The current state of tunneling

Spreading hooks dosn't take that long to do what the main issue why no one does is that it's not worth doing...hence why tunneling and camping became so big.

I'm seeing them in around 60% of my Killer games.

More BP, better emblem score, Pips if you're concerned about pushing up seasonal rank.

Though the biggest reward is more overall fun and less need to play in hyper optimal ways that often times don't even actually work for the vast majority of people who use them as their skill level isn't actually high enough to extract maximum value.

Making it easier for killers to kill survivors has a lot benefits and conversely if we didn't totally center the game on drawn out hook sacrifices then we could actually remove a great deal of strength from hyper optimal non interactive strategies on both sides and just focus on making the just purely fun to play. This would also have the knock on effect of making people who want to just grief others weirdly enough have to play normal games because they would no longer have benefit of weird game design to back up their jerk playstyle.

So its just about not losing, which is...getting kill?

The reward for getting kill is the feeling of winning? Then why would you like the game to make hooks give you the feeling to win (reward)?

I mean, you can either 4hooks 4K or 12hooks 4K, as long as it 4K, hooks dont matter.

This thread is about tunneling, survivors generally don't like that. So what i'm saying is, the devs should make it so that killers are encouraged to spread pressure around, meaning they don't have to tunnel someone out to win. Simultaneously, tunneling should be nerfed even further than it is now. Thus making it so these killers can be rewarded for spreading pressure, and punished for tunneling. Then the survivors will have a better time.

The problem with this game is that the most effective way for killers to win, is also the most boring to play against. Similarly, the most effective way for survivors to win, is also the most boring for killers to play against. I'm saying the game should not encourage the most boring way to play the game in order to win, and we should instead be encouraging both sides to play in more fun and interesting ways that will also lead to winning.

I personally would change this. I'm not sure if it would work fully, but it would need to be tested on similar to how they did the basekit unbreakable. But i believe the following change would fix the issue of both tunneling AND camping in one fell swoop. I have another idea as well that would work just as well if they don't want to do this.

OPTION 1:

• Remove the ability to intentionally unalive yourself on the hook and 4%, rework luck as a mechanic, or remove it and rework the perks/items that deal with it, deliverance can stay as is, as it isn't a luck or random RNG based mechanic, it might need to get nerfed a bit with the next changes though, but we'll see.
• Survivors now share 4 hook states, and get 2 individual hook states.
• This means that if you hook survivor 1, you get 1 hook. But if you hook survivor 1 again, you get a second hook, but that survivor isn't closer to being out of the game.
• In order to remove a survivor from the game, you'll have to do 6 hooks before it can happen.
• Hook state timer stay the same, the shared hooks don't have the 2nd stage mechanic, but the survivor's own hook state does.
• Deliverance probably needs to be changed to only being usable once per trial.

This would completely destroy camping, because in order to camp that survivor out of the game, you'd need to wait for 6 hook states, which takes 6 minutes, as opposed to waiting only 3, which takes 3 minutes. During that 6 minute window, the other 3 survivors would easily complete 5 gens, open the gates, and leave, or if they wanted to, try and do a save on the hooked survivor.

This also completely destroys tunneling, because if you are tunneling the same guy off the hook over and over again, you'll still have to down and hook him 6 times. At minimum, each of these chases is going to take you a solid 15-20 seconds because of the basekit BT. Add in the time it takes to pick them up, walk to a hook, the hook animation. And you are looking at 30 seconds+ per tunneled hook. Again, this is going to take you a solid 3 minutes in order to tunnel even the worst players out of the game.

Additionally, since hook states are shared, the survivors are less pressured to try and go for the unhook right away. So the combined mechanic tunneling and camping/proxy camping, because in order to hard tunnel you generally have to at least proxy camp. This becomes highly diminished as well.

Survivors also now are more of a team rather than single entities who happen to be working together. You'll want to help your teammates out more because some hooks are shared. This also makes it so you still get 2 individual hook states. Meaning if someone on your team is really bad, and they go down super quick, you aren't heavily punished for it, you'll simply lose 1 of your 3 chances, but you still get 2 of your own chances.

This also nerfs camping in a way that isn't as complicated and convoluted the same way that their proposed future mechanic is. This is simple and easy to understand, rather than having to figure out how far something is, or adding some kind of extra bar/mechanic that complicates the game.

OPTION 2:

If they just want to address tunneling, and then address camping as a separate issue, they could do something like this instead.

• Remove basekit BT (just hold on a minute)
• Create a new mechanic called Ethereal (or w/e, will explain shortly what it does)
• When a survivor is unhooked, they gain the "Ethereal" status effect.
• The Ethereal status effect does the following:
  • The survivor with ethereal is "phased out" think like spirit's power.
  • They cannot be seen
  • They cannot be heard
  • They make no scratch marks
  • They have no collision
  • They move at 150% movement speed.
  • They see the aura of all other survivors
  • All other survivors see their aura (probably make it a special color that isn't just yellow, like white or something)
  • They probably have some kind of screen effect that makes them look like a ghost, and the screen is all grayscaleish or something
  • Lasts for 30 seconds and CANNOT be cancelled early.
  • During this time you cannot do any action.
  • Other survivors CAN heal you.
  • You cannot heal other survivors or yourself
  • You cannot repair gens
  • You cannot do totems
  • etc.

Generally what this means is, when you get unhooked, you get put on "time out" but during this timeout, you should be able to run to any part of the map that you want, the killer won't know where you went, and you can see your team. The effect lasts 30 seconds, to discourage the tunneling, and give plenty of time to get to safety, wherever that me be. Additionally, because you are on "time out" the killer knows you can't be on gens, or otherwise doing something useful. So for 30 seconds, they don't have to worry about you. This encourages them to spread pressure, because tunneling you will be very hard, and they know that they slowed the gens down by at least 25% for the next 30 seconds.

Generally when you are unhooked, your goal will be to run away from wherever the killer is, and to a teammate that the killer is not going for, so that they can heal you. Additionally you can see the aura of teammates, and they can see you, so that they know that you are coming to them, and they know they should play it a bit safe so they can heal you.

30 seconds is plenty of time to get to safety and prevent the tunneling.

This doesn't do much for facecamping, but it will nerf proxy camping because proxy camping usually is more a proxy camp+tunnel rather than just a hard proxy camp.

With either of these mechanics, heavy testing will need to be done likely to rebalance the game, perhaps by changing gen repair speeds again, or tweaking killer basekit numbers again. But you get the general idea. Remove tunneling and camping as an option so it isn't even possible and then rebalance the game around that so that killers like trapper can actually stand a chance.

Also survivor salt is more bearable then the absolute gloating and blown-up egos that you have to deal with in basically any game that you lose big; "ggezzzzz, looser!", "uwahh baby killer. Go and uninstall the game. Snicker". Heck, even the survivor who barely escapes through hatch will just roll a die and on an odd outcome will try to convince you that you actually lost the game, because they looped you twice at this and that loop and you eventually couldn't kill them.

In todays day and age you can't 12 hook anymore, unless the MMR system entirely broke down and fed you absolute baby survivors. But in the same vein, why do survivors, who dominated the game and finished all 5 gens in 5mins need to swarm the hook and escort their friend to the exit gates while t-bagging and trading hits with the killer? Why can't they just leave and have the killer their measly 1K; do they need that 4E THAT badly?

So its about the game should be easier for 4K?

If you're a decent killer, you should only win against a team that worse than you, or a decent team like you but try less hard. If the decent team try as hard as you, they're deserved to have 2 escape.

People keep saying "try to 4K against a good team". Come on, a good team with 0 escape sound more wrong than a good killer with 2K.

The only thing I can think of is to give tunneling no benefit. No matter if you 8 hooks before kill or tunneling one out early, the chance to get kills dont change. Which is 4 survivors should be heavily nerfed, while 3 survivors heavily buffed. Aim for 8 hooks before kill to keep debuff on survivors.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

This thread is about tunneling. Survivors do not like to be tunneled. If you spend 30 seconds browsing this forum that will become obvious. I'm saying that tunneling should not be possible and should be removed from the game because it is boring for the survivors to be tunneled, and camped for that matter. And the game should be balanced around winning being about getting lots of hooks, not getting lots of kills, because then the game would be more fun for everyone involved.

I understand what you’re talking about is hard tunnelling at 5 gens which is something that is a jerk move. I do however think the game is clearly not designed for you to chase and hook every survivor…equally. Spreading hooks around too much has proven time and again to be a losing strategy when up against even decent survivors, let alone genuinely good ones. Most fair killers (including streamers whose games you can see) will always prioritise 1/2 survivors over the others and the general advice is to try and eliminate someone at about 5/6 hooks. Some people would call that unfun gameplay. Hell, I’ve even seen people say swapping between two targets is “stealth tunnelling”.

Would the game be more fun if killers could commit to giving everyone a good amount of chase time and two hook every survivor before then eliminating them? Probably. But when you compare how long it takes to two hook everyone vs how long gens take you realise why that’s not feasible in most games.

Theres a reason most people agree that tunnelling is sometimes necessary and is even accepted at certain parts of the game. Tunnelling at 5/4 gens is always awful and I’m sure the devs don’t want it. But killer’s having the agency to tunnel if they think it’s necessary is clearly part of the game’s design. There are deterrents yes, but nothing to outright stop it.

Killers will tunnel no matter the buff. Its really this..

I made this exact argument / comment in another thread. Unfortunately, the game is being balanced around kills and escapes which means achieving the most efficient way to do it which is also the most unfun. Gone are the fun days and it's just win. No matter the cost at the expense of the other side's enjoyment. We all want to play the game to have fun but it's stopped being fun and it turned into who can sweat harder.

It's great there's an anti camping mechanic coming but the tunneling will get worse.

We must have a different definition of tunneling. If your plan is to have someone out by 5/6 hooks then go for it. Every instance I’ve seen has ppl doing nothing but antagonizing one survivor until they’re dead even if they never hook another survivor once before that. I’ve seen some matches when during chases killers won’t even hit other survivors that get in the way unless they absolutely have to such as if a survivor is bodyblocking them. If it’s endgame or 3 or more gens are done and you’re feeling the pressure I think that’s the only time focusing on one survivor can become strategic. But if you’re in a game with me be prepared because if I see someon being tunneled I’ll do everything I can to get in your way.

The amount of actual tunneling is very exaggerated on this forum, no one is going weeks with every game being a tunneling killer, but sure being tunneled isnt fun sure. However its a pretty silly expectation for killers to not be allowed to get someone twice in a row. Im not interested or capable to mathematically keep track of each surv skin and hook number to ignore someone who ran in front of me or made a bad move just because i hooked them a minute or 2 ago. Why should I?

I dont ever intentionally tunnel except for proficient flashlighters or people with a skill level thats dangerous to me, but i also just go for whatever target of opportunity is there. Unless the team sucks i dont care if you got hooked 2x in a row alkready, ill hook you again because time is a ticking and you are the one who ran into my view/at gen i went to inspect. Its not tunneling, its just an organic emergent situation that arrives on a map with 5 players.

and If i am able to get the same person out 2x in a row and not 1 gen is done then whether you like it or not, your team is either throwing or you arent very good at locating/doing gens.

But at the end of the day, a killer has roughly 5-7 mins to kill 4 survs and every time you decide to ignore someone you recently hooked to go find someone else is time lost and is not in the killers best interest to do if the goal is to win.

Just as survivors wont stop running to the safest loops or tiles that either make them untouchable to the particular killer/player or have a advantage in the situation. Its in the survivors best interest to do so if the goal is to win.