Can we get some clarity on what gen-rushing is?

In my book it is doing gens over everything while not caring whether or not it impacts your team negatively like letting someone die on hook to finish a generator, while there are still 4 left or so... Basically just having tunnel vision generators without caring for the consequences.

Well tunneling gets used a bit more which helps, but also tunneling discussions get derailed as well. Some people define it as three straight hooks on the first survivor, while others will jump into such discussions and say going for 12 hooks is impossible. Some draw a line and refer to the straight '3 hooks' as hard tunneling.

It’s if you have a full build set for it or you ignore anything but gens. IE doing the gen in the killers face even if you go down for it or leaving the guy on the hook to just keep doing the gen. It’s essentially tunnel vision on the gen, pun intended. Same as tunneling for the killer, which would be him ignoring everyone and everything but the one guy who just got off hook, tunnel vision. IE just gens popping fast in general or the same person just happening to go down twice in a row does not imply tunneling even though many in game will say it does as they’re salty and want to make excuses.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t be trying to play as efficiently as possible, but I will say it tells me what kind of game they want to play and I match that. Like if I’m on killer and playing chill but I see them doing that, that’s fine, but now they shouldn’t be angry if tunneling shows up as they set the kind of match they wanted, and vice versa.

It's just as disingenuous as the similar situation in regards to tunneling.

You get unhooked, 20 seconds later youre being chased by the killer, then you get hooked again.

Meanwhile the killer perspective is: they hooked you, they ran across the map, they found and chased another survivor, they hooked them, they made their way back to the gens, found no one, then you got unhooked, so they make their way back to the hook, but the survivor who unhooked you is hiding and you're the only one the killer can find.

The killer isn't technically tunneling, but all you've managed to do all game is run and die. From your perspective, you're being tunneled out.

There are two perspectives in play. It's not a case that only one of those perspectives has the right to define what is happening.

I would say that this is circumstantial tunneling, which is far less egregious than intentionally tunneling, but the survivor isn't wrong for feeling they were tunneled.

Exactly the same applies to genrushing.

Gen rushing is 4 players with their entire build dedicated solely to gen progress doing gens in record time and not doing anything else (healing, unhooking, totems, etc.) until it becomes absolutely necessary.

"What's not is happening to run into the same survivor after they've
gotten away, or after you've chased someone else, or attempted to play
the game in any other way besides chasing them off hook."

This happens a lot. I intentionally don't pay attention to how many hooks people have and just going after whoever I run into or I see out positioned. The amount of times I just happen to run into the same person twice in a row somewhere else on the map and get called a tunneler is wild. These days people stretch the definition of tunneling to basically "if the same person goes down a second time in a row" regardless of anything. Which I wouldn't consider tunneling. If I just happen to run into the same person out positioned I think they expect me to literally be like oh my bad and just leave him there on the gen and go randomly looking around for someone else.

To me tunneling would be like 3 hooks in a row on the same person where I'm literally walking around other survivors completely ignoring them and seeing nothing but that person until they're dead. It requires intent, as you said.

Basically, if you start the game.
And you get into chase.
And you get a down.
Within let's say a Minute, and 1 or more gens pop.
You have been gen-rushed.

It's any strategy in which the time to repair has been optimized in a way that allows for very little counterplay.
How this is achieved can vary.
I'd say it's more likely to be encountered in SWF games, where you can have a dedicated runner, that intentionally seperates, so that during the first chase that happens you can have setups with either 3 people on one gen, or 2 people on one gen, and one solo on a gen.

The overarching point is the optimization of gen repair speed though.

Depends on who you ask.

Imo and to many it's when the survivors are being super efficient on gens, as the name implies. Splitting on gens at the start, getting 3 done in the first chase, getting on a gen again the moment the killer even looks away from the area ect.

To others you need an entire dedicated build to be gen rushing. Which to me feels strange because it's not like you need a "tunnel build" or killer (like Executioner) to be considered doing the killer objective "too efficiently".

Exactly, you believe it is accusatory, therefore you feel you need a solid definition to defend yourself against such accusation. You're thinking like a lawyer.

But a solid definition only exists if all agree upon it, or if it's irrefutable fact, which this can never be. There is no law to apply here.

Or, you choose to define it as a matter of perspective, without intent being a factor, and it's no longer accusatory. It becomes a truth of the person who experiences it.

If It's not accusatory, then you don't need to define it according to intent. There is no need for a defence.

I have no qualms accepting that I may have tunneled someone, if that's their experience. Denying it as such doesn't help the situation, it just causes everyone to double down on their opposing sides. Instead, you can say "yes I tunneled, it was not my intention". It's a more honest position to take, and the person accusing you can go away knowing they weren't targetted intentionally. If you pull out a defensive retort, they're likely to think you're being disingenuous, "they claim they weren't tunneling but I know they were" which feeds into the cycle of toxicity.

You can choose to interact like lawyers, or you can choose to interact like people playing a game for fun.

Obviously there are still fringe cases where the accusation of x is absurd, and you don't need to agree with nonsense. But if you can see that a players experience is the same whether your part was intended or not, then accelting that persons perspective is more helpful than denying it, which is borderline gaslighting.

The problem is the asynchronous nature. Which, unsurprisingly, is tied to the asymmetric nature of the game.
Of course if the game was easy it wouldnt be fun, but I feel like when it comes to counterplay, we put on different standards onto Killers and Survivors.

The problem isnt setting limits and forcing decision making, it's not paying attention to cause and effect. They just see effect, and attack an assumed cause.
The thoughts were "Killers were not running regression (or progress-denial (blocking gens)) because they had to assume fast repair times in a lot of games, they were running them because they were oppressive" and the result was Killers doubling down on it, because they still saw it neccessary to do so.

I dunno where my long winded post about this went, but it said it was waiting for approval, but basically, Gen-Rushing is a spectrum, that ranges from accidental synergy to minmaxxing repair times.

I disagree I think they're comparable just fine.

But like I said, it depends on who you ask. So if that's you opinion that's fine. Mine is different.

Tunneling is a strategy to fast track an objective. This was/is just a thing Killers could do. Yes it was unfun, but it was a gameplay decision. "I want to get Kills, I get Kills faster and safer if I remove the Survivors quickly 1-by-1"

Gen-Rushing is a strategy to fast Track an objective. Survivors can do that. It is a gameplay decision.
"It's easier to escape if I give the killer has as little time as possible to catch anyone"

Both of these are born from the desire to "win"
They are both considered "bad" and "toxic"

I think one of them is seen as less serious than the other.
Both strategies have received counterplay. Mostly in the form of perks.
But it seems like now people also deem Regression perks toxic. So I dunno what to think here.

I think both of these can be defined, but some definitions are jank by nature.

Tunneling is the strategy of actively focusing your efforts on killing a single survivor, actively ignoring others.
There can be "accidental tunneling" which happens if a survivor has been matched far outside of his skill level and therefore just ends up repeatedly being found and chased and downed. But I dont think that should count as tunneling because then it is not being done actively (which may be "intent" like people above mentioned) but for a generally accepted definition, this serves pretty well.

As for gen-rushing I also said what I believe it to be.
It's an umbrella term for strategies that optimize gen repair speed, and exists in a spectrum.

You are not optimizing Gen-Repair Speed if you dont bring items or perks.

The reason I brought up the situation with a pre-first hook gen repair, is that it's not fun.
Of course it can happen by circumstance. All Survivors spawn together, 3 of them work on one gen immediately, they get it done quick.

But with quick pops, it's unlikely, that it just so happened, that the stars aligned for them.

Toolboxes are just the easiest step in the equation.
A single Toolbox allows a single Survivor to repair a gen in a Minute.
With 2 People the default Time (without Boxes) is already only 52 seconds.

The point is, that you have very little opportunity to stop people who really optimize this time, if you commit to any chase.
You might as well not chase a single survivor at all, unless you know where the others are, and what they are doing, because simply committing even just a minute to a chase, even if you get a down/hook, has the potential of up to 3 gens popping. At the beginning of a game. Of course the less optimized the rush is, the less gens pop.

For me the frustration comes from how little I get to chase my main objective. Killers are supposed to hit, down and hook.
But the priority of the gameplay loop that furthers this goal is constantly challenged by the requirement of slowdown.
I have to invest more time into making sure the enemy doesnt fulfil their objective, that fulfilling my own objective plays second fiddle to that.
The best solution was if chasing, hitting and downing was actually a good way to stop generator progress, but it isnt.
That's the reason people started using Regression perks more aggressively, which is why, post-nerf, people run even more regression. These perks allow Killers to connect the dots. Pain Res regresses when you Hook. Pop is burst regression if you Hook. Surge is AoE Regression if you down. Oppression is AoE Regression if you break a gen.

Gen-Rushing is on a spectrum.
That ranges from unintentionally getting a single gen in 40 seconds becaus the killer spawned on the other side of map, and you spawned as a four right next to one, to 3 people with Toolboxes repairing 3 gens in 60 seconds.

But this can't happen. There cant be firm definitions when there is gameplay freedom.

In other games there is feeding. It is negatively connotated and usually boils down to intentionally dying over and over in order to sandbag your own team.
The problem is, that it can be hard to determine intent. So everyone calls it feeding, whether you are just bad at the game (equivalent to getting repeatedly found due to too much of a skill difference to your peers) or are actually doing it (equivalent to prioritizing instant kills)

The flexibility in the definition is also required, because otherwise you could just make them worthless.
If Tunneling is only the act of getting a single survivor hooked 3 times consecutively, then Hooking the same survivor twice, hooking another survivor and then hooking the first survivor again stops being tunneling.

So what would be a better definition for tunneling? The closest thing would be "attacking a recently unhooked survivor immediately after being hooked" but then Tunneling could simply be triggering the endurance hit? Maybe we reduce Tunneling to "getting hooked twice consecutively" but in that situation you remove the part survivors are actually upset about, which is that they are removed from the game immediately with no rest in between chases.

And with so many options in the game, you just cant boil these things people hate down to 1 definition.
I do think a lot of survivors abuse the word Tunneling.
For them Tunneling is just when they are the first person to die.

In the end, that's why those definitions need to be at least slightly open.
Tunneling is prioritizing fast kills by focusing a single player where possible.

When it comes to Gen-Rushing, I think because it is on a spectrum there is an acceptable range.
Everything that can happen naturally is often Okay, because it will be hard to keep that accidental synergy up for a long time.
4 Survivors that spawn together and get a 40 second Gen done is hard to sustain, so if that's the reason I get an early gen, it is acceptable.
If someone goes into trial with a Flashlight and then finds a yellow toolbox with a yellow addon and with 2 people the gen goes in 50 seconds or something, that's also not sustainable but slightly more so.

IF you visualize the spectrum as a line from accidental to intentional, then I think it starts getting toxic in the last third of that line. The point where your whole strategy is to make chases become counter-intuitive to the Killer because even if you get a hook, you'd have to tunnel to even get a kill, because gens go too fast.