We need some kind of anti-tunnel system now more than ever
Hello everyone, I'm on the forums quite a lot and have been seeing a lot of discussions about the updated Vigil nerf. Despite being an 80/20 survivor main, I am of the camp that the perk was unhealthy and needed to be changed in some way, although the updated nerf seems to have gone a bit too far. A lot of people are upset that the perk is being gutted, especially alongside Sprint Burst and even to some extent Deli. In these discussions, I feel like it's easy to see that the reason most people are upset isn't because Vigil isn't unhealthy for the game (although a few people do think that), it's that with a nerf to 3 different meta survivor perks at once, and after other meta anti-tunnel perks such as DS and especially OTR have been nerfed a lot, tunneling out a survivor from the beginning of the game to create a 1v3 has become increasingly more common and will become even easier after these nerfs, therefore tunneling will become even more common.
Hard tunneling a survivor out is objectively the strongest way to play the game as killer (especially a higher tier killer), as the rest of the match you effectively cut survivor gen efficiency in half, not to 3/4. Normally a killer would be chasing a survivor with one survivor on hook. That leaves 2 survivors to do gens until they need to unhook. In a 1v3, the killer can be chasing a survivor with another on hook, and only one survivor can do gens for a little bit until they're forced to unhook and heal. It is not only the most popular strategy, but also the most efficient and one of the most frustrating. In addition, it's easiest to do on the strongest killers, so it just serves to make the strongest killers stronger.
Survivor players are upset because Vigil feels like a last line of defense after many survivor perk nerfs, and especially when 3 meta survivor perks are being nerfed at once while the only meaningful nerf on the killer side is to Nowhere to Hide. Even the Thrill of the Hunt nerf will only actually shave off a couple seconds to an extremely long totem cleanse, and does nothing to address the ease that certain killers like Jason and the Judgement are able to defend these "unemployed build" hex totems. Neither does the new change increasing the visible range of Judgement's beams, as all that means is that you won't get hit on a totem as much, but you'll still be forced off and reset your progress.
I do not believe that the outrage at the Vigil nerf would be nearly as bad if this longstanding issue was actually resolved. I've been playing this game for 5 years, which is shorter than some of you, but I feel like hard tunneling has definitely become more common, even within the last several months. Meaningful changes need to be made to ensure tunneling from the beginning of the game isn't the most efficient strategy, slapping a bit of elusive on the problem isn't going to solve the issue when the killer is still in the area and has working eyes. It should be made easier to win games without this strategy and harder to do with it, not the other way around. In effect, this would also help lower tier killers more, as they had less of an ability to tunnel from the beginning.
On the topic of the Hex killer issue, there needs to be a meaningful change there as well. Make totem progress regress over time instead of just disappear, you can make the cleanse time a few seconds longer to compensate. The point is that I think survivor players are so outraged by this Vigil change because there hasn't been much to address the increasingly painful issues of the other side. I really hope that we get something to that effect soon.
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