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On the Efficacy of Tunneling and Camping.
Some days ago, I found a streamer and was intrigued by his style. He is somewhat new to the game and still learning a lot of the intricacies of the game like map layouts, but he has quite a playstyle.
Given his consistency, he became a perfect object of study on the matter of Tunneling and Camping, so I decided to collect data with a little bit of scientific rigor to see what we could infer. The main question I am trying to answer is How efficient is it to exclusively camp and tunnel in Dead by Daylight's current meta?
On the Subject
This person plays in NA east servers and has around 360 hours in DBD (SIC, Dec 26th). He streams on Twitch and has a consistent playstyle roughly defined by the algorithm below.
- Find a survivor, chase, and hook
- If rescued, immediately tunnel and hook again. Eat perks like DS or Off the Record if necessary.
- Repeat step 2 if the survivor is rescued a second time.
- Go back to Step 1 targeting a new survivor.
He also makes sure to include some ludic activities during face camping time like 360 M1s, and chat interactions. When inquired about other killer playstyles, on Dec 26th he spoke "I think my MMR got too high camping, I just get ######### on."
In terms of builds, the preferred one is composed of Bamboozle, Coup de Grace, NOED, and Deadlock. For addons the options almost always include Award-Winning Chilli/Chilli/The Beast's Marks/Knife Scratches/Begrimed Chains.
On the Data
We used his stream footage from Dec 17th to 26th as a source for this study. Survivor matches and killer matches played without the explicit intent of camping were disregarded. The Majority of the camping matches were played as Bubba with a few others played as Clown, and Trapper. The collected data included:
- Build: a combination of Killer, perks, addons.
- Kills: final number of survivors that did not escape.
- Map: realm location where the match was played
- Map Offerings: if those items were used by the killer, survivor, or none. Not available for days 24 and 26.
- First Hook (gens): number of remaining gens when the first survivor was hooked.
- 3v1 (gens): number of remaining gens when the first survivor was removed from the match.
- First Survivor Gave up (flag): yes if the survivor attempted to escape from the first hook 2 or more times, failed 2 or more skill checks in the struggle hook, or disconnected anywhere between being downed and sacrificed to the entity.
- Probably SWF (flag): When survivors displayed outstanding coordination multiple times, including but not limited to repeated body blocks, several attempts to killer grasp rescue, coordinated unhooks, multiple identical map offerings, chat clues, simultaneous disconnects, suboptimal build combinations, matching names, locker saves, boon: exponential abuse. DOES NOT DISTINGUISH BETWEEN 2, 3, OR 4 MAN-SWF.
- Hatch escape (flag): if the final survivor escaped through the hatch.
- Reassurance (flag): if Reassurance was USED at least once in the match.
- Switched First Target (flag): If the first hooked survivor managed to escape and the killer had to restart the camping/tunneling with another survivor. Causes include difficulties tracking, body blocks, or even external factors.
What was NOT collected:
- Presence and Use of DS, Off the Record, or any other perks.
- Use of items or addons by survivors.
On the Results
128 matches were used as sources for general statistics and a few charts.
No 0 kills were in fact verified, only 1 ever happened (SIC). So by camping and tunneling, he managed to keep his losses at around 1 every 10 matches.
Face camping and tunneling will yield an average of 68% kills. Note how SWF will not deviate from those values by much. What I noticed is that while they tend to finish objectives more efficiently, they also tend to go to riskier plays in the end-game, making them easy prey for NOED.
The biggest impact on the tunnel/camp strategy was forcing the killer to switch targets. A coordinated team body blocking was the most commonly used strategy. Other factors included indoor maps causing loss of line of sight and perks like Light Weight and mixing multiple survivors' scratch marks. That was a very difficult task though.
The second most important factor in reducing the kill rate was survivors bringing Map Offerings. Several reasons can be speculated here, including abusable perks in certain locations (Balanced Landing, Boil Over, Boons in Eyrie, and RPD for ex.), and harsher collisions in places such as Garden of Joy.
Reassurance also had a small impact on the kill rate. As will be shown later, Reassurance DID NOT see increased usage in SWFs, but the extra seconds granted by the perk were enough to reduce the killer's lethality. One addendum was that bringing reassurance caused no impact if the survivor was the one being tunneled.
Now, to the saucy bits. The general probability of him facing a probable SWF in the Zone and Time he plays is 32% or around 1 in 3. But if at least 1 map offering was brought by a survivor, those chances go up to 43%. Also, if he was forced to switch targets, those changes are updated to 50%.
As general info in a 3k scenario, survivors escaped through Hatch around 73% of the time, and through the exit gates the remaining 27%.
Finally, the probability of the first hooked survivor suicide was 11,7% and the probability of a survivor using a Map Offering was 18% (almost 1 every 5 games).
Comments
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On the Charts
The kill score distribution follows the Gaussian distribution with mode 3. No samples for 0k were found.
The graph above shows the most important piece of evidence on the impact of tunneling. On the X axis, you can find the remaining gen count when the first survivor was sacrificed, and on the Y axis the kill rate. The pattern clearly follows a linear trend, meaning that the sooner our killer tunnels someone out of the match the harder it will be for survivors to perform a comeback and escape.
The final Chart shows the same linear trend is NOT true for the first hook though. The most probable reason may be that while one survivor is being tunneled the others have time to work undisturbed on gen, before the pressure for unhooking impacts their objective progression.
Note that there is a steep decline between 3 and 2 remaining gens by the time of the first hook, almost a full kill in fact. That means that by just working on three different gens, they are capable of almost guaranteeing that one more will escape.
Also, note the slight increase in kills when the first hook happens at 0 gens. in several cases, it was observed that multiple survivors were downed due to NOED while trying to body block. Another factor that might explain that increase was the ECG.
On the Observed Counters
Upon confirming the camping and tunneling, one solid option observed was the use of Unbreakable to rescue and go down after body blocking causing the killer to either let you pick yourself up. Deliverance was also efficient, but a Bubba using Chilli can easily hit the rescued survivor twice with one Chainsaw sweep.
In coordinated groups, Power Struggle and Flip Flop are extremely effective and underrated. Doubling the time the killer needs to remove the survivor from the match (4 minutes to bleed out). A survivor just needs to go down in a pallet near a companion that will harass the killer just enough time to activate the combo.
Blinding a killer while another survivor unhooks is also very effective, even against a tunneling Bubba. A blind Cannibal will likely down the rescuer but crash after hitting a rescuee once during the endurance. The focus must be causing the killer to lose the death hook survivor.
Most importantly, a survivor on death hook that manages to escape a tunneler must hide.
On the Final Considerations
Undoubtedly, Camping and Tunneling are strong in the current meta. It is possible with moderate time investment to reach a loss rate of 11% by just tunneling and face-camping the first survivor found and best the counterplays found in this analysis involve coordinated efforts, perks, and map offerings. It is sure, however, that those tactics will remain strong for the foreseeable future.
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This game is based about unfunny mechanics talking about optimal gameplay... from both sides i might add: wanna be more efficient as possible as killer? Kill the 1st survivor asap at all costs. Wanna play efficiently as survivor? Rush gens. The only difference between those 2 tactics is that tunneling and camping require skill, especially now that the basekit BT was added (you need to catch them again with another chase after all, not to mention that you must deal also with eventual boons/bodyblocks and other nasty stuff, while doing gens efficiently require only to stay on a gen and press the space bar which can be further increased by certain perks and items). Whoever tell you that tunneling is for skilless people is just salty about it... The main problem about playing in a optimal way for both sides lies in the fun (and efficiency) of it: both are boring/annoying but effective.
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Tunnelling off hook in particular needs to be heavily punished by the base game mechanics without the need for perks.
Dubious botting viewer streamers or not, tunnelling in particular is killing the game slowly but surely. When you allow one side (killers) to deny the other side to play the game, get points or pip up and they are more or less defenceless to stop it, people will just stop playing the game altogether and the game is currently allowing that.
I don't even think it is camping so much (though with Bubba it is incredibly boring and unfun) as forcing a hook trade is something I can tolerate. But if they don't deal with the sheer amount of hard tunnelling off hook at even 5 gens, player numbers will continue to decline
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I think it's a consensus that skill in DBD is demonstrated as mechanical (I refer to that as micro skill), and map awareness+decision making (macro skill). While his playstyle surely taps on the former, it completely disregards the latter.
While tunneling and face-camping can be the optimal decision under certain circumstances, the data shows clearly that ignoring any macro decisions and just focusing survivors off the match one-by-one will yield positive and consistent results.
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I played against this guy once on RPD. We got a three out because he bumped into a wall during his camp and went into a tantrum. It took him like five minutes to get his first down. It's a cute gimmick but it sort of reinforces the idea that people who camp are terrible in chase.
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Yep, as I said he is learning map collisions and seems to have a tough time, particularly in RPD and Garden of Joy.
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Think you forgot to mention that his matches are all against n00bs...MMR is gone and his build and gameplay totally shows he's playing in bot lobbies and doesn't account for any good info whatsoever to favor camping and tunneling. A camper and tunneler should lose 75% of the time against any decent survivor squad. Just let the survivor die and it's an easy 5 gen and out.
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You're quite mistaken here. Any killer with an Average Kill Score greater than 2.0 will eventually hit MMR the ceiling, the higher the faster. He has a 2.73 Kill Score and Mode 3, meaning that most games end in a 3k. It wouldn't take long to reach the ceiling and be paired with all players in that bucket. Lobby inspection identified some survivors with thousands of hours (SIC) corroborating the hypothesis that he is indeed above the MMR ceiling.
Also, he did not play against tutorial bots during the roughly 30 hours of footage observed. Allegations of external software to play for other players are impossible to verify, and frankly quite wild. No indications such as several repeated games against the same players displaying the same behavior and with similar outcomes were notable.
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I think I know who you’re talking about…
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What more can they do? They already added a basekit 10 seconds of BT and 10% haste to guarentee you can make it to a loop. If you can't loop and you go down right after the unhook then the killer has every right to just hook you again. The only thing they could do at this point is just add an invincibility shield that only goes away when someone else is hooked.
That said, Bubba is indeed a problem as he can just shred through endurance, that's an issue with him.
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Of course they can do more, spawn survivor to another hook like Pyramid head cage.
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I guess you're talking about hookcamperlol? No idea why but this guy suddenly appeared in everyone's twitch recommendations and now he's consistently getting 500 viewers so might be him.
Imo he's a very representative sample of the current state of DBD so I'm happy to see him getting so much attention, that is a much more accurate advertising for new players of what this game is about and the playstyles that the developers promote.
Something that is worth mentioning is that he's not only tunneling, he's also regularly facecamping, hitting on hook and slugging survivors once the game is over. Of course sometimes he loses the game because of this, but from what I've seen he wins most of the time - which is only natural in a game where developers have made everything they could in the past year to protect and cherish their most toxic players and make sure they get rewarded for their dedication to ruin everyone else's time.
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(Disclaimer: not naming and shaming. What he's doing is allowed and I don't have any feelings about the individual.)
I think I know who the streamer is. He popped in my suggestions. I checked just to see if it was a clickbait and turned out it wasn't, then I left.
I was also quite astonished at the viewership, but as another poster said, that is representative of the culture of DbD.
Props to OP for the data collection. The results of the trials don't surprise me. A more competent player might get even better than that just via build optimization and more mechanical proficiency in the first chase. Also, Bubba is not even mandatory for this, as similar outcomes can be accomplished with a variety of killers.
Gen times, mechanics that rewards camping (grabs and unhook interruptions), passive slowdown etc., all make this a very viable tactic.
The content creator might be trolling, or be doing this on purpose to expose game issues. Regardless, this might be a blessing in disguise. The more this gets traction and gains popularity, the less the devs can pretend it isn't a problem and remain inactive.
If you balance the game to give more time to go for hooks, you concurrently buff camptunneling as well. Minmax players will simply stick to the latter. If you do want players to actually go for hooks, then you must make the alternative penalizing, or it won't work. Deathgarden taught us that lesson.
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Yep, Bubba is not Mandatory. He achieved very good results with the clown too, but the sample size was too small to analyze any further.
It's a difficult situation on the devs' side too. As you said, increasing gen times will indirectly buff the strength of camp/tunneling strategies, but the best current counterplay is to slam 3 different gens BEFORE the first survivor goes down. Only then survivors are fighting for a draw. That promotes a gen rush culture that punishes killers aiming for max hooks instead of max kills. Not sure how to fix that.
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