Is there a psychology behind tunneling and camping?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Hi, I'm a Dead by Daylight player and psychologist. A few gameplay tips for your mental health. : deadbydaylight (reddit.com)

"Concept 1: Humiliation DbD's gameplay is centered on humiliating your adversary. I would argue that every aspect of the gameplay is an act of humiliation, not competition, like you see in other games. The reward-based outcomes combined with asymmetric gameplay makes DbD uniquely painful to emotionally process both your losses AND wins. Let's look at the various aspects of gameplay:

Killer Humiliates

1. Frustrates a survivor's ability to contribute to their team (social humiliation)
2. Frustrates a survivor's ability to level up and earn points (reward-denial humiliation)
3. Frustrates a survivor's ability to appear competent in front of their survivor peers (mild self-esteem humiliation)"
4. 
   

Basically, being on a hook is humiliating. It shows everyone you failed, and now you NEED their help.

if you read on, there's humilation for killers too. Why is it SO annoying to be teabagged? logically, all the survivor is doing is distracting themselves and slowing themselves down. It's not optimal. But its infuriating to the point that when they're eventually caught (and with bloodlust, they will be) they'll likely be facecamped, even when that isn't logical. dbd is toxic at its core. don't blame the players, blame the game.

When you find yourself psychoanalyzing people over how they play a videogame, you probably take it far too seriously.

Camping and Tunneling are done under three circumstances;

1. They're new to the game. A baby killer, who has just been dunked on by poor matchmaking, decides to secure one kill per game by staring you in the face after chasing you for three gens. If they love the game, they'll look for youtube videos and twitch streamers about Dead by Daylight, and will grow and become better over time. Be patient with those Rank 20 face campers.
2. They're frustrated. It's not a great feeling to get teabagged by four survivors at the exit gates. You'll feel even worse if it keeps happening. In your anger, you see a white skull on a red background and are tempted. You gaze into Bubba's soulless eyes and see a way to have success, at the expense of other's fun. These are the purple and green rank killers, who got slapped by rank reset, returning survivor mains, or ######### matchmaking in general. I'm not condoning their camping and tunnelling, just saying why they do this to you.
3. They're a douchebag. Maybe they really are just an awful person. Maybe they really do just want to ruin the game experience for others. But these people aren't the majority I think. They're a fairly small group, but they play lots of games, having mastered the art of ruining fun, and they enjoy it, playing many games, again and again, tunnelling and camping each game.

So there's the psychology for 90% of the times you get tunnelled and camped. It's a baby trapper, an annoyed wraith, or a toxic bubba.

But how can we stop this behaviour?

Short answer; we can't stop it. It's like trying to stop people from drinking alcohol. There will always be someone, finding some way.

Long answer; we can discourage it. Perks like Borrowed Time, Decisive Strike put power in survivors' hands to let them discourage killers from tunnelling and camping, by making them undesirable targets, or giving survivors second chances when they are the victims. Killer perks like Make Your Choice, Devour Hope, encourage Killers to go forth and search, making killers get value from leaving hooks unguarded. We need more perks that reward killers for spreading their attention and their presence, more perks for survivors to make them less desirable targets for killers. It's up to the devs to make these perks, and it's up to all of us to encourage our killer friends to try new killers who aren't Bubba and encourage our survivor friends to take Borrowed Time instead of Self-Care.

New Killers probably don't even know what they are doing is considered "wrong" in the scope of the game. There is nothing in game that tells you not to do it. Most players are introduced to the idea of it being a bad thing in game at the end chat - typically with toxic attitudes coming at them.

Once I realized I could get a lot more BP playing the "friendly" way I never went back. There are times though where it's your only real option as killer.

• You keep running into the same survivor
• You are playing a team with multiple players with the same character and outfit (Bill especially) and lose track
• You are trying to get use out of your perks to help shift the game momentum
• You are down to 3 or less gens and don't have many/any hooks or even hits
• Survivors are healing really quickly
• Survivors are doing everything "in your face"
• Survivors all run the same combos and you have to hit through all the DS/Unbreakable and Borrowed Time crap

There is a psychological reason. It’s called I have no idea what I am doing so let me go ahead and take out the one I know will go down easy, because the game lets me do so without a downside.

I mean...you can't have it both ways. Just not how the game works. Can't have zero utility when a lot of killers have good 1v1 and still expect to win.

I used to get mad at killers for camping and tunneling. Then I started playing killers and now I can't even be mad anymore. Does it suck when you are tunneled/camped? Yep, but it's a part of the toolset and sometimes your best tool versus sweaty players and/or SWF. To ignore the toolkit so you can be an NPC that the survivors will either way berate after a match is just a level of masochism I don't understand.

As a killer it in no way feels rewarding to me even if I win. They are lazy tactics that are for too strong a reward for the little effort put in.

When I beat survivors I want them to know it was because my play was superior - not because I used cheap tactics to win.

people like to help other people.

survivors will try to help another survivor even if there's no chance of doing so or that it would cause more harm.

Thus, camping a survivor is viable because other survivors will come to you instead having to go to them.

Because - generally - you feel cheated and upset cuz you got fun ruined for no reason.

But, if you were particularly good and the killers being salty -- you get satisfaction because 99% of survs aren't human and live for human suffering and then they revel in it.

--joke btw it's literally just human nature to feel good when someone get's so mad they act petty and salty