http://dbd.game/killswitch
How to Rework “Wiggling”
First, the numbers I use are merely suggestions to illustrate the idea.
Ok, so you go down, get picked up, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, and hook. 90% of the time wiggling is futile, and only serves to wear out your gaming equipment and finger ligaments. I have seen numerous posts where people experience physical pain from this, as well as from struggling on the hook.
Wiggling, however, is an important mechanic and needs to remain in the game. For this reason I propose an alternative interaction.
- Wiggling is automatic.
- Automatic Wiggling progress is slower than the current speed (say 5%-10% slower? Btw remember what I said about numbers up above).
- As you’re being carried, you are blasted with a new type of very difficult series of skill checks.
- You get 2 skill checks on the screen at once: one on the left, one on the right. Hit them with M1/M2 (or L1/R1 for PS4. Not sure what Xbox buttons would be called.)
- Each time you hit or miss a skill check, a new one immediately appears to replace it.
- Each time you are successful, you add a bonus 4% to the progress of your Wiggle meter.
- Because one skill check will often be complete before the other, it won’t be long before they are appearing at non-simultaneous intervals.
- If, for some strange or strategic reason you decide you don’t want to wiggle, you can hold the action button (ie whatever button it is you press for Dead Hard) to prevent any wiggle progress from automatically occurring.this will also prevent skill checks from appearing so that you don’t become annoyed.
Why do I like this idea? It maintains the frantic “fight for your life” feel that the original mechanic is striving for, but it doesn’t involve mindless control input and extreme muscle repetition. The button presses are now timed and exact, but the fast, in-your-face pace of these continuous double skill checks will leave you mentally exhausted when it’s over!
If this were to prove successful, perhaps some variation could also be implemented for “Struggling” on the hook!
Comments
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You think why struggling and wiggling isn't automatic? Because you fight for your life. Wiggling is not ment to let you escape from killer's grasp most of the time. Wighling is forcing the killer to hook survivor. If he don't do that, then survivor can wiggle free.
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wiggling is fine as is.
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I think you saw the word “automatic” on my first bullet point and stopped to type your reaction. Believe me, I understand. You see the same ideas over and over and get sick of them. But trust me, this one is different.
I suggested automatic struggling because you, the player, will be very busy with something else during that time. My idea still very much maintains the “fight-for-your-life” feel, and perhaps even enhances it. Please, read the rest and tell me what you think.
Sadly, many of us don’t agree. Unless you’re in your teens or early 20’s, you have likely endured a Repetitive Stress Injury at some point. Trust me, RSI’s are a real thing (look it up) and the mindless button mashing and stick movement (PS4) involved in “wiggling” and “struggling” can be downright painful.
Do you know how to recover from an RSI? Stop playing games or doing really anything at all with your hands for a couple weeks. The movements required to enjoy this game can aggravate this and put many people over the edge where they’re now unable to do anything they enjoy for a while.
All I’m suggesting here is that we keep the game mechanic, ultimately enhance the intensity level, but make each button input actually mean something.
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This game is unbalanced at high ranks alredy. Red ranks survivors will hit those skillchecks all the time, and it will make struggling for them much faster.
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You may be right. However, if a player can consistently hit a steady stream of dual skill checks, then I say they’ve earned whatever bonus they get from the effort. I like the idea of player skill having some impact on a situation like this.
If it’s too unfair for the killer, make success zones smaller, or perhaps allow the killer to see the wiggle progress bar. “Do I reeeeeeeally want to make a run for the basement? That bar is jumping quickly. Maybe this nearby hook is the better bet.”
One final point is that I see this argument all the time. “The red ranks can handle it. Red ranks would find it easy. Red ranks will just SWF voice chat around such and such mechanic.” My response to this is that red ranks are good. Let them be good. Build the game around the mid-level players, who are the biggest part of the base. They buy outfits just like the Reds, so this doesn’t lose money for the company. If you’re always trying to make things highly challenging for the top players, you end up making them nearly impossible for the remaining 90%.
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You say you would like the idea of player's skill having some impact on the situation like this. But survivors alredy have, It depends on player's skill if he end up downed or not.
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Make it so that wiggling is just holding down a button, same as running or crouching or working on a gen. Skill checks or anything more seems unnecessary. But something to stop the physical strain on people's hands and the stress it puts on controllers would be a welcome change.
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Yes! Ending the strain would be a very welcome change indeed!
I have to disagree on the skill check part though. Remember, this is meant to be a struggle for your life, fighting to prevent a large metal hook from piercing your shoulder! I’m sure that’s why the wiggle mechanic is in its current state. You need to feel frantic pressure.
My dual skill check idea maintains the frantic pressure, which is important to the overall experience of the game. However, rather than mindless movement, it is strategic button presses. This eases pressure on the hands, but not on the mind!
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I can see that. If the wiggle meter is slowed down and hitting the skill checks would be akin to keeping it at the current speed but no faster, then I'm cool with it. But the slower speed + skill checks should make it neither faster nor slower than it currently is. It should be balanced just right to keep it equal to its current state.
The most important thing though is to prevent physical injuries on players. If I had to choose between keeping the frantic pressure or preventing RSI, I'd go with the latter.
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I agree that the shoulder struggle should be more than just wiggling a stick or bashing a button.
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You are correct, of course. By now you see my overall goal though. Ease the amount of control input while maintaining the intensity of the situation. How it’s done doesn’t really matter to me so much, so I am certainly open to any suggestions.
In my idea, I figured reducing the overall base wiggle speed would help compensate for the skill check bonuses (All my numbers are editable btw) while still allowing the player to have some involvement in the struggle.
Again, feel free to toss out any suggestions, even if they’re off the top of your head and not fully thought out. This goes for you and anyone else. Maybe we can hash out a solution that’s worth calling in a dev for consideration.
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It’s hard to say in terms of speed, because of course hitting more skill checks gives you more of a boost. If a change like this is made, it needs to be fair. I can see the torrent of complaints already if survivors have to hit all the skill checks just to maintain the current speed.
I would say something along the lines of hitting 75% of them gives you current speed, with the remainder earning you some bonus. This is off the top of my head, but that seems fair. The devs would need to test and fine tune the implementation of this.
Your final thought hits the nail on the head! If we can prevent damage/injury with a change like this, I think BHVR would be wise to consider such an alternative!
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I would think that hook distance and wiggle progress speed are pretty finely tuned, so any boost to wiggle speed could give experienced survivors who easily hit great skill checks an advantage that, given they're experienced enough to hit great skill checks, they probably don't need. Instead of a speed bost, the skill checks could look like the Autodidact skill checks, keeping survivors on their toes but not being difficult to hit.
One of the things that adding skill checks will do is bring up the question: do killer perks/abilities affect them? If the skill checks give a speed boost greater than the current wiggle speed, it would basically be required for things like the Doctor's Madness, Hex: Lullaby, and Unnerving Presence to affect the skill checks.
So, I guess the question is, would survivors rather have no speed boost or would they rather have wiggling be affected by killers' skill check perks/abilities?
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That’s a good point. Might be worth polling the community to see which form they’d prefer. Killer perks could potentially be devastating here, bringing Huntress Lullaby to primetime usage!
I agree with the look you suggested for skill checks, being similar to autodidact and having no “great” portion to hit. The zones should pretty small though.
I still think that even for skilled survivors, timing 2 skill checks at the same time would be hard to maintain flawlessly. Especially when one is a fast skill check and one is slower, causing the next round to appear in a staggered fashion. Your eyes will be all over the screen trying to get these just right!
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If people are experiencing physical pain from wiggling, they're doing it wrong. You don't have to mash the buttons like your life depends on it. Just rock back and forth between them. You only need to hit each side 2-3 times a second to get 100% wiggling speed. Of course this is discounting people with actual physical disabilities who have difficulties with repetitive actions, but I'm not convinced that anything short of fully automated wiggling would fix this issue for those people unfortunately.
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On a controller, you have to mess with the right joystick. It can be physically taxing on a person's thumb and it's bad for the controller. Trying to do it with your palm instead of your thumb isn't a good alternative and is still bad for the controller.
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I couldn't comment on how taxing that might be since I've never played with controller, so I'll take your word for it. In that case, perhaps a simple interim solution would be to change the default controller wiggle action to the bumpers instead of the joystick, which would be a lot more similar to the PC mechanic and therefore apparently less painful to execute.
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Can't change the default controller wiggle action. It's not given as an option.
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Sorry, I should have been clearer. I wasn't suggesting that the players remap the controls themselves, but that the devs change it as a quick interim solution to the pain issue.
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Ah, okay. Yeah, changing the controls for it might be a good interim solution. Hitting the bumpers might not be as problematic as say having to continuously press the X button to struggle on the hook (another issue that they need to look at). Hard to be sure without trying it, of course.
Completely unrelated to the wiggle thing, but it would be nice if they'd also let people turn off the touch button inverting the controls. I can't imagine many people actually find that useful; it mostly gets hit by accident. Just wanted to get that in there, in case the devs are listening.
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