Are people really that upset about the anti-tunnel?
So I might have a small brain or something but I don't know why people are upset about it. The idea is just saying "hey don't be sweaty and try to spread hooks around" I have played both killer and survivor and I will say I have tunneled once or twice when I was having a bad day. But I don't understand why people are upset about it when basically it's just learn your not gonna get a 4k all the time and a 3k is still technically a win 1k or 0 is a lose and 2 is a tie. So I might be missing something in all this but I really don't understand why so many people are upset with it.
Follow up post:
@jamally093 said:
So kinda follow up on my post about why people weren't happy with the anti-tunnel. So I decided I'll try making a version that seems fair...in some way you can't be perfect not no perks will be changed that would take to long so if it says perks effected kinda just think whatever perks are closest to it. Also feel free to share your thoughts.
New Anti-Tunnel
We noticed many haven't been very pleased with how tunneling has been with players being kicked out way to quickly before they even had a chance to blink so we decided to introduce a new anti-tunnel mechanic. We'll start with how it works for killers
Killers
Bonus kicking speed of 10% on generators, pallets and walls for 15 seconds. Instead of just waiting for someone to be rescued to run back and down them we thought of giving a small bonus to do something different by applying pressure to other locations or simply getting rid of any pesky pallets or walls that might be blacking your path for a nice chase later on.
Now of course we might get a few that want to bypass and think "pfff I wanna still tunnel and just do a 3v1 to get that 4k easily" Well we wanna try and prevent that everyone should have a fair chance of playing rather then someone having to wait for their friends to finish the match to play again. So we introduced for killers a small punishment for tunneling.
Reduced carry speed. So you wanna tunnel? Okay well your movement speed will be decreased by 10% if you tunnel and pick up the survivor also staggering while carrying that survivor will by increased by 5%. Perks that relate to either stagger or movement carry speed is ignored. We find that this could show you need to spread pressure to others not just one person. We have a working idea of hooks being blocked within at 12 meter radius of the tunneled survivor to reduce tunneling but we would rather test it first ourselves then suddenly put it in.
Now for the survivors those being tunneling might not have a fun time and we wanna make sure your games can be in a way fun. We introduce.
The second chance
When taken off the hook you gain the second chance status. Similar to endurance this allows you to take two hits from the killer before going down similar to being healthy but rather you enter deep wound and if hit again your deep wound timer is reduced by 50% now don't worry fellow killers this status is automatically lost if the survivor does any actions like before that removed endurance. Note second chance will only active on the second hit Off the record or Mettle of Man will not work with it. Second Chance's duration is slightly longer then the basekit endurance gained from being taking off hook being around 12 seconds in length. If the killer does still hit you, you gain a extra 10% speed boost upon entering second chance.
Now we do try to figure out how to make both sides fair but you always get an uneven score sometimes. The idea for the anti-tunnel is not to punish the killer fully we have realized 6 hooks or you lose any generator kicking is a little over the top so we have tried to figure out a few ideas.
Since a survivor can just give up on hook which can trigger the generator blocking mechanic we instead wanted to try something different if the same survivor is hooked three times in a row without anyone else in between for two times then generator regression is slowed ,kicking any pallets and stun endurance is reduced all by 5% perks related will no longer work. Now we do see how this might be insane so we wanting to try it out ourselves first. The idea is not to punish those who don't tunnel rather punish those who do so the same survivor must be hooked three times in a row for it to activate if they end up sacrificed on their first or second hook then it is not activated as we don't know if their teammates forgot them or simply they weren't in the mood to continue.
We do hope these changes peak your interest and please do feel free to share your opinion and suggest ideas to try and improve it.
mpt-at-better-anti-tunnel
Comments
Tunneling isn’t something personal or “evil”; it’s a legitimate reaction tool for the killer. The killer responds to live, in-match information: poorly played hooks, positioning, spent resources, lack of rescue tools, bad rotations. If the unhooked survivor runs unprotected into a dead zone or someone is available on death hook, it’s rational to chase that target. Expecting the killer to ignore those opportunities just because the other side misplays is a double standard—survivors optimize too (gen-splitting, focusing the weakest link, body blocks, items/perks). As long as counterplay exists (OTR/DS, coordinated saves, info), tunneling is a permissible, situational response — not mandatory, but legitimate. Penalizing the killer for reacting correctly to visible information is absurd and shows where the game is heading: toward safety nets and balance built around very poorly playing survivors who, on top of that, don’t even want to learn.
already wrote this in my steam review:
What BHVR’s rolling out is straight-up dumb: more survivor safety nets that reward bad play while punishing the killer for, y’know, reacting.
And no, I don’t care what consolation buffs killers get—none of it fixes being told to play blind and ignore stuff happening right in front of you because “you shouldn’t.” You can’t have a PvP game where one side gets to play bad with zero pressure to improve, while the other side is forbidden to punish the misplays they’re literally watching. It’s wild—no other game does this. Play bad? Here’s your shield and a buff. React to bad play? Here’s your penalty.
This doesn’t reward good killer macro; it actually rewards bad survivor macro.
30s mini-godmode after unhook: Haste, Endurance, “elusive”/concealment (less info/tracks), sometimes killer aura reveal, no loud unhook notif, delayed hook status, etc.
Result: Unsafe unhooks aren’t punished—they’re masked. Team can play over-aggressive and the killer is told to “move along.” If I stay, I’m the bad guy; if I leave, it’s a free gen rush. That’s rewarding bad survivor macro (greedy trades, hook rush) instead of good play.
Killer doesn’t instantly see hook state, no hook ping, sometimes no hook aura. So: less info exactly when good reaction matters (anticipate trades, separate saver vs. saved, hold zone). That’s not “balance,” that’s blindfolded killer. Again: good killer macro (zone control, informed swaps) gets nothing.
Sounds nice (“play fair, get Haste/gen-kick/aura ping”), but it’s basically a design shove: play our way or pay. It shifts skill from macro (holding zone, prioritizing) into a gen-kicking minigame. Survivors can even trade bad unhooks because the killer is incentivized to walk away.
Meaning: Mistake ≠ consequence; it’s “mistake → killer, please swap targets.” Bad survivor macro = protected.
Early kill before 6 hook states? Team repair +25% and/or killer can’t block/kick/regress gens. So… if I play efficiently, I get punished and they get faster.
Literally “Play dumb, win dumb prizes—(for the killer).” Why would I secure a strong zone if a quick kill slams me with a gen lockdown debuff? That devalues good macro and rewards bad survivor macro (feeding in a hotspot).
Combine unhook shields, info denial, target-swap candy with anti-slug thinking and you get: dive in, trade, mask it, while the killer loses reactive tools—the exact stuff that makes the role deep. Slugging isn’t pretty, but it’s a counter-tool vs. that over-aggression. Removing it protects bad survivor macro even more.
Everything this game is drifting toward: bad survivors can do whatever they want—no matter how aggressive, careless, or dumb—no consequences, still a good time. The killer? Not a threat, just the party clown to entertain the group. And when survivors lose interest because two things don’t go their way, they just DC for free and queue the next match. (Yes, really—no DC penalty when the round goes bad for them.)
Meanwhile the killer has to watch a hook get sabo’d, someone intentionally go down in a pallet, the full team rush in with flashies/body blocks/whatever—and the second you react correctly, it’s: “Yup, try to pick—nope, that’s evil… slugging.” And tunneling as a clear consequence? Also not allowed.
Play like a killer and you get punished; play badly as survivor and you get bubble wrap.
You are misremembering very badly. Gens got their charge increase in 6.1, hook timers got updated in 8.2, two whole -years- later, not weeks.
Except A) It's only thirty seconds if the killer puts literally zero pressure on anyone else, B) It's still in the survivors' best interests to unhook as soon as possible, as an incapacitated survivor reduces gen efficiency. and C) It was 50 seconds of extra gen time total, so even a total misplay wouldn't fully offset the gen increase, at least in one hook.
It's kind of what @ratcoffee mentioned: Any value, even if perceived in such a myopic perspective that it disregards all drawbacks, is labelled as 'unfair'.
Self report that you didn't watch it, 16:30 he explains he plays 80:20 and usually in SWF.
If your actual goal is to ensure fair and balanced argumentation, since you're so keen to promote that, doesn't it track you should at least hear the argument first before you disregard it?
I'm not against the anti-tunnelling measures but what survivors get for free when taken off the hook is honestly a bit excessive. Because once you're off a hook you get:
A 10 second delayed notification to the killer
30 seconds of the following:
-Haste
-Endurance
-No scratch marks
-No blood pools
-No pain noises
-No killer instinct
-Seeing the killer's aura within 32 meters (Not sure if this is affected by open handed yet)
And if somebody else is using borrowed time, those bonuses go up to 42 seconds. That's nearly three quarters of a whole minute. Like you could just keep the delayed unhooking notification, the 30 seconds of endurance and haste and that'd be more than enough to discourage tunneling. I do think there's such a thing as putting too much into something and it almost feels like the game's just hand holding you?
I doubt it. The unhooked target is still the obvious must-pick, so why wouldn't the killer go for them?
Pure assumption on my part here but I'm guessing it's excessive because of folks who will just hang around the general area of the hook. Looks like theyre making it simply not worth doing.
both sides are sweaty yet only one is seen as a problem that needs fixing
Just adding onto your point about hook timers, it's only 20 seconds because even in the worst case, the survivor only spends 2 of their 3 hook states waiting to be unhooked as the third one causes them to be sacrificed instantly.
As a killer main, I'm not calling you dumb or flat out in the wrong. Spreading hooks is ideal in this game to me. For a fun DBD game on both sides, I think killers need to not tunnel, but Survivors need to act like the killer will. This way I can chase people of gens, force them to heal up to stay safe, and buy me time to have more chases.
The concern however, is survivors exploiting ant-tunnel mechanics in a way they weren't suppossed to be. In the PTB, I was playing Myers, going for 8 hooks before my first kill, but this one Vee lady kept body blocking me from going after one of the only 2 survivors not dead on hook. I tried to M1 her, but thanks to me being in Evil Incarnate mode, I insta moried her instead. The game then punished me by blocking me from gen kicking for the rest of the trial.
I'm pretty sure this player wanted me to down her so she could use decisive strike, but it's one of many cases where survivors can intentionally exploit a feature meant to counter tunneling in a way it shouldn't.
It's 10 additional seconds of gen time per survivor on a gen.
Since the biggest issue usually occurs with the first chase and hook, it works out to:
This does compound over the course of the match, of course, since there are two exploitable hook stages per survivor and multiple survivors to get hooked.
This leads to the common use of tunneling to make it a 3v1 ASAP, as well as highlights the problem with "eye for an eye" types of balance patches. Specifically, it means that one side lost an eye ages ago leading to an eye being taken from both sides now.
Apparently people don't understand what "balance" means and complain about a "one-sided" change without realizing that the change is one-sided at this particular point in time precisely because it was already out-of-balance in the other direction already.
@Firellius also pointed out loud that it's in survivor's best interests to unhook ASAP most of the time because 3 survivors on gens is more progress than 2 on gens and 1 on hook, so the "30 seconds per survivor per hook states" only really applies if the killer is proxy camping and refusing to let survivors unhook, in which case good those killers should get punished
Again, this requires the killer to stand around like a dead fish and let survivors do their gens. Otherwise, you're not going to have three on gens.
First off, you said it yourself, casual survivors. Casual survivors are not what im seing in a majority of matches and for these people, this update can create an immense power trip. Just guess why they allowed the changes to be disabled in custom games. Because they know how unfair it would be in a competetive setting. Sadly, thats where base dbd is already going towards. The competetive setting isnt a myth. Its very much real in many public matches. What do comeptetive players enjoy doing? Optimizing everything and this update gives them a LOT to work with.
This update is making things worse. So much worse in fact, that its not going live at all.
You are looking at the changes form a superficial perpsective. Killer cant be generalised, as there are multiple with different levels of strenght.
While your typical nurse or blight wont get damaged much by this, a killer like Trapper does. There are killers that struglle getting their first downs due to pre dropping and the lack of a strong chase power. These killers, pig or sadako for example, tend to make a comeback through their power allowing them an instantly kill a survivor. Now they are supposed to get punished for exactly doing that.
Other killers like trapper or hag cant really decide who to go for. They tend to chase whoever interacts with their traps. Survivor got unhooked and stepped into your trap? You know, something THEY did wrong? Well, you cant punish them or you will be punished for punishing their mistake.
I personally disagree with this on a fundamental level.