How could tunnelling be remedied constructively?
The problem with tunnelling is that a player is removed from the match prematurely, effectively eliminating them from the game. The player must not have done anything wrong and is happy about it. The player has taken the waiting time, just wants to play a relaxed round of DbD and may have had a tough day, which he now just wants to put behind him.
The other problem with tunnelling is that we are playing an asynchronous game where the killer side is under enormous pressure if it doesn't want to be on the losing side from the outset. Every action has to be right, every decision has to be correct - otherwise defeat is certain. Coming back from a badly run chase is difficult or even impossible if the survivors don't make any serious mistakes. Eliminating a Survivor team member from the match is therefore a huge relief and is naturally a popular strategy. Let's face it - DbD for Killers is not half as relaxing as it is for Survivors and is a very stressful role. But it's also a fun role, which is why it's still popular with some of the community.
So both sides want to play the game and also want to win. As long as losing is not also a fun factor, winning is something that, biologically speaking, people like to do.
But how can these two conflicting interests be reconciled? Since we're unlikely to get a mechanic in the game where losing is fun, let's focus on the question: how can we free the kill side from the pressure that makes tunnelling so attractive without removing a survivor from the game?
An alternative for those who fear that it might encourage killers to tunnel - give the killer a good (!) reason to leave Survivor in the game.
So far, a switched-off Survivor is a relief for the Killer, because one less person is rescuing or repairing generators.
How would it be if the speed of repairing the generator was influenced by how many Survivors are still active in the match? In other words: a malus of 20-25% repair speed that expires as soon as the first survivor is dead.
In this way, every killer is seriously motivated to keep the survivor team intact for as long as possible, as he can use Mappressure to keep the individual survivors away from the generators and buy himself some serious relief, because time.
And the counterplay - split up the survivor team so that everyone is squatting on a different generator, and be careful not to lead the killer to your friends in a chase. They can still do the generators, but instead of just taking more time to do it (90 second repair time, I'm looking at you), the Killer's advantage now hinges on hooking the Survivor as often as possible and NOT taking one out accidentally, because then the repair will suddenly go much faster.
And yes, I realise that it becomes unfun for Survivor players if they just sit on the gen for a long time and ...do nothing. But as an answer to this, it would be possible, for example, to set the individual repair time back to 60 seconds (which is then stretched to the previous level via the malus of four living Survivors) and simply spawn more Gens so that not 5 but 6 or 7 are needed to open the gates. Depending on what works best for balancing after testing the new mechanics.
Comments