🚨 Anti-Tunneling and Anti-Slugging features got delayed 🚨

I would have agreed last year. This year, I'm not so sure. I do think they'll bring it back, but it's hard to say what it will look like. I'm getting the sense that they are actually trying to incorporate fairness back into the game, but it's a tossup on how far they'd be willing to go to get there. I also feel like the disaster of anti-go next and TWD chapter has them acting much more hesitant than before.

I'm more concerned people in charge of the game looked at the changes, how ambitious many of them were and how far reaching their consequences would be, how many interactions they couldn't possibly have tested and prepared for that the community would figure out before the content was even in our hands, and still went ahead with it in that state.

Then I'm more concerned with how things like the anti-go next feature went. Both in how it was designed in a way that led to almost as many false positives as genuine applications.

Then I'm also considered with how the feedback went toward it. Some was for refinement and fixing the system's accuracy and cutting down on false flagging, while the rest was a resounding "Just throw it out entirely" because of how many people who would be satisfied with nothing but removal of such an extreme system that could potentially affect them in their minds.

Now we look at changes that affect the entire killer role, not only not fixing killer balance but making it even worse, punishing killers for getting kills that don't involve tunneling because there was a possibility they potentially could, making changes to slugging that effect the entire macro game focus of both sides decidedly in one direction, applying both the carrot and stick simultaneously (which is good!) but doing so in extremely uneven measure (which is bad.)

Then people are surprised when so many killers want everything thrown out instead of refined. They should have seen this outcome from a mile away, there is no way they could hope to make this many sweeping changes at once and expect to land on the right values and oversights for everything. This is to be expected. But that makes it that much more important that the community is both fair and honest about all of it, regardless of how any changes affect them individually.

A lot of feedback has been dismissive since the moment the patch notes dropped. A lot of other feedback has been alarm bells at the slightest shadow. But a lot of people have been addressing foresights since the moment that the first details were revealed, mostly because of the amount of details that weren't, and how these things go each time they try to make ambitious changes.

Don't give up on making core experience improvements. That is a good focus to have, as player experience is very important. Not to go on a tangent, but the history of Final Fantasy 14 is a very good example of how important customer satisfaction can be for a game's success and longevity. All they did was strive to do better, put pride (and in some cases, even career security itself) aside and focused on addressing player issues in a way that impacted other players as little as possible, and went from being cancelled to the biggest game in its genre with an even longer lifespan.

The biggest difference with an asymetric environment is that both sides need to be treated evenly obviously, but they also need to be considered evenly. Not as a "devs favor X!" kind of excuse, but more of a "If I make a change to X survivor thing, it will affect Y and Z survivor things as well, but also C and D killer things." People theorycraft and doompost because they have little faith that their concerns will be addressed, and the pipeline for some fixes has been notoriously slow.

There will always be hyperbolic feedback that is self focused instead of being about the game on the whole, and there will always be people who want to throw out anything they see as a threat to themselves. All we can do as a community is be honest with our feedback, and all they can do is be willing to sift through the rubble and learn how to improve the game from it.

I just want everyone to remember how the anti-go next went. Both in the community, and how it was handled behind the scenes. We obviously don't know the latter, nor necessarily should we, but its crucial that the RIGHT steps be taken in regards to how to handle these changes going forward, regardless of whether they are the EASY ones. Many of the changes from this PTB have the potential to "save" or "kill" the game, depending on how they are (or aren't) revised and/or iterated upon. More than anything my personal concerns are how much dissonance is going to impact changes on this scale, whether the devs and leadership will be up to the task of handling things properly, and whether the community on either side will essentially sabotage them with bad data.

This isn't bandaid fixes, its actual core adjustments. Its important that the community acknowledges this is a shot at the devs doing more than throwing perks or numbers adjustments at problems and calling it a day, and its important that the devs realize that making changes this integral has amazing potential to both improve or ruin the game.

I dunno… 10 minutes? Wasn't exactly counting.

After the The Great Fog Vial War they should have seen it coming. That was so much drama over something so minor.

There was so much in this update I completely forgot about the new characters. I've had to keep reminding myself that they exist. We just had The Walking Dead, which most people thought was handled poorly and needed more work, particualry that god awful map. Before that we had Springtrap. I'm so exhausted with all this new stuff. Please just adjust the game to be more enjoyable.

So these changes can make like half the killers feel like worst killers now and worst killers now be almost gg free escape against them and you call it killer sided? These changes were overdone and if every killer would be like wesker in terms of power then they could go out but we have still ghostface,trapper,clown or knight which would get done by this going live not to mention hardcore tunneling punishments that can punish hardcore tunneler and even killer playing normaly or 12 hooking which inst good or healty in first place. This is probably biggest change in years of dbd that will determine it future so theres nothing wrong from devs side to be carefull with this change being most balanced as it should be.

It's easy to forget all the new content, tbh.

Don't know how strong she will be, but I really like the new Killer's design and Vee is such a cutie. And it's gonna be fun to whip out my tambourine and play it in the face of the angry hornet's nest of tunnelling Killers that BHVR have now whipped up into a frenzy for us. Silver linings and all that…

But yeah, feels like we only just got the Walking Dead yesterday and yet here it is, more content… Phew.

The real concern now is whether they'll actually follow through on slugging and Tunnelling, given how quickly they backed down. And let’s be honest, it also reveals which side of the equation they’re more invested in. When killer mechanics get pushback, it’s a pause and rethink. When survivor QoL gets pushback, it’s a full retreat.

I think this was one of the biggest takeaways from this PTB, actually incorporating the various strengths and weaknesses of killers into elements of the game, especially when they will affect all of them in every match. The most we've seen of this are things like cages not following (un)hooking rules, or nurse having stuff made into special attacks to prevent being able to utilize M1 perks. There is potential for more elements to have variable strength based on specific factors like that, and using it as a means to help the weaker killers more while reducing exploitation potential on the stronger ones would be one of the single biggest normalizations they could do to address the game's balance. Then again, survivor audio has been coming along "great" so it could very well have just been a fluke.

At least, for those of us who got to test it out in a normal manner, the changes really didn't feel too bad.
I made a much more in-depth post about the anti-tunnel feature in the PTB feedback section if you want to read my verdict on the matter.
For what its worth, I really hope they don't scrap the idea, because there were a lot of good changes in this test patch.

Here is my breakdown of the anti-tunnel, after 20+ matches worth of observing how it played out.

I did not say that.

Did you find the system to be perfect in the PTB? You could find no room for improvement?

You know who's bringing out Scene Partner for that occasion 😇

looks the other way, whistling the tune of a certain lute

I'd say they're consistent. The consistency just has a wee bit of a slant in one direction.

I think this is a large change to how the game plays. Probably larger than anything except the EGC, in recent memory.

Getting it mostly right, the first time, is important. I think pushing anti-tunnel and slug with a new chapter and a killer rework was a mistake.

Not really surprised. I think the screams were heard as far as Mars

Yeah I have to say, as much as I hate chase and second chance builds on survivors, I find the killer builds mostly boring as all hell. At least with survivor you do see some fun, creative, or memey builds. Killer is just regression and aura almost entirely.

I was happy to see that this is delayed. We want BHVR to test stuff and respond to feedback about it, so it's good to hear that they're being thoughtful about this.