Skull Merchant: Problems, Solutions and Questions?
A large amount of traffic on this forum (particularly in General Discussion) seems to be jeremiads about how bad Skull Merchant is, and how the devs should killswitch her to rework her or just straight-up remove her from the game (neither of which is going to happen). I like the idea of her playstyle as a tactical, set-up Killer, but I'm pretty sick of people DCing or giving up as soon as they hear her Terror Radius.
I've not seen a great deal of discussion about what needs to change about her. I thought it might be fun to look at how you could change her kit to make her... more enjoyable to play against, I guess. The issue isn't that she's OP: she's pretty mediocre in most situations that aren't a 3-gen, and there are more powerful killers who can easily be more oppressive in a 3-gen scenario. In fact, if she had more applied power to trap or chase survivors she wouldn't need to 3-gen, obviating that playstyle's unfortunate but understandable popularity among Skull Merchant players. The issue is that she's only really good at one thing– controlling a small area– and does that thing too well (you could argue that Nurse has the same problem, but her disproportionate power is in ending chases quickly rather than extending generator completion time).
So what do you do with Skull Merchant to make her worse at 3-genning without making her completely useless? It's easy to make Skull Merchant completely useless: simply remove the Exposed element from her drones. This actually reflects the reality of playing Skull Merchant without 3-genning in most situations: on large maps, a Survivor can be exposed but you can do nothing about it because they're so far away from you that you will never catch up to them in time. A halfway coordinated group of survivors can systematically take down your drones and deprive you of their lethality, with a fairly measly haste bonus and some information about Survivors' locations as compensation, none of which will help you without the ability to anti-loop or ambush them. This shows us that a lot of the time, Skull Merchant has a surfeit of information but little power to turn that information into value. If you aren't playing incredibly territorially, it's rare to get a down on an exposed Survivor.
To improve Skull Merchant's lethality, you could simply make it easier to expose Survivors. But that would make her 3-gen playstyle even stronger, while not necessarily actually making her more dangerous: after all, you have to catch a Survivor to down them, and Skull Merchant doesn't have a lot to help her do that. I'd suggest that any attempt to improve her overall– making her more threatening in early- and mid-game while reducing her ability to hold the late-game hostage– will probably need to start by removing her drones' ability to expose Survivors. As I said, that change alone would make her practically useless. But maybe starting from a position where Skull Merchant is useless, without the developmental crutch and bottleneck the Exposed status forces in her kit, it would be much easier to buff her significantly in other places. Give her (and Survivors) more ways and reasons to interact with her drones and Claw Traps, make it harder for Survivors to find Drones or even be aware of their presence, make the Undetectable element a more prominent part of her kit, the list goes on.
What do you think needs to happen to Skull Merchant? I'm no game dev, and there are plenty of ideas that I haven't thought of yet.
Comments
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I mentionned in an earlier thread that she could have his drones chasing survivors and though they still could hack the drones, should they fail, the drone would explodes and injures/downs them. But I was told this was too similar to te Knight's power and that's correct
Or she could set up invisible drones that would expose/chase the surv if they enter their perimeter, but that would be close to the hag's or trapper's power
If she goes under a heavy rework, I think her power would be close to one of the others killers, i don't see what new or unseen power thyey could come up with
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I liked this thing that @BlueHorkew started and I adjusted a little. I would much prefer this thing even if it's quite a rework from current version of skull merchant:
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For me it's her movement speed build is a bit absurd, she is way too fast atm with certain perks + addons its just not fun to play against especially with her bad animations.
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Part of the problem here is that people are taking it as a given that she is the problem to begin with.
What does her kit actually do, with regards to 3-gen scenarios? The lethality and stealth aren't really present since people want to remove the drones, so she has information and a little bit of stall from the process of removing the drones. Right away, then, we can see that someone like Doctor would be just as good if not better; he has more consistent stall from Madness 3 + to a lesser extent the Madness skill check shenanigans, and while he has the information less frequently, it's still plenty present. If it is the stealth and lethality, then every killer who is better at either of those elements (which is all of them to have those elements to begin with, albeit not at the same time) would be just as good as well.
I think everyone, devs included, should take a long, hard, serious look at 3-gens to begin with. If Skull Merchant can hold matches for 40 minutes, that means almost any killer in the game could if they wanted to, and that means that 'fixing' Skull Merchant isn't going to actually address the problem. Best case scenario is that it lurks in the background until another killer that's slightly better than average at it (and is perceived to not be good at anything else) comes out, and at that point we're starting the cycle all over again.
I'm not saying don't change SM, she's a little on the weak side and parts of her kit certainly seem lacklustre in comparison to others, but I am saying don't assume she's the entire problem and that changing her means it goes away.
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I have an idea to prevent her from using the "3 Gens" strategy.
The survivor who hacks the drone for the second time can turn the drone in his favor
There will be a "reverse lock" which is activated after the survivor has been within range of the drone for 15 seconds
Increases the speed of basic actions (generators - heal - rescue) and not secondary
The Skull Merchant can return the Drone in her favor using the Radar and she will receive a short cooldown
This helps the survivors break the "3 gens" strategy and punishes the skull merchant
I don't have any ideas to make it better and more fun but I came up with this idea
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Why would you punish killer for using their power?
Her 3-gen is nowhere near strong as before. CoB build make it kinda broken. It's not really an issue anymore.
I enjoy playing her and you don't need to hold 3-gen to win the game.
Your fix simply doesn't make sense. Survivors are there -> I use my drone. They keep going there and I get punished for it?
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Read carefully, I said (the drone was hacked for the second time), in other words the survivor needs to remove the first drone and then get the trap claw (45 seconds) and then penetrate the second drone and turn it into his favor
Why punish? The legion punishes if he misses his hit, Victor punishes if he misses an attack, the knight punishes if the survivor captures the flag, the nightmare punishes if the survivor was awake, the trapper punishes if the survivor closed the traps, and others
This suggestion punishes the skull Merchant for adopting a strategy (3 gens), and this is because the drones are close to each other and can be easily transformed in favor of the survivors.
The Skull Merchant is still able to turn the drone in her favor with the press of a button and with a cooldown period.
But if the drones are close to each other, multiple Survivors can turn the drones in their favor (such as 4 drones in favor of the survivors) and if the killer returns a drone, the cooldown prevents her from quickly turning them back in her favor.
In short, drones are a double-edged sword
Your playing well does not mean that others will not use the "3 gens" strategy and procrastinate the match for as long as possible.
Dude, it just stalls the game for a long, boring time (35-40 minutes) back and forth.
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Oh but she IS the problem. Like sure she is not the only one that can play 3gens. But she is by far the best with quite a noticeable margin.
Sure if she disappeared from the game, the problem is not entirely gone. There's still knight that can utilize the same thing with quite a bit less of a success. And even after knight there are still hag and trapper and maybe even fast moving killers like blight/wesker/spirit.
But all those other killers after spirit will not be able (considering kicking perks nerf) to hold the game hostage for super long time. They will be able to trade it for several hook states, but they won't be able to just hold it forever.
Skull merchant can hold them. That's why she (and maybe arguably knight, possibly maybe even hag in lower-skill environment) is the problem and why solving her alone would be good-enough fix for the whole problem. Also considering things like holding 3-gen should be viable (but counterable) tactics that gives killer something (while not allowing him to hold whole game indefinitely)... You should probably not even try to fully fix this "problem"
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Can I ask, sincerely, why?
Why can Skull Merchant "hold" these generators in a way no other killer can? What is it that's actually happening to make her ability to patrol 3-gens and harass survivors away that much stronger than other killers?
I'm asking sincerely, because whatever it is, it's sure as hell not obvious on paper. I'm lucky enough not to have faced this personally so I'm engaging in good faith by assuming there must be something I'm missing.
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You need at least 2 different people to hack drones for a single gen to not be under any drones. Realistically you need 3 so killer need to patrol. At that time, killer is 121% speed (that's more then with NOED - where chases are easy). But to do that, you need to actually hack it. Right after killer places the drone, there's immunity time for hacking = dead time you just have to give to killer for regression (or accept being exposed) + even hacking takes a few seconds, especially if they are not directly on a gen (travel time included). As she is silent in her drones and she is patrolling them (never too far) + she sees you, she is able to get 1 hit quite easily (especially if she holds that 3gen for some time = pallets are already used up). Now taking into account jolt, her kit together is just way too easy to keep gens regressed/survivors out of her 3gen - especially against uncoordinated survivors (1 survivor taking a drone is just free +3% speed = NOED on tier 1 speed)
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No matter how she uses her drones, survivors will be able to get this.
I can use this on loops, random gens, they will be able to disarm them twice.
It's like if I disarm second trap of trapper, I can ignore it but he will get trapped while walking over it. It doesn't make sense.
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Devs: Ok, let's make the skull trader more speed so she can chase and not camp 3 gens.
Players: Nice, more speed to be able to camp 3 gens.
Devs: Let's make it so Survivors can't take out a drone if they've already disabled one so the trader can know where it is and chase them down.
Players: Perfect, when they remove the drone I instantly place another one and the survivor couldn't get in to repair it and while it overloads it reduces the motor to 0 and I continue camping.
40 minutes later... all dead of boredom.
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It would seem in theory that it would make the killer too weak
But realistically, it may be beneficial for you if the survivors try to turn the drone in their favor, and then you turn it back in your favor, wasting their time.
Moreover, you know where they are and you earn (haste) status.
It's like when you read the description of "Mettle of Man" and think the requirements are plain and simple
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I already know where they are with current system. It doesn't bring anything good for merchant.
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Well that's your opinion
But do you understand that what is required to convert the drone in favor of the survivors requires the same survivor to penetrate the first drone and then turn the drone in his favor? That is, other survivors cannot turn the drone in their favor unless they all hack the first drone
Uh, right, after turning the drone in their favor, the survivors need to hack at least one drone to turn the other drone in their favor, and so on.
Or you think something else?
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So your overall plan is to have it so that survivors can steal her drones to get a set of buffs that are better than what she actually gets for having them in the first place.
The time it takes to disarm is drone is minimal so she's not really gaining any time advantage. She's losing access to her meager stealth and I'm gonna assume her haste buff from survivors being claw trapped.(This i'm not sure on as you've not really accounted for it in your posts)
Yet, she can just take the drones back with a button press which makes her power go on cooldown. So what does she actually benefit from? She's not really wasting survivors' time, her drones are more useful to survivors than herself and even then she can just take it back super easily at the cost of putting her power on cooldown. So she only gets hurt by this with no discernible benefits and you've still not addressed the issue because as much people tear their hair out over guarding gens with drones people refuse to interact with her power unless they are blocking the objective. People more often than not are drawing the games out because they just won't do the gens at risk. Which is the way you break her 3 gen strat, just push the gen at increased risk because once you pop one of them she can't do anything about.
Your idea unless I'm missing something from your posts don't make people more willing to engage with her power generally and it punishes her for using her power freely because she's not going to want to put out more than a single drone since they are better for survivors than her. You've given her nothing to either make her power useful in chases or make her just better in chase situations. Like almost no one wants to play a hyper territorial average m1 killer who ultimately has nothing interesting to do in a chase. I love Skull Merchant until I have to actually chase someone because it's boring cause my power doesn't matter then and just makes my chases longer for no benefit. I'm not in control of my haste effect, survivors are and if I don't put drones near gens they won't take a claw trap.
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I didn't mean to put all of her power into a cooldown , but rather the button that allows her to return the drones to her favour
You pointed out that the survivors benefit from the drones more than the killer
With that in mind and assuming my idea is implemented, what are your ideas for making up for it?
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Thing is your requirement is nothing new. It's a thing survivors need to do anyway.
When skull merchant can go there and get it back, it simply means she is not allowed to leave the area. Your change is forcing her to 3-gen. If I leave and they hack it, then I have nothing to do about it, I have to walk across the whole map to get my drone, that's so bad. So when they can hack my drone, I can't leave that area. I have to stay around, so they won't get bonus from it.
I like to play in a way to use drones as slowdown, whenever I find survivor on gen, I use drone and I chase. This playstyle is probably what most survivors would prefer, but it would be punished by your change way more than 3-gen strategy. If you stay in my 3-gen whole game, I don't care you hack my drone, because I will get it in 5 seconds back. That's actually better for me than claw trap. But if I want to leave and chase, then it's terrible for me.
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I have nothing to do about it, I have to walk across the whole map to get my drone
Are you nervously reading what I write?
I did not say that she needed to go by herself and leave the area to return the drone for her own benefit
Simply, she can return it using the radar device with just one click of a button, and the survivors have to do it again to count the drone in their favor.
And then a cooldown to that button, not all of her power
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If the survivors are going to gain control of the drone from their side it needs to be for a length of time that makes it worth engaging with. Say about a minimum of 10 seconds, not so long to be super punishing to Merchant but long enough to give tangible immediate value. I would say rather than give her button to reset the drones let the drones reset themselves, but for each drone out of her control her TR gets smaller and her lunges or movement speeds increase proportionally. In this way the threat of her stealth and striking potential personally increases to show her exerting more personal effort. In this way both sides gain from playing tug of war with the drones and it gives a bit of push/pull counterplay while keeping things fun. You take the drones and get a buff, but she also becomes much more aggressive.
This would probably require some changes to how drones function so they are less stationary gatekeepers and more of an omnipresent threat it is in survivors best interest to deal with rather than just ignore if placed anywhere other than objective points.
Another idea I have played with in my head is condensing the drones from 4 to 2 but each drone would be specialized for a certain task. One drone could be specialized towards tracking and emit a pulse that gives aura reading or killer instinct across a wide area at fixed intervals. While the other drone is specialized towards single target harassment and be thrown at a survivor to follow and inflict with debuff like oblivious. We drop exposed and lock ons from her kit and replace the open space with chase power similar killers like Legion, Wesker, Demo, or Billy. She's still a tracking killer, but now rather than being ultra territorial she's incentivized to play proactively rather than defensively.
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To sum it up:
-survivor needs to disarm dron -> get claw trap for 45 seconds
-next dron disarmed by this survivor is going to be hacked instead -> it would give bonus to gen repair etc.
-skull merchant can get it with her power, but get CD (probably same as when she activates a drone)
-hacked drone would be displayed to both sides (probably)
-so whenever this happen, skull merchant will get it back asap. So not really any bonus action speed from this.
-she gets CD, but she has her drone unlike claw trap, where she can't use it at all.
Claw trap changes are already doing what you are trying, but it's just more simpler and better for both sides.
It gives bonus to merchant in chase, but she can't use that drone for 45 seconds.
She is nowhere near as good at holding 3-gen like before. She used to have only 10 seconds cooldown, claw traps were recharged, you had to disarm it twice and mainly CoB build was really good.
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I don't know how you see it no longer adopting the "3 gens" strategy, even the developers said to "make it more difficult" and not completely prevent it
You may deal with this matter quickly
But for me, because there is no real communication and good coordination, the results are bad
If you remove one drone, it can easily replace it with a fourth drone
Its movement speed increases and it can stall the match for as long as possible
And then you lose all the pallets in that area
Then we all down and the game ends
See, our friend made up for it
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How to fix Skull merchant:
Make her drone move a little and a little taser animation with the potential to down survivors (A bit like the knight) if they stay in the zone... but give her fewer drones.
This way, she get a pseudo "chase power" by trying to corner survivors during chase and suddenly, she can't just park them next to the gens.
The issue with SM is an actual lack of lethality for the killer... its too weak as an M1 killer on these huge maps and can't possibly pressure the gens early on.
An M1 killer in this day and age is as good as no killer at all considering current map design (How big they are, the pallet/window density and the new BS tiles that even a monkey could loop)
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