A killer main's thoughts on the state of solo-que survivor, game balance and the health of the game.

Hey, Dead by Daylight. So, a little about me, I'm a rank 1 killer/survivor. I have a little over 2k hours in this game and I'm currently at about devotion rank 7, almost 8. I would consider myself a killer main, with most of those 2k hours, 80% have been killer. I currently have only 2 killers left to P3.

I'd like to consider myself to be a decent, fair killer -- with the amount of hours I've played, I should hope, at least. I have quite a few mind-games up my sleeve, I know my main killer's capabilities well, and I know their weaknesses even better. I can identify good survivors quickly, identify strong areas of the map quickly, figure which chases are worth it, and when I need to break-away to focus on the more important objective. I don't camp or tunnel unless the survivor positively deserves it.

My rules are: if you've been hooked I will not touch you again unless you've been fully healed or you get back on a generator. If you make distance to heal up and get back in the game, I respect it. If you do any objective based/altruistic action, you're back in the game. I'll usually give hatch to the last player if they played well and I accept losses when I play poorly. I don't tunnel or camp to make-up for the fact that I got looped for 3 gens because I wasn't good enough. I don't use Ruin or Devour Hope because I feel like they're overkill on your average solo-que game.

I decided to get the rank 1 survivor achievement solo, because I'd been told all this time how hard being a killer was, and how easy being a survivor is. The game is survivor sided after all, right? Wrong. I don't feel that way anymore. After having achieved rank 1 survivor solo-que, I have to say: the game is hopelessly imbalanced when it comes to solo-que survivor.

To start, let's address the biggest issue: Tunneling and camping are over-powered. Tunneling and camping are over-powered and there is little counter to them. This is especially true for solo-que. When you camp someone to death, you are denying their chance to counter-play any of your mind-games. You are denying them any chance to get better at the game, and you're denying them any possible pips/points they might've otherwise earned. You are taking the least skillful route to win the game. You can be a new, unskilled Nurse who only lands maybe 1/3rd of her blink attacks, yet if you tunnel and camp -- especially against solo-que -- you can win easily. There's a streamer with 760+ win streak where all he does is tunnel and camp. I did have it linked, but it was removed. Sorry.

Yep, you heard that right. 760+ wins in a row because he chooses to abuse this massive unfair doctrine. Some of them aren't even very good killers. If you watch them play, they don't pull off any skillful plays that make me think "Wow, that mind-game was brilliant." or "They really outplayed and correctly predicted the survivor's movements even before the survivor knew their own movements." Whereas, if you watch someone like Otzdarva who will usually not camp or tunnel, you can learn a lot and are dazzled by his skill. That really is what it comes down to: skill.

I was playing against a famous streamer a little while ago. When I played against him, I was face-camped to death on my first hook, while two of my teammates tried to save me. No, they didn't try and loop the killer around me, he camped and they both came to get the save because it's solo-que, and there's poor coordination. It sucked, and when I went into his stream, no one cared that he tunneled when there were 4-gens up because he just said "They're a SWF, I can tell." Even though there were 2 console players in the group.

Immediately after that game, I got put into a match with a Huntress that positively annihilated me. He landed some absurd, across the map shots, hit me through the gap on the magic bus window, and didn't need to camp or tunnel to 4k. I felt like watermelon full of hamburger meat in a lion enclosure. The guy was seriously good. I even stuck around after the match to compliment his skill. Objectively speaking, I got even fewer points that game than I did in my game against the streamer. So, why was that? Why was it that when I was out-classed beyond belief, I had more fun getting annihilated than when someone used a cheap mechanic to win?

Imagine that you're playing Chess. And your opponent predicts one of your early-game movements and he takes out an important piece of your Chess roster. He takes out a piece that you hadn't intended to lose yet. Good job, your opponent bested your early game. But that's okay, because you still have your eye on the mid-to-late game. Before you can hit the game-clock to start your next move, your opponent is already declared to be the winner and the game is over. You get no more moves. And to add insult to injury, he smacks the gameboard off the table and the judges think this is acceptable behavior. That's essentially what tunneling is, and it's why survivors get so immeasurably angry with the game and the killer. Being tunneled unfairly punishes victim and rewards the perpetrator.

Or look at someone who is just amazingly skillful at one given killer, like CoconutRTS or SupaAlf. When you watch them play, you're just blown away by their predictions. The guy in the linked stream just flat-out sucks. He can down one survivor, and then he uses that snowball the entire game by tunneling them. Wow, good job. Who can't do that?

Just bring decisive strike*.* You stunned the killer for 5 seconds, and during that time you made it to your next safe-pallet. Yay. The killer is going to break that pallet, you'll get a little more distance, maybe vault a window, or, if you're not a very skillful survivor, you're dead. And then the killer only has to deal with 3 survivors, which is infinitely more easy to juggle than 4. Not only that, but the chance is, no one else on your team is running DS anymore because it was nerfed significantly. So, the killer can now tunnel you and then tunnel his next hook and then he's basically won the game. Even the greatest survivors are only as good as their nearest pallet or window. GG EZ.

There is a counter to being tunneled/camped, just have your teammates slam out gens so the killer throw the game chasing one person. More often than not, especially in solo-que, this DOESN'T work. Why? A number of reasons, first of all. You have to convey to your solo-que teammates, without Kindred, that you're being camped/tunneled, and that they need to spread out on generators. So, basically, that's impossible. Not only that, but each one of your 3 remaining teammates needs to find 3 different generators and complete them all without being pressured off by the killer.

If the killer has Ruin, and he is able to pressure someone off a generator near his hook, this plan is foiled. If the killer tunnels his first hook that he gets while there are still 5 generators up, this plan is foiled. Just bring BT! If the killer can count to 12, this plan is foiled. If the survivors are not all coordinated, this plan is foiled.

Like it or not, the camping and tunneling are meta. It is so widespread, and killers keep getting buffed while survivors hardly get any buffs, that it's clear that camping/tunneling are to be expected. The power creep on killers has been pernicious, and there are a number of meta-perks that are not balanced for your average red-rank solo-que game. So if camping and tunneling are part of the meta, and we can't prevent them, how can it be made more bearable?

I mean, I expect camping/tunneling so much, that if the killer hooks someone and immediately leaves, he likely has Hex: Devour Hope, and I'm usually right. This brings me to my next point: the power creep on killer has made the current state of the game unhealthy. Yep, a killer main just told you that he thinks killers have an unfair advantage against solo-que.

They keep buffing killers while solo-que remains stagnant, and introducing new, powerful meta perks that can just further be abused. The amount of games I have lost to Ruin and Devour Hope against a mediocre killer is absurd. You should lose because you've been bested, not because you out-perked the other team.

My average solo-que game looks like this: spawn in, tap a gen. Killer has ruin. Spend 2-3 minutes trying to find ruin. Find ruin, destroy ruin, killer probably has 2-3 hooks by this point. Maybe I get a generator done, maybe the killer is mad that I broke his ruin and he tunnels me. If I don't get tunneled, I'll usually get rescued off the hook, and I use my Inner Strength to heal myself -- because getting healed in solo-que is impossible without a self-heal. If we manage to get 3 generators done, usually the playable map will now be so small, that none of my other teammates are doing generators. They're off looting chests, or skulking around, and doing anything other than a generator. The killer is able to pressure enough survivors at once, that nothing productive gets done and by this point usually has someone dead and then the game falls apart. People give up and the game ends. Loading into a match, I never expect to win and if I do, I oftentimes feel like the killer wasn't very good and didn't belong in the red ranks.

Now, with all of that being said, survivors, there is the survivor version of "tunneling". Which is to say there is an abusable mechanic that the survivors can engage in that leaves the killer no other real alternative than to tunnel. And that is "gen-rushing." Now, I hear this term thrown around a lot with no real clear definition. Gen rushing is when survivors spread out on generators, 1 person per-gen, and before the killer has his first down 3 generators are close to being complete/already done. In this scenario, the killer's only recourse is to either lose the game, or tunnel and camp his first kill. Maybe he's somehow able to recover the game if the survivors make some huge blunder, but more often than not, that's not the case. More often than not, the survivors will crank the last 2 generators out, and they'll get a 3-4 man escape and then t-bag the killer and chide him in the post-game chat. I know this, because I've been there. And in that scenario, I will camp and tunnel every time. I don't want to play that way, but there are few other likely scenarios in which I will win.

But we're just playing the objective efficiently. So am I when I tunnel and camp. See my point? What happens between the last 3 generators is when the game is truly played. If you strip the killer of that, you've given him little other options to salvage the game.

But the game spawned all 4 survivors separated and on different gens. Yep, sometimes that happens. The game has so much RNG that it's absurd. Spawns need a thorough revamp, and part of the requirements is that, more often than not, you should spawn with someone else, always. If you choose to spread out on generators after you spawn in, that's on you.

As a killer, losing sucks. Far worse than losing as a survivor. If you lose as a killer all the mistakes are squarely on your shoulders. Yes, you get compensated with good BP, but you still feel demoralized. This is exponentially worse when the survivors decide to be toxic and t-bag as well as chide and deride you in the post-game chat. The amount of times I've been told to kill myself over this one game is far too great. I’ve had to turn off comments on my steam profile because of this community. The chat filter helped, but not a lot. T-bagging is still humiliating, and it's a universal sign of arrogance that makes everyone feel bad. And if you are one of the survivors that t-bags every killer, just be aware that you're conditioning a killer who is now going to stack the most meta-builds he possibly can, while camping and tunneling everyone, because losing is such a toxic environment.

The amount of times I've seen people t-bag someone who is truly trying to learn a new killer is disheartening. I'll usually try and offer myself up as free kill to the killer if this happens because I've been there so much. Engaging in that toxic gameplay is just going to breed a killer who doesn't play any other killer other than his main, uses the most potent perk mixture he can (Ruin, NOED, Devour Hope etc.) and will play ruthlessly, all the time. Because that's a better alternative than being humiliated. If the killer doesn't camp or tunnel, plays fairly and loses, be kind to him.

So, please, survivors, stop doing this. I've made a point to thank all killers who don't camp or tunnel and play a fair game. That's it. If they 4k, but do it well, I thank them. I suggest you do the same.

Okay, I'm not just going to complain without offering a solution. If we're going to balance the game around killers camping and tunneling, which is inherently not fun, then we need to change the pip system to reflect that. In it's current state, when/if you get tunneled, you'll likely leave the match with 5-6k points if you're lucky, and then you'll de-pip. Basically, you can wait 4-5 minutes in que, only to get tunneled out instantly and then sent right back to the front of the que. That is not fun, and it makes people stop playing this game dead in their tracks.

If we're going to allow camping/tunneling to be part of the core spirit of the game, then the rewards for being tunneled need to reflect that. In the same way that killers get basekit addons as a buff, Kindred should be basekit for all survivors. The cap for chase points should include time spent on hook. Time spent on hook, struggling and being within the killer's terror radius should also be accelerated when on hook. If you spend most of your time hooked, in the killer's terror radius, and your first hook is your last hook, or you get unhooked, then downed immediately again, and put back on the hook, then the blood-point reward should, bare minimum be 15k blood-points and you shouldn't lose or gain any pips. Why that 15k blood-points? That's the average number you can expect to earn if you were to complete about a generator and a half, get chased 3 times and hooked 3 times. That is, of course, if we accept the narrative that camping and tunneling are an expected, maybe even encouraged part of the gameplay.