It's difficult to address because there's no one-size-fits-all answer to it. Sometimes slugging is obnoxious and/or unnecessary, and sometimes it's the only correct decision and anything else would be game-losing and/or giving a free save. It really just depends.

That said, reworking Knock Out would help a lot, that perk is a major part of the issue and should not remain the way it is

Reworking knockout won't change the playstyle, people will just move on to other perks that give blindness and are actually better than knockout. The strategy and build is now evolving beyond knockout.

It wouldn't necessarily change the playstyle altogether, but I still think it would help and be a step in the right direction, even if it's not a direct solution. Other blindness effects can either be disabled (Third Seal, or Singularity's Cremated Remains for example can be removed by EMPing - I've seen a few people trying to slug with this addon) or generally run on a time limit. Knock Out is the only blindness perk that is specifically designed for slugging.

In 2020 I used to watch a Fog Whisper that whenever he played The Wraith he would slug everyone and let them bleed out in the floor. To this day he is still Fog Whisper, but apparently slugging is now a problem for some reason.

My best match today was against a super-slugging Singularity. He had Sloppy Butcher, Knockout, and Infectious Fright. Kept trying to slug and camp the slugs so he could snowball the team and bleed everyone out. It was a terribly tedious and unenjoyable experience, but he messed up and we all managed to avoid the snowball and fix all the generators.

The only time he hooked was after we opened the exit gates, where he got his one and only single hook. Then that survivor got the 4% to jump off the hook and ran right out the exit gates. Most deserved teabagging at the gate I've ever seen.

Knockout could use a rework. Either put a timer on the aura-hiding, decrease the range it's hidden, or just remove it entirely and tweak the perk to focus on its other function, slowing down a slugged survivor's recovery or temporarily immobilize them so they can't crawl to pallets.

Notable difference you are not mentioning that accounts for most complaints:

when everyone is hooked, then you take your attempts, and it doesn’t force you to wait the phase 2, you can move on instantly.

Not to mention, you usually are not hanging from first hook to death unless you are playing comp. People complain about that too, because sitting there for so long doing nothing is boring.

If you get slugged and the killer wants to be a jerk you are waiting at least 4 minutes. And if you alt tab or go do something some nasty people will pick you up and leave you on the shoulder until you start to wiggle, then mori/hook.

I rarely ever play as Killer. In one game, because I didn't want them to open the gate that they all went to, I slugged everyone. I managed to hook two of them, but the other two crawled off, and in the chaos of the lights out event, I couldn't find them. I'm sure people can list off reasons why they think their slugging was justified. What upsets me are the people who do it every single match on purpose, and then just bleed out the survivors.

no, slugging didn't become infinitely stronger, in fact, it barely got any stronger at all. Forcing hooks is what got punished more and more over the time by game design. At the point where you have to think about everything that awaits you when survivor is on hook/gets unhooked, why would you force hook instantly?

Besides, skill of average survivor player didn't purely just stagnate, it deteriorated a lot over time. 20s chases aren't just a modern thing, they are a thing for years already.

P.S. Healing is still very strong meta survivor aspect, with syringes still being gigaoverpowered.

I think because with being hooked its absolutely expected. Where as with aggressive slugging it means that multiple people need to keep an eye on the situation.

If my teammate gets slugged and then my other teammate is being chased while injured I have to leave my objective to help out as I know that there is a timer on the bleed out and that it means multiple people are off objectives, I guess I just doesn't feel natural to the game flow.

If we talk about when all 4 survivors are on the ground then we're basically done. Unless someone has unbreakable there's 4 whole minutes where we can't do anything. Now I understand that 4 survivors can be hooked at the same time BUT in that case people can try for the kobe or go next (which in the particular situation is totally valid). Also in most cases killers bring knockout which means that I don't know where my team mate is slugged unless I have comms to get them so chances might be i can't even get them. And basically it just drags the game out rather than hooking.

That's the point right there "you take your attempts"

The thing i'm getting at, is that the only reason people don't like being slugged, is because they can't "go next" and "go next" is an epidemic all its own that needs to be dealt with.

1. i am talking about maps that have number of tiles lowered and made somewhat less frustrating to play on. I am of course excluding Eyrie which is still the most survivor sided map with safest tiles to ever exist in this game.Ormond Resort is a honorable mention too since it didn't really lose any of it's properties from the mini rework.

2. more basekit ways to deal with opponents means more autopilot playing of the game meaning skill gets toned down. You can't play e.g once a day and expect to be a good player. Also, you can't expect to do scrims every day and be absolutely good, take a month or even longer break and still be as good as you used to be.

In case of average pub player, SBMM, or i should better say lack of it, has pumped up egos of so many players thinking "ohh i am playing at top MMR and i am constantly losing, this game is sided to the role my opponents are playing".

It's clear that most people complaining about slugging have never played killer before. Yes, sometimes killers to it just to be jerks, but it is often required to counter things the survivors are doing, like lying in wait for a flashbang/flashlight/pallet save. I'll give you my own perspective as someone who actually plays killer. I don't slug people just for the hell of it unless they are intentionally BMing me (t-bagging at pallets, flashlight clicking, etc.) I do it because it's the right play given the situation. In so many of my killer matches, I've downed someone, noticed someone else close by, gone after them in a chase, and then later come back to find that the first survivor has crawled away, nowhere to be found. I'm not going to waste minutes trying to find that first person to hook them, so you're going to just have to stay slugged. This "slugging problem" is often self-inflicted by what the survivor players are doing. If you want to make it easy for the killer to come back and find you and hook you, don't crawl to the other side of the map.

I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but this is probably the first time I agree with Danielmaster87.

Slugging, not to check for pallet or flashlight saves, but heavily and for a multi-survivor down, is an easy way to bypass core game mechanics by putting very little effort, essentially working as a shortcut to victory. It disables about 80% of the survivor perks and can transform a 0 hook game into a full wipe.

It would be foolish for the killers not to slug when you can essentially bring a game to a halt the moment two people are on the floor. If anything, if you think about it, killers going for hooks are essentially just either throwing or flexing, when heavy slugging is just the most efficient way to gain an advantage over survivors.

I think slugging in general enriches the game, be it slugging opportunistically/tactically in a match that otherwise follows a more regular gameplay loop or strategically slugging where you try to slug as much as possible and win through it.

People say being on the floor is boring, but it is objectively less boring than being on a hook. On a hook you essentially cannot do anything. You have more agency on the floor as you can recover, crawl to pallets, teammates, gates, hatch or areas the killer is less likely to find you in, position yourself to enable someone to pick you up mid-chase, and there are vastly more perks that benefit survivors in the dying state than there are that benefit survivors on hook. You also cannot nearly as effectively be "camped" or "tunnelled" out of the game from the floor.

Full-on slugging matches yield low-downtime, high-intensity gameplay loops where a lot more chases and chances happen, camping and tunnelling effectively don't exist, and foregone conclusions are much rarer, as the match can flip at practically any time even if 3 (or even 4) survivors had been slugged, even after 10 or more minutes of playing whack-a-mole, since it is possible for everyone to get back up and reset, without having accumulated hook stages. It makes for really dynamic, back-and-forth matchflows and I for one much welcome this on both sides. Alas, it's vanishingly rare to encounter a killer that actually slugs as an overarching strategy.

Of course, there are killers that it can be overpowered on, most of all Nurse, Blight, Billy, Singularity and Twins. But that is more to do with those killers being overpowered than slugging itself being an issue (Singularity and Twins aren't generally as overpowered, but they have problematic aspects and they are overly problematic against uncoordinated groups). Slugging in general on most killers however is a perfectly fine and engaging strategy, even - or rather: especially - when including things like Knock Out and Third Seal. I would encourage anyone to try it as killer, and any survivor player to earnestly reflect on the fun levels they've had in such matches. People usually complain about "slugging" when it was one of those aforementioned OP killers that likely would have beaten them decisively anyway and where they merely opportunistically slugged 1-2 survivors, or when someone slugged them to bleedout even after the match was already won, or when they slugged the second-to-last survivor to guarantee the kill on the last one. And those are actual problems worth complaining about and that should have long been addressed. But slugging tactically and strategically benefits the game greatly.

Play any killer as you normally would, but simply never pick survivors up (unless of course you actually manage to slug everyone). See how much fun you can be having with the low downtime and frequent chases this yields. Mind you, you will regularly lose when playing like this (unless you are playing one of the stronger killers and are a strong player), but it gives you an impression of how engaging and refreshing a change of pace this can be. And as you find the right build and get more familiar with the strategy and make some adjustments to it (e. g. actually hooking people if you don't get an Infectious Fright proc), you will also start winning more often.

I really hope BHVR won't get rid of Knock Out or implement general basekit counters to slugging. The only changes we need in this regard are nerfs to specific overpowered killers and remedies to the ability to bleed people out and "slug for the 4k". Those can be things like giving survivors the option to "surrender to the Entity" when everyone is in the dying state, being sacrificed then and there just like in EGC, and both this option to surrender and the ability to recover from the dying state when only two people remain in the trial, forcing the killer to pick up in a reasonable time or forcing the hatch endgame.