Tunneling Actually Explained.
This post is not complaining, moreso just explaining the mindsets for/against tunneling.
In any game, players will normally take a variety of different paths based on the effort and skill required and the reward; for games that have win conditions, this is, of course, winning instead of losing.
Strategies and tactics exists within a game to optimize the time, effort, and/or skill required to reach a reward. For Killer players specifically, the end goal is killing all Survivors, and reducing the game down to a 3v1 instead of a 4v1 reduces the effort needed to win.
Since it is a path of least resistance and ultimately requires less skill to get the same (if not better) results, players opt into this playstyle; none of this is to say that it takes "zero skill" but it takes less compared to keeping things a 4v1.
The inherent downside to tunneling is that being removed from the match early on can taint the experience as Survivor, which can lead to matches that feel unfair. Obviously everyone has their own sentiment on if tunneling is "fair" or not but any look on social media (and the forums) can easily tell you that the general populous dislikes being tunneled.
None of this is to drag anyone down of course. Since it is simply a game. I personally do not tunnel or camp, I care more about hitting cool clips and having fun and that's about it (other than Bloodpoints since Im still leveling up everything), I personally think there is just a massive gap in misunderstanding that comes from both sides.
But ultimately there are two sides to every coin, and tunneling is simply a result of the game's design, and the easiest way to decrease tunneling is provided new paths with less resistance to incentivize hooking unique Survivors and/or creating more resistance at existing paths to decentivize tunneling.
Comments
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This reasoning is yes partly correct, but not applicable to this game and especially to this community.
Many players would tunnel regardless, even at the cost of losing the game, just for the sheer fun of it.
And the devs are even partially trying to counter this, but the results are disappointing.
Over time the killers have become stronger and stronger, the maps less to their detriment, perks like PR, NWO, GE that require you to hook multiple survivors have been added, but also in general perks like Friends till the end that invite the killer to switch targets have not helped.
A killer would only stop tunnelling, and I'm not sure about this, if he had the certainty of being able to hook 12 times the survivors without the slightest effort, which is probably the direction in which it is going.
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Ultimately outliers WILL exist, I feel as if it would be redundant to put it since the "variety of paths" part leaves a lot of room for interpretation and nuance.
I put the "EASIEST WAY TO DECREASE TUNNELING" since it is not the most effective way to actually remove it. The only way to outright prevent tunneling is to remove it as a path, but I dont think that is the direction the developers are aiming for.
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This is a logical and well-thought-out take on tunneling, and I agree with everything you've said.
In regards to "new paths," I propose taking BBQ and Chili's old +25% BP bonus per hooked survivor and make it basekit. Basically, paying killers not to tunnel. I guarantee that killers will hunt for hooks on all four survivors like bloodhounds if they could get a 100% bonus on top of what they're already making this match.
Like you said, tunnelers are going to tunnel no matter what, but they will be outliers.
Edit: Edited for clarity.
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Any advanced player, survivor or killer, will have no problem tunneling or camping. Because it is recognized as a tactic and can be used weakly or counterattacked.
Even if there is no way to deal with it, the survivor will only die once. For a Survivor who plays decently, it's just a small misfortune in many matches.
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Arguably tunneling is only bad because survivors dont like getting removed from the trial before they finished whatever goals they set out to do. Yes, this includes salt because "they died".
I'm just gonna point out that "normal efficient gameplay" on the survivor side is essentially what they complain about when the killer does it.
But it's refreshing to see some take that doesnt vilify the actual act of tunneling or calls it skill less. It's normal chases that are chained closer together (ofc theres the first hook camping but thats not the topic).
Survivors always boast about "chases being the fun part" but these complaints shows that "winning chases and escape" is the real thing they want. ( /weeb Lol isnt that the character arc for darkshine in OPM? /weeb ). I think killers are just a little more honest with "just wanting to 4k".
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The Crux will always be this: a survivor on deathhook can just as efficiently hold M1 on a gen then a fresh one, and 4 survivors are too strong and efficient in slamming that last 2 gens that so often are left after the first or second chase.
Going after a fresh survivor at 2 gens left is literally against the killers best interests and shooting themselves in the foot by doing so. Yet tunneling is not fun, but gens fly so fast these days that the killer is most often backed against the wall. Either play hard and mean and win at 4 gens left, or drop down to 2 and then quickly 0 and lose big time. The games in the middle are more outliers.
Of course, the gen kick meta showed that some killers will always tunnel, no matter what, and this pressure led to both sides internalising playing as efficient as possible: for survivors those means splitting up and always pressuring multiple gens and for killers it means tunneling one or two survivors and possibly camping and forcing hook stages.
I always advocate for secondary Objectives, for survivors this used to be boons, now invocations could fit the bill, for killers we should reintroduce the old BBQ style BP bonus, but only increase the counter as long as all survivors are still alive. I am also mostly against base-kit perks, but I think that a mini BBQ, that only showed yet unhooked survivors, would peel killers from hooks and showed then opportunities.
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I was hopeful that the Mangled Rework could be changed to affected Survivors suffering a penalty to repair times until healed. This would incentivize Survivors to heal and encourage the Killers to go for more injures over focusing on just one Survivor.
Alternatively having a Survivor on death hook being unable to repair gens but have increased totem cleansing/heal/unhook speeds would serve to bring the gen efficiency that 4 Survivors (1 on Death hook) would have closer to that of 3 Survivors while still allowing the 4th Survivor on death hook to remain in the game and contribute. Killers would also be incentivized to have more Survivors on Death hook rather than getting one Survivor out ASAP.
An easier version to implement would be a basekit Dying Light (Hooks on different Survivors consecutively reduce gen speeds, consecutive hooks on the same Survivor increases gen speeds)
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As long as the devs are afraid to give an actual downside or risk to tunnelling, people will keep doing it because it's so easy to do and disproportionately effective considering how effortless tunnelling truly is
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Relatively low risk for the highest possible reward and it's a lot more effective than the alternative. Similar to how survivors don't go for chests or totems, killers often focus on one objective at a time to increase their chances of winning.
It doesn't feel great but I can't blame either side for trying to win. It's only natural.
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I mean opportunistic killing isn't really tunneling. It's just playing as intended.
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That idea for mangled might also justify it being on a timer again. Take the time to heal and get your repair speed back up, or just wait it out/power through it
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The main points I have seen for why many would play super efficient is bp and improving their grade. Winning is always going to come in for many. I know at least for me if I am multiple pips in on getting my next grade then I cannot risk that the survivors are not going to rush.
I like the point of adding something that improves gains from spreading hooks. The other add is to change scoring to ensure you can gain grades or at least less likely to lose pips.
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Yeah, I could say the same thing about survivors. That might be true for a select few individua players but that doesn't change the fact that killers lose 3 gens in 90 seconds and will tunnel the first person out immediately.
Neither killers nor survivors know how their opponent will play in a match until they see it. And if they play "nice" until their opponent doesn't, then they'll lose. This is why I stopped ignoring the first survivor I hooked. Having one guy on 2nd stage early allows me to play a lot more ruthless, if I have to and turn the match around as a result.
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Games are so fast paced these days that you literally can't drive slowly and then shift gears when things turn south, you either slam in hard mode from the start, or you are at the whim of your opponents.
And sometimes, after eating dirt for 3 games in a row, on their forth the killer might go "extra spicy" from the start and you might just sit at the receiving end and smh why someone would camp and tunnel at 5 gens, while MMR things "huh, that's strange. Better throw them a bully squad next to cool them off"
We always just see snapshots of the players dbd day.
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After multiple matches of playing as the “fair” killer and spreading hooks I have found one major trend. You should never spread hooks. Most survivors will rush gens no matter if you are playing sweaty or not. As it has been mentioned you don’t know what each group will do, but the majority will slam gens. So as killer unless you want very low bp gain and a depip it just is not in your best interest.
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We all know that losing 3 gen in the first chase it not the end of the game.
That's true but you're missing the point. The survivors have already completed more than 50% of their objective in the time it took you to get a single down. It's an uphill battle from that point onwards. Because you're only 1 bad chase away from losing.
This whole cycle of 1 survivor on hook, 1 going for the save and heal, another in chase and only 1 on gens is impossible to uphold. How long does it really take to go for the unhook and heal? 20 seconds or less. In that time the killer will probably just begin the next chase. It's really not hard to break this cycle for the survivors. It gets worse when survivors are actually decent in chase.
We know survivors will pound gens until they know what type of killer they get.
This is wrong. The second part implies that survivors stop rushing gens when they get a chill killer. But that is not the case. Survivors simply rush gens until the match is over no matter how their opponent plays. Survivors and killers alike want to win and therefore will use everything at their disposal to achieve that goal. Gen rushing happens even killers don't tunnel and tunneling happens even when survivors don't gen rush.
I play pretty chill for the most part. No slowdown perks and I typically avoid tunneling and camping. I still have matches that end in less than 5 minutes. Even when I play dream pallet Freddy with only 1 perk. Or is that still too sweaty?
These are the meta play styles. If you want to win, then your best chance is to play like that no matter how nice your opponent may be.
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Remember, folks, the Psychology degree is optional.
You can still queue up and have fun without one!
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In most my matches, I just play for fun, I really dont care about winning or losing as Killer/Survivor since even after 3K hours (and still being horrible at the game), I still see it as nothing more of a silly horror game to goof on in.
That being said, I do think there are balance aspects that can and should be talked about, and I wanted to tackle what tunneling is and why it is prevalent since I see so many posts talking about tunneling being an issue but never actually talking about why tunneling exists in the first place.
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I think it's a good post. Honestly, I think the devs should consider the psychological aspect more. In the days of BBQ and Chili giving the BP bonus quite a few players viewed hooking each survivor at least once as their personal win condition. This helped keep tunneling down. For Emblem based matchmaking you would depip if you didn't get enough hooks and wouldn't get Red One. This encouraged players to spread hooks. Ruin was really strong but, if you didn't chase survivors off gens, you got no value.
With the win condition just being kills and with lackluster incentives at best to not spread hooks there has been an increase in tunneling. As well, Killers need to spread pressure and, with how fast games are, tunneling is the fastest way to slow things down.
Of course some people will tunnel just because they want to but the majority of players will move in the direction the game mechanics favour. If tunneling is not encouraged and there are reasons to spread hooks DbD would be healthier. There's no problem with people playing to win; that's normal. The game mechanics just need to provide options that are better for both sides.
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I've said this in other posts about this topic and I will say it again here because it's relevant and I still believe could be a possible solution. Like you said in your post, I both agree and understand that tunneling is simply the easiest way for killers to win in this current state of the game, and it is unrealistic to expect killer mains not to play as easy/efficient as possible, just as it is unrealistic for killer mains to expect survivors not to primarily focus on gens.
I am a Solo Q survivor main, but when I've spoken with killer mains who actively tunnel and why they do it, majority of them do it simply because it's the best way to secure at least 1 kill, and to establish a great deal of pressure, as you stated a 3V1 is much easier to win than a 4V1. This pressure is typically blamed by the speed of gens. This is my idea, I think that tunneling should reflect gen speeds. For example, when a killer consecutively hooks 1 survivor , then generators get a repair speed buff. When a killer spreads hooks (as in doesn't hook the same survivor twice in a row), gens recieve a slow-down. This enables the killer to tunnel if they desire but it is not longer the most optimal way to play, and at the same incentivises killers for numerous hooks. This obviously in return, gives all 4 survivors a chance to play the game, and discourages playing selfishly, because if one of their teammates gets hooked- everyone suffers because gens are now more difficult to complete. Thoughts?
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