Otz's Tunneling Experiment
This is EXTREMELY telling in regards to the community's perception on tunneling on BOTH sides.
While Otz obviously isn't an "average" DBD player, I think he is still comparable enough to be an efficient look at the player base.
Also, for further reading, Otz says he played around 60 games, with different killers, mostly using non-meta perks/addons. He also set a rule that prevented him from hooking a survivor twice in a row, which fully prevents him from tunneling.
- His 80% win rate is mostly indicative of his own skill, but this does have some weight when it comes to showing how killers do not have to tunnel EVERY game, specifically right off the bat at 5/4 gens. It's not like killers get sh*t-stomped if they don't tunnel for every game. Sometimes, it is a skill issue, and not the fault of the survivors if a killer is put into a position where they must tunnel to get ahead. There is a time and a place for tunneling, but its not like you'll 100% loose a 4k if you don't (at least in scenarios where a killer isn't at extreme risk like at 5 gens remaining and such).
- The fact that survivors still told him he "tunneled" after he specifically did not hook the same person two hooks in a row is absurd, and is something a chunk survivor player base needs to wake up to. If a killer does not go for, down, and hook a survivor who just got unhooked immediately, they did NOT tunnel. That is not what tunneling is, and it's insane that people think that what Otz did in a lot of scenarios is tunneling. I see the accusations of tunneling as sheer copium.
- As for people who want to be tunneled, that's fine, as some people just want chase interaction. Considering how boring gens are, I think that's understandable. I also don't think there's anything wrong with a killer giving what that survivor wants, or not. When a survivor begs to be tunneled and enter chase, its up to the killer to say yes or no, but the survivor can't turn around an sh*t on the killer for "tunneling" if they then go down. It's their fault they were the killer's next target.
- I have no thoughts on a team trying to prevent a killer from tunneling. Makes sense. 👍️
I mainly take issue with the first two points, as they poke holes in very prevalent opinions the community has. By "take issue" I don't mean I take issue with Otz's conclusions, I think they are apt based on his experiences, I mean I take issue with the opinions of the community.
Comments
3vs4 sounds to mee too many killers but I will definetely try it but personally I would hope 2vs8 mode to dbd. Just imagine Oni with legion or plague unlimited power... I hope the texas chainsaw is popular and forces dbd to add new game mode. That's only way I imagine it can happen. If they can't do 2vs8 for me 2vs4 is fine too. But it would need lot of balancing...
Instead just making gens slower they could add secondary objective which each unhooked survivors would have to do amd before that they could be just incapable of doing gens or have massive gen fix speed penalty. Now that second objective should take decent amount of time. So now if killer chooses to tunnel gens will go fast but if not then the match will go slowly.
How to fix tunneling: give the unhooked survivor literally invincibility. They cannot go down unless being grabbed from inside a locker or if they do any conspicuous action. The invincibility effect ends once the 5 gens are completed.
Rework Borrowed Time to become an endgame perk. Maybe give 15 seconds of speed and endurance to the survivor performing the unhook as well? No need for Off The Record to have endurance, maybe give "no pools of blood"?
Now killers are literally forced to not go for the same survivor back to back.
With that, and another tweak to solve camping, it would be enough, and then killers could get a buff to balance it out.
There's a lot of problems in this game that I'd like addressed, but I try to stay practical and realistic about it. I don't think there's anything we can do for camping and tunneling that would solve the problem without causing more problems. It will always be a thing so long as it's possible to do, and I can't think of a way to make it impossible that wouldn't wreck the killers' experience and/or be weaponized by survivors.
There are plenty of ways to address both without allowing them to be "weaponized" if you also account for their existence in other parts of the game.
And then the first chase lasts 5 minutes
You'd be lucky to lose only 3 gens in 5 minutes.
They strays close to implementation of punitive mechanics which is bad design.
Getting rid of tunneling via hard mechanic intervention would most likely be received negatively by the people who use the strat. It would just feel like a punishment rather than a healthy change if it was structured to be a hard lock out of the strat.
Realistically the better option would be to change the gameplay loop for both sides so that the strat can be phased out alongside other mechanical or strategic pain points to just overall refresh the game as a whole. Though that isn't something that is likely to happen in this current iteration of dbd. That would be like a design decision for a DBD 2 Electric Boogaloo or DBD: A Realm Reborn
Well you see they added boons and now they're dead.
The community asked for this fyi
-"3vs4 sounds to mee too many killers but I will definetely try it"
From the sound of things it sounds like DBD where you want to hook people so you can feed blood to Grandpa. Survivors will be hiding from the family and they can slip through narrow passages that most family members cannot follow through.
-"Instead just making gens slower they could add secondary objective which each unhooked survivors would have to do amd before that they could be just incapable of doing gens or have massive gen fix speed penalty."
You mean like give the killer a 5th perk slot that can only be used for hexes or boon removing? Imagine if they made hexes able to be rekindled on unbroken bones. There would be an instant meta shift with Blood favor. Survivors would be breaking the bones for fear that every pallet would be turned off when the killer attacks. People would stop bringing bones because the survivors would be removing them.
In regards to your second point, I've been saying for awhile that tunnelling is not massively prevalent for me. I keep stats of my survivor games and it's probably 1 in every 10-12 killers that does it. Most know they don't need to. Of course this comes down as well to one's definition of tunnelling. I've had killers who seemed like they were tunnelling my team mate but yet would immediately come after me when I attempted to take aggro. Which tells me those killers didn't plan to tunnel, they simply happened to find that same survivor again.
What you suggest then? How we nerf tunneling? We can't just make gens 120s or secondary objective and hope killers don't tunnel. Those who do so now certainly will and have even more time to do so. Basekit ds would solve the problem.
Tunnelling can't be nerfed imo. It's always been a thing in the 2 years I've played. I've seen so many suggestions, most along the lines of making killers stronger so they "don't *have* to tunnel", but that won't work either. Because the game is designed to give more challenging opponents every so often, and killers will revert to tunnelling again once they have those more difficult games. Short of guaranteeing a 4k every single game if a killer doesn't tunnel, it'll never go away.
Short of turning survivors invisible for a period of time enough to ensure they can escape after being unhooked you can't really do anything to "nerf" tunneling.
The best way to adjust it would be to change how players interact with each other. You can lessen the effectiveness of it if say there is a respawn system introduced and we shift the game from a static hook sacrifice system. That would help, but even that wouldn't end tunneling
I was surprised by his win rate with the restrictions he played. That was more telling than anything in the video. There are people here who claim that streamers have an MMR exception, which if true explains things, but not something I had previously heard about. Otherwise it looks like the claims of how many super efficient squads there are at high MMR aren't true.
That survivors told him he still tunneled isn't surprising.
1: People have different definitions of tunneling (which he covers).
2: People only real have their own perceptions which are always biased. It's really easy to feel like you are being targeted even if not true.
3: When people lose, they get upset. Not just this game, but all multiplayer games.
cough cough different mmr reserved to steamers (or to be precise fog whisperers) cough cough... those experiment are simply trash: it's sufficient to look at the survivors that he was facing to understand that something is wrong...
How do you know Fog Whisperers have their own MMR? When BHVR did their MMR testing last year, the Fog Whisperers I watched had the same long wait times that everyone else did. Plus when they play survivor they don't seem to escape more than anyone else
One thing you need to understand:
Otz is from Spain, right? So Europe. In Europe, the survivors in the evening are much weaker than in the daytime. In the evening, you will win most of your matches. If you want to face real opponents, you need the daytime. But then, sometimes you feel completely helpless.
No surprise, in the evening there are so many survivor-players online. I watch the Streamer Zeb89. Yesterday evening, he faced a guy with 100hours in the survivor-team, while he has 10.000h.
This wont happen in the daytime, when you face really good SWFs every game, because in the daytime you wont find as many survivors as in the evening, so MMR matches you with the elite as well.
Winning without tunneling in the evening is much easier than in the daytime!
Here are two videos daytime vs. nighttime of a friend of mine (console-player):
Daytime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpUbK9HQPc0
Nighttime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAkUjCLriN8&t=752s
If you watch them, take a look what the SURVIVORS are doing, not the killer. Ignore the Killer-Gameplay, just observe the movements and the teamwork of the Survivor-Teams.
The points you made are very valid and should be added into the game but on a smaller scale as survivors would just complain.
But this change alone will not stop tunnelling survivors need additional methods of survival against a tunnelling killer. Like you said killers will gain a debuf if they hook different survivors but they should lose it all together back to 0% if they hook any survivor twice in a row. Survivors should have a basekit perk, I can't remember what it's called but when you get to a certain recovering progress you can throw a pallet on the killer. As this is basekit the perk can have no recovery requirement. This base kit will deactivate after 60s
At the end, the outcome of a game is almost always in the hands of the survs. The more hours you have, the more you'll realize.
And bad - average, not as efficient survs like me are the only reason we have still killers left, wanting to play. The only good thing about MMR is, that queue times are still prioritized. Players would be shocked on both sides, when MMR would work at all times.
Well if killer notices he is losing because he tunnels but winning when he does not which he will then do?
How is basekit DS a problem? It was the most well-tailored perk. The only thing that could improve on it is removing collision with the killer while it's active.
Doesn't have to be just BHVR though. They do sometimes take suggestions from forums. They took a pretty ambitious one of mine, so we can all just brainstorm together about possible solutions.
They said it once (they even indirectly admit it when there was the huge wave of cheaters that were plaguing dbd and they said that they were doing something to protect the streamers because they were the most targeted ones...), also I keep repeating myself: look at the average skills that survivors have in most of their matches, if they can even do win streaks this should tell you the level of survivors that they get in their lobbies...
So they can bodyblock for their teammates without any fear?
Hell even if you work out all the issues this would bring up i would still hate it.
Being immune to everything when you are unhooked just removes all the tension, it's boring as hell. I'll take being tunneled out then. Atleast you get to have a chase then
Easy fix, once they are hit at least once, they lose collision only for the killer
Or just remove the collision altogether as soon as they are rescued
And you can still be tunneled, just perform a conspicuous action in front of the killer
And what if 2 survivors are unhooked at the same time? Do both become immune? Niether? Does the game crash?
Things are always easy if you look at it from the outside
Nearby gen is at 90%. Invulnerable survivor runs to that gen after getting unhooked and you watch him. The other players are doing gens across the map. What does the killer do? This happens all the time with OTR
How is basekit DS a problem? It was the most well-tailored perk. The only thing that could improve on it is removing collision with the killer while it's active.
If there's one thing we don't need back, it's the meta of everyone running DS and then baiting killers into attacking them just so they can use the stun. Every single new tool you give survivors is immediately abused in the most annoying ways possible.
The problem with "fixing tunneling" is that sometimes the killer doesn't have another choice, because they either just can't find another survivor or the "tunneled" is actively seeking the killer's attention. What should they do, just ignore the guy who keeps getting in their face with a flashlight no matter what? I will never accept any "solution" that punishes innocent players. If someone is unhooked and they immediately get in my way while their teammate flees in the other direction, I do not deserve punishment for downing the unhooked again for their stupid play. I had a killer game a few days ago where a Kate kept unhooking teammates then using Sprint Burst to run away, leaving the unhooked with me as the closest and most convenient target. Am I supposed to be punished for that Kate's bad playing? Was I supposed to follow the imaginary Survivor Rulebook and do the obviously bad move of chasing someone who was already halfway across the map?
Tunneling is a valid aspect of this game and doesn't need to be "fixed". Disincentivized, sure, but not eliminated, because there are times where it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
-"How is basekit DS a problem?"
Basekit BT gave survivors tunnel protection. The result of giving survivors this perk only increased tunneling - not decreased it.
Why did that happen? Because the killer was already too far behind on their objective.
Why didn't the killer get Basekit Deadlock? The answer is because survivors would feel bad and not like it. From a balance standpoint the killer needs tunnel protection so they don't lose a lot of generators quickly. They don't get it because the survivors would have less fun.
The balance method for this company is : what makes the survivors happy will make us the most money. Therefore we don't really care about the killer's fun. "F*** em!"
Before DBD bought their IP they were under a mandate for 2 years where they were not allowed to nerf survivors again. When they bought the IP they had the opportunity to change the formula to a balanced game. But they didn't do that.
McLean made a quote from around this time concerning the Marth experiments : " We weren't trying to make a balanced game."
And they still are not. They want to make a game that is fun for bad and average players so they buy all the DLC and then move on. They do not balance high level survivor play because then 70% of the "long term" players would quit.
Before we had the 6.0 shake up we had regular scenarios in queue where there were ~30 killers or fewer for 4500 survivors. This data was gathered by pinging the DBD servers to see who was in queue.
Remember that the recipe for this game is supposed to be 4 survivors for every 1 killer. The queue was missing about 850 killers on average.
Since some people weren't here I will remind everyone that after the game had been out for about a year there was a killer strike where at least 2k killers stopped playing the role. There was a 15+ minute wait time to play survivor. But there was no other game to play so people waited.
This same wait time killed VHS a few months ago.
Ultimately killer is a lonely experience with very little reward. Most of my killer main friends are excited for TCM because you can play 3 killers vs 4 survivors.
Basekit BT gave survivors tunnel protection. The result of giving survivors this perk only increased tunneling - not decreased it.
Could that perhaps be because BT only works for 10 seconds and DS used to work for 60 seconds so now killers can just wait out the 10 second endurance to get a free down now that DS is garbage?
If there's one thing we don't need back, it's the meta of everyone running DS and then baiting killers into attacking them just so they can use the stun. Every single new tool you give survivors is immediately abused in the most annoying ways possible.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
If you fall for that trick more than once, you are the one making a mistake and you deserve to get punished for it. If someone tries to DS bait you, just leave them slugged and they lose more than they gain. DS was not abusable opposite a competent killer. I've only been hit by DS -once-, and it was 100% my own fault.
The only argument you -could- make is that bodyblocking with DS should be removed, which I would fully support.
Just the other day I got a 4K against a 2-man SWF and solos that accused me of tunneling, and they were as you say one that asked to be tunneled... He was really good at looping, the remaining survivors didn't bother doing generators, just hid... so it was just me chasing him and him clicking his flashlight at me... Then he accuses me of tunneling him, calls me trash, etc...
What matters is that both sides have fun, and honestly that's a state of mind that is up to each player. I finally managed to get to a point that I was playing as Bubba (daily ritual, don't play him otherwise) on Dead Dawg vs. a "Head On Bully Squad" and.... I thought it was hilarious. They all got out and I got like 3 hooks total I think? But I told them GGWP in end game and that I was laughing at the Head On plays. THAT is where every player needs to be, but I know it can be hard to get there, and sometimes you have setbacks, but then you step away for a few hours, come back when youv'e calmed down.
It was never confirmed, and it wasn't a different mmr, it was supposedly them not being matched with players that had high reports of cheating. I can tell you right now, most, if not all of them would be pissed if they were getting easier matches. Hell, ohtofu says that constantly and is partially why he's burnt out. And if that were the case, why is otz struggling to get a dredge streak going?
I've also said this before and I'll say it again, you can't judge either side's players just by watching a stream - we all have games where we are not on top of things or make stupid decisions. It doesn't mean they are bad quality survivors or killers they just had a bad match.
Mmr just barely functions because it is too lenient. It has the slight edge above ranks, but I wouldn't say it's perfect by any means, because at least this is somewhat consistent. I don't want seperate queues, but what I'd like to see is at least have an option of being strict on mmr because I want these sweaty seal team 6 squads constantly like people on here love to chatter about. I shouldn't have to consider scrimming and joining a baby comp team to even get challenged in this game. Queue times are good and all but I just feel like ######### most of the time because I am constantly going against survivors that don't even have a chance the moment they load into my lobby. From my own experience I get the same quality of matches on par with <insert streamer here>. And I spend a lot of time in this game playing killer, maybe 80 hours+ every few weeks, and win most of my matches. And yet, I'm here, thinking, why the hell am I getting survivors that have significantly less hours than me constantly in my lobby.
If you fall for that trick more than once, you are the one making a mistake and you deserve to get punished for it. If someone tries to DS bait you, just leave them slugged and they lose more than they gain. DS was not abusable opposite a competent killer. I've only been hit by DS -once-, and it was 100% my own fault.
The fact that DS made killers afraid of downing a survivor and attempting to hook them, the most basic gameplay loop of killer, says a lot about how stupid a perk DS was and what kind of garbage gameplay it resulted in. If that's what's being defended, then I'm glad DS is dead. Good riddance.
Tbf DS didn’t ‘frighten killers’ or whatever you’re on about. The kill rate before its last nerf was like 53% which means the majority of killer players were averaging a 2-3K. The counterplay to DS really was just leaving the survivor slugged and even that had good pressure because unless survivors were pairing DS with unbreakable, they would need help to recover, which meant at least two survivors weren’t on gens. I don’t think DS has been monumental as a perk since its first nerf.
no ######### playing one of the weakest killers against an amazing swf on a survivor sided map wouldnt work???
otz doesnt control if he getsgood or bad survivors
The counterplay to DS really was just leaving the survivor slugged
What do people think would happen if basekit DS was added? I thought people complained enough about slugging, let's add a reason to do it to everyone. Let me guess, then add basekit Unbreakable so that the slugging doesn't work anymore? Then what?
No, it didn't. No one was afraid of that because it is the most easily avoided perk in the game. People would just not tunnel and not get hit by it.
Speaking for myself, with old DS I'd be more likely to put an unhooked surv down again because I assumed they'd have DS, and I'd want to eat it to take it off the board so they couldn't use it late/end game. Of course BHVR disabled it in the end game which would have greatly reduced that approach (in theory), but unfortunately they also nerfed the stun duration to the point where it became generally worthless.
I say keep it disabled in the endgame (and of course have it deactivate on a conspicuous action), but make the stun duration longer than before, like 7 seconds, and maybe even add in a haste boost. I think that would be the best approach using a perk to dissuade tunneling.
Of course the worst thing about old DS was how it was used offensively, so you'd have to be very careful of not tuning it back to the point where that becomes a thing again. Like basekit BT, using it for anything but getting away from the killer isn't the intent, and killers should be able to punish survs for using them to bodyblock or otherwise interfere with pursuing other survs.
I don’t see slugging often personally but I couldn’t care less if DS was made basekit. Basekit BT did jack-all to stop tunneling and killer mains insisted it would.
for me it's the inverse situation: i've come to a point where i ALWAYS have smurf accounts, people with 3 times my playtime or people who have vac bans/game bans registered... at this point i'm starting to think that i'm going aganist cheaters all the time because there are too many things in my matches that don't seems right (for example 3 gen pop while i'm chasing someone despite i've deadlock active, people that seems/ARE faster to run after turning a corner that have no LoS, people that won't miss a SINGLE dead hard, etc etc)... at this point no one can be sure about the MMR system, but i'm sure of 1 thing: it's PURE gargbage and it's making my matches unplayable (and the few ones that aren't suspitious aren't funny either because you get potatoes, making chases boring for how much easy those will be, or complete SWF that will require the same unfunny gameplay in order to keep up the pace with their efficiency)
I don't think I saw this brought up by anyone else, but wouldn't a test like this also require trying it on every killer?
I mean, some killers are just straight up better at avoiding the need to tunnel than others, so wouldn't that also factor into the data in some way? Not to mention people's apparent misinterpretation of tunneling. But to stay on track here, I'd think taking killers, their powers, and certain perk combos (meta vs non-meta) should be considered before concluding an experiment like this.
You tunnel 2 survivors at the same time?
LMAO where is the survivor who performed the unhook?
I've tunneled the whole team at the same time if you have to believe some survivora i've faced. While simultaneously camping them.
That aside it isn't about what you do in game it's how you program it. If you program that the last survivor that gets unhooked gets immune you need to account for what happens if both are unhooked at the same time. Cause that is possible, no matter how unlikely.
There is a lot of nuance to programming a game. If you think you found a easy solution it's cause you haven't thought it trough
So I let the survivor who got unhooked finish a gen immediately?
How is any different than how is the game right now?
OTR doesnt count, nobody does that