The survivor experience is just getting worse and worse
I came back to this game after a year break maybe about 3-4 months ago. I have been an 80/20 survivor main from pretty much the first time I played 5 years ago, and back then I would mostly just play killer to get achievements. Over the course of these past few months, I have gone from being an 80/20 survivor player to being a 70/30 killer player, and it's not because killer is so much more fun than survivor. Even though I have found myself playing Springtrap and Ghostface, killers low enough in power (especially Ghostface) to experience frustration whenever I face a coordinated team of survivors and eat a bunch of Sprint Bursts, Dead Hards, eating a DS even when I have 8 hooks and no kills, gen rush builds, etc, that frustration I will take any day to survivor.
As killer, there are plenty of frustrating things to deal with as it's a "gogogo" role with no breaks and so it can be stressful, but the games are always at least interesting and there almost always feels like some way to snowball into a win or a tie, even in the roughest scenarios.
Recently, whenever I have decided "hey I haven't played survivor in a minute, I'll try a game or two" I immediately remember why I haven't been playing survivor and regret queuing into it. As soon as I queue survivor, I immediately just experience (ironically, usually from higher tier killers) tunneling from the getgo, staring at a hook or in Jason's case sitting in OE until someone goes to the hook, and the occasional slugfest. It's not just frustrating, it's also incredibly boring and tiring.
Survivor has already slowly been becoming a bit stale so I had been experimenting with weird niche builds, but I just can't do that anymore without being tunneled immediately for not running DS literally every game. And ironically, even when I do that, how much does DS help me against a Blight? Or a Nurse? It's pretty much just a slight inconvenience for them. Especially in solo queue, these playstyles are almost entirely out of my control and I feel even more helpless than when I play Ghostface against an experienced SWF.
The only reason why I still say I play 30% survivor is because it's still bearable when I have at least a duo. At least then there's someone to share in the misery with and rant to, and at least one person to properly coordinate with so maybe the tunnel can stay in the game even a bit longer. It also helps that for me, I am the most experienced survivor in my friend group so even when the killers in those lobbies try to tunnel or camp or whatever, they are usually worse than killers in my lobbies so if I can bait them to chase me or if I can manage to save my friends a few times we can usually scrape by.
I used to play so much solo queue but I just can't anymore. Plus, next patch the killer experience is just going to get better, as all the Sprint Bursts I eat as a non-mobility killer player are getting essentially double nerfed. I think for the most part they were healthy changes, even if I think it was a bit overdone, but it still feels like this game is just pushing me further and further to become a killer main even though I'm still a survivor main at heart. I just want to be able to play survivor without feeling like every other game is going to be miserable.
Comments
Survivors are at the weakest they've ever been. They're just fodder now. All these strong perks that people talk about survivors having are mostly situational or just have dozens of drawbacks like STB. Decisive strike is basically a troll perk at this point. People go out of their way to get value from it. Doing dumb crap like jumping in a locker is the only way most people get value from DS these days. And don't get me started on the useless pallet density update. Most of the pallets are so weak that the killer can just walk right by them if he respects. The meat factory is basically the only map in the game with decent pallet placement.
It has been particularly bad after the RGMs left, its so bad right now that it's rare to get into a solo queue game that is even fun. Its just a cycle of "Man, this game is over at 2 minutes" all it takes is someone getting tunneled, unhooked, and hooked again and the games over against the higher tier killers… its just not a fun experience. I would just rather not see those types of strategies, they arent fun or engaging and they make the game as boring as possible.
I don't think survivors are completely fodder now, and I do think pallet density can feel awful on killer, but I do think that the reason why survivor feels so incredibly weak right now is because the amount of tunneling has gone up because recently it's become even more efficient. Perks like DS and OTR have been severely nerfed, and soon the issue is going to get worse because the duration of unhook protections is going to be reduced (and elusive for just 10s is going to do nothing against a camping killer or a mobility killer that darts back to hook). Nerfing DS and OTR would have been a good decision if there was actually a system to replace them, especially a system that more accurately punishes tunneling rather than any killer that just downs the wrong survivor (often because they shove themselves in the killer's face). But no such system has been added and we have no idea if such a system will be coming, especially considering BHVR's last attempt was canned.
I agree that tunneling is a problem— but keep in mind, killers tunnel because there is physically not enough time to hook everyone before the gens fly. The tunneling problem is downstream of the gen-speed problem. Punishing killers for tunneling is like punishing a starving mother for stealing a loaf of bread; you're not solving the root of the problem.
absolutely insane comparison at the end of the point there ngl but regardless The truth of the matter is that Tunneling has been Cemented as the best option in a lot of games for a lot of killers, which makes it way more oppressive when its being done by people who are very good at that killer or are already playing a high tier killer… it's just every single game, its an outlier when its not someone tunneling and that's why the game needs to change so that it isn't valid but also so it wouldn't be necessary at all. I think part of what feels lacking in DBD to me right now is how narrow the objective is: 5gens / 4 Kills. the only other objectives ever are when killers have a side game in their kit or when there's hexes/boons in play which usually don't feel good to have to deal with.
I think it makes a lot of sense for the match goal to widen, I think it will help with the staleness of games, it will lead to more killer innovation and more ways to play towards winning as a survivor… I am not even sure what that might look like in practice but the far end is that the objectives to escape are different per killer, though I understand how extreme that is as a concept its just unreasonable for the game to shift that much all of the sudden, but I wouldn't mind the base game changing you know? its just been hatch or door for years and years and for killer its orbit gens or a hooked person so that i can keep pressure on the match and win…
Agreed. Killers have to juggle a hundred objectives at once; survivors should have more stuff they have to do.
This post is about hard tunneling from the beginning of the game, simply tunneling to get someone out of the game at 2 or even 3 gens isn't the focus, and no killer should be expected to 8 hook before killing anyone every game. Sometimes even when not planning to hard tunnel going into the game, it goes poorly (whether it's because your killer is weak, the survivors are good/are using extremely meta builds, bad map, etc) and you end up needing to tunnel out one of the only—or sometimes the only—survivor you've managed to hook so far. But honestly, when I'm playing a strong A tier+ killer, I rarely encounter this scenario, even in the tougher games I usually have enough leeway to get an extra hook or maybe two before needing to get someone out of the game. I encounter that issue far more on weaker killers, and ironically tunneling is harder therefore weaker on weak killers and stronger on strong killers.
I think if there was actually a system in place for tunneling, it would actually have the side effect of technically "nerfing" strong killers, therefore slightly putting them closer to weaker ones, and also making it easier to balance killers and give weaker killers more strength without having to worry too much about unwanted side effects. It would also make it easier to balance things like gen rushing, as right now it's simply the most effective counter to tunneling (finish the gens before the survivor dies).
Y'all don't get tired of saying this?
People tunneled and camped even when slowdowns were at their strongest.
People still tunneled when anti-tunneling was at its strongest too.
Why? Because tunneling is very low effort for a high reward, and it takes far more skill to outplay tunneling than it does to tunnel.
For the 90000th time, tunneling will only be solved with a scorched earth approach. No amount of carrots will solve the problem.
Its a struggle even to get the dailies done lol. Im about 65% survivor 35% killer, and between events/chapters/rift quest pages, I'll just login to do the dailies to keep the rift going forword. But by the end of those 1-3 rounds I'm saying "glad thats done and over with so I can go play something else".
Even today's dailies involved finnishing 3 gens, and my first round starts, the dwight starts spamming all the pallets before the killer even shows up, goes down in seconds, leon decides to keep trading hooks with dwight immediately so they burn through all their hook states, by the time im done the first generator Dwights dead, the 3rd person is on 2nd hook and leon gets downed with a trap on his head. So i figure ill pickup leon first since the killer was likely going back to the hooked survivor, but no this p100 pig is a specialist, which specialises in camping with franklin weave combo (which i was bringing all the dropped items to the corner but somehow leon dropped another medkit) and they were just camping leon so i get hit picking him up, he stands there goes down again, and i cant make it to the other hooked player because theres no pallets left in that area, so i just go in a locker and abandon on hook. All dailies done except i need 2 more generators
Round 2 starts, lara decides to run straight to nemisis and start emoting, gets punched in the face and turbo tunneled to death. I manage to finnish the last 4 gens while the other 2 kept him busy looping around shack and saving eachother. 1 of them dies and i get found trying to go for a door, try to keep him busy while the other person opens their door, i get hooked and then they came and got me, and then i got slugged and nemi chases them out the door. I crawl all the way to the door and nemi finds me there and starts bming all the way to the line where its most fitting to give a mori.
Dailies done, glad its over with, can go play devil may cry trilogy instead since that whole series is still new to me and ive barely started the first game lol.
Survivor activity HUD, anti-tunnel, anti-camp, +10 seconds hook timer, pallet density, and somehow survivor is AT THEIR WEAKEST EVER. Whatever y'all are on, gimme some, because whatever it is, it is STRONG.
Survivor is not "at their weakest" not even close. Your teammates are worse than ever, because BHVR is holding their hand more than ever. Running most of the killer roster for multiple gens is not very difficult. S-tier killers? Sure, but outside of that, that says more about YOU than it does about the balance of the game.
Nevermind that in the past week, I've had more games with survivors ragequitting at 5 gens than without.
This post wasn't even about who's weaker or stronger or even if survivors are at their weakest ever, it was about how terrible the experience is. I don't know if you were trying to respond to @cammoking123's comment but I don't think I ever said survivor is at its weakest, I just think the survivor experience right now is probably the worst I've had in 5 years. It's similar to all the "killer anxiety" discussions going around, it doesn't have to be an "us vs them"
There are 2 possible solutions, and one of them was almost unanimously hated: 9.2.0. The other solution would be to flatten S-tier into A-tier and heavily buff D-tier and C-tier killers to compensate. Sadly I would expect BHVR to do the first half of the latter and call it a day. What's next? Will A-tier be too strong with these strategies as well? Should we flatten everyone into B-tier? C-tier?
Even if BHVR went through all that effort, tunnelers gonna tunnel, even if 9.2.0 went live. Free will is OP, so what is the solution? Should be ban players who tunnel, slug, or camp?
The crazy thing is, I think 9.2.0 had a lot of good ideas, they just didn't give killers anything worthy in compensation, and for that, it never even made it to the PTB.
I don't think those are the only possible solutions, nor do I think they are mutually exclusive. I think there are definitely other ways to go about anti-tunneling than 9.2.0 PTB, such as I believe it was Plat By Daylight's (YouTube) radical idea of making hooks cumulative. I also think that either way S tier killers need to be nerfed and C and especially D tier killers need to be buffed, and having an anti-tunnel system would make it easier to find the balance. I agree that 9.2.0 PTB had some good ideas but went too far in some areas and lacked meaningful compensation for killer. I know that a lot of people have suggested things such as changing the gen kick bonus after hooking to being a mini Pain Res so that weaker killers would be able to make use of it better, and I believe a lot of the extreme penalties came in if someone died within 6 hooks (I might be misremembering) and that definitely could have been reduced to 5.
I mean not really, Killers have to juggle 8 gens at once and survivors have to juggle 8 gens at once… its stale, is what i am saying… most killers can quickly void filler pallets and lockers feel obsolete as a way to hide, its just for perk interaction or brief killer power interaction (except The Dredge) and I am not even saying Lockers or pallets or whatever should go away, I am just saying side objectives feel not worth doing, hex builds in their strongest form are a nightmare, hex builds in their weakest forms dont work at all, boons mostly suck unless used in a SWF and people who run them in solo queue tend to grief the game by prioritizing the uptime of a boon over the generators… I think these are indirect factors that influence why tunneling is so prevalent…
there's just not that much to do ultimately, if a killer runs someone down early, throws them on the hook… 90% of the time people are coming back to it right away and you can just proxy camp it and wait and then they come because they have to unhook their teammate and you get free hits on them at the hook, then you can run down the guy you're tunneling again… rinse and repeat. that's happening so often because thats all thats going on. from the killer POV: Why not, they ran into a bad part of the map and they're hooked by a 3gen or a hard place to save from and I know that their team has to come get them. its basically the overpunishing of a part of the game that has to happen. if theres a game where a killer gets zero hooks its just a severe mismatch by definition but if a single survivor gets hooked its immediately a free snowball option for killers because survivors have to leave their only objective (if they are even doing it) and run to save their teammate. The UI to see what your team is doing helped a little but even still people just go to second hook kind of a lot in solo queue from camping alone because by the time Solo Queue survivors even realize that the killer is proxy camping, if they were doing the right thing and doing a gen on the opposite side of the map, they get punished for that and don't have enough time to reach the surv on hook. sometimes just to rescue someone who was hooked a single time in an inopportune place it takes all three survivors to even rescue them. that experience is absolutely horrible in solo queue and rarely works out for survivors…
this is why pain res is still so popular, kick a gen without being there for your first hook buys you some time and sets survivors back without you even having to leave the hook, when whoever comes to rescue you get a free hit on the hook, or two… so you bought yourself a kick on a gen across the map without moving and free injured states… these things overwhelmingly harm solo queue over SWF teams though, because there's no proper way to communicate that it's happening until its already too late most of the time. someone is hooked, pain res goes off, Dead Mans Switch, you have to find something else to do for some time anyway, might as well get the unhook, run into the killer who is waiting for you to do that, ultimately you have to get hit to get the unhook because the anticamp is very easy to exploit as killer, you die… the only mistake made there for the survivors is literally the first person who was put on the hook, the second survivor was on a gen, pain res, DMS, runs to save but the killer is standing there waiting to chase you into the hook so he gets a free down from it, you die for the act of having to save a teammate, or the alternative is that all survivors show up and the game stalls because one person got hooked. bad game design, its no wonder that it feels like its Griefing because survivors are losing because the best killer strategy is to win Via overpunishing people for saving their teammates off of a hook.
There are just too many situation hook proxy into a tunnel makes too much sense from a POV of winning for the killer, that's a bad game design. that's why perk changes won't fix it, it has to be totally voided from the game with some kind of compensation for killers to ensure they still have solid options to win.
Agreed with most of this, but the initial framing is flawed. To paraphrase zuhkashi:
The survivor team has to repair five gens, open the gates, and escape while racing the killer's hook progress.
The killer has to find survivors, win chases, carry survivors, hook survivors, protect gens, manage map pressure, predict where survivors will rotate, keep track of hook states, prevent resets, watch for flashlights, sabos, and body-blocks which can all cause a minutes-long play to have been entirely wasted, and somehow be in multiple places at once, while effectively racing a 90-second-maximum clock for each gen with a single survivor on it. Note that there is only one killer doing their objectives and four survivors doing the survivor team's objectives.
IK what you mean, I tend to play killer without doing the things I personally hate about the killer when I play survivor so my take on killer has always been that they themselves are too limited. I don't really care for the fact that killers are made and designed around how well they can patrol gens and loop pallets, it just makes the whole feel of the game fall away for me. I greatly appreciate things like Ghostface and Old Myers for this reason, and killer tier has never mattered to me personally (although I fully understand why people don't want to repeatedly lose on their favorite killers) I see all of these horror giants and kinda just wish there was more to them you know? why wouldn't michael myers objectives at least bend towards his character and presence a little bit…? I don't really get a sense of "Man this is like SAW" when i am facing the pig, its usually someone getting followed around until their head explodes, the saw traps feel less like something from SAW and more like a short generator that you die as a result of not doing immediately. I think objective should bend to a killer, not killer bend to an objective, and as a result survivors from the outset enter into that killers wheelhouse and then have to escape it, overcoming the killer not the map… does that make sense?
I think Jason is a reasonably good example of a well designed killer for example, Jasons whole thing is an undead, unstoppable monster that walks through doors and hits people with a machete, appearing and dissapearing seemingly at will… Behaviour did a generally good job of capturing this IMO, and if they went just a little bit farther it could even be great…
There is something I would really really like to say as I play solo q a lot
The main reason I go to Second stage, is because my teammates are often not paying attention to the HUD at all, like I've legit had a survivor crouch walk to me while the killer is mid chase.
Also, often wise I do want to point out that killers have two rule sets they have to play by and I'm not talking survivor rule book crap, I'm talking
Efficiency rules vs Kind rules.
As well survivors have three teammates for their main objective(gens) and if your teammates are competent(which I'm not saying high skill I'm saying just can see the game flow) can take advantage of certain time frames that leave a killer kind of gobsmacked with how fast Gens pop when they think they are doing fine.
Also you can not blame a killer for returning to hook when a survivor doesn't wait till a killer is far away or mid chase to save.
The major problem with this game is Competency. On both sides.
If a killer hyper focus a strong survivor, and cant catch them at a good pace, that's the killers fault 100%. If a killer hard tunnels and the gens are flying that's the killers fault.
You have to agree that it's more Competency(with the game) being the problem over all in this game, because otherwise you are kind of lying to yourself. Because what makes or breaks a good killer and survivor is knowing the game
no, I agree with you, I think that the reason so many points sound framed against the killer rather than truly neutral is because by definition the Killer is the power role in DBD, I understand that survivors can contribute to why a killer does something people generally don't like. If you force your way into blocking a hit after being unhooked and then get downed after that and put back on hook it's your own fault.
I think that maybe the best, most neutral way to put it is that for various factors the game plays more around hooks than around generators, Physically I Mean. there are definitely games where a killer is roaming and there are long chases or killers choose to camp a 3gen (some killers playstyles are kind of built for that over other strategies) and playing around hooks is just always a benefit of the killer not the survivor. that's just the way it shakes out, the only reason survivors have to go to a hook is because someone was caught and put on one (or to sabo before they get put on it), but survivors cant win the game around them, the killer can, but doesn't have to.
For the Killer, they can win by Slugging, or by hooking and oftentimes its the latter as a result of the former. Ex: Someone gets hooked, someone is not paying attention and runs the killer back to the hook and gets downed next to it and that's a game winning scenario for the killer right away.
Basically the issue is that what's being contested most often is not the "Main Objective" for survivors, it feels like the actual point of contest for gens is people pre-running when they hear a terror radius. but the killer is most at an advantage when they can force a scenario that forces survivors to run to them which is the hook. that's why the game state feels so unhealthy imo and why I said the core gameplay should expand. it isn't an easy issue to solve either, people love to say (I am one of them) just remove tunneling and slugging but if we're being realistic its not like a quick patch its the engrained meta in the game that happens in most matches as a result of the gameplay elements in play. IF Survivors only win by Generators then just make them come to the hook and you win as a killer. (Hence Pain Res, Corrupt Intervention, Dead Mans Switch ever prevalent meta) because survivors can run for 100 hours and they cant win unless they can do the gens. In other words: Survivors goal is to waste time and Killers goal is to not let them. but the "Tom And Jerry" sort of setting DBD was supposed to be has kind of fallen by the wayside because its considerably more valuable for a killer to pressure by proxy camping a hook and forcing survivors to run at them and I think that's a core system that might need to be changed.
Personally I don't have fun doing that as a killer either its just standing there with a hammer and hitting people when they run to you and then on the flipside its frustrating when you do eventually get outplayed (usually by a SWF) and you threw the game because they came to you and you couldn't keep them there. but that's just not the gameplay loop I want and I think most survivors feel the same way, overwhelmingly so in Solo Queue. it kind of removes the tension of "horror" and makes it the tension of "comp" and I dont play DBD to experience a Comp setting.
I can see what you mean
The game does appear to rotate around hooks rather then gens. And sadly, it doesn't help that the ecosystem we have been in has pushed that.
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We would need a system that promotes that play style. Make it feel better, and gives a bit of fun. And I want hope it comes, but the change has to be good with efficiency. Because making the game revolve around only speed/movement will kill the game at a quick pace
Yeah I mean as I said earlier I think the ultimate "Good" end of this would be that Survivors are unique to themselves (rather than husks for 4 perk slots and an item) and that killers are even more unique and imposing. There obviously has to be an objective or objectives but I don't really like that the "Wincondition" is the same for killers and survivors every game.
Just because the entity Snatched Myers from Haddonfield doesn't mean he should be anything less than himself. but because the general release style is to bend killers to criteria rather than bend criteria to killers, we get a lot of uninspired outcomes i think. its also why survivor feels so painful right now, they suffer the most with lack of identity because they have none, Quentin is the same as Mikaela who is the same as Jeff who is the same as Laurie and so on… personally I actually liked Tokyo Ghoul up until a point where i think the show fell off but the Kaneki in DBD does NOT feel like the Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul at all, and its because they made the whole design about how well he could traverse the map and pressure and loop, etc and then threw a little tokyo ghoul influence in afterwards.
I think its more reasonable to settle somewhere in between though as I understand that giving every killer a game that is their own is a HUGE undertaking and just not realistic, it would have to be a different game at that point. so because it is DBD I think it's definitely time to shake up the foundation a little bit and add something else to do in a match, something else to be contested, maybe a sort of neutral ground that is a win condition for both survivors and killers for different reasons… just anything to make it less of the same, by extension that would probably kill tunneling mostly for people who aren't doing it out of spite (because some people definitely do)
In other words: something that is very hard for survivors to accomplish but can be done if the killer is too busy guarding one person on a hook… don't know what that would look like in practice and there would absolutely have to be equal returns for the killer, something to be gained from a change like that for their side as well but I am very interested in the idea
I'm in the opposite boat where I'm playing more survivor because the SB+Vigils. Dbd is a unique journey for us all, one I believe where there's an ebb and flow so we all go through phases on our own. Thank you for picking up my killer slack.
i find survivor relaxing because once it's established that we are potatoes, I stop sweating the end result. I think our habits just tire us out eventually which is why we've traded places. I identify as a killer main, but I'm surviving and now you're killing. The tides will change again, I'm sure.
I think this oversimplifies survivor objectives in comparison to an artificially elongated description of killer roles. For example if I say this:
The killer has to down and hook survivors, and kill them before they finish all generators and escape.
The survivor team has to find generators, repair them possibly twice or even thrice over due to slowdown perks, make sure not to create a 3 gen or break the 3 gen if the killer is holding one, try not to get tunneled or help a teammate who is getting tunneled, make sure that they don't wait too long to pick up a hooked or downed teammate to avoid a snowball, similarly heal/reset enough to avoid a snowball but also not take too much time away from gens, have decent chases but also not chase near gens being repaired so enough gen repair can be done during those chases, get on most likely both gates because there's a good chance you'll need both or someone will get kicked off their gate, deciding depending on the killer whether to save a hooked teammate at the end of the game, and both that final save and the entire game require you to coordinate with your team which is especially hard to do in solo queue and the killer straight up doesn't have to do.
Basically the short description is a bullet point that you'd give a friend when trying to explain what DBD is and what the goal of each side is. The long description is a list of all the things the role needs to be aware of or often encounters. The two can't be compared.
My experience has been similar. I want to like both roles; I want to play the whole game, not just half. But survivor is really awful. Last seesion I had by myself I played nine killer matches. Seven were 4ks. I switch to survivor and how does it go? Full cheese killers, throwing teammates, and matches decided a minute in. The contrast was really amazing. Then I come here and see killers whine about how hard it is and how they can't spread hooks and they have to slug and survivor is so soooooo strong and yet I kinda doubt they're losing most of their matches.
With killer, you lose one, you get mad, the emotional spikes are more intense, but then you win the next three and all is right with the world. Survivor has a cumulative misery effect that gets worse with each bad match, and bad match after bad match is so common in survivor (for me anyway).
I run Nurse's Calling on my main, which is getting buffed, and my biggest enemy is SB/Vigil, which is getting nerfed. Why on earth would I not play killer? There's literally not one thing on the horizon encouraging me to play survivor. Everything interesting or helpful for the role gets nerfed or canceled because of outcry.
Survivor is really fun as of late imo, I've been running Overcome, Finesse, Five Moves Ahead, and Wide Open Throttle. The build is a pretty simple and fun chase build, I would also recommend playing with friends if you have any as its a lot more fun being able to talk whilst playing. Aside from all that I don't find tunneling to be a huge deal as long as its not at 5 gens.
Survivor is too easy, play killer for an actual challenge.
The que times will continue until Survivor gets better.
A carrots approach to tunneling would essentially be "make killer so absurdly overpowered that I never lose and I'll stop tunneling". And tbh a lot of killers would still tunnel even in that case...
I agree that tunneling at 2 or 3 gens is not a huge deal, at that point it's really nothing personal, the killer just needs someone out of the game to have a chance to win. But tunneling at 5 has become more and more common, and it's the easiest and cheesiest way to win almost every game unless you're up against a decently equipped SWF. Also, I do play with friends sometimes which is honestly the only reason I play survivor at all anymore, but most people don't have friends available to play 24/7, and the majority of the playerbase is solo queue
This is basically the objectives of the anti-tunnel system PTB but it got immediately canceled over temper tantrums. Pretty sad we could have had a much better game state by now.
yeah I mean I think most reasonable people think that at least some of that PTB should have stayed, although it never should have stayed in the game as is, as it was too harsh on what was considered tunneling and there wasn't much compensation to make up for it for the killers
A different take on the subject or rather my 2 cents.
Rather than nerfing anything; take the reward away.
If someone is hard tunneling at 5 gen just remove their bloodpoint reward.
If the second hook is the same survivor 0 bp.
If the 3rd hook is still the same survivor 0bp and no kill bp.
This doesn't prevent anyone from from doing it.
They still gain their desperately needed MMR and ego trip.
They just suffer less blood web and won't be able to afford all those red add-ons for every match.
All players only gain bp by performing actions. Preventing a player from performing actions is the ultimate problem.
Generally, tunnel/slug killers earn less bp.
It's also frustrating getting tunneled out and earning less than 10k bp.
Make a scenario where the killer earns less than 10k bp.
This is last constant war against killer mains. Why wouldn't killer tunnel when they can? What do they actually get if they don't tunnel? More BP? No. Aura? No. Regression? No. But they can quickly eliminate 1 target forcing the game inti 1v3 drastically reducing repairing and alturistic effeciency. If you have one survivor on hook, one chased and two on gens… one can still do gen and second goes for save. In 3v1 there is always momentum of no one able to do gens. We never complain about gens. If team spreads at gens they can pop three gens together in single chase if the chased survivor plays safe or well. If you are left in scenario where you have 2 gens left and only 1-2 hooks, there is no reason to hook everyone first, is it? Give killers rewards for fresh hooks. Fe. that every fresh hook increase required amount of charges to repair gen by 2, some aura reveal and extra BP and those who don't desperately want to tunnel someone out may adjust their playstyle, but untill then there is no incentive not to tunnel and tunneling will be efficient way, same as spreading at multiple gens.
If by "we" you mean killer mains, killer mains very much complain about gens. "Genrushing," even when that is just survivors splitting gen pressure, is probably the most common complaint I see alongside maybe pallet density. This thread didn't even start out making the main subject about tunneling but simply the terrible survivor experience right now. On the topic of tunneling, everyone knows there is a reason killers tunnel, it wouldn't be so prevalent if there wasn't. Killers tunnel because it's the easiest and most efficient way to win. Nobody is expecting every killer to 8 hook before killing anyone, but when every other game is a hard tunnel from 5 gens it's an issue. I also don't think anyone who has a relatively balanced view of the game thinks that trying to get someone out at 2 gens is a problem, that just makes sense as it might be the only way a killer can win at that point.
What we need is a system that both punishes hard tunneling and rewards spreading hooks, it wouldn't work any other way (unless hard tunneling was punished and the game was entirely rebalanced around that). If there are just rewards for spreading hooks, it would still mean tunneling is a viable option, and honestly unless the rewards were insane it would probably still be the easiest way to win, and as it is by hard tunneling a survivor you win infinitely more than you lose, which isn't a healthy balance. If tunneling is punished, then the outlier playstyle that gets so many wins is suboptimal, and if spreading hooks is rewarded, then killers wouldn't feel the need to tunnel.
What I dont understand many killer players say they need to be given a reason to not tunnel, like what buffs can we give killers compared to instantly winning a game when only 3 survivor alive with multiple gens remaining?
Simply game design issue, its mindblowing how easy to win against majority of survivor teams, all it takes one weak link or missing communication (no discord) and most of teams has 0 odds against a high tier killer.
I can tunnel and also mix with it slugging and then survivors has no answer to this, so the game just miserable as survivor.
If i have to say one thing, its the pure torture, when you realize game lost because the weak link was tunneled out, and you need to repair 2-3 gens or more with 2 people, never gonna happen , you lost but no surrender option, no comeback either because all killer slug for 4k, so hatch wont ever happen
Yeah I mean the issue is that tunneling is way too strong and it destroys the games balance, especially on higher tier killers. So when killer mains ask for something of equivalent value to reward them for spreading hook states, that just completely misses the purpose, as that means that killers would be so strong they wouldn't even need to tunnel to dominate almost every single game
This sums it up perfectly. There will never be an incentive which makes Killers not tunnel. Sure, Killer Mains say that there should be more reasons to not tunnel, but in reality, we heard it time and time again that if X gets changed, there will be less tunneling. X got changed and Killers still tunneled, just better. You can remove all Pallets from the map and Killers would still tunnel. Exaggerated, yes, but true. If there would be an incentive to REALLY work against tunneling, it would have to be something insanely strong, because removing a player early is just insanely strong. Only incentives just does not work.
I also fully agree with the last part. If it is an early 3v1, there is no way for the Survivors to win, unless there is a serious skill difference between the Survivors and the Killer. And at this point, the Killer cannot lose so they just play to maximize their Bloodpoints, which resulsts in a drawn out match which the Survivors have to play out, without any way to win and without any form to shorten it.
For me it just results in liking both roles less. I dont play much Killer anymore, simply because I dont want to bother with the queuetimes. Usually I play Killer when I am alone and play Survivor with a friend of mine. But due to Survivor being miserable and the latest releases and events, Killer queues are just too long for me to bother, because while I can do something while waiting, I just want to play DBD. And my Survivor playtime also is lower, simply because I end the evenings earlier than before, because the game became just so much less enjoyable as Survivor.
And the worst part is simply that if I see lots of slugging or tunneling, it is almost exclusively done by Killers who dont need to do that. This for example was a recent game:
People who defend slugging would say this was probably a Ghostface who needs to slug to win. In reality, it was a Blight and I did not bother at thisp oint. We were all slugged multiple times by then (seeing the Renato who already DCed) and the Blight would have slugged us again. So I just finished the Gen to let the Blight slug me, but he even waited with that.
And then people wonder why less Survivors play when things like that are far more common than they used to be. Simply because since BHVR botched their Anti-Tunnel and Anti-Slugging, even the last person on earth knows how strong those tactics are.
I think the only way to improve survivor experience to introduce a very tight matchmaking system.
The current rework is very misguided, the theory was that kill and escape bad indicator so changing that will fix the system.
The game is currently extremely comp heavy, as in asks really much from survivor team, and getting one bad teammate game instantly lost.
Here is the issue, there isnt mmr so to speak, it was never that didnt work, but rather game priority to get a game as fast as possible ignoring mmr values, because streamers demand fast matchmaking, and how else could be 1000+ winstreak happening? Its only possible because there in no mmr. Even the lowest tier killers has like 200+ wins in a row last time heard trapper.
All the new mmr will do, get everyone to high mmr, because it will be also based on chase, gen, altruism etc, so even if you died you wont lose mmr, or even gain it. So basically we watering it down even more.
But regardless the mmr isnt functioning anyway, and then there is lobby dodging so even if it were worked, destroyed right there, with backfilling.
For me the survivor gameplay is very bad right now, because nothing depends on me, but the start of the game, assigned with newbies in team ,sometimes A or S tier killer and nothing you do matters, lost, no agency. But i see all the time getting insane killers while your team get a new player or with one 100 hours etc
Again! Tunneling is not issue paired with pallet density or mmr. It's efficient way to win same as spreading on gens. The fact that you lose game to tunneling killers is mostly either that tunneled survivor is bad at looping or that other survivors don't do gens. If someone is tunneled it takes min. 4mins to kill them which is plenty of time to pop most if not all the gens. It's what makes me mad when I'm tunneled that survivors run to take hits, block the killer but no one is doing gens and now they are left in scenario where I'm dead, they have one gen left but one survivor is slugged, second is injured and last one is chased which mostly ends in full slug. If someone is tunneled just do gens, if they are not good at looping taking a hit won't buy them much time.
If killer keeps slugging you can abandon. You don't remember times where killers slugged and then waited for people to bleed out. Survivors become way less frustrating than they ever been due to abandons, HUD and basekit protections. Try to imagine what it used to be to play against 5 blinks exposed slugging Nurses. Also coulrophobia which is common perk in slugging builds is getting nerfed, knock out got reworked so… It's only getting better for survivors after all.
I don't think tight matchmaking would fix tunneling, people would still tunnel because it's the easiest most efficient strategy. In fact, very tight matchmaking might just make even more killers tunnel, as more of them would be in closer matches, and when so many of your matches are so close, even killers that don't hard tunnel will be tempted by the easy way out. The only way to stop tunneling is to, well, stop tunneling with an anti-tunnel system that punishes…tunneling. (how many times can I say tunneling in one sentence?)
But seems like anti tunneling improvements completely abandoned forever, killer streamers wont like it, all it takes a manufactured outrage and then cancelled. So i think its lost cause, in fact isnt baseline BT getting a nerf with next patch?
Tunneling somebody out from the beginning of the game and spreading gens are not at all the same. Yes, both are more "efficient" methods of playing the game. However, one completely eliminates a player early on in the match, cutting short their match, their rewards/bp, ruining their challenges, and ruining their experience. Spreading gens does not do that.
In addition, spreading gens does not automatically mean you will be able to win 90% of your games on survivor. Tunneling from the beginning does, especially on stronger killers, which is why it's more common to see from them. I still manage to win the majority of my games, probably around 70% or so, on Ghost Face (one of my mains) without tunneling from the beginning and often while playing extremely nice. Even most of the games that aren't wins are usually ties (2ks). If I'm able to achieve those results playing like that with Ghost Face, a bottom 3 killer, imagine what I could do hard tunneling a survivor out from the beginning of every game as Blight or Nurse? Simply spreading gens is not enough to counter tunneling. You either need the killer to make the mistake of chasing the wrong survivor, an extremely experienced player (ideally with anti-tunnel perks), or you need to help the player being tunneled if you don't want the game to be lost.
It's true that you can abandon when all survivors are slugged now, and there have been a lot of QoL changes. But I would be lying if I thought things have just been getting better for survivors. Even when I was playing 5 years ago and BT wasn't basekit, I honestly think there was STILL less tunneling back then, as most killers assumed the unhooker had it anyway (as they usually did). In the last couple months, the tunneling has been the worst I've ever experienced, and as it's not being addressed in anyway, and in fact basekit protections are actually going to be nerfed in duration (no the elusive isn't going to do anything against a camping tunneling killer), it's only going to get worse.
Hopefully it's not abandoned forever, but yeah the 9.2.0 PTB was canned and yes basekit BT is getting nerfed so it's going to get worse starting tomorrow. Honestly though, while I do obviously think there will always be some killer players that would get upset about any kind of anti-tunnel system, I think more of the community would have reacted more positively if the 9.2.0 PTB's system wasn't so harsh. The punishments were harsh which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's definition of tunneling was blurry so it had the very real possibility of punishing killers that shouldn't be punished, and the reward for spreading hooks just wasn't enough in compensation. I feel like if those issues were properly ironed out, less of the community would have been so upset—as with the 9.2.0 PTB even a lot of survivor players thought the system was too much—and the system could stay.
This thread has to be a sarcastic joke, right?!
"Hey, if the Killer is making it unable for you to play the game, how about you just leave the game?"
Oh same. When I play killer the queue is instant. I won't wait more than a minute. At other times I'll play survivor with friends. Otherwise I'm just not playing, and the state of the survivor experience has overall embittered me to the game more and more. I'm playing about half the amount of matches I used to. It's been kinda nice though. Instead of getting mad at this game I've been watching stuff and drawing. Hopefully I'll start reading again. Addiction to dbd has robbed me of my other hobbies for years and I'd like them back. I guess full discontent is the path.
Just in my last week of games I've got shots some like yours:
This Nurse hard tunneled the two dead players, slugged and BMed me, then BMed my teammate until I bled out.
These two got in the way of the tunnel so everyone got slugged.
So fair, so fun.
Then I go into killer:
Someone runs up to me to die at match start for whatever reason. Other two players slowly DC because I'm also getting fast downs. The Claudette is trapped in a match with two bots and a troll. Crazy thing is it took me some effort to get them to trust me. People are just that crappy. We had a nice little chat about how awful soloq is afterwards. Even the randos I meet outside of social media say the same stuff. This was just yesterday's example. It's endless.
yeah I mean I have been playing more random killer games just waiting for 2v8 or something to come back around and I played a game of huntress yesterday that I had NO BUSINESS winning, straight missing hatchets consistently, chased this ace for a long while and he was just better than me, and still came out with a 3k in the end without tunneling or slugging… I definitely play more survivor but it's like Bafflingly easy to play killer and people act like its some insane challenge in the current state of the game.. it Just Isn't…
I understand thats "low MMR" because I don't play huntress but I am telling you I was considerably worse than these people, there is no reason a killer should be able to make this many mistakes and win the game soundly. the only reason it was a 3k and not a 4k is because I let Ace leave after i found hatch first. I play Unknown semi consistently with a horrible build (I like building killers with perks that make sense for their character design and lore rather than perks that will win their game, I used to play walk em down myers (no perma T3) a lot before he became a soulless husk) and 3 and 4k… I have an average of a 65-75% killrate on killers and thats without optimal builds or tunneling or slugging for a 4k or any of that|
Meanwhile if a survivor makes one mistake at the wrong time (yes, one survivor out of four) the game's immediately over on a regular basis, especially in solo queue. Survivor is most often punished by doing the "right" things. you're supposed to run the killer away from where gens are being done, if you go down across the map from the gens being done in solo queue and one person comes to save you, by the time the team realizes you're being proxy camped and/or tunneled its already too late, they have to run the entire map to come help but you're going to second hook or you already got put back on hook for the second time then everything has to stop to come save you. Killer gets rewarded for doing this but survivor gets punished severely but what was the alternative? run the killer around the gens being done so people are closer to save you? that's easily punishable and a lose lose… Don't get hooked? how often are survivors in solo queue running killers all game? its insanely rare, its almost always instant hook, instant tunnel, trash experience.
And I started a post about this yesterday, naturally it got crazy downvoted, you get in trouble for doing that…. there is no honorable forfeit function, you are literally just stuck in games like this and the killer can absolutely draw it out without it being considered griefing, if they want their 4k so badly, and they want to do something like slugging for a 4k to do it, they can have it. let me go to the next game where I can actually engage in the game instead of laying on the ground for 4 minutes until I Bleed to Death.
I mean, overall it is good that abandoning is possible. Because otherwise you lie on the ground for 4 minutes. But this does not solve the issue that slugging is too strong, especially on the strong Killers. And as I said before, the Killer in my screenshot decided to not even down me for a bit. So the other two Survivors and myself could not even abandon, because the Killer was prolonging the game. (Only Renato got to abandon because he got slugged that often)
When it comes to the 2v1, I still think that the Survivor on the ground should be able to abandon. Which would then trigger the remaining Survivor to be able to abandon. And at this point the Killer can still go for their 4K, they are just only wasting their own time. Because slugging for the 4K is really only prolonging a game the Killer already won. And for the standing Survivor it is also not really fun, because their best way to play the game in this situation is to be the Antimate.