Solo queue does seem pretty gruesome right now
I just came back to survivor after a few months break and it seems pretty gruesome. I'm not talking about the escape rate; that's super low for me (5% so far) but I expected that after a lengthy break but rather the tactics.
In 20 games, there were 12 Killers tunneling and 3 going for a 4 person slug. Prior to my break it was roughly 30 to 40% tunneling and I saw a 4 person slug attempt about once every two weeks with an average of 4 survivor games played per day (so roughly one 4 person slug attempt every 56 games or so).
It's obvious that a game played where hooks matter more than kills is more enjoyable for most players than one played where there are few hooks. Currently, however, the majority of games I've experienced are not played that way.
Granted of course I'm one player and I'm using only 20 games as my sample size but you (BHVR) might want to look into this more to see if this is a common experience. I don't think having the majority of games be hard tunneling and 4 person slugs will be good for player retention (especially new player retention who have very little invested in the game to keep them playing.
Incentivizing hooks over kills would be a better strategy in my opinion. You also might want to consider if your MMR changes are taking fun out of the game. MMR, by definition, encourages the most meta tactics available and by tightening it that encourages more meta. That could be a good thing if the meta is fun but when the most efficient tactic available is something that is very much not enjoyed by the opposing side it's not a good thing. Balance is a tool to acheive fun but it is completely possible to balance the fun right out of a game (eg VHS had an almost perfect 50% win rate for high level play on each side but ignoring how miserable it made one side overall killed the game).
DbD is a good game and you're a pretty responsive dev team but, from my experience, things are not going in the right direction. If my experience is the norm you need to incentivize hooks or do what you need to in order to make it so the game is fun for both sides.
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Because the common message throughout the forums whenever anyone had asked at what point in the game does it become hopeless in terms of number of survivors left is that at one or two gens left three survivors can escape.
Of course that won't happen all the time but I'm near to 3,000 hours in the game and I've often seen escapes with three survivors left at one or two gens. Especially with tunneling a survivor will be taken out early and since, in previous discussions I've seen over the years I've been playing, multiple people saying you still have a decent chance of escaping at 3 survivors with one or two gens left leads me to believe my experience is not the exception. Losing one survivor does not cause a 100% stoppage on all gen completion.
The only real litmus test is the data that BHVR has which neither I nor you have any access to. Why? Are you saying all your games are 4Es or 4Ks with no in-betweens except for hatch escapes?
so what do you expect from killers the goal is set from the devs if you want to win just get a Kill by any means I blame the devs for this the MMR goals for both sides are very bad, for survivor nothing you do in the game matters if you die you lost in the devs eays even if you did a 5 gen chase and die you are a loser and that doesn't make any since, the emblem system was the right path for them but needed some tweaks that's it.