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@Blueberry said:
"Not only does DBD need fair yet strong protections in place to limit or counterbalance blatant tunnelling that creates an anti-fun experience for survivors, but the game also needs to include meaningful incentives that provide alternatives to tunnelling"
I agree. Most people that want tunneling fixed though totally ignore that last bold portion which is crucial.
Ideally you'd want very strong gen slow down perks that only reward "fair" play so that there's enough incentive to play in that fair way instead of tunneling. Unfortunately the games balance team seems to be going in the opposite direction of that, hence the increase in tunneling.
Things like Pop, Ruin, Thana ect are the type of perks that we want to be extremely strong but are currently in the trash tier. These kinds of perks reward split pressuring the map but don't reward just standing at the hook and tunneling someone out.
Another issue contributing to this issue is map design. The majority of maps are way too big and way too safe.
Currently on most maps like 80% of the pallets are safe, meaning forced breaks. This is because the pallet down makes the loop so safe that it will require the survivor messing up a lot and even if you get the hit it's going to waste too much time. Ideally we'd want like 95% of pallets to be a 50/50 mind game when thrown so each sides have equal chance of winning it depending on their skill. Instead most pallets thrown currently are like a 70/30 for survivor.
Next is the map size. If you're on an m1 killer most maps are too large to properly pressure no matter how good you are. All maps should be the size of Coal Tower. For example, if you're like Myers or Pig on Borgo, goodluck. There's no way you can pressure a map this big against decent survivors, you literally lose too much time just holding w. There's isn't outplay here. You are forced to tunnel someone out to have a chance.
Last issue is self healing. You used to be able to apply map pressure better because your hits would slow the survivors down by getting them off gens to heal. This isn't the case since CoH was introduced. It takes you longer to get the hit than it does for them to self heal. So no ones getting off the gens to heal them and you aren't actually pressuring the map by spreading hits. So injures are essentially meaningless. This is heavily exacerbated as well by how overtuned med kits are.
TLDR: Multiple factors listed above are what make it so that firstly m1 killers are unable to pressure the map properly and secondly maps are so safe that chases take lengths of time that are unviable against good survivors if you want to win. Thus this is where all the tunneling comes from. It's also the same reason you see people stacking slow down perks. The tunneling is a symptom of poor game balance as killers don't feel they have a "fair" chance of winning as the survivors do if they play normally without tunneling regardless of their skill.
Thanks for your input. You highlighted to me something that I had not considered; that not only can tunnelling present itself as a strong choice, but given the structure of some maps and the difficulty of applying pressure on these safe/large maps, tunnelling could be seen as the only option that some killers (m1 killers) have to keep up with the game. In this case, tunnelling would work by pulling the survivors away from advantageous and safe positions (safe loops, strong windows etc.) and into an area where the killer feels they can actually compete, creating macro control (gens) as well as having the normal pressure that tunnelling caries.
I also appreciate your point regarding healing and self-healing. Injuries are so swiftly and conveniently(?) healed that there is little point spending time to injure survivors without committing to a down.
With the solid input from others here, I'll attempt to recap on reasons why some killer players choose to tunnel (as their main game strategy in a trial):
1) As an option, it is almost always a reliable and efficient strategy, due to the huge swing in the game going from 4 to 3 survivors, as well as forcing 2 of your 4 objectives together near you, if you choose to stay near or return to the hook.
2) There can often during a trial be moments where the killer has little information to work with (where is everyone? which gens are close to being done?). When these moments overlap with the killer hooking a survivor, hook camping or returning to the hook upon the notification can present itself as a more attractive option in terms of information and reliability, because abandoning the hook to maybe find a survivor is seen as less reliable than knowing one survivor has to come and unhook another survivor. This 'poverty of information/momentum' is closely related to, but not the same thing as, the reliability of tunnelling as a strategy. Also here think of the change to BBQ & Chili.
3) The game currently has little to reward killers for actively spreading hooks, as a counterbalancing mechanism against the strength/reliability of tunnelling. Perks like No Way Out, Grim Embrace, SH: Monstrous Shrine, Hex: Devour Hope come to mind as rewarding killers for splitting their pressure, but not are all equal or would be considered strong. More perks or mechanics using the No Way out/Grim Embrace token system could be an option?
On top of this for 3), injures count for very little given the state of healing, which has an effect on the strength/viability of spreading pressure.
4) My understanding of Blueberry's contribution here: Tunnelling can let killers pull the game back in their favour when the odds are stacked against them. When killers assess that they are in an unfavourable position due to map size, loop/window/pallet distribution, the availability of zero-risk/safe loops, connected loops, and the strength of the selected killer character (e.g., m1 killer), tunnelling can force the survivors' hands and mitigate the disadvantages the killer faces. I think it's very important to consider here that these are disadvantages outside of our control. No survivor wants to see huge deadzones spawned in, no killer wants to see multiple strong loops easily connected together. Also most survivors and killers want to experience a diverse range of killers, including m1.
Conclusion:
Assuming the above 4 hold some insight, these could be considered as why tunnelling happens. And I hope now that, having tried to clearly outline the problem, solutions can be properly and carefully worked towards.
I basically created this post because I saw many people putting forth different reasons for why tunneling happens, and I felt like they all held one piece of a bigger picture. And I'm glad I did, because now my piece of the picture has been combined with some of the good input here (esp. Blueberry) and I feel like we are together building a greater understanding.
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@Nazzzak said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3353743#Comment_3353743
Yup, these aren't the reality of my games either unless I'm matched with efficient team mates. And I always hear about these swfs packed to the gills with BNPs every game, when I literally put 1.8 million bloodpoints into my Ada yesterday and didn't get a single one in my bloodweb lol
Tunnelling will never ever go away. The devs could give killers every buff under the sun but one thing that can't be changed in this game is skill. A buffed up killer will still sometimes come face to face with higher skilled survivors who will outplay them. And they'll just revert back to tunnelling, "because it's needed at high skill play." It's just the way it goes.
I have certainly experienced games like this, where the gens do fly, and only slow down once you have one person on the hook and another in chase. But I have also experienced games where I have ample time to work with, and rarely have to be in a rush.
I think it's important to note that players will have a wide variety of experiences. Skill/SBMM rating obviously plays a part, but there's definitely more to it. I'm in Australia, on the East Coast, and for many multiplayer games, we have a really small population (playing with 200 ping to West Coast US sucks). The time of day or night I play DBD greatly impacts the skill of survivors I face. From 5-9pm (abouts) weekdays and especially Thu, Fri and Sat, really strong survivors queue up in greater proportions, and you see (as killer) much more team play from survivors. Mindgaming is harder, loops drag on longer, normal tricks don't work, you have to get more devious. My hypothesis is that more serious/competitive players and groups get on, more SWFs, and maybe some strong players only play in groups? Not sure, just a hypothesis.
But if I queue up outside of this peak time, the survivor skill level generally goes down, from what I see as a killer. It's much easier to bait/mindgame survivors into prematurely vaulting the window or pallet of a loop, simpler tricks work, and you see more bad plays (a while ago I saw a whole string of really obvious 'I have dead-hard' plays).
And I know I've read multiple times people (surv and killer) talking about this as well, but some point out the opposite; that at peak times survivor skill on average is lower, and the more serious/better survivors are found off peak times. I'm not sure where these people are playing from, or what their peak times are, but it reinforces the notion that there is a wide range of experiences in DBD.
I have and regularly do see gens fly, but it's definitely not every game.
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@Blueberry said:
"Not only does DBD need fair yet strong protections in place to limit or counterbalance blatant tunnelling that creates an anti-fun experience for survivors, but the game also needs to include meaningful incentives that provide alternatives to tunnelling"
I agree. Most people that want tunneling fixed though totally ignore that last bold portion which is crucial.
Ideally you'd want very strong gen slow down perks that only reward "fair" play so that there's enough incentive to play in that fair way instead of tunneling. Unfortunately the games balance team seems to be going in the opposite direction of that, hence the increase in tunneling.
Things like Pop, Ruin, Thana ect are the type of perks that we want to be extremely strong but are currently in the trash tier. These kinds of perks reward split pressuring the map but don't reward just standing at the hook and tunneling someone out.
Another issue contributing to this issue is map design. The majority of maps are way too big and way too safe.
Currently on most maps like 80% of the pallets are safe, meaning forced breaks. This is because the pallet down makes the loop so safe that it will require the survivor messing up a lot and even if you get the hit it's going to waste too much time. Ideally we'd want like 95% of pallets to be a 50/50 mind game when thrown so each sides have equal chance of winning it depending on their skill. Instead most pallets thrown currently are like a 70/30 for survivor.
Next is the map size. If you're on an m1 killer most maps are too large to properly pressure no matter how good you are. All maps should be the size of Coal Tower. For example, if you're like Myers or Pig on Borgo, goodluck. There's no way you can pressure a map this big against decent survivors, you literally lose too much time just holding w. There's isn't outplay here. You are forced to tunnel someone out to have a chance.
Last issue is self healing. You used to be able to apply map pressure better because your hits would slow the survivors down by getting them off gens to heal. This isn't the case since CoH was introduced. It takes you longer to get the hit than it does for them to self heal. So no ones getting off the gens to heal them and you aren't actually pressuring the map by spreading hits. So injures are essentially meaningless. This is heavily exacerbated as well by how overtuned med kits are.
TLDR: Multiple factors listed above are what make it so that firstly m1 killers are unable to pressure the map properly and secondly maps are so safe that chases take lengths of time that are unviable against good survivors if you want to win. Thus this is where all the tunneling comes from. It's also the same reason you see people stacking slow down perks. The tunneling is a symptom of poor game balance as killers don't feel they have a "fair" chance of winning as the survivors do if they play normally without tunneling regardless of their skill.
Well I seem to have typed up something lengthy that has disappeared...
But, I wanted to thank you all for your input, and wanted to highlight Blueberry's contribution for pulling something to my attention: Tunnelling can be employed to draw a game back to one's advantage, when faced with odds stacked against you (that you have no control over) like map size, pallet density, large numbers of safe loops, easily interconnected loops etc. And this is all the more pressing for m1 killers, for whom these disadvantages are more significant. I think this is very understandable as a motivation, after all I don't think we'd want to see only mobile killers be played (blight, nurse etc.)
The great thing about DBD and game design is nothing is locked in stone, things can change. So I thought it would be valuable to attempt to clearly outline what the problem of tunnelling is and why it happens, as I often see people put forward a reason, whilst I think we all hold a piece of a bigger picture.
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@Halloulle said:
Very well put together and refreshingly objective.
"turning the game into 3v1 asap" is the most efficient killer strategy. And as long as it is possible to get a surv out of the game in under X time (basekit, not taking certain perks into account) this strategy will persist*. As you say; it's not really the player's fault to choose the most efficient path but the dev's fault to make that path available in the first place.
In my opinion DBD is the most fun when players play the least efficient - or put the other way around: efficient DBD is boring and unfun DBD. Alas, the trajectory we're on atm leads to an ever greater focus on efficiency - both on the killer as well as on the survivor side.
*Of course, if a killer takes longer than Y time because they are unable to actually down the survivor it turns the most efficient strategy into the least efficient strategy - at least as long as survs don't play into the killer's hand.
Specifically in relation to your observation "it's not really the player's fault to choose the most efficient path but the dev's fault to make that path available in the first place."
This is very true, but also it can be a matter of reliability as well as efficiency. Once you hook a survivor, one of your 4 primary objectives, another objective must come to the rescue, thus giving you at least 2 of the 4 objectives in one spot. Whether this involves baiting the team to unsafely unhook their teammate by changing your play, returning to the hook when you get the notification, or just hook camping, the reliability of tunnelling is just as much an issue as its efficiency.
The game provides remarkably little reward to the killer for spreading the fear and pressure on the Survivor team. This is why I think, for example, the perk No Way Out is brilliant.
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To address some of the points:
*** I've tried to make a general and brief analysis of why tunnelling might be perceived as a strong or even needed strategy. I'm hoping we can understand this problem, so we know where we are starting when we are looking for a solution(s). I believe these solutions are to be found in the design and balance of the game, not in making direct appeals to either 'side' to change how they play.
To use an example: killers don't just down a survivor 3 times and then they are out. Hooking survivors was designed as a system to make player elimination more fun and interactive, and to give a chance to survivors to rescue their team mates. This system has created all those thrilling clutch wiggle escapes, last minute sabotages, juicy last minute hooks, and pretending you don't know you're being followed when carrying a survivor to the hook, hooking and then turning around to smack the would-be unhooker. It is up to the developers to balance, and most importantly design systems/mechanics into the game both to create fun and to address, resolve or counter-balance any frustrating or unfun moments or patterns in the game.
Some player input can be helpful to achieve the above, but seeing the balance and design of DBD, or even the fun of DBD as being a war between what either 'side' wants is, I believe, a profound mistake. This outlook won't reveal new ideas or possibilities, and it can't make the game better.
*** To those who say that tunneling is the easiest way to win, this is not always true. Tunnelling can lose control of the game for the killer, and lead to more escapes. Tunnelling a survivor with strong chase skills can lead to losing. Tunnelling a survivor with strong anti-tunnel perks could lead to losing. Tunnelling can be the strongest strategy, for example in comp level play. The problem is that tunnelling is seen as a strong or reliable strategy, or even the best strategy, that some killer players have at a given moment. The game needs to provide alternate incentives so that killer players feel they have a range of options for what strategy they can follow. This is crucial to addressing the unfun experiences tunnelling creates in the game.
Think back again to the system of hooking survivors. Solutions to the problem of tunnelling won't be found in telling survivors or killers to change how they play, but by using game design to create systems or mechanics to provide fun and engaging choices and strategy to all players. DBD would not be fun if the killer simply downed survivors 3 times to kill them. Fun and engaging mechanics and systems can be designed into the game, and changes can be made to both protect survivors from tunnelling and to provide killers with other alternatives to the very often reliable strategy of tunnelling. Creativity will be needed, that's for sure. But I think a good beginning point is understanding the whole problem first, and this last part is pretty much the point of my post.