Singularity and Knight are Desperate for Polish
These are two killers I adore that just feel awful sometimes.
Knight's issues are easier to solve, as he has three add-ons that can solve his main problems--Knight, at base, sets guards up too slowly to feasibly create longer paths and catch survivors, and when his guards DO start to chase survivors, they're not likely to be very valuable. As such, he is practically required to run Call to Arms, Map of the Realm, or Dried Horsemeat, in any combination of the three in order to feel at all good to play. The fact setting long trails is such a kneecapped process also leads to the prevalence of bad Knights just dropping a guard in the middle of a loop every time--I'm not going to advocate for the removal of this strategy entirely, but I think it should be nerfed--maybe with a 1 second delay after starting the trail setting process before you can drop the guard. Implementing these three add-ons and the short delay should increase the frequency of people playing the Knight in a way that is actually at all interesting. [As an aside, I know people don't like the process of being chased by guards, but I wouldn't change that too significantly unless I was allowed to replace the banner system instead of just adding a new weakness onto the guards.]
Singularity's issues are more on the technical side--setting up biopods feels awful, targeting survivors with biopods is also really janky, and these aren't issues that are simple numbers changes, I'd imagine. But it's incredibly easy for Singularity's power to just, not work because a camera is slightly too behind a branch on a tree, something the Singularity could not account for because putting the biopod on the surface without stopping for twelve seconds was too finnicky. Cleaning these up--and, maybe increasing the range a biopod can target survivors from--would make him feel a lot better to play.
That's not my only issue with the killer, though. EMPs are far too plentiful, and too effective. They disable the killer's ENTIRE power by both disabling biopods and removing infection... At the same time, in a radius, so one survivor could cleanse the entire team and disable one or maybe even two biopods applying pressure all at once. I'd like for EMPs to be incapable of disabling biopods or cleansing other survivors of slipstream while the holder is infected themselves. I think injuring a survivor holding an EMP should maybe destroy the EMP, as a punishment for not using it more actively? It's also worth noting that EMPs are constantly being generated, even when every survivor is holding an EMP, so there's an endless supply of them at any given moment, more or less. Passive printing should either take longer in general, or should be halted when an EMP is taken from a case until the corresponding EMP is used. These changes would ideally prevent survivors from shutting the Singularity's entire power off reducing him to an M1 killer with no abilities to use.
Other than Singularity's biopod/EMP troubles, I think Overclock is a little underwhelming--At the very least in duration. Ball Glove could serve to be made basekit, as OC just feels unusable otherwise, either that or some more significant buff--maybe increased lunge distance--could be incorporated into the Overclock state to make the state's short duration actually justified. (Maybe Overclock could become stronger for every survivor actively slipstreamed, or teleporting to survivors could build a Genetic Development leveling system that makes Overclock or Slipstream more impactful. But that's more spitballing than a necessary change.)
Comments
I posted a long winded discussion on Knights issues and how to fix him. I’m just gonna link it to respond to yours since it’s a lot to have to retype that all every time. Everyone hates facing him but no one seems interested in discussing fixing them unfortunately. This is how I’d fix him per your topic.
I don't think preventing the Knight or other survivors from playing around a guard's targeted survivor is a good idea at all. Removing that makes him far less interactive on both sides, as well as probably just making Knight... Really bad.
As for the first suggestion, it'd be nice for applying pressure to generators and things, but I think that the guards getting buffed in relation to the length of their patrol path works better, both for chasing and as a more consistent way to buff applying pressure from afar. Guards already only barely catch survivors with their patrol radius.
I can see what you mean about less interaction, but the only interaction we’re losing is the Knight pinning the survivor with him and his guard and isn’t that the entire interaction we’re trying to prevent?
If we didn’t do that how would we solve that unhealthy part of his kit?
I figured the more interactivity we’d be gaining would be actually getting hits from well placed guards feeling rewarding. If they phased out we could also make his haste scale based on guard placement as well. Meaning giving him some strong chase on someone else while the guards focusing someone else.
That's not the unhealthy part of his kit. If you wanted to say something was unhealthy, the unhealthy part is that survivors can only meaningfully interact with guards in one way. Removing Knight from that equation makes him less fun for both sides and also bad.
Then how would you fix that problem?
Your changes are some QoL but don’t address any of the core issues.
Well, I think it would involve more of a full rework which I wasn't intending to suggest here, and I also think it's something of an overstated issue. I don't know if I could really think of anything that wouldn't either involve a massive overhaul to his power at a base level, which would be unnecessary, or something that might be too much or too little. Like, making it so pallet stuns get rid of them is a trade that is severely out of favor for survivors, but say, adding an item survivors could pick up outside hunts and use to kill guards would run into similar issues to Singularity, if possibly worse.
Maybe survivors could pick up the banner before it's fully charged and take a few seconds off the guard's hunt, meaning they could either take the easier, low reward version of the banner or risk waiting for it to fully charge. Though, this only really affects the Carnifex, as the banner spawns incredibly fast for the other two as it is. Maybe the method of getting rid of guards could be guard specific. I don't have any single solid suggestion I'd be satisfied with, not off the top of my head. I think keeping Knight from getting important QoL just because he has one issue--which is only an issue, I'd argue, because of how Knight is encouraged to drop guards without drawing a path right now--is a bad idea.
The singularity was on the road map to be polished up
That's good. He needs it a good bit. Hopefully they're actually impactful changes--Is that coming alongside the Twins rework or some time later?
Tbh I'm totally fine with your changes and the speed based on distance thing I was suggesting on their own, so I agree. I don't personally have much issue with the "unhealthy" part I was talking about, but more so trying to give a fair tick for tack if you will since any time I suggest Knight buffs people bring it back up and how they want it fixed and how they don't want him getting buffs till it is.
I want a knight rework so they’ll stop tunneling. Every knight I’ve ever gone up against tunnels so hard.
I agree my friend. It’ll likely be after twins. I reckon the second half of the year after the anniversary. However, if small enough it could be on his anniversary 😊