The problem with throwing knives is not that they’re bad, because they’re not, but that they feel bad. (They kind of are bad…)
I don’t know about you but what I want from throwing knives in a video game is mobility, agility, skill expression, and lethality; with maybe stealthy applications.
The SoT throwing knives get maybe 1.5 of those. They can kill people and they do require some skill to use. The rest is a write-off.
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Problem one is that the throwing knives are clunky. The timings of the animations are wrong, there’s dead space, and other animations get in the way. One culprit is the ADS animation itself, which is slow and slightly misleading, as sometimes you can’t throw until a fraction of a second after the full animation has played and sometimes you can throw before it’s finished. Sprinting with knives also forces the wield animation, like guns did until recently, preventing ADS. This and other jank will have the end result that, as you’re moving around and whatnot, your timings will often feel off by a fraction of a second.
Problem two is that the throwing knives are intent on making you slow. ADS makes you slow, stabbing makes you slow, a heavy stab makes you slow and then half stuns you. It wants you to stand nice and still for someone to shoot you or cut you up. It feels bad and it gets you killed.
Problem three is that they’re buggy. Their physics is weird and they interact weirdly with the environment. There’s no consistency with their arc and they sometimes gravitate to walls and ceilings like a fly failing to get out of a window. Try throwing a knife straight down, observe that it ain’t right, and tilt your aim up a little and throw again. Now do a bit of imaginary ladder guarding with it. It feels bad. Throwing knives also have the obligatory hitreg and other various melee issues.
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Potential solutions:
Make it smooth. remove the slow-downs, the stuns, fix the animations, make the little stumbles go away. It wouldn’t break the game to let a player move at full speed while ADS with the knives; you still need to aim them and won’t be able to sprint (if pistol hipfire hasn’t broken the game then full movement speed ADS throwing knives won’t). It wouldn’t break the game to remove the slow for the heavy stab charge; it’s still melee and you’ll still be slower than a sprinting player. How effective is the sword at killing someone that’s running away? Not very (plus the blunder exists. If 90 damage at melee range doesn’t break the game then the heavy stab won’t either). Remove the stun if the heavy stab hits but maybe have it as a consequence for missing. The TTK wouldn’t be any faster than pistol snipe.
Fix the bugs. Make it consistent. Sort the physics out, fix hitreg (unrealistic, I know), all of that good stuff.
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I don’t think the throwing knives have to be clunky to avoid breaking the game. They’re always going to be worse than a dedicated tool. The sword is always going to be a better melee weapon with its block, mobility, and the interrupt that it does. Pistol and EoR are always going to be more accurate and consistent. The blunder is always going to be the blunder. Even with my proposed changes the only thing that the Throwing Knives will do better than other weapons is boss DPS and versatility; which it already does. It will just feel better to use.
P.S. most of the throwing knife cosmetics are held incorrectly. You can compare using the Sea Dog Weapon Pose emote. If it’s held correctly in the emote it’ll be held incorrectly when wielded and vice versa. Two easy examples are the Reaper’s Bones Throwing Knives and the Killer Whale Throwing Knives. The Reaper’s Bones Knives are held correctly when wielded but incorrectly in the emote. The Killer Whale Knives are held incorrectly when wielded but correctly in the emote.
