An attempt at addressing tunneling

Arcturus

TLDR: Basekit Babysitter (except when exit gates are powered). Unhooked survivors have immunity for 1 second after their unhook animation ends to prevent killer power double hits. A death hook survivor's aura is revealed to teammates and can see teammate's auras if it is early in the game. If a survivor is killed early in the game, all other survivors are granted a 25% repair speed bonus. Every unique hook a killer gets before a survivor is dead gives them a mini Pain Res. Nerf toolboxes and toolbox addons. Nerf key genrush perks. Nerf other key survivor perks that encourage tunneling or punish hook spreading such as Resurgence and Deli. Nerf S tier killers. Rework DS to be more effective but deactivate after early game.

If you play any survivor, you know the experience has been awful as hard tunneling has only become more common over time and more common than ever before with this new update. Hard tunneling starting from the beginning of the game, especially on higher tier killers ironically enough, is by far the most effective and easiest way to win games, with (in the case that the killer isn't completely incompetent) only skilled SWFs actually being able to effectively fight against it. But this strategy obliterates 99% of solo queue lobbies, which are the majority, along with casual players and SWFs. It also only serves to make the gap between low and high tier killers wider as it is more effective on higher tier killers, and also makes game balance more difficult because hard tunneling is so much more powerful than not.

After the failed PTBs from BHVR there has been no real attempt to address this issue besides this new change that removed the 5s BT from the live release and instead gave 10s of elusive, which has done nothing to stop tunneling killers. No anti-tunnel system would be perfect, but anything is better than nothing, so here is my best attempt at an anti-tunnel system. I came to these conclusions from looking at what the PTBs did right, what they did wrong, what they didn't address, and what the community had to say about it (including both on the forums and large content creators).

1. Unhooked survivors should have base kit Babysitter (elusive would also be 30s). All status effects would go away when the survivor becomes healthy, and all status effects would become a flat 10s like currently when exit gates are powered. This would, in most cases, allow the survivor to reach a resource if they are being tunneled off hook without giving them extra time to abuse the endurance to body block the killer, while also giving them plenty of time with the elusive and haste to potential lose the killer by avoiding LoS. In addition, this overcomes the issue of elusive currently giving killers a perfect indicator for when the endurance is over. Babysitter would need to be adjusted or reworked.
2. For the first second after an unhooked survivor's animation is done, they have immunity to attacks (similar to Mettle of Man). This is a simple way to counter killer powers that encourage the killer to get a double hit on both the unhooker and the unhooked survivors, which then in turn encourages them to tunnel the survivor they now know has zero endurance (or dead hard). Instead, they have to choose, either hit the unhooker or the unhooked survivor, you don't get both.
3. If any survivor is death hook before the killer has a total of 4 hooks, their aura is revealed to all other survivors and the auras of all other survivors are revealed to them unless/until 3 gens are popped. This gives the information teammates need in solo queue especially in order to effectively try and help someone who is on death hook early, or gives them the information they need to keep the killer away from them.
4. If any survivor is killed before the killer has 2 hooks on other survivors (so the earliest a killer could kill a survivor without activating this is on their 5th hook) and before 3 gens have popped, all other survivors are granted 25% increased repair speed which is not affected by Diminished Returns.
5. For every unique survivor the killer hooks before any survivor is dead, they get a mini Pain Res that automatically regresses the most progressed generator by 15%. This is replacing the gen kick bonus in the PTBs, as low tier and high tier killers both benefit from this relatively equally as opposed to gen kick bonuses being much better for high tier killers. Pain Res would be adjusted to adding an additional 15% to this bonus for a total of 30%, and would be changed to act similarly and deactivate after a survivor is dead.

Addressing other things that affect tunneling / anti-tunnel:

1. Nerf toolboxes. This does not need to be a huge, comprehensive rework, this can be solved by simple number changes. The commodious is obviously most problematic. As an example, commodious can keep its identity of having the most charges at 24 charges instead of 32, and the repair speed bonus can be reduced down to something akin to 30%. All other toolboxes would receive similar nerfs to varying degrees. Addons for repair (or that are mostly used for repair) would receive similar cuts, such as the wire spool being reduced from 12 to 8 charges, and the socket swivels being reduced from 30% to 20%. BNP can simply be changed from 10 charges to 5 charges.
2. Nerf a couple key genrush perks, the obvious one being Hyperfocus. To make the change quick and easy, for now we can just reduce the bonus amount from 30% to 20%. So at 6 stacks for example, Hyperfocus would give +120% bonus progress rather than +180%.
3. Make certain actions, such as interacting with Pinhead's box, count as a conspicuous action.
4. A few key survivor perk nerfs. Resurgence is so powerful it ironically encourages tunneling because it is the only counterplay. For a quick and easy change, the percentage can be reduced to 50%. I know that on release though the community had the impression that at this percentage it was rather weak, so it could be reduced to 60% first and go from there, although honestly I think the community at that time may have slightly underestimated it. At 50%, I think of it like the Camaraderie to Resurgence (in relation to We'll Make It), where it is a similar effect but for yourself, and is underrated by the community. Deliverance also punishes spreading hooks. It recently got nerfed so that the broken lasts 2 minutes, but that does not solve some of it's core issues. We can reduce the duration of broken to 90-100s in exchange for it disabling after exit gates are powered. Even though it's still not ideal, it at least addresses one of the most problematic scenarios for this perk.
5. Blight and especially Nurse need a nerf. They've been S tier since conception, they are too powerful in general but also just too good at tunneling.
6. DS rework: DS should be increased to a 5s stun, but completely disables when the killer has 5+ hooks or 3 gens have been completed. This more effectively counters hard tunneling while being much less likely to affect killers that spread hooks.
7. For both sides, change the score cap to being 40k total rather than 10k in each category. In relation to tunneling, this more adequately rewards a survivor that ran the killer while being tunneled. For killers, certain killers are way harder to max out in certain categories making it much harder to reach the cap.

Note that none of the numbers are final. If the number of hooks or gens for certain activations / deactivations needs to be more strict, it could be reduced. The same is for the 25% repair speed bonus, the perk nerfs, etc. The numbers would be the part that would need to be tested. The only real issue I have been trying to figure out is that survivors may purposely 99 gens to prevent 3 gens from popping. I'm not sure how big of an issue that might be but perhaps it would need to be based off of total gen progress instead and give a global announcement when the penalties have been lifted. Let me know what you think.

pidgeon

I don't see how people wouldn't like these changes, they benefit both sides and don't seem abusable.