http://dbd.game/killswitch
Is there a way to eliminate tunneling entirely?
Everyone says we need to create an environment without tunneling. But how do we actually coordinate such an environment? If we were to hang everyone to the average level once, wouldn't that be like forcing everyone to finish a marathon holding hands?
Comments
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The way i would do is that survivors share the 1st hook state. Meaning that the earliest you could remove someone from the game is the 6th hook, which at that point most people would agree is near the later half of the game.
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I think BHVR's idea was pretty good.
You can't hook the same person twice, and you can't sacrifice somebody before getting 4 hooks.
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These sorts of changes heavily incentivize slugging for reasons which should be extremely obvious.
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Wasn´t that the reason why Slugging became a problem in the first place? Because it was negative impact for the Killer to hook at all? You pick up, risking a save, walking to hook, hooking, activating perks like OTR DS and DH. It is a big time investment.
The big problem with this is the following mentality. "You won´t heal me? Well here I go to the Killer and screw you over"
Another big problem which was seen on the PTB was that if you give Survivors the safety of beeing save from tunneling it can be weaponized pretty easy together with basekit unbreakable this makes some horrible scenarios. "Hehe I am on death hook, I will go for body blocks. Oh I got downed and slugged for 20 seconds. LETS DO IT AGAIN!" /evil voice off. You see the problem in that I hope.
I once thought about this mechanic. If the Killer picks up a survivor and carries them to a hook all Gens get blocked for the time the Killer invests. But I am unsure about this.
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Slugging is already heavily incentivized.
Also it's unlikely these changes would come without the 2 minute Unbreakable.
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If they put in actual punishments for tunneling. Sure they can also add rewards for not tunneling (and they should if they add punishments). But without punishments for tunneling, nothing will work, because you would need to create an incentive which is better than tunneling for people to not to tunnel if they want to win and this would be completely busted.
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Not all tunnelling is the killer deliberately hunting same survivor.
I got someone out within 4 hooks because they kept running in front of me.
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you could give people unlimited auric cells but they could never tunnel again and they would still tunnel. punishments are only way to make it less appealing as previous comment said.
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Thing is if you somehow completely remove tunneling, then either you need to slow down the game, or make it so average chase is faster even for M1 killers.
None of those options will be fun for survivors…2 -
I doubt it's possible to get rid of it completely without overhauling the entire hooking and elimination mechanic of the game. And that would be a very big change I could only seen done properly when you start fresh from scatch of designing the game.
Though I think it's possible to reduce it in a way to make it a less reliable strategy and not turn it into a weapon.
That's why I think that endurance is the wrong approach to counter it. Making survivors untouchable but not beeing able to interact with the killer during their protection phase would probably way more reliable.
It definitvely though would require a reconsider the early game advantage survivors currently have. Something like locked pallets and windows, which somebody has to open/unlock, before it can be used in chase.-1 -
I had an idea that the Entity blocks hooks when the last hooked survivor is carried by the Killer again. But this will lead to slugging. I don't think there's a way to prevent it completely unless the hook system itself changes.
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The concept of removing tunneling means giving survivors actual moments of invulnerability which will lead to more degen gameplay from survivors. And since killers have no other options for playstyles then they will just quit.
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I don't think we can or should even try to completely eliminate tunneling.
What I think we should do is try to make tunneling not be the clearly strongest strategy to use against solo teams and beginner-to-intermediate level players, in 99.9% of situations, the way it currently is. Let tunneling in certain scenarios stay viable, but don't make it so the flowchart for optimal killer gameplay is clearly and obviously more complex than [find someone] -> [tunnel them out]. (Obviously I'm oversimplifying here, but hopefully you get the point)
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The big problem with this is the following mentality. "You won´t heal me? Well here I go to the Killer and screw you over"
That's why I push for a hook donation system. Survivors can choose to donate their first hook state to the shared pool, and if there's a bad actor like this they can choose not to.
I've also mentioned that this would have a limit of something like 4 minutes or 350% total gen progress across the map, or both, where it locks in hook states and you can no longer donate in mid to late game.
Another big problem which was seen on the PTB was that if you give Survivors the safety of beeing save from tunneling it can be weaponized pretty easy together with basekit unbreakable this makes some horrible scenarios. "Hehe I am on death hook, I will go for body blocks. Oh I got downed and slugged for 20 seconds. LETS DO IT AGAIN!" /evil voice off. You see the problem in that I hope.
Well, they also pulled anti slugging, so this isn't a feature to be concerned about anymore.
But in the scenario with hook donation, the primary goal of the killer is so to eliminate someone as soon as possible, it's just how they do that changes. They will want to burn through hooks as fast as they can.
So, normally, this will be chases, but if someone gets downed body blocking, like your doom scenario here, the killer just gets a free hook and free gen pressure toward their goal.
If the Killer picks up a survivor and carries them to a hook all Gens get blocked for the time the Killer invests
I personally think that non interactive effects like gen blocking and incapacitation should be extremely limited.
I'm not opposed to the idea of giving the killer additional gen speed slowdown during a carry, for example, but that's only if they actually put in meaningful anti tunnel.
Blocking gens, or even slowdown, doesn't fix the "trapper can't cross the map like blight can" problem either.
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I think it's possible, yes, but there needs to be some willingness to take the plunge and address problems after they arise instead of handwringing about them before they happen.
What I think we can learn, constructively, from the previous PTBs attempts is that BHVR don't want to add in very disruptive systems that actively stop players from making decisions in the game. I have my issues with this, but thankfully I think meaningful anti-tunnel is still achievable within that framework, so what I've pitched before is the following:
When a survivor is unhooked, they gain a mark on their portrait the way they do now, which we'll call Last Hooked for simplicity. If a survivor with Last Hooked is hooked again, they do not gain a hook state, and their hook timer does not tick down until the Last Hooked mark is removed.
Last Hooked is removed under the following conditions: The survivor performs a Conspicuous Action (which should include flashlight and pallet saves, for the record), 90 seconds have passed, or another survivor gets unhooked (at which point the Last Hooked mark transfers to them instead).What this achieves is that killers are able to target someone fresh off a hook if they have good reason to (like that player being super aggressive, or them having hook-related perks they want to activate quicker), but what they get out of it isn't progress towards a 1v3— instead they just slow down the game by immobilising one survivor and forcing another to come save while a third gets chased.
It'd naturally be in the killer's best interests to chase someone else, but their choice isn't being taken away, they can still choose to target that one survivor if circumstances demand. You'd no longer be able to force someone out of the game early for an easy win, but you'd still have the ability to chase that survivor for other reasons.The "carrot" side of that stick for killers should probably be a toolbox rework, to definitively address genrushing, and possibly some adjustments to hook-denial strategies since those are quite strong at the moment. I like the idea of basekit incentives, but I think BHVR don't at this point, so I'm being realistic.
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You cant get rid of tunnelling as its caused by a core game design feature if you took it out killer be dead same for gen rushing but both exists due to the core gameplay loop.
The only way this can ever be changed is to change the core design, so realistically the only option is for DBD2 to be a thing where they get the chance to change up the core gameplay loop with something else.
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The hook donation system would be a stronger shoulder the burden and would buff SWF to an extreme which isn´t that good while soloque mates would most likely act selfish. There is a reason why no soloque player runs shoulder the burden but SWFs do.
I don´t think that it was smart to scrap the anti slug. It was only to strong when it gets abused with the immunity of anti tunnel if this makes sense to you.
I didn´t give the Killer the Pop the weasle for exact this reason. A Trapper wont reach the gen faster than a blight. But both carry the survivor in the same pace. Additionaly the gen block stops when the Survivor is hooked. This mechanic is only there to stop the argument from the Killer that he had no time to hook.
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I don't think it should be addressed as a blanket problem. I only see it as being problematic when it's happening before 3 gens are completed, and I think most players take issue more with early hard tunneling.
A hard tunneling Blight at 5 gens is a bit different than a killer getting an elimination with 2 gens remaining. I don't think a solution should be tied to total hook states, but rather gens completed.
Making early tunneling less appealing for the killer should be the goal. But it's sometimes the right move when you only have a couple gens left. That shouldn't be punished, and a reasonable survivor shouldn't have an issue with it.
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there's always the MLO approach; you go down, you die.
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The reason some tunnel and slug is to create pressure because either the gens go to fast or they don't get downs fast enough.
My idea would to make It where everyone shares hooks like shared life's in a mario game. The first 4 hooks would always be 1st stage hooks 5, 6, 7, and 8 wuld be 2nd and the remaining death. You could technically still tunnel the same person but they wouldn't die until hook 8.
But this change is heavily Survivor sided so Killers would need to be buffed.
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Bring back my FULL bbq stacks. Not the pitiful 10% they proposed. While not removing tunneling entirely (which it shouldn't and never will be impossible to tunnel) it would provide an actual incentive for me and some others to go for each unique hook.
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Wasn't it 10% per unique hook? As in, capping out at 120% for a 12 hook game?
Hypothetically that would've been more rewarding than old BBQ, if you got a perfect game.
Still, of all the basekit incentives, I think that is the one the most people will broadly agree could and should be implemented. It'd be neat to see a survivor equivalent, too, though I don't know what that would look like.
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The only people who say tunneling needs to be completely eliminated are survivor-only players who don’t know from experience that there are some situations where tunneling is the only means of applying pressure to have a chance of coming back from a losing match. I have no issue with efforts to reduce/minimize early game tunneling, but “tunneling” when survivors have already had a chance to play most of the match and the killer is losing is completely justifiable. It shouldn’t even be called “tunneling” at that point - it’s simply trying to secure a kill which by the way is the only objective of the killer role.
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Idk if it was that good for points but still old bbq will give you 20% less points and its hypothetically 3x times easier to get that 100% more bp so unless you got 12 hook perfect game bbq was still better for reward in general.
From what we can see devs kinda droped from the idea of giving both sides more bp through perks.
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To be fair, while it's not as easy to get to that 100% BP multiplier, you'd be getting that multiplier in a state of the game where things are less expensive and there are more sources of BP available than back in the day, so.
It'd still work out to more BP overall, I think.
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Yeah you could, but I don’t know if it would be a good idea.
Imagine this change: once unhooked, a survivor is immune to being damaged by any means but cannot cleanse, bless, sabotage, blind or stun. So tunneling is now impossible, the unhooked guy can sit on a gen and be immune. And the only way to remove this protection is to hook someone else. Bam, tunneling basically removed. I don’t think this change would be healthy for the game though…
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Isn’t doing a gen a conspicuous action too, it would remove the protection.
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How long do we have to put up with the selfish attitude of 'I don't want to be the first to be eliminated in a match'?
Recently, survivors give up on matches quickly and disconnect, so perhaps we really do need to improve the tutorial and raise the skill level of survivor players.
If things continue like this, survivors' complaints will keep leading to nerfs, and we could end up seeing a second or third wave of skull merchants emerge.
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In place of Enduring, lets weigh in on the idea of a Temporary incorporeal state:
Killer can't strike, chase, or down the unhooked survivor, but the survivor can't be healed, can't do gens, use items, or block the killer either. Incorporeal survivors move faster with no sounds, scratch marks or blood trails, and once the timer runs out they become corporeal again and can go back to doing normal survivor stuff. This Status is disabled once the gates are powered and any incorporeal survivors cannot exit for 15 seconds after becoming corporeal again (just incase anyone wanted to abuse it for guaranteed endgame escapes).
Pros:
Survivor has a set amount of invulnerability from killer attacks.
Gives time and speed to survivor to find a place of safety away from the killer to heal or do gens.
Killer can't chase the survivor waiting out the timer because the survivor moves fast, leaves no indication of where they went.
Tunneling is rendered "mostly" solved because the survivor can't pull any body block shenanigans off the hook, and killer can't just wait out the Endurance while chasing them off the hook to down them.
Killers near the hook only have Rescuers to pursue.
Cons:
No Enduring body block shenanigans fresh off the hook to give your rescuer a chance to escape.
No immediate healing or hopping on gens after unhook until the timer runs down.
Have to time powering the gates for after unhooking a survivor or the killer can tunnel them out in the endgame.
In the event that rescuer escapes the killer, and killer just happens to run back into the recently unhooked survivor after they've become corporeal again/was lead to them by the rescuer, it doesn't prevent the killer from going after them again.
I Dunno how long the Incorporeal state should be, whether or not the killer should even be able to see the survivor at all during that time, if the length of the state should stay fixed or get longer or shorter per hook state, etc, All I know is that to me, it seems like a much better option than the "Elusive" status with extended "Endurance" which, as the last 2 ptb's have proved, become highly abuseable by survivors. With this option, we trade abuseable off hook tactics for a guarantee escape to safety, and to be fair for the killer, the unhooked survivor also can't do gens until corporeal again, so hooks double as potential gen slowdown too, which incentivizes killers to go for putting more survivors in this state, especially ones with toolboxes. As previously stated, It would "Mostly" fix tunneling, but it's not idiot proof… that's too tall an order to fill with this player base.
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No, not using the conspicuous action system. If you used that, then they could follow the killer to do a flashlight save, pallet save, etc which is not a conspicuous action. Only the actions I listed above. Because then the "tunneled" survivor can sit on the objective and force the killer to look for other survivors to chase, or lose the game.
That said, I don't think allowing an unhooked survivor to sit on a gen immune is a good change, but it would kill tunneling which is what the OP asked.
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There's an obvious problem with that. It encourages tunneling! You can get free hook states on hard survivors by bullying the same survivor over and over?
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But why are you imagining a change that only does some of the things and not others?
It would depend on how many shared hook states there are (I think shared hook states are a bad idea due to balancing concerns and game feel, but on this issue I don't see the problem). Let's say there were '3' shared hook states, its still a better outcome for survivors if the same survivor gets hooked three times in a row and now every survivors is at what would be the equivalent of '1' hook state, then for that survivor to be eliminated.
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You can’t, unless the preventions are so extreme that they render the tunnelled survivor unkillable by any means.
Ignoring any arguments about efficiency or needing to win for a moment, some people tunnel just to be pricks, they want one person in particular dead for whatever reason and do not care how much they’re throwing the match to do so, You could hypothetically make it impossible or otherwise useless from a efficiency standpoint by either making spreading out hooks more efficient or by making tunnelling much more difficult, but that won’t stop the people who just want to be a dick for their own amusement
It’s the same way you can’t really fix Survivors staying by the gates to force the Killer to make them leave or stall out the match. If spite is the only motivation then people will simply find a way.
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Completely eliminating it is not going to be possible, but making it NOT the de facto most powerful way to play should be a priority. And for that, I think DS is the best way forward.
The 6.1.0 move from DS to OTR by halving DS's value and giving OTR endurance was a move that was worse for both sides. Taking one extra hit is weaker than going down, sitting through the pick-up animation, then stunning the killer for 5 seconds, before refreshing chase.
But simultaneously, if someone bodyblocks with DS, they're helpless on the ground, whereas with OTR, they only incur a mending penalty and that's it.
So DS → OTR was a downgrade for both survivors and killers.
So, IMO, they should make OTR a complete info black-out, and make DS with a 5 second stun basekit, with the perk adding another 2-3 seconds. It may also be worth looking into the ability to block active powers to help mess up particularly the more powerful killers like Nurse, Blight and Ghoul, without doing much to more passive killers like Pig, Trapper and Freddy.
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Just thing is old bbq was easier to get and you could get it in way more games than just the bonus for unique hooks game because getting 4 hooks for the same bonus as 10 is way more consistent and reliable overall.
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It actually discourages it. The reason that tunneling works is because you can eliminate someone early. If it takes you 6 hooks of tunneling the same guy. Thats 6 separate chases. Assuming the first chase lasts like 25 seconds for 2 hits and each of the other 5 chases lasts the minimum amount of 15 seconds (the duration of the endurance) that would still take you.
- 25 seconds first chase
- 15 second other chase * 5
- 2.7 second wipe animation * 6
- 3 second pickup animation * 6
- 8 seconds to walk to hook * 6
- 1.5 second hook animation * 6
That's a total of 25 + 75 + (15.2 * 6) = 191.2 seconds.
Gens take 90 seconds. Thats almost 200 seconds of 2 survivors doing nothing but gens (you are tunneling remember?) And a 3rd stopping periodically to unhook the guy getting tunneled and going back to a gen while the killer spends time tunneling that person. And this is assuming that the survivor getting tunneled can't get to a pallet in that 15 second endurance and the killer waits it out instead of having a proper chase that probably is able to last 25+ seconds assuming the killer hits them right off the hook.
If you can't finish 5 gens and escape while 2 survivors get 3 full minutes each of uninterrupted gen time, its a you problem at that point.
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This is why i say share the FIRST hook state only, and not all hook states. That way every survivor still gets 2 chances at least even if a teammate is bad, or causes issues.
Also throwing the game on purpose like that is a reportable and bannable offense. And even if a survivor did that, it would still give the other survivors a ton of time on gens for free without any pressure while that 1 survivor spends time throwing the game.
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The point of tunneling is to get one out early but it is also beneficial to remove hook states from hard to catch survivors by chasing easy to catch survivors that are already injured. It's six easy chases vs 3 easy and 3 hard. The amount of chases doesn't change between tunneling and not tunneling so why not get the easy hook state?
It's also bad from the survivors point of view. Imagine playing solo and a teammate wanting to die removes one of your chances to escape.
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Yes, but if you spend time tunneling that 1 survivor, the point is that you still have to catch them 6 times, even doing literally the bare minimum and just running in a straight line and using the endurance effect, 5 gens will get done before you get that 1st kill.
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In my opinion, im not arguing for tunneling to be removed. I’m arguing for it to be balanced in the same way every other major part of gameplay already is. There could be an activation requirement, a short cooldown, or even a brief disable period at the start of the match, similar to how anti-tunnel perks already disable in endgame, and have cool downs. The game clearly isn’t afraid of conditional mechanics.
Looping is a perfect example. It doesn’t need a perk to exist, just like tunneling doesn’t, yet looping still has built-in restrictions. Slow/medium/fast vault states, windows blocking after repeated use, bloodlust, and pallets that can be broken thus weakening the loop entirely. Looping is a natural part of gameplay just like eliminating survivors, but looping is still regulated by those built-in restrictions.
And just like some people hate being tunneled, others hate being looped. We have anti-loop killers and anti-loop perks, just like we have anti-tunnel perks. But the existence of those counter perks never removed looping’s restrictions, and tunneling isn’t held to a similar standard.
That’s the issue. Not that tunneling exists, but that it’s exempt from the balancing that’s applied everywhere else. I’d keep it in the game, I’d just put it on the same level of regulation as the other core strategies/behaviors.
And honestly, imagine if looping didn’t have its built-in counters. Imagine windows that never blocked, pallets you couldn’t break, no bloodlust, and killers expected to just deal with it because, hey, there are anti-loop perks and anti-loop killers that exist so that should be enough. That would be ridiculous, and wildly unbalanced and people would immediately push back on the idea that anti-perks alone make looping without restrictions balanced. But people do insist that anti-perks alone make tunneling without restrictions balanced.
That inconsistency is the actual issue in my opinion.
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Stop game being about kills maybe. There are always gonna be the guy who gonna die first. Before people considered tunneling as kill on third hook, now it’s expanding and some people define line on 6th one. Remove tunneling, X things will replace it. Or we start calling tunneling sth else.
Or another solution. Stop game being assymetrical to prevent people complaining on meta caused by assymetry.
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The easiest way to eliminate it would be to do what they already do in 2v8. Limit the opportunity to tunnel by separating the killer and survivor. You can move the survivor, as happens in 2v8 already, or you can move the killer. For example. Open a portal after a hook that lasts for like 15 seconds. A killer can enter it and travel within 32m to the gen of their choice, thereby giving non-mobility killers map presence while blunting the inherent advantage of killers that have innate mobility. If the killer doesn't take the portal teleport the survivor away instead. Disable this after enough game progress has passed, 3 gens, 4 hooks, 5 minutes, any or all of those.
Alternatively, reduce the impact. The endgame as it exists right now is miserable and provides both sides with very few meaningful decisions or interactive gameplay while allowing for all manner of griefing and BMing instead of naturally closing out the game. Automatically start an extended endgame at 8 hooks, 5 gens finished, or 10 minutes, with each side getting benefits based on how they 'pleased the entity.' eg Gates blocked for 3 minutes if 8 hooks. Treat that as a 'score attack' period with highest scores for the gameplay choices that are healthiest for all players, and then you can crank killer lethality up extremely high (eg all survivors mori-able) in endgame because everybody's gotten to play a full game at that point and survivors naturally switch from altruistic to competitive, especially if you restricted each escape point to one per survivor.
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Right if killer isnt super strong and doesnt have fast chases with full meta gen deffence perks he has small chance for win against solid loopers that know counterplay against that killer and do gens effectively (like spreading on two or three hooks before killer can even founf someone and getting them around or even before first hook thats what in higher mmr happens often two gens are done already before killer gets first hook unless survivor missplays super bad or its weaker killer not someone like nurse,dracula,billy,ghoul,blight) then killer has only chance for two kills if survivors dont missplay and when they dont he can get just 1-2 kills but it depends who is he chasing if he commints to one or two same survivors or he spreads hooks thats very important to but thing is if survivors play very effectively on gens they can get them before killer has 6 or more hooks especialy against weaker killers even on maps like haddonfield that doesnt benefit survivors.
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I literally showed you the math. If they just hold shift + w (no skill involved) you take at minimum 15 seconds to down them, which really should probably take a little bit longer even in the worst circumstances.
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15 seconds is just chasing meg that is injured and runs into wall mostly fastest chases against survivor that know some looping is more like 20 to 30 seconds and thats 1/3 of the generator if we exclude perks and toolboxes which isnt bad then add perks like ds or dead hard, otr and chase can be almost one time longer which is enough time for gens and killer cant deffend all of them regression perks are way weaker then they were and strongest ones have pretty strict requirements like getting hook and kicking that gen (pop) or can be used only once for each survivors first hook (pain res) so if survivors are very good in holding killer in chase and doing gens spread wide across the map killer has very hard time to do something against it especialy m1 non mobility killer even the ghouls will sweat their shorts when they see fast gens.
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Even though I do not mind tunneling or being tunneled myself, I have seen killers objectively go back to the hook to tunnel someone out.
It's not as uncommon as you think it is and the injured person is already susceptible, even if the unhooker takes a hit.
Again, I do not mind it at all and I can deal with tunneling - I popped three gens yesterday (by myself) against a tunneling Blight on Yamoaka yesterday in solo-queue, but if a killer is going to tunnel, a killer will tunnel.
I would also argue that survivors opting to throw themselves to prevent a death hook survivor from dying does more harm than good. The best location for someone being tunneled is on hook and staying there (while they're hopefully hitting skill checks) and others are doing gens to compensate for someone getting tunneled out. I have seen many Pain Resonance users opt to tunnel at 5 gens, while others opt to tunnel near the end when gens are being done. I see tunneling simply as being a part of the game, it's a correct stance that the easiest way to control the flow as a killer is to remove a survivor early and it's why second chance perks (even if killers hate them) are used at mid-high level to prevent an early person out to begin with.
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But you still need to do those chases anyways. How much time do you save chasing a fresh survivor?
Maybe you forgetting that there are killers with great map mobility that can disrupt gen progress while still having a hook bias towards one survivor.
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Most matches, its not a real problem, not the cause of losing. Proof of this is the fact that people run at the killer off hook with their endurance/ds/dh/ whatever to bodyblock and waste killer’s time. Sincerely speaking
Game’s balanced around it and players need to adapt if they wanna tryhard and play in higher mmr
´
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the big question is how do you stop that survivor from doing whatever he wants then?
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