http://dbd.game/killswitch
Is slugging an actual issue?
Slugging is the act of purposely leaving survivors on the ground after downing them. It is generally frowned upon by the community obviously yet is still seen as a valid tactic within the game that can turn the tide of a match.
Camping, tunneling and slugging are all tactics killers can opt to use, but many players take issue when the tactic is used for more toxic purposes, or they repeatedly encounter one or all in multiple matches. Yet, as of late, a lot of players keep talking about a slugging meta and claim that slugging far more prominent than before. Is that really the case though?
My thought process on the subject is players general habit of hyperfixation, something unintentional but does happen due to the stigma around these tactics. Players tend to fixate on other players are doing something wrong or something they don't like. Players remember these instances more than positive ones, especially if they lose. It doesn't even have to happen all that much for it to stick either.
Skill and mmr also play a huge factor as less skilled killers tend to rely on the easiest solution to make up for a lack of skill such as camping because they don't know how to spread pressure. It is a necessary action or the player feels like they will lose. More skilled players rely less on these tactics in general because they aren't necessary and when they are necessary, it's for a good reason. Survivors tend to fixate on the action, but neglect to ask why it happened sometimes. It's easy to jump to the conclusion that the killer lacks the skill, or they did it on purpose to be toxic because it lessens the impact of losing and removes blame from the player. Yet when it's necessary, a situation where the killer would otherwise be intentionally losing if they did not slug, camp or tunnel, it still gets lumped into the other two conclusions.
In conclusion, people don't like slugging and tend to hold onto the more extreme situations which often can give the implication that it happens more often then it actually does. Whether or not this gibberish means anything is up to whoever actually read all this.
Comments
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Neither tunneling, or slugging are an issue when it's done based on opportunity.
Issue is when you get a player who gets into the game with one of those in plan from start, luckily it's rare.Rework knockout, that would be good start…
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Slugging in general isn't an issue. Slugging then leaving all players slugged just for spite and letting them slowly bleedout imho isn't acceptable. Bear in mind, there are some cases where even 4 man Slugging is required, but that's only if the survivors force it by all being under a pallet or something similar. In general, I'm in favor of BHVR's thoughts of adding a surrender option if everyone is slugged.
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This again? Amma going keep it short, yes it is.
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It atleast well written gibberish.
For our 3 cents, slugging is a tool. It's not inherently bad, just like a hammer or knife it's how it's used that matters. The problem with slugging lies in the people. Your generally supposed to use the right tool for the job (in this case the right time), but people are saying they only have 1 valid tool (despite the very pointed looks at the decently filled toolbox) and keep trying to justify using that tool for every reason (this is our main gripe).
Slugging has increased, by how much we can all argue forever about but we've seen an uptick that's noticeable along with our discord groups and from what we see on the forums. We would confidently say with all these cases that there's some truth to an increase, what kind of slugging we can only guess again though.
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Well, there's only 1 tool depending on the type of team. Tunneling is default to deal with good teams, because you'll lose to the time disparity by playing normally. But if they've got anti-tunnel perks, slugging is better. But if they're SWF and negate Knockout, tunneling becomes better again. Notice that it's not really the killer picking this "oppressive, best strategy" like would be in any other game. It's more like picking "the most reliable, least worse strategy." Had hooking remained a viable strategy, people wouldn't be turning to these other, less fun strategies.
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pointedly looks at toolbox
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In general? It's same as tunneling for me, so no.
I would say it's an issue basically only in extreme case, where you get killers doing it from start of the game.
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Players tend to fixate on other players are doing something wrong or something they don't like.Complaining about something because a player doesn't like it is perfectly valid. When I think about the worst games of DbD I've had, the ones that made me want to immediately uninstall the game, slugging is basically in all of them. Even if a problem is rare, if the problem is extreme in those rare instances, its still a pretty big issue.
Now whether an unfun element can be corrected without impacting the fun elements is a trickier question.
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Opportunistic Slugging = Good, Healthy, No Issue
Hard Slugging = Bad, Toxic, Minor Issue
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The actual problem of 4 man slugging until they bleed out? Definite problem. That needs to be addressed.
However, many people start to eat their keyboard/controller in a fit of rage if they're left on the ground for 20 seconds because they went down under a pallet and a killer sees the Meg wearing bright orange with a flashlight very cleverly hiding behind a tree (they are very clearly visible).
There's a big difference between these two things and I can never tell when people are talking about either of them…nor what kind of person they are when they talk about it.3 -
"This thing happens rarely" and "it is a problem when it does happen and something should be done to prevent it" are two points that can and should coexist
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Oh, because it's a "tool" box. Funny. So funny.
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In which case, the survivors should lose. "At the start" can only mean 4-5 gens are still up. If the same survivor has already been hooked twice, and 4-5 gens are still to go, they're playing beyond terrible and deserve to lose. Same thing with slugging. How do you all 4 get downed in like 60 seconds? Where's your perks? Where's your looping skill? You can't implement a base mechanic to counter what the killer's doing there, because then you're balancing around the literal worst survivors in the game.
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Slugging is a frustration that has been expressed as a problem for a very long time. While it’s rare to go all out and just slug from the start, it’s happening to players every day. I am glad it’s being addressed.
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Alot of ppl don't differentiate them. They see ANY slugging as toxic. Watched a video the other day that kept swapping POV between various streamers playing survivor and the video content creator playing Billy. Billy came up on 2 guys at a gen and instantly downed one before chasing and downing the other (the streamer). The first guy was slugged for MAYBE 20 seconds, but that didn't stop the streamer from complaining that the Billy was slugging at 5 gens. If I find the clip I'll post it.
Its weird that the "at 5 gens" gets brought up so often. No one differentiates when survivors get flashlight/pallet/sabo saves. It's seen as equally valid doing it at 1st hook or death hook. Somehow applying pressure at 5 gens is toxic though.
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"At 5 gens" is such a wonderful cop-out in my opinion.
It can mean anything between 7 gens at 0% and 7 gens at 99%. The number can also change at any given moment after about a minute or two into the trial. And it may even change by more than 1 within a short period.
Now imagine if someone kept pestering survivors not to do gens "at 0 hooks", they'd just be laughed at.
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A lot of the time even when the counter says you are at 5 gens by the time you get your first down, really you are down to 2 or 3 because 2 or 3 are really close to finishing.
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It's not that it's meta, it's that the face camp community had to find new ways to troll people and make people miserable by power tripping
Nobody actually cares what oni/twins mains do
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You'd be surprised.
Here's a post with the OP complaining that a Twins used Victor to down multiple ppl at the start before hooking. The twins didn't slug for the 4k or anything, but OP insists that Thw Twins didn't deserve the mori because they "camped the downed survivor with victor" which is obvious since Victor can't hook ppl.
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Imaginary scenario for you
Survivors spawn in two groups of two. One group goes together and hits one gen, the other two each find their own gen.
Killer is a Ghostie with Discordance, notices the pair co-oping the gen. One survivor sees him but the other does not, and gets marked and downed in the first 15 seconds of gen progress. You've now got one guy who's hooked, one guy who has to assume he's 99ed, and two people on gens.
The guy who is 99ed goes off to a safe gen because he's 99ed. Ghostie finds a second survivor on the gen and starts chasing them. The last survivor realizes they won't be able to finish their gen before the survivor on hook goes second - so he gets the gen to around 80% and then runs for the unhook. It's not ideal but it's the best he can do given the circumstances.
After chasing this other survivor for 40-45 seconds the ghostie decides to drop chase and head back to hook to secure second stage. He getshe ghost face decides to chase the unhooked survivor. They are tunneling, and it is 5 gens left.
Now, aside from the one mistake of the survivor not noticing the ghost face and getting marked, the survivors have played this as optimally as possible, and they still got in a situation where the killer started tunneling at 5 gens. When you say survivora deserve to lose if the killer tunnels at 5 gems, to me it seems like you're saying all 4 survivors in that scenario deserve to lose because 1 of them made a mistake early in the game, regardless of how many correct decisions they make thereafter. Where am I wrong? Should early mistakes not be recoverable?
IMO if early mistakes like that are not recoverable, if the killer automatically wins if the first unhook happens before the second gen gets done, it vindicates anyone that chooses to go next. We should not be encouraging goers-next
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Just so we're clear in this situation. The killer was able to get a down, hook, start a chase and be in that chase for 40-45 second... and the survivor who wasn't pressured at all only got 60 seconds of a gen done?
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I would rather them to implement mechanic that will focus only on early game, which is not going to affect majority of killers than mechanic that is going to work always.
Survivors simply complained enough, I am just trying to come up with solution, that is not going to affect me that much.
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Let's say the survivor that wasn't pressured got 40 seconds of progress done, then got hit with pain res for -18 charges. At that point they have 22 charges of progress left on the gen, and 70 seconds to get the remaining 68 seconds of progress done and get the unhook. They better hope they get a boatload of skill checks, because without any, the hook has to be less than 8m away to get the unhook before second stage.
What the heck, Daniel said that a tunnel-out attempt starting at 4 gens left was also deserving of a loss. Let's assume the gen popped, and the Ghostie was returning to the hook in reaction to that and anticipation of the unhook attempt. Does that team that got a gen done despite the free first down deserve to auto-lose?
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For 1, it's still not an auto lose. You have at LEAST 3 gens with decent progress. For 2, at this point, the killer only is 1 hook in and hasn't even downed the survivor their tunneling yet. The team can get some gen progress in or maybe take a hit since the guy who unhooked isn't even injured.
As for mistakes though, Survivor A made the mistake of not noticing Ghostie, survivor B made the mistake of not going for the unhook as soon as Ghostie started chasing Survivor C since they were already nearby and SHOULDVE been the one to do that... and also... Even if Ghostie had pain rez, it wouldn't have hit survivor D's gen. Survivor A and B were working together, remember? Apparently survivor D missed every skillcheck that showed up after admiring a nearby dull totem, lol.
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You're right that it's not auto lose, but the point is Daniel is arguing it ought to be and I am arguing it ought not
Ghostie had Discordance, headed to the coop gen within 10 seconds, and survivor B let go of the gen as soon as he saw Ghostie. They only got a few seconds of coop progress, then a few seconds of solo progress, then 20 seconds of nothing as ghostie mean mugs survivor B and then hooks. Pain res absolutely hits one of the other two gens being worked on.
I guess one of the problems is that to anyone who wants to blame the survivors, it will always be the survivors fault. Instant unhook? Shouldn't have farmed, omegalul. Wait until the last minute and have the guy who isn't stalked do the unhook? Should have unhooked sooner, genrusher, get punished. Have survivor B lurk for the unhook once he starts chase with someone else? Ghostie notices him and pops the 99ed stalk, now he has a hook and a slug, ez game baby survivors.
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It's not "instant unhook". Common sense says the survivor who spawned with his buddy should've gotten the unhook once Ghostie left and started chasing someone else. At that point you should know your the closest since the other survivors spawned in a different area and you know Ghostie is busy. It's not unreasonable to expect a timely unhook and it's VERY reasonable for Ghostie to drop chase on a survivor after 45 seconds since he's a stealth killer. Approaching an unsuspecting survivor and stalking is what his power is for, NOT straight up chases. In the scenario you described, the survivors left a guy on hook so long that he was about to hit stage 2 anyway. What was survivor B doing during all this besides getting mean mugged by Ghostie for long enough that Survivor D gets the most gen progress? Your telling me he WATCHED ghostie and just...did nothing.
Survivor C didn't spawn with them, so that chase wouldn't be close enough to pop a a 99 on survivor B. Survivor B HAS to do SOMETHING because it's not like his 99 is gonna regress or anything (something he's assuming he has).
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Like I said. If you want a situation to be the survivor's fault, any decision the survivor makes is a mistake.
Thanks for confirming you didn't properly read my post by responding to the part that didn't apply to this situation instead of the one that more clearly did btw 👍👍👍
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I read everything. Your hypothetical had 3 survivors making mistakes. Survivor C was the only one who didn't. Survivor C ran the killer until they dropped chase after 45 seconds, which is a reasonable decision to make. You just tried to claim this hypothetical was a lost game after only 1 mistake. I'm saying it was a rough start, NOT a lost game, after 3 of the survivors did separate misplays.
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highly depends on context. Slugging in order to maintain pressure at specific point of the match? Completely okay.
Leaving survivors on the ground intentionally so that they can bleed out? Well, that's cringe
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Ah, I see the problem. You're misunderstanding my point, and you aren't intimately familiar with Daniel's particular opinions. Apologies, I was overly aggressive assuming you were defending a particular position, when you were not.
I'm not arguing that the game is lost at that point. I made an edit to one of my previous points, which you missed (because I made it after you responded - not your fault) about the point of my post. Daniel is arguing that if the game gets to the point where a survivor is being tunnelled at 4 or 5 gens, he believes the game should be lost for the full team of survivors. I agree with you that the game is not factually lost at that point - I was merely trying to illustrate a situation wherein it was fairly obvious that the killer can have an opportunity to start tunneling at 4 or 5 gens, and it shouldn't already be game-over.
The additional piece of context you're missing is that Daniel has often opined on here that survivors unhooking with [edit: more than. I swear I typed more than lmao] a few seconds on the hook timer is a blunder because of course the killer is gonna tunnel - you need to make sure you get gens done before you unhook, and unhook at the last possible second, so the killer's tunneling with fewer gens left and you have a chance of getting out. I wrote the survivors as doing what I believed he would say the correct play was, and still getting 0-1 gens done before the killer has a chance to start tunneling, because I wanted to illustrate why "the game should be dead lost for survivors if the killer is able to tunnel with 4 or 5 gens left" is ridiculous.
Post edited by ratcoffee on5 -
If a hooked survivor has a limited amount of time to be rescued or die then a slugged survivor should have a limited time in which he will get up again if he is not picked up and hooked.
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In this case, waiting last second to unhook iskinda pointless. The killer isn't even proxicamping, it's obvious he's chasing survivor C in a different part of the map and survivor D has been on a Gen. The info you gain from the UI as a survivor does a pretty good job at painting a total picture for game sense. I'm not gonna nitpick too much more at the ridiculousness of some of the time details, just that in your example... the obvious correct time and person to get the unhook is survivor B as soon as it was obvious the killer was busy.
As for preventing tunneling... You can play towards that if he starts acting like he might. As it stands, the only thing you accomplish by leaving someone on a hook who ISNT anywhere near a killer is keeping them unproductive.
Sidenote though... I'm not Daniel. The idea that your arguing against perceived points I didn't say because your familiar with someone else is silly.
During this whole hypothetical situation, I was just kinda giggling at how much had to happen in order for a gen to not get done which included mean mugging for awhile so the pain res would hit the "right" gen, followed by a survivor being so scared of a possible 99 that he completely disappeared from the equation. The survivor he was mean mugging BTW only got 5 seconds of gen progress done before realizing the killer crossed the map AND had time to 99 stalk him. You sure this is Ghostie, cuz he's SPRINTING, lol. Can we agree this point was essentially a joke and get a laugh in. Ghostie ain't doing all that so fast.
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I know you're not Daniel, which is why I apologized for falsely assuming you were defending his point, explained in a very measured way the point I was trying to argue against while explaining I understood that was not your point of view, and gave you a very good opportunity to gracefully stop trying to pursue a pointless fight. Judging by your response, the importance of trying to deescalate and avoid unnecessary conflict is a personal value shared by one of the two of us.
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The biggest issue with slugging, in my opinion, is the killer is not punished much for doing it. Worst case scenario the survivors that are left can maybe get the slugged survivors up or the killer loses track of the survivors and they bleed out.
I'm really disappointed that behavior's first choice to deal with slugging is a "give up" button for survivors instead of something like base kit unbreakable. It's a bit similar to how they deal with tunneling without actually dealing with tunneling. Ultimately slugging and tunneling are strategies that give an enormous amount of value relative to the required skill, but pose very little risk to the killers.
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It's weird that ppl always insist slugging is just super easy. The chase is typically the hardest part about playing killer, and that's still taking place. Your cutting out the actual hooking part, which isn't where the challenge generally comes from. Both being slugged and being hooked has the same exact solution, which is wait for a teammate to help you. You have more control over that when slugged since you can crawl to a safer location if need be.
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But when thinking about solutions like baskit unbreakable, you have to consider every side. If implemented improperly, you end up inba situation where the killer is being punished for downing survivors and survivors are being rewarded for being down which denies the entire structure. Even if that issue is fixed, survivors are still being given a second chance after arguably losing.
Then player agency comes into discussion, meaning that if the solutions only serves to limit player choice regardless of side, then its not exactly a good mechanic.
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In my opinion, Slugging is a tool like any other in the game, but its current state lacks the balance typically seen in other tools.
I can get into the nitty gritty of that all, but when compared, it’s clear how slugging has the potential to be problematic, as even its dedicated counters are significantly weaker than slugging itself.
If slugging was a perk, it would likely have cooldowns, require a perk slot, activation requirements, or restrictions—highlighting how unbalanced it is compared to other tools. (Aside from tunneling)
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You're wanting to punish killers for doing the last thing they have left to do. It's the optimal play as well. And why should there be tons of risk? Survivor optimal play is now running into the corner of the map, because the killer can't possibly get to the gen he needs to before it pops, whether he hooks the person or slugs. There's no risk or punishment for that.
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I wouldn't have humored the hypothetical. Like you said, it's endlessly speculative angles of "What if the survivor did or thought X, in which case it's not their fault?" But I always lean towards what you've argued here. "What are the survivors doing?" Because the killer is expected to play optimal, and every mistake is scrutinized, but survivors aren't held to either.
My comments can be quite absolutist at times. My main point is not that survivors should ALWAYS lose in those situations, but that they should at least be worse off throughout the match because of it. But the likelihood that a start like that was created by survivor mistakes, and the likelihood that they'll continue to make blunders, are both quite high.
And my point about survivors being worse off... You don't really 'feel' that as killer, as I've said in another discussion. That's because killer is on the back foot pretty much from start to finish, hence why they play sweaty from start to finish. I disagree with the common notion that, "Killer starts off super weak because all 4 are alive and on gens, but then later he gets super strong!" Where does this supposed period of strength begin? What, 1 hook on someone, just because they have to send someone to the rescue? That doesn't do anything in the grand scheme, because it's too much time investment for too little slowdown/progress on your objective: killing. There's been so many matches where I or other killers are making pretty good time on chases, pressuring gens, detaching at the right time, if not downing survivors back to back to back... resulting in 1 gen left, or all gens done. How could the killer be considered strong or in control, when him playing really well usually results in really close matches?
And I'm not always empathetic to random solos, because they usually complain about killer being too strong, even when they're clearly not playing well themselves, complaining about aura perks and Wraith and stuff. If they'd complain about the MMR system, which is clearly the underlying problem, I'd hear them out more. If you're mad because you know you're carrying your team every time, and are just getting killed by them, I feel for you. But more often than not, they willingly support a game state that lets bad survivors beat really good killers.
I like to deescalate as well, but it's also important to be firm, and it seems like the devs do the opposite. They coddle the weakest among us so that the most skilled and dedicated suffer. And I have no doubt that they intentionally benefit off the "us vs them" that their inconsistent matchmaking/balance scheme creates, because like politics, they just want to distract to avoid being asked the tough questions, to be given low expectations, to do little and be rewarded handsomely.
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No, it isn't, unless we're talking about bleeding out when the killer has already won the game, and that's not even that common. I'll die on this hill.
Slugging is a tactic like any other in the game, and it's not plagued by the same issues camping and tunneling have. It doesn't lead the killer to interact with only one of the four survivors, it doesn't allow the killer to get a quick early kill and secure the win too soon like slugging does, it isn't as cheap and easy to do and hard to counter with unorganized teams like camping is.
If anything, slugging is a risky tactic that may lead the killer to waste the opportunity to hook a survivor if things don't work well for them, but pays off very well if they do. It has a very simple counter, survivors just need to be more altruistic, and they also have a bunch of perks that help against it, including unbreakable and exponential, but also the healing perks. Survivors also have means to force the killer to slug instead of hooking a downed survivor due to lack of time to do it, or even a good chance of failing to hook due to sabotaging or flashlight saves, so again, it's a normal part of the game.
People complain because they think being slugged is too "boring", but if they're not slugged, they're going to the hook, to spend up to 70 seconds there, or up to 140 if they stay for more than one stage, without being able to even move. Also, it's kinda funny that, even though being on the ground doing nothing beside moving seems to be such a boring thing, the last survivor on the ground, more often than not, tries to hide from the killer and bleed out instead of letting themself be found so the match can immediatly end. If so many survivors are willing to go throgh 4 minutes of bleeding out just to deny the killer a few points even when the match is already lost, then I guess the boredom of being on the ground for a while and then healed isn't THAT bad that needs a fix.
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slugging is a problem and I’m all for reducing it, but I don’t want killers being punished for slugging when survivors try to sabo and get flashlight/pallet saves.
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As other changes have shown, slugging tunnelling and camping are not issues.
Excessive tunnelling, slugging, and camping are. That's what these changes should aim to address. Otherwise, it risks punishing normal Killer basekit tactics that are MEANT to be part of the strategy of the game, while also hitting the actual problem which is people who just wanna grief.0 -
the reason why slugging showed an increase is because hooking a survivor isn't worth it with all the anti tunnel perks/mechanics that put survivors at a massive advantage after they unhook that you're punished for hooking more than one survivor not to mention survivors can bring that unbreakable boon or just bring unbreakable to counter it.
with gen regression being nerfed underground with the gen kick limit and all the nerfs to gen perks as a whole people slugged to compensate since it 1 got survivors off gens and 2 gets them out positioned so that chases can be shorter 3 allows gens to regress longer and 4 gets survivors into more chases which is allegedly the "fun part" of the game
slugging was just a response to fast gen speeds (even after i left and came back the problem just got exponentially worse) and even with these changes they aren't addressing gen speed or buffing regression (or getting rid of that horrible gen kick limit)
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you nailed it with this post, I also feel like a lot of survivors only play survivor or they don’t play enough killer to understand the frustration that happens in their matches which makes them have to slug. I’ve had to slug a whole team because they all wanted to sabo and blind me.
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