The fundamental problems with the current overheat mechanic, and a simple fix
I'm sure we've all seen Billy's changes at this point. I, as well as many others, heavily disagree with the overheat mechanic, and find it contradictory to what they themselves have said they wanted to do with billy. In the developer update, BHVR have said that they are largely happy with how billy functions, and only want to give a small penalty for "misusing the chainsaw". The problem right now is that the current overheat doesn't punish misusing the chainsaw, it removes or heavily punished any skillful use of it. Ironically enough, they've said they're not removing curving, feathering, traversal yet these will be punished severely with the overheat.
Look up any curving video online. In almost all examples, billy will hold the saw for an extended duration to curve at the perfect moment when the survivor makes a mistake. With the overheat, this will be impossible or nearly impossible depending on the tile. Feathering will also be critically punished, given that you can no longer hold your chainsaw for extended durations. Pretty much every skillful play is now removed, while the problems, backrevving and charge rate, presumably are not touched. Backrevving will become one of the only techniques possible (and I dislike calling it a technique) as it doesn't require the saw to be held for an extended duration. Charge rate add-ons, if they still exist, will become easily his best as they minimise the heat gained by revving. It's not fixing any issues, and in fact is capping his skill ceiling and punishing skillful play.
Although this is just conceptual, a better way to incorporate this mechanic would be to have the overheat occur like Oni's blood fury loss when hitting a survivor. Every time you miss or hit a chainsaw, you gain a certain amount of heat, or lose fuel, or whatever. Longer chainsaw sprints consume less heat at the end as to not punish traversal, while shorter sprints, i.e. missed chainsaws, cost more. Missed saws consume more heat than hit saws. It wouldn't really fit with the "overheat" idea but gameplay comes first, surely. This would punish missed saws and incorrect play while not removing his skill ceiling and techniques such as curving and feathering. This wouldn't even require a full add-on change for all the heat add-ons that have obviously been made.
Tl;dr: Billy's overheat mechanic punishes skillful play by restricting the use of revving, making curves next to impossible, while not actually punishing backrevs, and making charge time add-ons much more necessary to minimise the heat gain by revving. This should be changed to gain heat when the chainsaw is actually missed or hit, and consume more heat on short missed sprints than long ones to punish missed saws and backrevs while not removing his ability to rev.
Comments
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Dont forget in their little video, for Billy they held it revving with addons. Imagine how it would be without addons, it completely removes skillful based gameplay, and I think without addons, the time it takes for Bubbas chainsaw to overheat will be the same for Billys. Literally the only possible thing I could think about using the chainsaw is for like only using them when they are up close, in a dead end, or in a long wall, and for going across the map. No more timing up the chainsaw for cool curves, or waiting for survivors to do jukes to avoid it.
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I'm pretty sure (not certain though) that those add-ons were the new steering one and the moonshine, right? If so, they shouldn't change the heat. Regardless, the current system is massively flawed and hopefully it is reworked so it punishes misuse instead of skillful play such as curving.
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They were both purple. The steering one have been changed to brown, and mabye moonshine might not even be an addon for steering. Who knows, but I am going to keep my thoughts that one of them were used to decrease heat.
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