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The Skull Merchant: The Potential, The Pitfalls, and What Could Have Been
I'm writing this both to get my full opinions on Skull Merchant across and to announce that, odds are, I'm going to be taking a break from DBD for the foreseeable future once she gets added, unless SM either disappears faster then Twins and Trickster did on their launches or she receives the mother of all surprise reworks that makes her actually fun to play and play against, then I might stick around, but if not, I'll probably play the reworked maps for a while to grind out Rift Pass progress and that's about it, with that out of the way, These are my full opinions on Skull Merchant, and why her getting added to DBD makes me genuinely furious.
If you were following the PTB Discussions when they were open, you probably would have seen a post from me titled "Why Skull Merchant's lack of creativity genuinely upsets me", In which I pretty much just blurted out what a completely visionless and creatively bankrupt execution she was compared to the ideas behind her.
That post came from the heart, and so is this one, like I said, I am a creative, not by degree nor training (I'm a computer science HNC student) but because I enjoy writing and coming up with crazy ideas that might just work, I may not have the skill to draw or animate but I can recognise cool ideas when I see them, and that's ultimately what annoys me so much about SM
Skull Merchant's visual, lore, animations, and power design, are, to be blunt, bad on their own, and pathetic when put together, lets just list all of the ideas SM has behind her.
- Mixed Brazilian/Japanese heritage
- Alter ego is inspired directly by her father's manga
- Terrifying mix of high intellect, zero morals, and immense ego
- Rich and ruthless businesswoman
- Has a thing for theatrics
These five bullet points are, on their own, a recipe for something very special, but I do have to ask, which one of these bullet points do you immediately figure out when you watch the teaser we got a few weeks before the Tools of Torment PTB?
If your answer was "literally ######### none of them" , then congrats, we think along similar lines. I'll take three frames of this teaser and just ask a few questions I'd like you to answer for me
And finally, probably the most important question, where the hell is Skull Merchant in this? Why is she not here? Why does this teaser not have a single hint as to who she is or what she does? You didn't even have to directly show her, just her shadow, hell, even her laugh would have been enough. This just feels like vagueness for the sake of being vague and open-ended, this teaser could have been for a goddamn Warhammer character for all we ######### knew, being mysterious is fine, having literally nothing to indicate who or what the killer is actually going to be isn't.
Credit where credit is due though, SM's actual trailer is pretty cool, I like that it shows her actually working on the drones and shows of a bit of her theatrical side, still asking what the ######### the logo on the folders is meant to mean, but I can ignore that, mostly. Genuinely well done to the team behind this trailer
Next, her lore and it's myriad of issues, Pixel Brush does a much better job of breaking down her lore then I could, but I'll just sum up my problems with it
- Why is half of her backstory dedicated to her childhood? And why is the other half of her backstory a any% speedrun of her time before the fog? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
- Why is all we get on how she acquired her drones half of a single sentence? You're going to make drones her entire power and not explain how she got them? "she tracked them with a prototype drone" is not enough, did she make them herself or did she threaten someone else to make them for her?
- If SM made the drones herself, why does her lore not state anything along the lines of "She studied engineering and machinery"? And if she got someone else to make them for her, why doesn't her lore say so?
- Why did this supposedly extremely competent hunter not have a plan for in the event her drones were shot down or she was seen? You really want to tell me the same woman who was tearing companies to shreds from the inside before her mid-20s wouldn't have a plan for this sort of thing?
These four problems just kill whatever intrigue SM's backstory could have for me, it's a mess of bad pacing, really weird plot-holes, and just flat out not explaining crucial details, her drones need expanding on,, her childhood shouldn't have been half of her entire backstory, her killing spree needed to be more of her lore rather then just the later half, and her reasons for not having a contingency in the event of witnesses need to be explained, now I will say that all of these can be very easily fixed with a Tome of her own, but still, that's just band-aiding a wound that could have very easily been avoided.
Next, her visual design
I have heard a few ways to describe SM's outfit and visual design, mostly very unflattering, but the one thing I've heard the most (aside from being a Apex/Fortnite skin) is that her outfit is "tactical", and to those people, I do have to ask, What part of this ######### is meant to be "tactical" to you?
Let's just go over the problems with this supposed "tactical" outfit, from head to toe
- Her gas mask only covers half of her face and is made from a silvery reflective material, making it useless as a gas mask and awful for keeping her hidden, one stray bit of light and the mask will give her position away
- The eye lens has zero indication it even does anything and is super distracting, giving it night vision would have made some sense but there is literally no indication it serves any function
- I hate the texture of the gas mask, why does it look it's made from chainmail and not rubber like a normal gas mask?
- Why does she have such a clunky harness for her gauntlet knives? There is literally no indication the knives retract, she could literally just cut the harness off and her weapon would be the exact same, it's just pointless weight for the sake of looking cool, Pig doesn't have to use a harness to retract her wrist blade, why would this really similar weapon that doesn't retract need one?
- Why is her belt so sparse? That could have been a utility belt with all manner of stuff she might need, why is so little of it used?
Her hair, kneepads, and boots are all fine and make sense from a tactical point of view (short hair stays out of her face so she can focus, kneepads help keep her clothing close to her body to prevent it from rustling, boots are tight and secure), but the rest of it is just baffling to me, a part of me feels like it's because she loves being theatrical and making a statement with what she wears, which is fine, but you can be theatrical and not be seen or heard from miles away at the same time, make her outfit a combination of actual camouflage colours instead of white and dark green, remove the pointless harness or give the harness a reason to exist other then as a Predator reference, and make her gas mask cover her full face and build a pair of Night-vision goggles into it. Because her currently design simply isn't tactical, Ghostface's base outfit is a pretty good way to indicate a "tactical" outfit while still being a bit outlandish, it's tight fitting but easy to move around in, it keeps his identity hidden, and the floating tassels look cool while also being just silly enough to make it work, SM's outfit doesn't do that nearly as much as it could or should IMO
And finally, her power, Hoh boy, her power.
I can forgive less then interesting backstories with a ton of plot holes, I can forgive a messy design
What I do not forgive is combining both of those problems and topping it off with a absolutely dogshit power
Skull Merchant's design and lore, while a bit troubled, could have lead to a really interesting power concept, and all she gets are drones, drones that do barely anything useful against Healthy survivors and absolutely nothing against injured survivors
What they are good for, however, is creating large "do not go here or die" zones.
Which means that SM is ANOTHER zoning/3-gen control killer.
Why, just why, that's pretty much all I can say on this, WHY THE ######### DID YOU MAKE ANOTHER 3-GEN KILLER RIGHT AFTER KNIGHT
We could have gotten something like a Twins/Huntress hybrid with a bird and poison dart launcher, we could have gotten a more micro-heavy killer where you split your attention between your drones and the survivors, lining them up perfectly for the killing blow, but no we get a laughably weak Ghostface/Knight hybrid with less lethality then Sadako, this is not acceptable for a killer with as much potential as SM does, Brazilian/Japanese heritage combined with a intelligent and remorseless hunter should not equate to a power this bland and ineffective, the drone's project where their radius is to everyone when hiding it from the survivors could at least force them to be on their toes and keep a eye out for the drones, taking away something that could have made her semi-threatening, the tracking might as well mean nothing since you're slowed down while using it.
And the animations too, oh my lord the animations, there is recycling and then there's copy/pasting Oni's wall breaking animation and Freddy's mori and giving it a different camera angle, while leaving the rest of the animations completely default, was there seriously nothing interesting you could have done with the mori or animations?
I struggled for a while to really understand why this Frankenstein's Mess of bad ideas makes me so angry, and now I know why, it's because of just how half-assed BHVR were when making SM, we could have had a genuinely fun and interesting addition to the roster, the ideas are there, she could have been amazing, a wholly unique take on a trap based killer where her gameplay is a healthy mix of stealth, tracking, and getting into survivor's heads, getting them to run to areas you want them to be or ambushing them using the stealth granted by the drones, but instead we are not getting something fun, we are getting a rehashed idea done worse then it was before, with nothing interesting lore-wise nor design-wise to make that fact hurt less.
BHVR, you have done more with less, you made a medieval knight interesting and fun to play (I will be dying on this hill thank you very much), how the ######### did you guys manage to mess up doing more with more? Tiny buffs aren't going to fix anything, just commit to the ideas that are already there, make her stealth useable and hide the drone range from survivors and she instantly becomes at least mildly effective and kinda fun, but her current state is just pathetic, combine that with her boring visual design and reused animations and you have probably the most lazily designed killer in the entire game. Which sucks even more because I adore the ideas behind her, Brazil doesn't get enough representation compared to other nationalities, cyberpunk is a endlessly deep pit of crazy ideas, and looking on Reddit and other image sites shows what we could have gotten out of the ideas behind this chapter (Seriously the fan artists in this community are amazing like holy ######### these are all amazing)
I wanted this chapter to be excellent, I wanted this chapter to knock it out of the park, but instead I got a bland and uninteresting chapter that was so half-assed that it was actually more like eighth-assed, I hope BHVR has one hell of a anniversary chapter cooking because we deserve better then R63 Crypto and her garbage drones
At least the map redesigns are nice, i guess
G'Night
Comments
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People mad at the teaser either just don't understand BHVR's history with teasers or just decided the teaser meant things it didn't which is literally your own fault if you did that.
Spirit's teaser is literally her getting murdered by her father making it seem like the killer will be him and we were getting some type of samurai.
Slinger's teaser made him look a lot like Pinhead.
Twins Teaser is just victor's arm and screaming which a ton of people thought was wendigo or until dawn chapter.
Trickster's teaser is just a song being played then reversed and then played again giving no indication of anything.
Merchant's teaser was actually a lot more straight forward than some previous teasers tbh just people wanted to do random leaps of logic that spiraled out of control. Literally on the day the teaser came out I said it wasn't a cyborg.
From that thread when the teaser was first posted: "So I don't think it's a cyborg just because if you look at the plans the bottom drawing can be perceived as a body but there are no arms but four legs there as a base, this is important to the killer as you see it again at 0:14 but upside down. Also keep in mind they never just straight up show us the killer in a teaser unless it's a license."
Now in hindsight those weren't legs but a place to hold the rotors and was put upside down in the teaser relative to the skull but if you look at the drones it is that exact skull attached to that main body piece. As for the logo it's probably just the logo for her company it doesn't really have any meaning besides that. I will say it's kinda dirty to make it look so much like the skynet logo but it was obviously not terminator from there being no copyright in the trailer. So has far as the teaser goes nothing in it said cyborg the community just decided that cuz they felt like it.
Her story I'll skip on because there's aspects to it I like and a lot I don't and it's not clear what the focus is supposed to be in terms of theme. I'll skip on the outfit too cuz it's fine but doesn't standout to me although the cosmetic we're supposedly getting is really good and sohlud have been her default.
So going to her power I'll admit it will only appeal to a few people because there's two aspects to it that make her a hard sell.
- She plays somewhat like hag
- She's as add-on reliant as wraith to make her power actually do things
Now this is not a death sentence powerwise as Hag is a good killer and Wraith was good before he got nerfed for absolutely no reason. It is a problem popularitywise because some people have a serious problem with needing add-ons and most people despise Hag's gameplay. But for people that like being able to customize their power and creating "this area of the map is mine and if you go here you die" areas she's very appealing. I've said it multiple times but I think the comparisons to knight are completely bogus, people say 3 gen killer but idk if people realize this but uuhhhh EVERY KILLER CAN 3 GEN. Nobody can is making a good point saying they're good a 3 genning. She's close to Hag and in an abstract way close to Pyramidhead in the sense of shaping the map to her advantage if torment trails were actually scary and worth going out of your way to avoid.
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her trailer image look looks like sombra from overwatch. She looks like a hacker over a merchant with all the computers. For a bounty hunter, Most bounty hunters are like assassins. they spy on their victims then strike in for the kill at the opportune moment. Her gameplay does not convey her that at all. I would think of a game-hunter to look more like Splinter Cell(The game) with dark image clothing with 3 eye green goggles. I think that is image-type they are going for but they are trying to turn it into a more female look that just does not fit.
I think her gameplay would be more interesting if she was an undetectable 0 TR killer and her drones were changed into sc-fi small circular chips that you could place on walls. when the survivor in a 16 meter radius, they are shown on the scanner and the survivor is 99% marked. To activate exposed, you activate the sc-fi scanner chip on the wall and this would inflict 30 second exposed. This would convey her bounty-hunter gameplay a lot more. you setup little circular black chips on the wall and this allows you to spy and see people on the scanner to tactically assassinate survivors on generators.
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SM’s Teaser being vague is fine, but there is a distinct difference between being vague and having so little to indicate who or what the killer could be that it could be literally anything, the only thing straightforward about the teaser was “skulls play a part in this” and that is it, I will reiterate, SM could have been a Warhammer character with how open-ended this teaser is m, her shadow or laugh being included would have been enough, but instead we got exactly nothing concrete
as for her power, the comparisons to Knight are wholly justified when that is entirely what her power boils down to, people call her a 3-gen killer because that is what she is best at, other killers can 3-gen but they always have something else besides that, she also does not play like Hag at all, with Hag you set up a web of traps, teleport to them, replace the trap and go from there, with SM you throw down a drone and that is it, the drones do not do nearly enough to be useful for anything other then throwing them down at a loop to scare people away
I do not care about what kind of defence people will come up for this absolutely garbage execution of a area control killer, SM is awful and lazily made in every ######### aspect, her lore is a mess, her visual design is a mess, and her power is ineffectual for anything other then the two most boring strategies in the entire game
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People want to believe what they want to believe.
In the first trailer you can literally hear a person using metal work equipment and you can also see it. its a human killer.
wow I cant wait to see the inhuman robot horror use this to repair itself.
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Again the teaser was nothing out of the ordinary compared to what BHVR usually releases in terms of teasers. Hell the Pinhead teasers were so vague half the community thought it was FNAF until the very end. SM's teaser actually gave us more than usual because the skull clearly had a eye or sensor in its mouth so some sort of trap you were able to place was obvious.
And no not really anything like knight, knight you can actually chase with his power where as that's not really true with SM unless you bring geographical readout or maybe prototype rotor. The comparison of "they both 3 gen" is so insanely weak and I don't even think it's true every killer has something besides that. Unless you get basement it doesn't make sense to do anything on Trapper besides 3 gen that's why they all bring corrupt so they have time to set that up. And yes SM is like Hag you can set all of them down in an area you wanna control and give yourself the ability to keep your stealth in a large area much like creating a web with Hag you're creating alone you're much more powerful in. Unless you're bringing specific add-ons to help you in chase throwing the drones down in loops is kinda pointless besides maybe keeping one drone if they go shack or something. Now that doesn't necessarily mean 3 gen you can throw the drone network down in the middle of the map or try to create a perimeter somewhere and I've had that be okayish as well depending on the map.
But I have a feeling people are going to default to "I use power in loop" and not bring the right add-ons for it and get really frustrated when that doesn't do anything.
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Thank you for explaining her power more! People don't realize you CANT have a power which creates a lethal area without having a 3 gen be apart of it. However, her power encourages more than a 3 gen since setting up a 3 gen makes your entire chase overall weaker unless you dedicate time to being super far from gens.
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Not to mention that her name is flat out shown in the trailer on the blueprints. You can see written out "Adrianna Imai" on her blueprints, the fact people thought this was terminator (Which was super ???) or some insane robot killer is just funny and them hyping themselves up to be angry
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The benefit of Hags traps is that you basically cannot see them unless you're on a map where they contrast against the ground, SM's drones can be seen from across the map by a blindfolded infant with glaucoma, making them hilariously easy to ignore, and thus making her horrendously bad stealth even less usable then it already is
And if SM is meant to be fine because "you can bring addons", need I remind you that Wraith and Sadako were universally panned as some of the worst killers in the entire game due to their basekit sucking? Wraith's basekit is fine now but Sadako's only viable strategy is with a pair of obnoxious addons, Killers need to be good without addons, they are not meant to be these keys to viability, they're meant to either be small buffs or offer up a alternative playstyle, not make up for the basekit being awful.
and even if those two problems were solved, that doesn't change the fact that the ideas behind SM could have led to something far more interesting then "Drones that stop people from going here safety", BHVR has done more with far less interesting ideas, fumbling the ball with SM this hard is inexcusable
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Hmmmm…the fan-art does hit different. I am a lil dissatisfied they went with a Cosplay Killer who doesn’t know how to Anime. Devs should have went to a convention or watch a show lol. Anime characters, specifically ones with her theme, have a vibe and they missed the mark. That Skull Merchant Re-Design picture really hit the feel of a Manga character. I’d really love to play that version, she looks perfect.
Anyway, I’m still looking forward to SM. I don’t see what all the fuss is about, but it’s entertaining. If it makes you feel any better OP, I won’t hard 3gen, I’m going Hex Builds~
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Yo I love that redesign
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I don't understand why BHVR thought this was an appealing / interesting / fun killer. I will not argue about whether or not the trailer imlicated different things because it doesn't really matter. What matter is the killer they actually designed.
This is the first time that I think BHVR's visual design team really missed the mark. Her power indicates that she should be some kind of stealth killer. Her appearane however does not support that. She looks like a mercenary not an assassin. A huge claw, a glittering mask, a glowing eye that seems to serve no purpose and an outfit that is in now way stealthy. Her power and her visual design don't match. That is an issue. Next, she is just a regular woman with a claw. That would be fine, if she was some kind of assassin lurking in the shadows and strike when the time has come. That is not the case though and this makes her pretty non threatening.
Her power itself has no real skill expression or tactical component. Especially after the buffs she received it is clear that you are meant to place drones while in chase (otherwise why would they reduce the activation time?) and not set them up for later (even claw trapped survivors can deactivate them, after all). Her power is still no threat to injured survivors and incentivises Shift + W plays for the survivor. I believe they didn't think about the stealth part too much. What reason could you possibly have to become undectable in an area, when the survivor already knows you are there? Setting up a drone and then sneaking up on a survivor later will not work because the survivor will hear her terror radius as she comes near. Hiding inside the drones radius is useless as well because there is no way the survivors won't see that drone. The tracking part is pretty awful as well. She cannot use this information. Doctor has the ability to track survivors near him. Skull Merchant on the other hand will more often find survivors that are far away from her. With her lack of mobility she can't make her way across the map to capitalise on it. If she does, that results in a lot of wasted time. She does so much and all of it is bad. This is way worse than the Demogorgon who is jack of all trades. His power does at least work good enough to be a threat. SM on the other hand does a great many things without achieving anything.
Lastly her animations. Again, I feel like they really dropped the ball there. Knight's animations looked pretty cool at least. Her animations are boring in comparison. The weapon animations are very simplistic, her walking animation looks awkward (Seriously, who moves like that?) and her mori is by faaaar the worst one yet.
This really is a perfect example of 'less is more'. Scratch half of her lore and power and focus what remains. This could be an interesting killer, if it didn't feel like half of her power and lore are so redundant.
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Except besides 3 genning if you put them in choke points and high traffic areas they have to go through there and if they don't then you know where not to waste your time looking and it can still get you the first hit if they don't know what direction you're coming from.
As far as Sadako goes as much as everyone says she's bad she's consistently near the top of the kill rates so how much help does she really need? I don't think they're all bringing iri tape so obviously she's a bit better than people give her credit for. Iri tape just gives her another playstyle just as wraith and SM have add-ons that dictate their playstyle and literally who said add-ons arn't meant to be part of a killer? You literally just made that up. Most of the reason people think Billy is dead is because they massacred his add-ons his baskit wasn't really changed that much besides overheat which doesn't come up that much.
SM could use some improvements for sure but there's plenty of things that are appealing to some people. I don't think SM is a fumble she's just a niche killer like Twins, Hag and Artist. Honestly I feel like if the community had their way they just would have copy and pasted deathwire form VHS, not exactly the pinnacle of creativity.
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I don't really care about how she looks, but I wish her Mori was more interesting and her power was actually fun to use.
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Honestly if they had copy/pasted Deathwire i think SM would have been way better received, considering that she already looks like she was copy/pasted from Apex Legends
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