Feedback and Suggestions
Feedback and Suggestions
The achilles' heel that is Tunneling
I'll just get straight to the point:
Playing Red Ranks is frustrating because the most prevalent and active strategy used by killers to secure easy victories in this game is Tunneling. You tunnel one guy to death; there is one guy less, and his team is now slower at everything they need to do.
The greatest issues with tunneling are the following things:
Tunnelling is a Good strategy because it removes a opponent from the game early.
Tunnelling is not de-incentivized in any form, shape or way. Making it a good go-to for weaker killers (and killer players)
The person who gets unhooked is always the most vulnerable guy in the survivor team not simply because they were the one who got caught but also because they are Bleeding everywhere, Loudly moaning and go down from a single attack.
There is no good reason for a killer to try and spread his hooks across the survivor team as that simply weakens his ability to slow the game down.
Tunneling is a more difficult problem than Camping: Because in camping the guy sitting on the hook can effectively always waste the killer's time unlike a person being tunneled who is dependent on the map rng, his teammates, his own perks, his teammates perks and the killers ability to cut a chase to a halt.
The second biggest problem with tunneling is simply the fact that Tunneling does not get a easy counter to stop people at higher ranks from utilizing this strategy the way that Camping does.
High-ranked players don't Camp and neither should they Tunnel
Tunnelling is a strategy that becomes more and more powerful on Killers who are good at keeping track and denying a survivors escape (Doctor) and killers who are extremely good at ending a chase or catching up to the survivor (Nurse, Deathslinger, Oni and many others)
Tunnelling is something that should not be getting fixed by having Perks compensate for the lack of gameplay incentives that would discourage tunnelling. (In other words, lets try to find ways to make tunneling not the most optimal strategy without gutting a killers map pressure)
Potential solutions in a bottle:
Make every hook function the way that Pyramid Head's warp cage works BUT make it so that when you hook a survivor they warp to one of the three furthest hooks from the killer.
If this were implemented in the current state of the game then it would just end up denying killers map pressure that they need. Additionally it might be too much of a hard change to the gameplay so maybe some softer mechanics should be put in place to ease against tunneling.
Incentivize a killer to hook many people to slowdown game progression: Add a de-buff to the individual survivor that slows their ability to repair generators according to how many times they have been hooked something akin to 10/15% and up per hook.
OR
something that debuffs the entire survivor crew for every fresh hook on a fresh survivor. This Debuff could even be something more powerful since it would only last for the duration of that person being hooked or until a health state shift happens? (No idea on what this debuff would be, hence the question mark)
Punish tunneling by coldly taking away Emblem ranks according to how much tunneling is happening (This would actually truly put a stop to high ranked players wanting to tunnel)
Now there may be other more clever ideas to fix the tunneling but the point I am getting at is that I should not want to stop playing this game at High-Ranks because I don't ever get to play the damn game because someone is playing like a homing missile running up my butt-crack the entire time.
Make playing this game enjoyable. End the Tunneling already. (and do keep up the discussion. brainstorming ideas actually gets results)
Comments
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Any solution that is just nerfing tunneling is horrible.
The best way to handle the problem is to make not tunneling not lose-lose strategy and give keeping survivors as long as possible some actual strategic meaning.
For example:
- 4 survivors alive - apply something that pressures survivors additionally/slows them/etc
- When survivor dies/dies too early - pressure becomes weaker/disappears/survivors gain buff
- Killer would have incentive to keep survivors alive as long as possible if that debuff would apply enough pressure to justify such
- Killer would finish survivors off only by the end of the game, where some kind of repair/healing speed buff wouldn't change much.
- If killer kills too fast, other survivors would gain some kind of advantage over killer to help them
But for god's sake, anything like that should be BASEKIT mechanics, not another bunch of DLC perks that will either not be used at all because people wouldn't find them appealing or they become overused so much that both sides will puke from seeing and having to use them in every game.
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This. Perks must NEVER be used to fix game balance because all perks exist in a constant state of flux. Their power varies according to the current meta the type of killers available and even the good graces of the Developers themselves. Whatever change or fix is implemented it MUST become a core mechanic the same way Emblems killed Campers out of the game.
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healing used to be faster, and that allowed for the survivors to make both the unhooked survivor and the unhooker equally appealing targets.
and wait...campers haven't just disappeared because of emblems, or have they and I've not been playing the same game y'all have been?
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I have an idea:
- Make Dying Light basekit for all killers, but the effect is decreased and the obsession receives no benefits and suffers the same penalties as the rest of the survivors. It still deactivates after the obsession dies, and obviously no tokens are gained from hooking the obsession.
- The first survivor hooked in the trial becomes the obsession
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You dont really see campers at high levels of play. They exist in the r20's and r15's where they belong because they cant get kills anymore
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if you decrease the effect of dying light anymore than it is then it will simply have 0 impact. Which it currently already does in the format it is now.
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Personally I'd say, buff perks that encourage you to spread damage all around a team. Third Seal, Blood Echo, STBFL, and even Forced Penance are perks that encourage people to spread damage to get their maximum effect but 3 out of these 4 perks that I just listed are below average. Hook token perks like Devour Hope and Huntress's Lullaby also do this since if you immediately kill off a survivor, you'll get less tokens.
As for survivors, make perks that reward you for protecting your teammates. WGLF and Deliverance is a step in the right direction but that's it. Breakout, Babysitter, and MoM are considered weak and for that reason, almost nobody uses them anymore. If you get hurt trying to protect your teammate, it would force the killer to consider chasing you down and taking advantage of your injury or continuing to tunnel the probably healthy survivor.
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LOL WGLF is survivors biggest enemy in this game. I honestly think that if you imposed a penalty on unhookers you would see a drastic change in survivor mentality toward (unsafe) unhooking and farming teammates. As a survivor this is what sets me up more than anything and that isnt tunneling, thats being opportunistic as a killer and survivor (unhooker).
If you impose a penalty on unhookers I guarantee they would stop setting you up. Hell give modified adrenaline (5 sec) and BT (5sec) to unhooked survivors and give unhookers exposed (20seconds) status after unhooking.
PLEASE REMOVE WGLF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Fine I guess I can understand your hatred for WGLF. Still, it's kinda sad that a perk that implies that David is willing to protect his teammates became a perk for greedy survivors who farm their teammates.
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Another big problem with the tunneling issue is that if I play a weaker killer I find myself being forced to tunnel to keep the game pace in check. 4 People roaming around is just too much pressure and speedy genny repair to really be easily controllable.
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Repairing a generator is the easiest thing in the game aside from just being AFK. Until repairing generators actually requires some measure of effort, I do not care what killer players do to make the game easier on themselves.
That being said, I understand how tunneling can be quite unpleasant and annoying same as camping. I think punishing tunnelers on its own is a good way to get a bunch of killers to not even touch the game again.
The way to fix it is by making game pacing more reasonable, and going on multiple chases, against multiple people more rewarding, and then you can actually punish tunneling, because at that point, only people who do it out of malice would remain.
I couldn't care less about Blood Points if my matches are lasting 5 minutes because survivors AFK on gens. It should be a tangible, in-game incentive to make killers want to go for multiple targets.
About your ideas specifically:
-Your idea of making hooks work like PH's cages would completely destroy the potential of any killer to exert control and pressure over specific areas of the map. Killers with low mobility will be unable to lockdown an area by hooking strategically between a 3 or 4 gen, meaning they will be at a massive disadvantage from the get go against killers with more mobility. During mid to late game killers who havent killed at least 1 or 2 people might as well just give up entirely, because even if they get a survivor down, all survivors need to do is unhook and heal, reset and the killer has 0 pressure again.
-A debuff to hooked survivors could be interesting, but flat gen speed reduction can be pretty unpleasant. Gens are boring. Holding M1 for longer is not the way I'd go about fixing how fast they can go. Maybe skillchecks could be harder similar to lullaby? you get a massive reduction in skill check warning cuz your character is clumsier cuz they're wounded? Also just a flat speed reduction will make late game almost unwinnable for survivors, especially if the killer managed to secure a 3 gen.
Also maybe getting a speed boost after hooking every new survivor? kind of like devour hope? Maybe not as strong, something like 5% for like 10 seconds? that way it incentivizes even low mobility killers to move away towards other survivors and they will also think "i need to get the best use out of my speed boost! it might even make my next chase just that little bit easier, at least for the first hit" It rewards them for playing well and incentivizes them to go for other survivors.
-The emblem thing, I don't think is a good idea flat out. I can tell you I would much rather have games that last a decent amount by tunneling someone out of the game early, than be rank 1 and risk survivors finishing gens in 2 seconds...Now imagine killers that actually know how to end chases in 20 seconds or less against decent survivors going against lower ranks, because, as much as people like to pretend killers that tunnel are incompetent, there are killers who have strong chase, but still get nuked by gens and killers who are very very very good but sdtill have to resort to tunneling if they are trying to win. That would ruin the time of lower rank survivors and wouldnt really fix the problem, unless the killer actually gives a damn about the emblem system.
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There are plenty of counters, not the least of which is safe rescues in the first place. The second is your fellow Survivors can body block and take some hits. Then there is always simply looping well and getting away.
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This. Survivors are so coddled by DS and BT they just lost the sense of a safe unhook. I unhook safely and if I hear the killer coming back I'll run away from the other survivor to leave scratch marks and draw the aggro. It kinda goes out the window as well, though, when my injured teammate also runs instead of walking away like a fool -_-
Also I don't get this post saying basically tunneling is optimal for the killer to do, but also shaming them for doing it. Make tunneling not optimal should be the change, not throwing something else in to punish killers for doing the smart play. Unless we're also going to punish survivors for sitting on gens. I don't want either of those. Furthermore the incentive would have to be strong if we even want to consider it because why would I go for a 15% debuff on one survivor when I can make that 100% by killing them.
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I actually agree with you. Match length does feel like a piece of the problem honestly. If the killer doesn't kill out one survivor extremely quickly they slam gens to completion and get out super fast resulting in both sides getting little to no playtime and often just safety pipping. As for M1 Genning being boring I think its just the way DBD is currently. They should honestly consider making a second game on a new engine with some new gameplay mechanics that make playing survivor more interesting.
And you are correct of the PH cages by themselves being a bad idea because you lose pressure. Honestly it feels like the idea itself isint bad but if it were iterated in the current version of the game it would just cause problems.
Changing skill checks to be "difficult" aint really gonna work though. The debuff would have to be absurd for it to work out as survivors rarely if ever fail any skill checks to begin with. Honestly I just feel the game should start slow and slowly ramp up in pace to compensate.
OR
Maybe we will finally decide whether we want Dead by Daylights maps to Wide or High. Most High maps are more killer sided and most Wide maps are Survivor sided, where it all comes down to travel time. Most "bad killer experiences" come from the fact that say for example clown takes way to long to cross those wheat maps depraving him of pressure from the get-go. The same can be said to Deathslingers, Hags and any other killer that has to depend on some form of gimmick to get their pressure off. (Not saying Hag is bad just that she is slow when traversing the map)
I suppose that there currently is no method to distinguish strategic play and just malice filled tunneling. And no matter how many hits survivors take or how much they body block or annoy a killer if they want to tunnel someone out of existence they will do so remorselessly and that just... sucks.
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Safety hooking works like that if the survivor you just unhooked has something like Iron will to deny their massive cries of pain. Maybe there simply should be a small period maybe 10 or so seconds of time where a unhooked survivor doesn't bleed and moan so much that they get the opportunity to atleast attempt to escape the killer. But as mentioned elsewhere the problem comes down to map pressure. If they made it so that a unhooked survivor is difficult to re-down then what would be worth giving back in compensation to the killer to help them keep up pressure even without having to tunnel one person down to the ground?
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Well a dozen of my responses just vanished like farts in the wind so I will just respond to several of you in this single post.
Drawing killer aggro works if the killer himself wants to play nicely. The problem lies in the fact that the unhooked guy is the weakest link in the chain because they were the one that got caught early. The fact that the survivors teammates have to work hard to draw aggro from the killer and the killer can just actively try to ignore them doing so adds to the problem of the survivor being tunnelled feeling powerless. Maybe something akin to not bleeding and not giving out grunts of pain for some short duration of 10 seconds or something would help alleviate the issue? And the idea is of course to make tunneling not the optimal play hence why I was hoping that some debuffs for hooking different survivors would work wonders.
Those are all things completely out of the tunnelled guys control. Depending on map RNG you cant loop anything nor can you hide because you are the loudest man on earth. Secondly taking hits and body blocking works but there is a point where a killer just hits you for Save the Best for Last and just keeps tunneling but now with extra stacks. Its a problem that there is no way to distinguish strategy and malice in tunneling since currently there is no distinction between the two. Also "unsafe hooks" can be countered by people deciding to just kill themselves on hook and that sure as ######### ain't funny for anyone.
Also I agree with the idea that game pace is kinda all over the place currently. Since maps are either Wide (Survivor sided bar a few exceptions) or High (Killer Sided bar a few exceptions) the problem really is pressure versus travel distance honestly. Big wheat maps are hated by everyone, survivors hate it because there is jack-######### to work with and killers because if they ain't playing someone who can cross the whole map in a few seconds with their ability then they take forever to patrol gens. There really are only two ways to fundamentally fix game pace in this game: Slow down gen progression or finally find that happy medium in map size that the devs seem to think exists somewhere (this would mean axing or reducing the size of some maps and increasing the size of others). But I feel like I'm starting to fall off-topic so lets keep Game pace as its own discussion as much as possible.
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this is just a bit a lot wrong
"Tunnelling is not de-incentivized" the treat of ds making you lose a good amount of time and pressure is a good reason to not tunnel especially since its extremely common because of how easy it is to abuse
The person who gets unhooked is always the most vulnerable guy easy prey that you can easily track saved in front of the killer makes easy pickings, use babysitter, iron will, or bt to give them a better chance or just divert the killers attention to yourself or just don't save while the killers right there to take advantage of the situation
There is no good reason for a killer to try and spread his hooks across the survivor team true
Tunneling literally has the same counter as camping, just do gens at a fast rate while the killer tunnels and keep mounting pressure and leave the guy on hook for a bit instead of saving right away so they can die faster
High-ranked players don't Camp and neither should they Tunnel (false, just because you are high ranked doesn't mean you have to hold yourself to a higher standard of play, people should still play how they want (except freddys no one should play freddy))
Tunnelling is something that should not be getting fixed by having Perks compensate for the lack of gameplay incentives that would discourage tunnelling. (In other words, lets try to find ways to make tunneling not the most optimal strategy without gutting a killers map pressure) killers tunnel to create map pressure, why would gutting map pressure deter a strategy meant to create map pressure
Incentivize a killer to hook many people to slowdown game progression: Add a de-buff to the individual survivor that slows their ability to repair generators according to how many times they have been hooked something akin to 10/15% and up per hook (no there is enough slowdown)
something that debuffs the entire survivor crew for every fresh hook on a fresh survivor. This Debuff could even be something more powerful since it would only last for the duration of that person being hooked or until a health state shift happens? (wow slowing survivor progression thats like what the idea behind tunneling is
Punish tunneling by coldly taking away Emblem ranks according to how much tunneling is happening (this would just lead to more lower rank tunneling and give high ranked killers an easy way to derank to bully low ranked survivors)
protect yourself and teammates better don't expect the game to fundamentally change because a strategy since when the game released is still effective
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Yeah we got the no grunts/scratch marks/blood in the form of a perk. Its really not needed however if survivors just did safer saves and didn't bolt away leaving scratch marks leading right to them. In my example, the killer would have nothing else to go on but my scratch marks which would draw them away. I would be fine with the 10 second rule you proposed for the blood definitely, since that's another form of tracking as well that you can't do much about.
I don't think we can really debuff the survivors enough to incentivize not tunneling unless we either use huge numbers or something crazy. The issue is at the core of the game and we would have to change that. Something like making the survivor team as a whole have a limited number of hooks and once that amount is reached they all get sacrificed. That way rather than having to 3 hook 1 person, you have to get 8 in the match. Wasting your time waiting around the hook when you could be in another chase would probably be pretty bad. Unsafe unhooks would still be punished, but tunneling 1 person out the game is no longer a thing. Survivors would feel less brazen to unhook right there because they'll all be affected as well. Just spit balling here.
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Its effective. My issue isint the fact that its effective though. The problem I have with it is that its just a ######### and toxic experience. I mean you are correct that people playing smartly would remove this problem from existence. But its a problem because people cannot be trusted.
I dunno anymore man. I guess toxic ######### is just to be accepted and not changed because its been there from the start? Because its somehow a good thing?
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if you feel that you are being tunneled against too much and its ruining your survivor experience join the dbd discord and play in a swf with the 20-30 4 man groups on there at any time, as said playing smart is the best counter so best to know you have teamates that also play smart
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Sounds quite sweaty and very tryhardy. Nah I just wont play survivor outside of a few rare situations where one of my friends is playing. I'm just gonna give up on this topic. Tunneling is staying for better or worse. Trying to change that is pointless.
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Nothing wrong with a viable tatic. Just more banshee's wails from my perspective.
Anyways,maybe BHVR can offer more incentive to a killer to want to change targets. This is my suggestion.
BHVR may not even consider this an issue.
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then don't play solo queue to win, in my experience playing killer and survivor (mostly always 99% killer) if you play solo queue to tryhard and win it is very unlikely that you succeed
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I don't really think that there needs to be any drastic changes to stop tunneling.
From the survivor side, you can get better at looping to punish the killer for tunneling you. It's just not always easy as some killers are knowledgeable in looping and mind-games (rank 1 killers are intense), but it keeps me coming back to the game.
Currently two design choices (in the game) incentivize tunneling:
Bloodlust sweetens the incentive to tunnel and if Bloodlust goes away permanently, killers will have to think a little bit more about how they spend their time in the match.
The quantity of survivor tracking perks and add-ons incentivizes tunneling and denies survivors the option of stealthing around the killer. Whether it's I'm All Ears, Hex: Undying, Discordance, Tinkerer, BBQ, Whispers, "All-Seeing" add-on for Wraith, etc... It'll make it easier for the killer to find you. It will feel like you're being tunneled when you were just a survivor given away by one of these abilities in the game.
This is the main reason a lot of red rank survivors just run around the whole map. It's better to accept that you will be chased at some point in the match and it's smart to be prepared.
(I truly believe that if killers didn't have these tools a lot of survivors would feel they were tunneled less often).
I don't see BHVR taking away all the tracking tools they have given to killers and it seems that they are looking to axe Bloodlust some time down the line. So not much needs to be changed, we just have to play through the awkward phase where Bloodlust is still active after killers got access to all these tools.
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He said a good go to for weak killers.
I'm sorry that when you get tunneled that they're not playing by the rules in the survivor's guide for killer.
Now give me better incentive not to take the easy win. Explain to me why the killer should burden himself by forcing himself into a disadvantage?
Some killers don't care about the points. We just want everyone on the opposing side dead. It's on the same level as survivors wanting to speedrun the map and get out alive with a four man.
Either way both sides usually don't want to lose due to bullcrap.
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The idea was to get incentives not to bullrush survivors out of the game. But well nobody cares anyway. So the topic should be tagged for deletion. Toxic playstyles and mechanics are fundamentally apart of this game and they are never getting changed anyway.
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Tunneling may be a solid way to win, but it makes the game intolerable to everyone. It's one thing when ONE or TWO people do it, but when you play MULTIPLE matches, back to back where you effectively play less than 5 minutes each game: it takes all the worth from the game. Want to know how to keep a toxic player base alive and thriving? You're looking at part of the issue. It's on both sides, and I don't think the toxicity on either side is handled nearly a fraction as well as it should.
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