The Grand Weak Wrists Syndrome Theory

[Dietrich]

Well, I had a free day to experiment, so I spent quite a bit of time looking into the weak wrists phenomenon - the one where your weapon suddenly becomes wobbly and it feels as if you cannot deliver even half your usual striking power.

At first, like many others, I took it for a bug. A nasty one, at that. But to me it always seemed a little too systematic to dismiss as a random glitch.

What I had noticed before was that weak wrists seemed to appear either after a hand hit, or - much more often - after a clinch with a lot of hard wrestling and excessive movement. Especially when things got messy and I started making too many panicked motions. That led me to suspect that this "weakness" might be related to excessive mouse movement.

So, after roughly a hundred test matches against heavily armoured opponents with different mouse sensitivities, I think I can at least put forward a working theory:

The weak wrists phenomenon is directly related to overcommitting, excessive mouse movement, and/or overly high mouse sensitivity.

For about 180 hours, I had been playing on what I thought was a reasonably low sensitivity - roughly 2 millimetres from the visible minimum on the slider. Turns out, I may have been quite wrong.

So I lowered it further - to the point where the slider knob sits about 2 millimetres below the far-left bumper. The idea was simple: set it as low as possible while still being able to move the weapon fully from one extreme position to the other with a mouse movement that remains just within the edge of comfort. Because yes, sometimes you simply need to throw a quick, powerful swing. It should not be your default habit, but the option has to remain there.

Then I went testing. Mercenaries first, until I got bored of bullying them and moved on to Champions, because they are larger, heavier, and much more useful for this sort of abuse testing. Please do not report me to the Willies Rights Movement. I did it for science.

After about a hundred matches against heavily armoured opponents on the new lower sensitivity, I have yet to experience weak wrists syndrome again.

So at this point, I am increasingly convinced that weak wrists are tied, in one way or another, to overswinging, overcommitting, or simply moving the mouse too generously.

[Dietrich]

To all of that, I'd like to add one more thing. I have been accused often enough of acting as a developer apologist. Fair enough. But if the theory above later proves correct, I will be among the first to say: not cool.

Because if I am right, it would mean that in practice we only really need something like the lowest 5 percent of the available mouse sensitivity slider. And if I am not mistaken, the default sits somewhere around the 50 percent mark - an absurd sensitivity level that is usable by no one, unless perhaps one belongs to the School Of Cast-Iron Mouse.

That could mean one of two things: either the default sensitivity range was thrown together in the haste of a rushed release and then quietly forgotten, or someone involved has a remarkably devious and perverted sense of humour.

[Kush_Kamper]

Originally posted by Dietrich:

Well, I had a free day to experiment, so I spent quite a bit of time looking into the weak wrists phenomenon - the one where your weapon suddenly becomes wobbly and it feels as if you cannot deliver even half your usual striking power.

At first, like many others, I took it for a bug. A nasty one, at that. But to me it always seemed a little too systematic to dismiss as a random glitch.

What I had noticed before was that weak wrists seemed to appear either after a hand hit, or - much more often - after a clinch with a lot of hard wrestling and excessive movement. Especially when things got messy and I started making too many panicked motions. That led me to suspect that this "weakness" might be related to excessive mouse movement.

So, after roughly a hundred test matches against heavily armoured opponents with different mouse sensitivities, I think I can at least put forward a working theory:

The weak wrists phenomenon is directly related to overcommitting, excessive mouse movement, and/or overly high mouse sensitivity.

For about 180 hours, I had been playing on what I thought was a reasonably low sensitivity - roughly 2 millimetres from the visible minimum on the slider. Turns out, I may have been quite wrong.

So I lowered it further - to the point where the slider knob sits about 2 millimetres below the far-left bumper. The idea was simple: set it as low as possible while still being able to move the weapon fully from one extreme position to the other with a mouse movement that remains just within the edge of comfort. Because yes, sometimes you simply need to throw a quick, powerful swing. It should not be your default habit, but the option has to remain there.

Then I went testing. Mercenaries first, until I got bored of bullying them and moved on to Champions, because they are larger, heavier, and much more useful for this sort of abuse testing. Please do not report me to the Willies Rights Movement. I did it for science.

After about a hundred matches against heavily armoured opponents on the new lower sensitivity, I have yet to experience weak wrists syndrome again.

So at this point, I am increasingly convinced that weak wrists are tied, in one way or another, to overswinging, overcommitting, or simply moving the mouse too generously.

it was like this in the demo too for senstivity, i never had it past a 10th of the whole bar. ive tried 6 differnet DPIs and slider combos as im someone who likes to use a higher DPI, around 3200-4800 most of the time. for halfsword i had to make a seperate setting around 1800-2400 for better control. i figured that out sub 10hrs that the EA was the same way, the thing is the EA willie really does just have "weaker stats" so to speak. also so can get better results if you actually tune your DPI/sens to the weapon you are using. heavier weapons tend to actually benifit from higher sens lower DPI as an example. the limit for EA willies joints are lower then the Demo willie. as you said your hrs i kinda feel like i need to say mine lol, i got around 200hrs on the Demo and 150 in the playtest and i think around 60 hrs in the EA, so i think i know i little bit too lol. Dev apologist is hilarious like its somehow a crime to like the game or at least the concept and then supporting the devs instead of accusing them of crimes we have Zero evidence of. im sure we are both agree that the game has its share of problems, and if thats a yes then its stupid to call anyone a "dev apologist" lol. like they said they are focusing on a big content update and so far they havent given me any reason to doubt that. i just hope they are just not the best at english/western PR or media relations at all lol, kinda like No Mans Sky where it got hyped they had setbacks and they were all anti social devs working on the game with no PR experience because thats competely forgivable, i mean look at the game now lol.

[Sonofbop]

i bet my entire life and child if i restarted my game to 60kg with this knowledge id still have the same problem this only went away once i got stupidly strong and still does happen now and again with a precise low sensitivity controller.

[Dietrich]

Originally posted by Sonofbop:

i bet my entire life and child if i restarted my game to 60kg with this knowledge id still have the same problem this only went away once i got stupidly strong and still does happen now and again with a precise low sensitivity controller.

I didn't mean the characters with an overall low strength. That, I guess, is intentional phase of humiliation the devs think we all should go through.

[Sonofbop]

Originally posted by Dietrich:

Originally posted by Sonofbop:

i bet my entire life and child if i restarted my game to 60kg with this knowledge id still have the same problem this only went away once i got stupidly strong and still does happen now and again with a precise low sensitivity controller.

I didn't mean the characters with an overall low strength. That, I guess, is intentional phase of humiliation the devs think we all should go through.

yea........ but it still does happen tho rarely what pisses me off more tho now is that willie a lot of the times will not want to 2 hand a weapon i have to move the joysticks and shimmer for the prick to damn grab the weapon thats does need fixing

[Dietrich]

Originally posted by Sonofbop:

yea........ but it still does happen tho rarely what pisses me off more tho now is that willie a lot of the times will not want to 2 hand a weapon i have to move the joysticks and shimmer for the prick to damn grab the weapon thats does need fixing

Yes, and that is exactly why it would be good to arrive at at least some understanding of why this happens and what, if anything, the game is trying to tell us by it (if it does). Could you try to remember when exactly it happens? What was your character doing just before you noticed it?

Because so far my theory is only that - a theory. It would be good to understand what exactly triggers it, and then determine whether this is a bug, a poorly balanced mechanic, or something else.

[Sonofbop]

Originally posted by Dietrich:

Originally posted by Sonofbop:

yea........ but it still does happen tho rarely what pisses me off more tho now is that willie a lot of the times will not want to 2 hand a weapon i have to move the joysticks and shimmer for the prick to damn grab the weapon thats does need fixing

Yes, and that is exactly why it would be good to arrive at at least some understanding of why this happens and what, if anything, the game is trying to tell us by it (if it does). Could you try to remember when exactly it happens? What was your character doing just before you noticed it?

Because so far my theory is only that - a theory. It would be good to understand what exactly triggers it, and then determine whether this is a bug, a poorly balanced mechanic, or something else.

randomly somtimes a swing and no not a fast one sometimes literally just pressing the button for him to 2 hand it and he simply doesn't like im just sitting their waiting for him to grab it with his other hand and somtimes he will grab it eventually orrr ill have to move the weapon into his hand its probably one of if not the most annoying thing in this game rn.

it ruins the pace of combat and somtimes i have to retreat to fix it if their using a polarm or polaxe if its anything else i sit their and fix it while they tickle me.

before i simply thought it was a strength issue but it definitely isn't.

[Dietrich]

Originally posted by Sonofbop:

randomly somtimes a swing and no not a fast one sometimes literally just pressing the button for him to 2 hand it and he simply doesn't like im just sitting their waiting for him to grab it with his other hand and somtimes he will grab it eventually orrr ill have to move the weapon into his hand its probably one of if not the most annoying thing in this game rn.

it ruins the pace of combat and somtimes i have to retreat to fix it if their using a polarm or polaxe if its anything else i sit their and fix it while they tickle me.

before i simply thought it was a strength issue but it definitely isn't.

I think you may be missing the point here. I was not talking about losing the grip or letting go of the weapon - that is a separate issue and beyond the scope of this topic.

What I was referring to was this:

your weapon suddenly becomes wobbly and it feels as if you cannot deliver even half your usual striking power.

That has nothing to do with losing the grip (presumably). I believe that belongs to an entirely different mechanic.

[Lateau0]

Hey, Dietrich. This post actually helped me a bit. I don't know about lower sensitivities preventing limp wrists, but it did help me with accuracy, so thanks for that.

By the way, you can spin greatswords of 2 to 3 kilograms like montantes if you have 30 to 40 percent sensitivity.
https://cdn.steamusercontent.com/ugc/18138648482114454778/2BD02E726F22072E4C0CBD33EBE67986496CEED0/

[Sonofbop]

Originally posted by Dietrich:

Originally posted by Sonofbop:

randomly somtimes a swing and no not a fast one sometimes literally just pressing the button for him to 2 hand it and he simply doesn't like im just sitting their waiting for him to grab it with his other hand and somtimes he will grab it eventually orrr ill have to move the weapon into his hand its probably one of if not the most annoying thing in this game rn.

it ruins the pace of combat and somtimes i have to retreat to fix it if their using a polarm or polaxe if its anything else i sit their and fix it while they tickle me.

before i simply thought it was a strength issue but it definitely isn't.

I think you may be missing the point here. I was not talking about losing the grip or letting go of the weapon - that is a separate issue and beyond the scope of this topic.

What I was referring to was this:

your weapon suddenly becomes wobbly and it feels as if you cannot deliver even half your usual striking power.

That has nothing to do with losing the grip (presumably). I believe that belongs to an entirely different mechanic.

ok if u didn't care why did u ask me to remember what i was doing before it happened of which i explained to u.

i just got reminded of a bug that i hated yea it didn't really have anything to do with ur post i just don't get why u said all that for u to just be like lolz i didn't ask.

maybe im just confused here it just seems that way.

[Dietrich]

Just an observation - managed to got these weak wrists even with lowerd sensitivity. Again, happened after quite nervous wrestling (with the opponent's legs trapped between my poleaxe and my arms holding it with a short grip), with some wide mouse movements. At least we see some system here... I think.

[roran.martin]

wait you didnt notice it was excessive mouse movement right away (not tryna be a ♥♥♥♥ so if it comes off that way srry)

[Dietrich]

Originally posted by roran.martin:

wait you didnt notice it was excessive mouse movement right away (not tryna be a ♥♥♥♥ so if it comes off that way srry)

I had my suspicions, but suspicion is not proof.

Also, I previously rarely used thrust control (alt) to deliver strikes, except for actual thrusts. I relied much more on mouse movement instead. Once I started adopting the "Alt-strike" technique, the correlation between weak wrists and excessive movement became much harder to ignore.

That said, we still can't claim for certain that excessive mouse movement causes weak wrists. None of this is documented anywhere. For now, it is still just a theory based on observation.

[akdkdp]

Hey, thank you for sharing your research on the topic, very interesting read my man. The limp wrist syndrome is one of the reasons (another one is butter fingers) why I tried really hard to make polearms work and just failed miserably.

However, I don't think it's entirely dependent on excessive movement but rather general pressure on the wrist. Worth mentioning wearing a shield on the forearm breaks the left wrist and makes it incapable of thrusting with mid weight polearms from the opposing side or just raising to high guard without letting go. Also it's not player-specific, I observed multiple cases of AI failing to wind up an overhead with heavier polearms.

It's funny that you mentioned the alt-strike. It's a staple of my style and I can confirm the issue is very pronounced. I myself developed this technique during playtest and very much fond of it due to much more precision and control over the tip while also getting seamless transition between strikes and thrusts.

[Dietrich]

Originally posted by akdkdp:

However, I don't think it's entirely dependent on excessive movement but rather general pressure on the wrist. Worth mentioning wearing a shield on the forearm breaks the left wrist and makes it incapable of thrusting with mid weight polearms from the opposing side or just raising to high guard without letting go. Also it's not player-specific, I observed multiple cases of AI failing to wind up an overhead with heavier polearms.

That is a very interesting addition about shields.

My character wears a targe on the left hand, and I don't seem to have any issues because of that, so I assume you mean a different shield type.

Recently, I have even seen the same "buggy" juddering movement on an AI weapon - the one where the weapon looks as if it is being repeatedly resisted by some invisible counter-force. Instead of one smooth swing, the motion breaks into a series of small jerks.
That, to me, looks like a genuine bug. It is also much harder to pin down, apart from the possibility that it may again be triggered by some form of hand or wrist trauma.