Is there a way to punish tunneling without being weaponized?
The anti-tunnel and anti-slug PTB were both completely scrapped due to how easy it was to purposefully use against the killer even when they weren't going out of their way to tunnel and/or slug survivors. So is there any way to punish this without it being super overpowered? My only suggestion would be something like:
- New Status Effect: Incorporeal | After the survivor is unhooked they cannot be interacted with by the killer for X seconds this effect ends if they use a conspicuous action. (Possibly gain temporary invisibility)
Tagged:
Survivors
Comments
9.2.0 PTB showed that its not really possible.
I think the problem with 9.2.0 was that the survivor could still be hit and targeted out of the game by the killer which is why I suggested Incorporeal as it would force the killer to chase the unhooker as attacking the unhooked survivor would just make your attacks pass through them, so you can't really weaponize it.
Complete intangibility is one of the stronger options, but it does have the snag of potentially making certain types of saves uncounterable, which is a problem I've never come up with a good solution for personally.
My proposal these days is a bit more subtle: When a survivor's unhooked, they get a mark on their character hud. That mark can only be on one survivor at once, and disappears when performing a conspicuous action. If a survivor with that mark is hooked, they do not gain a hook state.
Pair that with a hard scaling back of post-hook Endurance (removing it from perks entirely and scaling the basekit down to 8 seconds maximum) and you have a situation where focusing someone out of the match from word go is impossible, but survivors can't bodyblock without being put on the ground so it's much harder to weaponise.
This makes it so that the invincible survivor can tail another chase and hover for save with no counterplay from killer.
It can always be changed where incorporeal survivors cannot interact with their items/environment
There would need to be some buff for killers if tunneling is removed like pop goes the weasel base kit possibly or something else, like I don't mind if tunneling becomes inefficient but it's literally the best killer strategy and nerfing it nerfes weak killers that need it the most, so they would need some buff the most and not just bloodlust (I think this is the only reason that anti-tunneling change failed as it gave killers nothing).
It's not as complex of a problem to solve tunneling really, bhvr just didn't really do it with the anti tunnel PTB. That PTB pretty much obliterated the strategy as a whole without understanding or covering any nuance.
What should've been in detail: Separate tunneling in 2, hard tunneling, and soft tunneling. Hard tunneling: 5 gens still left, going straight for the kill. Soft tunneling: A tunnel after 2nd hook at any point in the game, after multiple other hooks were made (so basically you got like 5 hooks, then decide to tunnel death hook survivor out cuz you low on gens or they are in a dead zone whatever.).
Now, does hard tunneling need a change? I would say absolutely yes, it's unhealthy for the game, so it should probably be reduced in how good it is. How to do it? I would say, make first 3 unhooks of the game special, like give the survivors the Incorporeal you suggested. Just to make it harder to get them. I personally thought of shorter endurance unless basement hook, but much bigger Haste with larger duration, so that the priority would be to get away instead of bodyblocking.
Now, does soft tunneling need a change? I would say that no, there are certain moments in the game where killer has to hook, or the game would be lost for them, especially at lower count of generators remaining.
In that PTB, both of these were practically destroyed, which is just horrible way of doing any game design really. They could revisit it, but judging by the second PTB they did after that original one, I don't think they will suddenly understand how to do it this time
Side note: I would personally prefer a nerf to hard tunneling coming together with the Hook spread buff, so that this strategy, which is non-benefitial at this moment would see more play
No.
The only way to fix tunnelling is to incentivise the killer to not to do it, in giving them a bigger reward then getting rid of one player.
Unless that reward is giving the killer more time to win the game, it's not going to happen.
bhvr has stepped away from that design anyway.
I think part of the problem with tunneling though is that some killers are definitely going to still do it because they like making people angry. the "I want people to have a bad day" sentiment is on both sides, survivors have bully squads and killers have people who are hard tunneling at 5 and making sure the game sucks for somebody, the problem is that SWF bully squads are blatantly foregoing the gameplay loop to act like clowns and almost always end up losing against decent killers, but Hard Tunneling is a mix of people doing it without intent to directly BM people and people who definitely are, but it's entirely unreportable because its "technically gameplay".
A true solution would need to Incentivize killers not to do it, give them some kind of consistent alternate option instead of it, and also punish killers for doing it.
I had a similar idea before. The unhooked survivor (let's say) gets the Incorporeal status (borrowing your name here) after being unhooked. For a duration, they cannot:
I said before, give survivors 30s of invincibility, at that point they can't be bodyblocked, can't be attacked and can't receive any form of infection or anything at all for that duration, also can't block for the teammates anymore. Deactivate it completely in endgame collapse and give killers rewards for hooking - regression, aura and bp.
I think your best bet is to make the killers that are REALLY good at hard tunnelling worse at it and make them stronger outside of that hard tunnel if it turns out during playtesting that they need it.
Tunnelling is inevitably the best strategy in the entire game, and there is no changing that. The best way to address it as a pain point is to take the killers that feel like they can ignore a lot of antitunnel and make them have to care about it more in line with the regular members of the roster - and then you can balance that antitunnel easier, too.
I haven't come up with an idea yet that can't be abused. Endurance off hook currently is more often used to body block for a free hit, which is abuse of the system - it's just one we kind of learned to expect and accept. The problem we have after that is of course that any changes made that can be abused will just become standard abuse.
Take Jester's idea above,
which is a really good idea. The problem with it being that if a survivor can gain a condition by which they can get hooked without gaining a hook state, this can be abused for hook and unhook trigger perks.
Ultimately the problem is that Killers are in a good spot, but survivors are also in a good spot. Which means struggles for advantage pop up. Surv's can pop gens like they're listening to Initial D, which puts pressure out on the Killer to perform. The killer often elects to perform in fashions the survivor side of the community doesn't like, such as tunneling.
So in light of this I would say the fix would need to be mechanical in reflection of hook states, but also in reflection of that pressure allotment. The real hilarity to this is, if you put a giant red ball in the middle of the map that gave 3k bloodpoints if it got hit after every hook, most killers would stop tunneling just to take the bp and reset between each hook.
It's just a problem of incentives, not punishments. Give the killers proper incentive to not do these things, and you'll see better response I think. But try to punish them for doing it, and they'll just find the work-around. Because tunneling/slugging are, themselves, work around tactics - the people using them are already showing you by default they are willing to find and use work-arounds.
I think honey will catch more flies than vinegar on this one, I guess is my point.
I think focusing on punishing killers of tunneling is not what is currently needed. Currently killers do not get any innate benefit to spreading hooks on survivors and killing a survivor early slows down generator progress a lot.
Before we start to punish tunneling, we need to provide actual benefit for spreading hooks so that killers do not feel that tunneling survivors is their best choice every game.
I still think that tunneling is happening, and has been happening widely because it is a Net positive for a killer in a way survivors cannot counter for the outcome to be positive for them.
What I mean is that the entire survivor win objective is Gens, if they don't do the gens then they don't get out. but Tunneling, regardless of what killer is doing it and how well they can hold it down forces survivors off of gens and into the hook of the tunneled person which is a lose lose scenario for survivors, because if survivors were playing right from the outset and especially with solo queue in mind, the people on gens are far from whoever was running the killer which is why Pain Res, Corrupt Intervention, and DMS are still so popular because the killer can force the survivors into a side of the map (unless they wait out corrupt and waste a bunch of time), hook a survivor, get gen pressure on the most progressed gen without physically going there and kicking it, and then forcing the survivors off of it with DMS. that encourages survivors to leave the gen and come to the hook, depending on the killer that's just game over in most solo queue lobbies. but if the survivors don't come to hook, they are trolling their teammate and if they do come to hook they are running into the killer who will most likely get another down from it and start the cycle of resets and diving the hook.
This is Damned if I do and Damned if I don't for survivor because "leave them on the hook until the end of hook state" is not viable, the killer will return and defend the hook at that point almost always. this is again, because tunneling shifts the play area to around a hook, something survivors cannot win from.
I think tunneling is mainly only possible because of how narrow the objective is, widen the objective and tunneling goes away as viable. How long someone does or doesn't have endurance/elusive isn't going to change that meta unless its an obviously ridiculous number like 60s of Endurance, Elusive isn't even helping at all on open maps. so expand the objectives for both sides. Killer doesn't just need hooks for a total win and survivors don't just need gens, then it becomes another playing field to be balanced around but it is much harder to tunnel vision a single objective when there are multiple objectives for you.
The easiest way to stop most tunneling without preventing people from doing it is to take away the bp reward.
Same person hooked a second time 0 bp.
Same person hooked a third time 0bp and 0bp for the kill.
I don't think people who tunnel care about BP, its moreso the need/want to win the match bloodpoints aren't much of a thought.