Are people really that upset about the anti-tunnel?

It seems you don't fully understand that this change doesn't exist to balance around the best players. Tunneling and Slugging have been the number 1 complaint about this game for quite literally years. The only people complaining about this either have had 0 attempt at trying to play with it (its actually really good changes overall) or just want to make sub-optimal plays because its "what should be better". This "finish the game as fast as possible" mindset is awful from both sides, its not fun playing for 5 minutes and then waiting in lobby again afterwards because of stomps, you can look at literally every single game where this is an issue and see the exact same sentiment from all players. In the Otz clip he makes a bad decision to end the game faster and gets penalized for it. Which was not necessary at all, something I have personally explained earlier in this thread.

I am by all means a "bad killer" I am directly the "casual" player that would be affected by these changes, I go to the loud noise of unhooks, I go for the weakest person on my screen, yet in 4 total hours of gameplay I never once got the anti-tunnel punishments. Not a single time. Balancing around the high MMR players has only hurt lower MMR players, its extremely obvious this has been the case, extreme nerfs to everything survivors can use to survive over the years because they were abusable by SWFs to bully killers and make the game unenjoyable, just leading to this awful back and forth until turning the game into a 3v1 became the defacto best strat possible, and then because the "top players" started using it, so did everyone else. Mid tier players who think they face an SWF every game because of their personal poor gameplay, tunneling out your average person just trying to enjoy the game are the ones that get effected so negatively by tunneling and slugging, not high MMR players. The exact people you are trying to defend are the ones the most effected by the existence of these "strats". I have heard nothing negative from ACTUAL casual players that have tried the changes, they love them actually. They love being able to run their favorite perks without having to waste slots on Decisive Strike or Off the Record every single game because they are at risk of being tunneled out immediately once the game starts. They are happy games aren't ending as soon as the first person dies because people aren't dying until much later into the game, allowing for a much more active back and forth when it isn't a boring 3v1 watching as your team falls apart into nothingness because the game is effectively over once the first person is dead at anything more than 3 gens remaining (don't forget they have to stay in the game or they get penalized). Are these statements from first time accounts of the changes? Yes.

Acting like the single Otz clip of a killer rightfully getting punished for playing poorly (something that is extremely rare in 2025) is anything even close to bad for the game is disingenuous to the current state of the live game, killer queues are through the moon because people just do not want to play survivor, its not fun, there is no incentive to sit there and suffer acting like a punching bag in 90% of games, even with some insane bloodpoint bonuses.

Hell even with the 25% bonuses to repair speed AND the blocking of gen regressing, a 3v1 tunnel at 4 or 5 gens is still an easy 3-4k for all good killers. Nothing has changed, survivors are STILL losing an entire player, 75% total bonus repair speed across the remaining players doesn't make up for the effective 100% repair speed the extra person gives, or the existence they can even put on the map. The changes are undeniably good, if you can't see that, then I'm sorry you're blinded by the "killers need to be the most OP thing on the planet and win 90% of their games" mentality that the majority of killer players seem to have nowadays.

Frankly, this is beyond anti-tunnel.

Gens can be perma blocked past 6 hooks if you hook a survivor twice in a row and they die, even if you weren't tunneling and are trying to at least secure a kill with 1 gen left.

It's embarrassing at this point, and you may as well forget ever playing Pig or Sadako since their Mori's also trigger the gen speed boost. On top of the extra pallets (aside Haddonfield and Coldwind, thank god for those two maps getting love) M1 killers are going to be a headache.

That is quite literally the opposite of normal game design. You always balance games around what the best players are capable of, but while keeping in mind that lower skill players. Look at any competitive game ever:

• DotA
• LoL
• CS:GO
• Rainbow Six
• Hell even Fortnite

So, imagine a world where we say, nerf the killer shack. If you nerf killer shack, what happens at high level play? Well, one of the strongest structures in the game is weaker for the survivors in a way that might make it a place you can actually mindgame on say, an m1 killer.

But what does it do against low skill survivors? Well nothing really ,because low skill survivors aren't using check spots, and watching for holes in the walls of shack to see where the killer is. Low skill survivors don't even realize what a "tile" is and probably don't even realize that the structures they are seeing from game to game are actually the same on different maps. All they see is, pallet, and drop it.

So this would be an example where, you can nerf something for high skill survivors while not hurting low skill survivors.

A great example that was actually done in DBD history was the old old ruin. The one with the skillchecks? That was an example of a perk that, at low skill play, was DEVASTATING to survivors because the low skill ones could barely hit skill checks as it is, and now they have to hit a great skill check? Or find a hex totem? When they barely even know what that is? But at high level play, where the survivors are hitting great skill checks in their sleep, it doesn't really hurt them. So this would be an example of a perk that needed a good rework to make it so it wasn't so devastating to low skill survivors, but actually buffing it at high skill play.

Don't people constantly tell survivors to 'git gud' too?

"Git gud" is the only word and argument this community knows, it's not news. Once again, if people love this patch simply because they love the idea of abusing their opponents, they should just say so. Not pretend like they care about the health of the game.

Yes, because I said that. Can every player on the game in theory play any game on an E-Sports Championship level. Sure, and we might get through a patch without a Pig Nerf and all her bugs fixed But most of us are not out there winning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year playing video games and no game should expect us to play on that level and there are Pig bugs (sorry, features) that have been in the game since 2021, not to mention new ones.

You're not getting it. It's not proof that that's the minimum skill required to pull it off.

Thank you, now i think you are finally starting to understand where I am coming from. The bonuses to repair speed aren't the biggest problem I have, its them coupled with the hard no more regression penalty. As long as they get rid of that part, I am fine with the repair speed buff (not saying I like it, but I understand it and can work around it, even when I am playing Pig with zero gen regression perks, as I normally do.)

It's a good idea to start punishing it but 6 hooks is kinda crazy, honestly if it was just the generator speed I think it would be more okay and not blocking the gens cause I don't think anything should make your perks not work… besides maybe endgame collapse but I think they should work there but that's just me lol.

The core mechanics and objectives have to change for people to want to stop doing the strategy.

Just so we have a clear understanding, what are you specifically referring to with this part?

Yeah! I actually watched his video last night, and considered sharing it here myself, but I was defeated. Thanks, glad you came here to share it.

Except Its hitting a more than just aggressive tunneling...

Spookyloopz accidentally got it in his 2nd match here. Unfortunately a flashlight blind negated what WOULDVE been his 5th hook on a still living survivor. Since the game is only tracking hooks and not downs or chases... that doesnt matter. Killing the guy who had plenty of time off hook and was never tunneled resulted in a hit.

he said that even if the update was good and successful, he still would hate it

I feel like a big problem is that they added like 7 anti-tunnel things at once. Between the boosted endurance and haste time, the hidden aura, hidden killer instinct, hidden blood, hidden scratch marks, no grunting and hiding the unhook... you've pretty much already countered getting tunneled off hook.

The penalties just feel like they're mostly going to hit ppl who are doing what they're SUPPOSE to be doing. Not every chase results in a hook. If I pressure the other survivors for awhile before finding the last hooked guy 2 minutes after his unhook working on a gen... he hasn't been getting tunneled.

Im for the idea of anti tunnel measures being put in place and definetly the anti slugging measures. I do think the "before six hook" penalty might be a little steep but we will see. They are really just trying new things and that is good for the game. If it goes too far the other way they can adjust. Since the change I've had mixed results. I've had a 4k match and a couple where I got no kills but hey it was like that before the change too. Overall it's not too bad so far.

I actually kind of agree with your point, but perhaps in a bit of a weird way:

Tunneling and slugging was the "nuclear option" that killers pulled out in response to sweaty SWF stacks, but once released on the DBD playerbase, it became a genie that couldn't be put back into its bottle once people realized how effective it was.

In true "gamers will optimize the fun out of everything they can"-fashion, things have just escalated constantly back and forth between survivors and killers, and that has caused us to reach the point we are at.

One other note about the hook stage vs gen time changes, if I'm remembering my patch history correctly, the hook stages were changed at the exact same time the gen repair extension happened, or within a week or two after at the worst.

In other words, killers got a "buff" and then it was immediately taken away in the name of "an eye for an eye" rather than looking at whether it was actually balanced or not in the first place.

As it turns out, 10 seconds extra of hook time on the first hook of the game translates into around 30 seconds of gen time, which completely negates (and then some!) any benefit the killer received from extending the generator repair time.

On a more general note, BHVR's constant "balancing via pick rate spreadsheet" has resulted in making the tactics and strategy metagame escalation happen exponentially more rapidly instead of mitigating or even possibly reversing it when it was still a lower-stakes issue, precisely because killers were picking perks that filled gaps in the game systems, while survivors had the ability to pick basically whatever perks they wanted for whatever role they wanted to fill in that particular match.

This meant that the killer perks that were the most useful at filling gaps got nerfed into the ground, leaving only in-game strategy and tactics left to fill the gap, leading to further proliferation of tunneling, slugging, and camping as a means to achieve victory.

Now killers are getting some basekit stuff (but only if they have the mobility to be able to use it, thus the complaints about only Nurse, Blight, Kaneki, etc. being viable), but then they are also getting their entire set of perks currently used to fill gaps in the game systems completely gutted or reworked to not be useful anymore.

As for the "refusal to adapt" thing, the entire situation is coming about because of the survivors' refusal to adapt to the ages-old strategy of tunneling and/or slugging with perks that already exist, which could have changed the meta into a more healthy spot if they only chose to use those perks, while killers have been compelled to adapt to the very real changes that BHVR has implemented to spoon-feed survivors.

Basically what I'm saying is that Killers have been using scissors because BHVR banned them from using paper, while survivors have been continuously using paper while refusing to use rock despite rock's existence being pointed out to them repeatedly, because they don't find rock "fun" for some arbitrary reason.

The entire time BHVR has been buffing paper and nerfing scissors because that's what the spreadsheet said had a high pick rate with extreme effectiveness in favor of scissors, which ironically resulted in killers leaning into scissors even harder because it was still the only thing they had left despite BHVR's best efforts.

If the survivors had just swallowed their pride and used rock for a while, then killers might have found a way to "counter" them by using rock as well, but at least that would have resulted in an evenly balanced game state as opposed to the tunnel-slug-camp fest the game became.

Additionally, if the survivors had picked rock, prompting killers to pick rock, perhaps over time BHVR would have made balance change decisions other than "nerf scissors, buff paper" for the last few years.

This patch will simply be the straw that broke the camel's back, and I genuinely hope that the killer player pool evaporates within a week of the patch going live on the main client and everyone realizing how awful it feels to play killer.

This last part is complete tinfoil hattery combined with "There's no way they're that lost in the spreadsheet sauce… right?" but I'm afraid to believe that someone at BHVR went "Survivor is picked 80% of the time in games and therefore needs to have gameplay catered to them because they make up 80% of all profits for BHVR," and that resulted in the changes we are seeing.