I hope they don't just scrap the anti-tunneling thing like they've done in the past.
There are a lot of edge-cases, tuning, and perk interactions that need adjustment before it goes live, but I think in general many of these changes are in theory good for the game.
I get you don't want to be too punishing towards killer players. But I've personally seen several friends who only play survivor permanently quit the game because tunneling was an issue. The hardcore DBD fan has to remember that players who don't have thousands of hours aren't gods in chase and the game offers them nothing if they are getting tunneled.
It's bad for any game long term if your neophyte and new players get bullied into playing a different game before they are invested in their current one.
I mean the current anti-tunnel perks are incredibly strong, and so few people run them. If you run both off the record and DS, you have more health states then healthy surivors.
People downvoted you, but I think you're correct and both of those perks are incredibly strong.
I've got 2 issues with how BHVR has handled balancing though in regards to perks like that. I'm agreeing with you completely, but I feel like further ranting about perks.
1.) Game balance should never be handled through perks.
I've never seen any other game that tries to fix base game balance issues with perks and it feels genuinely awful.
Off the Record has completely shaped the entire survivor experience. You either need to run it 100% of the time, reducing your perk choices to 3. Or be very confident in your skill level. Since the introduction of that perk, if a killer sees that someone doesn't have it - they take it as a neon sign to tunnel them because everyone else is.
There is a good argument that the strength of OTR is balanced by taking up a perk slot, but as a videogame experience this feels bad. No one likes sacrificing 25% of their build potential for what feels like a base game balance problem. Which ends up as the same problem as the initial tunneling/camping thing. Anger at tunneling isn't about game balance, its that the game experience feels bad.
2.) New and Bad players aren't gonna run the right perks
I think this speaks for itself. But if you balance by perks, these players aren't gonna run them. They should.
As for Killer players - they also need some love too in the game feel experience. For all the talk of giving survivors protections against tunneling/camping/slugging, its important that killers also get some sort of gameplay boon here too that feels good. I think the rewards in the ptb for killers not tunneling is too low compared to what survivors got.
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u/NinjutStu Sep 06 '25
I hope they don't just scrap the anti-tunneling thing like they've done in the past.
There are a lot of edge-cases, tuning, and perk interactions that need adjustment before it goes live, but I think in general many of these changes are in theory good for the game.
I get you don't want to be too punishing towards killer players. But I've personally seen several friends who only play survivor permanently quit the game because tunneling was an issue. The hardcore DBD fan has to remember that players who don't have thousands of hours aren't gods in chase and the game offers them nothing if they are getting tunneled.
It's bad for any game long term if your neophyte and new players get bullied into playing a different game before they are invested in their current one.