tunneling without skill

Tunneling is never justified unless the survivor is being a dick on purpose, and it's not necessary. I've played against a truly skilled player.

Dude never once tunneled, and killed all of us before the second gen was completed.

Survivors can be douche bags, the unnecessary tbagging, and end game collapse antics, and the flashlight spamming just to flashlight.

But tunneling take no skill.

That's now how I've seen it in the movies. Usually there's only two remains by the end.

But sure - the indian board game Pachisi (better known as Ludo in this age) is likely more than three thousand years old, so tunneling is about as old as history. More modern examples would be Counter Strike, PUBG (or any Battle Royale), Fall Guys, Among Us. These are all games where a round doesn't end at the same time for all participants. I could list examples all day - I'm focusing on the most popular ones.

These days the game is a boring speedrun for both sides. Regardless of what BHVR says/believes, it's not a casual "party" game. They saw to the death of that concept with their bizarre perk reworks and lack of game upkeep. It's annoying to play, and can be almost impossible to get certain tomes done (particularly older ones), which I've started doing until something interesting happens with the game.

I ran out of current tomes to do so I dug into some older ones I never finished, and pulled out one of the "Stun a killer four times in a single trial". Years ago this was fairly easy, as even if you couldn't land a pallet stun you could always rely on Blast Mine/DS getting it done. Boil Over, if you're hard up.

With the gen kick meta having been killed off most killers don't even bother with gens anymore. Gen kick perks were nerfed so hard there's only a couple worth running, and you typically want to use a gen kick build if you're doing that (SMs were notorious for this). Now kicking a gen does so little that it's a waste of time vs hunting/chasing survivors for a down. To this day it still only gives a paltry 100 BPs for a kick, so there's no incentive at all to kick a gen unless it's almost done and there are only 1-2 gens left. Even then, running Jolt, Oppression, or Pain Resonance negates the need to kick most gens.

Most killers know when to respect pallets and tend to do so by default unless they're running Spirit Fury and Enduring to chew through pallets. Most trials I was able to get 1-2 stuns in, with a last-second third on a Midwich near the exit. Four was being a problem.

After about a week of trying I lucked out and found a laggy killer that I was able to feed three pallets to their face, then deliberately got hooked and burned DS on them for the fourth. They DC'd right after, which was entirely understandable as they were having a terrible match, but the credit stuck and I finally (thankfully) put that PoS tome entry to rest. I didn't even feel any joy or relief having finished it, such a bitter experience it gave me. Almost as bad as the tomes where you have to throw the match to complete.

It made me think about my own killer matches, and that it's all survivors burning gens and killers burning survivors asap. I only kick gens on my killers (in most cases) when I've already won and just killing some time. The trials only last a decent amount of time when one side is farming the other, or the last two survivors are hiding. In most of the trials where I was trying to do the stun tome, by the time I had built up enough repair time to use Blast Mine, two other gens were done or close to it from stacked toolboxes with BNPs. There was literally not enough time in a typical trial to get off more than two Blasts max, even if the killer wanted to kick the specific gen I had it on.

It's not even about having fun anymore. It's all about maxing efficiency, making your opponent's life/lives a living hell, then on to the next trial. I'm going to have to take a break coming up, because it's more fun to not play DBD (not even playing something else, just not playing DBD) anymore.

Tunneling is an easy way to win. Every killer can do it at any point in the match without needing any special perk/add on or higher game knowledge. It is easy to do, usually not punished and in most cases completely swings the momentum of the game. Countering tunneling on the other hand is hard. You need a considerable amount of skill to loop a tunneling killer long enough for it to be bad for them or have teammates than can communicate strategic body blocks. This stuff simply isn't happening in the average pub game, meaning that tunneling is an easy way to win against most pub survivors with no/minimal amount of skill required. So of course a lot of killers will do it. Many dbd players aren't actually looking for fun or balanced matches. They want to win as fast as possible with as little effort as possible.