A Question On Anti-Tunnel Rewards
How would we feel about ramping up rewards for continuing to hook unique Survivors?
For example if you hook 4 Survivors, with nobody being hooked twice in a row, you get an extra bonus.
Say, arbitrarily, that if you hook 6 Survivors and none of them are hooked twice in a row, you get like 20% Haste until a damage state and 40% percent off a gen plus Killer Instinct instead of aura reading on the lower hooked Survivor (unless you're an S-tier). This isn't going to stack with the normal hook bonus, but rather replace it for that 6th hook, in this example.
Haven't put a huge amount of thought into it. Just thought that people should be more rewarded the longer they stick with not tunneling.
Tagged:
Killers
Comments
It seems like the consensus has been that, though skill levels vary, survivor is a single role and could maybe have a (tweaked) universal change, but killers (not just players) are all drastically different and blanket incentives aren't ideal. But those incentives were probably chosen over individually reworking each killer because that's going to be very difficult.
I suppose the plan was to help survivors first and make the experience less infuriating then adjust killers accordingly, based on whatever results that produced. But people don't have the patience for that. Just the mere idea caused outrage.
This is a reward after 6 non-tunnel hooks, that only happens once.
Since you failed to even attempt to start a dialogue after I said you wouldn't get something to replace tunneling, I spoke to other people and further refined my ideas.
I am not opposed to a stacking bonus, or a permanent bonus.
They can have a lesser bonus, just like the original system.
20% Haste only lasts until the first damage state. This is mainly a helpful map traversal/first hit enabler for lower-tiers that may struggle to keep up consistent pressure. It also, by extension, enables the Pop effect to be used more freely since movement is now less punishing.
This post is about ramping up rewards, not reducing them, so that's in addition to the already proposed rewards for each unique hook. If you use that 40% on the gen with the most progress, that's massive, more so when you've also been receiving the other unique hooking benefits and using them smartly.
hard disagree we shouldn't make already good killers better they shouldn't get a bonus
If it's a one time thing sure but if it was for every hook like the devs system no
Yes, it would be a one-time bonus at 6 hooks, for instance.
Those bonuses could be permanent or temporary.
Not permanent only temporary
Why not?
Is this in regard to the haste or the pop boost?
I don't care.
Difficult to get a response out of you, I suppose.
No interest in idea-crafting or improving systems? Nothing to add?
I am genuinely curious on where we stand. If not for me, for others who may agree with you.
I wouldn't mind discussing it a bit. Create categories for buffs for the system, then apply a few of them at a rate based on the killer. You could approach it by either starting with one buff and then adding more with each subsequent unique hook, or by having multiple and having their potency increase with each unique hook.
For example, lets say we go with the first approach, where the first hook might be a gen regression effect. Then when there is a second unique hook, it would have the same gen regression effect but then add a detection one, while a third might some type of survivor debuff, and so on. The idea would be to have the first effects be less impactful than the later ones, and their potencies/effects would be designed on the killer specifically to work around their strengths and weaknesses regarding macro play in their kit. This would help address the fact that no matter what bonuses they get, different killers will get different mileage out of them.
With the second approach, you would similarly center each effect combination to be tailored to each killer's kit, but they would start with underwhelming values which then scale into much more impactful ones. It doesn't even have to be direct number scaling, effects could also have milestones that affect their application. Take the gen kick bonus as an example, it could start at something like 10% of current, then go to 20% and 30%, then drop back to 10% but make it based off the total instead of current value, then scale it up to 20 and 30 from there. Then you just apply that logic to whatever effects are used, with the core idea to have them start weak but ramp up to be very strong at high counts.
Edit: Realized I forgot to clarify, but by "categories" I meant that they would vary based on the killer. While one killer's gen regression event might be a buff to their next kick, another might get something like a localized effect with lower relative potency (think surge) or even a much lower potency global effect. You would tailor each aspect to suit the killer specifically.
It would be hard to come up with something that directly matches unchecked LCD strats, but if removing them, the most important thing to address is how they interacted with the core power dynamic of the game via attrition. The idea is that if a killer is going to be punished for macro efficiency if they take shortcuts, they need much more motivation to go to the opposite extreme. Basically even if the end result ends up being less impactful than removing a player outright, you want your motivations to be centered around providing a comeback factor in exchange for sacrificing that potential.
So this would be individual for every Killer?
Yep. What works for Twins is going to be different for what works for Nurse, especially since the penalties similarly effect every killer differently. These types of changes have far reaching ripple effects, so universal applications only further destabilize balancing. Conversely, these types of restructures make a very good opportunity for normalizing power creep within the roster, and even maintaining balance with further additions.
I'm interested in improving systems, but not with you. I don't owe you an explanation. I'm done this conversation.
Ouch.
Then make your own post, and be sure to tag me in it since I dont care who I improve systems with, only that they are improved.
So would it be completely individual or more categorical like the actual anti tunnel we saw?
That would depend on how much effort they'd be willing to put into it. Dividing killers into categories would certainly be in the right direction, but having each factor be on a per-killer basis would allow them much more control on how underwhelming or oppressive things would be in their extremes. Too many killers blur too many lines in regards to categorization at this point, so I feel like it would be a bit of a wasted opportunity to leave it there.
Doesn't that get sort of personal?
Like, we can broadly agree on the S-tiers, but putting everyone else into tiers?
Haste
Thats why its not about tiers or arbitrary measures like that, its about focusing on how each killer gets impacted by removing viability of LCD strats. By categories I meant more like [ranged] [stealth] [m1] and so on. It would have to be centered around the most objective categorizations you could apply across the roster, which would then need a sort of hierarchy in their values/effects for when they clash on a per killer basis. There are just too many blurred lines to categorize the whole roster cleanly, so thats why it would be best to better utilize that effort and just make the whole thing be on a per killer basis.
Would be to strong if it was permanent
So then more on the lines of Dashes, M1, Slowdown, Slugging and stuff like that.
Exactly. Just measures that are as objective as possible toward their mechanical strengths and weaknesses.
What exactly is it you want for killers? The rewards for not tunneling are fairly significant, so what more could be done? The only thing I can think of is 25% repair penalty on survivors as extra incentive for not tunneling, but then perks would have to be adjusted to compensate for this and avoid the problem of survivors just giving up because doing a gen becomes impossible beyond a certain percentage.
A lot of people already find gens boring. A penalty like that might be too hard to trudge through, especially with additional regression perks.
Also, rewarding killers for their actions sounds a lot better than penalizing survivors for killers' actions. I don't mind bonuses for playing the way I always play anyway, but I don't want penalties for my opponents for my actions (or non-actions).
You have a 90% KR and you want buffs.
I have a 60% KR and I'm indifferent.
Something is wrong here.
The rewards for not tunneling should be similar to the kill rate loss that would happen from the anti-tunnel mechanics.
Remember that it's mandatory for the kill rates always be around 60%, and if tunneling gets major nerfs, then the kill rates will need to be raised back to 60% somehow. So BHVR can either choose to have powerful rewards for not tunneling (to help encourage killers to avoid tunneling), or they can give generic buffs to the killer side (or generic nerfs to the survivor side) that apply regardless of the killer's playstyle (which means killers could tunnel if they wanted to).
The only other option is for the tunneling nerfs to be small enough that they don't majorly change the kill rates.
In general, encouraging behavior with incentive is better than punishing.
Given what it is a bout, and I say that for the devs, making stupidly exploitable game rules with invulnerability or loss of collision and so on is unlikely to be good.
If you go through WHY tunneling is so prevalent, it simply is because removing one Player is the most effective way to play killer.
Removing one out of 4 survivors immediately Strips the opposing team of 25% of their "man power". 25% less gen progress, 25% less healing, 25% less perks to Worry about, 25% less items, etc.
So to give killers an even remotely comparable effect to that, welche have to talk about something like -25% repair speed upon all survivors after 3 Individual hooks. Test it and see where it goes from there. Maybe add in some tweeks like -50% if survivors are clumped together, dimnishing the further survivors move away. Ofc with a visual indicator and excluding survivors in chase.
An ongoing PTB with weekly number tweaks could be really helpful here.
The point is in removing the "unfun" part for survivors in making one Person unable to play after a few Minutes while not forcing the killer to play in a way that is hindering him just because it gets more and more punished.
I'm going to be honest, I kind of think that's risky. Speaking as a killer main who follows the "thou shalt not tunnel nor camp" mentality, I like rewarding killers for not tunneling/camping, and I think they should aim for that playstyle. However, this amplifies an issue with all mutliplayer games:
If you're doing good, you're doing great. If you're doing bad, your doing terrible. If I can easily hook all 4 survivors once and trigger grim embrace before the 2nd generator is completed, I tend to be doing great, almost too good for a balanced game. But in the games where there is just 1 survivor who is good enough to avoid me almost non stop, it doesn't matter that the rest of his team is bad, they all do a lot better because I can't trigger embrace, which I kind of need to spend time chasing that one dude who is locked in.
Not complaining about grim embrace, I'm just pointing out the risks of this sort of thing.
The idea is that not only is tunneling extremely unfun to play against, but it's already far too strong. Why would we be trying to replace the strength of tunneling with something else?
That isn't to say we can't (or shouldn't) give people rewards for not tunneling. I think buffing individual Killers is a better way to go about it.
If Pig, for example, falls to a 50% KR post-changes, then we look at Pig and buff Pig. We shouldn't buff Killers across the board (like Nurse, Blight and Ghoul).
I don't think there's any encouragement we can give that's going to convince people not to tunnel.
The general population understands now that tunneling is the best way to win consistently, and that's what every player (Survivor or Killer) wants.
Most killers are not tunneling bcs they Inherently want to. They tunnel bcs by the time you spread hooks onto 4 different survs, 3-4 gens are done and your game is practically over if survs dont do major fuckups. Which Most of them they are Protected of doing by all the basekit stuff they got.
Bonusses like haste or gen kick are not going to cut it. Its like taking away 2 wheels of a race car but "here you have a second Steering wheel and a 3rd Mirror on the outside, youll be fine!"
We know that isn't true because of the Eruption meta.
If it was true that Killer players did not want to tunnel, but needed to, we should've seen tunneling go extinct when they could use Overcharge, Call of Brine, Eruption and Pop/PR/Corrupt. This was a huge amount of regression for very little effort.
We saw tunneling go up because it isn't about needing to, it's about ease of use. The reduction in Survivor power-level, while necessary, allowed tunneling to become more and more effective. Whereas in the past, some truly busted things kept it in check, now they are gone and tunneling is basically a free win against most teams.
You also said they should go through even if the survivor changes don't. I don't want one without the other.
And do these struggling players have numbers way below the 60% despite regular playing and practice? I haven't heard too much in that regard.
Not that im 100% agreeing with him, I find the "I haven't heard much about x" type of comments arent good? Just because you haven't heard it doesn't mean it isn't happening..
Also the main reason I think they said those changes should go through is Incentives is better then punishment. If you make playing fair be more viable then tunneling, without getting tunneling tunneling will naturally stop, which is true. But if you make playing fair to viable and Too strong, it would be oppressive on ether side.
Remember that "killer players" aren't one person. The thing with a change this core in the game's mechanics is that it affects far more than the intended cases in relation to virtually necessary aspects of the game (hooking and downing survivors will happen in nearly every single game, theoretically) regardless of the condition of the game around them.
You can't use the intent of those who refuse to change as punishment for those who honestly want more healthy alternatives to be viable. Punishing [someone who avoids tunneling like crazy but ends up in a situation where it is the only reasonable play at that state in the game] the same as if they were [a blight hard tunneling from the word go with a lethal pursuer build] is why people don't see eye to eye on these types of balance considerations. Thats why us vs them rhetoric causes discordance in these types of discussions. A lot of times LCD strats can be reactionary as the power dynamic starts in favor of survivors, while shifting to killer over the course of the match. If survivor resources remain (hook states, pallets, viable "safe" gens, etc) the onus on the killer to catch up and start building momentum goes up the longer they are less efficient than the survivors. Thats why I like the idea of a reward for subsequent unique hooks, it addresses the fact the killer has been purposely operating at an efficiency deficit, and can easily be used as a means of preventing tunneling from becoming a fall back strategy when the survivors have a strong start. This then also goes well with measures to discourage and even punish the LCD strategies, as their reasonable application becomes obsolete.
Nobody needs to tunnel all the time, but there are absolutely situations where actively avoiding tunneling is directly putting yourself at a significant disadvantage. We have no way of knowing how many people will voluntarily adjust without being forced, but we do know that a combination of reasonable incentives and disincentives absolutely adjusts behavior on average.
I didn't say I haven't heard it. I've seen people in the forum alone with stats under 60%. I'm asking if that's the case with these friends. But the devs know just how sharp the slopes on the bell curve are.
I don't agree that it will stop because there's some basekit buffs and nothing to dissuade. People that don't do it will keep not doing it and benefit. If there are no discouragements why would you stop if its already working for you?
I understand what your saying. But honestly I do think of the game had less pressure on killer in regards to gens, tunneling will have a higher likelyhood of lowering. I might be optimistic with this thought process tho.