Slugging/Tunneling ideas
Hey so I was re-reading the old changes for slugging and tunneling and I thought of a couple ideas that could very easily make the slugging and tunneling system more fair (this will be long so prepare yourself)
Before I start on these ideas I want to propose something to you that will obviously be in these ideas. You guys should make partial hook stages (PHS) . How it would work is pretty simple, your hook stages are broken up into multiple parts of themselves, this could be as many parts as seen fit but ill use 3 for all these examples. A couple things for these PHS, hooking a survivor would still give a full hook stage (so 3/3 PHS). If a survivor were to lose a PHS while at a full hook state (Ex: they have 3/3 PHS and a certain perk or something would remove 1 PHS they would go down to 2/3 PHS) the remaining 2/3 PHS would glow orange indicating they still have a full hook stage but they could lose it if they lose the other 2 PHS. Basically a survivors PHS would be a separate count than their actual hook stages, they would just directly affect their hook stages). PHS would be persistent so if I have 1/3 PHS and get hooked I would have 1/2 hook stages and 1/3 PHS. Removing 3 PHS could remove a hook state, or if that's just unfair it could just give the survivor like endurance or like a new shield effect or something that protects them from a whole hit
Now we get into the fun stuff.
Slugging - For slugging I believe your guys idea was amazing basically a base kit unbreakable, but here's where the PHS comes into play. survivors could pick themselves up instead of after 90s it would be 60 or maybe 50 seconds, BUT in doing so they would be giving themselves 1 PHS. You can probably already seen where this is going but if a survivor were to decide to pick themselves up they would be ultimately killing themselves too, so after 3 pick ups they would gain an entire hook state just to add to the "is this worth it" so survivors would feel less obligated to take a completly free unbreakable, instead they would need to decide if its worth part of their life
Tunneling - This one is probably going to be long since it's more complicated but yeah. I believe that everything should be scrapped EXCEPT the killer being able to see how many hook stages each survivor has, and who was the last hooked (obviously the evasive (or whatever it's called) can stay and the other quality of life things just not the direct changes to tunneling). Now these ideas can be just overall ideas (as in active all the time not by gens completed) or by what I believe is best, Gens completed
• Before any gens pop - if a survivor were to gain 2 hook stages before the other 3 survivors gained a total hook stages of 2 then that survivor would instead gain 2 PHS in place of one whole hook stage, after the survivor that was affected by this is unhooked, their unhook buffs are doubled.
• 3 or 4 gens left to be completed - if a survivor were to be killed before atleast 1 (or 2 whichever seems fit) other survivors are on death hook, then the entity will take pity on them, throwing them off the hook and giving them a new "Perish" effect Perish - Instantly removes 1 PHS from the effected survivor. Lasts 45 seconds. The survivor afflicted by this effect is completely invisible to the killer and cannot be harmed by the killer in any way (kinda like The Lich's eye). The survivor gains 35% Haste for the duration of this effect. The survivor must have another survivor cleanse the effect from them (While cleansing the speed at which the effect decreases would basically be like each second takes 3 seconds, so while cleansing the timer ticks down by .33 seconds). If the effect is not cleansed before the 45 seconds the entity will perform his end game finisher thing (the same thing when the end game timer hits 0). So basically they have one more chance if they're tunneled out
• 1 or 2 left - idk if there's really a way to tunnel after one or two gens I mean if all survivors have 0 hook stages with 1 or 2 gens left it's kinda understandable to tunnel, but if you decide you still need something for it, if the killer tunnels just give the PHS how youd seem fit for whichever criterias are met🤷♀️🤷♀️
For the killer (all of these happen after being unhooked unless specified) - These are just a bunch of ideas you could pick and choose which you like. - Chasing a survivor for more than 4 seconds after an anti tunneling method is triggered would hinder the killer by 1% increasing by 1% every second, decreasing by 2% every 1 second out of chase. - Chasing a survivor for more than 8-12 seconds after a tunneling criteria is met , the killer would have their ability locked while they're in chase with that person (obviously this could cause some problems so I mean you could just make the ability do literally nothing to that survivor). - putting a survivor in the downed state after a tunneling criteria is met could either remove 1 PHS (or free recovery) or just overall prevent the killer from picking them up (kinda like block the survivor with the entity or something) - putting a survivor in the mend state after a tunneling criteria is met could stun or blind the killer for 4-5 seconds.
Adding PHS would also allow for more perk ideas or even reworks of certain perks (like that one taurie Cain perk removing PHS instead of hook stages). there can also be just overall other ways to remove PHS like doing/working on (and putting significant progress (like 20% - 30%)) 1 - 3 gen(s) would remove 1 PHS for survivors that help the team, or like every 2 unhooks would remove a PHS, just a way to encourage better survivor ethics.
Something else I don't see get talked about alot is teammates leaving survivors on hooks to die. Now I totally get there is no way to ever determine if a survivor is left on hook by bad teammates or left on hook as a strategy. So my idea would be that if a survivor goes from one hook stage, to 2 hook stages because they stayed on the hook, I believe that 1/4th of the remaining hook stage would become yellow on the hud, and if the survivor is unhooked in that yellow bar, they get 2 PHS instead of a second hook state.
Other than that those were just my ideas on what I believe would enhance the slugging and tunneling changes overall I believe just adding in a "PHS" system would be kinda cool for dbd, but I can absolutely see where it could go wrong or be 100% survivor sided, I guess it would just need to be worked on more
after writing that last part I thought that if a survivor has been truly hooked 2 times regardless if they've gained basically another hook stage (as in fully lost 3 PHS) if a killer has mori or if Mori is part of their base kit they could still Mori them. obviously just an idea and there would need to be heavy planning and testing and over all balancing but it would be so cool to see these changes :)