The Prevalence of Tunnelling?

Tunneling is simply targeting a recently unhooked survivor within a certain time-frame.

This time-frame varies for every person you ask, but there are definitely solutions that encompass a large swath of problems because of tunneling.

Yes people will still complain, but this shouldn't be relevant because most players are rational.

The reason I state to stop bringing up killer players is because it should be a given that killer would have to be compensated for losing the best strategy for winning.

The truth of why tunneling hasn't been addressed yet is because bhvr knows their profits aren't in danger so they're taking their time coming up with a low-cost, low-effort solution to implement.

People are grossly overthinking the problem because of BHVR's radio silence on the topic making it seem more complex than it is.

You'd be surprised how many "unsolvable" issues would be fixed very fast if this game had a serious competitor.

The truth is, if you are killer playing against decent survivor(s) that know how to loop and prolonged chases as long as possible, and waste so much of the Killer's precious time in defending Generators; of course, the best play would be to go back to survivor A (or B also) again, as they proving themselves as the weak link of the survivor side of that match and see it as a golden opportunity to secure a easy kill and make the pace of the game much easier for the killer.

Obviously agaisnt SWF that are coordinating with each other and know how to protect each other with stack meta perks and experience to overcome the one killer; it is not easy to tunnel and win every single time. But for those rare moments in which the swfs make a blunders and a bunch of mistakes, and makes it easier for the killer to turn a 4v1, into a 3v1 then 2v1 and finally 1v1; by then, the killer is at his prime in strength. But survivors are only at the peak and overpowered state, when they take advantage of their 4v1 numbers advantage, stacking meta perks, and their ability to communicate and tell important information about the killer they are facing and what they are doing at all times.

Of course, alots of playerbase, especially survivors mains can make all kinds of biased statements and their definitions of tunnelling. It can be as stupid as "the killer went after me again" despite the fact that the Survivor intentionally ran up to the killer and bodyblock them from hitting their teammates that rescue them or their teammates went into "immersive mode" and that injured survivor is the only one running around in the open freely.

When I play killer most often, as soloQ survivors playing is miserable for me at times and I earned more BP this way; I usually do not resort to tunnelling unless the Survivors make it clear they want to be tunnelling and do some of the most ridiculous plays that end up flopping miserable and getting back on the hook as a result of their plunder. When I play killer, I am a opportunist that will take advantage of any mistakes the survivor makes. Not all the time, if I have specific challenges that doesn't require me to secure sacrifice and kills all the time or adept Achievements. But at the end of the day, I treat certain tunneling as killer's valuable strategy to put map pressure and changes the tides of the game side from survivors to killer if executed right. It is more often easier done in soloQ then swf, as soloQ lacks the information or even the equal experience to understand whom has been hooked once and twice and when it would be a good idea to take their place and trade hooks if necessary. If a player has Zero hooks and another teammates is on death hook when caught again, it would be wise to let the take their dying teammates place and be on the hook to protect them long enough to keep the generator repairs going.

It is also why I feel like basekit Borrowed Time Iis a stupid idea, as killers can simple hit the Survivors again after the protection or wait out the timer. If anything, if the devs truly care about tunneling; they could simply offer a limited time "No Hit/body Collison" protection to the unhooked survivor, so that the killer simple cannot harm the survivor at all, until they do any conspicuous actions. As well as maybe very limited time aura reading on the survivor that rescue the hook survivor, to encourage healthy hook exchanges. Maybe even a basekit killer Buff of some kind to encourage and reward killers for seeking different survivor and hooking them, like for Example basekit mini Pop goes the Weasel. Another quality of life improvement changes for soloQ, is important information to get the killer attention and engage in chase with them, while letting your teammates heal up and do objectives. Also a solid nerf for swfs and experience Survivors is map Rebalancing making sure maps offerings are completely scrap for favoring one side.

Genrushing doesn't happen, at all. This is coming from a 70% of the time killer player, I've seen real genrushing probably once ever, and it ended in a 3k. Gen rushing is ignoring healing, looping, or even unhooking to prioritize just doing gens instead. It's potentially the dumbest and worst strategy in the game, which is why nobody ever does it lol.

There were massive methodology flaws. First off the poll asked 'how often are you tunneled?', not someone tunneled in your match. That means Tunneling can actually occur up to 4 times more often than his numbers suggest if each Survivor is taking turns being a tunnel victim, or the exact number if somehow only the participant was the only person getting tunneled. Combined with what some people estimated to be ~25% tunnel rates (on themselves only), that means it theoretically can happen every match (25%*4=100%).

Plus for his testing he was far too lose with what he didn't count as tunneling. I remember watching a string of 10 games he did, and 2 of them most certainly included a tunneling Killer that he didn't count for one reason or another, and then counted the 1 that was the obvious Blight at 5-gens styled tunnel.

Finally some people distinguish tunneling into 2 sub-categories: "tunneling off-hook" and "tunneling out of the game". About half of his matches (out of the 10 or so I saw) had "tunneling off-hook", or hooking the Survivor before they had a chance to do a CA post-unhook. So if someone was saying "Killers are tunneling every other game" then that still is an accurate statement as well.

For an example, I answered his poll with 0-20% in 11pm to 6am category, but only because it asked 'how often are you tunneled?' I probably get tunneled 1/8 games (12.5%), but that is also shared with my team in being 4/8 all together. That means I have a more accurate tunnel rate of half my games being ruined because a Killer tunnels with the intent to have one Survivor be their first 3 hooks. That is likely heavily driven due to 'degen-hours', but I gotta say that VPN Killers from 8-timezones out are the larger driver of this behavior. It's like they already know they are doing the wrong thing (VPNing for lagvantage), and intend on taking every advantage they can. It is so bad that I am better served by waiting out a DC timer if a see a Killer with a red-bar. I don't do that, but the game shouldn't be so poorly designed that quitting is the only winning move (for your sanity).

wdym he explicitly stated he took into account whenever anyone got tunneled not just him to avoid the very thing you're accusing him of.

Did you actually watch the video?

No it's not. That's why you think you see tunneling more, you're considering something that's not tunneling tunneling.

Again 97% of those that got polled agreed with his definition of tunneling being explicitly going for only 1 person and no one else.

Well until you explain either why you're right against the majority or why I'm wrong you're argument as it stands is incorrect.

That's fine with me.

That's not tunneling though. Tunneling is explicitly going for the same survivor repeatedly as agreed on by the majority, further evident when polled, and that has been the agreed upon definition for a very long time also among the majority.

Especially considering the whole basis of the term was "tunnel vision". Which doesn't make sense if it's just happening to get chased soon after getting unhooked. How is that tunnel vision?

This is part of the problem. There's some players asserting this "new" definition trying to stretch what "tunneling" means to be a lot more broad than it is. Whether intentional or not.

It's not just getting unhooked and chased again soon after.

Furthermore there's so many things that can influence if that happens or not that it'd have no real value calling it out if that were the definition. You might just get unlucky or your team just failed to take aggro for you for example.

The point of the survey was not about whether or not people feel they or someone is getting tunneled, it was about finding patterns in region, team size, time played, etc, in the reports of tunneling.

There's plenty of urgency, because there is a survivor not doing gens slowing you down. Also, they still burn through the team's health states if they don't get them, getting the team closer to losing.

The second one, the point is that you give them a "timeout" so the killer gets more time by hooking them then they do by slugging them, or trying to tunnel someone.

I believe that was in reference to his own games, not the survey which notably only asked when you got tunneled and gave a fairly strict idea of what tunneling is.

Yes and the hypothetical other people that could be being tunneled that are not "themselves" would be taking the survey too.

I always enjoy a good massive length zarr post.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDSdD_RPCCk), which is that tunnelling is not really a problem and in his opinion not even a particularly good strategy. The former is debatable, the latter is outright untrue.

So I watched that video when it came out and I didn't think his opinion was that its not a particularly good strategy. I just rewatched the video and still don't think that is what he is saying.

You say in your post:

And finally and most crucially, he neglects here the entire part of what's so good about tunnelling to begin with: you create a 3v1 scenario that is skewed heavily in the killer's favour. 

And he agrees with this. At the end of the video he highlights how tunneling is the strongest strategy if it presents itself. I don't think he or really anyone denies that eliminating a survivor is the strongest thing that can happen for a killer.

And that's why I think your first main criticism of his video is a little off because I don't think you and he actually disagree. If you can eliminate a survivor while still maintaining pressure on the others, great, but a single minded approach to targeting one survivor and getting them out as quickly as possible is not the best strategy (more broadly, his points seems to be that killer's need to adjust their strategy over the course of the game).

but yeah, nobody said tunnelling means tunnelling the very first survivor you find.

I'd say that is what tunneling is, but we're all just making up words to describe behaviors.

To me tunneling is trying to eliminate one survivor as quickly as possible, basically ignoring everything else in the game. What you are describing seems like just normal gameplay.

"Tunnelling is so prevalent in comp because anti-tunnel perks are limited" - While that is certainly true, it precisely goes to show that tunnelling is the best strategy and that only changes if non-basekit things are in play to change this.

But if X is strong unless Y occurs, and Y does occur, then X is no longer strong.

That's pretty much the whole game, certain strategies are or are not strong depending on what the other side does (meta). As an example: if the meta strategy was to run prove thyself and triple up on gens, the value of pop and pain res would drop substantially.

Summary: I think you're defining tunneling differently than he does, and so broadly that it just melds into general gameplay. I agree with the last paragraph about issues with tunneling.

Cheers, thanks for reading and engaging with one of my entirely-too-wordy posts yet again.

And that's why I think your first main criticism of his video is a little off because I don't think you and he actually disagree.

I believe Scott has a much more limited idea as to when tunnelling is good, and isn't convinced that it is a great strategy in general. I'm not saying he is trying to suggest tunnelling is a bad strategy per se, but the rhetoric certainly seems to be that he would not recommend it. Me personally, if someone is struggling to get kills, the first thing I will tell them is to try tunnelling and see how much different the game instantly becomes. Even "dumb" tunnelling will make mediocre killer players succeed against average pub lobbies, and decent killer players dominate.

My primary concern with responding in the way that I did to the videos (and responding at all) is that I think even if I weren't convinced tunnelling is the best strategy, I would still hold it is powerful and problematic enough that if we need anything, it's content creators exaggerating its need to be addressed, not downplay it the way he speaks of it can.

At any rate, I think even if he were to agree that tunnelling is a particularly good strategy (or even the best strategy), most of my criticisms against the arguments made in the video hold. Even if we were to say tunnelling reduces the match to a micro battle against the tunnelled survivor and that is detrimental (neither of which I agree with), it is done with the express purpose of creating a scenario in which your macro skills will have an exponentially greater impact. Even if he knows how much of a foregone conclusion the 3v1 can be (which he does), he still neglects to really point to this and other strengths of tunnelling, even in the section literally entitled "pros and cons". The video is called "Is Tunneling The Best Killer Strategy?", but it fails to really deliver a discussion on this, mostly just one-sidedly highlighting his opinion that tunnelling is a bit overrated.

I obviously agree with the general argument about "smart tunnelling" being more optimal, I just think his particular portrayal of it is too limited and strays too far from the idea that if you want to win as consistently as possible you should try to tunnel as hard as you can because it's the best thing you could possibly do - unless things happen that change this. I. e. it's not that you should only go for a tunnel if so opportune or tunnel situations present themselves, you should proactively tunnel as hard as you can and only stray from this course if situations or conditions arise that make it less optimal, and only stray as far as those situations and condtions call for (e. g. if another survivor is bodyblocking for the tunnelled survivor, you should try to ignore them to the best of your ability and down the tunnel target instead of taking what may falsely be construed as a "free hit" on the bodyblocker - unless the bodyblocker shows themselves to be too much of a nuisance to ignore, meaning too good at blocking not to have to spend an unreasonable amount of time trying to get around them; and then after that, you should regularly still continue chasing after the tunnel target, not swap off, even if you think you may be able to down the bodyblocker (nor pick them up if they went down to bodyblock in the first place, for that matter)). Of course there are a million different situations all of which could call for slightly or significantly different decisions and routes of action, some more tunnelly others less, but fundamentally I think the orientation should be to get a survivor out of the match as quickly as possible, that's objectively optimal if you want to kill as many survivors as possible as consistently as possible.

It goes without saying however that that doesn't mean I think tunnelling is necessary to win, nor that there aren't other great strategies. In most pub matches, you can even just chase whoever you find, "hook it and book it" and still succeed more often than not; if you are good in chase you don't even have to really strategically think too much and make too many decisions macro-wise, just bring Pain Res and Grim Embrace and you will win most of the time if you are skilled at chasing. I myself tend to go out of my way not to tunnel because it makes matches too easy and I want more of a challenge, as well as provide an overall more engaging match. That is also something I can appreciate about Scott's desire to want to leverage his macro skills specifically in a 4v1 scenario as opposed to a 3v1, because in a 4v1 it is much more difficult to establish and maintain pressure on survivors, it is much more challenging and requires more skills and smarts, it's a welcome challenge if you aren't obsessed with "winning" as hard as possible.

To me tunneling is trying to eliminate one survivor as quickly as possible, basically ignoring everything else in the game. What you are describing seems like just normal gameplay.

The differences in definitions is of course a fair point, but I don't think this distinction really lends itself well to the argument he is trying to make. Not committing to a tunnel attempt on a survivor that is running circles around you from the get-go and instead trying to find an easier tunnel target is "common sense tunnelling" more so than "smart tunnelling". Plus it's still captured by the "trying to eliminate one survivor as quickly as possible" definition, insofar a survivor that is worse in chase can be expected to be tunnelled out more quickly, even if the first survivor you happen to find might not be a good tunnel target and it therefore requiring you to swap off. Tunnelling doesn't really necessitate rolling the dice here.

My definition of basic tunnelling by the way would be going for the survivor you hooked first, not found first.

But if X is strong unless Y occurs, and Y does occur, then X is no longer strong.

Well, multiple things. First of all, these tournament players he talked to may say that tunnelling would go way down without restrictions because everyone would be on anti-tunnelling perks, but whether that is actually true would remain to be seen. We have seen tournaments with low or no restrictions and everyone being on anti-tunnelling perks, and yet tunnelling was still completely common. Tunnelling is just so powerful and consistent that even tunnelling good players through anti-tunnel perks can be worth it, particularly of course on killers such as Nurse, Blight and Spirit. Next, his own argument can be used against him (even if I don't agree entirely with this argument), namely that the tournament environment is so completely different from the live environment that arguments that may hold in one don't translate well or at all to the other, and for the sake of the people he is mostly addressing and 99+% of players in general, that means if tunnelling is the best strategy in pubs, it's the best strategy for all intents and purposes. In tournaments, you have teams of 4 good survivor players you are going up against, that can not only hold their own in a chase and will lead chases away from active gens and so on, but also have the coordination to support a tunnelled (and camped, which often go hand-in-hand) survivor if so deemed beneficial. And you have coordinated builds, with as many anti-tunnelling (and anti-camping) tools in play as permitted, as well as the coordinated usage thereof. In pub matches, you are going against random groups of bad to mediocre-at-best players the vast majority of the time that not only die in 30 seconds in chase to a competent killer but regularly also lack coordination and have no real chance or clue how to efficiently play around a camp and tunnel, regularly throwing themselves at the killer, wasting tons of their time and throwing away health states, resources and lives in the process. And anti-tunnelling perks are still rather rare, even seeing 2-3 of them in a match is already a surprise. Not to mention that tunnelling these players through anti-tunnelling perks doesn't regularly pose much of a problem. And finally, as Scott himself points to, at most the optimal strategy without restrictions in tournaments would then shift to the next best thing, half-jokingly referred to as "tunnelling 2 survivors", meaning juggling hooks between them to still accumulate stages towards an early sacrifice but doing so in trying to circumvent anti-tunnel perks.

Above all I think that even definition differences and arguments about just how strong tunnelling is and whether it's the best strategy aside, we (and he) would agree that there are problems with it and that addressing and rebalancing it to one degree or another is called-for and would be good for the game, and as such that highlighting its strengths and problems is more beneficial than to say "I don't even think it's that good", or "it's not even that common". And we would perhaps still debate the "degree" part of that proposition, but there are a few things I'm sure most would agree with. For one thing that at the very least, if we're already relying on perks as band-aids for game design, they should be better at that than they currently are. That's not to say OTR and DS are bad, far from, but they are evidently not good enough. I think making unhook Endurance unhook invincibility instead would go a long way to improve OTR (as well as other hook perks, such as Dead Hard, Second Wind and Resurgence), as getting hit right off hook wouldn't render it nigh-useless anymore. It could also hide pools of blood. DS hopefully is getting a stun duration buff next patch, but I would even go further and say it could also activate up to two times, not only once. As a trade-off, collision could be removed from the survivor for as long as OTR/DS are active, so that they can't be weaponized quite as much. They could even make it so that they deactivate if the survivor is healthy, gets into a locker, rescues another survivor with a pallet or blind. But in turn make it so that they stay active indefinitely until the survivor engages in a conspicuous action. Likewise, killer perks could be buffed to make non-tunnelling gameplay more potent, but in a way that actively discourages tunnelling. Imagine if Pain Resonance would be 50% of a gen - but the perk deactivates once a survivor is sacrificed. Or that Barbecue would show the auras of all survivors that haven't been hooked yet, and gain a token for every fresh hook, granting 1.25% Haste per token, but you lose a token whenever a survivor is hooked for the second time. Grim Embrace could block gens for 10 seconds for every gen left to complete at the time of its respective activation, incentivizing killers to go for fresh hooks as early as possible. Weasel could grant 40% regression on fresh hooks, 20% on second hooks, 0% on third hooks. In general I think the idea behind Ruin automatically deactivating itself once a survivor is sacrificed was good and something they could be implementing for many more perks, only of course while at the same time making sure those perks are actually powerful. Ruin specifically could go back to 200% base regression per second, but disable itself again on sacrifice. Obviously base game adjustments would be more welcome, but better perk design could already go a long way to make other strategies more attractive and tunnelling less no-brainer optimal as I for one think it is.