About the state of the game regarding camping
I wanted to talk about the state of the game regarding all the tunneling and camping killers that have been happening as of late and the design philosophy around it. There's been a lot of community frustration about this over the years, and although this past patch was an attempt to address it, it doesn't feel like it was addressed properly. The basic goals of the game boils down to:
Survivor:
-Complete generators as quickly and safely as possible
-Use the environment to hide and/or loop when the killer approaches
-Unhook/heal survivors when they go up on hook
Killers:
-Search for survivors
-Prevent/slow down/regress generators
-Put survivors on hook
There's currently a lot of strategic choices that both a survivor and killer have at their disposal with perks, items, and addons. Choices like deciding whether or not to heal versus completing a generator, dropping a pallet, faking a window, going for saves, etc. are what make the survivor gameplay interesting. Choices like deciding to kick a generator and giving the survivor a bit more time to run, faking pathing around mazes, choosing to slug if you think there's a chance at another quick down, etc. are what make killers interesting. Being able to read opponents and their pathing, the possibility of counterplay, and utilizing different strategies to winning is what makes this game interesting.
I think this patch was a good step in the right direction with the change of perks since, playing both sides, it does seem like you can tailor more builds to playing certain styles rather than going straight for the same subset of 8 or so perks that were above and beyond in strength compared to others. However, the issue with camping/tunneling is that it removes the majority of these strategic choices for survivors. Many killers know this and, despite having no perks to support this playstyle, there's no reason to ever deviate from it. Taking counterplay out of the game for the opponents is the most consistent way to win the game. I understand that BHVR is attempting to gently push killers in the other direction. With the addition of the 5 seconds of Borrowed Time, and the increased time doing generators as well as the buffs to generator kicking perks, killers are incentivized to leave the hook and stop generator progression. This is the part of the design choice that I and I believe many in the community disagree with. These design choices, while well-intentioned, actually encourage more killers to camp hooks. Increasing time for generator completion means that generators will take that much longer to be completed while someone dies on hook. Decreasing killer attack speed and survivor distance after being hit means it's considerably harder (especially for a random group) to safely escape without someone going down or putting the team at a massive disadvantage with the number of hits being taken just to secure the unhook. If we were to talk about strategic choices in this part of the game, the optimal strategy for the survivor team is to sacrifice the person on the hook while the rest of the team uses the time to do generators, especially if the goal is to maximize the number of people escaping.
I believe in terms of fun, the majority of people by far in this community, do not appreciate this playstyle. It lacks strategy beyond the first hook and survivors would rather throw the game in an attempt to save because the alternative is just a generator simulator with one chase before their game experience ends. I think it's important for the game health to really put a hard stop on camping and not just incentivize killers to leave the hooks and go on chases. I know I'm not a designer, but something along the lines of: As long as the killer is within 25 meters of the hook for 3 seconds, the hook timer is paused. It deals with a lot of the issues with camping. Killers can still chase survivors near the hook and force other survivors to come for the unhook, but it will no longer be a forced trade since survivors can now choose to bide their time/do generators/make a risky play. With the new buffs to killers in this last patch, there is a chance that this might be the right time to implement this, or even potentially add on more buffs/interesting perks to killers if the winrate for killers is still too low. I love this game, and I hope that BHVR does something to truly get rid of camping because the rest of the game is something very unique in the gaming world. Thanks for reading my TED Types.
TL;DR: Camping takes a lot of the strategic fun out of the game. Adding something to completely remove camping as a consistent win condition (such as a pause on the hook timer while the killer is around) would be nice.
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