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Pinhead changes majorly miss the mark. (LONG)

TacitusKilgore
TacitusKilgore Member Posts: 1,380
edited September 2021 in Feedback and Suggestions

Thought i'd add my two cents onto the current projected changes that pinhead will presumably launch with on the 5.2.0 patch, considering i've been pretty vocal about his weakness and the kinds of changes i feel like he might need. I like to discuss these things, so if you disagree with my perspective please throw a comment down below. I like to hear all points of view when i discuss DBD stuff. Anyways, lets get into it.


First off, lets discuss this paragraph.

"First, we’ve polished the way chains spawn to make them perform more consistently. We’ve fixed an issue which could cause chains to spawn behind obstacles and corners and immediately break as soon as they would connect. Additionally, if a chain fails to spawn (i.e., there is no suitable place to spawn the chain), the system will now attempt to spawn another chain much sooner. Finally, if a chain is broken by the environment or The Cenobite himself, a new chain will spawn considerably faster than before. These changes will make chains much more effective in tight areas with lots of obstacles."


This is a good, albeit somewhat misguided change. As a lot of you know, a pretty big issue with pinhead is the obscene rate at which his chains break on the environment. it was incredibly frustrating to chain a survivor and have them break away in milliseconds, completely negating your power. A pretty sizable amount of the community were quite vocal with their belief that chains should just be a simple channeled action that doesn't involve map geometry, it would make him much more consistent and enjoyable as you could easily predict how your chains would function. Sadly BHVR disagreed, and doubled down on the idea that his miniature BDSM devices should snape like twine on any objects in the vicinity, until the live patch launches though we won't know how helpful this change was. Whats most baffling about this though is the direct mention of how pinhead himself breaks the chains just by walking into them, the fact that this is a mechanic and one they themself are happy with is quite frustrating. Being able to sabotage your own power simply by walking into it is not a fun mechanic.The fact this will make it into the live patch is quite disheartening. Enough about the chains though, onto the second paragraph.


"We’ve also simplified the way the chain hunt works. On the PTB, the number of chains that spawn during the hunt would depend on the number of Survivors remaining. Instead, the hunt will now always spawn a cluster of 3 chains (with each chain appearing 3 seconds apart) with an increasing interval between clusters based on the remaining Survivors. This will keep the hunt feeling meaningful without getting out of hand as Survivors die."


This is actually a great change, seemingly the only one that makes a significant change in an area everybody agreed on. Making the chain hunt more meaningful, and less ridiculous for remaining survivors is a healthy change. Though it may lend a bit to the decreasing lethality of pinhead as the game drags on, which could be seen to some as a bit detrimental. Nontheless i feel like most of us would agree that this is a good change. Onto the third paragraph.


"Finally, deciding when to solve the Lament Configuration is something we want to leave up to you, but keeping it forever shouldn’t be ideal. In the PTB, the Survivor carrying the box would have a chain spawn and attempt to latch onto them every few seconds while they were interacting with something. This would slow your progress down, but could be a worthwhile tradeoff for preventing chain hunts entirely. We’re changing the Lament Configuration to only pause the timers of the other Survivors, but not the carrier. This means if the person holding the box neglects it for too long, a chain hunt will start for them only. This chain hunt is in addition to the occasional chains that spawn while interacting with something, making it very difficult to ignore."

This is...exceptionally bad. It completely ignores the key issue of why kidnapping the box is incredibly detrimental to pinheads kit, you can still kidnap the box for a full 60 seconds before their personal chain hunt activates and it fully becomes an issue. I Doubt i need to explain why this continues to be a bafflingly stupid design decision, for 60 full seconds of a match you can rob pinhead of 2 parts of his power, he can no longer teleport, and the chain hunt won't activate for any of your teammates. At the cost of oblivious and slightly hampered progress on healing and generators. You can no longer hear the terror radius of a killer thats not particularly lethal. Its not a substantial downside, and the slower progress on objectives hardly matters when the rest of your team doesn't have to worry at all about being harassed during the chain hunt. Its just...bad. REALLY bad. its frankly worse than kidnapping victor, leaving pinhead without any of the game slowdown he requires to make up for his very lackluster anti-looping power. There NEEDS to be more of an incentive to solve the lament configuration and give pinhead the opportunity to utilize his power, if this change goes through survivors can just solve the box every 60 seconds, pick it back up, and repeat it ad nauseam. This is what REALLY misses the mark. I Hope they intend to make further changes, because this is terrible. The last changes are not as bad.

We’ve got a few more changes to get through, so lightning round:

Tweaked gateway placement to be easier on maps with multiple floors – This’ll prevent cases where you look ever so slightly down and end up accidentally placing your gateway on the floor below

This is good. Easier use of a power means a cleaner feel and greater experience. Removing clunkiness from a killer is a good change.

Added a brief immunity period to chains after being unhooked (3 seconds) – This will prevent a Survivor who was just unhooked from being chained before they can move

Also a great change, this circumvents pinheads who wish to hard tunnel a survivor off the hook by instantly immobilizing them. This makes him a biiit less cruel to play.

Added a maximum control time for gateways (6 seconds) – The Cenobite’s power is meant to be fast paced and used in a chase, not to be placed somewhere and wait

This is a... meh change. This feels like it can somewhat remove the "scouting" potential people were voicing their love for during the PTB. 6 seconds is basically nothing, and will make using his gateways as a method of long range surveillance much clunkier and much less fun. This is not a particularly good change as it dumbs down his power and removes a bit of the complexity that people were enjoying. If they plan to stick with this change, they should at least bump the amount of time to 10-15 seconds. 6 seconds is not a fun amount and can lead to some fringe case annoyances.

Added a brief cooldown to the solve interaction to prevent spamming (1 second) – Spamming the interaction would give the Killer way too many notifications

Simple change, good change. No more annoying electric spam, though considering its only 1 second, if survivors want to spam you with it they still will. Just to a little less of an annoying degree.

Increased Bloodpoints for The Cenobite’s scoring event across the board – Bloodpoint earnings were lower than anticipated in the PTB

Great change, makes pinhead less saddening in the BP department, this should mean he keeps up with the rest of the cast and can re-invest back into his own bloodweb.


Overall, some of the changes were good, some were...not. All i can really say is they certainly miss the mark, and this feels like it could be a trickster repeat all over again. BHVR is going through with changes that are not necessary and were not asked for, or ignoring things that were asked for in favor of what they view as necessary. I don't really have to tell any of you how often this happens and how awful it is every time, pinhead needs changes, undeniably. But these really aren't it, hopefully before he releases live we get some more amiable changes that make him a bit more distinct than "Over-complicated BDSM clown"


EDIT: Thanks to the mods for moving the post to the correct sub-forum, im a bit sleepy and posted it in general instead.

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