Is there a psychology behind tunneling and camping?
dspaceman20
Member Posts: 3,423
We all have been tunneled and camped, but the question that I started thinking about is what is the psychology behind camping and tunneling and why does it feel so negative? Or if you do it why does it feel positive and rewarding at times? What are you guys theories?
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It feels rewarding because it’s effective at winning the game + toxic survivors can get screwed pver
feels ######### to go against because there’s nothing you can do, it usually means you perform terribly, and it’s just super annoying to NEVER get a break.
there’s probably deeper psychology but I really think people just hate it because it’s cheese & use it because either it’s powerful or they’re toxic
I thought it was pretty obvious.
1. Getting camped and tunneled means you usually don't get to do anything at all. Most people are fine with losing to an extent. Most people don't like not being able to play at all. Your first chase might have been good or you screwed up and got downed in 5 seconds. All's fine right? When you get unhooked you can get back to business. But killer face camps you. You get unhooked, he whacks you down again, puts you back and then repeat and you're dead. You didn't get to play at all. And that is not okay with most people. You just wasted 5 minutes in the lobby waiting for a game, get downed in 5 seconds, then spend 2 minutes on the hook pressing Struggle. That is not an enjoyable experience no matter how you slice it.
2. Why is camping and tunneling positive? Super easy answer. Because it works. Unless you're fighting a super coordinated SWF, Camping is super effective because the uncertainty of the survivors feeds to them playing suboptimally and wasting time not doing gens, going for saves, etc. And that plays right into your hands as killer. You don't even need to look for them. They come to you and you just shoot them like fish in a barrel. Super easy, super effective. It is very rare to see survivors in solo q punish a killer for camping by just doing gens and letting the guy on hook die. Actually not very rare. It doesn't exist. I have NEVER seen this in 1,500+ hours of playing Survivor or 100 or so hours playing killer.
The psychology is very simple. You watch any new killer who just picks up the game for fun. They tunnel, camp and do whatever they want for fun. They're just goofing around. Once they start playing both sides they might start feeling more empathetic but there will be plenty that probably won't care and just want to do whatever they want for fun. Then when they find out survivors don't like it they sadistically enjoy ppl's complaints.
I'm going to be pretty harsh here on myself and other survivors. I'm probably projecting here. On the survivor side it doesn't feel fair because of entitlement. It feels like if the killer just played fair and gave us a chance than we'd do a much better job. Of course the problem with fair in this case is that it ends up being; it's only fair if the killer goes after me when I'm ready for them and have tools ready to deal with them. U blame the team, the killer, map RNG, game design, bs powers/perks, hit validation, etc anything but yourself. Although, all those things do effect the outcome to an extent but there's a lot you can do to get better. I'm more partial to the teammates though. For the love of God fix matchmaking in solo queue.
I think it comes down to simple math. Take one guy out asap because a 3v1 is way easier to manage. It's not necessarily a good strategy, but I do see the logic behind it.
As for toxicity, I don't take it personally when people tunnel. I mean it's a PvP game so there have to be winners and losers. To use a metaphor, sometimes you're the pigeon and other times you're the statue gettin' pooped on, y'know?
Orrr it feels negative because it feels like someone is purposely going out of their way to ruin your experience.
I don't care if I die, a lot of times I sacrifice myself anyway as long as I actually get to play the game. I get killers are here to kill, but it feels very mean spirited when they're denying you the chance to even play the game because they find it fun.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Do people actually find camping (and I mean camping when you know there are no survivors nearby) and just throwing the match fun..?
Granted solos tend to just throw themselves into a loss because they're desperate for unhooks, but a good team of SWF or solo with Kindred will just get a free win.
They are neither. Camping and Tunneling are tactics, nothing more. Sometimes they are the right tactic based on conditions and the situation, and sometimes they are not. You are playing the match to win, and ultimately killing MORE Survivors is what you want to do. You balance the camping against the loss of Generator pressure.
Gotta be honest, it doesn't feel negative to me. I'm usually more annoyed at my teammates than anything else. There should never be 4 survivors without a DS or BT between them. And if a red rank survivor can't run a majority of the killers on this roster for the better part of 5 gens on most maps over 3 hook states, they need to look in the mirror.
Hi, I'm a Dead by Daylight player and psychologist. A few gameplay tips for your mental health. : deadbydaylight (reddit.com)
"Concept 1: Humiliation DbD's gameplay is centered on humiliating your adversary. I would argue that every aspect of the gameplay is an act of humiliation, not competition, like you see in other games. The reward-based outcomes combined with asymmetric gameplay makes DbD uniquely painful to emotionally process both your losses AND wins. Let's look at the various aspects of gameplay:
Killer Humiliates
Basically, being on a hook is humiliating. It shows everyone you failed, and now you NEED their help.
if you read on, there's humilation for killers too. Why is it SO annoying to be teabagged? logically, all the survivor is doing is distracting themselves and slowing themselves down. It's not optimal. But its infuriating to the point that when they're eventually caught (and with bloodlust, they will be) they'll likely be facecamped, even when that isn't logical. dbd is toxic at its core. don't blame the players, blame the game.
I agree with this. Camping and tunneling doesn't bother me as much as some of the other things people do, but the negative feelings I have about it mostly come down to feeling like the other player either doesn't care if they're ruining the match for me or else they're actively trying to do it on purpose. Neither is what I really want when I play a game with someone.
As far as why it feels good... I honestly have the opposite reaction. I think it feels really bad to camp and tunnel people, which is why I generally don't do it.
Some people are deeply and fundamentally unhappy with their lot in life.
These people tunnel and camp in a vain effort to mask their misery and to claw back what little control they can over their powerless, menial lives.
It just gets people out of the match early. I rarely camp/tunnel because I play a lot of survivor and I like everyone to have fun--but I will say, I camped/tunneled an Ace that teabagged me with a key in his hand the last time I played. At that point, he was the only one I wanted dead, I let someone else leave because they had a nice outfit.
As for hating being tunneled/camped... that's pretty obvious, right? You literally can't play the game?
is there a psychology behind asking deep philosophical questions about things you don't like in a video game?
how edgy
Maybe its just me but I find asking questions in games interesting.
I think because so many survivors are bad at the game they rely entirely on stealth and not skill. So many people will unhook you but not take a hit, no matter how many times you've been slugged or hooked already. A lot of killers just can't find anyone else, so they run the risk of losing all four if they try to be fair and look for the person who made the unhook. There's also just being bad at the game on the killer side and thinking that one kill is at least something.
When you find yourself psychoanalyzing people over how they play a videogame, you probably take it far too seriously.
Your probably right but I find it fun. Is it weird?
Speaking of teabagging. I only teabag when the killer hooks someone with Kindred, I'm 40m away, I point at him, tell him to come to me. Then start teabagging.
I love aura teabagging through bbq, because I want them to know I know they're looking at me. Hahahahaha
I find that a lot of people are way too quick to assume tunneling. Got called a tunneler in my last game, and I don't think I even hooked the same person twice in a row once. I even ran away from the hook. Was told to 'get good'. (Apparently killing everyone with 4 gens undone is bad)
Camping and Tunneling are done under three circumstances;
So there's the psychology for 90% of the times you get tunnelled and camped. It's a baby trapper, an annoyed wraith, or a toxic bubba.
But how can we stop this behaviour?
Short answer; we can't stop it. It's like trying to stop people from drinking alcohol. There will always be someone, finding some way.
Long answer; we can discourage it. Perks like Borrowed Time, Decisive Strike put power in survivors' hands to let them discourage killers from tunnelling and camping, by making them undesirable targets, or giving survivors second chances when they are the victims. Killer perks like Make Your Choice, Devour Hope, encourage Killers to go forth and search, making killers get value from leaving hooks unguarded. We need more perks that reward killers for spreading their attention and their presence, more perks for survivors to make them less desirable targets for killers. It's up to the devs to make these perks, and it's up to all of us to encourage our killer friends to try new killers who aren't Bubba and encourage our survivor friends to take Borrowed Time instead of Self-Care.
The psychology behind it varies. Common things among he player base (inferred from post game chat, stream chats, forum posts, etc):
1) an unconscious feeling/fear of inferiority and being powerless. Taking “control” and forcing others to be weary of your “power” temporarily fend of these unconscious feelings
2) an unconscious (or conscious) desire to cause pain, anger, unpleasantness
3) for streamers, an unconscious fear of being unlovable, possibly coupled with #1, so you behave in a manner that your audience will enjoy
Those are three off the top of my head
PS: “it’s just because they want to win” is not a psychological answer, at least on a meaningful level. That doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.
New Killers probably don't even know what they are doing is considered "wrong" in the scope of the game. There is nothing in game that tells you not to do it. Most players are introduced to the idea of it being a bad thing in game at the end chat - typically with toxic attitudes coming at them.
Once I realized I could get a lot more BP playing the "friendly" way I never went back. There are times though where it's your only real option as killer.
It makes sense at a base level. Sitting near a hooked survivors means you will always be there to punish the unhookers. Hitting an injured person is better than hitting a healthy person. Survivors get three hooks. it's pretty simple.
There is a psychological reason. It’s called I have no idea what I am doing so let me go ahead and take out the one I know will go down easy, because the game lets me do so without a downside.
If you see a gen at 80% and regressing. Do you stay around to finish it or do you ignore it and go for another fresh gen?
Most people don't run those perks cause they don't enjoy running them (myself included) and against killers like deathslinger lol good luck lasting long in a chase
I'm doing a camping experiment right now and yes there is psychology behind it in many ways. I can tell you that Bubba is not the best camping killer, for reasons having to do with psychology one could say. Because they respect that killer and all do gens instead, while with Doctor it's mostly 4k game after game only a few times have there been 1 escape but never more and I played 16 of these Doctor games this weekend.
Even had a red rank SWF doing everything right until the very end where NOED caught them by surprise trying to group unhook, and there was another Doctor 4k game.
Camping and tunneling is effective and I think it will make games stressful for some survivors that will make mistakes they otherwise don't do. And who the killer is does make a difference in how they will deal with the situation, or not deal with it.
I mean...you can't have it both ways. Just not how the game works. Can't have zero utility when a lot of killers have good 1v1 and still expect to win.