Tunneling at 5 gens

This is natural since they are competing seriously with each other. And we really need to talk about balance when we are willing to compete with each other. Therefore, tunnels and camps are both tactics, and even if they are weak on their own, they must be used in the fight to the top. This is because the survivor speeds up the gen due to its existence, and when the killer rushes in response, the hook area becomes thin.

Everything is causal, so missing any of them would be foolish in a competitive situation. And in reality, tunnels and camps are often only deterrents, and they rarely actually suppress survivors, at least among advanced players.

This is exactly it.

I don't really care if I'm the first survivor found or even if I get out alive. I just want to be able to play the video game and tunneling makes it impossible for a survivor to properly play the game.

If a killer decides to tunnel you for whatever reason there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about it. Your only hope is to basically burn all the map resources while the rest of the survivors finish 5 gens in what would amount to 3 chases. There aren't enough perks and pallets in the world to hold a killer off that long in most games.

I don't find a game with tunneling to be any less enjoyable to play than a game without it.

Put simply if the killer targets only one player then I've got extra time with which to complete the objective, I take advantage of that time. Most games involving early elimination or "tunneling" still result in plenty of interaction for myself with the killer towards the endgame. Sometimes more if the team have progressed the objective enough (3-4 gens). It permits me time to interfere with the killers attempts to hook the same person again and take some protection hits/aggro.

So the concept that it ruins the game does not hold true for all survivor players. In fact it barely holds true for those who complain when you dig under the surface a lil. Because they blame tunneling even when it isn't present.

Most of DBD isn't very interactive even when the killer doesn't "tunnel", but folks don't tend to complain about that. All they tend to see is tunneling. We've hit a point where "tunneling" has become a convenient excuse for not getting exactly the game that someone wants.

This is part of the "mentality" issue. You qualified "tunneling" as being one of two things, both malicious and/or personal in intent. Being eliminated early is not a personal slight in an elimination game, thinking it is… is the mentality issue.

Saying that a player is maliciously trying to ruin your or other's fun because they try and eliminate a player early in an elimination game is a terrible way to approach the game.

DBD isn't an outlier in this case it's just like every other online game. There are players who want particular gameplay and outcome and when they don't get it they project all their annoyance onto the opponent and/or teammates. You notice players who do this always use the same language to describe their play experience as miserable, their opponents as scummy etc.

I don't assume the motivation of a player who "tunnels", nor hold any hard feelings against someone who "tunnels" me out and neither should any player. Its just gameplay.

B is god awful. A sounds way better.

Well the game must be balanced at least somewhat otherwise people wouldn't play it. Imagine if every single game the killer won 100% of the time because it was balanced so heavily in favor of the killer, so you think it would be fun playing survivor? Probably not.

Now that you have answered the question, that we balance around "average" player. I will say i disagree, and its for one fundamental reason.

If we balance around the average player, then BY DEFINITION of balancing around the average player, there is something that, per the data, MUST be done. And that is to absolutely completely MASSIVELY buff The Nurse. Yes, the nurse. When looking at statistics from "the average player" nurse is always BY FAR the WORST killer in the game. As in, the absolute bottom of the list. This was only recently "slightly" not true, in that she was the second worst, per the data. But still FAR below, the 60% kill rate the devs balance for. In fact, her kill rate is usually in around 48-49%.

So, if we balance around the "average" player. What BUFFS do you propose they do to nurse to bring her "up to par" with some of the MUCH STRONGER killers such as, "THE PIG"?

Obviously i being somewhat tongue in cheek here, but you see my point. If you balance around the average player, we need to be nerfing killers like pig, sadako, and yes freddy some more. While we MASSIVELY buff killers like nurse and huntress. Also per the "average player" statistics, Skull merchant is the deadliest most powerful broken killer in DBD HISTORY.

Now, you can say "well nurse is the exception" but that isn't fair to the idea. If you think that "nurse is the exception" because she is "so hard to play" then you actually believe the game should be balanced around HIGH MMR players, and not average players. Unless of course your belief is that the game should actually be balanced around AVERAGE survivor players, but HIGH MMR killer players. Someone with those beliefs though, would clearly be severely biased towards survivors.

I’m cautiously optimistic that the DS change will somewhat help. I just worry it will lead to an uptake of killers reverting to slugging again. If a killer is determined to tunnel you out of the match, they’ll just persevere through the DS stun just like they did before.

That’s the reason why I do love running BT, worth it just to see scummy killers try to count and go for the down when tunnelling because they’ve counted to 10 instead of 20 ha.

I answered average as you only gave two options. My answer of not balancing for comp, but for fun, would be healthier. I appreciate the long post and explanations. Im sure itll help someone out.

I've already given up on that. I ate 3 DS in one game because 3 people wouldn't stop healing and bodyblocking with it. If that's any indication, then I take it, my worries that it will be used aggressively have come true already. Great. If this becomes the norm, then the tunneling might just intensify.

Ok, you balance for what is fun. How do you do that? Do you do it for what is fun for the majority of players? Again, if you do that, then you are balancing in favor of survivors because naturally there are more of them.

So you must actually balance the game in a "fun" way that is "fun" for both sides.

Do you think the current state of things is "fun" for either side?

Killers tunnel survivors

survivors rush gens

There shouldn't be a solution because it's not a problem, simple as

DBD used to have the stance that camping was a recognised strategy way back when. It was good when they did backtrack on it and introduced basekit Borrowed Time.

I do live in the hope that they will go back and take stock of the tunneling issue and find an effective way to tackle it. It would be good if there were some added categories to the post-match reporting system ‘tunnelling’ etc even if it wasn’t used for anything other than metrics. The game must know the killers that choose to consistently tunnel.

i’d love for the matchmaking to work like GTA, if you play in a detrimental way, you get put in the same sandbox with other detrimental players and you can ruin the game for each other and leave everyone else to enjoy the game.

My brother in Christ if your not actively chasing someone and the unhook happens returning to the hook is literally the only logical choice, you have two out of the four survivors with one injured. The problem with returning to the hook is 99% of the time the unhooked gets left out to dry while no hook healthy meg sprint burst away or claud hides in some bush and Dwight hides in a locker. This would not work if the unhooker makes themselves the primary target after an unhook and can actually loop.

We really should think about the fact it's literally impossible to tunnnel survivor out at 5 gens UNLESS survivors decide to unhook him

what even is this

A very good point. Smaller maps are great for M1 killers, but highly abusable by high mobility killers, or ranged killers, since pressuring the survivors gets exponentially easier the smaller the map gets. Hence why so many killers has favored small maps like Dead Dawg Saloon, due to it being easy to pressure, even as a basic M1 killer.

This is why you often see survivors bringing offerings like MacMillan, or Badham since some of those maps are the only "sizeable" ones left, especially after the reworks of Haddonfield, and Coldwind Farm, which used to be great survivor maps in the past

What.

Am I being trolled right now?

having fewer places to run hardly matters when hard tunneling, they can't go anywhere anyway

Ah sorry, I didn't understand that you weren't asked for explanation or anything, it's sometime hard to understand what others are trying to say

That is if tunneling does not play a major part in the kill rates. If tunneling leads to a significant drop in kill rates, something else will have to be done to pull it up again.

Buff Killers to be more oppressive in chase/reduce Survivor Counterplay? Remove resources on maps to make them more Killer sided? Introduce or buff more game stalling perks? Those would become the next thing to complain about after tunneling and slugging gets restricted.

An additional side effect of a reduction in Kill rates is a decrease in people who play Killer. This would lead to matchmaking becoming less strict cue more complaints of imbalanced matchups and even cosmetic sales would be slightly affected.

Devs have to consider all the possible backlog of additional work that would surface solely from "fixing tunneling" and look at their schedule and decide when to slot it in. Given their track record, it would be far easier and more profitable to just introduce more anti tunnel Survivor perks rather than a basekit overhaul that people are advocating for.

I've said this before to you and I'll say it again, you don't need to choose one or the other, balance decisions can be made with both groups in mind

I think that’s the problem as you say, either killers tunnel from the get-go at 5 gens or they start fair and spread hooks, then default to tunneling when the match isn’t going their way. Tunneling in any capacity pretty much always leads to a snowball effect and an easy win.

I think somehow the whole gameplay ethic needs to change. I think anyone who plays both killer and survivor, is fully aware how awful it is to be on the receiving side of tunnelling. Too many killers sweat so hard, I think the focus should change to hook counts rather than kills. So many seem to think it’s either I had a good match and got a 4K, or I had an abysmal match - there’s no inbetween with match outcomes as far as the bulk of killers are concerned.

with the reduction in map sizes, this has lead to a reduction in useful loops as well as map resources (pallets) you also have to consider that so many new killers have anti-loop / pallet abilities baked in. I think there’s on so much you can go with it.

I'm by no means an expert survivor, but I’m lucky to escape more than 20% of my matches nowadays (maybe I play too altruistically?) but I can consistently play killer with my BP boost build (Thrill of the Hunt, BBQ & Chili, Distressing) with no gen regression perks and get 12 hooks. I think the game just has a big learning curve for killers and there’s so many differences in how to play each one.

I think killers do rightly so get frustrated when gens ping, but I think they forget that kills aren’t everything. I’ve had so many killers disconnect in EGC, when there’s 5 BPs offerings on and they would’ve still got good points, but they just nope out of the match rather than try to improve or think of what they could’ve done differently. It must be the game / survivors that are the issue, not how they’ve played. I think that’s a lot of where the issues crop up. I know they have to appease both sides, but it does seem to tipped for in the killers favour.

again, this was proved during the Lights Out event. This was supposed to be the most level playing ground experience since the game’s inception. But pretty much all the killers did was tunnel still and sap all the fun from it.

First off, if someone is getting tunneled out of the game AT 5 GENS, then the team is going to lose anyway because they're clearly not gen effecient, because a tunneling killer nets you more than enough time to finish at least one gen.

Secondly, how can you even judge whether or not a killer is tunneling at the start of the match? If a survivor is getting chased at the start of the match and hasn't been recently unhooked, that's not tunneling, that's just a standard chase.

Lastly, It's not weird behavior. For some, it's an actual strategy to focus only 1 - 2 survivors.

You can and you should, but the devs don't, they balance for the average player and most people believe that is correct. I just create the choice in order to prove the point why its bad to balance only for the average player.

But what if hear me out, the killer brought: ANY GEN SLOWDOWN/BLOCKING PERK IN THE GAME

Still impossible because killers can't tunnel and activate slowdown/blocking perks efficiently at same time

Corrupt doesn't work because it doesn't block all gens and will be disabled anyway, pop doesn't work because you need to stop tunneling to activate it, same goes for DMS, eruption, literally any kick perks and a perk that requires pressure doesn't work while tunneling

So remaining perks would be PR, deadlock, surge, dying light, and merciless storm

Since dying light only activates up to 2 times at max, it's effect is pretty much nothing, surge and merciless storm is pure RNG so it's useless too, leaving only PR and deadlock, but since deadlock only activates after a gen done, it'll not work for "5 gen", leaving only PR, which can only activate once throughout entire tunneling procedure

Now what, three survivors having like 100 seconds + two chase + picking up/hooking, all while only getting -25% of PR once, it's already long enough to finish two generators, but then we can have all the anti-tunneling perks

It's quite obvious this is just a results of extreme skill gap between a killer and survivors, not even a balance issue or anything