http://dbd.game/killswitch
Idea for an Anti-Tunnel Mechanic
Tonight I was thinking about anti-tunnel mechanics and what could help dissuade killers from tunneling, without punishing them the way the 9.2.0 PTB did. I think survivors are generally stronger than the killer, and the anti-tunnel changes certainly nerfed killers. I’m glad they didn’t implement the changes, but I still think creating some kind of anti-tunnel mechanic would be good. With that in mind, I tried to think of a mechanic that would prevent tunneling, without nerfing killers. This is what I thought:
When a survivor is unhooked, they enter the “Ethereal” state. While a survivor is in the Ethereal state, the survivor has no collision, and the killer cannot hit them with any attacks. The survivor exits the Ethereal state when they perform a conspicuous action, become healthy, another survivor is hooked, or after manually exiting it by pressing a button (like dead hard). The Ethereal state is also deactivated once the exit gates are powered. If a survivor comes off the hook while the exit gates are powered, they get the current endurance effect. The survivor’s model would look ethereal, so it’s clear that they are in the state, but it wouldn’t show up on the killer’s HUD.
I may be overlooking other ways this could be abused, but the idea is that the killer wouldn’t be able to touch them until either the survivor has progressed the game, or the killer has hooked another survivor. There’s a manual option it exit the ethereal state in case they want to take a hit for another survivor. Technically the killer could camp the survivor while they are in the ethereal state until the exit gates are powered, but they’d still have windows, pallets, and other survivors to help.
Comments
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This is basically just what elusive should be. Or should've been.
I didn't get to test it, but unless you include the "can't be hit by attacks" it doesn't do any good for body blocking to simply lose collision. You can lose collision right now by falling onto the killer and still get hit.
So yeah, agree with that part.
This doesn't solve tunneling though. Killers have already shown that standing at or lurking near the hook for up to 70 seconds isn't enough to deter them from getting you out of the game, so 40s of elusive isn't anywhere near enough.
People don't like it, but the only way to meaningfully deal with tunneling is some kind of consequence for doing it.
4 -
Survivors can weaponize that, because they would be immune to damage, but could still choose to flashlight save, flashbang save, pallet save, or hook sabotage.
So, for example, if a different survivor is under an undropped pallet, the ethereal survivor could just stand next to that undropped pallet, and the killer wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, since they aren’t allowed to hit the ethereal survivor.
-4 -
- Survivor gets unhooked
- Becomes ethereal
- Runs inside unhooker
- Killer attacks
- Ethereal survivor pesses E to
deadhardto become ethereal to bodyblock anyways.
This is just elusive but with extra steps. You know the thing that was abused on ptb.
While I actually dont think this should be implemented, here are a few pointers to make it not abuseable:
- The ethereal survivor would need to be completely inivisble and undetectable. Even to other survivors.
- The ethereal survivor cannot interact with objects except windows. That will be reenabled 1-5 seconds after becoming material.
- The ethereal cannot see or hear the killer, the terror radius or other survivors.
- If the last point is too harsh... Maybe allow vision of the aura of survivors who are currently not in chase or more than 24m away.
-3 -
There are some problems but they can be fixed.
A survivor in this state shouldnt be able to do this things:
Use items: mostly items for blinding.
Drop pallets: to help another survivor in chase, pallet save
Vault: denying pallet breaks or killer vault
Stun the killer: Head On, Last Stand (vaulting covers that)
All of thar needs to be still impossible for atleast 5sec after exiting this state, otherwise you can abuse it for an easy save, stun etc.
With that said the timer must be long enough so the killer cant outwait it.
You still have the problem that this survivor can just watch the chase of others and make mindgames with callouts impossible or run into the killer to hinder his vision a bit.
Personally i would like it if the antitunnel would be more like "you cant find me" than "im here but you cant hit me." So like elusive + completely invisible or/and the teleporting with lockers from Vecnas hand.
1 -
I honestly think unhooked survivors should go invis like how the vecna hand item works. No scratch marks, no sounds, cant use any item as the icon would be greyed out. The effect disappears after doing a conspicuous action. Although, I want maps and killer disparity, perks, addons, 4 man swfs to be addressed before any tunneling update
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This was what I also thought Elusive should shoot for. No body blocking ability. The killer should be able to hit someone else right through the unhooked survivor.
It needs a timer, because someone could essentially rat after one hook and be simply useless the rest of the match by doing zero conspicuous actions. Or they could be in an SWF and follow the killler everywhere and be a massive problem. As others said, they shouldn't be able to interact with anything accept maybe a medkit.
It would need another timer for someone else being hooked, since people are often downed while unhooking. So the killer could toss player 1 on the hook and player 2, who was just unhooked a few seconds ago, would lose the status immediately. That would make it a useless effect.
I'm just brainstorming, but they could make it so the survivor goes to a different realm, like the Void, where there's a healing well. This would cut them off form the match entirely, keeping them safe form the killer, and the killler safe from them, until they heal and are returned to the match. This would also need a fairly quick time limit to prevent ratting.
1 -
I don’t really want to discuss technical and logical appliance to it, because it may find their use
Just my personal issue
I don’t really like this idea from aesthetic side. I just can’t see survivors a complete ghost in the game. It was SO artificial with elusive in PTB, as well as the way how they hid UI of hooks. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise. Yes, I believe in magic healing hands even more than ghost survivors
If one day it will be added, probably I’ll be that person who wouldn’t be able to fully accept this feature. Just my personal meh
1 -
I think from a lore perspective it would be kinda perfect, if you give it some magical aspect to the visuals. Like the survivor has been protected by a temporary spell or something.
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Meh… entity… protecting? Rather than being forced to do so… which implys something like offering and perks rather than default thing
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It could be the Entity wanting the trial to drag out to feed longer. Hope is neccessary too. It could also be a protective spell surviors learned from someone like Vigo. That wouldn't be bad as a perk.
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It could be the Entity wanting the trial to drag out to feed longer
But we have 3 gen mechanic that prevents hostages… We have endgame collapse…
So even if the survivors learned spell, how exactly? After all, even boons and invocations are available to survivors somehow special in this terms, and then, out of nowhere, every survivors suddenly know a spell by default that they whisper immediately when they're unhooked...? So Mikaella or Vittorio/Taurie doesn't look special anymore, for me it's just another layer of ignorance of past lore to justify some mechanic… Like man, who cares about some potential energy when everyone has a damn ghost spell!
In fact, everything in this game can be justified by lore. Absolutely. So no, I’m not saying it's pointless. We literally have survivors healing each other with magical hands, but that's not what I'm talking about. I doubt I can be convinced of the visual validity of this mechanic, sorry. Even what I saw in the PTB didn't satisfy me; the survivors covered in some strange dust were simply disappointing. My survivor model looked simply ugly. I don't think there's any need to try to convince my personal itch here. I also don't think there's even any point in trying to justify this mechanic with lore; we all understand that it's a crutch. Necessary or not matters by vision
I've already written about this somewhere. I don't particularly approve of this mechanic. Because bodyblocking/protection hits from both the survivors and the killer are a form of interactivity and a way to play for me. I'm used to it, even if I'm playing as a survivor and understand that for some protection hit the killer will sentence me to tunneling. Sometimes I doing it purposefully, because for example I’m in better spot rather than my saviour. Because it's a game for me and I have my personal giggle for this. From a balance perspective, not giving perks that grant a tank ability for 80 seconds and also properly designed locations of the hooks on the map is already enough. And well… fixing auto aim? Maybe this as well
I also feel this collision thing will cause many, many annoying bugs. Or it will be another exploit for long term, but who knows. Again, everything here is an just a humble opinion0
