dbd is at it's downfall || tunneling & matchmaking
Alltough they add new content regularly and the new chapter looks amazing, it didn't even took 5 matches for it to feel stale and boring again.
Why is that you may ask? Well let's look at the current situation. A new player join's dbd he get's maybe 5 starter games before mmr screws him over and sells him out to a killer with more experience then the whole team has. They get stomped into the ground and made fun of in the endgame chat.
I've seen it, I've even tested it with a new account. It's just so disgusting.
If that was your first impression of the game when you started you probably would've put it aside too. Eventually after 2 weeks you even forget about the game alltogether and never play it again. That's what happened to a lot of my friends when I tried to bring them into dbd. It wasn't even my presence that made the match mmr bad for new players. They played on their own more then with me but the experience was the same.
So dbd can attract new players but can't really keep them. This means a constant decrease of players over time.
Now onto the current situation for veteran players. I don't really know how we ended up here but currently I blame streamers partially for it. Popular players like Otz and others made a whole marketing strategy to sell tunneling as a strategy to the average person. Tunneling is normal in competitive dbd but has never been as present in normal dbd as it is today. It was so normalized that people don't even feel bad about it anymore when they made bad decisions the whole match and then "won back the game" by tunneling and camping. That is not what the entity wants according to lore.
People are proud of themself when they won a match against solo-q survivors by tunneling and camping. When has it come this far. It's just sad
So currently active players are beyond annoyed as they have to face killers tunneling at 5 gen's almost every game now. It's tiring, boring and draining. All killer feels the same because they are played the same way with almost similar builds.
So players take a break for a weak, come back to find out it's still the same, go on another break for a month, nothing changes, they are gone for years or even for good.
This game will have a rapid end if the matchmaking is not improved and tunneling is put to an end.
Comments
-
solo queue does feel pretty damn unfun most of the time. The game loop has gotten stale.
Killer finds survivor, downs Survivor, proceeds to tunnel them out becasue it's the easiest, most skilless way to win. BHVR is too scared to incorporate any meaningful anti-tunnel to Survivors, probably because they can't figure a way out to make it strong while keeping it fair.
I genuinely don't know how anybody new starts playing this game. My girlfriend has tried to learn but literally can't play without getting tunnelled out because she's the newest survivor on the team. They don't have to remove tunneling by any means, but I do think they should make it easier to counter.
For the record, tunneling at later stages in the game is completely different. Tunnelling a survivor out at 5 gens, however, is by far the most skillless way to play the game and get easy wins.
22 -
pls stop the double standard
if u work on a gen do u complete the gen only until u reached 33% or do u finish the gen up to 100%
tunneling is the same on the other side :)
its really that easy
16 -
The problem is that the killer can't afford a 12-hook game. If you distribute hooks even and be Mr. Nice guy, you will be absolutely clowned on
If they flat out make the survivor un-tunnelable, killer would be such an uphill battle it wouldn't be worth playing.
13 -
Why is this the argument for tunnelling these days.
How do you not see that this is a false equivalence.
33 -
The difference is how it makes that focused surv feel.
When an unhook happens, very often the killer immediately heads back, knowing there's two survs there and one is hurt. Should the killer now decide the unhooked surv is the exclusive target and are going back on the hook, in the end they are going back on the hook. The killer will eat through/wait out the base bt and any endurances, and run them into the ground.
Now this makes total sense tactically & strategically, as removing one surv turns the trial to a 3v1 and thereby so much easier. But the complaints stem from how this focusing feels, particularly to newer players, and absolutely sucks at 4-5 gens remaining. Pooched matchmaking makes this problem even worse.
It's the emotion of it that's hard to reconcile, and mainly why it's a very difficult riddle for the devs to solve and be anywhere near fair across the entire playerbase.
15 -
Because this is all that can be said. There is no real defending it unless its called for in the game. And the game beginning is when its apparently 'needed.'
Doing gens is not the same as tunneling out someone. This will be the most common argument. Imagine lol.
9 -
These solo q threads are endless lately. The DS buff better be magical 🥴
16 -
People on here won’t be happy unless it’s buffed to work after each unhook and stuns the killer for 10 seconds.
8 -
Well, back in its old form it was so prevalent and meta, that I actually respected it. I had a timer on my other screen and took notes when a survivor got unhooked, just in case they tried some aggressive DSing. And I had situations where I had two survivors downed and waited out 1min before I picked them up, just so that one wouldn't DS me and pick the other up, or had 1min to crawl around and maybe get hatch. It was a wild time.
Oh and one time I chased someone off hook, how had BMed me pretty hard. She jumped into a locker and I waited a full 60s before picking her up. Postgame revealed that she didn't have DS, I had essentially mindgamed myself, but DS was in full meta back then.
7 -
Hahaha that would definitely end tunneling
9 -
Hopefully it will be a good change, because it might be the only thing survivors will be getting until the anniversary event.
15 -
If you really want to mention tunneling, I'll mention an interesting story I experienced the other day.
I had a chance to watch two Youtube videos on the same day. One is a live 1on1 tournament in Japan, and the other is a video of Japanese people's impressions of playing DBD on Western servers.
First of all, I would like to introduce how do Western players play DBD, unlike Japanese players?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE3G_4kKxoQ
Since you probably don't understand Japanese, I'll give you a little explanation. Compared to Asians, Westerners play what they think is fun and are more proactive about light rescue and treatment. On the other hand, T-bags and Light clicks are used as greetings, and suicides and amputations are overwhelmingly common.
The reason is that they do it because they don't like it when they can't do what they want to do, or when they are forced to go into a tunnel or camp. However, it is not limited to this, and many people commit suicide or commit DC simply because they are hanged for the first time. Many people run away from situations they don't like, not just tunnels. It's true that he has a fun playstyle, but I feel like he's selfish and doesn't consider the inconvenience to those around them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFj4yx3hd-I
2nd is the live archive of the Japanese tournament.
This is a competition where both Survivors and Killers compete in a chase to determine who is superior and who is inferior on equal terms. Map luck is involved, but it's fair anyway.
All players are skilled at both Survivor and Killer, and some are better at one or the other. The audience is mostly survivors, but they're also people who understand the game.
I'll leave direct proof to another tournament, but they are serious about the game, and they enjoy it. And not one, not one, complains about the tunnels and camps. Do you think it's a lie? But it's true. There may be exceptions, but if you chant hate, he will be reprimanded. Both the viewers and the players. Because they understands the game and sees the perspective of both the killer and the survivor.
Of course, I am aware that the differences between the West and Asia are due to differences in playing styles and cultures. However, there are some cultures where tunnels and camps are accepted as tactics. No one would ridicule killers who do that as bad killers. No one would ridicule him as the struggle of a bad killer. It is a ritual performed only among novice survivors.
The last thing I would like to mention is that many Japanese people, upon seeing Western games where they neglect generation completion in order to rescue Light, think, ``It's obvious that Survivors can't beat Killer in this way. Without base kits, they can't play."
This includes differences in interpretation, so I won't go into much detail. However, Japanese people do not give up on winning until the end, so they do not commit suicide and experience many situations where they need to recover through self-care botany. And since both tunnels and camps can be conquered, there's no need to give up because of that.
In the West, people give up in tunnels or camps and commit DC or suicide, so there are few chances to recover, and Self-Care Botany is unpopular and is interpreted as a perk for beginners. This is why the evaluation of self-care is 180 degrees different. This is a big discovery for me.
14 -
It made me stop playing killer when I got into higher ranks and every survivor had it equipped along with BT, UB and DH. People like to down play its aggressive use and say it’s mainly for tunneling but in my experience, it was almost always weaponized.
The only time I ever thought about tunneling was when I was down to two gens and hardly had any hooks and even then, I’d go for the unhooker. It didn’t matter because the unhooked would go for the body block or do the nearly completed gen in my face just so they can force it. Don’t get me started on how I was constantly punished for not tunneling by having them use DS to escape after all gens were completed. I’m happy the added the conspicuous action caveat to it.
6 -
Let me know when you stop trying to appeal to emotions with cherry picking. The flaws of MMR affects both sides equally, a brand new killer player can be matched up against survivors with many hours over them and the chances of that happening is more because 4 survivors > 1 killer.
And as for the melodramatic rant about tunneling, it is a valid strategy and completely necessary in many situations. It is strategical, not emotional unlike your word choices and tone.
4 -
The amount of times I've heard that tunneling is "necessary" really takes a toll on my objectivity I cannot lie.
17 -
Among other reasons like gens aren't players, survivors might play like this if gens locked in progress and couldn't regress below certain break points like 33%, 67%.
You know, like how hook stages are permanent and can't be removed.
Just two of many ways these things aren't remotely equivalent.
15 -
Then why is it so easy for almost everyone I know to either 12 or 9 hook?
10 -
They're playing against bads because it's mathematically way out of the killer's favor to have a 12-hook game. That relies entirely on survivor incompetence.
10 -
Not really even most people at high MMR have done tests and without the comp rules they win 90% of their games.
5 -
What is "most people at high MMR" and what are the tests?
5 -
Most of the comp community and a large group of people did a test where they 12 hooked people and didn't tunnel or camp but ran strong add-ons and obviously they are in the top MMR bracket so they have good game sense and they all won at about 90-93% of the games.... It can also just be shown how killers go on hundreds of game win streaks without having to camp or tunnel. Even The top comp squads haven't even broken the 400 win streak mark as survivor.
4 -
Or a killer's skill expression.
3 -
As it should. If a killer doesn't like it? Target different survivors. Only those who tunnel whine about DS.
Side note, yes I know there are situations of DS not involving tunneling like you're chasing fewer ppl. Even then, the ones who complain are ones consistently getting DS, tunnelers.
5 -
Please inform me about what the right perks are because they seem to be all very easily counterable when it comes to tunneling. Also, you do realise killers will rotate to find the weak link and then tunnel them out, something we don't have control of since MMR is tragic? If you're tunneling survivors for a long time that's a skill issue on your part.
Tunneling is a flourishing issue and it's ruining experiences like the Lights Out modifier. Preaching skill issues whilst supporting a skill issue strategy is hypocritical lmao.
9 -
where
5 -
The current timing is a little short, but 10 seconds is too much.
As to complaints about DS, it depends on the timing of those complaints. A lot of survivors weaponized DS before conspicuous actions disabled it. It was entirely possible to be playing normally without tunneling and end up DS'd because the 60 second timer wasn't up, even though you'd already wrapped up a chase with someone else, hooked them, and found this person. 60 seconds is an extremely long time in a game like DBD.
0 -
There's a couple videos on it... I have to find them again but here's even a recent video of pro players playing against each other with no rules and survivors just get ran through. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v68-aGId0Bs&t=1854s ... The only tie the survivors got was because the map and it was still a tie. Also the point that you can go on hundreds plus kill streaks as killers even when the game was super survivor sided shows you can win with decent game sense and without having to tunnel and camp.
0 -
You completely made the point of why the game gets stale not everyone wants to play comp and have to sweat their balls off every match.
7 -
Please read carefully. Selfish suicides and DCs are giving up winnable matches. It is extremely bad behavior to think that you have lost the match and complain that your opponent is at fault when in fact you have not lost.
It doesn't mean sweating. Please do not surrender without permission. You are causing trouble for your own allies. "This game is a loss. I'm going to die." "Why? Even though we're about to turn things around?"
6 -
Well I don't play to win so whoever's on my team is going to have a bad time anyways I just go to have fun chases and get saves or funny plays. I really could care less about winning in this game it makes it boring who wants to just sit on a gen. In solo que its 1v1v1v1v1 so might as well just make the best out of it and enjoy and just expect to lose its not like this game is call of duty or and fps that really shows skill.
0 -
How would you feel if your fun was ruined by a friend's suicide or DC? In that case, you should not complain to anyone. It's your doppelgänger who's stealing your fun.
4 -
It happens to me almost 95% of my matches and I don't care because my point isn't to escape the trial its to have fun. I'm not complaining about tunneling and camping I think its fine. My point is it just shows you have little skill since its not needed to win. I haven't had my fun stolen in this game since I quit caring about escaping. My point is though that people find the path of least resistance because they sweat to much and try to min max everything which just kills the game. for them. You cant even see your elo or mmr so you will never truly know you are at high mmr as a survivor unless you play with sweaty swfs and go for escape streaks. Or if you play killer and camp and tunnel both imo very boring gameplay styles which lead to quick burn out and the reason most people come on these forums lol.
0 -
Not going to lie, I find the japanese community to have a much more positive attitude towards the game than other communities. The majority for the most part don't complain and whine when they get tunneled and acknowledge that they could have played better and lasted longer in chase.
Some twitch streamers from said community even have rules against flashlight clicking and t bagging the Killer in their community games. When viewer players do any of those, they immediately call out said person and ban them if required.
While I don't swf as much with japanese players these days, playing with them is always a positive experience
7 -
95% really?
If that's true, all of you aren't enjoying the game. Everyone just enjoys firing party crackers in other people's faces. It's childish.
5 -
Killers: "Lol stop getting clapped in 20 second chases bro"
Also killers when the suggestion of preventing massive dead zones and useless tiles in reworked maps is brought up: "You're not supposed to last more than 30 seconds in chase so you can't have strong tiles. And I still get a free hit after 30 seconds with BL because reasons"
6 -
That's good.
They need to see their solo-q player-base are not happy. So instead of excuses, they need to fix whatever problems they have. Ofcourse if they want to keep this game alive.
5 -
There is no such thing as tunneling gens. Just a terrible comparison
9 -
No, it should not. Removing all risk of early termination from the match completely changes the game. The whole point of playing survivor is to persevere against a more powerful opponent. Removing the killers choice would kill the game.
And no, not everyone who complains about DS is a tunneler, that’s just a generalization of people who don’t play killer much, if at all. Back when it was prominent, I’ve had it constantly weaponized against me when I had no intention of tunneling. It was also used to punish me for not tunneling and giving the survivors an easy game all so they can use it after the gens are done to t-bag at the exit gate.
9 -
How do you stop tunneling without making the survivor invulnerable? How do you pervent a survivor from abusing invulnerability?
3 -
Perhaps there could be some reward for killers if they alternate between survivors rather than tunneling just one or two in succession. An example could be if you hook 4 different survivors in a row you get a bonus to your next gen regression action, or all survivors suffer from exposed for a short time. They are just random ideas but you get the idea, if there is some incentive for killers to play different then maybe...
1 -
Tunnelling is a massive problem but it's been a massive issue for years so I don't see how it would suddenly cause the downfall of DBD. Everyone complains about tunnelling and most of them continue to play regardless.
1 -
I see.....
Adds OTR to Survivor's base kit and maintains it for 80 seconds regardless of actions. Instead, survivors with this effect activated will receive a 30% debuff on all actions.
During this time, it is better for the Sweaty Killer to leave the Survivor alone, so many Killers will remove them from their targets. If the survivor is still tunneled, it's just a traffic accident. The frequency will drop significantly.
This proposed adjustment is a win-win, buffing both Killers and Survivors.
2 -
The game is totally dying, because killers can kill survivors.
7 -
Still people defending tunneling without any reasoning in 2024. Sigh.
11 -
Thanks, I wanted to highlight that too. I'm not saying that everyone should get sweats about the game, I want All to fun the game itself and not deny the system of the game.
Putting aside the pros and cons of tunnels, DC and suicide for personal convenience are the "worst acts" for all players who fun DBD. Even if I am the only person in the world who keeps saying that, it must be true.
5 -
Tunneling is more prevalent, but make no mistake it was an issue that existed before Otz, Scott, [insert dbd content creator here] ever said anything about it. The onboarding for dbd is terrible, but it has always been pretty bad if you didn't start playing in 2016/2017.
0 -
Isn't the correct play from the survivor is to just increase the chase time for the next chase then? You have a free health state and do gens much slower. Why wouldn't you take that free health state and help the survivor that is in chase making the next down take longer. This delays downs and makes gens go faster since there is less interruption. Best way to slow gens down is forcing survivors off gens constantly because they need to unhook.
You then have the issue of OTR not working with BT, and if you change that then survivors can body block with BT and have OTR in their back pocket.
0 -
Why suvs cry for otr basekit?
just take it with u and u have still 3 perls for ur free choice
killers also habe to pick at least one gen regression perk…
maybe try to look on ur 4 perkslots like a portfolio and u can choose the focus of ur portfolio
u are afraid of tunneling? Take oft and ds
u wanna rush gens? Take proof and deja vu
u wanr chases? Wi dows and exhausten perks
why suvs always cry for basekit perks instead of just picking them into obe of their 4 slots???
3 -
My personal opinion is that I am familiar with both Killer and Survivor, and from that standpoint, I don't think there is a need for a base kit.
However, from this official forum and from what I have personally seen in Europe, America, and Western culture, tunneling is incredibly difficult for survivors, and it seems to be a way for killers to hide their poor skills. It's like being told that it's difficult for me to go to the toilet 100 meters away to relieve myself, but that's what every survivors says anyway.
Therefore, I just suggested a compromise. To be honest, if you follow this idea, you'll probably need 120 seconds and he'll need a 40% debuff. Survivors cannot distribute the number of hooks due to skill issues, so they will have to rely on the killer, so I think it is a good incentive for the killer to leave the survivors alone, who are useless in completing the generator.
1 -
That's not true at all tho. As a killer main, it's completely possible to get everyone to the last hook stage and still win. Makes for some close games.
4
