BHVR just admitted and proved that tunnelling is an extremely effective strategy
The stats are there to prove it. I don't want to see any survivors denying it's a legitimate strategy or toxic now.
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The stats are there to prove it. I don't want to see any survivors denying it's a legitimate strategy or toxic now.
Read THIS post.
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It turns out I did instead lol
If DbD was a competitive game you might have an argument.
Well the game is so unbalanced (and does not reward skill at all) that it is impossible for a killer to win against 4 survivors and it is impossible for 3 survivors to win against a killer.
4vs1 is too strong, 3v1 is too weak.
Who cares ? When survivors stack busted perks + busted items they ruin the fun for the killer and they do not care at all.
Both sides are entilted and want to win no matter what even if it destroys the fun of the game for half the community. This community is the most toxic i have ever seen.
They've been saying it for a while. And we've been saying killer is pretty decently easy to play, yet killers can't admit it.
There's no hypocrisy, looping is a legitimate strategy that has its place in the game (alongside camping and slugging), but it is absolutely a slippery slope that brings a lot of killers up in MMR when they don't have the skills to keep up without using those strategies. Killers who don't rely heavily on looping won't have this problem, but killers who constantly hard loop at 5 gens are most of the time out of their depth.
Even on this forum you can see the number of posts calling the game survivor sided or asking for survivor nerfs solely based on the fact that the person who made the post can't win without looping. These people go against opponents better than them and demand everything gets balanced around them so they can keep up, and it's one of the reasons looping is bad for the game.
And although much less popular, an other questionable strategy is a survivor equipping a stealth build with Wake and/or Sole Survivor and stealth until they can escape through the gates. It's not against any kind of rules and is therefore legitimate, but it's not enjoyable for anyone and the survivor's MMR go up until that's the only way they can survive because they don't have the skills to keep up everyone else.
Obviously looping is way more popular than this, but it doesn't change the fact that it's really weird how anyone would tell off a survivor who do this and comes complaining about how the game is killer sided bc hiding is the only way they can survive but somehow we're supposed to listen to killers who have been looping until they can't keep up and suggest we nerf survivors so they can keep beating people who are better than them.
TLDR: looping is a legitimate strategy but the majority of the time it's not needed and most killers only do it to get easy wins until MMR kicks their *ss and they come crying about the game's balance when really it's just a skill issue.
I keep dying because the killer is making the best play. Sounds like an excuse to say "I'm bad at this game, so I'll complain."
Do you understand what being boosted means? It means being at an mmr that is higher than your skill level. I'm referring to this comment "tunnelling can put you in an MMR above your skill level". If tunnelling is a legitimate strategy, why would using it cause me to be boosted? It's hypocritical because you don't view other legitimate strategies the same way. For example, why don't you see people who loop as being boosted? I can easily replace what you said about tunnelling with looping: looping is an effective strategy in that it helps secure kills. Hence, it's a strategy that results in more kills that results in your MMR being boosted.
"So do I. Do I have to tunnel and camp to win? No, I do not. Do I do it anyway because it's easy? Yes. Do I recognize that makes me an #########? Yup."
I still disagree. In the competitive games I mentioned, people will do the most annoying things possible if it lets them win, and people aren't viewed as ######### for using these strategies, like in DBD. If you complained about annoying startegies in these games, people will just tell you to get good or give you advice on how to play better. It's practically never the fault of the person using the strategy.
"You cannot give bonuses to not tunneling. That's been tried, it doesn't work. Eruption, PR, CoB + Overcharge. 4 exceedingly strong regression perks."
Firstly, those perks were successful in stopping people from tunnelling. In 3 gen strats, you typically go for the easiest person to down rather than try to tunnel someone out and leave your gens unguarded. Secondly, those perks weren't designed to reward not tunnelling. They were designed for gen control. The current perks that specifically reward not tunnelling are No Way Out and Grim Embrace. No Way Out is one of the top killer perks currently, which shows these perks can be successful. Grim Embrace is another one that no one uses, but it shows these perks aren't oppressive. Anyway, I'm not asking for perks that reward not tunnelling. I'm asking for basekit changes. Base kit changes are needed to make it worth it for most killers not to tunnel. Most killers aren't going to run these perks when they could just tunnel and get the same or better results.
"We've tried the carrot, I'm interested to try the stick."
We already did: DS and Borrowed Time. Both perks were nerfed extremely heavily.
Almost no killer would play that game mode since it would just be putting them at a disadvantage for no benefit.
LoL only allows for 1 ban per person. It's no where near enough to ban everything that's annoying. I also disagree about counter picking being significant since most people only main 1-2 champions, so they will still pick their champion into a bad matchup.
"When there are champions that are strong both on a low and high skill level, they usually get addressed."
You're wrong about this. Everything that's strong gets nerfed eventually. They don't specifically nerf champions that strong in both low and high skill. They nerf champions that are overperforming at all. Also, these games places a much higher priority on balance for top players compared to low ranked players. They don't give equal priority to balancing for both low skill and high skill, like you say.
You also mention that DBD is not balanced for all levels but I disagree. The latest stats showed that almost every killer is within 3% kill rate of each other when comparing all ranks to top 5% (https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/350586/stats-kill-rate-by-killer-and-mmr-september-2022#latest), which is better than LoL. This shows that the game is balanced for almost everyone. I only think balance is an issue for the top 1% of players, but that's a problem that all competitive games have. Top players always find broken things to abuse.
And your point is?
Tunnelling being extremely effective kind of is the entire problem?
The whole point is that it is a low risk high reward strategy which in higher levels of gameplay is going to be taken advantage of. Its up to the devs to fix. You cant expect the community of a game to adhere to house rules. You cant blame people for using the strongest strat, regardless of how scummy it is.
“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”; therefore, “One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.”
DBD is an asymmetrical, horribly unbalanced mess. People like you who keep trying to treat it as a competitive e-sport game will never cease to be ######### hilarious to me.
Thanks for the laughs, I needed it today.
Hm this is different entirely but if lasting long in chase makes you an "absolute legend" why do I always get the worst blood points? Weird logic, that is.
I'm not asking you per say...I just find it contradicting. Oh hey you're an absolute legend, enjoy 12K for kiting the killer the whole match lol gee thanks.
To OP - And as for tunneling, that and strategy don't belong in the same sentence. It's boring, lame and has made all my friends quit, for good. Don't think it's hard to do or some kind of epic task to pull off like performing surgery.
I've never seen anyone complain it's not legitimate and it's cheating, they just say it's boring, and from my experience, quit!
Taric with Master Yi were never a problem in top MMR. They were a problem in Plat through Diamond maybe Master at most. And it still got nerfed.
There are champions who are safer than others. Not everyone is one trick pony. Most people won't willingly play a champion with 30% winrate against their counter. Even in the trenches of Silver people still might ask someone to trade pick order so they have an advrantage when picking.
Riot has also balanced around ARAM which is a casual mode (I'd know, I have over 7k games on aram by now). When ARAM was added the champions that ruled where poke champs with a lot of ranges. And later Riot added Mark so melee champs can actually close the distance. Also many champs have adjusted damage for ONLY ARAM.
In league a champion overperforming is a champ with 55% winrate. If they have 60% they are broken. And 55% winrate still gets addressed unless they only work till plat or something.
As for 1 ban per person, you can still ban your counter, or ban stupid 1v5 champs that are common if you feel like it. It's a huge agency over picking who you play against or what your team plays against. In DBD you don't have that agency.
As for "everything that's strong gets nerfed eventually", ya because LoL is a spectator e-sport. It becomes boring seeing the same champions over and over. They are not trying to balance perfectly. They are trying to make entertaining matches as well. Also Ryze exists and he always somehow ends up stupid strong in top levels.
Top 1% players will usually only play broken stuff. That's their personality, they want to win. They don't care who they play. They're not trying to prove something with Malzahar jungle or Malzahar support.
Someone who plays Nurse and Blight with the strongest perks/add-ons has the same mentality. They're only gonna stop playing those killers if they get nerfed or something much better comes along.
Your stat does not show each killers killrate against all sorts of survivor teams. Is the killrate the same vs 4 solos? How about 2 solos 1 two-man SWF? etc. Nor do they include winrates per killer build/add-ons etc. Maybe Nurse with 4 slowdown has 80% killrate instead of 60%, but you wouldn't know.
In league you usually can find that info from other sites that collect those stats.
So what? you cant just outright stop tunnelling.
While I agree with alot of whacha said here, the slugging part is the outlier for me. As long as you have survivor strategies to prevent the killer from getting a survivor from the floor to a hook, slugging is going to have a role to play. This is why base-kit unbreakable was tried and scrapped.
Anything that can be used purely to antagonize or gain an unfair advantage needs to be looked at. I do thing slugging has its place but like camping it’s too easy and effective for a killer to do and they can do it just to be a jerk.
Slugging in itself is no easier than hooking though since it still involves winning a chase. It's sometimes strategic if you have to prevent a nearby gen from popping rather than take the time to hook, but even that comes with the risk of the survivor you just spent time winning a chase on getting picked up and getting nothing from that invested time.
I'll agree that BM can involve slugging. If I T bag on you with Ghostface or puke on you with Plague just to BM while on the ground... THAT is not strategic, and is in the same boat as hitting on hook (I'll sometimes give 1 hit to end the super long screaming though...).
The reason why tunneling is so effective is because the average survivor that plays this game is utter garbage, even though survivor is incredibly easier than killer.
I have to disagree. I play both sides and believe in the current state that killer is the easier of the two. Once you get the hang of a certain killer you have most of the advantages.
Well, unless the killer play is absolutely awful they’re going to win a chase eventually. In its current iteration I can just slug survivors continuously until they bleed out two seconds after being downed. Of course, that depends on how long they’re down before they get picked up but it requires nothing but chasing and downing which favors the killer player. If they wanted to balance it out they could add endurance for a limited time after being picked up or recovering completely without needing a perk to do so.
That word "eventually" is a bad word to have for a killer player. That's generally the ppl who let 3 survivors go completely unpressured to sit on gens. And your plan is to leave that guy you wasted a ton of time EVENTUALLY downing on the ground so you can EVENTUALLY down someone else? How is bleeding out for 4 minutes a better plan than dying in 2 min or 3 hook stages, whichever is sooner. Slugging in itself is NOT a game winning strategy unless you can get fast downs and apply alot of pressure. You don't want to down someone EVENTUALLY.
It happens when you try to balance the game around kills and escapes.
The reason why tunneling is so effective is because the average survivor is usually ill equipped to deal with a killer that hards tunnels at 5 gens.
Unless you are going full DS, OTR, DH and have a team to back you up covering hits and rushing gens you are very likely to die early.
That’s just a word meant to imply that the game is designed for the killer to complete their objective. Chases are skewed in their favor. If you’re good you can give the killer a real run for their money but the overall design isn’t meant for survivors to be able to escape chases - prolong them, yes, so that maybe the killer gives up? Survivors ending them? No. So the average killer player is going to get a decent amount of downs - enough to abuse slugging, if they so choose, for sure.
Both sides need their strongest stragegies be reigned in and neutered, so that the game can breath again. Right now its a pitched battle who can be more unfun faster: will the killer succeed to tunnel a survivor out of the game, before the 3 other split up survivors with juiced toolboxes manage to slam their gens like there is no tomorrow? Games like this run at a breakneck speed and are over before you blink, with no side feeling especially good about it, but most often just bitter.
Here is a way out:
1) give the killer old BBQs BP bonus at basekit, but only increase the counter for each survivor hooked while everyone is still in the game. This gives the killer a side objective besides tunneling someone ASAP.
2) give the killer a mini BBQ that shows them a single survivor that hasn't been hooked yet, after hooking a survivor, thus peeling them away from the hooks and after someone fresh.
3) give the survivors some kind of debuff upon being hooked, but only as long as everyone is alive. Basically, don't make the killer sabotaging themselves and shooting themselves in the foot by keeping survivors alive, MAKE them WANT to keep everyone alive; at least until everyone has been hooked at least once.
3.5) maaaaaybe throw in a Grim Embrace like effect at basekit, once the forth survivor is hooked and anyone is still alive and block all gens for a while.
4) inverse the gen teamwork penalty, ie make gens go faster when survivors work on a gen together, but let gens repair slower when they split up. Splitting p would still be possible, but there wouldn't be 3 gens popping in union after the first chase, anymore. This whole thing would allow the game to go back to the good old times where it was "one survivor lost a chase and got hooked" - "a gen gets done" - "another survivor gets hooked" - "another gen gets done" - "the playing field shrinks ... uhhhh ... things get spicy now!!!1"
5) give all remaining survivors action speed bonuses for each dead teammate. The killer could tunnel someone out, but this would strengthen the remaining survivors and rob the killer of all the Entities debuffs on the survivors and slim down their BP gains severely.
6) each month nerf the 5 most used perks in some numerical way, while buffing the 5 least played perks on both sides. Next month the last month changed perks wont count for the next round of nerfs/buffs. Thus we would get a living meta that ever evolves, with meta perks falling out of favor, old favorites coming back and new fun perks becoming suddenly eligible, until they are overplayed.
6.5) (a bit controversial) make only one OG chapter and one Licensed chapter per year plus one Community contest chapter. Reserve the last quarter of the year for game health.
Those perks were supposed to be anti gen rush, because they are gen regression perks.
It doesn’t even make sense to call them anti tunneling perks. They don’t give the killer any help to find a different survivor to chase, and they don’t give the killers any bonuses for chasing a different survivor.
The idea proposed was that Killers were forced to tunnel if they wanted a chance to win.
Those perks were so strong that you didn't need to tunnel in order to win. They were anti-tunnel perks due to their strength. Or, at least, that's what I thought would happen.
Didn't really work out that way.
That doesn't make any sense. You can't just say perk are "anti-tunnel" because they are strong. Those perks had absolutely zero connection to tunneling.
You created a bad hypothesis, and created a bad conclusion from your bad hypothesis.
Perhaps I'm not explaining well.
The perks aren't anti-tunnel. The original argument, iirc, was that Killers needed to tunnel to stop gens and that if only gen regression was viable, tunneling would stop.
Who made that original argument???? So you picked a ridiculous straw man argument, and concluded that was proof that killers shouldn’t get anti-tunneling incentives?
Someone who didn't know how to make a decent argument, evidently.
If you want more effective reasoning, here's why.
Tunneling, is for all intents and purposes, a push to remove someone from the match as quickly as possible. Taking all emotional responses out, the idea is to tilt the match in your favor ASAP. If you can get the game to become a 3v1 before 3 gens pop, you are almost guaranteed to win as Killer.
In order to properly incentivize something, the rewards need to be as good or better than what you are trying to dissuade people from doing. There is no reasonable reward that would ever be as strong as tunneling. Even if you were to give the Killer an entire extra gen as a reward, it would still be worse than tunneling. You cannot reasonable incentivize people to not tunnel.
You can, however, punish people for tunneling AFTER you adjust the games balance. If we make the 4v1 less Survivor-sided (which I don't think it's super Survivor-sided currently, especially against certain Killers, so this'll be tricky) and adjust the 3v1 to be less Killer-sided, then I think you could have something there.
That would remove both the need to tunnel and the benefits you get from tunneling.
BHVR could shift this game to move away from camping and tunneling, but they would need to give killers real help in finding other survivors and actually getting in close ranged chases with other survivors. If BHVR does that, then it can create real anti-tunnel and real anti-camp mechanics.
The entire game expectation for killers is just garbage, which is why camping and tunneling are often the best strategies. BHVR expects killers to just wander far away from hooked survivors, and hope they might find other survivors, and if the killer doesn’t find anyone, well it’s just too bad for the killer. And if the killer stumbles across the person they most recently hooked, and there is no other survivor in sight, then the killer is supposed to just ignore that survivor and wander around the map, hoping to find other survivors, and if the killer doesn’t find anyone, we’ll it’s just too bad for the killer.
There seems to be this death grip that killers have to ensure they still have to option of camping and tunneling when those are discussed.
There are such perks such as BBQ, Floods of Rage, PGTW, etc etc that either help you find Survivors or give you something worthwhile to do while you look for Survivors.
I don't have any issue finding people consistently. Crows, gens, scratchmarks and aura-reading has made Stealth an essentially dead playstyle (some Blendettes haven't caught up yet).
If you wanted to give the Killer a speed boost until they start chase or are within X meters of a Survivor, then I'd be okay with that as long as it doesn't stack with power movement speed.
Those perks aren't good enough, and they aren't basekit either. BHVR has made it clear they want to give survivors basekit help, and killers should also get basekit help. Most of those aura reading aren't even reliable if the survivor is far away, because they could have easily moved far away by the time the killer gets there.
Use your gamesense.
Survivors can't move fast without leaving scratch marks lol
Survivors wouldn't need base kit help if the underlying issues they were supposed to help with are removed.
Gamesense isn't basekit help
What would you suggest then if you don't want to learn how to track?
Some sort of tracking, and some sort of speed boost, to help the killer get in a chase with a different survivor. If BHVR wants killers to chase a different survivor, there should be some sort of basekit help to do this.
Because if BHVR refuses to help killers find other survivors to chase, then it really doesn't matter how many penalties they stack on the killers, because killers might decide to just continue camping and tunneling. Wandering around the map, looking for survivors that are hiding, is still unreliable and is often a waste of time, and giving killer penalties won't change that.
Are we talking just straight up unblockable aura-reading and how big of a speedboost
I don't have specifics, but it needs to help needs to be enough for killers to actually feel like there is real value in leaving a hooked survivor, for killers to feel like they have an extremely high chance they will actually be able to start a chase with someone else.
What would sound reasonable to you?
You've already said BBQ wasn't enough.
So taking your best chance at winning is "playing like an ass"? Yikes.
I don't tunnel and camp because it's not fun for me, but I wouldn't call someone who does because they want to win a slur. That's the point of the game, to win. It's completely understandable.
That's such an immature viewpoint imo. "It's not fun for me so you're a bootie for doing it". It's the game designs fault not theirs.
That's like saying survivors are booties just because they split up on gens, it's ridiculous.
Don't know where you're getting me calling people slurs from and I'm moderately upset at the implication.
If you want to tunnel one person out at 5 gens, you are free to do so. You don't have to in pretty much any circumstance.
Play Blight with Alc Ring + C33 with 4 slowdowns and tunnel the first person off of hook. You're allowed to do it, but you're playing like an ass for no reason.
Slur: "an insinuation or allegation about someone that is likely to insult them or damage their reputation."
You calling them an ass is literally a slur, so that's where it's coming from. So be upset with yourself if you want, it was your actions.
You're not "playing like an ass" unless you're doing something with the express intent or sole effect of causing the other players to be miserable. Playing something because its strong and wins or is your best option does not fit into that category. Even if a side effect is some people get upset at it.
Yeah, that's a swear not a slur. A slur is what you hear in a CoD lobby. You're choice of phrase was intentionally picked to evoke a reaction.
Yeah that comes off like a massive excuse. "Oh, sorry I four man slugged til bleedout, I was just playing to win, oops you're fault that you had a bad time"
Nobody is stopping you from tunneling off of first hook. Nobody is stopping you from grabbing 3 friends and slamming out gens in 4 minutes while t-bagging at the gates. You can play that way and be completely within the confines of the game.
There needs to be normal and ranked modes with solos/duos/quads queues. No trios as it throws off the lobby balance.
That alone would help improve the matches and allow for more casual fun play, like it used to be. Hopefully it can help take the stress off of killers who can't compete against a lobbied-up teams. THAT was the intention from the start. NO COMMUNICATIONS.
Also, we have enough killers and players in the game and not enough maps. Stop adding more (perks) until you properly balance what is there. Take a few chapters off like Ubi did with Rainbow Six to balance the game. It literally reinvigorated that community and has been thriving since.
I get that new DLC drives revenue, but how about making your season passes more appealing. Get rid of the charms (they are useless) and start adding 2XP tokens, shards, and skins that actually look cool .... you know, things that actually entice players to pay and will impact gameplay.
And stop listening to streamers. I've watched many of the "top tier" streamers and they are ass at most other MP games. So, their input is counter-intuitive to balancing as they have no idea what it takes to properly balance a MP game. Let alone this one.
At this point, the only question is will Texas Chainsaw be good enough to take players away. The beta was so much fun ... but, in reality, so many have tried and failed. However, Gun already did it once with Friday the 13th ...
I don't have specifics, but it needs to help needs to be enough for killers to actually feel like there is real value in leaving a hooked survivor, for killers to feel like they have an extremely high chance they will actually be able to start a chase with someone else.
So what, 8 seconds of unblockable aura-reading on the entire team or just one Survivor?
And then a 20% Haste until X condition is reached?