Cause and Effect - the problem with Skull Merchant

Wibwob

I can't check these forums without seeing at least one recent post about her and how much it sucks to play against her, so I thought I'd highlight what I think is her main issue: the effects of Lock On.

It can be ok that getting Lock On stacks is "inevitable, but can be delayed". A lot of killer powers are - you can't block line of sight with Myers forever, Dredge will eventually activate Nightfall, Doctor will gradually level up your madness as long as he tries, etc.

What probably should change though, is what happens after getting scanned three times. Instantly lose a health state, broken, a haste boost for the Killer, hindering the Survivor, and tracking.

"Normal M1 gameplay but with cards heavily stacked against the Survivor" is not engaging and takes options away from Survivors, and it doesn't ask the killer for much skill, risk or effort to get there. The effect is way too much for an easily executed and inevitable cause.

Instead of an immediate reward, I think a Survivor being claw trapped should enable SM to use an "offence ability" on them - like how Oni has to earn Blood Fury, or Singularity has to slipstream survivors before he can teleport. The Survivor is now at a disadvantage, but it's not over and there's still a chance to express skill on both sides.

HolyDarky

When Skull Merchant was released, I hated her so much due to her 3gen and hold the game hostage ability and her really boring design (her rift outfits are boring too). But since her rework and with more cool cosmetics, I don't hate her anymore - in fact I like her and play her from time to time. However, matches with her are sometimes really hard because survivors either dc or kill themselves on hook because they refuse to play against her - traumatised from the past. When I play SoloQ and face a Skull Merchant, same issue. Another issue is also that survivors struggle to understand her power and just walk into the scans. This hurts SoloQ the most and I think she is with Pinhead a huge SoloQ stomper but another topic.

Now she is in a better spot but the hole injury, deep wounds, and slowdown via scans is too much and require little effort from the killerside. So yes I agree with you that this should be change into more interaction. The basic idea of putting drones, scanning, and trapping is good and I like it but everything beyond that is so akward.