What is the rationale behind the wiggle buff?

I recently had a hand injury, which made me appreciate accessibility options in games. I had difficulty using my left hand and had to turn on accessibility options in nearly every game I played. These options are so crucial to people, so I fully support them. And if anyone cares, my hand is fully recovered now.

First off, to be fair to the original poster, they're not asking about why the devs put in skill checks on Wiggles. I don't think they're upset about that. Nor are they upset about Great skill checks reducing the time, per se. What they are calling a "buff" is that, hypothetically, if you hit every great skill check you will Wiggle out 1 second faster. In other words, the current system has a 16 second timer to escape, and under the new system the time can do down to 15 seconds if you hit every Great skill check. So the question is "why didn't they make that so the average time to escape is still 16 seconds?"

I think the answer to that question is possibly that when you say the survivors are escaping more quickly you're assuming they're hitting Great skill checks and never missing checks entirely. However, at least for new to average players, the chances of missing some Good skill checks are non-negligable. For them this change is actually a nerf, it will be harder for them to escape in 16 seconds hitting skill checks than it is to escape under the current system by just hitting alternating keys rapidly or wiggling the joystick. It's only potentially a buff for people who can consistently reliably hit Great skill checks which is probably a minority of the player base.

In other words it might be a very slight buff to a small subset of the playerbase, but for most it's either no impact at all (assuming they hit Good checks reliably but not Great ones) or it's a nerf (if they have trouble hitting Good checks consistently.)

If you want to make a real accessibility feature you make an option to wiggle with only holding a button down. That would really help.

Like many people the skillchecks are for accessibility which is completely fine and should be encouraged but I don't understand the great skillchecks at all. Even if it only shaves a second off wiggling it's still going to encourage people to make macros for the game and get all sweaty and tryhard which is gonna be annoying to say the very least.

Nah, keep great skill checks so survivors can get more survival points. An easier way to get survival points has been long awaited. Just remove the buffed progress.

The sad thing is, there's an easy, smart way to resolve this entirely but BHVR doesn't seem to consider their own changes!

Instead of the Skill-check changes to Wiggle and the 6% buff for Survivors if they hit all Great skillchecks, why not this?

Have Wiggle be one of the actions that can use the brand-new optional Toggle mode.

Survivors with accessibility issues? Select Toggle mode and you can wiggle as well as anyone else without hassle - Win!

Survivors who like the oldschool wiggle? Leave the optional setting as "Classic" - Win!

Killers who won't see any difference whatsoever and don't face an unnecessary nerf? - Win!

BHVR gets to demonstrate that they can accommodate those with accessibility issues without changing game balance - Win!

If 1 second is insignificant then why add it?

Anyone who says 1 second won't help never screamed, the bar is at 99.999% [wiggle], as the killer hooked them. All those post from a few years ago about "hook vacuum" were clearly from survivors at 50% wiggle. 🙄

Sure some maps have close hooks but some map you can barely reach a hook before a survivor wiggles free. RPD, Haddonfun, and some instances of Midwitch for example.

Bottom line denying killers hooks will incentivise slugging and bleedout. Survivors wiggling out should only occur if other survivors get involve by block/perks or the killer gets greedy with their hooks.

BHVR can make wiggling have skill checks without decreasing the time killer have to hook. They didn't extend hook struggle time with great skillchecks, why do it here?

New players ?

Yeah, the question they asked was "What was the rationale behind the wiggle BUFF". Not "What was the rationale behind changing the wiggle mechanic". If you can't even read what you're typing yourself, I'm not surprised you couldn't understand the title correctly.

Side note: Super cool that they're being considerate about players with physical impairments. (And the bonus of not destroying players' controllers/keyboards).

People who think the 1 second doesn't matter have clearly never gotten/denied escape from a hook solely by the hook vacuum animation.