Dead by Daylight Finally Removing “Awkward” Camping Mechanic

Dead by Daylight’s developer update for July was shared this week with some good news for Survivor players (and perhaps Killer players, too). The hook grab minigame where players dance around a hooked Survivor while a Survivor tries to unhook their ally without getting grabbed and the Killer tries to time the grab correctly will soon be a thing of the past because hook grabs are being removed entirely. Behaviour Interactive said as much on Tuesday and said it hopes that this change reduces some of the “awkward” gameplay that’s been seen in these sorts of scenarios.

For those who haven’t seen this situation play out too often and aren’t sure what the fuss is about, the clip below featuring Dead by Daylight player Otzdarva shares some insights into the issue. If you don’t want commentary, you can skip to around 40 seconds in to see what the awkward gameplay looks like when Killers are trying to time their hook grab and Survivors are trying to bait a normal melee attack so that they can take the hit unhook the Survivor while the Killer is recovering from their basic attack. The clip is 10 months old at this point which should give you an idea of how long Otzdarva and others have been against this mechanic.

Otz Explains how Grabs should not be a thing on Healthy Survivors .
byu/Key_Limit_2637 indeadbydaylight

Behaviour now agrees that this little hook grab dance shouldn’t be something that players should have to put themselves through, so the answer to that is to remove hook grabs entirely. “Facecamping Killers” will obviously be affected by the change, but Behaviour warns that Survivors won’t be able to get away 100% of the time either. Since there are no hook grab mind games to be played, Killers will still have an opportunity to slug a healthy Survivor twice if the Survivors aren’t fast and efficient.

“In this next update, we are removing grabs from unhooking Survivors,” Behaviour said. “In practice, this means that the awkward mindgame when unhooking has been eliminated. Be warned, however: You still are not safe while unhooking. Though you may succeed in rescuing the hooked Survivor, the Killer will still be able to hit you twice before you can make your escape. In most cases, you will trade your safety for your friend’s.”

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This change and others discussed in the developer update will be added to the test servers this week for players to try out before the update goes live for everyone else in the next few weeks.