Mashing buttons to break-free from enemy is getting very old

Does anyone else think the whole "mash this button 20 times as fast as you can" to break-free of an enemy hold on the player is very old. It was an interesting concept when it came out in 2004. Now it is just over-used and annoying to have this in every single FPS game I play.
Maybe it's just me, but I loathe this game mechanic. It reduces the enjoyment I have of the game.

There are some games where this is unavoidable. The enemy will spawn behind you without warning and grapple you. Why do developers keep doing this?

 

One of my favorite things in gaming!

 

What do you suggest then...?

 

Why not just a single button press to melee and break-free? Why do I have to press the button quickly 10-20 times? IMO it makes no sense.
I struggle pressing the controller buttons fast enough, which is mainly why I have a gripe with this game mechanic.

 

You think mashing buttons to break free from a hold started in 2004? You apparently never played Street Fighter 2.

Developers keep doing this because it has been a tried and true mechanic for over 25 years, and people love banging on stuff frantically.

 

Street Fighter 2 didn't really benefit from waggling much. Track and field however...

 

The point is to make you feel the struggle of the character by making you mirror the effort and have some stake in the action.

Although it's kinda plain, good struggle has minor variation and are mini high stake story with constant shift of power balance, linear struggle are rarely interesting visually. If I where to implement such a scene and keep the core idea, I would had multiple stakes and sequences that would cycle very quickly. The classic one is pushing back the opponent while trying to get a weapon, it's a small management where you have to push back just enough yet save enough energy to get the knife, first sequence focus on the struggle, you push back the enemy just enough after it almost over power you, then the pan is introduce by a shift of the camera shoot and you have to balance pushing back vs reaching the pan, then you get the upper hand and now the enemy is struggling against you. Basically the problem is storytelling.

 

It's an excellent way to sell more controllers too...

 

I'm currently following these "hacks" to overcome lack of button pressing skill

 

One timed press and that's it.

See any throw-reversal mechanic in a fighting game.

 

Because it's established and easy.
I thought about something like this - a little similar to fight night round2. The triggers and bumpers could be considered hands and legs, the thumb sticks could be the direction/motion of each limb corresponding to the depressed button (trigger / bumper) so as to use counters for martial arts, combat mechanics, fighting games, and yes - breaking free from bad guys. That would be so complex -

Probably why they use mash button 20 times to get free.

Nobody beat me at the running sections of that game.
I used the tried and true short pencil cheat! On top of middle finger below pointer/ring finger. Apply pressure with ring finger - Tap as fast as you can on your pointer finger with other hand. So fast!
I sucked at the other sections, pole vault and hammer throw.

 

This.

I think it's stupid too. Why bother implementing enemy grapple attacks if the player counter is just "mash" button. What does anybody get from that?

I think the first game that made QTE's a big thing was Shenmue. Correct me if I'm wrong. I know they may have existed before that, but I think it was Shenmue on the dreamcast that made them a major part of the gameplay.

But in Shenmue, the QTE's were pretty challenging -- or at least I remember struggling with them way back when -- and it wasn't dumb "press A repeatedly to do lots of stuff". So I think in a story driven game, thoughtfully designed QTE scenarios are acceptable. Assuming the story is actually worth discovering. Otherwise who wants to play whack-a-mole?

 

QTE incredibly heavy on dev times.

 

It's a respectable attempt at emulating a situation where the person in question is mainly exerting effort, and not necessarily complex technique, to overpower someone else. Allow me to expand upon what was already asked. How else do you intend to replicate a situation where the main challenge is simply pushing back and building up strength and overpowering someone? It depends on how the game implements it of course, but in some of the situations I've seen it's mainly used in these types of situations. I recall seeing it in some melee action games where a couple of characters cross swords, and it fits there too.

I won't say I like it, but it fits.

Also,

Lol.

 

I play video games on consoles only and those sequences are normally "wiggle analog-stick", which kind of makes sense to me, as it "simulates" your body actually going left/right to break free.

 

An option to switch it to this:

The button mashy type QTEs are bad for people with RSI issues and make the game inaccessible to a number of people with physical disabilities who would otherwise be able to play the game (that's at least what I remember reading on a site about game accessibility issues as one of the bigger and easiest to fix showstoppers for those players). Even a notoriously hard game like Dark Souls 3 has you escaping from being held by one of those blobby things that hang on the ceiling and drop onto you with just one button press (or even fully automatic, I don't know). Button mashing is not a fun test of skill, it's just dumb imho.

Heat Signature has a fun twist on the "panic QTE" when your ship crashes where a list of 4 or so damaged systems pops up with a randomized list of "hold X to fix Y" and "DON'T press Z!", so you quickly have to read through the information and hold the right buttons (no mashing) without pressing any of the wrong buttons. So it has both the panic element and something very deliberate about resolving it.

 

Can't stand this type of thing. It's immersion-breaking and skill-less. How about a series of timed presses where each one corresponds to moving to a better wrestling position, and ending with a punch or something. Sitting there hammering on a button like a starving rat looks, and is, stupid.

 

I think people aren't timing how quickly the bar goes up vs how quickly the button is mashed. Likely, it's time based and only needs a tap every half a second (regular more important than speed). People will mash at the maximum speed because they think it will go faster than say, the minimum period of 2.5 seconds, when it's perfectly OK to press it 5 times.

I've personally recognised this relaxed nature in most AAA games I've played that have it. It's just people get a bit more frantic than they need to, which is kind of the feeling such a tapping hopes to inspire. Probably, everyone taps 2-3 times faster than the maximum effective rate of tapping.

GTA5 requires you tap a button regularly to cycle or run. In my testing, it does not get more effective to mash the button faster than half a second per press. Certainly, older games did not have a cap on how effective your tapping speed could be.

 

I've seen both, there certainly are games (AAA too) where I've failed the button mashy QTEs in spite of legit trying to win them. I can't press very rapidly with my thumb. When I want to "make sure" I get it, I have to let go of the right side of the controller and use my index finger to press the button. There's no way to convince me this is a great mandatory feature in a game. If it was optional I wouldn't complain.

That's even dumber and caused me quite a bit of very unneccessary thumb joint pain. It adds nothing to the game but tedium and pain. GTA5 even has a side mission where you need to do this for minutes because it's a bike race that you can't win otherwise. Red Dead Redemption had much of it too. If you dig it that's cool, but it should be optional because these things are nothing but annoying to people like me.

 

Sounds like an autofire joypad will be very helpful indeed! But if we go with your argument, we also need to make any form of timing optional because everyone has different competency here too. At what point does the game just become easy mush to interact with?

I totally get the RSI thing, I can no longer do some of the better SF combos and I used to be able to. I don't think the game should change though.

 

Neither do I because the whole point of that game genre is the competitive test of abilities. I don't think that's remotely the case for games like GTA, nor do I think that mindless repetitive button mashing is a sensible or fun skill to test.

I think you know that wasn't what I want, I picked Dark Souls as an example for a reason.

 

Also make sure your TV is set up right. Some TVs have a small delay between receiving a picture and displaying it, which makes any QTEs impossible to beat, because the timer is almost over before the prompt appears.

In general I hate QTEs and button mashing. I haven't seen a single game that wouldn't be better without simply removing them. Don't replace them with anything. If you absolutely must have them, run with hold down button instead of mash button repeatedly.

 

I don't know about that....

I think rhytm-based timing approach where you need to press the key when corresponding symbol passes through marker area is okay.

Either way it depends on the genre.

The problem with QTE, for example, is that they completely distract player from what is actaully happening on the screen. So, instead of looking at the amazing monster your designers made, the player will be staring at button symbol. It is really disruptive for cutscenes too, because rather than watching the cutscene, you wait for some damn QTE pop up again.

I think for many scenarios "one button press" is the way to go. This worked as throw reversals in games like Mortal Kombat, for example.

Another interesting idea was in DOA. Basically in DOA you can counter ANY attack (almost any attack) with a hold/thorw, if you guess what kind of attack that is and perform correct counter to it. Basically, there are high, mid and low attack (and it isn't really obvious which is which), and you need to perform high, mid, low hold/throw to counter them, if you succeed you damage your opponent isntead of taking damage. This result in interesting gameplay with "mind games" when dealing with a human opponent.

 

This is a good point. One way to kind of circumvent it is to come up with a sort of rule for what each button does.

Like, at the very beginning of Assassin's Creed 2 you play as Ezio as a baby, and you have to move your head, your arms (offensive and non-offensive arm), and then legs. If a game developed this kind of language and communicated it clearly to the player, you could to some extent make the QTE more understandable.

You could probably go a step further and provide different reactions to different button presses--pressing the "leg" button causes your character to try to kick another person, or jump to avoid an obstacle, while the hand causes them to punch an advesary or try to push the obstacle out of the way. If you worked on that for a while you might have something pretty dynamic.

But anyway, the idea is to develop a language with your controls like AC did (as well as plenty of others, like character action games for example) so their use in a high-pressure situation is intuitive.

 

I like it because it mirrors the panic your character would be feeling and forces you to be similarly frantic.

Along with mouse based FPS control and the drag and drop bag system, it's among the few gaming tropes that are perfect.

 

I feel like it precisely fails to deliver any sense of panic. As soon as I get the button prompt, "press X repeatedly to break free", I think, "oh, nothing to worry about, my thumbs work."

Whereas if an enemy grapple meant certain doom and absolutely must be avoided in the first place, or at least half health decreased, or I knew that a complex button combo would be necessary to avoid instant death, then I would feel panicked, or at least stressed.

I guess it comes down to your preference as a gamer. I think more casual inclined gamers, or those who want to experience a story and perhaps vicariously believe they are the hero character or in the given situation, they might only need a small prompt like this to help them imagine they are in the enemy clutches and struggling to break free.

But me, I have a poor imagination, so unless the game actually threatens me with lost progress if I don't think fast and perform something that requires a small degree of finesse, I just feel like its a pointless thing.

 

If you are looking for alternatives, I felt the last chance mechanic in Shadow of Mordor worked well. Basically you had to position the cursor inside a small box within a time limit. The more times you used last chance, the smaller the box gets.