they are adding new measures for countering camping and tunneling...
... but they aren't asking themself WHY those tactics are so common... well, the reasons are quite simple:
1 despite being nerfed through all these QoL changes a killer is ALWAYS incentived to kill a survivor as soon as possible since this strategy is extremely effective and will allow to have a match much more manageable (a team who do gens is impossible to defeat if you play "fair"... that was viable when the old ruin was still among us, but now it's just impossible, even if you play nurse)
2 the lack of real incentives to not tunnel and camp (BBQ was stripped away from the bonus % of bloodpoints earned by chasing different people, gens are still awfully fast, all the best perk for defending gens were nerfed into the ground and SWF are still a huge issue for the game's balance)
3 map design simply suck: i lost the count of the maps that have tons of palled and have loops that can be EASILY chained with each other, resulting in areas so safe that when you finally catch someone here, the gens are already done (to gave a valid example it's sufficient seeing the garden of joy map)
4 pip system and devs point of view: in one side the game is telling you to do multiple hooks in order to get a pip (so technically a win), but in the same the other (devs) officially stated in their stream that only kills/escapes are considered a factor of "skill"/"win condiction"... this imo lead/incentive unfun matches, where people will abuse of every possible flawed mechanic in the game in order to win.
5 toxicity: by concequence with all those safe zones, certain people are absolutely sure to escape and can act however they want without worrying about being chased
now, i won't say that tunneling and camping doesn't need to be adressed, quite the contrary it's a good thing that they tried to adress the problem (it wasn't done properly well imo but at least they are TRYING to do something), but the problem is that they aren't giving incentives for the killer to play how the game is supposed to be played, or to be precise they aren't making viable the strategy of going for other targets (this analysis is based on my personal experience and mmr since i found people that tryhard in every match with the best tools at their disposal makes my matches extremely short lived and unfun)
Comments
He did not repeat those games and both of those games were not an "AFK" experience.
Fair enough, obviously breaking his own rules if those things happened like that. But eh, it's just two rounds, and it's still not like he actually "played" for those 30s, doesn't really take anything away from the overall point he tried to make with that challenge.
Watch one of true's videos
I've seen my share of Tru3 content and while I won't say he isn't competent/decent, he's far from the best killers I know. And something I've learned from playing and watching (a lot of) DbD is that good killers often make it look easy if they catch survivors, even if those same survivors could run another killer around. There's a lot of micromechanics and micromanaging stuff that doesn't immediately or intuitively meet the eye that goes into skilled chase play, those things can even make competent survivors look stupid.
That said, obviously there are a plethora of telltale signs whether a player is good, and while I can't say from my (admittedly limited) time of watching Otz and Tru3 content that either of them faces better players more often, I also can't say I've actually set out to seriously compare it. Maybe I will, but I honestly just doubt it's the case, I just can't see why it would be, again, if anything I'd expect better players to be roaming the fog at night.
To be fair he is doing a face camping thing today but he wasn't the last few times I watched him.
I'm inclined to believe Otz uses his challenges to be able to play like that without losing his "nice streamer" status, lol. He definitely cares about winning, and this stuff gives him a pass to do anything "mean" he might not normally want to be associated with.
Anyway, this is obviously all beside the main point.
Make it so survivor's cant tunnel gens and make it so the killer doesn't want to tunnel survivors out. The killer objective is too long and the survivor objective is too short. It's really that simple.
Yeah, given equal skill and experience on all players in match of DbD, for most killer characters the idea of winning while going for alternated hooks such that they get their first kill 9 hooking events into the match is just not feasible. Some of the killers can do it, but overall the game is definitely not balanced for that idea. So with nerfs to camping/tunnelling, there should have to be compensatory adjustments. And preventing survivors from being able to "tunnel" and "camp" gens is not actually as absurd as it sounds - an early game collapse where all gens are blocked until the first chase begins as well as blocking the gen with the most progress whenever a survivor is hooked or unhooked until another gen is finished are just two ideas for something that would actually lead to survivors not being able to stick to gens from the get-go, nor to just stay on their gen until it is done. Or for a simpler implementation: "Corrupt and Deadlock basekit".
You cannot deny my experiences.
I won't say you are lying or whatever, but for a lot of people it really is that they remember their worst games the most, so even after a playing session of 10 games or whatever where they pretty comfortably succeeded against 8 random groups, the 2 coordinated SWFs can make them feel as if they had a really tough day in the fog. But if you scout out all your lobbies for SWFs I won't just deny that perhaps you actually are getting them that regularly. Either way, as I suggested before, if you do not enjoy having to play like that in order to win and can't seem to manage to win without it, just stop using those strats and you should eventually arrive at an MMR where you can on average do well without them. If you however want to win most of your matches and don't mind camping and tunnelling to do so, you can't really complain about getting tougher opponents either of course.
The stats they posted were very misleading but the majority of players are in a SWF of some kind. Considering that was a time when it was easier to play in solo queue I think those stats have heavily shifted.
I wouldn't really call them misleading, there is still a substantial difference between duos, trios and quads, so it's fair to make the distinction that 4-SWF specifically only makes for around 5% of the global player pool. While we have no concrete reason to assume that the group size distribution has to have changed significantly since then, I will say that MMR in all likeliness has made it more common to face SWFs at the cap, that's been my experience too anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if 4-SWFs make for around 10% of the high MMR player pool on average, and we're probably having at least a duo in like 70% of our killer lobbies there. But yeah, this is all anecdotal.
Like I said, I'm confident I am at the MMR cap on my "main" killers, and I usually refrain from camping and tunnelling and yet I still succeed more often than not. I definitely get my share of tougher opponents, and I have more people escape than I would if I were to camp and tunnel of course, but if I look back at a killer session in earnest, I would be lying if I said I don't also face a lot of subpar survivors, or that I'm struggling to compete.
Well its the only way to counter a gen rushing team especially if they have coms
-"But eh, it's just two rounds, and it's still not like he actually "played" for those 30s"
If you treat it like a fault in any sport then that would change those 4ks into two 0ks. That's a huge swing to lose 8 kills. The way in which he forgot to go AFK made a huge impact on both of those games.
-"I've seen my share of Tru3 content and while I won't say he isn't competent/decent, he's far from the best killers I know"
True plays DBD to make money. Most of the games he plays are builds people pay him to play. Most of the builds are sub optimal to say the least. While he plays he always gives little bits of teaching advice.
This is an example for you of "evening" players. Look at how few of the pallets get used on The Game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H7PrPFMjpI
-"9 hooking events into the match is just not feasible. Some of the killers can do it, but overall the game is definitely not balanced for that idea."
It's not just the killers base power kit. Most of the maps are completely game breaking for the old killers. It would be a different game if slow movement speed killers could never play maps larger than 9000m². It would also be a different game if the pallets were spread out so there were more dead zones and less zones that allow you to go from pallet to pallet to pallet.
-"just stop using those strats and you should eventually arrive at an MMR where you can on average do well without them."
In other words : just throw the game and you will eventually be in a "fun" MMR. No thanks. I would like the game to be fair beyond low/medium levels of skill. In order for it to be fair past that point you need to play vs solo queue or you need to play dirty. Alternatively you can just play "ok" with the best two killers in the game because they are so much better than every other killer. This is also boring.
-"I wouldn't really call them misleading, there is still a substantial difference between duos, trios and quads, so it's fair to make the distinction that 4-SWF specifically only makes for around 5% of the global player pool"
So many people are of the opinion that SWF is when you have 4 people in a group on coms. Two groups of two people playing in a SWF is two SWF groups. They aren't playing alone and have extra information if someone in the pair dies. The devs were clear that about half of all games feature SWF and that SWF gives a 15% escape advantage - even though they seem to refuse to nerf it.
If you treat it like a fault in any sport then that would change those 4ks into two 0ks.
Well, I don't treat it like a sport, it was just some random challenge a few players did, and that I at that only brought up to showcase Otz' opinion on balance in the game's actual game mode, which in turn I only did because you brought up Otz. In my mind, even taking those two rounds out of the results altogether doesn't change anything about what the challenge went to showcase, which is that even when putting themselves at a stark handicap, good killer players can win most of their matches with most killers even at top MMR.
This is an example for you of "evening" players. Look at how few of the pallets get used on The Game.
I don't need to watch that video to know that most players in this game range from bad to mediocre, but this goes for players at any time of day or night. Again, I have never seen evidence that the average prowess of players predictably changes throughout the day (in any given region), and I doubt there is such evidence out there because it's not objectively quantifiable. I guess if we had BHVR's insights we could look at whether the amount of top MMR players playing consistently reaches a peak at certain times of day, but eh, the MMR cap is too low for that to matter much anyway. And again, if the argument is that players at night are worse, that's not something that makes sense to me, not from my own experience nor just from the common sense perspective that the "no-lifers" are more likely to be playing at night.
Either way, I did watch like half of that video, and if I feel like pointing something out, it's that Tru3 plays a rather mediocre Freddy. He had some good uses of snares and some bad ones, his basic chase mechanics and decisions were alright but nothing special, with a few blatant mistakes and shortcomings, but what instantly separates a mediocre from an advanced Freddy is whether they constantly spam his abilites, and Tru3 basically never does. There is no reason not to constantly fake teleports on gens around the map while you are in chase or otherwise traversing the map, and there is also no reason to walk around with snares in your back pocket, you want to constantly set up snares because you never run out, they just replace themselves, and the optimal scenario is always that you have all your snares set up on the map since that can potentially cut future chases shorter before a survivor even reaches a loop or notices you trapping it.
Just to point out some of those blatant things I mentioned, here's a few timestamps (going very off-topic, but we've been pretty far from the main topic for a while anyway, plus I feel like I've already said all I wanted to say here with regards to that, and maybe these pointers can help some players):
0:20 - He approaches Meg on the forklift dropdown pallet. He has Red Paint Brush, meaning that all survivors start the trial in the dream world. So he is free to start working with his snares, and here it would have been the obvious play to snare up the right side of the tile and go around the left, meaning that if Meg tries to loop around the tile, she's getting hit. While I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he went around the right side here because he was already planning to make her drop and jump down the other side (which is easier from the side he did it on rather than forklift side), that only works if she's actually camping the pallet rather than looping it, which a good survivor would not do, meaning that by going around the long side here and not using snares, against a better survivor all he would have done is waste more time, and even open up the possibility that the survivor could run away from the tile while he's making his long way around rather than immediately cutting along the left side.
0:30 - After he drops down and hits her, he follows her through the pallet, which is a basic macrozoning mistake. He knows the room he just came from is the LT corner map tile, and the room the pallet is in has a closed gate making it a deadzone. That means what he should have done after hitting Meg and seeing her cut to the left behind the pallet is go back through the LT room to chase Meg around the other side. Not only can this potentially already catch her off-guard because line of sight was broken and she might just not expect him not to follow straight, but if he's chasing her in that direction, now she will be in the deadzone when he breaks the pallet. Instead, he loops around with her (and respects the pallet despite having Enduring) and gives her a free way into the entire map by breaking the pallet from the deadzone side. Plus, reversing direction here would have also allowed him to set up snares to try and chase her into. What can also be pointed out is that he constantly shows her his red light around the many corners where line of sight is broken here. Hiding red light is something you can do for free, there is no reason not to do so in situations like this because you aren't losing distance and you can potentially make the survivor hesitate or even double back into you. By showing the red light, she knows well in advance that he is simply following her straight and as such she knows she can just hold W to the safe pallet.
1:06 - Here it would have been possible for him to do a bit of an advanced play. If this Meg has Dead Hard, she is almost certainly going to use it here given that she's in swing range and that there's a pallet in front of her which "forces" the killer to swing. Knowing this, he could have played around DH by doubling back and going around the other side of the pallet - if she uses DH or drops the pallet, she dies. That said, a really good survivor/one with really good ping and reactions might not actually preemptively DH or pull the pallet here, so there is obviously a risk in trying to go for this play, it's not objectively a mistake not to do so.
1:45 - His play was alright, although sliding along the wall here can reveal his red light earlier than if he were to angle himself to the right a bit. He could also have went a few further steps toward the pallet from the front side before cutting around back, he might have gotten the pallet drop (and potentially a hit) out of that rather than having Claud keep running. Little things, but they can and will matter, it's very helpful to be in the habit of utilizing micromechanic details like that.
3:20 - While Cheryl played it pretty well, it was obvious she was taking a wide curve around the snares to get past them, which might have already allowed Tru3 to catch up had he simply followed her, but at latest once he heard her step into the snare he had just set up in front of the pallet he should have immediately doubled back through the pallet, she would not have made it anywhere after that. Instead he spends time setting up a third snare, allowing her to get to the pallet to drop it on him.
4:00 - Good on him that he notices she isn't in the dream world and doesn't waste time setting snares.
5:15 - Good that he already thinks about the gen teleport to intercept her, and then he plays it competently with the snares at the pallet and waits for potential DH as well. Obviously Claud played it awfully putting herself in that spot to begin with, but that's a given, not commenting on survivor play here.
Stopped watching after this. Again, not gonna say Tru3's a bad killer or whatever, he isn't, but he has plenty room to improve, and these are just a few random examples of as much.
Most of the maps are completely game breaking for the old killers.
Some maps are definitely an issue, especially for killers without map traversal or potent chase abilities, yeah. Map adjustments and/or buffs to these killers would be part of that compensation for camp/tunnel nerfs in my book anyway.
I would like the game to be fair beyond low/medium levels of skill.
Well, camping/tunnelling/slugging aren't inherently "unfair", if you don't mind using those strats and can't regularly win without them past some MMR point, that's obviously your prerogative. My suggestion was just in case you don't actually enjoy playing like that. That said, again, it is possible to become good enough of a killer player to win frequently without camping and tunnelling at top MMR, it is not absolutely necessary to be able to compete and succeed.
The devs were clear that about half of all games feature SWF and that SWF gives a 15% escape advantage - even though they seem to refuse to nerf it.
Yeah, around 50-60% of the player pool were solos when we got stats on this (https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/719/CPIDC1XE8JBT.jpg), which obviously means around half of all matches include at least a duo. And while the survival rate increase was around 10% for 4-SWF and 5% for 3-SWF, 2-SWF only made for a difference of like 1-2% (https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/771/II0BH5BS6HP0.jpg). This can have changed somewhat over the years and with MMR, and obviously we can't just look at averages, the top performance ceiling of a good 4-SWF is just way too high for the pub game mode, just like the killer equivalent to that is too - both can have win streaks of hundreds of games in a row, and that just shouldn't be happening (although matchmaking is at least equally as much to blame for that as balance).
I think duo SWF is not a problem, not even double duo, but obviously they are still more competitive than four solos. My main desired SWF nerf would affect all of them anyway, by making it so any perk and item/add-on can only be present once between members of a premade group.