Why killers tunnel? And how to change the actual state of the game.
The killers tunnel for one reason only: In a reasonable scenario it is very difficult for just 3 survivors to finish off 2 or more generators.
Imagine that 4 survivors have a repair force of 100%. So each survivor represents 25% of the total strength. When a survivor is removed from the game, only 75% potential remains, which changes the game drastically after an early elimination (before only 1 generator is left).
If the game were better balanced, it would make no difference to the killer whether all the survivors were alive or not - making tunneling unnecessary. And for the survivors, the loss of a companion might not mean almost inevitable defeat, even with two or more generators left to repair.
And how BHVR could change that?
If, when a survivor is eliminated, the 100% repair potential could be rearranged, each survivor would go from 25% to 33%, making the generators faster than when there were 4 survivors alive.
This would make tunneling non-essential to achieving a victory for the assassin or a more positive scenario in the match.
With that, it would be possible to rebalance many perks, killers, add-ons, thus making the game much healthier, free of the tunneling problem and making it unnecessary to have so many perks to accelerate the repair of generators, since while it is relatively easy for 4 players to win a match, it is on the other hand extremely difficult for 3.
Comments
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Honestly it would stop survivors from giving up as well which would be nice. I feel like if a survivor dies at 5 gens then the remaining 3 survivors should get a pretty big repair bonus. But if a survivor dies when one gen is left they shouldn’t get a speed bonus at all.
But at the same time I think killers need a better incentive to not tunnel and to hook as much as possible. MMR should be hook based and maybe give a 1,000 BP bonus for unique hooks on survivors that increases perk hook.
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Killers tunnel because tunneling is easy for the killer, efficient, and difficult for survivors to counter. That's it.
It's not because of gen speeds, flavor of the month perk or item, or anything else.
And the reason is so efficient has nothing to do with repair speed. It's entirely about survivors' action economy.
With 4 survivors, you have 4 simultaneous actions. Typically, once the killer builds pressure, these actions are being in chase, being hooked, going for unhook, and gens.
When you tunnel someone out, survivors can only complete 3 of these at once instead of 4. Since hooked, chase, and rescue are mandatory, that means gen progress basically goes to zero after one person dies
No reasonable amount of action speed it's going to overcome that. You have to make tunneling less efficient, which can be done as easily as making the hook timer longer (90 seconds - match gen speeds). Or your have to introduce a new mechanic like a hook donation system.
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I used to tunnel HARD (always at 5 gen up) and only learned my main (Wesker) was a machine to do this like a month before they announced the nerf (which I think is too much. Only make the infection at 1% after unhook is enough), so I had little time using this strategy.
BUT after they announced the current PTB and it's changes I simply said "F*** it! I'll stop tunneling AT ALL and also stop using meta (gen) perks".
THEN I think I went to another parallel universe because I've started to win more. XD
Seriously now. I'm indeed winning more and I have my suspicions why this is happening.
My biggest streak so far was 3 wins, but I don't care about this. My number of victories (3K or 4K) is greater than my number of draws (2K) which in turn is greater than my losses (1K or 0K) and I'm happy with it. :)
The reason I tunneled hard is still something that needed to be addressed years ago: survs have NOTHING to do besides find a gen and staying 90 seconds in front of it. Weak killers like Pig, Trapper and etc are basically "forced" to use Corruption Intervention.
I always thought that by eliminating a surv earlier I would, in turn, have one less surv making gens, so the reason to tunnel hard.0 -
This wouldn't work. Not only would this lead to more slugging so that the killer can get to hook everyone else at once to avoid the buff or rather force everyone to bleed out to avoid it. But it also rewards the survivors for losing the game. Game already has a ton of safety nets as it is.
One person a can get a gen going fast already. I had plenty of games where I had 3 people occupied but they were still consistently knocking out gens easily. This would also require a MASSIVE rework of a lot of the game. Gens speed would need to be adjusted, perks, add-ons, etc. That's too much work for something that has existed for as long as the game has.
Best thing for them to do is add perks for killers that gives incentive to go after multiple people. Tunneling is sometimes really needed to eliminate a really annoying survivor with a flashlight or is extremely good at body blocking and etc.
At the end of the day. Good survivors are able to avoid being tunneld. Or at the very least make it extremely irritating to chase them so much so that the killer isn't going to want to chase them. The game is never gonna be perfectly balanced for either side.
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"Honestly it would stop survivors from giving up as well"
Doubt.
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Not at all. Survivors wouldn't be rewarded. Think with me: 4 survivors alive, ok? Imagine 3 (max scenario of efficience) doing generators and 1 being chased, thus you have 75% being puted on the gens. If you have 3 survivors alive and 1 is being chased how much speed you will have? (in a scenario were since one of them is dead, and now every survivor counts as 33%) you will have 66% of total speed. Survivors will absolutely not being rewarded by having of the them dead. The point is that having one of them dead early by a tunnel strategy won't hurt as much as now.
That being said imagine DS, Pain Ress, Grim Embrace and other perks still existing, giving the killer better options than chasing the same guy always.
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Yes, lets punish killers for doing their job.
I suggest then to punish Survivors doing their job too well to reduce their repair speed by -10% per each completed gen done to each teammember. And extra -5% if someone dies because they failed to protect them.
I see nothing wrong with this direction of balancing. /s
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This changes would help both sides in the direction of a better game.
The reason with BHVR keeps buffing gen speed is because of tunnel. If you have a team with 0 survivors having gen speed perks and this team loses early on survivor that got tunneled this time won't be able to finish all gens.
That's the reason that BHVR nerf constantly slow down perks and keep in the game bad designed perks as resilience (wich benefits you for being injuried) and keep including alot of other gen speed perks.
Making these changes BHVR could buff weaker killers and even giving buffs to killers perks.
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One of the problems with this, is that the normal (skilled) Killer gameplay loop has 1 Survivor on gens, 1 Survivor on hook/being healed, 1 Survivor attempting the rescue/healing the unhooked Survivor, and the final Survivor in chase. That puts the gen efficiency at 100% from the onset, and 25% once you get a single hook. Once you reach a 3v1, we still have the remaining 3 categories, but the first (the Survivor pumping gens) is gone, which puts them at 0% gen efficiency for essentially the rest of the match.
If anything, we should always assume 1 Survivor is in chase/occupied (like on hook), so that would put us at 75% with 4 Survs (3 working gens), and 3 Survs would each need 37.5% (to equal the 75% with 1 occupied). That all is if we stick with this idea.
Overall though, I mostly agree with what @AmpersandUnderscore was saying, in that no action speed can match the utility of a 4th player. The only thing I would majorly disagree with is the hook timer needing to go up to 90s. I think 65-70s would be fine. 60s without Deadlock was fine even with facecamping back with 80s gens, but then they bumped gens up to 90s, and added Deadlock, and made Grim Embrace as crazy as it is right now. 70s would probably be the best bet (the logic being: +10s per gen, +10 seconds per hook), but I could also understand the argument for +10 seconds split across both hook stages, with 65s stages. 90s is just too long for the opposite extreme, and sweaty Survs could abuse this too well.
I see this line 'punish the Killer for doing their job' often when people misunderstand the problem, or misunderstand the Killer's 'job'. The Killer's 'job' is to instill fear, dread, but still maintain an inkling of hope in the Survivors. Full on despair, and hopeless scenarios means the Killer failed at their job. If the Survivors start running at the Killer spamming 'come here', and then pointing at hooks as a direct consequence of the Killer's actions, the Killer did their job wrong. The Survivors should be squeezed and stressed to the point they are wanting it to end, but not to the point they think 'naw man I'm just gunna go next'. A Killer imposed 'go next' mindset is a Killer failing to do their job correctly. That's like saying I won a LAN match by unplugging the opponent's Ethernet cable, it might technically 'win' on the screen, but everyone knows and judges it as a loss/poor sportsmanship.
Only in a tournament should we expect the cheesiest strats being commonplace, and that's why many people often don't care for tourneys that fail to prevent such abuse. I would love to see the best players going against one another, but instead they too often facecamp the lone chokepoint at 17m+ from hook. That's so boring. That's why people insult players by saying 'playing for the $5 subway card', because it is unwarranted sweatlord behavior.3 -
We are talking about gameplay here, not a lore stuff.
Tell my MMR that I did a good job when you 8 hook people with 0 kills and game tells you in end game screen "Entity Unhappy" like yea. You have achievements, challenges, dailies, MMR and also balance, mindset of players on both sides (ah bad killer 1 kill LMAO, oh 100 winstreak 4K every game!), endgame where antifacecamp is off and perks too because only job left is secure a kill...
All that are all about kills atm so some lore thing that is outside of the gameplay game is just living in a fantasy world. Game is about kills for killer, thats their job.
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It has been proven again and again that Killers tunnel just because they can when they want to. There isn't a magical reason. You can nerf generator speeds all day you want and they'll still tunnel. There's not much counter to it, it's easy and it wins games. That's it. You can create the most fun game mode or event where "winning" isn't even a thing and they'll still tunnel. As we see again and again.
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I dont think its that simple…
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Tunneling is the most efficient way to win a match, that's a fact and always been a fact
Nerfing gen speed wont prevent tryhards from tunneling and never will
I try most of the time to not tunnel, but hey, some games you just have to if you desire to win (and some games, survivors being cocky/bodyblocking me to proc ds and so on, i just tunnel the ######### out of them)
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Its giving them the same amount of power as if they still had 4 people. Maybe Reward is not the word but its forgiving them for losing the game. They already forgive a lot in the game. They can't just keep adding more and more handicaps and forgiving players for playing bad.
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You can't stop people from doing what they want in a video game it's no different than 4 survivors choosing to hide all game and not do gens or just flat out troll you and not do anything else, I don't condone tunneling but some people are so bad it's the only way they can play the game they paid for and feel accomplished, you can just as easily be annoying to those tunneling killers and make them pay for it
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This is the current state, and as others have said, thats just the way it is. Maybe its efficient, maybe its for wins, maybe its for seeing a t-bag. Whatever the reason is doesn't mean much, as if that reason wasn't there, it'd just be some other made up crap.
Tunneling is a thing, killers need it like survivors need gens. Yes it makes DBD as a whole a much less rewarding and fun game and more of a 'why do i even?' sort of game, but its our game. And clearly we're not going anywhere, regardless of the state of tunneling, as we're here writing about it lol.
Buuuuut….
The us vs them IS super fun lol. So,
Stop ruining our game, killers!* lololol
Post edited by Spare_Them_Mori_Me on0 -
You'd also need to take into consideration that survivors rarely if ever have 4 people on gens. Survivors are generally balanced around one in chase and anywhere between 1-3 on gens - sometimes there's 1 on a gen, 1 on a hook, and 1 going for rescue, sometimes there's 2 on gens while letting the last person hang, sometimes there's an unhook and all 3 non-chased survivors get on gens. outside of the first few seconds of a game, 4 survivors on gens means the killer's made some sort of mistake
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You will never stop tunneling but I think this idea sounds nice, but can also be exploited. The issue is trying to help out solo q ends up being abused by every non solo player.
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Ok from gameplay perspective as well, when I play so well and stomp my opponents, they quit. When they quit, only the sweats remain. When I only fight sweats, I need to sweat back in order to win at the same rate I was used to, and start to no longer have fun. So by lore and gameplay, it is bad to go all out every match.
Tell my MMR - I'm not sure you realize, but the top MMR softcap is so strong, that only after something like 200 games of intentional 8 hooking do you even have a chance to fall below the barrier. Even then, it is far more likely that you will incidentally get enough kills to stay in top MMR regardless. If the "Entity thinks you played stinky" is that big of an issue, take a piece of paper, write on it "Nice Job Duder!" and raise it at the end of every match. If you would fall prey to such a simple psychological trick such as the letters on the end screen when you know you could have won (by the games metrics) by sweating, then such an equally simple trick can make you win.
Achievement/Daily/Tome - These are actually much rarer (to require a 3/4k) than you are implying they are. Achievements are basically the Adept only, which shouldn't take more than 3 games assuming a bad day and the Killer is skilled (3/season, or 12/year sweating for 4k). Dailies are mostly chase X seconds or down Y people with power, and the Mori is the only Kill quest I remember (which can easily be cheesed with Rancor). I just looked it up, and there is a 2 Sac quest, but I seem to only get power usage dailies for Killer, plus it can still be rerolled. As far as Tomes are concerned, I checked out the last completed tome (18) and added up all Killer accessible tomes (other than Glyphs), and checked which ones required (or were made significantly easier with) killing 2+ in a lobby. I found 6/37 tomes, requiring (assuming 3ks for the mass kill quests) 15 matches tops. So that is less than half (assuming the other tomes can all be completed in 1 match each.
Saying kills are all Killer is about is too reductive, especially since there is so much to be offered in the game that isn't strictly the third hook/Mori. I would respect your opinion significantly more if you made a claim like "Devour Hope Moris are the only way to win", then it would be a clearly staked out position based on personal enjoyment, instead of a partially accurate claim about the game as a whole.
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