We should give better benefits to murderers who don't dig tunnels.

I still don't know why they thought original Pop basekit was good.
What good it does for killers with no mobility?
Current Pain Res should've been made basekit and the perk reworked.

I gave up of making sense of their actions too. :(

There also needs to be a downside to tunnel people at 5 gens remaining as well.
This new update does absolutely nothing to address that issue.

Yeah we go from finally base kicking meaning something and you can actually use different builds. To back to using the perks. Fun. Because now you just run pop or the like and nothings changed i guess. Gen regression as usual.

I'm currently playing more killer than survivor and don't feel I need a lollipop and a pat on the head for not tunneling at 5 gens. Don't assume everyone who thinks this narrative is bs only plays survivor.

What other views? I'm playing killer and I'm fine. There's nothing I want changed. And what nerfs do I want? Maybe for S tier killlers, but most reasonable people want that. I want the lower tier killers reworked to catch them up and have everyone meet in the middle. And where did I say anything about nerfing addons? But there's plenty of examples of killers in the forum crying about BNPs, syptics, and syringes, two of which are now on the chopping block. So it's okay for one group to cry for addon nerfs?

Tunneling at 5 gens is not the same as doing gens. There's nothing else for survivors to do. There's no other objective. Tunneling is a choice. Doing gens isn't. And even when there is another objective, look at the sweatfest that is the event. God forbid I go into the void and make a stupid crystal without the killer using it as an opportunity to down me at the well when all I want is to complete a Quest. Even when survivors aren't doing gens constantly there's just no winning with some players.

Honestly, I don't like giving profound in-game benefits for hooking different survivors out of perks.
If anything, trying to give tasty rewards in a game designed like this would be ruinous. Killers should feel plenty powerful basekit and have the ability to pour on pressure, antagonize survivors, and effectuate hits reliably.

It's true that not all kits have been designed in a way we can all take pride in as a community, but heaping massive benefits such as regression and haste onto "non tunneling" behavior will either overtune the 96% of Killer mains that play their characters properly, or developers may have to actively NERF Killer kit to balance out the "rewards" for normal, healthy gameplay.

It's not like giving all of your employees a small raise or quarterly bonus - whenever you empower one side of this asymmetrical game, the other side is the one who has to pay.

Trying to keep the game as-is and "bandaid" a solution with some numerical benefits will not work; bad Killers will not feel enough of a benefit, normal Killers will be generally buffed, and great Killers will feel unstoppable. You can't make the buff too high or it breaks the game, you can't make it too low or it will fail as incentive; and regardless, bad faith actors are going to keep being mean no matter what carrot you dangle over their heads. (Which is why the devs chose to add a little 'stick' to the anti-tunnel patch last time… a bit much but we get their train of thought.)

What REALLY needs to happen is less of a focus on the Killer gameplay and a much broader focus on the Trial's pacing itself.

Why do lots of Killer players (not the mean-spirited ones that tunnel to be vexatious) feel that they are pressured into getting a Kill earlier than natural? Why do Killer players keep bringing powerful regression perks and lament about how OP survivors are? Why are content creators always complaining about mechanics that avoid hits and give objective bonuses to survivors? What is the number one complaint of new Killers that start to climb in MMR ? Why do Killers often feel so helpless?
On the flip side…
What do survivors feel when someone gets hooked early? Why do survivors disconnect at the first sign of trouble? Why is it so common to see survivors sacrifice themselves for a friend in need when there's only one generator left - but that same survivor will easily let friends perish at 5? Why do survivors often feel so helpless?

The root cause for many of this game's negative experiences don't just stem from balance and power dynamics - it stems from the fact that Survivors have too much power in the early game and virtually none later on. Generators fly by in a blink, and it's often difficult for even the best players to stop a survivor team that's glued to the gens and well coordinated.
On the flip side, what happens when the Killer gets a couple of downs before a generator or two are done? The match can be salvaged perhaps, but that's the key sentiment: "**Salvaged**" - it's easy for survivors to lose hope because if they don't get the first couple of generators done before the Killer gains momentum, the match is basically over. There are plenty of second-chance perks that rebound health states, give advantages in chase, and can come in clutch in rare circumstances; but there honestly are not a lot of opportunities for survivors to bounce back and turn "3 hooks at 5 gens" into a 3 man out.

What needs to happen?
The early generator progress needs to be slower and Survivors need ample opportunities to power through generators as the match drags on.

It should not be EXPECTED that the first survivor hook is going to be punctuated by 1 or 2, sometimes 3 generators popping.

It should not be EXPECTED that if the Killer gets three hooks with 4 gens remaining that the match is basically over.

Having an idea of what this healthier, more robust system might look like - I believe anti-tunneling would fit in here somewhere.

A quality anti-tunnel system isn't going to be adding numbers to Killer basekit, it will be interacting with a new system designed to encourage health and engagement across the board. In a system where the Killer is given more lenience and survivors are allowed more opportunities to make a comeback, an anti-tunnel system would maintain lenience early and starve survivors of opportunities later - with those who tunnel foregoing particular lenience early on and allowing survivors to escape more easily.

Thanks for reading this stranger's weird take <3

While the developers have missed the mark sometimes - it's a massive company with leaders, passionate artists, and talented engineers making this "half-lucid asymmetrical horror dream" experience work so amazingly.

Personally, I can't agree with the idea that giving every killer "base kit pain res" is a solution to any kind of problem, and there isn't a lot of evidence to suggest that the developers prefer one side over the other. At the end of the day, the developers are just people - they're doing their best with what they got.

Directly or indirectly, we have a relationship with the developers through their work; Sometimes their best is amazing, sometimes it just isn't good enough. That's how relationships work. It's best for us to give grace and help fix their mistakes instead of putting them down.

As for the "pain res base kit" - I can't imagine what that would solve.

If the problem is pressure or match time, there are far more eloquent ways to increase Killer pressure and/or make Trials a pinch longer to relieve scrutiny on the Killer. The solution is seldom to take a meta item and tape it to the base game.