Stop hard tunneling.

and vice versa, if a 500 hour killer gets matched against survivors averaging 2/3 thousand hours its not their fault if they lose. That doesn't change the fact that its a skill issue. Just means its more understandable. At this point it seems your content with strawmanning, as im seeing in the rest of your comments.

I said either role. The imbalance is just more visible on the survivor side. One baby can throw a match out of whack for the other survivors. One survivor with triple the hours can still be beaten if the rest of the team is more on the killer's level. What's the strawman?

But to act like when a killer tunnels because they feel like they can't win is a skill issue vs when a survivor can't handle being tunneled its not a skill issue is ridiculous

We're shifting the topic a bit here. This post was in reference to killers immediately tunneling, not tunneling when they feel desperate. These are people who want to push the "I win" button immediately. If a killer feels like they can't win ever without tunneling then they're in over their head and need to drop in MMR. It's only a proper skill issue if the skill levels are at least marginally equal and their was a fair shot. But if a killer hits someone off hook and then throws poison at them in a deadzone so they literally cannot react or get to anything there's no skill to express. That's just uncounterable cheese, and the killer knows it quite well.

I'm asking killers that cheese their way to the top to just accept it isn't the game, it's thier decisions. These people are the meme of the kid putting a stick in his own bike spokes and blaming someone else. And what I mean by blaming the game is blaming things like perks or pallets. Matchmaking is a genuine concern but that's not what most people default to blaming. They blame the toxic evil enemy side and all its OP handholding. Many people in this community are allergic to admitting that other players can be much better than them.

This is just my most recent example, but mmr can screw killers as much as survivors, so a "killer being bad" may be down to them, but they can also be thrown into the deep end vs the unemployed who have way too many hours/time to play this game

This is the same example as my comp team except I lost. We're saying the same thing. But you're also kinda making my point. A killer can be new and screw up and still beat better survivors. I do this every day. The survivors I play against are almost always better than I am at survivor. It's an easy thing for me to identify playing both regularly. But bad survivors don't really beat good killers, and that's because killer is not in the bad place people want it to be.

Your argument before was killer has a queue time, so people must be filling the role way too much.

My argument is that killer queue times are longer than normal and the role is not undesirable. I have never had to wait in line at my normal play time. Now I do. People are playing killer. That's it. That's the whole point.

The BP bonus is well known to be buggy and erratic. A few months ago I had this happen:

Even though there was no queue for killer. I've generally had no BP bonuses on the event on either role at my time despite killer having a small line. That may be because they want survivors to go to the longer 1v4 queue instead. It's much better to use the online queue times as gage than the BP bonus.

Just checked, If your checking using Dead By Queue (which I think you are) that doesn't account for the event queue, which is what weve been talking about for so long

If you scroll down it shows the event queue times as well. However in general you can't infer much based on the queue times as they are very much time and region dependent, and vary with your MMR

I mean I'd agree if it was a minor shift, but the trend over the past week and a half has been such a major shift that matches at least what the forum is saying.

In the fighting game community, you would get laughed at for complaining about that, and rightfully so.

I suggest reading the free ebook by game designer David Sirlin, Playing to Win. Here is an excerpt from the book: https://www.sirlin.net/ptw

The derogatory term “scrub” means several different things. One definition is someone (especially a game player) who is not good at something (especially a game). By this definition, we all start out as scrubs, and there is certainly no shame in that. I mean the term differently, though. A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about. A scrub does not play to win.

Now, everyone begins as a poor player—it takes time to learn a game to get to a point where you know what you’re doing. There is the mistaken notion, though, that by merely continuing to play or “learn” the game, one can become a top player. In reality, the “scrub” has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything actually going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He’s lost the game even before deciding which game to play. His problem? He does not play to win.

The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevents him from ever truly competing. These made-up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant. Let’s take a fighting game off of which I’ve made my gaming career: Street Fighter.

In Street Fighter, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations “cheap.” This “cheapness” is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone is often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn’t attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design—it’s meant to be there—yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield that will protect him indefinitely. Why? Exploring the reasoning is futile since the notion is ridiculous from the start.

You will not see a classic scrub throw his opponent five times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimizes his chances of winning? Here we’ve encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you—that’s cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that’s cheap, too. We’ve covered that one. If you block for fifty seconds doing no moves, that’s cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap. Street Fighter was just one example; I could have picked any competitive game at all.

Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is a tactic close to my heart that often elicits the call of the scrub. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can’t counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn’t I be a fool for not using that move? The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. That is true by definition of playing to win. The game knows no rules of “honor” or of “cheapness.” The game only knows winning and losing.

A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which one tries to win at all costs is “boring” or “not fun.” Who knows what objective the scrub has, but we know his objective is not truly to win. Yours is. Your objective is good and right and true, and let no one tell you otherwise. You have the power to dispatch those who would tell you otherwise, anyway. Simply beat them.

Here is one of the best SF2 players in the world daigo playing Ryu notice what he does? Gets his opponent in the corner and then "spams" fireballs. (i say spam in quotes because he is using them in a very specific way that not anyone can just pick up the controller and immediately do)

Should he instead let his opponent out of the corner to "be nice"? because it "isn't fair"? Should he let his opponent get a hit or 2 in because that would be nice? Or should he do whatever he can to completely dominate his opponent and win the match?

I don't understand this notion of "we have to be nice" in DBD. WHY? WHY? Why do i have to change how i play just because it would be "nice"? Why is no other game of ANY kind ever expect that? Why doesn't football? Why not let the other team score a goal to be nice? Why take your opponents queen in chess when they leave it open to be taken? Why aim for the head in counterstrike when your opponent rounds the corner why not aim for the chest and give them a chance?

There is a difference between asking the devs to change something that is unfun vs expecting the opponents to not use that thing because it is unfun.

I am not a fan of hard tunneling either. But it's a nuanced problem.

If you get group of casuals with off-meta builds, the hard tunnel from the start practically guarantees a 3 or 4k if the killer gets the kill before a couple of gens are done. The remaining survivors are just playing for hatch in that scenrio and it sucks. If we could reduce this type of hard tunneling that would be great.

But we can't just have a blanket mechanic to take the tool out of the killer's hands because that is not the only type of games that happen in DbD, even if they are the majority.

Sometimes you get those lobbies where it is a SWF on comms or a group of seasoned solos with great game sense who do bring the meta, are good loopers and split up on gens. In that sort of game, especially with some of the weaker killers on the roster, not being able to hard tunnel means they might just lose, straight up. Remember they can't hold a 3gen forever anymore.

So there really isn't an easy solution to this problem.

@Nazzzak @crogers271

Thanks for pointing out my mistakes. (Honestly, Im hardcore killer biased and dont wanna end up as much a hypocrite i accuse others to be)

But I think the surv examples of flashlights or bodyblocking are interesting.

Item dodging is an acceptable comparison to killer dodging.

Do you think bodyblocking gets comparably as much hate and demands to be changed by devs as tunneling/slugging?

I feel like blocking has been accepted and peopls play around it ntead of being added to the scrub rules.

Sorry for replying to this one a third time, Just gonna revisit queue times.

Normal queue:

Killer 7:25, Survivor:24s. This either suggests way too many killers. Or not enough survivors. Or Both at one time.

Event queue:

Killer 2:32, survivor:6s . This suggests that whilst there could be not enough survivors, theres more ample a supply of survivors playing the event than normal mode, whilst theres still too many killers thats a drastic shift in 5 mins between the modes. That means theres a lot less killers playing the event queue than normal queue.

Every queue is showing these stats right now (was using UK numbers). Event queue has lower killer wait with low survivor wait, and normal queue has a slight survivor wait with a High killer wait.

Tunnelling is by far the most complained about strategy in this game. It's also probably the most prevalent strategy though, due to the lower risk associated with it compared to other strategies, which could be why.

the line to play killer is because theres more than a 1:4 ratio, it may not be unplayable, but it is incredibly survivor sided and unfun for most.

"perfectly popular"- so your saying that if 1 of 2 roles is only played by 25% of the community its "perfectly popular"? I mean thats a take you can have for sure ig.

I was actually embarrassed reading it. He's writing like these people are going to war when their biggest struggle is juggling their controller while trying to eat their chips and dip.

I agree with everything you said.

I get “tunneling” can be viable, and sometimes, a way to create pressure. Say a killer only has 2 hooks and 3 gens have popped, I get it. Or when survivors bring it on themselves and aggressively use endurance, Will to Live, OTR, etc to take hits. Fine.

What I don’t get is when killers are clearly higher MMR than the survivors and are stomping them but still tunnel. You have a couple survivors on death hook and only a gen or two have popped, in this instance, tunelling just feels cheap and dirty and an easy way to win.

The response I know will be “get better at the game”, “make tunelling harder for the killer”, “there are anti-tunnel perks” etc. working on that logic, the exact same thing can be said to the killer…

getting stomped by survivors and gens are popping quickly…? get better at the game. Getting gen rushed…? Run gen slow down builds. There’s literally a counter-argument to all killer excuses for hard tunnelling. Let’s not sugarcoat all instances of tunnelling as a “viable strategy” when we all know some killers do it just to be toxic(not all, I’d like to emphasise that).

one final thought on the subject of anti-tunnel perks. When tunelling killers say “there are perks to counter tunelling”, tell them there’s perks to counter “gen rushing” which is why you seem the same perks in rotation constantly (Pain Res, Oppression Ruin/Undying, etc). And yes, I know gen slow down is popular due to “gen rushing” and is essentially a bandaid fix for a core gameplay issue. However, consider why you see so many survivors run so-called “2nd chance” perks (WtL, DH, OTR, etc)… same thing.

The thing is, everything you pointed out does happen.

A killer doesn't like "gen-rushing", theyre laughed at and told its a skill issue, and questioned what killers theyre playing and how many hours they have.

Gen rushing specifically is laughed at in this forum. This is the worst example you could've brought up. Killers are told to bring slowdown, and also harped on for bringing the unfun builds that slow survivors down (the new hex build for example, on any killer, gets the same response (not just jason, although he is much more annoying with it).

Both are both sides playing efficiently essentially. I don't hate either of them, but I will definitely say that tunneling/slugging get a lot more weight on their claims and people band together a lot more surrounding these issues than genrushing, because gen rushing is seen as a skill issue 80% of the time.

I was using quotes there because I personally don't see a lot of stuff as incredible broken, people complain about the slightest strong items in the game. Im using it because thats what the community are defining it as, sorry if that caused a miscommunication.

I'd argue that tunneling is just the killer playing efficiently, and is the end result of the objective being kills. Thats not something thats incredibly broken, and has been nerfed multiple times (basekit bt, ds , off the record ect ect). Even old DS being a thing should highlight that nerfed.

You don't seem to understand the nuance at all here and I'm not sure how many different combinations of words I can use to say the same thing. I pretty much stopped playing for a couple weeks when Jason came out. There was a small window around midnight then the queue was acceptable and I i could play a few matches. Long queues simply make people not play at all if the role they want is too long. You are approaching this as though 1) everyone is a main at a role and 2) all players are always in line at all times, making the numbers an accurate reflection of where the game is at. You're not accepting that some people just play whatever queue is shorter or that some people (like me) play SWF or killer depending on other people's availability. The queue times won't tell you how popular a role is if most people play both, but they are currently telling you that enough people are willing to wait in line to play killer when they could just play survivor immediately. It is that simple. If you choose to wait in a line instead of not waiting in a line, you like the role enough to do so. I don’t know why there is such a desperate desire to make the role look like it's in a bad place when reality says otherwise.

but right now due to the queue times being consistently lower than their average even before jason dropped

This is just not true. I check the queues in all regions multiple times a day. You didn't even seem to know Dead by Queue existed before this conversation so you probably aren't used to the wait patterns that shift by region and time of day. You seem to be only using what you've seen on your server as an example, and I don't even know how often you play, but I'm usually on almost everyday and the times are much higher than normal, and that's even with it being split between two modes. They're going to shoot back up even higher once the event is over.

Fundementally killer role has to be less popular unless you want abysmal queue times

Killer is the role that sells the game. It's the role the CCs all pitch. It's the role designed to win more. Most people who didn't join to play with friends probably started playing to play killer. But, once again, if you play both, you'll just play survivor if the killer queue is too long, thus keeping killer queues from being astronomically high and just moderately high. There's a reason there's an option to play survivor while waiting for killer and no vice versa option. They want to push people out of killer and towards survivor (without actually making survivor more enjoyable.) There was a time years ago when survivor had long queues. You had an argument then but those days are over.

The fact there isn't a queue time in the event (or its incredibly small) means killers aren't waiting.

There are waits to play killer in the event on almost all servers right now. A ten minute wait in Singapore is crazy and you're saying killers aren't playing the mode. There were no 10 minute waits 2 months ago.

Does that not saying anything to you?

That they prefer regular mode but will still wait in line for the event? Again, people don't wait in line to get punched in the face. If it was that bad they wouldn't be there at all. They'd play survivor or wait in the longer queue—or just play something else. I'm sitting at a 75-80% KR in the event and even I'm unwilling to wait for 3 minutes for my easy win.

doesn't mean I cant see the literal queues.

usually a game or two a day weekdays, weekends can smash out 4+ hours depending on queue times.

Ok so you have no idea what the queue patterns are. The visible timer was only even added during the last 2v8. So you're using a limited amount of play time on one isolated server with a very new set of in-game data to make these hard statements about the whole state of the game and the queues.

Whats their queue times look like normally

Queue weren't regularly over 5 mins until recently and even that was the extreme end. I don't know why you're so deadset on arguing this when you've clearly never monitored the times before.

And Singapore's queue time for both modes are equal right now.

Thrill must not be that bad

Not every match is Hex Jason. I played 35-40 survivor matches the other day and I not only didn't see one hex Jason but not even a single Jason at all. Very few totem builds either.

But no, its not okay. The Jasons with hex builds are why I took a two week break from survivor, the longest I've ever taken since picking up the role. But now that it's gone down, it's bearable. Nurse is also not fine but she's also not every match. Frequency is what makes a broken thing unplayable.

The UK is not the world. You're limited experience on your own server guesstimating queue times is just not something I'm going to entertain. At the time I play, killer is usually instant. If I use only that extremely limited experience, I'd have 1% of the picture. You lack context.

So we can finally understand that just because people are willing to queue for a role doesnt make it okay/bearable

Are you going to misconstrue everything I say? For one, survivors aren't waiting in a line. Second, I literally said I stopped playing because of it. With queues hitting 20+ minutes I proabjly wasn't the only one. Do you think survivors would play if every match was a god Nurse? If killer was consistenly terrible, and they consistently lost, they wouldn't play. Is your argument "killers occasionally lose and the role is therefore bad"?

The recent killer queue times stand out because they are an anomaly, not the norm. Killer was always pretty instant in the evening. There was none of this waiting 5 minutes. The time increase is because more people are wanting to play killer. That's literally all it comes down to.