And until we fix this issue, we recommend that players with photosensitivity, or who have an epileptic condition or have had seizures of any kind consult their physician before playing.
Minigame-Based Gen Repair
Bear with me on this one as it was a random 4 am thought while getting tunneled and I am not sure if this specific idea has already been talked about elsewhere.
I'm not sure how but I ended up thinking about how Project Playtime uses pillars with minigames the players have to complete in order to get the objective and how multiple players can be on the same pillar and have their progress be independent of the other sides. I think this type of model for the objective could work to solve some of the issues that the game has.
The basic premise is each gen has between 1 and 4 sides survivors can work on. For a gen to be complete, the minigames on each available side of the gen must be "won" a certain number of times or have enough objectives within the minigame completed (kinda like task progress in Among Us) to gain enough progress to be marked as complete. Each available side will also lock in progress once it is completed. So if side 1 of 4 has been completed the total repair progress of the gen will stay locked at 25%. However, each side's progress would be independent of the other which means gen regression would also be spread to each side individually. Failing skill checks will only affect the side you are working on whereas perks like pain resonance will affect all incomplete sides individually since it will be using total gen repair progress as part of the trigger. This means that naturally a gen with 1 side is much riskier to repair than a gen with 4 sides as you can't lock in any progress on a 1 sided gen and you need to complete/win the minigames more times to reach the completed state.
Since each side has a separate animation when you are working on it, the minigames can also be made unique for each side. This would allow a much greater amount of skill expression for survivors and make gens more engaging while potentially tackling issues that killers have with gen speed. While gen repair speed perks and items will still be available, they will also be adjusted. Toolboxes will only affect the side that is being worked on and while prove thyself would still be good for teams working on gens together, the overall impact will be reduced since each survivor is not contributing to an overall pool of progress, rather it helps them get more progress in their individual minigames.
Ultimately, this may or may not affect how killers tunnel, but at least if we can change how the objective is completed it can justify harsher punishments for tunneling (in terms of more benefits for survivors that are being tunneled) while also making a core aspect of gameplay more engaging.
TLDR; I think gen repair should be changed to be similar to project playtime minigame pillars where each available side has a unique set of minigames that have to be completed and each time a side is completed it locks in the relative amount of total repair progress depending on the number of available sides (25% for 4 sided, 33% for 3 sided, etc.).