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If You Play Killer, Tunnelling Is Against Your Best Interests

135

Comments

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    This post isn't about complaints and it isn't about policing people, I'm just giving advice as a fellow killer.

    Though, I feel like most PvP communities will have people getting mad at the cheap stuff, especially cheap stuff that's actually unbalanced.

  • Nathan13
    Nathan13 Member Posts: 6,960

    tunneling is the best way to win if you’re an M1 killer, that also goes for camping and slugging because if you never do them than you’re playing killer wrong.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    I feel I addressed that pretty well in the post. Did you disagree with any of the reasoning?

  • Nathan13
    Nathan13 Member Posts: 6,960

    I’m just calling out people that are 100% against those tactics.

  • AmpersandUnderscore
    AmpersandUnderscore Member Posts: 2,965

    I feel like this is a charicature of a position. Not that no one holds this view, per se, but I don't see that in this conversation.

    Personally, I think that killers have a variety of tools available to them. Things like camping, tunneling, slugging are some that get focus, but there's also chase, objective slowdown, spreading pressure, switching targets (and knowing when to), or even things like totem defense, depending on your build.

    Those are all base kit options for the killer, and knowing how to apply those tools, and when, is, imo, a measure of skill.

    Camping, tunneling, and slugging, though tend to be used as "the only way" some people know how to play. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And because these strategies are fairly simple to execute and hard to counter, it also makes them effective as the only tool people use for quite a while (or for some people, all they ever use). And, when those players have stomped teams at their skill level using only these strategies, they don't learn to use anything else, let alone learning when to change up to another tactic.

    The discussion started by focusing on "people who always tunnel", and you're implying that "people should never tunnel" is the implication, but those aren't the only options on the table.

    All of those things I listed, including camping, tunneling, and slugging, should be situationally used. And it's a measure of player skill, game sense, and game knowledge to understand when those situations arise.

    And once people do learn to use more of the tools available to them, they naturally become better players. Which I believe was mainly the point OP is making here regarding "fundamentals".

  • NarkoTri1er
    NarkoTri1er Member Posts: 1,366

    All of those things I listed, including camping, tunneling, and slugging, should be situationally used. And it's a measure of player skill, game sense, and game knowledge to understand when those situations arise.

    And once people do learn to use more of the tools available to them, they naturally become better players. Which I believe was mainly the point OP is making here regarding "fundamentals".

    but the problem here is that game doesn't have proper matchmaking nor is average player willing to punish killer for instantly locking into the match with intention to apply these strats right from the start.

    When you have a lot of successful matches bruteforcing specific strategy against not very good opponents, you will build this mindset up.

    Matchmaking needs to improve, drastically. This way this type of killer players will evolve into actually being aware of when they actually can tunnel, camp or slug because they will definitely not be able to bruteforce these strats every match again at all.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    Matchmaking would only make tunnelling consistently punishable at higher levels, though.

    The whole point of tunnelling is that the chase is heavily stacked in the killer's favour and the survivor team needs either coordination or pretty significant skill in chase to overcome it. Matchmaking being more consistent wouldn't help lower or mid ranked matches with tunnelling at all.

  • Anti051
    Anti051 Member Posts: 881

    Oh, that's a reminder about where the terminology "tunneling" spawned from.

    As for the relevance check: The OP was written from the angle of "catching the same survivor consecutively is bad" was it not?

    To clarify: The points you're making in the OP aren't actually valid.

    1.) The Fundamentals of playing killer are about understanding and executing actions that ultimately stop the survivors from escaping and lead them into death. Nobody's growth as a killer is "stunted" by taking the path of least resistance if the opportunity presents itself. Killers are supposed to exploit the mistakes of survivors and a skilled killer is a master of this.

    2.) Hooking the same survivor consecutively is unpopular, but not unbalanced due to the time constraint of generator speeds. Generator completion speeds can be harsh. The time a killer has to make a difference against seasoned survivors is very short, thus tactics like "tunneling" for faster eliminations and "slugging" to create more time and pressure are employed (These tactics started and persist because of fast completion speeds).

    With exhaustion perks, inapposite second chances, resource distribution and varied killer power levels, the entire thing is extremely messy, and as such, a consistently comfortable hooking rotation is a pipedream at best.

    Even with possible incoming deterrents, there's not much sense in trying to convince killer players to adopt such a bizarre sense of one-way etiquette in an environment where they'll probably lose the game if they do (unless they play an S-tier character).

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    I mean… no?

    The OP was written from the perspective of "Relying on the easier chase that comes from chasing someone who just got unhooked can be harmful in the long run".

    Remember, this isn't a complaint. It's advice, from one killer player to others.

    I'll grant that I should've clarified that tunnelling in this context is just that, only chasing survivors who were just unhooked, but otherwise you're presenting the post in a heavily skewed way, and your initial comment still doesn't reflect even that view whatsoever.

  • KeefCheif
    KeefCheif Member Posts: 145
    edited May 25

    @jesterkind FINALLY someone who gets it. I'd shake your hand if I could good sir. I've always wondered why some killers inflate their MMR by tunneling match after match, victory after victory. Only to complain that tunneling is the only way for them to win in this unfair game. Makes no sense.

  • UndeddJester
    UndeddJester Member Posts: 4,970
    edited May 25

    A fair enough definition and one I agree with, however I suppose the follow up question is do you consider tunneling a problem in any instance? Or is tunneling fine at all times? Or is it somewhere in between? Cause thats effectively the important point we're debating about and is the reason I make the distinction.

    I play mostly SoloQ survivor (apparently) and I personally consider opportunistic tunneling fair game. I believe a very important skill on Survivor is to play the macro game and put the killer into difficult macro choices. For example if I have a survivor that is on hook, or I know where a very important gen is about to pop, I will ensure I take the killer away from that objective, even if that means running to a less safe set of tiles to do so. Effectively I'm treating my hook state as a resource to exchange when the team needs it. I have even been known to deliberately "screw up" my looping or run into a dead zone to make me a more enticing target, to ensure that the killer doesn't leave me and return to hook to tunnel.

    This is why I make the distinction between opportunistic tunneling and hardcore tunneling, and why I don't see opportunistic tunneling as a problem at all. If I as a survivor make tunnelling a difficult decision for the killer, they are far less likely to tunnel due to the risk that it entails... and I consider this a part of the game.

    Following this mentality I have found that I very rarely see low tier killers tunneling... it is simply far too costly for them to do so. I have seen high tier killers also don't tunnel often with this play style because even for them, you can still make it a reasonable risk... of course taking them somewhere where you're gonna get downed fast is less effective vs. these killers so naturally it's all a big game of weighing it up... but you get the point.

    Had nothing to add, just wanted to 🤘😁🤘

    I too have a friend who plays survivor only, and love him as I do, he amuses me sometimes with the vitriol he levys at the killer in scenarios where to me it was a perfectly reasonable action for the killer to take... and tontake any other action would benthe killer throwing the game...

    He has played killer 5 times and concluded its too easy... so I know the pain of explaining that perspective well xD

  • RpTheHotrod
    RpTheHotrod Member Posts: 2,826
    edited May 25

    There's nothing inherently wrong with any kind of tunneling (otherwise, it would be bannable). However, I feel its just poor sportsmanship and lame to hard tunnel someone out of the game early just for the sake of hard tunneling and I do think early game tunneling needs to be addressed somehow by the devs.

    I personally do not do any early game tunneling even though I accept not doing so will lower my chances at success. We are all playing the game to have fun, and I am not out to make anyone else's game experience a miserable one.

    Post edited by RpTheHotrod on
  • UndeddJester
    UndeddJester Member Posts: 4,970

    Pretty much exactly how I feel on it. 😅

    It's one of the reasons I main Pig, since she is probably the only killer with a built in mechanic that actually discourages tunneling. If you chase a head trapped survivor, you pause their timer, thus you are actively going against the pressure the RBT gives you. 😁

    I suppose the short version of all of the above, is while I don't tend to tunnel myself (I tend to play more for fun than kills and am probably one of the few players who still gives hatch), I do also hold the opinion that expecting the killer not to tunnel when you serve up a teammate like an hors d'oeuvres is wishful thinking, and I wish more survivors would consider that before they unhook me 🥺

  • danielmaster87
    danielmaster87 Member Posts: 10,719

    Well then you admit that the killer is on a time clock that pressures him into focusing out certain survivors, which taken to its extreme (or most optimal) is just tunneling.

    Edit: Oh wait, you didn't even get that far. You just think simply seeing other survivors and then going for them one by one is gonna cause team-wide massive pressure. I had a lot more to say, but no, I'm done.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    …Again, why are you assuming this isn't strategic and purposeful?

    If you're playing properly well, then you'll already know (or strongly suspect) where all the survivors are, and you'd choose the one that'd cause the most damage to the survivor team, like going towards any gen with two survivors on, or going to a survivor on a central gen, or a survivor that's already injured, whatever.

    It's not just "see survivor, walk to survivor, don't think about it".

  • CatFish
    CatFish Member Posts: 49
  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564
  • I_Cant_Loop
    I_Cant_Loop Member Posts: 2,276

    Killers trying to win as efficiently as possible: “no skill”, “toxic”, “trash”, “bad sportsmanship”, “git gud”

    Survivors trying to win as efficiently as possible: “just doing their objective”, “you want to punish people for playing with their friends” (SWF on comms)

    Killer players - play however you want and don’t feel bad about it. It’s only fair because that’s what so many on the survivor side demand for themselves. The only people who are going to get mad at you are survivor-only players who would get curb-stomped if they ever tried playing killer themselves.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    I feel like a broken record, but this post is not aimed at shaming or judging killer players. I am also a killer player. I'm making an argument that is wholly divorced from how survivor players will feel about you or your gameplay.

  • ChuckingWong
    ChuckingWong Member Posts: 1,263

    Not surprised the usual suspects derail your thread @jesterkind


    It can be discouraging to post; when its met with ad hominems, false equivalencies, and contextually ignorant responses.

    Understanding your message though; and I agree. There’s a time and a place for tunneling, but generalizing it as 100% go to strategy in every situation, without considering context or adapting your gameplay, works against a killer’s best interest in the long run.

    You will struggle once you start facing higher MMR opponents.

    It’s like using a calculator in math. Sure, it’s helpful, and sometimes even necessary; but if you rely on it for everything, you don’t develop the core skills you’ll need later. Once you reach higher level math; calculus, derivatives, integrals, linear alg etc…. You’re expected to actually understand and apply the foundations you've built. You can’t lean on shortcuts like WolframAlpha, Symbolab, Desmos, Calculators forever.

    Same with DBD: if you don’t develop your fundamentals like pressure, chase skills, map awareness, reading(not literary but maybe lol) you’ll hit a wall and come to the conclusion "tunneling is the only answer"



    With the changes on the horizon your last point, yes, if BHVR intends on discouraging this playstyle; you really are going to struggle as a killer if this is your go to strategy. But we just dont know what they have planned.


    Personally I would love the game to discourage both camping and tunneling, I dont do it myself out of respect for my opponents. If I lose, its not because I "chose not to tunnel" it could be due to so many other things, thats fine too.


    And people really need to be a bit more humble, but this is the internet; losing is apparently seen as the ultimate weakness for whatever reason. So admission of it is rarely seen on the forum, and admission of messing up anything else in their play… honestly I haven't seen it yet.

    Which is understandable given the responses you got just in this post. You are dogpiled with just nonsense.



  • Mr_K
    Mr_K Member Posts: 10,347

    Speaking of long term when the game is over 9 years old.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    Yeah?

    It doesn't look like it's dying any time soon, you still have the ability to think about your long term results.

  • terumisan
    terumisan Member Posts: 2,209

    chase is heavily stacked in the killers favor?

    no not really chase is completely dependent on survivors skill and how competent survivors are at doing gens since a good survivor can run for 3+ gens in the first chase and a bad survivor goes down in 30 seconds

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    Tunnelling makes the chase heavily stacked in the killer's favour. Regular chases are closer to equal, favouring survivor on some maps.

    Remember, if you're chasing someone that was just unhooked, that survivor starts the chase injured and directly next to you. That's two huge elements of chase tilted in your favour.

  • Anti051
    Anti051 Member Posts: 881

    Well I'm re-reading it, and it definitely boils down to "taking the path of least resistance is bad, learn better 'skill' instead."

    It's misleading advice to try to get killers to "tunnel" less.

    The OP was answered with an example and explanation. It's hard to argue that posts like this don't crop up largely because of all the complaints about getting caught again and the crooked, anger-driven insistence that it's an imbalanced issue (in complete ignorance of the time constraint against the killer).

  • AlreadyTracer
    AlreadyTracer Member Posts: 227

    I mean, you're just wrong on both counts. Firstly, tunneling strategically IS a fundamental. Second, tunneling is not unbalanced just because you personally don't like facing it.

  • NarkoTri1er
    NarkoTri1er Member Posts: 1,366

    and it's okay for matchmaking to do so because that way everybody would see how extremely situational the strat is rather than constantly reading "tunneling is overpowered" takes.

    The whole point of tunnelling is that the chase is heavily stacked in the killer's favour and the survivor team needs either coordination or pretty significant skill in chase to overcome it. Matchmaking being more consistent wouldn't help lower or mid ranked matches with tunnelling at all.

    i mean yeah, game requires huge amount of macro knowledge in order to compete with truly good killers.

    But matchmaking would actually help even lower ones because those bruteforce tunneling players would quickly get out of lower skill levels and then they'd just face the wall at some point. Every PvP game i played has something that basically stomps newer players (champs like Nasus in League that prey on other players not knowing wave management; Negev and PP Bizon in CS2 etc.) but people don't really have good time when they suddenly get to know their strat gets hard punished if they bruteforce it.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    It is an imbalance issue. I'm coming at this from the killer perspective, so you know it's not driven by anger or annoyance from having to deal with it, and it's pretty plain to see as far as I'm concerned.

    If a killer chases someone as soon as they're unhooked, that survivor starts the chase injured, directly next to the killer, and with a good likelihood of not being near resources. It takes no effort or skill for the killer to stack the chase heavily in their favour, and it takes considerable effort and skill to beat them.

    On its face, that's pretty obviously unbalanced. I don't see a way around that. Equally, if you rely on leveraging something unbalanced too heavily, you won't know how to play without it, and you'll have a harder time after a certain point.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    See above. This isn't about what I like facing, and I have actual reasons for saying it's unbalanced.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    I mean, what if they can't?

    Being able to bodyblock for the teammate who just got unhooked is pretty dependant on the killer not being able to easily go around you. It's a very situational counter for a very universal tactic on the killer side, and if it doesn't work out, the killer gets massive value.

  • LockerLurk
    LockerLurk Member Posts: 1,683
    edited May 26

    Sometimes you get into situations in this game that are simply bad luck. Sometimes you get off the Hook, the Killer is patrolling, sees you, goes to smack the unhooker, and hits you and decides to waste not want not. Sometimes, you go to heal in a corner and the Killer simply finds you. Sometimes you mistime the Deliverance and mistakenly unhook too close to the Killer. It happens. The game is unpredictable that way.

    Killers are given unhook notifications for a reason - it's to find and chase Survivors. Sometimes, that means they end up chasing Survivors off hook. One of the tooltips even states that checking on hooks is a good spot to find Survivors, and common sense dictates that SOMEONE has to come save the hooked Survivor usually (unless certain perks are in play), meaning it's intended for the Killer to do this, the Devs see no problem with it.

    This is a feature not a bug, unfortunately - blame BHVR for this.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    That isn't bad luck, though. That's the killer intentionally leveraging a basekit unbalance and you not being able to do something about it.

    The killer intentionally targeting you because you're at a severe disadvantage isn't the same as the killer stumbling across you while you're trying to heal.

  • Coffeecrashing
    Coffeecrashing Member Posts: 5,675

    Tunneling is in my best interests because it works now. And if it does get nerfed, then I'll just adapt to whatever becomes the optimal strategy. Seriously, I'll adapt to whatever meta the game turns into. That is what I do in the other PvP games I play, and it's fine.

    Your logic is also wrong, because you're assuming everyone wants easy games. I purposely try to keep my MMR number as high as possible, so I can have the harder games. So yes, I really should tunnel.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    Genuinely, I don't want to be rude, but is it even worth me continuing to repeat that if you don't care about the reasoning I laid out then the advice isn't for you? It seems like nobody's listening to that.

    If you want to tunnel for harder games and you're willing to adapt if and when it's nerfed properly, this post isn't aimed at you.

  • Coffeecrashing
    Coffeecrashing Member Posts: 5,675

    Your post is titled "IF YOU PLAY KILLER", which means you're making a huge blanket statement for all killers.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    I then go on to clarify multiple times what context my statements are relevant to. I do believe this to be true overall of the killer role, but I respect some people have different priorities to me.

  • Mr_K
    Mr_K Member Posts: 10,347

    Tunneling is nothing new and the game has been around for a long time. The reality is you cannot stop it and neither can bhvr without making the survivor invincible which we've already seen the result of. DS used to make survivors invincible. They could repair a gen right in front of you without worry. If you grab them you get stabbed. That's the kind of stuff that happens when you remove the ability to "tunnel".

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    Well, the first argument applies either way, but for the record I don't actually think it's impossible to fix tunnelling. Honestly, I don't even think it'd be that hard?

    If it were me, this is what would be on a PTB to test: When unhooked, survivors lose collision instead of gaining Endurance, alongside the basic Haste. Both last a little longer, both cancel on Conspicuous Action, and survivors can't use items until the effect disappears.

    Fixes tunnelling, can't be abused, everyone wins.

    Either way, BHVR are planning on weakening tunnelling, and have been trying to this whole time. There's a good chance they'll eventually succeed.

  • Mr_K
    Mr_K Member Posts: 10,347

    Lose collision for how long? Killers already chase unhooked survivors and wait out the endurance timer. If the timer last too long then the survivor can troll. Think old Freddy where awake survivors still affect M1 aiming.

  • jesterkind
    jesterkind Member Posts: 9,564

    That'd need to be tested, but I think fifteen seconds would probably strike a good balance?

    Enough time to use the Haste to make distance if the killer's trying to wait it out, but short enough that a survivor lingering to be annoying will still be vulnerable soon enough.

    Again, that's outside the scope of this post for the most part, though.

  • CatFish
    CatFish Member Posts: 49
    edited May 26

    WAIT A MINUTE, they actually banned danielmaster87 !?!?!!?
    Rest in pieces soldier

  • GeneralV
    GeneralV Member Posts: 12,666
    edited May 26

     The same occurs for the downvote system. It's why it needs to go, it doesn't promote discussion

    I strongly agree with this one.

    The existence of a downvote system is exactly why I really dislike Reddit. It doesn't promote discussions, it replaces them in the worst way possible.

    Just downvoting and moving on completely defeats the point of being on a platform meant for discussing and talking about things.

  • TwinsMain2004
    TwinsMain2004 Member Posts: 175

    only the case if you are brand new to killer

    otherwise you should and often need to tunnel as the 4v1 is impossible even for nurse and blight

  • AmpersandUnderscore
    AmpersandUnderscore Member Posts: 2,965

    the 4v1 is impossible even for nurse and blight

    I'm just gonna leave this here. Most recent official stats, 69% kill rate at the top end.

    1000009368.png

    Yeah, really struggling. They're merely defeating their opponents more than twice as often as the survivors are escaping.