Suggestion for tunneling and slugging update
Hey guys, just posting my thoughts on how to try and help relieve tunneling and slugging, probably nothing new and they may have already come up and been shot down (don't frequent the forums here too often), but I thought I'd throw my two cents out there.
I guess I'll start off by saying that I get tunneling and slugging aren't fun for the survivor side, but I also know that (some) killers do it because, at higher skill levels, 4 survivors being efficient means that if you don't tunnel and/or slug, there just isn't enough time for non-S tier killers to actually have a chance at winning before all gens are completed. Heck, depending on the perks being used and how efficient the survivors are being, even blight, nurse or billy can't down fast enough against a well coordinated and efficient team using meta perks and items, so I completely understand that there are other balancing issues that would need to be addressed to balance things out for killers, especially lower tier ones.
My suggestion for tunneling would simply be making survivors share hook states, maybe this sounds stupid and maybe it isn't even possible with the way the game is coded (shoulder the burden makes me think it could be made to work though), but I feel like making it so that no survivor can die before the 9th hook stage would effectively kill of the main reason people hate tunneling. With this change a killer could still target the same person over and over, sure, but it would also make it so that the survivor still has a chance to make it to the end of the game if they're playing well enough or the killer is making mistakes in chase. This change could also discourage things like farming your teammates as that directly reduces the farmers chance of surviving as they're also bringing themselves closer to death, trying to body block or make pallet/flashlight saves would still feel good because that's one less stage for everyone now, and it could discourage people from just hiding all game because the longer the game goes on the more stages your team will have making it possible that your first hook could be your death. I just personally feel like this change would help tunneling feel less bad if a person is targeted (9 chances as opposed to 3) and make it feel like less of an instant win strategy for killers. This would also probably feel better as it's basically just removing the main draw of tunneling someone out, but without adding weird or unfun/abusable punishments for targeting the same survivor multiple times in a row for their misplays, think trapper or hag and someone running into your traps over and over, you shouldn't feel forced to ignore them for fear of a punishment. Shoulder the burden and possible other perks I haven't thought of would need changes obviously. I think that self unhooking could just be made to working off any hook stage you're on (minus 9 or higher obviously) but only work once for wicked or deliverance, and luck offerings and slippery meat would give you the same chance to unhook but be limited to 3 tries for a luck offering and 6 tries for slippery but once you've unhooked yourself you can longer try.
My suggestion for slugging would be almost exactly what they had already, but my thought was that once you get downed, after 60 seconds and while fully recovered (meaning you couldn't just crawl for a full minute and jump up, you would have to recover still) you gain the ability to pick yourself up, but, at the cost of adding a hook stage. This change would still make it so that you can't just be slugged all game, but also wouldn't punish killers who have to leave survivors slugged because of the threat of pallet/flashlight saves or the threat of Power Struggle. It would make slugging still sort of a strategy for killers by still giving them some pressure in the form of extra hook stages, but also making it less miserable for a survivor being left to bleed out for 4 minutes. Unbreakable, exponential, and plot twist could be left basically the same but allow you to pick yourself up one time each with no hook stage being added.
I know, these probably aren't new ideas and I'm sure there are reasons that people would disagree with these changes that I clearly haven't thought of, but these were just a couple of ideas that I had and figured I'd throw them out there and see what people thought. Again, I totally get that at higher skill levels these changes would make games basically impossible for some killers to even have a chance at winning, but balancing to things like gen times, chase times, loops, or whatever else can be able to bring game time inline with 4 survivors being alive for 9 hook states. Interested to hear what people think.