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Two basic questions around tunnelling
Recently a friend of mine started streaming DBD. We will occasionally duo together in survivor. She has TTV in her username and I can say anecdotally she definitely gets targeted more in games. Not always outright tunnelling, but it does happen fairly often that it led to me thinking about two issues/questions I’d like to pose the community.
Question 1- should the ability to hook the same survivor twice in a row, without any other survivor being hooked, be taken away from the killer? So you don’t have to go A-B-C-D-A in regards to hooking fairly, but you can’t just go A-A-A.
Question 2- Following on, should a survivor be able to be eliminated from the game without any other survivor being hooked or should some sort of minimum amount of hooks/other game state (number of gens done as an example) be required before a survivor is killed?
Now in the essence of transparency my friend is not the best player. So I’m aware one of the responses to these issues could be “if you don’t want to be tunnelled, git gud”. But there isn’t much incentive or opportunity to get better if you’re tunnelled out in a lot of your games. Also, I know putting TTV in your name (and being live) is like putting a target on your back, but for discussions sake let’s agree this doesn’t warrant being tunnelled.
My own thoughts are that I’ve always been wary of taking away a killer’s agency when it comes to managing hook states and kills. If you force a killer to hook in a certain way, killers could end up losing the game due to being forced to chase very good loopers whilst leaving the weaker ones alone- and weaker loopers can still do gens.
However, I am starting to lean towards the idea that a survivor should not be eliminated by being hooked three times in a row without any other survivors being hooked (or camped from hook one) at any point in the game. I know some people will say “but gens fly, sometimes you have to camp someone or eliminate them to get some momentum”, - I personally don’t agree with this- but I’m aware that I’m not as competitive as some other people when I play killer and that’s fine.
Now if this was made a thing, that a survivor couldn’t be eliminated up until a certain point, I know this would create other issues for the balance of the game. But could it be healthier to balance around such a thing? People have said in the past that killers have been incentivised either through perks or some nerfs on the survivor side to spread hooks but these changes still result in tunnelling. I would suggest that these incentives were never as rewarding as tunnelling so the solution is to remove the possibility of tunnelling entirely and then give incentives around that.
But I’m just spitballing here. I want to hear the community’s thoughts.
Comments
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I don't think tunneling is in itself bad manners, but I do think you shouldn't be able to yeet a player out of the game so fast. I think that some more anti-tunneling should be basekit.
I'd like to see 3s DS basekit and the perk being a bigger stun like 5 or 6 second. That would put a real damper on tunneling. Killers could still down the survivor if the occasion calls for it (survivors using it "agressively", whathever this may mean), it's still pressure on the team, but to slow down how fast you can hook the same survivor again.
I don't think tunneling is necessary to win most games, nor that it should be.
The players who mostly tunnel would need some time adapting, their mmr would need to lower to their overall skill level in response, and this could be accompanied by removing/reworking BNP, nerfing toolboxes and putting a cap on gen speed to prevent "tunneling gens" on the survivor side.
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I don't know..,...
Like.....why people would think take one player out of game in early state is a bad thing.
For killer it is the most effective way to win.
For solo players,they can just easily move to next game.
So the problem seems to happen only in SWF which player need to wait their teammates.
So the new question comes .
Should we really do some changes for SWF game experience?
Umm... I don't.....know.
Maybe......if the changes would not hurt other players?
I think giving reward for hooking different survivor might help?
Like giving debuff for those being hooked may help it? Let killer has no neeed to tunnel?
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Because what’s effective and what’s fun should be as close as possible to put the game in the best state it can be.
Being tunnelled sucks. The idea that solo players will continually shrug their shoulders and say “well onto the next one” rather than just stopping playing altogether is naive.
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These are good suggestions. Like I said in my OP removing a killers agency on who they can hook/killer makes me slightly uneasy, but basekit DS would at least give a player a fighting chance to maybe get healed if the killer does still down them. Too many killers can chew through the base kit BT right now, it does feel like there needs to be something else.
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Then why the killer's fun need to be ruined?
You think tunnel is suck?
4 gen being done in 5 minutes isn't either.
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to question 1 - no. it should not work like that.
to question 2 - if you're asking "should survivors die after being hooked 3 times in a row" my answer is yes, they should.
going away from the questions and discussing the meat of the issue:
"my friend self identifies as a TTV player and is bad at the game. How do I convince her it's worth the harassment?"
you don't. that's for her to decide. you're peer pressuring her to play a game if you try to make her when she isn't enjoying it. just be glad she's not playing F13 or the new texas chainsaw massacre game where you die as soon as jason or the family touches you.
The game shouldn't be changed for the sake of one person and if you ignore the argument of "skill" and "branding" then you're sticking your head in the sand to the entire issue.
if you want a solution to it then here's one - just for devils advocate. are you familiar with the dying state bar? it's referred to as bleeding out when you die this way. being on a hook has a similar bar called the hook progression bar.
combine the two and treat it as a death timer. when it empties you die. if you're on the ground the killer can mori you. if you're on the hook you're instantly sacrificed, but no longer does hooking reduce the bar by phases. it's just there to keep you from crawling around.
in this version of the game hooks don't matter. it's all about preserving your life by not sitting on hooks or laying on the ground. then you can no longer complain about being hooked three times back to back. instead you can only complain about how much it sucks to be bad at hiding.
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It’s a hard problem to fix without major gameplay overhauls. Realistically DS should be basekit with 3 seconds to discourage it as a strategy
It could also disable killer powers for 5-8 seconds so killers like blight and nurse can’t just ignore it completely
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I don’t disagree that gens flying sucks. The discussion and potential solution however needs to be more than “I tunnel because of Gen rush and that’s that”.
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You seem overly fixated on the example I used. I am clearly not suggesting the entire game be changed because of one person. If you don’t think the questions I posed have any merit or are worth discussing then fine.
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If you want to outright remove the ability the tunnel you'd need to buff killers a fair bit to compensate. The game simply isn't balanced around spreading out hooks, especially as your MMR rises.
You'd also need to make sure survivors couldn't abuse this mechanic. You couldn't just make survivors invincible until someone else gets hooked because the unhooked survivor will just repeatedly bodyblock.
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To both of your questions i can give a answer within one word: No
I don't know how good you both are, but with the new hud, the antigen-perks nerf and the rng of most maps the genspeed is already way to fast. If i play surv or killer, it is most of the time the same outcome: Killer gets first hook -> 1 - 3 gens are done or at least barely done.
Also i don't understand this complaining about tunneling. It is the objective to kill the survs as the killer. Why does a killer have to be nice and look for a new surv, getting a down on him and hokking him? So the survs can have the most fun? Sry but since when i have to think about something like that?
If i play CS:go and i notice someone who is weaker than the others and i can tell, where the person is going, i'll use this and get this person out for my own advantage.
If i play CoD and i am demolishing the enemy team, i won't stop, just because they could have less fun this game.
If i play Lol, i won't stop killing my enemy, just because he got ganked often and killed 15 times, not having a great game.
Do you see my point? Why do i have to care in Dbd, but in other games it is just normal to play for my own advantage.
Of course it can be annoying get tunneled out, i get tunneled out often as well, but i try at least to buy as much time as possible, so i am maybe the only one he is killing.
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I just want to repeat my last paragraph here because I know the post was fairly long winded:
“Now if this was made a thing, that a survivor couldn’t be eliminated up until a certain point, I know this would create other issues for the balance of the game. But could it be healthier to balance around such a thing? People have said in the past that killers have been incentivised either through perks or some nerfs on the survivor side to spread hooks but these changes still result in tunnelling. I would suggest that these incentives were never as rewarding as tunnelling so the solution is to remove the possibility of tunnelling entirely and then give incentives around that.”
I am fully aware that survivors should not just be made invincible for a prolonged period of time when they’re unhooked. And that anti-tunnelling gameplay changes would need to come with quite significant changes to the overall game which incentivise spreading hooks/chase and also possibly give buffs to killer in other areas (and finally some map changes).
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1: no. It would end up in a similar situation to older DS and unbreakable. Survivors would abuse the immunity and the killer would resort to slugs to keep them down.
2: no but admittedly this is a more biased reason. The killer should always be a threat to the survivors survival. While it would be nice in theory, we don't want the killer threat effectively dead till a certain point.
We think tunneling has become out of hand in recent months, but we agree with the above in that more anti tunneling should be incorporated instead of killers being restricted or straight up unable to do things.
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i originally had a line in my reply that said
"if you want me to elaborate then feel free to ask"
but i chose to remove it because i didn't think you'd care what my opinions are. To be honest your response (the one above) definitely continues that trend of expectations.
but on the off chance that you're actually wanting to know my opinion and not just looking for echo chamber supporters i'll share mine since you claimed that was an issue with my original response. however, since you also stated you weren't interested in my opinion of the example you provided (which confuses me to begin with. why provide an example if you don't want feedback) i'll err on the side of caution and pick apart your questions piece by piece as best i can while trying to not seem harsh. no promises. i talk and type in a very "matter of fact" way and i realize it's off putting to some. my apologies in advance.
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Question 1 asks for a safety net for survivors that are feeling as if they're being tunnelled by offloading the weight of the killer onto other players forcibly, but i have 2 problems with that.
for one it punishes players that are skilled at hiding and rewards players that are bad at running/avoiding chases while making players that are bad at hiding and good at chases even stronger. this is counter intuitive to a majority of the game's mechanics.
if the goal is to forcibly lock players into an a-b-c-d pattern of any kind then you're removing agency from the killer and enforcing a meta change to the point of only running perks like bbq and chili, lethal persuer, and similar things. because if you run across survivor A after hooking survivor A then you can't do anything. your hands are tied as a killer and so if that survivor heals back to full health and completes a generator or starts performing body blocking etc. there's literally zero high risk associated with those actions. it becomes entirely a net gain. like a fly buzzing around you while you're trying to work. camping hooks would have to be buffed to compensate because the killer currently struggles to defend a hook as is without a well timed interrupt grab. so instead of a survivor having to hide, sneak up, and pull a rescue while another survivor is on hook or a a bodyblock to bodyblock combo you get survivors hook farming because there's no reason not to if healthy. run up eat the hit and know you're only going to get hooked 1 time even if you go down. and if you get far enough away from a hook then the person you just saved can body block for you without fear until you're actually hooked. it's just purely bad design theory.
the second issue i have with it isnt necessarily gameplay oriented, but rather community oriented. mental fortitude is required to enjoy this game. players can easily succumb to the idea that they're being tunnelled simply by failing to perceive the world from the killer's perspective. this leads to a lot of players accusing killers of camping, tunnelling, cheating, stream sniping, etc. just because it's easier for some people to make an excuse rather than look at their own behavior to discover what they might have done to become "the weakest link". when a killer is making choices about who to target it's not always a simple choice, but sometimes it really just boils down to "this person is bad at chases and will waste pallets" or "this person has deadhard, this person has circle of healing, and this person has deliverance" or the obvious "this player is cocky and teabags at pallets". sometimes it even as simple as "this person is more likely to die"
which has nothing to do with harassment based tunnelling where a player specifically targets you every match because they know who you are. If you're playing poorly then you're going to get FIFO'd. That's how games work. this isn't salem or mafia where the group as a whole automatically decides to kill the same person every game. that's horrendous abuse of power and gameplay mechanics and quite frankly bullying, but in dead by daylight more often than not unless you're well known and constantly getting matched with the same people then you're not getting harassment tunnelled. you're getting picked off because you're bad at the game.
even with proper mmr balancing (which this game doesn't have) if you're choosing to play swf then all of that data goes right out the window. mmr isnt designed to balance team versus team outside of a tournament environment and even then does poorly inside of a tournament setting. the reason for this is because teams are static in tournaments. in a quick 1v1 it's easy to determine who is better over time. in a 5v5 though it's a lot harder simply due to how many variables are involved. when you remove consistent variability and consistently change members of the teams you in effect remove any form of static element that one can use to judge an individual player's value. and then of course there's the reality that some people play better with each other than others do. how would one even go about calculating that? "synergy rating?".
so it's not unusual to have a friend be better or worse than you and therefore experience being singled out as the weakest member of a team. this shouldn't be fixed. it's entirely normal for these types of games.
question 2 asks if minimum requirements should be expected before a player can be killed. this is purely a question of game design. friday the 13th the game is the obvious counter argument. in that game 7 counselors vs 1 jason. counselors could die by just being touched. simple as that. if you didnt have a pocket knife you died. even flares, guns, and baseball bats were temporary and required another player to save you. if you survived then either jason was bad or you were lucky enough to not be the 1 of the 7 he found. in dead by daylight the survivors are more powerful and fewer numbered. this means you as a survivor have to carry more of that weight individually to ensure a successful escape. in f13 it was almost a guarantee that someone would die, but the fact that it was 1:6 made it less likely it was going to be you every time. in dbd its 1:3. or a 25% chance. that's almost double the chance.
so you get health states and hook states to compensate. the argument is too based in opinion of what makes healthy game design, but the primary objective point to realize about this is that there are already requirements in place. it's find the survivor, down the survivor, carry the survivor, hook the survivor, repeat three times.
if you're simply asking for more steps to the process then that's basically pointless busywork that doesn't create entertainment value. it's just intentional hinderance for the sake of it. if that's truely the goal then a new health states system has to be created from the ground up.
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The problem with your proposal is it provides immunity to elimination.
So 3x players do gens and are safe from elimination. 4th survivor hides all game with no interaction with the killer.
Killer can't kill anyone without leaving the other survivors alone to do their objective and finding the hiding player. Kind of a bad idea.
Lets try and eliminate the problem people have with getting eliminated then...
So lets propose survivors respawn and win/loss is based on an endgame score. No one ever gets eliminated and the number points scored by hooks/time taken to escape dictates who wins by endgame score.
Game becomes dull and repetitive because the only thing interesting about DBD is avoiding the threat of elimination. The mechanics themselves are actually pretty dull without that threat. So also not a good idea.
The very thing that makes DBD interesting is the ever present threat of elimination. Anything that heavily attenuates that threat invariably dilutes the game experience.
So yes you may get targeted and eliminated early and that may be more prevalent if you have TTV in your name because people have a bad opinion of TTV's given the extremely bad behaviour of a lot of TTV's. I'm not justifying targeting another play but it is a reality of having TTV in your name.
Attenuating the core threat of the game so streamers feel better about playing is frankly a terrible idea for game health.
The only real solution to this is to put 1000's of hours into the game get really good at it and then be a quality player who can be an entertaining streamer. See online streaming like anything takes a ######### ton of effort to be a valuable endeavor beyond just some silly hobby.
Additionally given that streaming is open to basically anyone with a computer and a camera, being a streamer means you are just another Joe Blow in a sea of 10'000'000 other Joe Blows with a computer and a camera, no talent needed.
So to make streaming a worthwhile experience, given the costs that come with it, you need to input a heap of time and effort... and attenuating the core threat of the game to minimize that time and effort for the sake of streamers is a really bad idea game wise, no matter how good the intentions might be.
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-"Question 1- should the ability to hook the same survivor twice in a row, without any other survivor being hooked, be taken away from the killer? So you don’t have to go A-B-C-D-A in regards to hooking fairly, but you can’t just go A-A-A."
Are you aware that the killer's objective is longer than the survivor objective? In other words it's far easier to finish 5 generators before the killer has 6 hooks on 2 different players. Most people want the killer to do 2 hooks on everyone before there are 3 hooks on anyone. The problem is that in order to do this we would need to make generators longer and remove all the gen rush perks.
You can point to content creator XYZ and say well this person does not tunnel so what's the problem? I guarantee you if we get 5 content creators who can all play well on both killer and survivor you will find that the killer will regularly get stomped with 3-4 escapes.
Why does this happen? DBD is not a competitive game. As an example : Doctor has lesser maximum abilities than Nurse/Blight and the difference is massive but they are treated equally by the game. A more balanced system would say Doctor you kinda suck so you get +2 perks.
I have a Question for you :
What penalty do the survivors get if they finish a generator and there are no hooks? Do all generators immediately get blocked?
You didn't think that far ahead did you?
"should a survivor be able to be eliminated from the game without any other survivor being hooked or should some sort of minimum amount of hooks/other game state (number of gens done as an example) be required before a survivor is killed?"
I'll answer your questions in a way to make you realize that what you asked is not well thought out.
I'll stop tunneling survivors the second that the survivor team I play against must always get every generator to 33% progress before any generator can get to 66% progress. And before any generator can get to 99% progress all generators must reach 66% progress.
Since survivors are unwilling to abide by my unreasonable demands I will tunnel them out.
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There is a lot of issues with these statements. For clarity sake and not typing a manifesto in response all of those PVP games you mentioned, its a level playing field- you can just as easily die as kill someone.
That is not the case in DBD. Survivors can not simply just choose to tunnel and face/proxy camp because they're "LEGIT STRATEGIES" and not in the "POWER ROLE" and remove 1 player from the match for whatever reason they want, unlike killers. It's a blatant double standard and part of the issues withe the game that the devs have 0 interest in even addressing.
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No but survivors can choose to split up on gens spreading the pressure of their objective, they can choose to focus a particular gen down. They can leverage their goals optimally too.
Now people see less impact of this because when leveraging a survivor goal nobody is eliminated, but elimination and avoiding elimination are the core elements of the game.
The rigid rules for goal setting you are applying to the killer player would have to be applied to the survivor player also, so now gens are numbered 1-2-3-4-5 and you can only fix them in order. You can't start working on gen 2 if gen 1 isn't complete. Greatly limiting your ability to apply pressure toward your objective.
Elimination is part of the game, you may get eliminated early you may get eliminated late but it is the entire killer objective, you can't remove the ability to apply pressure via early elimination without drastically breaking the game.
If you feel elimination is somehow mean and not fair, then maybe DBD isn't the game for you because it is an elimination game and the killer player can use every legitimate tool in their arsenal to try and eliminate you, that's allowed, its their goal, just as you the survivor can use every tool in your own arsenal to complete the gens and avoid elimination.
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Funny thing, there is one version of DBD that the killer cannot tunnel a survivor out of the game and is greatly incentivized to hook each different player.
The board game.
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