Analysis of why tunnelling is favoured by some killers.
Analysis of why tunnelling is favoured by some killers.
So, I want to address the issue of tunnelling. While it doesn’t appear in everyone’s games, we certainly hear enough about it to know that it is negatively impacting a lot of people’s fun, which is very important for the health of DBD. For context, I started playing in June 2022, and have ~600 hours in the game (mainly killer). Hence, I am obviously no expert on DBD, yet I believe a thorough conceptual analysis of game mechanics, and how these mechanics are interpreted and understood by players is crucial to address the fun-degrading presence of tunnelling in DBD. I believe a more fun DBD for every player with reduced or very little tunnelling is possible and achievable.
The TL; DR below will take you straight to my conclusion.
Obvious points to get out of the way:
1) I don’t know if I really need to mention this, but I actively avoid tunnelling in my killer games. This is not a criticism of players that choose to tunnel, rather an investigation into why some killer players tunnel in some of their games and why they believe they need to or should tunnel. Let’s investigate the issue, not lampoon players.
2) Hook Camping is often closely related to, and often appears alongside tunnelling. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, this is an analysis only of tunnelling, with some mentions of camping.
So that we are all on the same page, Definitions:
- Tunnelling: Prioritising chasing, downing and hooking one particular survivor over the other three. Usually understood to be a focused effort to eliminate one particular survivor from the match quickly. DBD forum browsing can reveal many comments from users highlighting a further observation that tunnelling often involves foregoing easy chases/hits/downs against the other three survivors, in favour of focusing all offense on the chosen survivor to be tunnelled.
- Player experience: Simply put, how much fun someone has while playing a trial in DBD. While this involves different paths for the killer player and the survivors, I assume here that both sides can and often do simultaneously have a good and fun experience playing a trial (match). It is widely reported by DBD players, forum posts, content creators, etc. that tunnelling negatively impacts the player experience of DBD.
- Objectives: (I acknowledge there is some difficulty when talking about objectives as ‘winning’ is not clearly defined in DBD.) Objectives are what players contest/control/secure/manipulate in order to influence the overall course of the trial and/or to try and ‘win’ or to achieve their own main goal.
What are the Objectives in DBD?
My analysis involves these assumptions:
A) Survivors are the killer’s primary objective, and they chase, zone, hit, down, hook and mindgame/deceive survivors to influence the overall course of the trial and/or come closer to ‘winning.’
B) Ranging in spectrum from lone wolf to self-sacrifice for the team, the Survivor’s goal is usually escapes, and they repair/contest/blast mine/control their primary objective—generators and the exit-gate switch—to influence the trial and achieve their goal/win. Unhooking or saving survivors can become a high priority objective, but ultimately the generators must be completed and the exit gate switch(es) must be opened for survivors to achieve their goal of escape/escapes.
C) The hatch is understood to be a tiebreaker/game-ender mechanic that exists to avoid and curtail end of game stalling and frustration when too few Survivors are left in the trial.
D) Generators and the exit gate switches are the secondary objectives for killers that they seek to contest/regress/protect/trap/vomit-infect/control/patrol to give them more time in, and control of the trial.
E) All other objectives (hex totems, vaccines, Sadako tapes, Plague fountains, Franklin’s dropped items etc.) are considered to form a complex tertiary web whose priority has to be juggled with and considered against primary (and for killer primary + secondary) objectives throughout the game. For example, cleansing old Hex: Ruin doesn’t win you the game (i.e. open the exit gates), but not cleansing old Ruin may lead to you losing the game.
DBD, being a competitive/adversarial game (N.B. not competitive in the e-sports sense), is fun because players, in addition to and parallel with skill expression, get to contest and strategize around objectives. A trial has rich cooperative and confrontational player interaction, leading to a fun and engaging Player Experience.
The problem of Tunnelling:
With all of that established: why is Tunnelling a problem? Intuitively or through experience, it is not hard to understand that consistently being prioritised and chased by the killer without break or pause, and/or spending a lengthy amount of time on the hook when tunnelling is accompanied with hook camping is not fun and negatively impacts the player experience. This strips away the tunnelled (and perhaps hook camped) player’s ability to engage in the rich player interaction DBD has to offer, and blocks or impedes their participation in strategizing on the progress of the trial. Tunnelled players are even locked out of some of the core basic mechanics of DBD like healing or unhooking teammates if they are focused down and hooked back to back. Tunnelling creates an anti-fun experience for the survivor who is tunnelled, and it often flattens the strategic depth of the game for the other survivors, creating an anti-fun experience for the other survivors, as well as being vicariously anti-fun.
So why does tunnelling occur?
I argue that tunnelling occurs because of a combination of the actual state/distribution/accessibility of objectives, and some killer players’ understanding and perception of their control over objectives and their ability to secure objectives.
Consider that Survivors are objectives that can rescue/unsecure each other, and we naturally understand that the killer’s pursuit of securing their objectives becomes much easier as more survivors are eliminated and less are active who could rescue each other. Now whilst that is obvious, I want to highlight that there is a tension in the game here; based both on the design and the balance of the game, there is a massive swing in momentum and control of the trial toward the killer upon the first elimination of a Survivor. A huge part of DBD is managing the balance of objectives, and managing this balance becomes much more difficult for Survivors when the first of their team is eliminated. Based on how the game is now, (from my imperfect understanding), this is a huge turning point in the game, and there will always be an attraction for the killer towards the shortest path to the first kill/elimination.
There is nothing wrong with this attraction towards a swift elimination; we cannot try to shame someone for trying to win or influence the trial! Rather, it is the designers’/developers’ responsibility to ensure that this path to elimination is fun and involves strong player interaction, or more likely that this path is slowed and controlled through design and balance to reduce and contain its negative impacts on a fun player experience. There should be some mechanism(s) in place to counterbalance any negative impacts related to the allure of the killer pursuing a swift elimination.
The second point here relates to the location/distribution of objectives, and the scenario where an unhooked survivor finds themselves in-chase again and at risk of being tunnelled. From the killer’s perspective, when an unhook happens, two of their primary objectives are in one place. When the killer surveys the map and the distribution of objectives, being present or close to an unhook is likely to seem to be a very strong play. This compounds with the point above, meaning tunnelling and then staying close to the hook make a very strong strategy. My conclusion is that the elements of game design and balance should provide mechanisms to inject fun into this situation, or more likely to counterbalance against the negative impacts of this strategy or provide alternate strong choices for killers.
Whilst the game mechanically has these concrete incentives for tunnelling, we must also consider that the interpretations and understandings of killer players who choose to tunnel are not the same thing as these incentives. Many players, forum users, and content creators with vast experience do not believe tunnelling to be necessary or even to always be the strongest strategy. (I’m not saying there is a consensus, and skill range is a huge factor, with tunnelling being the go-to for comp play for example.) The question is then why would the killer give up their other options in order to tunnel and maybe even hook camp? Tunnelling is not a risk-free strategy; it can even be a game throwing choice at the wrong time or situation. If changes are made to DBD to reduce the frequency of tunnelling and its strength as a strategy, as they have been with base-kit BT and then its buff to duration for example, they still might not change anything if some killer players understand tunnelling to be either the strongest/safest/most reliable strategy.
In the face of a large map where the killer doesn’t know the location of the survivors and feels that they have a tenuous control on the generators, focusing on one objective, hooking it and thus knowing exactly where it is, and exactly where another objective will come to, and then eliminating that first objective from the game may seem like the safest or strongest play.
*** TL; DR ***
My ultimate conclusion here is that the motivation for tunnelling occurs on a spectrum between a single-minded desire to win and a lack of confidence or certainty about the current state of the trial. Very rarely do I believe that a player will be at either edge of this spectrum, but rather somewhere in between. Not only does DBD need fair yet strong protections in place to limit or counterbalance blatant tunnelling that creates an anti-fun experience for survivors, but the game also needs to include meaningful incentives that provide alternatives to tunnelling as both a strong strategy and a safe strategy. I’m not experienced in game design, so I won’t be putting forward any suggestions, rather I’ll just outline what I think is the problem.
Comments
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It's not that deep bro. Some tunnel cause they are
1. Tunneling u on purpose cause u good
2. Doing it for a early death and an ez dub
3. Doing it to come back later game cause gens popped quick
Some don't do it because
1. They want a merciless victory
2. They simply play the game honorably
3. They don't need to tunnel cause u suck
4. Want the game to last long
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True
When 3 gens popped in less than 2 minutes
I'm sorry but someone has to go ASAP byt any means necessarry
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Tunneling is favoured because games doesn't punish it and it's the easiest way to win.
Let's be honest, people that tunnel want to win and to be a little sadistic, preaching morals on a video game will always be a lost cause. It's up to the devs to do something, till that day dbd will be dbd.
P.s. but but but survivor do x y z: yes
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My ultimate conclusion here is that the motivation for tunnelling occurs on a spectrum between a single-minded desire to win and a lack of confidence or certainty about the current state of the trial.
I agree, buff all Killers again.
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i was hoping for a more concrete solution and better examples, but decent analysis. good work 👍🏻
i'll provide some examples that can be considered for a follow uo analysis if you desire.
rancor is a spirit perk that makes the obsession a primary target. while the obsession is alive they can provide info to their team. there are no downsides to removing the obsession this way.
altruism addicted survivors tend to be more harmful to their team than beneficial. these players will unhook a camped survivor knowing the killer has noed and body block while exposed. sometimes while kindred is active. this is something a killer can abuse if the killer notices it.
likewise there are survivors that engage in the chase willingly and have a fully decked out kit of runner perks. these survivors often run an exhaustion perk. some survivors fail to realize that an exhaustion perk puts a marker on your back to be tunnelled. because if you're left slive till egc you will probably escape. not to mention the synergy with ensuring the perk isn't able to recover by forcing the survivor to keep running.
and the same can be said for endurance perks like metal of man or hook and wiggle counters like break down and boil over.
a killer can see when you're carrying an item, but might not be able to tell if it's a rare or common item. also they can't tell if it's used up or not. these items can cause a killer to focus a survivor due to desiring to hinder a "mechanic" player or a "healer" player.
obsession perks can sometimes fall into the reason why a player might want to focus a player. as mentioned earlier - rancor, but also meyer's entire kit of perks is about avoiding a specific survivor. so it might seem as if meyers is tunnelling when in fact he's doing the opposite. object of obsession is also painting a target on your back.
the whole concept of tunneling and camping only rewards killers who are playing against unskilled survivors. skilled survivors see it, know what's happening and focus gens. unskilled survivors panic, begin to all chase the killer trying to divert its attention and ultimately provide an easy 2 for 1 chase while no gen progress is being made.
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Tunnelling is favoured simply because it’s the easiest way to win
I don’t do it personally because I don’t care about winning. Give me some fun chases and decent hook count and I’m fine
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"How dare you kill me in such a manner" -Survivors
Killers responsibility isnt to make sure the survs are having fun. Ive watched enough DBD to know that simply removing tunneling will not appease survivors. Certain killers "arent fun" certain builds "arent fun" Ive heard a surv main say a Bubba was exploiting for using his chainsaw constantly (he wasnt even camping). Ive seen survs rage quit when I killer made a play dropping someone to down a rescuer to win a match. This game is plagued by a community that has lost the objective of this game and video games in general. The literal structure of this game doesnt really lend to a competitive mindset. A game that was meant to be spooky and horror has turned into a pvp fest where every surv wants to run a killer for 5 gens and the killers just wanna murder all 4 survivors.
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Very well put together and refreshingly objective.
"turning the game into 3v1 asap" is the most efficient killer strategy. And as long as it is possible to get a surv out of the game in under X time (basekit, not taking certain perks into account) this strategy will persist*. As you say; it's not really the player's fault to choose the most efficient path but the dev's fault to make that path available in the first place.
In my opinion DBD is the most fun when players play the least efficient - or put the other way around: efficient DBD is boring and unfun DBD. Alas, the trajectory we're on atm leads to an ever greater focus on efficiency - both on the killer as well as on the survivor side.
*Of course, if a killer takes longer than Y time because they are unable to actually down the survivor it turns the most efficient strategy into the least efficient strategy - at least as long as survs don't play into the killer's hand.
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To address some of the points:
*** I've tried to make a general and brief analysis of why tunnelling might be perceived as a strong or even needed strategy. I'm hoping we can understand this problem, so we know where we are starting when we are looking for a solution(s). I believe these solutions are to be found in the design and balance of the game, not in making direct appeals to either 'side' to change how they play.
To use an example: killers don't just down a survivor 3 times and then they are out. Hooking survivors was designed as a system to make player elimination more fun and interactive, and to give a chance to survivors to rescue their team mates. This system has created all those thrilling clutch wiggle escapes, last minute sabotages, juicy last minute hooks, and pretending you don't know you're being followed when carrying a survivor to the hook, hooking and then turning around to smack the would-be unhooker. It is up to the developers to balance, and most importantly design systems/mechanics into the game both to create fun and to address, resolve or counter-balance any frustrating or unfun moments or patterns in the game.
Some player input can be helpful to achieve the above, but seeing the balance and design of DBD, or even the fun of DBD as being a war between what either 'side' wants is, I believe, a profound mistake. This outlook won't reveal new ideas or possibilities, and it can't make the game better.
*** To those who say that tunneling is the easiest way to win, this is not always true. Tunnelling can lose control of the game for the killer, and lead to more escapes. Tunnelling a survivor with strong chase skills can lead to losing. Tunnelling a survivor with strong anti-tunnel perks could lead to losing. Tunnelling can be the strongest strategy, for example in comp level play. The problem is that tunnelling is seen as a strong or reliable strategy, or even the best strategy, that some killer players have at a given moment. The game needs to provide alternate incentives so that killer players feel they have a range of options for what strategy they can follow. This is crucial to addressing the unfun experiences tunnelling creates in the game.
Think back again to the system of hooking survivors. Solutions to the problem of tunnelling won't be found in telling survivors or killers to change how they play, but by using game design to create systems or mechanics to provide fun and engaging choices and strategy to all players. DBD would not be fun if the killer simply downed survivors 3 times to kill them. Fun and engaging mechanics and systems can be designed into the game, and changes can be made to both protect survivors from tunnelling and to provide killers with other alternatives to the very often reliable strategy of tunnelling. Creativity will be needed, that's for sure. But I think a good beginning point is understanding the whole problem first, and this last part is pretty much the point of my post.
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Specifically in relation to your observation "it's not really the player's fault to choose the most efficient path but the dev's fault to make that path available in the first place."
This is very true, but also it can be a matter of reliability as well as efficiency. Once you hook a survivor, one of your 4 primary objectives, another objective must come to the rescue, thus giving you at least 2 of the 4 objectives in one spot. Whether this involves baiting the team to unsafely unhook their teammate by changing your play, returning to the hook when you get the notification, or just hook camping, the reliability of tunnelling is just as much an issue as its efficiency.
The game provides remarkably little reward to the killer for spreading the fear and pressure on the Survivor team. This is why I think, for example, the perk No Way Out is brilliant.
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True, though in my mind reliability is part of efficiency in this context of killer strategies; something is only an efficient strategy if it reliably leads to the desired result. Might be me jumping to a conclusion that we talk about tunneling/camping as a prevalent strategy and not as a collection of instances.
And I do agree with NWO. - Love the perk. Since I don't do the tunneling/camping (at least not to win - for certain archives or as a petty act of revenge in some instances I do but I think that's a bit of a different story) I rely heavily on late game snowballing and NWO comes in really handy there.
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Exactly, as long as Survivors can easily get to 60% completion (3 gens) before the killer can even get to 8.3% completion (1 hook), killers will always jump to desperation tactics like tunneling and camping. There is no getting around this fact should anyone ever truly wish for tunneling and camping to be eliminated in a way that actually works.
At this point, it will not help our situation to incite further punishment for tunneling without some accompanying form of generator completion limiting. No, not at all, it would just be further weakening the killer's ability to combat the "gen rush," which in turn causes even more people to lose the desire to play killer because of the sharp increase in frustration.
Fast completion = Desperation Tactics (tunneling, camping, slugging)
I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about this or why there are so many fantastical attempts at rebuking it.
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*Generator being completed sound effect
*Another one
*Another one
F It Claudette is being hard tunneled
*Claudette messages u
"Get gud trash killer"
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Some do it because they want to have chance to win or just get kills. Happens usually 2-3 gen or less left.
Some do it because it's fastest/easiest way to win even if they could win other way as well. Tunneling in this case does not stop once 1 survivor is out they also tunnel next one.
Sometimes it's just happen because killer want specifically that one survivor out reason can be that he is high prestige or good looper. This can be seen as toxic tunneling.
There are different reason and it would still happen commonly even if gens were 200s. As long as tunneling remains the most viable stragedy it will continue happen no matter what. Before ds nerf it was actually worth to spread your hooks more as tunneling was actually punished and you were also rewarded as killer not doing it with BBQ bonus and old pop.
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Why don't they just link generator regression to not tunneling?
Spreading hooks around could give a bonus to current regression perks, working like CoB.
This really does not feel like a deep topic. It feels very simple, I'm convinced somewhere in the decision making chain someone is blocking common sense revisions.
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Sometimes yes but tunneling occurs often when still 5 gens left. It's tactic to win as fast/easily as possible. That tunneling should be specifically nerfed but when 2-3 gens pop in first chase it's understandable for killer to start tunneling/camping.
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So I'm going to talk about one of BHVR's previous games, Deathgarden: Bloodharvest (it failed pretty spectacularly, but had elements I loved). The game had a lot of similarities to DbD with Hunters instead of Killers and Runners/Scavengers instead of survivors. Hunters were more FPS, Scavs were more parkour.
Hunters goal was to down the scavs. Unlike current DbD though Hunters could auto execute the survivors, though they got more 'points' for not doing it and allowing scavs to get back up. Frequently Hunters executed the Scav and ignored the points (and if they didn't it was frequently an indication the Hunter was so good you were getting stomped in a totally different way).
*for anyway who played Deathgarden, yes it had multiple versions, but I think this was the version that saw the most play as it coincided with Steam's free weekend
My ultimate conclusion here is that the motivation for tunnelling occurs on a spectrum between a single-minded desire to winTo me a game is about both sides trying to win. I hope both I and my opponents play our best. I'm trying to win and hope the opponents are doing the same. I hate the feeling when I'm playing killer and I come across two survivors and I know one is on deathhook and I chase the other to be 'more fair'.
DbD, Deathgarden, BHVR, and some of the player base have always had an idea that there should be other elements in to the game: i.e. you are playing for overall points, some other win condition like hook states, etc. To me, and others, this is strange. In Deathgarden I would execute scavs and get the response of 'you're giving up so many points!' and my response was always 'I don't care'. You play a game to accomplish the ultimate goal and the joy is in clashing strategies/styles with opponents who are trying to prevent that.
I think the community's anger at Killer's who tunnel/camp is misplaced. Just like the anger at survivors who bring four spare parts, all medkits, etc. is in the wrong place. Players should pursue the best strategies, BHVR just allows strategies that are broken (SWF) or unfun (tunneling/camping). I think BHVR's history though shows that their thinking is different and they want to create a gamespace were multiple views of what a game is can be contained. Which given the game's success can't be said to be a failure, but it does create a lot of toxicity within the community.
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sounds like Claudette's problem
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99.9999999% of the times killers that tunnel also hit you on hook or nod, i don't take it personal if all it's more entertaining to me than holding m1 on gens.
I don't understand all this surprise in saying that people that tunnel are sadistic considering that they are impersonating characters with psychopathic behaviours and abominations to society
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IMO Decisive Strike was overnerfed. Survivors got basekit BT, with both BT and off the record extending the durations, but those effects don't stack with each other.
Back in the old days of early 2022, and going as far back as 2019 IIRC, if you tried to tunnel someone, you usually got the double whammy. Your first hit didn't down them because they were under BT, and your second hit did down them, but if you picked them up you got hit with DS and had to chase them down again. While this could only happen once, the threat of it, particularly given how long DS stuns you for, meant it was easier to chase literally anyone other than the just-unhooked survivor.
If you assume that many killers don't like to follow the survivor rulebook but also don't tunnel out of malice towards any specific survivors, the only reason that people tunnel is because it works as a strategy to win games (with almost any interpretation of what a win is). The haste buff and Off The Record do make it difficult, as waiting out BT isn't a reliable strategy like it used to be, but hitting a survivor twice with a mild 10-second haste buff is way easier than hitting a survivor twice and then hitting them a third time after they stun you for 5 seconds. Whereas before the DS nerf, the existence of it was enough that you don't even need to be using the perk since half the killers would assume you were running it anyway, and would avoid tunneling because of that.
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the current meta encourages it. perks like hyperfocus/stakeout, coh, and dh, and items like bnps and syringe and anti hemmorage make gens shorter, heals shorter, and chases longer. Every game the killer has to do the same long chases on the same unfun survivor sided maps, and it very often leads to a lose unless youre playing a meta killer with a meta build and/or tunneling. tunneling is encouraged because sure, you could go for the unhooker with 3 healthstates who hasnt been hooked, or you can go for the freshly unhooked survivor with 2 healthstates at most. Its a no brainer choice- you bring yourself closer to a kill, or you can let them go heal in 5 seconds and get on a gen with the other 2 survivors while you chase the unhooker for 3 healthstates
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Analysis?
Let's see ...
What were the options?
What options are left after the last changes in the game?
There you have it.
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"Not only does DBD need fair yet strong protections in place to limit or counterbalance blatant tunnelling that creates an anti-fun experience for survivors, but the game also needs to include meaningful incentives that provide alternatives to tunnelling"
I agree. Most people that want tunneling fixed though totally ignore that last bold portion which is crucial.
Ideally you'd want very strong gen slow down perks that only reward "fair" play so that there's enough incentive to play in that fair way instead of tunneling. Unfortunately the games balance team seems to be going in the opposite direction of that, hence the increase in tunneling.
Things like Pop, Ruin, Thana ect are the type of perks that we want to be extremely strong but are currently in the trash tier. These kinds of perks reward split pressuring the map but don't reward just standing at the hook and tunneling someone out.
Another issue contributing to this issue is map design. The majority of maps are way too big and way too safe.
Currently on most maps like 80% of the pallets are safe, meaning forced breaks. This is because the pallet down makes the loop so safe that it will require the survivor messing up a lot and even if you get the hit it's going to waste too much time. Ideally we'd want like 95% of pallets to be a 50/50 mind game when thrown so each sides have equal chance of winning it depending on their skill. Instead most pallets thrown currently are like a 70/30 for survivor.
Next is the map size. If you're on an m1 killer most maps are too large to properly pressure no matter how good you are. All maps should be the size of Coal Tower. For example, if you're like Myers or Pig on Borgo, goodluck. There's no way you can pressure a map this big against decent survivors, you literally lose too much time just holding w. There's isn't outplay here. You are forced to tunnel someone out to have a chance.
Last issue is self healing. You used to be able to apply map pressure better because your hits would slow the survivors down by getting them off gens to heal. This isn't the case since CoH was introduced. It takes you longer to get the hit than it does for them to self heal. So no ones getting off the gens to heal them and you aren't actually pressuring the map by spreading hits. So injures are essentially meaningless. This is heavily exacerbated as well by how overtuned med kits are.
TLDR: Multiple factors listed above are what make it so that firstly m1 killers are unable to pressure the map properly and secondly maps are so safe that chases take lengths of time that are unviable against good survivors if you want to win. Thus this is where all the tunneling comes from. It's also the same reason you see people stacking slow down perks. The tunneling is a symptom of poor game balance as killers don't feel they have a "fair" chance of winning as the survivors do if they play normally without tunneling regardless of their skill.
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I'd like to witness these magical soloq games (majority of matches in dbd) where gens are just popping off the rails. Usually i cant get my teammates on gens, let alone to rush them. Or they all group up on 1 gen without prove thyself which is very inefficient. I've played for awhile now (5k hours) and tunneling has always been a thing but IMO it got way worse because:
- DS was nerfed and is no longer meta, so killers know DS is barely in play.
- Basekit BT, regular BT & OTR are all countered by the killer hitting off hook.
- BBQ was nerfed so that it no loner incentives hooking every person.
I fear new survivor Renato Lyra's perk "Blood Rush" will become meta if it isnt changed and killers will counter it by tunneling so the survivor can't get healed to use it.
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Yup, these aren't the reality of my games either unless I'm matched with efficient team mates. And I always hear about these swfs packed to the gills with BNPs every game, when I literally put 1.8 million bloodpoints into my Ada yesterday and didn't get a single one in my bloodweb lol
Tunnelling will never ever go away. The devs could give killers every buff under the sun but one thing that can't be changed in this game is skill. A buffed up killer will still sometimes come face to face with higher skilled survivors who will outplay them. And they'll just revert back to tunnelling, "because it's needed at high skill play." It's just the way it goes.
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Well I seem to have typed up something lengthy that has disappeared...
But, I wanted to thank you all for your input, and wanted to highlight Blueberry's contribution for pulling something to my attention: Tunnelling can be employed to draw a game back to one's advantage, when faced with odds stacked against you (that you have no control over) like map size, pallet density, large numbers of safe loops, easily interconnected loops etc. And this is all the more pressing for m1 killers, for whom these disadvantages are more significant. I think this is very understandable as a motivation, after all I don't think we'd want to see only mobile killers be played (blight, nurse etc.)
The great thing about DBD and game design is nothing is locked in stone, things can change. So I thought it would be valuable to attempt to clearly outline what the problem of tunnelling is and why it happens, as I often see people put forward a reason, whilst I think we all hold a piece of a bigger picture.
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I have certainly experienced games like this, where the gens do fly, and only slow down once you have one person on the hook and another in chase. But I have also experienced games where I have ample time to work with, and rarely have to be in a rush.
I think it's important to note that players will have a wide variety of experiences. Skill/SBMM rating obviously plays a part, but there's definitely more to it. I'm in Australia, on the East Coast, and for many multiplayer games, we have a really small population (playing with 200 ping to West Coast US sucks). The time of day or night I play DBD greatly impacts the skill of survivors I face. From 5-9pm (abouts) weekdays and especially Thu, Fri and Sat, really strong survivors queue up in greater proportions, and you see (as killer) much more team play from survivors. Mindgaming is harder, loops drag on longer, normal tricks don't work, you have to get more devious. My hypothesis is that more serious/competitive players and groups get on, more SWFs, and maybe some strong players only play in groups? Not sure, just a hypothesis.
But if I queue up outside of this peak time, the survivor skill level generally goes down, from what I see as a killer. It's much easier to bait/mindgame survivors into prematurely vaulting the window or pallet of a loop, simpler tricks work, and you see more bad plays (a while ago I saw a whole string of really obvious 'I have dead-hard' plays).
And I know I've read multiple times people (surv and killer) talking about this as well, but some point out the opposite; that at peak times survivor skill on average is lower, and the more serious/better survivors are found off peak times. I'm not sure where these people are playing from, or what their peak times are, but it reinforces the notion that there is a wide range of experiences in DBD.
I have and regularly do see gens fly, but it's definitely not every game.
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Thanks for your input. You highlighted to me something that I had not considered; that not only can tunnelling present itself as a strong choice, but given the structure of some maps and the difficulty of applying pressure on these safe/large maps, tunnelling could be seen as the only option that some killers (m1 killers) have to keep up with the game. In this case, tunnelling would work by pulling the survivors away from advantageous and safe positions (safe loops, strong windows etc.) and into an area where the killer feels they can actually compete, creating macro control (gens) as well as having the normal pressure that tunnelling caries.
I also appreciate your point regarding healing and self-healing. Injuries are so swiftly and conveniently(?) healed that there is little point spending time to injure survivors without committing to a down.
With the solid input from others here, I'll attempt to recap on reasons why some killer players choose to tunnel (as their main game strategy in a trial):
1) As an option, it is almost always a reliable and efficient strategy, due to the huge swing in the game going from 4 to 3 survivors, as well as forcing 2 of your 4 objectives together near you, if you choose to stay near or return to the hook.
2) There can often during a trial be moments where the killer has little information to work with (where is everyone? which gens are close to being done?). When these moments overlap with the killer hooking a survivor, hook camping or returning to the hook upon the notification can present itself as a more attractive option in terms of information and reliability, because abandoning the hook to maybe find a survivor is seen as less reliable than knowing one survivor has to come and unhook another survivor. This 'poverty of information/momentum' is closely related to, but not the same thing as, the reliability of tunnelling as a strategy. Also here think of the change to BBQ & Chili.
3) The game currently has little to reward killers for actively spreading hooks, as a counterbalancing mechanism against the strength/reliability of tunnelling. Perks like No Way Out, Grim Embrace, SH: Monstrous Shrine, Hex: Devour Hope come to mind as rewarding killers for splitting their pressure, but not are all equal or would be considered strong. More perks or mechanics using the No Way out/Grim Embrace token system could be an option?
On top of this for 3), injures count for very little given the state of healing, which has an effect on the strength/viability of spreading pressure.
4) My understanding of Blueberry's contribution here: Tunnelling can let killers pull the game back in their favour when the odds are stacked against them. When killers assess that they are in an unfavourable position due to map size, loop/window/pallet distribution, the availability of zero-risk/safe loops, connected loops, and the strength of the selected killer character (e.g., m1 killer), tunnelling can force the survivors' hands and mitigate the disadvantages the killer faces. I think it's very important to consider here that these are disadvantages outside of our control. No survivor wants to see huge deadzones spawned in, no killer wants to see multiple strong loops easily connected together. Also most survivors and killers want to experience a diverse range of killers, including m1.
Conclusion:
Assuming the above 4 hold some insight, these could be considered as why tunnelling happens. And I hope now that, having tried to clearly outline the problem, solutions can be properly and carefully worked towards.
I basically created this post because I saw many people putting forth different reasons for why tunneling happens, and I felt like they all held one piece of a bigger picture. And I'm glad I did, because now my piece of the picture has been combined with some of the good input here (esp. Blueberry) and I feel like we are together building a greater understanding.
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I'm posting this before reading any answers, so please don't hate me :x
Answer for tunneling is simple - to win a trial. But this one quote is important:
"There is nothing wrong with this attraction towards a swift elimination; we cannot try to shame someone for trying to win or influence the trial! Rather, it is the designers’/developers’ responsibility to ensure that this path to elimination is fun and involves strong player interaction, or more likely that this path is slowed and controlled through design and balance to reduce and contain its negative impacts on a fun player experience."
It's behavior who should understand this, and implement mechanics that reduce unfun interaction, and at the same time make game fun for those who liked it for aby reason other than this being most optimal way to play.
Yet.
I don't think that tunneling is as bad as some people say.
For lot of survs chases are most thrilling and most fun interactions in game, even if they loose and are eliminated early (tho this can loose the game for the rest survs, who does not feel the same way).
Much bigger problem here is camping which make three things:
- As with tunneling - shortened the game for one surv, and eliminates it from the game early.
- Removes ANY interactions with killer.
- Makes hanging survivor being bored af for some time. Disconnecting when camped can help with this, but this screw other survs, and dc penalty is longer than waiting for Entity to consume me.
And removing camping would be also a thing that would reduce tunneling for some killers.
And solution is simple - make hooked survs being randomly transported to another hook while at the same time remove killer ability to see hooked survivor (unless they carry another one to know where to go), and remove loud notification over unhook.
But
The beat way to remove tunneling is to make survivors being progressively faster in doing gens depending on time and how mamy survs have Bern sacrificed.
For example. For every survivor killed before 9min in a game, all remaining survivors get +50% gen repair speed, for a max of +150% for sole survivor.
This would make killers being discourage of removing anyone from the game before first 9min.
This would require some balancing on the survivors side for example - for every gen done before 9min, survs suffer from -15% gen repair speed for every repaired generator, for max of -60% on the last gen. This debuff is applyed on top of aby other gen repair speed modifer do that it will never reach -100% and will be significant even with other bonusses.
Edit:
Im gonna share my recent experience for some though.
I player the Nurse, tho it was long time since i played her last time (its worth noticing).
In the surv team there was 3 claudettes and Meg. Meg was quite good with loops (especially that i had to re-learn blinking), and one claudettes was hiding extremally good.
I could easly kill two other claudettes but i did not wated to tunnel, i wanted just to chill and mess around. If i wanted to win i would kill those claudettes, spend some time over the Meg, maybe camping, and then close the hatch, forcing last Claudette to go out. But i did't wanted that. I wanted to hook everyone at least once, best was doing 8 hooks, and then mess around one surv just to play.
Yet i hooked one claudette 2 times because i wronged her with another Claudette. I noticed in my mind that 3rd Claudette on HUD was hooked two times, and when i downed her next time (2 times) i left her.
I decided to find Meg i spend some time chasing her, and was comminted for reasons i said above.
After hooking her i was going to find lasy Claudette, but found this "3rd Claudette", then last gen popped up. I downed another Claudette that was once on a hook (she had different outfit), and brought her to the gate, then opened the gate and allow her to crawl out.
But at the end, on chat, Meg wrote: "ez. Thx for tutorial". And as far as she really done loops good. I could win this by just tunneling.
I believe some tunneling and camping are made by suche toxic texts.
Post edited by Archael on0 -
I agree on camping being a much bigger issue. Tunneling can feel oppressive, but you at least get to play the game.
As for your solution I see four potential issues
1: Theming - maybe not a concern for us, but probably a reason BHVR wouldn't do it. Would seem very weird without a good explanation to be bounced around the map.
2: When survivors lead killers far away from their teammates, there is a trade off. On one hand the killer is now far away from everyone else, but when caught so is the survivor. This would mean a survivor might pop all the way back from where he started and could jump right back on a gen/get healed.
3: How would you handle basement?
4: Would need new perks likely to replace the killer perks that reward getting away from hook. Also probably do away with the perks that increase time on hook, not that those are really useful outside of a SWF anyway.
Potential issues aside, I'd gladly try your idea.
On the tunneling suggestions
1: I feel like 9 mins is excessive or your games are going a lot longer than mine. 5 would be more reasonable.
2: I don't think time would be the best way to go if that was the goal. You could say that a killer needs five total hooks before eliminating someone, or your suggested penalty kicks in.
3: I think the reason not do this though is that it would lead to people being left to die on 2nd hook/sacrifice. Right now if you see someone dying on hook getting to them is the priority (barring you being about to finish the last gen). Would sacrificing a 4th person for a 50% benefit be wise? Probably not. Would it be wise if the survivor was on the other side of the map? I could see it.
-maybe you get around this idea by only having the penalty kick in if the survivor is eliminated via a third hook state death.
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