If the anti-tunnel changes go through, survivors who have been hooked would be able to designate themselves as box solvers, head to the box and be in a win/win scenario.
'Lose less' =/= 'win'
That survivor would still be incapacitated for 90 seconds, and they'd still lose the box if they get downed before they can solve it.
I know he's not the most played killer following his removal from the shop/storefronts, but these anti-tunnel changes would make counterplay tremendously exploitable.
Currently, juggling the box as The Cenobite is the upper ceiling to his skill expression. Whether thats knowing when to teleport to a box solve, or tracking the spawn location and targeting survivors who are heading towards it to protect it, it's core to his playstyle in high MMR and against organised comps where people are confident in managing the risk/reward of solving the box.
If the anti-tunnel changes go through, survivors who have been hooked would be able to designate themselves as box solvers, head to the box and be in a win/win scenario. If The Cenobite wants to protect the box and preserve their chain hunt progress, they have to either commit to hooking a survivor that would trigger anti-tunnel, or be forced to slug which is now easier to recover from.
If The Cenobite doesn't want to proc anti-tunnel, they have to keep repeatedly solving their own box to extend chain hunts. Why is this bad? Isn't this what he's supossed to do? Yes and no. Solving the box to active a chain hunt is great, but that upper skill ceiling I've been talking about comes into play as soon as the chain hunt starts. In order to prolong the chain hunt to get maximum value, The Cenobite can track the spawn location using predictable spawn logic, and protect the box, either by intercepting survivors moving towards it for a solve, or remaining at a close enough distance to interrupt a solve either with basic attacks or a summoned chain. The box spawns 10 seconds after The Cenobite solves it, imagine the mental load of tracking box logic every 10-30 seconds (accounting for travel time) just to keep a chain hunt going for any substantial amount of time.
If a Dead on Hook player is solving the box before 6 hooks or was the last hooked? The Cenobite isn't even allowed to do anything other than slug or let the player free. The repair speed bonus and gen protection from a pre-6 hook or previous hooked death compounds with the lack of slow-down The Cenobite would otherwise naturally recieve from prolonging chain hunts. Gens will pop at light speed, faster than they are even now, all because the survivor that last got hooked decided to be the one to solve the box or initiate chase. That's it, that's the counter play. Get hooked? Solve the box, and guaruntee either a slug that is no longer the threat it would be (Which is a good thing!) or a further hook that brings survivor one step closer to winning through exploitation of anti-tunnel mechanics.
The optimal way to play would basically be without the box. You load into a match, knowing that one survivor has to run off of a gen every 40 seconds to solve the box knowin they're completely safe from retaliation. It becomes a non-mechanic for The Cenobite, and barely an annoyance for Survivors.
Believe me, I want there to be reasons to not tunnel, and survivors deserve matches that are free from hard tunnelling, but these aren't negative repurcusions. These are a brand new resource that can be exploited by organised players to drastically increase their chances of winning against The Cenobite.
Again, if a previously hooked survivor designates themselves as "the box guy" in a match, they either force downs and hooks that proc anti-tunnel, or completely remove The Cenobite's skill expression and gutting his chain hunts.
Call it an overreaction, but I simply won't be playing anymore if these changes go through. The anti-slug features are okay (Still have to see how it feels on PTB), some of the anti-tunnel features are great, but the rest of them will utteruly kill The Cenobite, and no doubt other killers too (I'm a Cenobite main, so this is what sticks out to me).
The following changes should not leave the PTB. If they do leave the PTB and make it to live, I hope other 7 players who regularly play The Cenobite stop playing and pick up the new Hellraiser game for our boy.
"Added new effects that disincentivize tunneling:
If a Survivor dies before 6 total hook states, all remaining Survivors gain a repair speed bonus for the rest of the Trial.
If the Survivor that was last hooked is Sacrificed or Killed, generators cannot be regressed or blocked."
I'm begging you to remove these.
Notably, one does not need to pick up the survivor in order to retrieve the box, and sometimes the most important play is to NOT teleport to the box, especially since you're told who's holding it. You're also in a win-win scenario if you open the box at the top of basement stairs (along with any other slanted or high place, like harvesters on Coldwind), does this mean we should remove the basement?
Also, in your scenario, either the Cenobite is never hooking someone after the original hook that "designates a box solver," therefore never resulting in a switch of "who is the box solver now?" or one of the survivors is actively wasting time away from the objective by designating themselves as the box opener past the (at most) 90 second window in which they are the last unhooked player. Both of these are completely against actual logical gameplay, in which you would immediately either begin to search for the box or a new player upon hooking, which would result in the "box solver" switching, or the box being found and popped again. If, for whatever reason, you physically cannot find any other players because they have all decided they were going to fall through the map, you can just slug the box opener and walk away because you get three loud noise notifications at a minimum to find those other 3 blokes.
Please note that me stating this doesn't mean I agree with the anti-tunnel going through - I think any gen related process in the anti-tunnel changes will never make it to live due to the way that it can be abused and bugged. It's just that this is completely unrealistic, like people's concerns about how 4 mans would hold killers hostage for 10 minutes to trigger abandon, as if every killer in the game minus 2 didn't have a way to find and hunt down survivors.
tl;dr: just hook someone else or slug the box opener peepoBox
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Comments
'Lose less' =/= 'win'
That survivor would still be incapacitated for 90 seconds, and they'd still lose the box if they get downed before they can solve it.
Notably, one does not need to pick up the survivor in order to retrieve the box, and sometimes the most important play is to NOT teleport to the box, especially since you're told who's holding it. You're also in a win-win scenario if you open the box at the top of basement stairs (along with any other slanted or high place, like harvesters on Coldwind), does this mean we should remove the basement?
Also, in your scenario, either the Cenobite is never hooking someone after the original hook that "designates a box solver," therefore never resulting in a switch of "who is the box solver now?" or one of the survivors is actively wasting time away from the objective by designating themselves as the box opener past the (at most) 90 second window in which they are the last unhooked player. Both of these are completely against actual logical gameplay, in which you would immediately either begin to search for the box or a new player upon hooking, which would result in the "box solver" switching, or the box being found and popped again. If, for whatever reason, you physically cannot find any other players because they have all decided they were going to fall through the map, you can just slug the box opener and walk away because you get three loud noise notifications at a minimum to find those other 3 blokes.
Please note that me stating this doesn't mean I agree with the anti-tunnel going through - I think any gen related process in the anti-tunnel changes will never make it to live due to the way that it can be abused and bugged. It's just that this is completely unrealistic, like people's concerns about how 4 mans would hold killers hostage for 10 minutes to trigger abandon, as if every killer in the game minus 2 didn't have a way to find and hunt down survivors.
tl;dr: just hook someone else or slug the box opener peepoBox