The History of: The Twins

GrimReaperJr1232

Disclaimer

I hate them. I absolutely hate the Twins. I loathe them. I abhor their presence. I prefer to verse a Knight any day. I would rather endure a match against Skull----okay, no, we're not there. Still pretty bad though.

So if this sounds like it gets a little heated and the text implies any ire, that's because there absolutely is.

Kick the Vic!

Almost immediately after hitting PTB, Victor was the subject of jokes around the pact survivors kicking him in the face to kill him.

Among them was a South Park joke, "Kick the baby." This, however, caused issues. For legal reasons, Twitch and BHVR both had to enforce that Victor was not a baby and to please not refer to him as such. Even on this forum, you can't call him that. He's not a baby, he's a tiny adult.

Even though that actually makes no sense. He died before adulthood, stopped maturing, then was brought back as a zombie, and---you know what, just don't think about it.

The Power

Let's break down Twin's power first. 

Big sister Charlotte is the one you control initially. She's a powerless M1 killer. That's it. Nothing special to her.

On the other hand, little brother Victor carries the Twins on his infantile back. He runs at 6m/s, has no Terror Radius (and his lullaby is immune to the Visual Terror Radius added in later for some reason), and his only attack is a pounce that can hit over pallets/windows. He also cannot see scratch marks or auras (excluding gens), but does have blood highlighted to him.

If he pounces on an injured survivor, they go down. If they pounce on a health survivor, Victor will injure and attach to them.

When attached to a survivor, Victor will... stay on them. You don't even see Victor's aura except for the first few seconds after being kicked back to Charlotte. The survivor has been Incapacitated, so they can't do gens or heal or anything.

Oh yeah, and Victor is a motion detector. If you're controlling Charlotte while he's out, he'll reveal any survivors near him with Killer Instinct but only if they move and it can be countered by crouching.

Impressions

PTB - Incomplete Killer

Twins in the PTB had hallmarks of an unfinished killer because they had glaring design flaws.

Issue one) If survivors go into a locker, Victor could not do anything. Literally, nothing. Lockers completely neutered this killer.

Issue two) Survivors could hold Victor hostage. While Victor is attached, they could just keep him. Sure, one person is disabled but so are you. You don't have a power anymore. And keep in mind, they control if/when they remove Victor and they could still unhook (more on that a little later), so it's not even a real 3v1.

Issue three) Lack of obvious use. I mean, you could injure someone and send Victor. Or you just play Oni who also needs to get a hit before powering up. They were good at camping since BT wasn't basekit and based on TR then, but you have to get a down first, park Victor near a hook, switch back to Charlotte, cross half the map for the pickup, and then hook the survivor (And the camping can be countered by, again, crouching and then kicking the Vic).

None of this including the many, many, many, many Bug this killer had. Victor would frequently get stuck in the floor, unable to move, and force you to lose your power for 90 seconds unless a survivor has mercy and kick your little brother for you. (90 is how long until Victor is automatically recalled after being left out for too long; this timer only depletes as Charlotte and resets if you control Victor. Don't ask me what its purpose is. It's just there.)

This was a killer that was buggy, had glaring issues, and was nowhere near ready to be released.

The Release

They were almost completely unchanged from PTB. Yes, seriously.

There were minor things such as the buff to Victor's pounce charging movement speed and the ability to recall Victor if a survivor holds him for too long but that's it.

Why was the Victor recall minor? That sounds huge! It would be, except it required a survivor to hold Victor for 45 seconds. That's so long that there was hardly much of a point to it.

The locker thing? Technically still a thing. However, funnily enough, due to a bug, Victor could hit people in lockers. This was a bug, so widely unknown, that people exploited lockers with both sides generally thinking Victor is harmless.

And, of course, there were no bugfixes. In fact, things got worse. A lot worse.

Bugs for all!

Twins broke the game. Seriously. It was horrible even by DBD standards. I partook in helping keep count of the many bugs added that patch. Of the top of my head, there were the following...

1. Legion didn't get an FoV increase in Frenzy (this gave the impression that Legion was slower, leading many to believe their power didn't even work)
2. Demogorgon also didn't get an FoV increase when holding a shred.
3. Actually, FoV in general was broken. So Monitor and Shadowborn was also broken.
4. Nurse randomly didn't get a lunge animation
5. Bubba's add-ons broke, such as his chilis, movement speed add-ons, and Carb Tuning guide. These bugs, as of 6.7.0 are still not fixed!!!
6. Speaking of Bubba, his chainsaw cooldown was bugged to be longer than intended. This bug persisted for years.
7. Legion could lose acceleration on his Frenzy lunge
8. Hex Ruin didn't automatically regress generators

You get the idea. The count was over 100 bugs that were added in that patch. All for a killer that was also buggy and widely believed to be among the worst killers in the game.

Slugging Monster

Time went on, and a lot of the bugs got ironed out (unless you played Leatherface, in which case, you're still broken. The locker thing was addressed by letting Victor hold lockers closed for several seconds and the hostage recall had its 45-second requirement lowered to 30. We were still left with this killer that people already hated, and it was only going to get worse.

There was 1 thing they were good at, and that was slugging. Keep people injured and send Victor out to just snowball, forcing everyone on the floor.

Okay, so we have another slug-centric killer. That's nothing new. We have killers like Nurse or Oni that are great sluggers too. However, there's nuance to this.

Oni has to work to have his power but also has a short duration that depletes with every down. This means he can only slug in short bursts before picking up a survivor and hooking them, giving survivors time to go on damage control.

Nurse was much rarer (she was pretty buggy herself, even before Twins) but even still, she could pick up survivors. Twins couldn't as taking control of Charlotte and then going to the slug to hook them simply took too long. So whereas a Nurse would do it to build pressure if given an opportunity, Twins did it out of necessity.

Twins lacked Oni's anti-snowball restrictions, started with their power (even if Victor is less effective if the survivor is healthy), and physically couldn't pick survivors up in a timely manner. What did this lead to? Overslugging.

When I say overslugging, I don't mean they made the games miserable by slugging---they definitely did but that wasn't the issue---I mean that they slugged so much people were bleeding out regularly.

Bleeding out exists so a killer can't hold the game hostage by keeping people dying on the floor. Twins slugged so much that they kept triggering an anti-hostage safeguard. Just putting things into perspective.

Difficulty by Region

Edit: Forgot to mention this as it's rather minor but something worth mentioning nonetheless.

With the default control scheme, controller players have the "remove Victor" and "unhook" options bound to the same button, whereas KB&M players have them bound to entirely different ones. this means that controller players couldn't unhook with Victor on. Still can't. It's very annoying.

Puzzling nerf

After many complaints, BHVR finally took action to nerf the Twins' slugging capabilities, right?

Not exactly. They instead lengthened the post-hit cooldown from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. What this means is after a successful hit, the survivors had a 5-second window to kick Victor instead of 3.

How's that not a nerf to slugging? First, this means it takes even longer to pick up a survivor, meaning the lengthened cooldown makes slugging even more of a necessity to get the most out of Victor. Second, after getting kicked, Victor comes back in 6 seconds. Oh, it's a blow to Twins' pressure, but in that window, you'll be picking up the slug. And Victor or Big sis will arrive. And then the conga line of downs and hits ensues.

So in reality, all that happened was that the nerf made Twins feel awful to play. Legion's 4-second fatigue was deemed too long, so 5 seconds on Twins was outright painful to endure. Rubbing salt in the wound was that misses remained at 3 seconds, so you were punished more for correctly using your power than if you screwed up. Did I mention Twins felt terrible to play?

High MMR Monsters

Between feeling awful to play and still being a buggy mess, Twins were in a sorry state. They were very strong. They were simply strong in a way everyone hated while being unfun to play.

So what did the devs do? Nerf them some more! Like the add-on that reduced that awful cooldown from 5 seconds to a super fast 4.5! Now, instead of a 0.5 reduction, it was... 0.4.

What? Just... what? On top of this not addressing the issue Twins have to play as or verse, the nerfs were so minor that everyone was baffled. This is a killer that needs help to feel better to play and verse, but they just made things worse.

Why? According to a developer, it's because "[Twins] are MONSTERS in high-end MMR."

This quickly became a bit of a meme among the two Twins players left. Oh, but they also made some of the add-ons "more interesting" like Baby Teeth, the add-on that... just inflicts Blindness for several seconds. Oh, and only if they remove Victor, so it'll do nothing if they hold Victor hostage which was and remains a common strategy against Twins, forcing a recall.

Rework?

After the well-received Legion and Ghost Face reworks, the devs announced Twins would be the next killer getting looked at.

That was in 5.7.0. We're (as of writing) a week away from 7.0.0 without any mention of it. The only hint I could find was a reply from one of the Community Managers saying that Twins had not been forgotten, but this would take some time as the required changes were "extensive."

What does that mean? I don't know. I don't know if this is a Freddy-level complete power rework or a Doctor-esque rework that is largely just large amounts of de-clunking.

Edit: June 7th, 2023, a developer AMA claimed that the Twins rework should arrive either this year or early 2024. No details on the actual changes.

In summary

Killer sucks to play. Sucks to verse. Has glaring flaws and is blatantly unfinished. No one on either side likes them except two content creators whose hearts break with every patch as the realization sets in their favorite killer will likely be deleted from existence and only after years of neglect. There's a reason they're the least-picked killer in the game.

SpiritsHusk

Hmm, I personally love playing against the twins, bit refreshing and it's not like the other killers either, quite fun to play against after a few SMs , knights and blights.

Steel_Eyed

I like playing as Twins. They have all the hallmarks of a high end killer too. Moves fast, can hit survivors while moving fast, does not rely on perks to win.

Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, plays like a high tier killer.

If I miss a lunge and Charlottes far away, I completely lose that survivor. There’s counterplay, although complex to explain in a short timeframe to my less experienced friends. Combine with low pick rates. Mix in high tier power. ‘Monster at high MMR.’

sizzlingmario4

Thanks for the detailed write-up as always.

Also, I agree with you and I’ll go even further than you did: Hate on me all you want, but if I had a choice between playing against Twins or a 3-gen Skull Merchant, I’m picking the latter every time. And neither are good choices.

CorvusCorax86

This was a great read! Especially for me who began playing this game only 2 years ago.

I picked up Charlotte only because I had some shards left. I even hate the menu theme she has.

Also thanks for clarifying the hostage thingy - I was wondering as a survivor what if I didn't complete the action to free myself but I always forgot to ask / search for the answer as Twins is just a rarity.