Why Tunneling needs to be examined by BHVR

Interesting! I wonder if you can even compare changes to things like when "slowdown gets nerfed" or whatever to address these sorts of claims. I think trying to tie some sorts of correlations to the data could be useful, since it may be hard to know how to address these things otherwise.

I still think your original data and conclusion is important, just thinking about the future.

The last part is exactly why tunneling has to change. I personally know multiple people who couldn't get into the game because of how tunneling disproportionately hurts newer players. I don't personally have an issue with tunneling in most cases and it doesn't effect my games as often as other people claims it does for them. However I do understand where they are coming from due to the experiences of my friends.

Yeah that's an interesting perspective. Nothing much to add besides I wish we could think of some concrete fixes because it's clear with things like 2v8 hooks that the devs want to try other solutions while being fair but maybe haven't gotten there yet.

DS received a (completely wrong kind of) buff survivors still don't know how to use.

OTR is insanely strong, even more after hook grabs removal.

People are still picking these two perks not because they know how to use them, but because they are expecting killer to avoid them because of expectation they have them equipped.

These things definitely help a lot but I wouldn't say it stops a determined player, especially a higher tier killer character. What's being talked about here is basically making it impossible/not optimal to tunnel.

determined tunneler is a killer that doesn't know when to drop a chase and will waste tremendous amounts of time trying to down the survivor they are trying to tunnel out. Tunneling is optimal atm only because average survivor is really bad at chase (20s chase compared to 60s for high tier killers and 90s for other killers in case of good survivors) and/or gives up prematurely.

Additionally, it's a way too weaponized term used even when killer doesn't tunnel at all.

The reason the kill rate is rising is because the developers do not yet have all killers around 60% kill rate and that is their goal and so they make more changes overall that help killers. That's my view anyway, but this thread also suggests that killer players may have changed their strategy more over the years too and that has also increased the kill rate(possibly a lot) which is interesting. Why they started tunneling more is something to wonder about, but the case is that it happens and it seems to also affect games a lot.

how many overall handholding mechanics killer have received compared to survivors in last one year? I'm not saying they should get any, but i keep saying same for survivors, since more handholding mechanics = less overall skill and lazier players. It's so obvious how average survivor skill rapidly deteriorated after first true handholding mechanics were added. Depipping removal was another reason for people to go next on hook in order to avoid losing pips and have 0 punishments before they instaload into next match to ruin it for 3 new people in their team again.

Why they started tunneling? Simple, average survivor literally tends to get 2-tapped in chases due to lack of chase knowledge. This means killer wastes almost no time in order to force a complete 3v1.

The same reason camping is still very popular. Average survivor will just go next on hook instead of greeding themselves on hook in order to give their team maximum amount of time before a trade.

We still haven't taken care of making DCing more punishable, removing kobes, making report system much more useful, MMR much more strict etc. Those are first things that need to be taken care of. And additionally, don't balance the game around people that have no idea how to play it.

Quite frankly, it's easy to pinpoint some factors that increased (not created, there's a difference, tunnelling has always been in the game, it's just been getting worse) the frequency of tunnelling.

Almost every single gen-regression perks were nerfed, some of them might as well be useless (CoB, Eruption is literally a risk to use since the ill-thought-out regression limit and same goes for Undone) while most of them are merely decent (Pop post-nerf, Overcharge but only against newcomers/casuals, Oppression) and Pain Res remaining the best despite all the nerfs since it provides the best value for the least risk to trigger the regression limit.

Having less options for getting more time, especially for weaker/slower/M1 Killers, obviously incentivizes playing more aggressively to compensate. The best slowdown is a dead Survivor and it's only getting more true as options keep getting reduced.

Then, popular chase & non-regression slowdown perks, which were used to shorten chases, slow down healing or to get into chases faster after a hook, were nerfed into the ground over a rather short period of time; STBFL became worthless on some Killers and downright unuseable on Deathslinger & Trickster, Sloppy and every sources of Hemmorage and Mangled was put on a timer that decent Survivors ignore most of the time, Ultimate Weapon was killed off completely.

All those nerfs made Killer, perk and playstyle variety go down, encouraging tunnelling and proxy-camping to compensate for weaker/limited slowdown, anti-heal and chase power. This is even more true for Killers on the weaker end of the spectrum.

If tunnelling goes down (not disappear, that's impossible) it will be because even for weaker Killers and against decent Survivors, there will be either other viable options and/or incentives to not tunnel.

It's more that you're missing the point again. The majority of the issue most likely lies with the strategy itself and yet you're attempting a 'git gud' discourse once again ignoring that the escape rates in the first batch of games was 45.3% which declined by over 19% over two years with the main change in the games being tunneling substantially increased and the overall escape rate between the two sets of data was nearly exactly the same once the games with tunneling were filtered out.

the majority of issue "most likely lies with the strategy itself" and then we have tunneled survivor getting 2-tapped in chases, going next on hook and actually wasting 90% less killer's time than a good survivor would do.

Why did tunneling usage and success rate increase even though anti-tunneling perks exist, but people don't attempt to realize those perks need at least some skill to use? You are making conclusions based on "research" on the level of a person doing winstreaks in pubs and looking only at killrates using specific strat for making conclusions. That's not how thorough research works.

Once again if you feel that is the issue you're more than welcome to post your own data set and videod of 100 to 175 games showing how you managed to get four random people to tank hits, coordinate hook exchanges, etc when you have never met them before, have no idea of their perks, can't communicate with them, etc.

first, you don't need to coordinate hits tanking and hook trades at all against average tunneling killer because they are quite easy to be fooled by a good survivor because they lack awareness of when to drop a chase.

A good uhooked survivor with anti-tunneling build will be able to buy your team 2+ minutes at which only thing you need to worry about is doing gens.

second, so here we come, we talk about randoms and never ever meeting them before. That literally makes it a player related factor. Why is my teammate getting 2-tapped in first chase? Why aren't my teammates doing gens when i'm successfully wasting 2 and more minutes of killer's time? Why are my teammates wandering around the map like some tourists instead of doing their objectives? Why should i blame balance around specific strategy because my teammates decide to act like "ohh, they're tunneling again, let's go next"?

The only balance related things i would implement are visible perk loadouts in pregame lobby and a lot more tightened up MMR system.

That appears even more so to be the case as the thread itself is suggesting BHVR use its own playtesters and investigate it themselves. Are you scared of it being investigated as you know it'll reveal it's an 'easy win' strategy? If not then there shouldn't be an issue with BHVR doing its own investigation and coming to their own conclusion as DbD is their own game and their major revenue driver so BHVR can make their own decisions as to what to do. If BHVR doesn't feel it's an issue they won't change it and, if they do, they'll change it as soon as they come up with a feasible strategy.

if they ever implement more handholding mechanics against tunneling, it will literally be same as with other ones like that: more revenue from selling skins, literal fortnite model of profiting :)

….WHAT????

You are saying survivors are weaker now than they were with old DS DH Adrenaline IW Medkits and stronger maps and less resources to use to improve???

Yeah I don't think we can gain much from a discussion here.

Based on my observations, I can confirm that if the killer resorts to tunneling, he usually wins, and if he doesn't, he loses (provided that the team of survivors plays normally). At the same time, the game from tunneling, as it seems to me, is not interesting for either the maniac or the survivors.

I would really like to see the tunneling tactic made less effective, but at the same time, it might make sense to buff the killers or weaken the survivors in something else. It would be especially good if the killer received some kind of increase in the second half of the game, in the event that the repair goes too fast, and the hooked and wounds of the survivors go too slowly.

I'm really failing to see how matchmaking has anything to do with tunneling.  Killers will tunnel, whether they're good or bad at the game, they will tunnel at high or low MMR.  Survivors find tunneling frustrating and unfun, regardless of their skill level.  Even if they take a hit for the tunneled Survivor, their fate is still decided by the Killer's choice, whether they choose to continue the chase with their tunneled target, or start going after the person who tanked the hit.

You have to consider WHY there is tunnelling more now than before. I don't think it has anything to do with wanting a higher kill rate at all, and everything to do with the fact a lot of Killers feel they have no choice because generator regression got nerfed… but generator PROGRESSION on Survivor side wasn't touched. In fact, it was even buffed. So now we have the same issue but in reverse again. It is now currently possible with the right builds to do THREE GENERATORS in one chase even if the Killer plays perfectly, does not hard commit, does not tunnel, does not focus out, and does not do anything incorrect with their power - unless you're an Instant Down Killer like Ghostface or something and the Survs don't see you coming. Even then a good team can punish you.

So of course in light of all that even good Killers fall back on tunnelling. It's the most basic way to get someone out of the game fast when you can functionally start in the first 5 minutes at only 2-3 gens left to go. Like yeah no wonder tunnelling in your games went from 5.6% to 26% - Killers feel they have literally, literally no other option because there really isn't any way to slow that early game down left anymore. And early game is when Survivors are, literally, the strongest since all map resources remain. How exactly do you expect the average Killer to outplay that? They aren't gods.

And as you said, if BHVR thinks this is an issue, they will do something when they find a way to fix it that isn't a straight nerf for one side and buff for the other. But since nobody at BHVR has chimed in yet to state this is an issue, and they never have and likely never will? It's probably not that big an issue, unintended, or as big a problem as you have stated it is in multiple threads.

Again to be clear - tunneling is a completely acceptable form of playing the game. It's like saying "Gen rushing is bad and it should be nerfed". No both are completely acceptable ways to play the game and both have counters. Just stop whining about tunneling already, the game is already so easy for survivors, do you really need more help to win? Dozens of pallets. Windows around every turn. Anti-camp. Basekit DT. No more instagrab survivors from hook, the list goes on and on. Stop wasting time doing convoluted analyses and get better at the game.