Tunneling is a Math Problem - Is the Problem Solved?
When you tunnel a survivor out, it effectively applies a “hidden debuff” to the survivor team: all healing and repair is reduced by about 25% for the rest of the trial. That’s why tunneling has always been so strong; it’s unmatched value, roughly equal to giving the killer two or three extra perk slots.
The big question is whether these new anti-tunneling changes will actually make tunneling obsolete. We don’t have the exact numbers yet, but unless the killer bonuses come close to offsetting that 25% team-wide penalty, the answer is still no.
The update is also a bit unclear. If it isn’t obvious to killers that tunneling is a bad strategy, many will continue to do it. Survivors gaining a repair speed boost isn’t something killers will directly notice, it’s hidden, unless they’ve read the patch notes or someone else explains it to them. And if the benefit isn’t both substantial and visible, tunneling will remain the default strategy.
Removing an entire survivor from the match? The math is obvious. You don't need to read patch notes to understand how that works.
My Suggestion:
If a survivor gets tunneled out too early, they should return as a temporary “Shade.” The Shade can’t be targeted or interacted with by the killer, but they can still repair generators and heal teammates for a short duration (around 2 minutes, for example).
This would make the mechanic clear and obvious to the killer, while also preventing them from gaining that immediate ~25% pressure advantage the moment a survivor is eliminated.
Another thing you could do is explore options like increased movement speed, repair speed and healing speed for the shade. So that tunneling a survivor can become extremely detrimental for the killer. And you could adjust the numbers depending on how egregious the tunneling was.
Comments
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Something else to add that I had not thought about until now. It seems like with this update, survivors will be incentivized to not unhook. If you let the first hook die, you get a repair speed bonus and gens can no longer be regressed or kicked. So even if the math works on paper (once they make the number available), there may be issues where team play is discouraged.
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I'm speaking as a killer main, so I'm not the most trustworthy. But the idea of a player who can't be killed I think is bad. That's way too risky a mechanic. I'm all for making tunneling/camping/slugging less effective, as I think they make every killer more the same, and they're annoying to fight, but I don't think this is it.
Something to note, it's not about the percentage efficiency, it's doing all those things at once. It's being able to unhook a teammate while another is slugged, and another is being chased.
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I mostly play killer as well and I agree, that why I suggested the 2 minute time limit.
I didn't want to complain about how poor this proposed change is, but then not give an alternative. So that's my suggestion.
Ah yes and you are right about the reduced number of players. That's very true. Not only do they have less efficiency, they have less players to actually apply that efficiency. 4 players means2 can do gens1 can do gens while one gets chased and maybe one goes for an unhook. 3 Players meansonly 1 can do gensno one can do gens while one gets chased and one goes for unhook.-2 -
I'll have to play it to know because it feels a bit obfuscated right now. I'll play a few games on the PTB next week and see the difference between tunneling and not tunneling.
It's always so hard to get games as killer on the PTB though. It takes literally forever. I'd like to try 10 games where I tunnel and 10 games where I don't and then see how that pans out, but it's almost impossible to get that many games.0 -
I feel like Killer Klowns did a good job with it. They made it so when you die, you spectate and play mini games to feed the remaining Survivors items that they can use. Some were very helpful while others were not.
The only issue there being that you were forced to spectate because of the revival mechanic instead of filtering back into the queue so a significant chunk of players would just DC instead.
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I just checked it out and the mini games look dumb. I'd probably DC if the game put that in front of me.
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25% isn't nearly close enough of an estimate.
Let's say one survivor is on hook, one survivor is in chase. That leaves two survivors free to do gens, heal, go for save, etc.
Once one survivor is tunneled out, things quickly turn into a situation of.. One survivor is on hook, one survivor in chase, only one free survivor left.. who needs to go get that save or else the whole team will probably be dead.
It's anywhere from a drop in efficiency from 50% to 100% depending on the situation.
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Personally I enjoyed doing something that contributed to the match instead of tabbing out like I do in DBD. But the general consensus was that players didn't love it.
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Agreed, I did not take into account situations where survivors could be on hooks and going for saves, or doing killer objectives like the Cenobite box or pig head trap.
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Looking at the patch notes, it seems survivors get a 25% buff if the killer secures a kill before 6 hooks. I think the 25% buff itself is fair, but I disagree with the 6-hook requirement. It should be 5.
With 6 hooks, the killer is forced to put at least two survivors on death hook. This opens the door for an exploit: two survivors can intentionally hide while the death-hooked survivors work on gens. The killer can’t slug them, can’t hook them, and is forced to search for the hiders while the other two rush the objectives.
Players might not catch onto this right away, but once they do, it’s going to create frustrating matches.
Edit
Unless I am misunderstanding how the hook states work. For example, can the 6th hook be a kill? Or does the 7th hook have to be the kill? If it's the ladder, then the 6 hooks are going to be a problem.0 -
That requires BHVR to put fourth effort
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I wouldn't want to do minigames that look to be lifted from Among Us in Dead By Daylight. So I hope they don't do that.
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