Tunneling. Why it feels bad. And what I think might be done about it.
If you're playing solo queue as survivor and the killer you're up against decides they're gonna immediately tunnel out their first hook for the easiest win then there's nothing you can realistically do as that survivor to prevent this and get a win out of it.
"Just run anti-tunnel perks." You can run the 4 objectively best anti-tunnel perks and you're still gonna go down and get sacrificed. These perks do buy your team time to do gens before you get hooked again, but these perks are not going to keep you from dying and getting a loss. Not to mention that you're trading all of your survivor's power for a situational buff that doesn't even help you win the game, just your teammates.
"Just get better at looping." Cool thanks every killer main who tunnels at 5 gens and thinks every survivor main has 10,000 hours and regularly loops the entire match like their favorite youtuber. No actually that's not how the game works and it's obnoxious how every discussion about unfun mechanics on the killer's side of the table come down to unreasonable expectations of what your average solo queue survivor player can pull off. You are not seeing 4 man SWF lobbies with a combined total of 60k hours every match like you claim you are.
"Your team should save you." Without the ability to communicate with that team this is near impossible. Even with good solo queue teammates the fact you have no means to communicate between each other means a rescue usually isn't going to happen. Sure it can happen, I've seen it once and only once. But realistically either your teammates realize the situation and genrush while you're getting focused or they waste their time in a failed attempt to rescue you and get slugged out. And it's usually the latter sadly. Which makes the experience far worse.
"Just add more anti-camp/tunnel." Sure lets add bandaid solutions to the problem until killer is literally unplayable because you get 4 minutes of endurance if the killer so happens to be within 200 meters of your hook when you get unhooked. They help buy time for your team if they choose to genrush, but they're never going to stop tunneling unless they get so egregious it negatively effects normal killer gameplay.
To put it simply, there's a fundamental issue with the core gameplay loop where 1 choice of 1 player results in an extremely negative outcome for the other players before the match even started. A consistently negative experience that really shouldn't exist in the game. And due to the way the game is designed to function there aren't any really good options for the victims of this outcome to stop the aggressor. This to me is why people constantly rage out and get so upset about it. Nothing you do matters, you're going to lose no matter what, and the next 2-4 minutes if your life are spent watching the longest game over scene ever created. You can't really have this experience and say you had a good time.
So whats the solution?
Well people tunnel to win. So why not do something with that? Give less pips to killers who win by tunneling. And give better pip rewards to killers who don't tunnel. This could alter with gen progression. Like tunneling a survivor out at 5 gens is worthless, but tunneling out at 2 gens isn't.
And if killers are intentionally tunneling to stay in lower ranks and torment newer/inexperienced players, then you have a legitimate argument for griefing and taking direct action against that account.
Comments
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No one cares about pips, they are worthless except bloodpoints (that are also worthless with the insane amount you get). Also you can't even lay it out as griefing because bhvr wants tunneling and camping as an option, they just want to make it harder to control it better.
The better option would be to actually make hooking different survivors any usefull, at the moment hooking different survivors until last hook is basically screaming that you want to lose. Sure you'll have a moment of preassure because 2 people are bussy (1 hangs and 1 goes for the unhook, after that 1 gets healed and 1 heals. Maybe you chase 1 so you're at one person doing gens), but it's nothing against having 1 person out after 1/3 or 1/2 of the match (1 hangs, 1 unhooks then 1 gets healed, 1 heals so 1 on gen. Or even better 0 on gens if you chase the last one in that moment).
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DS, OTR, please use them. Survivors have a number of OP perks.
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Additionally, tunneling is not a strong strategy.
The two of you can repair the gen for free. So what's the point? If you keep tunneling, you'll complete 5 gens in no time.
If you draw an ally who doesn't know the rules, too bad.
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As long as your mmr is down if you die, if you play for mmr and you are being tunel → just suicide en hook.
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I think the framing is completely wrong, tunneling is a consequence of some plays in this game of the Killer doing what a Killer should, the Killer is doing his job, so to take away points and pips for him doing his job, is just unfair really.
Like I agree tunneling feels bad and harsh and even worse if your team-mates do nothing to help but then we have to fix the game and give survivors better options, not screw with and limit the other player who is just doing his job.
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Off The Record and Decisive are incredibly effective at preventing tunneling. Use them.
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Anti-tunnel perks like OTR and DS are decent on the average survivor, but they are devastating on a good one.
Become better in looping and killers will leave you alone a lot of the time.
When I loop well (I'm not that consistent tho), killer tend to quit chase if I run near a strong tile/building.
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Well people tunnel to win. So why not do something with that? Give less pips to killers who win by tunneling. And give better pip rewards to killers who don't tunnel.
Pips are not a win. The kill is the win.
And if killers are intentionally tunneling to stay in lower ranks and torment newer/inexperienced players, then you have a legitimate argument for griefing and taking direct action against that account.
That would be incredibly hard to prove unless the player outright admitted to doing it.
The issue is that this is an elimination game. That's its design. Eliminating players is the goal, and as each player is eliminated it weakens the survivor side. Spreading hooks is not the way to win. Spreading hooks is done by people who like playing that way or done by people who just chase who they see and don't care about focus or kills. On lazy days I chase who I see and don't think about it any deeper than that, my memory can't be taxed with things like who's who.
Anyway, you want killers to spread out hooks, you need to reward them for doing so. Gameplay rewards, which means the opposing side somehow gets weaker with each hook state and it's at least if not more rewarding than outright eliminating someone. There's always pushback when that's brought up, "There are perks for that." And so we remain where we are. Spreading out hooks is not optimal.
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This is the first honest survivor who has posted something about this. It’s right there in his words. Tunneling is a problem for him because there is no guaranteed way to get a win. That’s what this comes down to, anytime a survivor main posts that this is a problem it needs to be fixed that is a problem that needs to be fixed and so on and so forth all they’re saying is keep making changes until I’m guaranteed a win every single match.
Any strategy or play style that doesn’t allow me to feel like I am an elite gamer needs to be NERFED into the ground so that my ego can be inflated.
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I think you're right that BHVR should disencentivise tunneling. Otherwise people will keep doing it because it's almost guaranteed to secure one kill. Though, if the survivor loops well enough, tunneling can take away gen pressure, making it harder to get a 3k or 4k.
Personally, I do think tunneling is a problem because it directly makes the experience of one player worse. It might not be intended that way by the killer, but it will generally have that effect. I agree with what you said though, sometimes it's not easy to tell which Dwight you're chasing :/
And people can argue that if survivors bm the killer, why shouldn't the killer do it back? Which I'd honestly agree with; if someone teabags you at each pallet, they're actively trying to get on the killer's nerves. Anyway, not sure what the solution would be, but I do think tunneling causes more negatives for the community than positives, and is something BHVR should discourage.
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I certainly don't enjoy being tunneled as survivor. Sometimes I'm good enough in chase the killer will give up, but usually not. I also don't tunnel as killer unless I need the win for some reason, because I don't enjoy tunneling and don't care about killing. When I play killer, I often feel bad if I kill just one person (usually by accident because their teammates left them to die) not because I did poorly but because I know how much it sucks to be that one person.
The existence of tunneling makes this game less fun. I try to avoid complaining that killers use the tactic, because when done properly it is often the best play, but I will complain that the game design makes it a much more effective tactic than spreading the love.
So often, the recommended course of action by players is "punish the killer for tunneling." But if we look at the win condition as getting a kill, then there's no punishment that's going to overshadow that. Base game mechanics would need to change so that eliminating one player stops being the best way to eliminate all players.
And people can argue that if survivors bm the killer, why shouldn't the killer do it back? Which I'd honestly agree with; if someone teabags you at each pallet, they're actively trying to get on the killer's nerves.
I mostly refuse to chase survivors who teabag unless they put themselves in a bad spot. They usually teabag because they want the killer's attention, they want to be chased, and if they know what they're doing they've positioned themselves in a safe spot. Ignore them and they'll at some point put themeslves out of position, either because they think the killer is scared to chase them or simply because they want to help a teammate, and then they're an easy down. I like to hook them and immediately walk away like they were hardly worth my time lol.
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The problem is that survs only pretend to be a team.
Tunneled survivor is buying time for rest of them, but at the end tunneled one dies and loses.
This is main issue there (side with the fact of premature ending the game).
My personal solution is to remove sacrifices during the trial completely:
1. Introduce time limit to trial.
2. Alter objectives (one can even change them completely if needed. Imagine that on swamp you dont need to fix gens, but rather to find some special herbs and brew a potion).
3. Hooks and moris removes a survivor for a set amount of time. Hooks allow other survivor to rescue hooked one, moris dont.
3a. Hooked surv is teleported away from killer that cannot see their aura to prevent camping.
3b. Moried survivor is in ghost mode - can move freely with no collosion and inability to do a thing.
3c. After some time surv either is removed from the hook or brought back to life by the Entity.
4. When timer is out: either survs managed to do their objective and killer is punished by the Entity (survs won, together, as a team), or survs did not succed and are consumed by the Entity (like at the end of collapse) and killer won.
Gameplay remains mostly the same with main difference is that now survs are cooperating instead of competing team, trial ends after set time and killer cant and wont camp and tunnel.
I would first introduce it as a game mode to check what peple thinks about it.
This would also allow for offerings changes, like adjusting map brightness or time limit, hook or ghost times, alter objectives. Imagine like default objective is gens, but killer may use secret offering changing this objective into gathering herbs.0 -
I don't think the framing is wrong here. Playing a game with other people is a group activity. And unless you're in an intentionally competitive environment (e.g. league sports or some huge rivalry), the most important part of playing a game with other people is that everyone gets a chance to have fun doing it. For most people, tunneling takes away the opportunity to enjoy the game.
Don't get me wrong, if someone teabags at every pallet, I'll sometimes decide I only want one specific sacrifice that match. But I'll only do that because taunting is bad sportsmanship, and I'll sometimes I'll repay the favor. But I do think that someone tunneling should expect to get some grief in the chat. But so should someone taunting their opponent in any game.
Having said that, I also think BHVR needs to discourage behavior that takes fun out of the game. The DBD community is a lot more positive than some other online games, and they should probably try to embrace that.
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Literally just make a system that punishes the most extreme cases of hard tunneling. Hook the same survivor three times in a row while everyone is alive and the remaining survivors get a massive buff to repair speed, healing, unhooking etc. You'd still be able to strategically tunnel late in a match and the game wouldn't immediately be over if the killer decided to hard tunnel from the start. Killers would have to think about whether or not it's worth it. I promise you this would drastically cut down on the most extreme type of tunneling.
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maybe, for every eliminated survivor, every repaired gen is counted as +1?
So if you killed surv at 5gen, then they got massive buff, and if they was killed at 1-2 gens then not much changed. Also, if survs was eliminated when all other had 2 hook stages, then they will start dying very fast and this buff will not do much for them0 -
this is:
- rewarding survivors for not doing their objective
- rewarding survivors for lasting extremely short in chases
Can we please stop with asking for more ways to punish strategies and try creating a bigger picture in order to see how do good survivors manage to dump on average tunneler, while the ones that cry about them magically always lose as a team and thus make tunneling look like it's meta?
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- no, it is not. Its like saying that NOED is rewrding killer for not doing their objective.
- No, it is not. Its rewarding their teammates, while its actually not. Its punishing killers from rushing objectives.
Can we please stop defending unhealthy mechanics and instead concentrate of making game more healthy? If this change will result in massive kill drops from killers then killers will ned some bufs to recompensate, but this does not meanst that tunneling is anyway healthy for the game.
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no, it is not. Its like saying that NOED is rewrding killer for not doing their objective.
a basekit mechanic that significantly boosts your objective progress thanks to either survivor that is "tunneled" lasting less than 20s in chase or team that does 0 gens even if teammate manages to achieve a long chase VS. a perk that has 50% chance to secure 1 kill at most if survivors are good or secure 4k if survivors are horrible. Sure.
No, it is not. Its rewarding their teammates, while its actually not. Its punishing killers from rushing objectives.
so, we are punishing killer for managing to "rush their objective" instead of trying to take a while look at situation and further encourage people to not improve at the game + not actually look for the way to reward spreading hooks more. It's ALWAYS like that because yall simply wouldn't be happy even if killer was spreading hooks at the end. I know very well how it goes
Can we please stop defending unhealthy mechanics and instead concentrate of making game more healthy? If this change will result in massive kill drops from killers then killers will ned some bufs to recompensate, but this does not meanst that tunneling is anyway healthy for the game.
- tunneling is not a mechanic, tunneling is a strategy.
- Punishing tunneling/camping/slugging further by new basekit mechanics first is NOT the way you will make the game healthy if you don't even take a look at why any of those strategies are meta. It actually the way to turn the game into even more unhealthy state by further encouraging players to play on autopilot more and more and expect wins to come by investing 0 of strategical thinking into your matches.
Just take a look at the current state of the whole hook mechanic and tell me do you see any incentive given from BHVR to spread hooks, or even hook before achieving 2+ slugs at all?
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That's most useless idea I have seen in a while. Like really, how many people care about pips?
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Or instead of disencetavise a playstay, BHVR should make not tunneling more rewarding at base
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Right now, there’s not enough incentive for killers to avoid tunneling, which I do find really unhealthy for the game. It just feels off that the only way survivors can counter something killers can do base-kit is by bringing perks—many of which aren’t even free.
Instead of trying to discourage tunneling with things like BP or Pips, I think the focus should be on something that directly impacts gameplay: gen speeds.
My idea is to introduce a built-in gen slowdown that activates when killers spread hooks across multiple survivors. For every unique hook, gens would slow down, rewarding the killer for spreading pressure. On the flip side, if a killer tunnels and hooks the same survivor consecutively, gens get a repair speed boost, making them quicker to finish.
This doesn’t remove the killers ability to tunne, but it makes it less viable and encourages spreading hooks as a better strategy for built in slowdown. Killers would have a real incentive to chase different survivors and create more dynamic matches.
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BHVR can give all killers BBQ basekit, and make that after hooking, surv is teleported to random hook with no aura indicator for killer.
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I can't tell if this is sarcasm. Is that how you meant it, or do you genuinely see basekit BBQ as a fair trade to ensure killers can't easily run back to hook?
I'm not making a statement or anything, just really want to understand your statement :D
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