tired rn that I just can't make anything worthy of discussion
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That's not tunneling though. Tunneling is explicitly going for the same survivor repeatedly as agreed on by the majority, further evident when polled, and that has been the agreed upon definition for a very long time also among the majority.
Especially considering the whole basis of the term was "tunnel vision". Which doesn't make sense if it's just happening to get chased soon after getting unhooked. How is that tunnel vision?
This is part of the problem. There's some players asserting this "new" definition trying to stretch what "tunneling" means to be a lot more broad than it is. Whether intentional or not.
It's not just getting unhooked and chased again soon after.
Furthermore there's so many things that can influence if that happens or not that it'd have no real value calling it out if that were the definition. You might just get unlucky or your team just failed to take aggro for you for example.
Post edited by MrPenguin on1 -
I will more or less agree on the prevalence of tunnelling, insofar that it doesn't appear to be as problematically common as it is sometimes being made out to. At least "hard" tunnelling is fairly rare, where the killer will go out of their way and do everything in their power to get the first 3 stages on a singular survivor. And I'm playing in the EU region, said to be one of the sweatiest, from which most top tournament players hail (true EU at that, not UK, two remarkably distinct player pools that Scott has before falsely conflated). It does happen, with a frequency of I'd say maybe 10-20% (with an increased incidence in matches where I play with randoms, i. e. where there's quite regularly weak links that make for tasty tunnel-out targets), but it isn't ubiquitous. I do have to note that I almost always play in SWFs where there rarely is a weak link, but still, even in cases where the killer gets an early down and by all accounts should feel inclined to camp and/or tunnel that player, it happens surprisingly rarely.
But I will counter the general narrative he seems to try to build with both this and even more so a previous video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDSdD_RPCCk), which is that tunnelling is not really a problem and in his opinion not even a particularly good strategy. The former is debatable, the latter is outright untrue.
Now first of all, I won't say tunnelling is the worst issue in the game. Ever since the 10-second unhook Endurance was introduced, I haven't been too vocal about it because as it is now impossible to be "farmed off hook" without there being anything you can do about it, the survivor regularly gets into a fair chase scenario if they're being tunnelled, and good players want, enjoy and excel in that scenario. But it does become a real issue against certain killers, in matches with a lower skill level, and in solo matches. Some of the reasons for this I have outlined in this comment on another thread regarding one of his videos on tunnelling. Some things have changed for the better since then (first and foremost the introduction of the 10-second unhook Endurance as well as the removal of hook grabs), but some of the points still hold, such as certain killers being particularly oppressive in tunnel scenarios, uncoordinated (i. e. non-4-SWF) groups having limited means of combatting this strong strategy, it exacerbating the issue weak links can pose, and just the fact that it can make for an undesirable game experience to have a killer essentially ignore to the best of their ability any but one player. I will say that tunnelling would already be much less of an issue if people were to more regularly actually use anti-tunnelling perks, be that OTR and DS or even stuff like Second Wind or Lucky Break/Plot Twist that you can use to try and hide after an unhook. But the game experience and balance shouldn't stand or fall with the usage of perks.
My concern with this post however is more so to address the idea that tunnelling isn't even all that great a strategy. I think it's objectively the most optimal strategy. Responding to specific points made in the video:
"I find tunnelling to be detrimental to my (macro skills') impact on the match" - First of all, it really isn't that you're exclusively engaged in a micro battle against the survivor you're tunnelling. Not only can you do a fair few things mid-chase that affect other survivors (such as zoning the survivor you're chasing into them or pressuring the other survivors with your presence and abilities), but once you down that survivor you can hook them in places where you can then apply macro pressure, and continue doing so during that hook time. Knowing where to hook, how to pressure other survivors during hook time, when and how to camp, these are all macro decisions and skills. There is also the aspect of playing around the other survivors' potential attempts to support or rescue the tunnelled survivor, which can be a bit of both micro and macro play. And then even regardless of that, micromechanical skill differences can be huge in this game, leveraging them can be very gratifying and rewarding, especially on killers with high-skill-expression chase abilities. Sure an even just decent survivor can run trapless Trapper for 2-3 minutes on a good map (although you'd perhaps be surprised how big the differences even there can still be), but once you play killers with actual chase abilities, the outplay potential shoots up, and as does the ability to win games by leveraging chase skills.
Next, it's not like the survivor you're tunnelling actually has "the whole map". If they take the chase to areas gens are being worked on, the killer can pressure those gens while still pursuing their tunnel. Worse still, they risk going down next to those gens, then getting hooked there and giving the killer tons of pressure being able to defend both the hook and progressed gens. He also argues the survivor you are tunnelling as opposed to the other survivors knows which resources on the map have been used and thus where to run, but even if we ignore that average players aren't regularly good enough to actually have that map knowledge and presence of mind in a tense chase scenario to both lead and plan the chase with that in mind (as well as ignore the killer's ability to zone them into deadzones (and the popularity of Windows Of Opportunity, which shows other survivors where (not) to run)), something he doesn't consider is that the tunnelled survivor will regularly be hooked in places where they went down, i. e. where they used up resources. And the killer can of course also intentionally carry them into those deadzones. The survivor will often have no choice in the matter.
And finally and most crucially, he neglects here the entire part of what's so good about tunnelling to begin with: you create a 3v1 scenario that is skewed heavily in the killer's favour. You can leverage your killer macro skills in a 3v1 much more reliably and to much more impact. Once in that 3v1, you can stop tunnelling as hard and spread out the pressure much more efficiently, effectively and consistently. This is true to an extent where even in tournament matches tunnelling and camping a survivor out is seen as optimal even if it may take 4 gens to do so. If a survivor gets taken out before all gens are through, the winning chances of the killer skyrocket. Juggling 3 survivors is just such a completely different dynamic from trying to do so with 4. Any hook in a 3v1 can spiral into a won game then and there, because if you interrupt and down the would-be unhooker, now you only have one survivor left standing, instantly creating a match-endingly precarious situation. And that's just one obvious example.
"Rolling the dice on the first person you're chasing" - Here he is neglecting the fact that you can swap off a survivor. I guess this would extend into the notion of "smart tunnelling" which he touches on later, but yeah, nobody said tunnelling means tunnelling the very first survivor you find. If they show themselves to be a decent or good looper or simply just better than you, you can identify that relatively quickly and swap off in the hopes of finding an easier target. The same goes for "rolling the dice" on whether they have anti-tunnel perks or not: if they have Off The Record, you can tell that they do and swap off before you overcommit to a potentially too costly attempt of tunnelling - and simply try the same with the next person. Although it's not like tunnelling through anti-tunnel perks is a big issue either, not against the average survivor you'll meet, and not on a good chunk of the killer cast.
"Tunnelling is so prevalent in comp because anti-tunnel perks are limited" - While that is certainly true, it precisely goes to show that tunnelling is the best strategy and that only changes if non-basekit things are in play to change this. And to keep in mind again, this is only true because in a tournament setting you have 4 survivors all of which can hold their own in a chase, so if they are using anti-tunnelling perks on top of that, a tunnel attempt can get to be too costly, but this has no bearing on the average match with this game's matchmaking, where tunnelling someone out even through OTR, DS and DH can and will most of the time still happen long before all gens are through.
I do agree that if all survivors have to be expected to be on anti-tunnel perks, trying to alternate hook stages between two survivors is likely more optimal, but again, the fact that even the best of teams are expected to stack anti-tunnelling perks if so permitted highlights nothing but the fact that tunnelling is the strongest strategy that the best survivor players will always spend most of their perk slots combatting, despite being good in chase and having the team coordination to try and help the tunnelled survivor. I also think that OTR and DS don't do enough against some of the killers to deter a killer from tunnelling even in a tournament setting where all survivors can be expected to be good, because they can regularly just slap the survivor off hook to get rid of OTR Endurance and eat the DS and down the survivor again quickly thereafter because they are Nurse or Blight or Spirit or Wesker or Billy or Huntress or Artist or Unknown, … Buffed DS will change a bit about this again (if it actually will be buffed, it's arguably nerfed on the PTB), but it won't make tunnelling much less powerful either, certainly not in the average match with the matchmaking we have.
Momo's Blight streak loss which Scott brings up I think if anything happened due to him giving up on the tunnel. He had Ace edge map at 5 gens but noticed he had OTR so he gave up on tunnelling, instead opting to venture out into the map where he then spent time searching for and chasing someone else. I really don't think tunnelling through OTR and potential DS and DH as Blight is all that daunting a prospect, at 5 gens he should have simply tried that and I feel like he very well could have won doing so. It was actually later in the game where he then ate anti-tunnelling perks that costed him, which is precisely not what he should have tried to do. You have to tunnel as early as possible, at least against competent survivors and/or if you expect anti-tunnel perks to be in play.
In the pros and cons section he is again neglecting to speak to the pros of tunnelling. I think even when ignoring the (incredibly compelling) 3v1 argument, there are very obvious pros to tunnelling. A survivor off hook is injured, that already makes them a much easier chase target than healthy survivors by default. You know where a unhooked survivor is, you don't have to search for them like you do other survivors (if you weren't across the map at the time of the unhook anyway, but even then, again, being injured they're easier to find (or just use Ultimate Weapon, haha)). You might already know some of the chase perks that survivor is using and can try to play around them better, as opposed to having to figure that out for another survivor instead. In general there are a plethora of perks (and items) tunnelling can nullify: he brings up how not tunnelling can make anti-tunnelling perks useless (although they can still be used offensively, so this is only partly true), but what about things like generator perks and items (Deja Vu, Prove Thyself, toolboxes, Hyperfocus, etc.), hook perks (Deliverance, Borrowed Time, Babysitter, We'll Make It, Reassurance, Resurgence, etc.), healing perks and items (Self-Care, med-kits, Inner Strength, etc.), Background Player, Boons, Unbreakable, even DH or Second Wind if you get slapped into Deep Wound, Overcome, Dramaturgy, … - there is no end of perks that can be rendered essentially entirely useless on a player that is being tunnelled.
Any hook stage you get will only ever be that one hook stage, and any survivor you chase will only ever be that one survivor being chased - concentrating the stages on a singular survivor objectively progresses your win condition more than spreading them out on multiple survivors, and since in either case you are only occupying 1 survivor's time, you aren't really forgoing anything for it. Obviously there is stuff like healing and rotations and such, the game can slow down more if you spread the pressure (but only if you can do so reliably and keep up that pressure), but it can also be noted that almost every time in a typical match, other survivors will try to support someone that is being tunnelled, often going as far as literally throwing themselves at the killer and doing all kinds of things that waste a huge amount of time and create pressure for free, "pressuring" themselves so to speak. This is a major reason why camping and tunnelling are so problematic particularly in an average match scenario, where other players out of a lack of information, coordination, experience, knowledge, intelligence or even just out of sheer boredom or frustration with the gameplay dynamics of these strategies as well as out of empathy, solidarity or a sense of obligation or whatnot for the player on the receiving end will try to engage as much as they can, sitting and running around the chase and hook.
All of this is not to say tunnelling is amazing and everyone should tunnel. If you want to win as consistently as possible you probably should tunnel, keeping in mind however the things Scott also points out about knowing when and who and how to tunnel, doing it in smart ways and capitalizing on tunnel opportunities when they present themselves. What this is to say is that tunnelling is a game balance and experience issue because it is too strong in the average match and uncoordinated (non-SWF) groups tend to fall apart against it while also not seldomly having an undesirable experience in the process. And it should be rebalanced on a base-game level, not worked around with band-aid perks, let alone ones locked behind paid DLC. I do welcome a DS buff and I know it would create a more tangible baseline "threat" with its mere existence again that will deter tunnelling more, as well as actually punish it more whenever DS does come into play. I also believe adjusting strong killer perks to more strictly discourage tunnelling would go a long way to improve things (such as buffing Pain Res, Barbecue, Grim Embrace, Weasel and so on in scenarios where the killer is spreading stages across survivors, nerfing them if they are getting stages on the same survivor or killing them). But more than that the game would benefit from better base adjustments to make tunnelling less powerful. That can range from making the tunnel-out more difficult or costly, to making the 3v1 be less skewed in the killer's favour. Of course compensatory buffs especially for the lower half of the killer roster would ideally go along with this, but we should first see what the live balance settles on if tunnelling isn't as objectively optimal anymore. And the fact that it isn't a ubiquitously abused strategy in the live environment if anything adds to the merit of the argument, given that rebalancing it wouldn't upset the live balance so much as a result.
Post edited by zarr on5 -
I have one big issue with Scotts survey: its the wording of his main question, as he asks how often people themself (!) feel to be tunneled. He doesnt ask how often someone in a match is tunneled. There are still three other players each match that could be tunneled., and thats the important thing to ask. Like this it makes his final assumption not useful in arguing against the prevalence of tunneling.
Also you can always fight about the definition of tunneling. Like, I still would say that blocking with BT to prevent a guaranteed hooktrade, doesnt justify tunneling not being tunneling. the killer is still willingly going for the same survivor though he has another target, that has even less distance (blocker with boost after hit).
Although i would be cautious on surveys filled in by dbd players. I do not say this happened here, cause noone can prove it, but this could be manipulated by biased players, answering in an incorrect way. If you look at forums for example, you see that esp killers like to overexaggerate if it comes to defending their "strategies" or other unwanted behaviour.
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but he didnt disproved that it's overbrowned in his on stats he proved that in 1 in 4 games hard tunneling happens on average witch is a insane amount witch is a problema huge one at that
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The point of the survey was not about whether or not people feel they or someone is getting tunneled, it was about finding patterns in region, team size, time played, etc, in the reports of tunneling.
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Tunneling is not nearly as common as it was in the past and I commented on this a month ago in a semi-long rant
I am CTRL C and CTRL Ving my take but fixing the grammar because its relevant.
"This is another nuclear take but camping and tunnelling is nowhere near as out of control as it has been in the past and it has been on a downward trajectory. Its just previously such as when circle of healing was broken or keys could open the hatch it was enforced by really strong things that could be enabled on the survivor end because spreading pressure was less valuable than now because healing and resetting was so fast and killing anyone but the survivor with the key could end it games ending early.
But before it becomes a point that is mentioned you could not opt out of being tunneled by choosing not to run these things because when a player with a key died they dropped it where they were hooked and circle of healing was useable by every survivor so when solo Qing you would run DS and it would proc regularly. Nowadays if you run it you won't see it proc as often simply because people just don't tunnel as much nowadays It has just become the most obvious thing to talk about since the game has gotten better and there is nothing nearly as broken in the game as there was in the past.
Most people I see running full anti-tunnel builds nowadays I see as the zombie apocalypse preppers of dbd top easily influenced by what the community's consensus is on the state of the game and not judging the game for how it really is like at the moment.
The only way in which tunneling and also camping has become more prominent is there are specific points in the games MMR ranges where a lot of people who tunnel and camp end up because they are often getting similar results to eachother so surviver is fun for a while for a player, then they get better at it, then they see more campers and tunnelers until they get better again where they will see less because the vast majority of camping and tunneling killers are just kinda mid players.
This however is not as new as it looks however it also used to happen years ago before MMR was a thing. I used to joke with a friend that every month you would need to climb past the purple ranks again and get facecamped by a bubba on the way."
Most players complaining about being tunnelled all the time just don't understand what tunnelling is or are at the point in the MMR ladder where there is what I call an "old purple rank tunnelling/camping hotspot"
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1st Idea
Problem is that without any urgency to rescue, what is the motivation to save someone from a 6 min hook?
Its far better to play stealthy and leave the 1st player on hook while focusing on gens than to stop gens and attempt rescue. Basically while BHVR are trying to minimize the likelihood of spending all game hanging on hook this option creates a scenario where its best if one player does just that. First person hooked is all but guaranteed to spend ~6 mins on hook. So not a great solution.
2nd idea,
Is way to convoluted to work well. Also it basically turns every hook into a safe unhook with a free health state. Which is way to much of a benefit for being unhooked.
Two things you can never do to survivor gameplay is; remove urgency from the tasks or make survivors completely immune to threat from the killer. Those two elements are the core of survivor play, they are the reason you are trying to escape. Remember survivor is the role of a desperate victim trying to escape and DBD needs to emulate that.
Idea 1 removes urgency, while Idea 2 both removes urgency and induces immunity. So neither are good ideas I'm afraid.
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Some interesting numbers from my own experience using nightlight.
Total number of matches played from March 23 to April 16: 243
Average Escape Rate: 44.35%
Average Kills: 2.23
Most Seen Killer: The Unknown
Matches tagged with Tunneling: 65
Escape Rate in those matches: 24.62%
Average Kills in matches with Tunneling: 3.02
Matches tagged with Tunneling involved the killer ignoring other players in favor of eliminating one person from the match as soon as possible. Ironically, matches where the killer opted to simply proxy camp ended up netting more kills than just tunneling.
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Fine, so this question wasnt the main topic. Still it lacks the foundation for your conclusion (tunneling isnt that prevalent) as you just look at one survivor per match, while there are four. So if one survivor feels tunneled every forth game, and there is most likely just one player tunneled every game (you could make this up to 3 but most likely its one being removed this way and after that tunneling doesnt really matter anymore) you would have 4 people every forth game: in other words four games four tunneling issues. (not that i would assume its that bad, but your numbers are likely to add up to this).
Then rhere is the point, did everyone really told tunneling for themself and not for everyone in a match. Most likely not.
Not that I want to decry your survey or conclusion, but I think it has asked the wrong question to make a conclusion on prevalance.
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I don't think any unreasonable conclusions have been made. Everything Scott said in his video regarding his data sets was factual and unbiased. The data set hasn't been presented in bad faith, or warped or twisted in any way. Its primary purposes was to challenge notions that confuse the discussion around tunneling, such as different experiences in region and time of play. He made an attempt to identify skillI level, but acknowledged the flaw in those data sets. It is pretty clear for anyone watching the video what the terms of the survey were, and the conclusions he was drawing from the data.
The fact that 80% of players reported less than 40% of games being tunneled, is not a strong argument for tunneling is not prevalent on its own, but when you have people claimimg they are gettimg tunneled every game or other game, this kind of result throws shade at those arguments. Personally I think the ranges are far too large. If it were me I would have had more tiers to choose from, as 0-20% and 21-40% is a pretty large swing, and if there were a "less than 5%" option, I would choose that.
In regards to any conclusion about the prevalence of tunneling, Scott's statements were largely based off his own recirded evidence and account of his 50 game tests, and combined with the anecdotal experience of someone who claimed to always get tunneled, who then didn't get tunneled a single time in an 8 hour stream when put under objective assessment. He also talks about what people define as tunneling and the differences and issues therein, and then makes the point that noone seems to be able to show him footage of being back to back tunneled to the level that a lot of people claim, and this poll supports that argument.
This is more of the crux of his argument, the poll is a supplement to his own evidence, and points to the notion that people making the claim tunneling is rampant and happens all the time are a minority, and may be biased.
I see nothing flawed in his methodology and conclusions here.
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There's plenty of urgency, because there is a survivor not doing gens slowing you down. Also, they still burn through the team's health states if they don't get them, getting the team closer to losing.
The second one, the point is that you give them a "timeout" so the killer gets more time by hooking them then they do by slugging them, or trying to tunnel someone.
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Actually its far better mechanically to leave the player on hook then to rescue them. Because of the combined timer you now have 6 mins to rescue from first hook. So you don't really need to rescue the person till a second survivor goes down and gets hooked.
That cumulative time is better used to focus on gens than pausing to rescue, so it does create a scenario where the first player hooked hangs on hook for longer due to reduced urgency in unhooking. Good teams will figure this out and the better play will be to leave the first player hanging there while they smash out gens because of the reduced urgency to make an immediate save.
Essentially early game slow down due to getting someone hooked is largely nullified by the lack of urgency to rescue that first hooked survivor. The urgency only comes after multiple players have been hooked and by then gens should be mostly complete. So it's incredibly unbalanced and likely to leave players with a game experience of hanging on hook for up to 6mins. Its really not a good idea.
The second as pointed out offers way to much for a hook save, it guaranteed to be safe, it provides complete game immunity and a free health state. It also removes the pressure of being hooked because you teleport over to the furthest survivor, which means they don't even really need to leave their gen to get the save.
So again we undermine the pressure gained from hooks, we make the player immune to gameplay and then offer them a free health state. Its beyond OP nuts, add in the convoluted teleport mechanic and you've got this mess of a bonus that really throws the game out of whack.
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Really you play 10 games of DB and see tunneling in 2-3 of them and that's a massive impact?
I think you overstate the issue. Especially when the issue is so ill-defined that a lot of it is likely imagined or assumed resulting in the actual measure being inflated.
So we have a subjective inflated variable that happens roughly a 1/4 of the time. I'm sorry that's not impactful in any sense of the word.
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"For my experiment I included anybody getting tunneled" Literally quoted from the video.
So he did take into account other people being tunneled and says that it was included in the data.
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Just at his own games, but not in his survey. And thats the critical point, why the survey isnt useful for his conclusion on prevalance.
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His own games data does show results as well. Also, that survey would include the other people hypothetically on your team when they're taking the survey as well.
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I believe that was in reference to his own games, not the survey which notably only asked when you got tunneled and gave a fairly strict idea of what tunneling is.
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You HAVE urgency. Because the timer still stays the same for burning through hook states. If a team leaves someone on the hook and doesn't get them and instead does gens. Now you have
1 person on hook
1 person being chased
2 on gens
Now you down that person you are chasing, and they probably burned through 2-3 hook states. You hook the guy you were chasing, you just burned 4 hook states. You can't just leave someone there.
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I understand the mechanics, but it only works in the specific scenario that you have another player go down in chase. Outside of that specific scenario there is no urgency to rescue the first player hooked.
If the remaining players choose to stealth out, evade chase they can still complete gens without urgency to rescue the hooked survivor because they now collectively have 6 mins from one hook with which to complete gens.
It only makes sense to make a rescue if survivors are going down quick enough to deplete the shared timer. If they aren't then there is no incentive to rescue the hooked player. That time is better spent focusing on a gen.
You are essentially nullifying the urgency to rescue by making it causal on how fast survivors are going down rather than the need to rescue a specific player on hook. If the killer isn't securing multiple hooks then the team can leave that first person on hook for the full 6 mins and use that time to finish gens.
6 mins is enough time for 2 players to likely complete remaining gens without needing to rescue the hooked player. Its not a great idea.
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It would not include them as he speficially asked for peole themselfs being tunneled. Thats not how stochastics work.
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Yes and the hypothetical other people that could be being tunneled that are not "themselves" would be taking the survey too.
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Ive already explained this. Sigh.
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Tunneling isn't an every game occurrence but occasionally it can happen multiple games in a row, I see it more often in the morning when there are less players on but in the evening it's rare unless someone is going out of their way to troll, that's about the only time I really see it at night.
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I don't consider it tunneling if the survivor has a chance to heal up, someone else is chased and hooked after the first survivor has been unhooked, or if the survivor does something foolhardy like doing a gen immediately after getting unhooked.
That said, I do see tunneling in the majority of my games. Tunneling is an issue that should be addressed.
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I always enjoy a good massive length zarr post.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDSdD_RPCCk), which is that tunnelling is not really a problem and in his opinion not even a particularly good strategy. The former is debatable, the latter is outright untrue.So I watched that video when it came out and I didn't think his opinion was that its not a particularly good strategy. I just rewatched the video and still don't think that is what he is saying.
You say in your post:
And finally and most crucially, he neglects here the entire part of what's so good about tunnelling to begin with: you create a 3v1 scenario that is skewed heavily in the killer's favour.And he agrees with this. At the end of the video he highlights how tunneling is the strongest strategy if it presents itself. I don't think he or really anyone denies that eliminating a survivor is the strongest thing that can happen for a killer.
And that's why I think your first main criticism of his video is a little off because I don't think you and he actually disagree. If you can eliminate a survivor while still maintaining pressure on the others, great, but a single minded approach to targeting one survivor and getting them out as quickly as possible is not the best strategy (more broadly, his points seems to be that killer's need to adjust their strategy over the course of the game).
but yeah, nobody said tunnelling means tunnelling the very first survivor you find.I'd say that is what tunneling is, but we're all just making up words to describe behaviors.
To me tunneling is trying to eliminate one survivor as quickly as possible, basically ignoring everything else in the game. What you are describing seems like just normal gameplay.
"Tunnelling is so prevalent in comp because anti-tunnel perks are limited"- While that is certainly true, it precisely goes to show that tunnelling is the best strategy and that only changes if non-basekit things are in play to change this.But if X is strong unless Y occurs, and Y does occur, then X is no longer strong.
That's pretty much the whole game, certain strategies are or are not strong depending on what the other side does (meta). As an example: if the meta strategy was to run prove thyself and triple up on gens, the value of pop and pain res would drop substantially.
Summary: I think you're defining tunneling differently than he does, and so broadly that it just melds into general gameplay. I agree with the last paragraph about issues with tunneling.
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Just because they develop their game does not mean they necessarily understand it well or the game is well designed in the first place. Valid in this case means it is not a bannable offense, not that it is inherently fun and engaging. Tunneling is a cheesy strategy. Cheesy strategies are generally much easier to execute than to defend against. The best defense against tunneling is coordination but, unfortunately, players are not allowed to communicate during a trial. Though the real issue is the hook-mechanic and that is not going to change.
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Cheers, thanks for reading and engaging with one of my entirely-too-wordy posts yet again.
And that's why I think your first main criticism of his video is a little off because I don't think you and he actually disagree.
I believe Scott has a much more limited idea as to when tunnelling is good, and isn't convinced that it is a great strategy in general. I'm not saying he is trying to suggest tunnelling is a bad strategy per se, but the rhetoric certainly seems to be that he would not recommend it. Me personally, if someone is struggling to get kills, the first thing I will tell them is to try tunnelling and see how much different the game instantly becomes. Even "dumb" tunnelling will make mediocre killer players succeed against average pub lobbies, and decent killer players dominate.
My primary concern with responding in the way that I did to the videos (and responding at all) is that I think even if I weren't convinced tunnelling is the best strategy, I would still hold it is powerful and problematic enough that if we need anything, it's content creators exaggerating its need to be addressed, not downplay it the way he speaks of it can.
At any rate, I think even if he were to agree that tunnelling is a particularly good strategy (or even the best strategy), most of my criticisms against the arguments made in the video hold. Even if we were to say tunnelling reduces the match to a micro battle against the tunnelled survivor and that is detrimental (neither of which I agree with), it is done with the express purpose of creating a scenario in which your macro skills will have an exponentially greater impact. Even if he knows how much of a foregone conclusion the 3v1 can be (which he does), he still neglects to really point to this and other strengths of tunnelling, even in the section literally entitled "pros and cons". The video is called "Is Tunneling The Best Killer Strategy?", but it fails to really deliver a discussion on this, mostly just one-sidedly highlighting his opinion that tunnelling is a bit overrated.
I obviously agree with the general argument about "smart tunnelling" being more optimal, I just think his particular portrayal of it is too limited and strays too far from the idea that if you want to win as consistently as possible you should try to tunnel as hard as you can because it's the best thing you could possibly do - unless things happen that change this. I. e. it's not that you should only go for a tunnel if so opportune or tunnel situations present themselves, you should proactively tunnel as hard as you can and only stray from this course if situations or conditions arise that make it less optimal, and only stray as far as those situations and condtions call for (e. g. if another survivor is bodyblocking for the tunnelled survivor, you should try to ignore them to the best of your ability and down the tunnel target instead of taking what may falsely be construed as a "free hit" on the bodyblocker - unless the bodyblocker shows themselves to be too much of a nuisance to ignore, meaning too good at blocking not to have to spend an unreasonable amount of time trying to get around them; and then after that, you should regularly still continue chasing after the tunnel target, not swap off, even if you think you may be able to down the bodyblocker (nor pick them up if they went down to bodyblock in the first place, for that matter)). Of course there are a million different situations all of which could call for slightly or significantly different decisions and routes of action, some more tunnelly others less, but fundamentally I think the orientation should be to get a survivor out of the match as quickly as possible, that's objectively optimal if you want to kill as many survivors as possible as consistently as possible.
It goes without saying however that that doesn't mean I think tunnelling is necessary to win, nor that there aren't other great strategies. In most pub matches, you can even just chase whoever you find, "hook it and book it" and still succeed more often than not; if you are good in chase you don't even have to really strategically think too much and make too many decisions macro-wise, just bring Pain Res and Grim Embrace and you will win most of the time if you are skilled at chasing. I myself tend to go out of my way not to tunnel because it makes matches too easy and I want more of a challenge, as well as provide an overall more engaging match. That is also something I can appreciate about Scott's desire to want to leverage his macro skills specifically in a 4v1 scenario as opposed to a 3v1, because in a 4v1 it is much more difficult to establish and maintain pressure on survivors, it is much more challenging and requires more skills and smarts, it's a welcome challenge if you aren't obsessed with "winning" as hard as possible.
To me tunneling is trying to eliminate one survivor as quickly as possible, basically ignoring everything else in the game. What you are describing seems like just normal gameplay.
The differences in definitions is of course a fair point, but I don't think this distinction really lends itself well to the argument he is trying to make. Not committing to a tunnel attempt on a survivor that is running circles around you from the get-go and instead trying to find an easier tunnel target is "common sense tunnelling" more so than "smart tunnelling". Plus it's still captured by the "trying to eliminate one survivor as quickly as possible" definition, insofar a survivor that is worse in chase can be expected to be tunnelled out more quickly, even if the first survivor you happen to find might not be a good tunnel target and it therefore requiring you to swap off. Tunnelling doesn't really necessitate rolling the dice here.
My definition of basic tunnelling by the way would be going for the survivor you hooked first, not found first.
But if X is strong unless Y occurs, and Y does occur, then X is no longer strong.
Well, multiple things. First of all, these tournament players he talked to may say that tunnelling would go way down without restrictions because everyone would be on anti-tunnelling perks, but whether that is actually true would remain to be seen. We have seen tournaments with low or no restrictions and everyone being on anti-tunnelling perks, and yet tunnelling was still completely common. Tunnelling is just so powerful and consistent that even tunnelling good players through anti-tunnel perks can be worth it, particularly of course on killers such as Nurse, Blight and Spirit. Next, his own argument can be used against him (even if I don't agree entirely with this argument), namely that the tournament environment is so completely different from the live environment that arguments that may hold in one don't translate well or at all to the other, and for the sake of the people he is mostly addressing and 99+% of players in general, that means if tunnelling is the best strategy in pubs, it's the best strategy for all intents and purposes. In tournaments, you have teams of 4 good survivor players you are going up against, that can not only hold their own in a chase and will lead chases away from active gens and so on, but also have the coordination to support a tunnelled (and camped, which often go hand-in-hand) survivor if so deemed beneficial. And you have coordinated builds, with as many anti-tunnelling (and anti-camping) tools in play as permitted, as well as the coordinated usage thereof. In pub matches, you are going against random groups of bad to mediocre-at-best players the vast majority of the time that not only die in 30 seconds in chase to a competent killer but regularly also lack coordination and have no real chance or clue how to efficiently play around a camp and tunnel, regularly throwing themselves at the killer, wasting tons of their time and throwing away health states, resources and lives in the process. And anti-tunnelling perks are still rather rare, even seeing 2-3 of them in a match is already a surprise. Not to mention that tunnelling these players through anti-tunnelling perks doesn't regularly pose much of a problem. And finally, as Scott himself points to, at most the optimal strategy without restrictions in tournaments would then shift to the next best thing, half-jokingly referred to as "tunnelling 2 survivors", meaning juggling hooks between them to still accumulate stages towards an early sacrifice but doing so in trying to circumvent anti-tunnel perks.
Above all I think that even definition differences and arguments about just how strong tunnelling is and whether it's the best strategy aside, we (and he) would agree that there are problems with it and that addressing and rebalancing it to one degree or another is called-for and would be good for the game, and as such that highlighting its strengths and problems is more beneficial than to say "I don't even think it's that good", or "it's not even that common". And we would perhaps still debate the "degree" part of that proposition, but there are a few things I'm sure most would agree with. For one thing that at the very least, if we're already relying on perks as band-aids for game design, they should be better at that than they currently are. That's not to say OTR and DS are bad, far from, but they are evidently not good enough. I think making unhook Endurance unhook invincibility instead would go a long way to improve OTR (as well as other hook perks, such as Dead Hard, Second Wind and Resurgence), as getting hit right off hook wouldn't render it nigh-useless anymore. It could also hide pools of blood. DS hopefully is getting a stun duration buff next patch, but I would even go further and say it could also activate up to two times, not only once. As a trade-off, collision could be removed from the survivor for as long as OTR/DS are active, so that they can't be weaponized quite as much. They could even make it so that they deactivate if the survivor is healthy, gets into a locker, rescues another survivor with a pallet or blind. But in turn make it so that they stay active indefinitely until the survivor engages in a conspicuous action. Likewise, killer perks could be buffed to make non-tunnelling gameplay more potent, but in a way that actively discourages tunnelling. Imagine if Pain Resonance would be 50% of a gen - but the perk deactivates once a survivor is sacrificed. Or that Barbecue would show the auras of all survivors that haven't been hooked yet, and gain a token for every fresh hook, granting 1.25% Haste per token, but you lose a token whenever a survivor is hooked for the second time. Grim Embrace could block gens for 10 seconds for every gen left to complete at the time of its respective activation, incentivizing killers to go for fresh hooks as early as possible. Weasel could grant 40% regression on fresh hooks, 20% on second hooks, 0% on third hooks. In general I think the idea behind Ruin automatically deactivating itself once a survivor is sacrificed was good and something they could be implementing for many more perks, only of course while at the same time making sure those perks are actually powerful. Ruin specifically could go back to 200% base regression per second, but disable itself again on sacrifice. Obviously base game adjustments would be more welcome, but better perk design could already go a long way to make other strategies more attractive and tunnelling less no-brainer optimal as I for one think it is.
Post edited by zarr on1 -
This was partially the reason why a few months ago I recorded all my stats for 100 SoloQ matches.
In my experience 47 matches involved the killer tunneling out the very first survivor that they hooked completely ignoring everyone else, 15 tunneled at some point prior to the endgame and only 38 out of 100 matches didn't contain any tunneling or just endgame one.
Tunneling is not an overblown issue.
Post edited by EQWashu on0
