Brainstorming ideas on how to make The Knight more enjoyable (As survivor)
So this is just a random thread I wanted to make to jot down ideas pertaining to the state of The Knight and how to make him more enjoyable to face from a survivor POV.
This isn't to say that I think the Knight is OP by any stretch, there's a difference between a killer being too strong vs a killer simply not providing much of an enjoyable experience even when defeated in a trial. This isn't meant to be a thread complaining about Knight either, just a list of random ideas of things I think would make him more enjoyable to face without neutering why the people who like and enjoy him do to begin with
Feel free to post your own ideas or critque other ideas in this thread, as this is nothing more then an idea bucket for discussion!
So in no particular order, here are some random ideas I've had
(Also worth noting I don't think any/all of these ideas should be added at once):
(ALSO WORTH NOTING: Obviously with nerfs, there should be compensatory buffs in other areas. I have not listed any because I genuinely cannot think of any, Knight is a character I don't enjoy playing so if you play Knight and have ideas - post them!)
- Pallet stunning The Knight whilst a hunt is ongoing will end the hunt prematurely - Some people might ask why this is a suggested idea. Quite simple really, you have an anti-loop power but if you're stuck in a tile due to being zoned, the Killer should be punished for making a mistake and getting stunned.
- Increase the cooldown on Knight's power if his guards do not engage in a hunt or an order - This change comes from the rationale that Knight's main way of defending 3 gen scenarios is to keep spamming his power at them over and over, the incredibly short cooldown (3 seconds) means there is no downside to doing this strat.
- Remove the endurance status effect from picking up the banner and instead make it increase the Knight's power cooldown by a certain amount (Which could have addons that lessen its effect). - This again is meant to counteract the playstyle of having Guards pester survivors in a 3 gen, right now if you pick up the banner during a hunt all you're really doing is just letting Knight have his power back faster (In these scenarios)
- Give Knight the Artist/Dredge/Twins treatment and disable his power around hooked survivors. Not a huge radius, just on par with the Killers who have built in anti-camping measures.
- Standardise the Banner activation time across all 3 guards. Right now Carnifex has the property of the Banner takes 10 seconds to materialise instead of 5.
- Alternatively, have the banner activation time tie in to the patrol path (Aka shorter path = quicker banner spawn time and vice versa maybe)?
- Increase the minimum patrol path length, but make cancelling power slightly faster.
I'll probably add more if I can think of any, again don't take this thread as me blindly demanding Knight be nerfed or anything to that nature. I know many people don't enjoy vsing him and I'd like to see that improve in some way.
Comments
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make the ai roamers the same as zombies that automatically roam and initiate chase when you're discovered. at line of sight and physical boundaries to the ai so that they have to follow normal killer chase rules and have to see the survivor same as ghostface and meyers have to see to stalk.
the knight can make rally banners for the ai to interact with. the guard will guard. the assassin will roam. the jailer will perform interactions like checking lockers, repairing hooks, breaking pallets etc. and highligjting (maybe even hooking) survivors.
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The issue is, BHVR has this thing where they make a power and for the most part they refuse to change it too much because of the people who enjoy it the way it is.
The same logic was applied to Legion when they got their buffs, someone - I believe it was Peanits said on behalf of the devs that they don't want to rework Killers with powers that people enjoy. There are people who enjoy the way Knight's power works right now
That's why most of the changes I suggested don't really change how the power works, they are either numbers changes or small additional mechanics that don't alter the core part of how his power functions.
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i added more to it. sorry accidentally clicked post before i was done.
i agree with their decision to not rework it entirely. i actually liked old freddy for what it's worth...
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Literally all of these boil down to "make the character feel worse to control", and all changes like that should be avoided. Except maybe the Carnifex's banner spawn being weird.
Like, think about it: every change proposed is some variation of "spend more time as an M1 Killer fighting your own power to get anything done, and making it easier to deny you the ability to do anything except be a generic 4.6 killer."
And finally: the anti-hook change isn't needed. 1) those restrictions tend to be garbage functionality at the best of times, especially on 2 floor maps, 2) the power already has a built-in anti-hook mechanic. All you do is deny the ability to strategically place a guard to be triggered by a loud noise notification if the save happens right as he goes off to do something. Y'know, one of the cleverer uses of it.
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Is it not wrong to say his power feels extremely forgiving right now, though?. I'm not saying he should be locked out of his power 24/7 but I think the spamability of it is a little excessive. He can even cancel patrols now, which isn't a change I disliked being added don't get me wrong.
I get your point about "spending time as a 4.6" but I'm gonna be honest with you, Knight doesn't down you with his power basically ever. He downs you when he eventually puts you in a spot where you either take an m1 from him or you take a hit from a guard and then get m1'd anyway. This goes especially if he's using his power to pester survivors on generators and then chasing as a normal 4.6 anyway
I'll ask you for your take though, do you think his power is fine the way it is from a survivor POV?
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Why DOES a Killer have to be fun to play against for Survivors?
"Sorry, you cant murder me right now, cause I'm not having fun while being chased."
I fear I have heard people in this Community use the word fun so much I don't know what it actually means anymore.
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Like I stated in the OP, a Killer's strength doesn't equal how engaging or "fun" they are to go against. It's a bit more complicated then someone losing and going "i hate this killer its bad bleh"
I'll try to answer your question to the best of my abilities though.
One could simply chalk it down to taste and call it that. Some people like vsing Knight, some don't whatever. No big deal right? The issue comes in why people don't find a certain character enjoyable or engaging in the first place.
Ideally you want to strive to have both sides enjoying the content in the game, right? I don't think that's an unfair expectation and again this thread is NOT "Knight boring Knight bad" it's "People have issues with this Killer, what could be changed to fix it?". I wanted to have a constructive conversation about it, same reason I made that thread about DH not too long ago.
I don't know how accurate this is but from my exposure to conversations and my experiences since his release, Knight's not exactly considered the pinnacle of fun and engaging design, especially when compared to the Killer who came before him.
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So where's the compensatory buffs to make him better in the healthier ways?
This is all just making a killer who's already bad, even worse.
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Please read the title of this thread as well as this part here
(Also worth noting I don't think any/all of these ideas should be added at once):
Nowhere in this thread have I stated Knight needs flat nerfs, the topic of the thread is what changes could be made to make Knight more enjoyable for survivors so that is the content of the thread
Side note, I do think that nerfs should come with some buffs - I'm just not all that enthusiastic about Knight's kit from a Killer POV so I don't know what I would change to make him more fun for Killer.
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It's not spammable. If you avoid a guard or if the guard messes up with line of sight blockers then they're out of a guard for the duration of their patrol. God help you if you think jailer is gonna detect someone and he doesn't for whatever reason and you have to chase the survivor without a power at all.
You just want hard nerfs for knight, a B-tier killer at best. You don't like playing against him. Fine, whatever. I don't like playing against about a dozen things but I'm not trying to get them gutted.
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There's nothing you can do to him that doesn't make him Bad Spirit or make him only good at protecting a 3 gen. Just let it lie.
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You're projecting intentions onto me. I don't think Knight is particularly that strong or threatening personally.
I just think his power is unengaging and kinda boring, I also don't think they should ignore the issue of genlock knight (If you don't know what that is let me know I will elaborate) which is what some of the changes I mentioned are specifically designed to counteract
Also I disagree, I think his power is pretty spammable overall but if you don't think so that is totally fine.
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Sounds like defeatism to me, it's worth discussing.
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Yes, I read the title. I never said you wanted all of them. My point is about even one of them.
"Nowhere in this thread have I stated Knight needs flat nerfs, the topic of the thread is what changes could be made to make Knight more enjoyable for survivors so that is the content of the thread"
Yes I know what the title of the thread is and I know how you stated what you were trying to do, but however you butter it up and dress it up, at the end of the days these are in fact nerfs, regardless of your intentions.
"Side note, I do think that nerfs should come with some buffs - I'm just not all that enthusiastic about Knight's kit from a Killer POV so I don't know what I would change to make him more fun for Killer."
Saying this in your title would've saved a lot of peoples posts as that isn't what the post come across as. Something as simple as "I do think he needs some buffs in his healthier ways alongside this to compensate but I just don't know what if any of you have some good ideas." would've gone a long way and displays a very different message.
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Because we have a ton of killers that are fun for both sides. Its good for the health of the game, makes a killer more interesting because you can give him more pronounced strength and weaknesses that can be played around.
Or i guess you can keep him the snooze fest that he is by camping 3 gens and making survivors hold W because you can't do anything against him and he can't do anything against survivors holding W. AKA, no one wins.
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I appreciate the respectful response.
At the end of the day, people will take posts like this whatever way they want. I did my best to make it clear that these are just ideas. I even said feel free to critique them all you want - that's why i made the thread in the first place.
The DBD community is full of people who just project at each other and no actual discussion gets done and then they wonder why the devs don't listen to them. Thankfully, though this conversation isn't one of those.
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I like most of these ideas, they feel like reasonable changes to give him some amount of counter play and punish a bad player.
He probably would need also some buffs in other areas, but any suggestions and ideas to increase interactive elements of the game are great.
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I appreciate it
And yes, I do agree. I'll amend the OP to include something that mentions this
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Sorry. I'm being irrational. The constant knight complaining just makes me annoyed. Same thing when people complain about legion.
The frequent idea is to punish him drawing short lines. If you do that then it just shores up three genning as his only play style because he can't pincer with his guards.
The other idea is to heavily incentivize drawing long lines and cutting survivors off. Which is just spirit with extra steps and less reliability whether or not you get a down because you're relying on DBD pathing to do it.
Like, none of this stuff works. I'm tired of seeing it over and over again. Knight is fine. His niche is long chases with very likely hits. This puts him into B-tier. That's his identity. It's no different than doctor shocking or artist using her birds for ten different things or clown making your vision blurry.
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Trust me it's not my goal to complain about Knight, I'd be happy to just file him in the "killers people hate" category and leave it at that but I feel like it's worth discussing ideas, even just for the sake of it.
I also agree, I don't know how you could feasibly change his core power outside of number tweaks or a full on rework (Which won't happen because he just came out).
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I think people will naturally have to branch out when eruption gets nerfed and holding a three gen is far less strong. I play chase knight to moderate success. You could add some regression to my build and get good results if you wanted. People will figure this out.
I just love knight how he is. Cycling guards, having a ghost friend do stuff while I do other things is cool as hell. I'm scared he'll get gutted or his best addons will get nerfed like toy sword because he basically doesn't work without them because of the complaining. It makes me defensive.
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That's totally understandable and I'm glad to hear you enjoy playing Knight the way he is. I know some people (like myself) don't but it's a difference of tastes, not objective fact you know
I will say I despise people who play Knight with saloon offerings and full gen builds though. Not trying to pass blame but after someone semi-popular made a video showcasing it - I see it from time to time like when people started doing the AFK pig thing.
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Knight has a laundry list of weaknesses, why do you want to add to that?
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Ideally you want to strive to have both sides enjoying the content in the game, right? I don't think that's an unfair expectation and again this thread is NOT "Knight boring Knight bad" it's "People have issues with this Killer, what could be changed to fix it?".
I think "Fun" is poor indicator of that, even tho Dead by Daylight is a horror movie simulator. People DO NOT like to get hunted, smashed and killed in this game. But it happens cause that is how this game is played. We definitely need to question those feeling ALOT more.
One could simply chalk it down to taste and call it that.
You say this yourself and then back down from the idea without really giving a good reason why.
Why isn't it a taste thing then? Why cant we just chalk it up to taste? Why must Knight be changed now? Can you answer this?
I am gotten complaints about Killer being boring on every Killer I have ever played so where are these Killers which are fun?
Your following argument is 1. makes them interesting and 2. maybe being more interesting can make them stronger, which is really cool if that happens. But it would be an absolute terror if it failed and bHVR screwed up and ruined the Killer for years before a Rework in 2026.
Case is we have seen Killers such a Deathslinger which was nerfed to address an unfun strategy and after that his player numbers dropped, waste of my money really. Playing him any other way is too hard and bHVR is slow to react to make the Killers inviting to players.
The only way is to take it EVEN slower with Killer changes cause we need to make sure we don't end up with another Dead Deathslinger. That way we can make sure bHVR does not render the Killers unfun for Killers as well and when we do that I certainly think people need to come to the discussion table with more than, "its not fun"
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What i define as fun and exciting, i would say Power with risk.
Killers that are strong, can do impressive plays, but are heavily punished if they are outplayed. Wesker, Blight, Billy, deathslinger, Piramid Head, i know some are stronger than others but the idea is common. They can do plays that survivors need to be aware, they have strong mind games and let players express their skill. But survivors can make them pay hard if they are not on point. Because in the end, if something is very safe, its not very impressive.
I see Knight as the killer that just makes everyone waste time, he wastes survivors and his time. Most plays are decided by map layout and give very little input for both sides to do anything. The survivor will waste the killer's time by holding W and the killer will waste the survivor time because there was never really other option to begin. Everything feels like you have only two choices, he feels uninteractable.
Ultimately Knight's issues are very hard to solve with his current kit and identity and i don't expect him to be addressed for a long time for multiple reasons.
But i love this discussions because i hope bhvr starts to actually keep a more fun philosophy for designing killers.
So yes, i do believe that punishing a killer and giving counterplay is important for him to be fun. And like the OP and i said before, he would need other changes to buff him in other areas. If survivors can fight him easier, than he should get better reward for his power. Its really just a discussion of philosophy of design and trying to make both sides enjoyable
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I’m not reading every post but if we were trying to find fun for both sides without drastically changing the fundamentals of his power, then I’d like to test out the ability to set multiple guards out but with no time limit or distance restriction. So, the match starts and you might create a round path that passes all generators and let you guard loose and he will follow that path forever until The Knight puts him down or the Guard finds a survivor and does his thing.
Hiding in locker or staying out of the view bubble will be how you counter initially and when chased you can still grab flag too. Lastly had a 10 second timer delay before Guards can start hunting to help negate that hard drop strat.
The fun for Killer will be seeing his little army all patrolling and moving to his will, like a commander, and enjoying the ability to share the burden.
Fun for survivors would be playing the floor is lava and running around playing a mini-game of don’t be found. The bravest of survivors could try and scoop up multiple guards as like the ultimate challenge/sacrifice. Just make it so that one smack will make all Guards in action disappear, but not one’s still patrolling.
The real kicker to this Knight character is that he is always nearby and ready to work with his Guard to ruin the chase for survivors, but with my change then he might be too far to participate or multiple chases might kick off at once. Yes, I realize he still has a strong, maybe stronger 3 gen potential and it might be too chaotic to enjoy.
I definitely wouldn’t throw this in without a PtB run and general community approval but I think it would open us to a bunch of fun/silly clippable moments for both sides.
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But it's not forgiving? The latest buff doesn't even totally make up for if you take time to go place a long patrol.
Like, his power is a zoning tool. And whilst it has a short cooldown between uses, it's one that goes offline for reasonably long periods of time when in use (if distracting someone or camping something) and forces another cooldown where you can't move if you have to cancel it (attack CD), and if you can't go out of your way for that, you already have no power.
Like, a lot of these won't really make him any easier to defeat, they just make it worse for the knight player. No zoning off short loops (instant spawn of banner), longer cooldown if you already screwed up and the guard was out of commission, longer cooldown on banner pickup is either irrelevant (you're in a chase with that person) or just annoying as you're doing something else, everything about hook restrictions being clunky, etc.
(also he can't cancel power, he has to walk back the path, that's real weird)
The cooldown is short, but it's a power that has a chunky time investment already, and a lot of powers are pretty short like that and restricted somehow--charges, miss CD's, limited placement. We're in the latter category.
3genning without eruption's going to be way less effective, wait for that before going "how can we neuter the ability to play the character in order to make a zoning killer as weak as possible when everyone gets confined?" That's the scenario he or Hag or Trapper are meant to be strong. They're not chase killers.
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thats probably because “fun” is open to interpretation as it’s not a specific thing, but rather an idea of something that causes a specific emotion.
emotions are one of the most complex things in the brain. Emotions, memory, and spacial reasoning are up there on the highly evolved brain chart.
so that’s normal that you’d have trouble understanding what makes others have “fun” because the fact is… it could be something that makes you miserable.
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I don't agree with your take. I do think his power is very forgiving and safe to use. I do think that his power has basically no reward, yes.
But its also very safe and easy to use because survivors can't really punish you for using the power bad. Which bhvr has even been making him even more safe with patches.
For example, Wesker is way stronger than Knight, i think we all know that. His power is very effective around certain loops and has the right amount of slowdown, map mobility and anti loop. But it has a long cool down and if mess up, aka survivors mind game you, you can loose so much time and effort, you can go flying way from them, survivors can make you vault stuff you don't want. Survivors can really make you pay for messing up.
Knight is not like that, his power is a time waster or a IQ test , because survivors can't really do anything to punish you, but your power is also very weak and survivors just hold W against you.
Yes, if you make him have counter play for survivors, his reward should be bigger. I think we all agree with that.
Big reward and big risk. A killer is not really exciting to watch or play if there is no risk to what you do in my opinion.
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I agree that he has the smallest cooldown, which is even strange since you can just stand and spam
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