My Feedback on Judgement
As soon as I saw what the grimoire was about I was instantly hooked. I am pleased to say that overall I adore the chapter, the theming, the art and, my favorite part, the killer. Firstly, I want to thank the devs for such a cool experience, seeing the process, I hope we get something like this again at some point in the future.
Now, I would like to give feedback from my perspective, which comes from both watching people be proficient at judgement and playing the judgement myself to varying degrees of success. According to the stats page, I have currently 5.6 hours and 37 matches of judgement played. Make of that what you will.
First the positive:
- General Power: Love it. I love how it controls. I love that it is difficult. I love that slowly, as you get better with it, you start feeling more comfortable and start thinking about other aspects of the game. Honestly it kinda reminds me of learning how to ride a motorcycle. At first I thought the spacing between releasing the clutch enough to accelerate and too much that I stalled the engine was so precise and finicky, it seemed impossible, and then the more I got used to it, the more I could do it without thinking, feel the nuance in doing it and start thinking about other aspects of driving. Judgement feels the same to me, and I can remember exactly the first match in Autohaven where instead of thinking "lets see if I aim this right", I actually thought "I think this survivor is gonna go this way, so I'll fire there" and I got the hit. Absolutely stellar.
- Map pressure: You guys managed to make a 4.4 no mobility killer that has incredible map presence. It's honestly really neat and I think it's a testament to your creativity. The killer feels good, and plays into the fantasy of the character, being sort of "omnipresent". Also stellar.
- Aesthetics: This killer is soo coooooool. I love the aesthetics, the menu music is phenomenal and the chase music has grown on me a lot, to the point where I like to listen to streamers playing the judgement in the background just so I can hear the music, with the divine light sound and the voice lines. it's just so….relentless. Absolutely love it.
Now for some feedback:
- Non-Zealous curving: The recent patch introduced a 0.3 s control window to the beam while non zealous. I think, this is fine. Non zealous used to feel really bad, especially against players who even mildly knew what they were doing. 0.3 s is not much, allows for minimal adjustment, and makes it so a player needs to be paying attention to you. If they see you ready your power, then you look at them, they will have to make a read on when you're going to redirect in that 0.3 s window. I've seen players do this against better players than me. I've seen players do this against me. I think it makes survivor counterplay to non zealous a bit less easy, which is a good thing imo. Non zealous feels better to play. I like it.
- Zealous curving: Currently you get 0.8 s of control which is 0.2 s less control time than what you had when uncharged on the PTB. Honestly, I don't know why this is an issue, since, again, the PTB curve was even longer. I don't know why it is an issue now all of a sudden. But I think reverting it to 0.6 is not unreasonable, since that already felt nice, and the less difference there is between zealous and non zealous, the easier it is to keep good muscle memory between them.
- Post exile changes: Having survivors spawn further from the judgement when rescued from exile was a really needed change, and it already makes it more difficult to find a survivor that has just been rescued. It does its job well enough to make tunneling more difficult in a fair way. Great change. I'd say Heresy could even be removed right away when someone is rescued from exile and it would still be fine.
- Aura reading: I think aura reading is fine on this killer. I have seen good survivors compensate for the aura reading already by faking out their movement. I've seen it both against myself and against better judgement players. And I think killers synergizing with certain builds is a good thing for the game. What I think should happen is what MintSkull suggested on his video. Make it so when a player's aura is being read, (killer or survivor) a little untimed HUD element just informs them. That way survivors don't have to keep track of all the things that can reveal their aura, they''ll just know, and they'll be able to respond accordingly, to try and throw off the shot.
- Exiling Survivors: I love that this mechanic exists and that it doesn't count as a hook state. I think this should remain as is. The tradeoff of not being able to use hook perks is fair enough for the benefit.
This killer is very strong. Very very strong. Which I think is well deserved enough. Almost perfect design. And it's very refreshing to have the exile mechanic for its tradeoff. A killer that's basically different to everything else in the game in a nice and refreshing way. I just hope the killer stops being changed so that I can learn the muscle memory for it already without fear that next week it's gonna change again.
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