An Attempt At A Realistic Anti-Tunnel Patch

Broadly speaking I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest we're not going to get another attempt at anti-tunnel from BHVR for a while… which makes now the perfect time to make pitches!

In the wake of the 9.2.0 and 9.3.0 PTBs, I think we can learn a few things. Summarised to not make the preamble to this long post also unreasonably long, I think we can learn the following:

• Showing an olive branch to killer players is important, to make it feel more like a back-and-forth instead of a heavy nerf
• Less is more; the original 9.2.0 PTB especially had far too many things on it all at once considering how impactful some were
• Disruptive preventions and active penalties don't go over well with players
• In general, BHVR don't want to dictate your gameplay with penalties and incentives

Any realistic attempts at anti-tunnel, I feel, are going to have to take these things on board and adjust accordingly. It's important to try and ease the blow of losing tunnelling as much as possible- though of course, any effective anti-tunnel will result in tunnelling no longer being optimal, so we can't expect that nobody will be annoyed.

In this post, I'm going to pitch what I think is a reasonable and sensible set of changes that I feel could comprise a realistic PTB. For the sake of this thought exercise we'll assume there aren't many more major changes on this hypothetical PTB, just some bugfixes and tweaks to perks and killers here and there. It's comprised of three parts: the anti-tunnel, the fair compensation for anti-tunnel that targets a killer pain point, and then some perks I think should be adjusted in line with the previous two points.

First…

The Anti-Tunnel

The bulk of my proposed anti-tunnel is this:

• When a survivor is unhooked, they gain the Last Hooked Mark (placeholder title; the real thing would surely have a more atmospheric name).
• While a survivor has this mark, they cannot gain hook states, though the mark itself does nothing to prevent being hooked.
• The mark elapses under the following conditions: performing a Conspicuous Action, 60 seconds passing, another survivor being unhooked (at which point the mark transfers to them), and the exit gates being powered.

This point here is to avoid any disruptive prevention systems; the survivor off hook is exactly as vulnerable as you should expect them to be and you are entirely permitted to chase them… you just get proportionally less for doing it. There's not no reason to do this, a survivor on the hook still can't progress generators and still has to be saved, but it decisively knocks tunnelling down from the "obviously most optimal in all situations" pedestal it's sat on for years.
The obvious concern here would be for survivors trying to bodyblock and be a nuisance. To reasonably safeguard against that, the rest of this patch has some nerfs and reworks to post-hook Endurance sources, so survivors have fewer ways of protecting themselves if they choose to annoy the killer; they would be forced to trade the bodyblock value for being put back on the hook or left on the ground, no scurrying off in Deep Wounds.

The first of that is this:

• Off hook Haste and Endurance lowered to 8 seconds (was 15 seconds)

With the aim of ensuring survivors still can't be downed the second their feet touch the ground, but not providing much of a protection if they aren't trying to make distance.

Finally, one more basekit change before we move on to the compensation:

• Successfully saving a teammate from the killer's grasp is now considered a Conspicuous Action

Why is this not already a thing?

The Anti-Genrush

Now for the other half. Tunnelling has been one of the bigger survivor pain points for years, so it only seems fair to tackle one of killer's most enduring pain points. Genrushing here is largely being defined as "the act of bringing loadout options to massively increase generator speed", and that means we're tackling toolboxes primarily here, as nothing else even comes close. Everything problematic requires a toolbox, after all.

I'll keep this light on specific numbers and pitch the general idea, as a lot of this would need fine-tuning from in-house testing I'm obviously not capable of doing. The broad idea is this:

• Toolboxes are paired down to one variant per rarity, up to purple.
• The Worn Out Tools (brown) and Commodious Toolbox (blue) have their repair speed bonus replaced with the ability to protect generators against regression.
• This regression shield is consumed when regression hits it.
• Repair oriented toolboxes can no longer perform the sabotage action.
• Repair oriented toolboxes still provide higher skill check chance.
• The Mechanic's Toolbox (now green) and Alex's Toolbox (purple) have their repair speed removed, and charges + sabotage speed adjusted slightly for better scaling
• Addons are adjusted in line with this rework, and frankly also probably pared down a bit to cut down on clutter

The TL;DR on this change is that toolboxes no longer speed up generators, instead protecting against instant regression from the break action or perks. This lowers the upper limit for how fast gens can be completed dramatically, while retaining toolboxes being useful as a generator-focused item.
Sabotage should be mostly unchanged overall, just with some numbers tweaked a bit to remain at its current strength, with the exception of repair toolboxes and sabotage toolboxes being separated out into separate variants with one cheap and one expensive option each. Ideally, sabotage boxes and repair boxes would have a visual difference as well so the killer knows what's going on, but that part could come later.

This change alone instantly removes the most problematic versions of genrushing from the game entirely, as the amount of time generators take would be far, far more realistically predictable due to the fact crazy speeds would require a lot of investment. There are, however, a few problems to adjust from the perk side, which we'll get to next!

The Perks

Let's get into it. This will be one part addressing anti-tunnel perks that will need an adjustment going forward, and one part addressing a handful of generator related perks to shore up the genrushing adjustment. In a hypothetical real patch there'd probably be some unrelated buffs in there too, but I'm keeping it simple.

Decisive Strike

• Skill check size increased noticeably

Notes: Nothing substantial here, just giving the perk a little quality of life change to ensure lesser skilled players aren't left unable to use it, especially now it's entering the universal perk pool. Ideally, this perk won't be needed anymore, but it's best to keep a safety net in place in case tunnelling remains a problem.

Off The Record

• Endurance effect removed
• Duration increased to 60 seconds (was 40 seconds)

Notes: Not much here, either. The Endurance effect is being removed to disincentivise bodyblocking now that there's a different protection in place, and the other effects get a longer timer to compensate because let's be real they were never a problem.

Borrowed Time

• Rework: Once per trial, when taking a Protection Hit that would otherwise put you in the dying state, instead gain the Broken status effect for 30 seconds. At the end of this timer, automatically enter the dying state.

Notes: Borrowed Time has been slowly shifting out of relevancy with every anti-tunnel update that happens, so instead of continuing that trend, it's for the best to rework it. This change shifts it to a niche tool for protecting your teammates and keeping yourself going on borrowed time.

Blood Rush

• Rework: Upon reaching two hook states, this perk activates. While Blood Rush is active, press the Active Ability Button to remove the Exhaustion status effect from yourself. Blood Rush then deactivates for the rest of the trial.

Notes: Bringing back a simpler and easier to use version of the original effect seems appropriate in this context, as the killer focusing you down should ideally no longer be a concern and so the current effect will become redundant. This version should allow players to give themselves a bit of a boost once they hit death hook to try and escape one chase and reset, with the cost of being an empty perk slot for most of the game and being single use.

Hyperfocus

• No longer gains tokens while repairing with a generator.

Notes: Another simple change and one that firmly shunts genrushing down the efficiency ladder conclusively. Losing the extra speed from a toolbox already hurts the Hyperfocus/Stake Out combo, and losing the ability to gain tokens faster too fixes it outright. Now the combo works, but only as a safety net for Hyperfocus instead of actively improving it.

—

As I said above, any real patch is also gonna have some general buffs to perks and killers, but I'm keeping this post light with just the stuff relevant to anti-tunnel.
So, to recap:

• Survivors gain the death of tunnelling someone out for easy value
• Killers gain the death of genrushing (at least efficient genrushing) and the death of post-hook Endurance bodyblocking

Everyone wins and everyone loses in roughly equal measure. Nobody's unfairly harmed, and everyone still has options available depending on the situation they're in.

This of course doesn't address every remaining problem in the game - objective denial is still a problem for the killer side and stacking slowdown is still a problem for the survivor side, for example - but it should be a stable enough patch to hit live without causing massive undue damage to innocent bystanders, so to speak.