You don't get tunnelled frequently. You are just biased.
Scott Jund conducted an experiment and survey on tunnelling. In his experiment, he played 50 matches and recorded the number of matches where anyone on his team was tunnelled. Tunnelling occurred in 5/50 (10%) matches and in only 2 of the matches, the killer was deliberately tunnelling. In the other 3 matches, the tunnelling occurred due to survivors making stupid mistakes. Considering there are 4 survivors, the odds of a specific survivor being tunnelled out is 1/4*10% = 2.5%.
He also conducted a survey, which gathered 3103 responses. 80% of people were tunnelled less than 40% of the time. Only 7% of people were tunnelled more than 60%. The average tunnel frequency was 27% (assuming the average of each range). Though, the real values are extremely likely much lower since the survey question was "how often do you feel like you get tunnelled". It was based on feeling and their own definition of tunnelling rather than actually tracking their matches with a standardised definition. When matches were tracked, people were tunnelled (individually) 1%-3% of the time, as seen in Scott Jund's experiment and the data I discuss later.
Tunnel frequency | Percentage of responses |
|---|---|
0-20% of the time | 47% |
21-40% of the time | 33% |
41-60% of the time | 12% |
61-80% of the time | 3% |
> 80% of the time | 4% |
He also found that region and time of day had minimal impact on tunnel frequency.
It was also found that tunnel rate was correlated with escape rate, so it's possible that survivors that get "tunnelled more frequently" are not actually getting tunnelled more but are just dying more frequently due to being worse at the game.
From the data and his experiment, Scott Jund concluded that the myth of frequent tunnelling occurred due to negativity bias, which is a bias that caused people to remember and place higher weight on negative events than neutral and positive events. He also challenged anyone that thinks they get tunnelled frequently to record their gaming sessions and send them to him for proof.
The takeaway from this is to track the percentage of matches you get tunnelled. For example, someone recently posted data from 1212 matches they played (Jan-June 2024), which tracked tunnelling. Note that 18 matches were cancelled from the start, so there were 1194 matches in total. I compiled the data from it and these were the results:
- Tunnelling occurred in 49 matches (4.1%)
- In 47 of the matches, 1 person was tunnelled. In the remaining 2 matches, 2 people were tunnelled. Therefore, 51 survivors were tunnelled in total.
- There were 4776 survivors (1194*4) in total. Therefore, the odds of a specific person being tunnelled was 51/4776 (1.1%)
- In many of the matches with tunnelling, there was a DC, so tunnel rate would be lower if DCs were excluded.
Nazzzak also provided their data set of 421 matches and found that tunnelling occurred in approximately 1/12 (8.3%) of matches.
Comments
Hens isn't a comp player. He has occasionally participated in tournaments for fun but mainly plays the role of host or commentator.
You've already admited to inaccuracies in your definition. For example, in the Huntress game, you said that the Huntress clearly wasn't tunnelling when she was according to your 2 hook definition. You also said that you were tunnelled in 4/7 matches when there were 6 matches according to your definition, so you didn't consider 1 other match as tunnelling. If you've already admitted to inaccuracies, why are you still sticking to your inaccurate definition? Why aren't we making corrections to fix the inaccuracies? You were quick to point out flaws in my definition, but it's perfectly fine when your definition is inaccurate?
If you give an inaccurate definition, of course I'm going to disagree with you, and it isn't just me disagreeing with you at this point. It's seemingly 97% of people, according to Scott's poll.
If you use a definition that causes many false positives, of course you are going to see tunnelling extremely frequently. If I define bullying as survivors looping me, then I also get "bullied" every match. That's essentially the equivalent of what you're doing.
My point is that cheating feels bad and regardless of how much it happens it shouldn't be ignored.
Because the devs are ok with it doesn't mean it is automatically fair and balanced. There is a disconnect with fairness, it's a killer favored game hence why survivor has been an unplayable way to play for a long time. Tunneling is one of the reasons.
I don't have the time currently to search through old posts, but you are going to find comments of people who say they have been accused of tunneling even though they don't think they tunneled, so these discussions aren't new.
Also:
(I don't have Twitter, i guess the original discussion is about ds.)
You brought up urban dictionary, but dbd is not only played by english speakers. Also, not every player interacts with forums at all, so who knows what their opinion might be.
The definition you mentioned is the most popular one for sure, but it's not the only one. Again, I've used my definition since 2017 and the people I play with generally use the same. I don't remember though if I got the definition from them or from a Youtuber (again, If I had the time I'd look through some old videos of the YouTubers I used to watch, but I don't currently).
Hearing what some people in this thread consider “tunneling” totally explains why people think there’s way more tunneling than there actually is. Some of these definitions of tunneling are so wildly far off from what actual tunneling is. I feel like people use these broad definitions as a means to take accountability off themselves for how a match went.
All I see in this thread is killers trying to justify their tunneling using one single streamer's experience as anecdotal evidence.
Big yawn. You all tunnel quite often. Do all the mental gymnastics you want, it's a thing, and everyone knows it.
Source: I can go find a killer main streamer who tunnels 100% of their matches in 8 seconds on Twitch. Oops, there goes your stats.
You do realize that Scott's video means nothing? It's a group of games from one person that is representative of Scott's experience over that particular time frame and nobody else's. Attempting to extrapolate that to a group of people as large as the playerbase of DbD spread throughout so many countries would get you a failing grade in any first year statistics course. It's not evidence at all.
You're also reading more into what I said than I actually said again. I never said tunneling was common or uncommon; I said nobody except BHVR had the analytical tools to determine if tunnelling is common or not. That is most certainly not a claim to the incidence of tunneling; it's a statement that I don't have the data. I do see a fair amount of tunnelling but, once again, I can't speak to any but my own personal experience.
Also, if someone states their personal experience, of which more than one person has stated they have experienced high levels of tunnelling, and you say 'nah, that didn't happen to you' that is gaslighting. Once again, you're focusing on the videos given after the OP set him up. The statement that 'It's an objective fact that tunnelling is uncommon' with no proof to the contrary and telling people they didn't just experience what they just said that's gaslighting. And, once again, saying tunnelling isn't really happening applies to more than just one person.
What is more relevant, however, than Scott's video is the fact that tunnelling is extremely prevalent in competitive settings. As MMR increases more optimal strategies have to be used. As there are far more examples of games being played in competitive settings than Scott's set of games in the video I can infer that tunneling is common at high MMR and that people may use that at different MMRs more frequently than spreading hooks as it's a more optimal strategy but I still can't say anything definite about the incidence of tunneling overall since I don't have the data and competitive games still aren't a wide enough sample. That data thing is important if you're making a broad reaching claim.
You do realize your answer to 2 could also have been used to support the abomination that was pre 6.1 DH, infinite loops, instablinds, etc? Perhaps those should be brought back as well and if people don't like it maybe they shouldn't play asymms, right? It's just an easy strategy, correct? Sort of like what happened with VHS because Monster had a hellishly high skill floor in comparison to Teen. Or, maybe since DbD is now leaning Killer sided as opposed to the Survivor sided it was for the majority of its existence it's time to start looking at the unfair stuff on the Killer side of things of which the most egregious example of what's left is tunnelling.
Plenty of additional comments here that explain what I was trying to say in more detail, so I'll bow out and let the smart and more experienced ones talk. :)
But yes, I agree - Tunnelling is when you focus the same Survivor out repeatedly, on purpose, quite often from the word go. I would not say going for an aggressive bodyblocker using off-hook endurance or forcing value from an antitunnel perk, finding someone again soon after they get off the hook, punishing healing UNDER a hook (which is situational to do at best), or even checking unhook notifications are tunnelling - those are just smart cases to find Survivors or good Killer play to punish bad Survivor play.
But again. Depends on definition. I only feel tunnelled PERSONALLY when I keep being found and chased over and over and unable to do anything but chase and be hooked, regardless of there being other Survivors there to spread pressure to, so I don't do it as Killer if I can help it. That to me is Tunnelling. Anything else is focusing or a borderline case IMHO and can be forgiven (and probably should for all our sanity's sake).
As long as you are being disingenuous and calling everything gaslighting there is no point in having a discussion.
downs you 4 minutes after unhook, patrol, and a failed chase
'Filthy tunneler'
Do you feel that this:
Person A: This happens to me a lot
Person B: No, it doesn't. Even though I'm not you and have no understanding of what happens to you I'm going to say that doesn't happen to you even though I have no proof that it doesn't.
represents gaslighting.
If you don't think that's gaslighting I'm more than happy to use another term. This is pretty ironic, though, considering we would be arguing about a definition of a word in a thread where the OP's argument rests on saying there's only one interpretation of a word (well, that and incomplete, faulty data) and multiple people have stated different definitions that meet the overall criteria of 'Killer attempts to remove one survivor from a game before any other survivor'.
If anything, it should help illustrate how flawed the OP's argument is .
Reductio ad absurdum fallacy comes to mind here.
My dude. Not only have I avoided tunneling long before the game punished you for it, for no other reason than it made me feel bad, I did not intentionally kill any survivors during the entire event, unless nobody brought a cake. I'll throw my games at the twitch of a bunny Feng's ears and I've given up adepts at 3k just because the last survivor was cute. There is no non-insane definition by which anyone could call me a sweat.
I still think two hooks in a row is not a meaningful definition of tunneling. In fact, in loads of the aforementioned 8-hook games, I would have ""tunneled"" a survivor by either random chance or because they were the only survivor left who wasn't on death hook.
Would you like to actually contest the definition of tunneling, or are you just going to swing at strawmen?
My complaint about the gaslighting claim is that B is not what actually happened here. From what I can understand, Pulsar said "Killers tunneled in a sample of 6 out of 7 survivor games", the games were asked to be looked at and provided, and the general consensus is that actual tunneling - execution or even intent to remove a survivor from the game - did not happen in any of those games. Hence the "no, it doesn't", because now it looks like the term tunneling is being applied incorrectly.
That's different than if there had been no vods and everyone just assumed tunneling didn't happen because "that's not what happens in my games."
I don't agree with every single thing that's being said in this thread… but if I said the killer slugged me in every game, and then I showed some games where the killer left me on the floor for eight seconds to kick a gen before they hooked me, you shouldn't trust my claim any further because my definition of slugging is clearly wrong. Or if 'wrong' is too subjective, then watered down to a point where it's meaningless and certainly no longer denoting unfun or unfair gameplay.
got a link?
In that situation saying I don't believe you, or believe you might be exaggerating or have a negativity bias because you have no presented proof is not gaslighting, no, and neither is saying someone is wrong about the definition of tunnelling. It is absolutely absurd to claim that anyone is trying to psychologically abuse you by saying that. It is kind of funny though that you keep trying to rewrite definitions or at very least misunderstand what words mean, intentional or not.
Yeah literally lol. Like I intentionally go out of my way to not tunnel and I don’t even pay attention to how many hooks people have, but when I watch matches back from streamers perspective they’re very often screaming about tunneling. It’s wild. I even have months worth of my streams recorded and available for people to watch back and see there’s no tunneling.
Ihttps://www.twitch.tv/pulsargaming360_?sr=a
I'm not referring to Pulsar's games. Pulsar's games were a distraction tactic by the OP who set up a discussion in bad faith. I'm referring to the general, overall game.
Edit: Please also note I stated a definition of tunneling that was different from Pulsar's on at least three different posts.
Saying I don't believe you or I think you are exaggerating, or there is a negativity bias at play because no proof has been provided is not gaslighting, and it also is not gaslighting to say that someones definition of tunnelling is incorrect and differs from the agreed upon definition. It is absolutely absurd to say that someone is psychologically abusing you and manipulating you by disagreeing with you or correcting you.
just got tunneled 3 games in a row, as in the killers bolted back to hook and chased me down and took me out the game first. So yes, yes I was tunneled!
I'm chiming in to add that I really do not think getting hooked twice in a row is tunnelling either. I agree with you, that's an ABSURD definition. It can happen by accident. it can happen because someone made a bad play. it can happen because the Killer can't FIND anyone else. It can happen because this Feng has brighter cosmetics than that one, it's really unreasonable to expect a Killer to always throw away an opportunity because "Oh no, I already hooked that guy and it wouldn't be fair. :( They should get to have their goal at the expense of mine! :)" That isn't the overall pint of Killer. Survivors have to die at some point. Sometimes, they die earlier than those Survs would like. Sometimes you will be out really fast, that's just part of the game and it's LONG past time we all accepted that it is.
Personally I also tried to avoid tunnelling in the event, I normally do anyway. But I am under zero, zero obligation to let the person closest to death who I can easily get out go free, my ultimate goal is to kill at least some of you. That's the point of Killer. I too am really chill to the point my ideal vibe game is a 2k with 10 hooks and then we points-grind a bit and I let them all go. I'll throw games a bit to let weak Survivor teams get free gens so they don't feel left out. I'll let cute enough Survivors live, I frequently either give the last guy hatch or let him get it while I max my points out or chase him into it with no intent of getting the 4k. I am so aggressively not about the win, because for me every individual Kill counts as a win and I can win up to 4 times a round. That's how chill I am.
I've probably accidentally tunnelled some people or focused people a bit too hard. It happens. It's never my intent when I start a round. I don't load in as the big mean evil Onryo or Pinhead or Ghostface going "nyahahahaha today I will tunnel Feng-Min from the word go and ruin her game! >:D" But like… if I am at 2 gens and nobody's out yet? Best believe I need to focus SOMEONE to start my snowball. Inf act… that's how I like my rounds. I like watching them ramp up in tension as we both get more desperate, everyone gets points, everyone gets some of a round, it's fun… and it ironically feels way more like the horror films this game is inspired by and intended to feel like.
dropped a follow
Thank ya <3
cope, killers with very high winrates are using same strat 9/10 times, hard tunneling 1 player as quickly as humanly possible, lot of them even stream on twitch or post their xxx winstreak on youtube, it's not a debate it's fact
yes you can choose to play suboptimally, no tunnel, 12 hooks, be nice and so on.. it doesn't change anything, 1 player hard tunneling every game will win more games by default that's what matters
Okay, if you disagree with the definition we can use a different definition. Here are our two positions from how I understand it.
Me: A video by a content creator with a Twitter poll that only reaches his followers does not meet the basic standard necessary to claim that tunneling is not common at any MMRs except high MMRs for a playerbase in the tens of millions spread out over multiple continents. It is not possible to say tunnelling is uncommon (or common) based off of such limited data. Tunneling being common at high MMRs as it's the most optimized tactic means people at other MMRs may tunnel if they want to improve their MMR and this would suggest it's used more as MMR increases but there is not enough data to say that as a certainty.
You: A Twitter poll by a content creator that only touches the creator's followers and was done only in English is sufficient to draw a widespread generalization to tens of millions spread out over multiple continents. A survey done in one language that only reaches the audience of one content creator is sufficient to make such a broad generalization. Although high MMR as seen in competitive games is a tunnel fest as it's an optimal tactic it's not used frequently in low and mid MMR. People attempting to improve their win rates or their MMR won't use optimal tactics enough that tunnelling is common at any MMR but the highest MMR.
Would that be an accurate summary? Because the people attempting to say tunnelling isn't common or defend it sound a lot (not exactly of course but a lot) like the people who defended pre 6.1 Dead Hard. In fact, one of the main reasons given for nerfing pre 6.1 Dead Hard was that it was used more frequently as MMR increases and this suggests it's overtuned.
If you're trying to say that, with the data available, that you can't draw a conclusion on whether tunnelling is common or not and that people can't speak to more than what happens to them then we're in agreement and this thread (which is titled: You don't get tunnelled frequently: it's your own bias) is complete bs and denies what other people are saying happens to them without any actual proof to the contrary.
Tunneling is not what grants you winstreak though, it's good as long as it works, but it will fall off quickly the better survivors get thanks to sheer amount of counter perks which coincidentally also helps against camping, and also extreme gen efficiency that will finish a match within 4 minutes if killer is mediocre
I really don't think Hens should be held up as the standard at all. I would expect people to be good at their job - especially after spending years at it. He literally makes his living playing DBD. He's a comp player. He is the exception, not the rule. As I said earlier, I agree that tunnelling isn't as frequent as most people claim it is but it just kind of grinds my gears seeing a "professional" DBD player being held as evidence to countering it lol like, if I had a water leak at my house of course the plumber could fix it. I wouldn't expect an electrician to get the same results.
Tunnelling is an easy enough tactic that someone who buys the game today can implement it to great success. But you need to be a full-time DBD player in order to counter it? That doesn't seem like a good comparison lol
I mean… lets be honest, you cant do -4 if you wont "tunnel", but complaining about it is crazy. Imagine killers would cry about gen rush xd
No, tunneling definitely gets you wins, even against good Survivors.
It works like that because the skill needed to counter tunneling effectively is quite a bit higher than the skill needed to tunnel. That's why you see tunneling used effectively in competitive play.
It is the best strategy for every skill level, works even better when punching down skill brackets and only really falters when you would've lost anyway due to a MASSIVE gap in skill.
"just being better than the killer" isn't really that difficult against average killers, though
They are also just as bad as common players
Kinda have to disagree, I really can't think of any situation where forcing the 3v1 ASAP isn't the most efficient play the killer can make. It's the dominant strat to counter genrush and it's also the dominant strat to win… basically anything else? When tunneling fails, it's usually because you pursued the wrong survivor (and if all of them would have been bad choices, then that team would have won anyway, you're just outmatched.)
Like, tunneling can be made harder with DS and OTR, but DS and OTR aren't helping them that much unless they've got good loops to run to, and if you weren't tunneling then you'd be chasing a healthy (or freshly injured) survivor through those instead.
Unless what you're saying is that doing nothing but tunneling will catapult you to high MMR and eventually give you survivors that are too good for you to deal with, in which case yeah. But high skill killer tunneling against high skill survivors is still lethal and it's only when both players are at the very top level of the game where this nears parity.
forcing the 3v1 asap is efficient play, but hard tunneling will not grants you quickest kill against competent survivors, since it basically forces you to play a game with proxy camping, which will be hard countered by "just doing gens" or reassurance
But then, if you leave hooks and allow survivors to get saved without staying close to them, it's not really an "efficient" tunneling, at least you should be able to hit them off hooks, that's impossible while patrolling anywhere
Sure. And I'd have no issue with the person I replied to showing examples of average survivors vs average killers to make his/her point. "Hens can do it so anyone can" doesn't hold weight imo. I've seen you're in another thread regarding comp players and you acknowledge that of course the comp player, being the better player, would be expected to best their opponent.
I think I've spent enough time on this discussion and will wrap it up here. I don't care much about the effectiveness of tunnelling or counterplay debate. That's a whole other topic.
At the end of the day, how you define tunnelling only affects you. You can define tunnelling as 2 hooks in a row and get salty about being tunneled every game, or you could define tunnelling as being heavily targeted by the killer, which is how most people define tunnelling. If you go by the 2nd definition, you can enjoy the game knowing that over 90% of killers don't try to tunnel you. If you go by the 1st definition, you'll get bitter, grow to hate the game, and eventually quit, like Pulsar has.
There are people who can have hundreds of win streak as Clown, so can they. But for some reason they dont agree on that.
Tunneling shouldn't happen at all. We don't need a study on this.
If you are gonna throw shots at me, tag me.
So can we agree that Killers don't need to tunnel in order to win, since the numbers show that most killers don't tunnel and killers still win 55.4% of games and lose only 32.2%, with 12.4% of games being draws? That something we can all come to a consensus as being an inaccurate talking point?
A few game today
Honestly, had tunneler 3 times in a row made me feel turning off the game.
Not a skill issue.
What tunnelers are just waiting at hook like that, and don't get body blocked by the unhooker or anything? And you understand that hitting them off hook gives them a sprint burst which they wouldn't get if the killer was just waiting out normal base BT? So how does it do nothing?
It may surprise you to learn that many Killers have powers that give them a massive advantage in chase, this is by design. However, these chase powers can also be used to deal with bodyblockers and make it harder for the freshly unhooked person to escape, Sprint Burst from hook or not.
Killers are also faster than Survivors, making bodyblocking difficult depending on location.
Likewise, getting rid of BT and OTR, as well as any perks like Second Wind is certainly worth a minor speed boost.
Sometimes even the threat of tunneling is enough to force people to adopt a passive playstyle.
Given that most people don't even know what "tunneling" means, yeah, I'd say they are not to be trusted.
Tunneling = killer having a tunnel-vision for one survivor to chase and hook him even if it's at the killer's disadvantage. (e.g. full health and speeding away when another survivor is bleeding right next to the killer)
It seems for a lot of people tunneling means "the killer chased me too often", without any regard for other chases others went through.
sorry using scott jund as evidence is just automatic bad take
Luckily we have yet another example of how rare tunneling is in this thread, I'd say it can be trusted
he made bad takes i dont trust it
We have video proof of how rare tunneling is in this thread
Here's my screenshot from my game I played during my lunch break. Considering how badly the basic tenets of sampling and using proper data have been butchered in this thread do I now get to claim that tunneling happens in 100% of games?
Note I even ran right behind the Claudette and body blocked twice in order to give the Killer an opportunity to not tunnel.
200 comments later and you still have things to add to this endless topic. Damn.