Should healthy hook grabs still be a thing?
Why or why not?
Comments
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Yes. Hooks rescues are supposed to be risky and eat up time for survivors. It's also thematic and fitting for killers to grab someone cold-blooded like that.
At the same time facecamping *can* be incredibly powerful and I face (haha) it in like 1in 5 matches as survivor. But you can bait hook grabs anyway so removing it won't fix the problem entirely. A new system needs to be in place to make facecamping less effective.
17 -
In this day and age it should be removed. Same for bloodlust.
36 -
I think it's fine. Sure it can be annoying, but during end game, its one of the last things a killer can do to get a kill if a team is coordinated. Now, if the killer is camping at 5 gens is where we run into problems.
8 -
They never work for me when I play killer, yet when I play survivor the killer always gets me with it. For all I care, delete it
2 -
Of course they should exist. Without it a single healthy survivor could dive bomb the hook without a second thought (and without a second wasted) ignoring the killer defending it.
Right now it creates mind game potential that should not be removed.
19 -
I say get rid of it.
It's something that punishes new players hard. Encourages facecamping. And it's something that's just a coinflip when any latency is involved.
People just try to bait it anyway which often leads to you baiting it 3 times while the killer just awkwardly stares at you to then just result more often then not in a normal hit anyway
Anything that involves awkwardly standing and waiting should be heavilly reduced or removed. Those things have a tendancy to just kill the otherwise high speed momentum feeling of the game
It's the same annoying waiting around that dead hard has
24 -
the ping component should be removed. i got grabbed far too often even though the other survivor has already unhooked and runs away.
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No. It just promotes camping and stand off like when happend with hatches before the rework to them.
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People will say it never works, has no impact, and survivors can play around it, then claim we should keep it in the game. Why? If it only works against newer players and for killers that have high ping, why should we keep it in? The only times unhook grabs impact my games is when a beginner doesn't bait the unhook and I grab them.
Or when I have newer teammates, who go for the unhook, get grabbed, and the game is pretty much over.
If you want to prevent survivors from escaping endgame, hook far away from the gate. Ensure someone is dead by the time gates are 99d. I just don't think this mechanic brings anything of value to the game. All it is is a huge carrot that incentivized killers to hang around hook and bait for a grab. It promotes boring gameplay.
"Baiting" the grab isn't a very fun mechanic either. Just like old Dead Hard. Just "wait it out".
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Well, just to nitpick, the "injured only" vault grabs are the outlier to the other "get caught during any action"-grabs.
For consistency, vault grabs should be performable on healthy survivors.
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I'd say that grabs should still be a thing, yet I would also add that if a survivor is grabbed whilst healthy, then if they somehow escape they should be healthy after. Afterall, the killer is grabbing then and not hitting then with a weapon. Same with injured.
A grab normally results in a hook anyway, so on a rare occasion a survivor does escape they can escape in the state they were grabbed in.
A killer who grabs a survivor who is healthy can choose to drop them, in which case the killer can throw them to the floor to cause then to become injured.
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That sounds kinda broken not gonna lie lmao
4 -
With all the second chance perks survivors have sure let's punish the killer some more.
There is almost no gen defence left and you want more with not being to grab?
No wonder a lot of killers camp.
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The problem with hook grabs is the game of chicken that it results in. Having survivor and killer just standing there by a hook trying to psyche each other out. It's ridiculous.
We removed hatch standoffs, we removed Eruption's stalemate, and with DH now not universally used in every chase that game of chicken is also vastly negated. Same needs to happen here.
Removing hook grabs wouldn't remove anything of value from the game. Instead of grabbing the survivor, you would smack them, and with the current hit cooldown, you would be guaranteed a second whack once the unhook was made. So without hook grabs, hook trades are still guaranteed. How is that not good enough?
As a survivor making the rescue, you are trading two of your health states for one on the unhooked survivor. The killer is still in credit here.
The bonus is that camping killers would not be rewarded with double hooks for camping, they would have to make do with a "mere" hook trade.
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They shouldn’t exist imo. It leads to a boring game of chicken and discourages altruism against camping which is bad
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They should remain. Killer is supposed to be able to exert power over one survivor once caught and there should be great risk involved for the rescuer. If anything, survivor is a team role and sometimes they may need to come together and have two people go for the rescue.
The only thing that needs to go is Bubbi Bois ability to completely remove the chance for an unhook. Survivors should always have a chance to rescue and it shouldn’t take the whole team.
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Agree on grabbing, disagree on bloodlust. Devs already tested that and it just took too long for m1 killers to feasibly catch up
2 -
This is the correct response to this topic.
All posters saying hook grabs on healthy survivors are healthy for the game need to give their heads a shake.
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I'm not sure. It's not fun for anyone to have a protracted game of Tapping Unhook, and most of the time it just ends in a trade anyway... but, even if it's not fun, maybe sometimes it's advantageous to the killer for unhooking to take a long time and/or psych people out. So I don't know.
1 -
Get rid of it. Lots of killers complained that the thing they didn't like about DH was having to run right behind a survivor and not hit them. Same logic for hook grabs, it feels utterly ridiculous to just stand there with the killer breathing done your neck trying to bait out a swing.
13 -
For consistency and balance, I think grabs should only be performable on injured survivors. Even if it was removed, a killer can still get a hook trade since the killer is able to down the unhooker regardless. The successful hit cooldown animation speed lines up almost perfectly with the base unhooking animation speed. Hook standoffs have never been fun either.
5 -
Yes. I'm a fan of not giving free saves. They should get punished for making bad calls. Survivors shouldn't just divebomb into a hook and get a hit at most. Being given a guaranteed hook trade (best case scenario for killer that is) is punishing killers and ultimately I think worse for the game. I'd rather have camping and such than potato random survivors just dive bomb and get us both killed.
I understand the stalemate not being fun but survivors do have a choice in engaging in it. They could go do a gen, heal someone, escape, open a gate, etc. They can also try baiting the killer away for a friend to get the save. You could body block for a friend to get a grab. There are several choices available.
I will say that the killer hovering over hatch is dumb. I do think that should automatically close if the killers stand over it for so long. Feels dumb as a survivor your choice is to sneak into hatch or work on 2 gens if they refuse to close hatch
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I love how killers whined about people saying "just wait it out" for dead hard and are now doing the exact same thing for hook grabs which create a similarly awkward situation for survivors. Removing hook grabs would kill facecamping with little risk and would not prevent killers from trading hooks. It's one of those things that only really works consistently on uncoordinated solo players anyway. A strong SWF can coordinate an unhook with proper bodyblocking without much issue. You can't do this in solo.
11 -
It's bull and everyone knows it, all it does is encourage face camping
13 -
No.
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I don’t see how removing this will prevent camping. All this will do it camping to secure a killer at end game way harder. There’s other ways to prevent camping at 5 gens.
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That's not the same. DH you must engage with as a killer at some point since your goal is the survivor while unhooking you don't have to engage in as a survivor. It's certainly wise to but you don't. You can still coordinate in solo play as well
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That's the problem with Favor The Killer in general! The game needs to move to server authority. I know the devs like to justify it because most FPS shooters use Favor The Shooter for their network philosophy but in a shooter, everyone is eventually the shooter. In DbD, only one person is The Killer who has a perpetual network advantage over all four survivors.
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pallets, famously something that survivors use when they're ignoring a killer
9 -
Grabs Vaulting stuff is something I don't think is needed
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I say no, and only because they are extremely ping dependent. Any contested hook play above 100ms becomes a 50/50 at best even if it looks good on your screen. We actually had a rule on my team that our player on Canada NA West couldn't be the one to make contested saves against teams from certain regions because his ping was consistently above 150ms and it was too risky. That's obviously not going to be a thing in pubs most of the time, but cross platform interactions have an inherent latency to them to begin with, and I do consistently see players around that 100ms mark in my region.
It's a skill interaction to a point (at or below 70ms) and a complete toss-up above 100ms. It's too impactful to be this ping dependent.
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No. Hook grabs only encourage and reward face camping.
7 -
Great way to make stealth and w-keying even more popular.
2 -
Bloodlust is still necessary until they get rid of the ridiculous near infinites in several of the main buildings (mother's dwelling, chapel, etc.). Or stop spawning jungle gyms into shack, into more jungle gyms.
7 -
Grabs should stay so BHVR can see how even killers that are not Bubba can easily face camp, completly deny the rescue of any camped survivor AND also get a free kill because another survivor dared try to save someone being held hostage by an uncounterable mechanic.
1 -
Yes and healthy window grabs as well.
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Next they want to prevent insta downs when unhooking a survivor. Why should a survivor take damage while unhooking anyways?
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I'm on the fence about this
On one hand:
Yes... cause it causes the Survivors to try and play it safe and gives the Killer a reward for timing it correctly
On the other hand:
No... cause "it's not fair" (says someone that has more hours playing Killer)
Side note:
Locker grabs are a thing so should we get rid of those as well??? Gen grabs as well???
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Not in the slightest, does absolutely nothing but make camping easier in an admittedly interesting but completely unnecessary way
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Hook grabs only incentivize facecamping. If the known outcome of a facecamp is repeated hook trades, it won't be successful, and done less. When people can gamble on a grab, and get it, they are rewarded disproportionately to the effort and skill involved. There is 0 skill to facecamping, and forces a garbage interaction based far far far more on latency than a mindgame between both sides. When I play with my friend on the other side of the states, I know I can go for the hook trades a lot better because I have minimum 100 latency. My start-stopping is unpredictable and forces a hook trade, which is always how the interaction should go. ( I also get hit by the Killer with a lot of bogus hits, but that's the risk in playing with friends.)
If a Killer deciding not to play the game and decides to force facecamping, they should only do so when they guaranteed they earned the pressure on the Survivors. If the Killer failed to injure would be rescuers in advance, or otherwise create an advantage for themselves, why should they deserve a reward for NOT playing the game? That would be like saying the corner crouching Claudette deserves a gate escape for not interacting with the Killer or the Gens and hiding out the 2 minutes after hatch is closed. "Yeah she touched a gen for 30s before she started hiding, so she deserves it" is what anyone in favor of hook grabs should logically be OK with for the Survivor equivalent. After all, she did a real good job preventing crows from appearing over her head.
Also anyone who says "don't go for unsafe rescues", I ask you who is in control of the 'safe' quality of the rescue. I'd say it exclusively lies in the hands of the Killer. If a Killer makes it always unsafe, then that is the equivalent of saying never rescue. Never rescue is the worst design for a multiplayer game. If it were a single player grand strategy game, sure, that's fine, but a multiplayer game where the desired gameplay is interaction between both sides, makes it bad.
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I'd be okay with removing hook grabs if there were an equivalent for being punished for attempting to make a grab on the killers face (such as exposed for a brief window etc). Not sure what's best though
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Why should facecamping be rewarded in the first place?
10 -
Not every situation is face camping when you can grab btw.
Plus, even as a survivor player you are just asking for people to dive dumb hook grabs (which was more of a thing prior to built in BT and ot was awful).
And on the other hand, why should survivor always be entitled to an unhook? There should be additional risk making a risky play. Survivors have a choice to engage in the unhook game where they can choose not to and prioritize the actual objective as well. Killers are protecting their own objective.
Facecamping is definitely already penalized, just not in the way people want. You get a lower score if you facecamp and if the survivors just do the gens rather than engage with the facecamping killer and the killer will get a 1k (~8000 score). Does it sucks being the camped survivor? Yes, but survivors don't have to play into it.
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It's mindboggling they are still in the game. Do nothing but encourage hardcamping, are vulnerable to latency and a coinflip at best even without. Create an awkward non-gameplay stand-off. Also lead to the hooked survivor getting animation-spammed, if they're in struggle stage, which is a grating experience. Still glitched after all these years, not allowing a third survivor to unhook for the duration of the animation.
The killer already gets a guaranteed down on hook trades (especially now without Dead Hard), and hardcamping is something that should have long been rebalanced anyway, there's no reason to reward facecamping with an even more game-deciding benefit. Mindbogglingly bad game design.
2 -
No, it should be removed
7 -
It definitely needs to be removed. You shouldn’t be grabbed while healthy when you’re going for a hook rescue.
4 -
Yep get rid of it. If a trade is worse case scenario for the camping killer that’s not bad at all.
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I would say hook grabs should be removed. If you are in a SWF then saving vs a camping killer doesn't matter if that mechanic is in the game or not. You can always get the save and never get grabbed by simply having a survivor body block the killer while the other saves. Removing it doesn't seem like there would be any major downside since the killer can still get a trade, and it would no longer be a grab or trade vs soloq. This would still make camping at certain times still valuable but not let them have the chance to massively snowball the game vs soloq teams by getting a grab.
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Non-hook grabs - Yeah, and I have no problem with any of those. (Gen grabs, sabo grabs, totems, chests, etc.) The main circumstance where hook grabs come into play is facecamping though, or at least some degree of camping. Yes, theoretically the Killer could run to the opposite corner of the map, chase the bush crouching Claudette back to the opposite corner (with the hooked Survivor), then grab when she tries to rescue, but that typically doesn't happen in realistic cases. At least some degree of camping must be present for a hook-grab to occur.
Hook Dives - Which is only possible when healthy. If the Killer cleverly uses their power, or spreads pressure correctly, they can negate this possibility entirely. Even in this circumstance where the Killer would be denied a hook grab, they still get a hook trade.
Survivor entitled to unhook - I would argue back why a Killer would be entitled to a hook being an automatic free-kill? Is a Killer entitled to a 4k either by slugging for it, or what if the game just ended on the final Survivor escaping to 'tell the tale' when the third Surv died? Neither side is entitled to a free win. This would make a Killer have to earn the kill moreso than they currently have to, (by forcing them to engage in the '3-strikes you're out' hook mechanic,) while fixing an edge-case problem. Removing hook-grabs wouldn't prevent the killer from slugging the entire team and hooking them. Also the risk has no back and forth, it is strictly Killer-sided. Other facets of the game have both sides have to risk something in order to gain something, and shouldn't be rewarded for doing nothing.
Facecamping's 'penalties' - The issue is how this is bad design. In a versus multiplayer game, the fun is typically driven through competitive interactions through opposite sides, or cooperative interactions with your side. Interactions with others is key, otherwise you could just play a single-player game. When a Killer facecamps, they deny interaction from the other side. The winning move is 'not to play', or more accurately hold M1 for 120/450s. I don't know about you, but I don't queue up to ONLY hold M1 for the sparkly generator lights. This means a Survivor craving fun, will likely try to risk a rescue. The thrill, is in the interaction. The Killer player is weaponizing or holding the fun hostage against the Survivors. This also is a low risk action. Typically risk should equal the reward. This is where people often make the claim 'optimize the fun out of the game', as this is a low risk high reward circumstance. Plus, many people have basic human empathy, and wish that their hooked Survivor teammate could 'play the game' also. Also most facecamps from the onset result in a 2k minimum, not a 1k, if the killer can abuse 1-shots. Heck, even in soloq with M1 killers they can get frequently get 2k+ with facecamping, due to the lack of coordination. Removing healthy hook-grabs is one way they could meaningfully address facecamping, without impacting any major other facets, such as 90s hook timers. The Survivors would know to just hook trade at 55-59s, and Killers won't have any more (meaningful) incentive to facecamp.
Also as I said in my previous post, hook-grabs are based more on latency, not even skill. I shouldn't have an advantage playing with a friend who lives somewhere else in dealing with unhooks. (Albeit, at the cost of chase lag hits.)
2 -
Non hook grabs- I agree with most of yours but the Vaulting grab is the worst one imo (worse than hooks even).
Hook dives- I disagree any killer can just counter it. Most killers don't have the ability to commit 3 hits by an exit gate (1 for unhooker, 1 on unhooked bodyblocking, and 1 more for either target). You don't need coms to coordinate that at all. I'd consider those to be very free saves if the killer can't capitalize on survivors making a bad move (doesn't have to be a grab, but there should be something above a basic hit).
Survivor entitled-not a free kill, they are on the hook so obviously the killer got them there. Getting a 1k or 2k is by no means a win by any measure. Someone being able to defend a hook is not the same discussion of "killers hold always get a 4k".
Penalize facecamping- yeah I agree it's not fun being facecamped or having a teammate facecamped, but that's just by design of the game unfortunately. If killers can't defend hooks anymore since most can't get 3 hits in such a short span of time there has to be compensation for this.
I'm all for getting rid of hook grabs if there is a good solution to punish bad unhooks (remove built in BT maybe? although the idiotic unhooker should be punished).
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