Skull Merchant has lost her identity

End_of_Slayer

As I am waiting in Killer Queue with my friend for 2v8, I realized something about Skull Merchant. This will be a bit of a hot take but I wanted to share my thoughts with you all to see who agrees.

Story time: Back when Skull Merchant released, I did enjoy her macro gameplay. She was an area denial killer with no chase power (which she didn’t need, not all killers need to have a chase power). She released in the time of the 3 gen meta, which caused people to be upset with her design which is valid. People wanted her power to be changed and I knew the devs would make her a chase killer. A weird Artist where you place your drone at a loop and then the survivor would leave or stay and you do the same until you eventually hit and down them. Like Artist

This was correct and because she got overtuned from people saying she was weak, on top of her being changed into a chase killer, she was miserable for survivors to go against. This is what caused her to be nerfed until the devs reworked her to be more player friendly. And me and my other friend would joke that we would just pick skull merchant if we wanted to turn our brains off to have an easy game because she’s easy to play. (Pre-nerf but post rework). I used to play Skully a lot when she came out but she fell out of my rotation because she was no longer interesting. She wasn’t challenging anymore (unlike the other characters before and after like Knight and Singularity who focus more on macro play like she did). She lost her macro play.

This is fine because other killers don’t have macro play and still feel fun. Deathslinger, Huntress, Wraith, etc. but she was supposed to be a macro killer. She was literally advertised as an area denial type killer in a new way unlike trapper and hag. And it’s fine that she got reworked, that happens in a live service game as time goes on and design principles change, it’s only natural that things like this happens. But as what Trickster mains are hoping to do and Sadako mains successfully have done, I hope Skull Merchant does go back to being an area denial killer. In a less egregious way and more engaging for survivor.

But here’s what I’m getting at. Skull Merchant lost her identity with her rework. When she got reworked and overtuned, she lost what made her feel different from other killers. She is a coagulation of other killer tropes. Stealth, Chase, anti loop, area control, zoning. She has so much in her kit but isn’t good at any of them to make her stand out from everyone else in the roster.

She was given too many different things. Literally Jack of all trades, master of none. And this is why I said she lost her identity. Haste upon scanning a survivor, hinder on scanning a survivor, undetectable for placing a drone, her drones are used for zoning and area denial, and she gets to injure a survivor without incurring a wipe off animation. (That’s okay, other killers can do the same, Knight and Nemesis being examples.)

But here’s where Skull Merchant really lost her identity. She was Area Denial and Tracking. She did both really well in her first version. Cause that’s what she was meant to be. Now you barely track anyone. You can only put a claw trap on someone when they’re actively in chase. So there’s no point in tracking because you’re already in chase with the survivor you just scanned/trapped. Sure, you get to track a survivor when they’re scanned but that rarely happens when you aren’t actively pressuring them but it’s for such a short time and by the time you get to move in on the survivor you did track, they’re already gone from that location. Or you could be in chase, in which it’s useless because by time you do end up looking at your radar, you won’t see them.

The tracking was so unique but now there’s no reason to use it when you barely have anyone to track in the first place unless you’re running the add on where all survivors start with a claw trap. Sure, there’s some edge case scenarios in which you could track to find someone through a loop, or know the general location of where they are. But the normal killer gameplay is keeping track of where people are and how to loop so it doesn’t really change all too much.

The reason why tracking was also unique is because the survivor knew when they were being tracked and there was no killer instinct (unless they got fully scanned or failed the drone mini game). Now a survivor gets scanned and doesn’t know if they can be tracked or not (and some people might not know she can track period). When you get scanned, it’s permanent. There is NO way for a survivor to remove it by themself. Curse requires the tapes, infection is vaccines, sprays, and pools of devotion. Torment is arguable but you can remove it through uncaging (and pyramid head should get to torment survivors by hitting them with punishment of the damned. The reason this was bad is because it was too easy to get consistently and there was no way to remove the status effect if he never caged anyone and why would you outside of a daily? That’s why it didn’t work or feel well).

When you get scanned, that’s permanent until you get downed or willingly scanned 2 more times to force yourself to be injured and tracked by the killer for a whole minute. This whole killer is a balancing mess that’s going to be a nightmare to fix.

Now, I have my own ideas for a Skull Merchant rework, that I thought would be engaging on both sides, brings back her area of denial in a more interesting way and tracking becoming more of the focal point along with adhering to her backstory and how she’s portrayed in her lore. I’ll probably detail a post about it if I haven’t already (I don’t remember if I have, I’ll check later when my phone isn’t at 5%).

But I just wanted to say I don’t want old Skull Merchant back. I want the killer I did enjoy back. The killer with macro gameplay, who had a unique gimmick where she could lock down areas and make it harder for survivors to maneuver through, and most important of all, tracking. I do not enjoy current Skull Merchant. I know there are people that do and I’m happy for them. But I do miss the killer that rewarded me for playing in a macro sense, monitoring so many different areas and trying to pressure people in a bigger way. And there will be people that say; “why don’t you go play knight, or singularity? They have macro gameplay too.” To which I raise, I do. I really enjoy both of their play styles and I used to enjoy Skull Merchant’s. And I get that not every killer is meant to be for me and they have their own types of players that do really enjoy them (ghost face, Chucky, Michael to name a few).

All this to say, whether you like old skull merchant or new skull merchant. Love her or hate her. I think the reason why the community seems to not like her - outside of personal biases or whatever - is that she does too much. She has fundamentally lost herself as a character. Too much has been incorporated into her kit as a means to try and offset the damage she has done, which has caused frustrations cause she feels like she can do anything and everything. This is why I think Skull Merchant has lost her identity.

PetTheDoggo

Well, now she lost everything…

I think her power needs to be completely reworked, current way of drones will simply never be accepted by survivors.

SoGo

She always had an identity crisis affecting every single part of her.

The solution of just stripping it all and making her a joke was not it.