Why does the struggle mechanic still exist?
Seriously, what? The struggle-on-hook is on the level of "Moris screw the game flow up dramatically" in terms pernicious game mechanics that serve no purpose, other than to purely frustrate and aggravate players. It has the following downsides:
- It's flatly just annoying. You slam a key over and over. It's "Press X to not die." This is literally the name of a page on TV Tropes, that is how stupid it is. It isn't "tense" or whatever the devs think it is. Maybe the first couple times, you're going "Oh no, I hope someone saves me!" After that, it is pure aggravation for every DBD match you will ever play until the end of time.
- It's prone to lag or mistimed presses screwing you over. I have never introduced a player to this game who didn't screw up the struggle mechanic the first time or two, even when I explained the hook phases to them beforehand. This a really negative first-time user experience, because the player feels like the game cheated their chance out of them. This is the kind of thing that makes players stop coming back after a couple matches.
- I have seen people claim every now and then that they accidentally break or damage their keyboard doing this. I know the defense brigade is going to jump in with "Just change it to a different key" or whatever, but this is a stupid problem to have to begin with.
- It gives players an easy way to disconnect without the penalty. It allows them to screw the rest of their team over without any kind of punishment. I cannot count how many times there was a match we would have wound up winning against a Nurse or a Spirit or whatever thing that survivor didn't want to deal with, if they had just stayed in the match and not chosen to suicide on hook.
- It is not a choice. I mean, in the sense of "either do this or die," sure, I guess it is a binary win-or-lose choice, but that's not a real choice. So any arguments the devs want to make about it providing some sort of player agency are out the window, because it consists of nothing but mindlessly mashing a button.
And it has the following upsides:
That's it. Zero. There is nothing good about this mechanic. It doesn't make the game more tense, it doesn't serve a purpose, and it lets players screw their team over without repercussions. There would be literally no downside to just removing all input possibilities from the struggle phase -- just have the player sit on the hook until they get rescued or the timer runs out. No mash-to-struggle, no reversing it with a "Press X to die," just make the struggle phase be a passive thing, essentially just like the first hook phase without the option to try unhooking yourself.
The sad thing is that this is likely not far from being a "just change a number" level change a la Moris, that would improve everyone's quality of life, which means it will take Behaviour another four years to get to it, if ever.
There is no counterargument to this. Like, there is no good-faith position you can take that the struggle mechanic somehow adds something to the game. It is a bad, outdated mechanic that does not fulfill any goal of "tension" and has only negative repercussions. I don't want to hear it. I just want to see it changed. This mechanic is effing idiotic. The fact that it is still in this game, that is not far away from kicking off its SIXTH YEAR, is one of the most asinine things about Dead by Daylight. This is such a small thing that is SO AGGRAVATING and yet has a straightforward and clean solution.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, now fix this terrible mechanic please. And don't kick this down the Feedback & Suggestions well, no one sees things there. This is here for discussion purposes, so others can discuss and debate.
Comments
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It definitely should be a passive thing. There's nothing good about it, seriously. Missing one hit is such a pointless way to die, and it can be unnecessarily punishing for people with physical disabilities. I'm healthy, but my hand gets tired every time, which is just annoying.
Small thing, but why? Outdated mechanic.
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As much as I love to let go of myself on last hook to give a teammate the hatch I'd MUCH rather this mechanic go as its often used to screw over your team way more often.
I support this.
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Hey, look at that, another downside I forgot: It lets players coordinate and tactically disconnect (again without penalty) to deny the killer a fourth hook and circumvent the "last man standing" luck factor of finding the hatch. This isn't remotely the most pressing thing about it, but I would actually consider this way more of an unintended downside than an advantage.
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They think it reduces the boredom and engages the player. (as said in a stream)
They are horribly wrong and tone deaf to peoples complaints.
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Have they actually said that? Really?
Boredom? The struggle timer is like two minutes. If you can't pay attention for two minutes while your friends try to rescue you, and are immediately bored, that to me says more about the player than it does the game. And "the only thing we can come up with to keep our players engaged is an aggravating button-mashing mechanic" is just bad design. There's no excuse. None whatsoever. Yes, they are SUPER tone deaf.
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paraphrasing but yes they did....
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Ugh.
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Thank god this didn't get stuck where it will wither and die. I guess I need to rephrase all of this and post again, so it's clear that it's supposed to be a discussion topic. Maybe it should be a poll.
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The solution there is to just have a give up option.
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After that stream of them defending Struggling on Hook, they did eventually give out a survey of them asking of how important the struggle on hook mechanic was to the player.
Whether they wanted to actually do something with that survey or just asked the question aimlessly is another thing.
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Are the results public? I have to imagine they skew heavily against the struggle mechanic.
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I've actually died on hook because of my wrist or forearm locking up trying to press spacebar enough to not die. When I first started playing I died so many times with this and it still annoys me. I don't like it at all. I know I can keybind it to something else but thats not the point. The point is having to press a key over and over and if you mess up for half a second you're dead. Its beyond annoying and something I really wish they would just remove from the game. If you reach second hook your character should automatically struggle without you having to do it. The consequence of the struggle phase should only be dieing if someone doesn't save you in time. Its honestly probably one of the most annoying parts about the game for me.
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The struggle mechanic is one of the dumbest fails by the developers. And I don’t mean that in ######### talking way, it just was never a good or creative idea and it’s very obvious it doesn’t fit gameplay. Nobody cares or is interested in having something to do on their second hook and it takes away more from the game than it gives. It was a bad idea, people have bad ideas sometimes, that’s ok. The next step in realizing you had a bad idea is to get rid of that bad idea.
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Um, no. Lol. I'd much rather have teammates who are unable to kill themselves than to be able to give others the option of leaving through the hatch. Now some will argue that they'll just run to the killer and get downed again. But if they're wasting the killer's time like that its way more time for us to get gens done. I'm OK with that! Its when someone ragequits on first hook after being downed and screws over 3 other teammates with 3-4 gens left to do its infuriating.
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I think a good way to rework this is to have skill checks like there are on Pyramid Head cages. Also make the penalty a small decrease in sacrifice time like a failed escape attempt (greats maybe pause the timer slightly). Randomly dying instantly because of something stupid like your finger slipping or minor lag is really not fun.
This could also allow a rework for Monstrous Shrine in messing with the checks difficulty in attempt to kill hooked survivors quicker (more so for basement hooks, or maybe remove the great zone for those).
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Yeah, there just needs to be no input option during the second phase. No dumb mashing, and no giving people a free way to DC.
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There is no need for struggle mechanic. The devs may think it stops people from getting bored but what I don't get is how can you get bored when waiting for a minute to get saved before you die?
There are multiple problems with the struggle mechanic;
- It breaks hardware - I play on my PC and on my old keyboard (legit plugged in a new one today) due to constantly spamming space on DBD the spacebar was loose and only attached by one of the dot thingys (underneath the key). People who play on Playstation / Xbox have their controllers broken very easily from the struggling mechanic.
- Health - I have carpal tunnel in both my wrists, and while I know I should limit my time I don't get why I should have to because there is a dumb game mechanic? since I have it in both my wrists when one hurts too much I have to switch to my other wrist which then causes a risk in not spamming quick enough when swapping and dying but also then both my wrists end up hurting. I know a lot of other people have this problem and it truly sucks. I shouldn't have to have sharp pains in my wrist from a game mechanic that is not that important.
- Not even that important for gameplay - so after having the problem of it breaking your hardware and possible wrist / arm problems you realise that it does not even affect gameplay that much or at all, all it does is ######### over your teammates. It doesn't make the game any less or more tense its just useless and its just like there for no reason at all.
I hope the devs remove it, save my wrists lmao.
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jesus just bind it to mouse downwheel lol. its 2021, people still mash spacebar to struggle?
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Clearly you missed one or two of my bullet points in the original post. The point is that this shouldn't be an issue to begin with, it shouldn't be something that the player has to take steps to fix because its default function is too annoying. The fact that this is the case means that something is wrong with this mechanic.
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I know that BHVR will change the struggle system eventually because there is no denying that it is exactly as you described it. However, when we will get to see this change is another story. BHVR is not best known for its speed of improvements. I can only hope they will prove me wrong and show us an updated struggle mechanic that does not require player action to stay alive.
And because I know BHVR is thinking about this, no, we do not want to see the struggling mechanic being replaced with Pyramid Head cage struggle system. While that would be a great improvement from what it is right now, it is not a real solution. Personally, I am fed up with having to do something to stay alive on the hook, can't I just observe my team in peace and relax for a bit?
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Its not about giving teammates hatch. People should be able to die if they want to whether it is because a game is hopeless, they don't want to be saved (Ex: Killer hard camping them at EGC w/ gates done) or an example I had just a few days ago where I had a killer who was using modded files... Or VPN/high latency killer which hit validation did not fix. If I play a Peruvian or Chilean with high ms I'd rather die on hook.
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No, players shouldn't be able to lol. Tbat's foolish. And it's more often used by crybabies who are triggered or bad teammates that just want to throw... or coordination for hatch.
This archaic style of "gameplay mechanics" needs to die. Quick.
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This. There are so many matches where we would have wound up winning if that one guy just hadn't given up, if we'd just had one more active player. People give up way too quickly, they suicide immediately when they see something they don't like. They need to be denied that option. If you decide to play DBD, and then you recant after you're in a game, then you need to take the DC penalty because that's what you did. That's what a hook suicide is.
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It is to remind you that you are playing Mario Party.
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I think they left it in so the survivor can purely die on 2nd stage on purpose
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