Indepth Skull Merchant Feedback

YayC

Getting the bias out the way early, I loved old skull merchant (before laser tagging) as a chase killer and have disliked her more and more with each rework.

TL:DR I like the ideas proposed but so far the execution is flawed from what we know.

We're going to start off with the spotting mechanics of red light green light and stealth drones which you yourselves state are for finding survivors out of chase to initiate a chase.

I'll start off with the red light green light mechanic. I'm going to assume this works like doctor where when you use it to scan, the actual scanning part will only last 2 seconds or so since we've not been told otherwise.

Even with the update to it's counterplay of it scanning people walking, in it's current state it's going to be borderline useless for its intended purpose of spotting while out of chase. It's supposed to be a map wide doc style shock but because it's map wide, you're nerfing it's strength by making the counterplay standing still or crouch walking. The counterplay is just too easy for having a notification for it happening. If you took Doc's ability and made the counterplay standing still instead of being in a locker/using a perk, it would also be useless.

You also need to remember Doctor gets 2 benefits from the shock since it also increase madness of survivors which is inherently passive slowdown (not much but it's there).

If you make it so the scanning happened for an extended period of time, for example 10 seconds and they couldn't work on generators during those 10 seconds or they would get scanned, it could be used as a passive slowdown and still have it's spotting potential. But as it stands, it's a none mechanic because the counterplay is simply too easy for being alerted it's going to happen. As it stands it will only be used by players in chase on tall wall loops to track on the radar while looping because that's the only time you'll get any consistent value.

Next is the stealth drones. I don't know exactly what you mean by

• Stealth Drone scan lines are now visible, but will not extend entirely down to the ground, providing a visual indicator for Survivors to crouch-walk as a counter action.

But I'm assuming the lines will look very similar to now. (An updated drawing would've been very helpful here for clarity on this change). I don't know why you've nerfed these drones from the first preview, how they were before is perfectly fine despite being hard to see. The reason being is the drones now ONLY serve the purpose of spotting survivors, it no longer directly injures survivors like they do now so you'll mainly be ONLY them for information. Making the lines super easy to see renders the entire purpose of the drone useless because you'll never catch anybody off guard if you can clearly see a bright orange beam that contrasts on almost every realm in the game. Trapper and Hags traps are much harder to see and they actually injure players or lead to injuries. Atleast make the information trap mechanic hard to see like it was before.

So overall, both these passive information abilities will never get you any passive information when playing against any survivor with a brain.

The next change is the drone hacking change

• We’ve removed the Killer aura reveal when hacking a Drone

Great change, no complaints here and thanks for listening to feedback on this one.

Next we have the whole drone power changes. We'll start with the buddy drone.

First of all, if that drone buddy doesn't have a pink bow on it like you showed in your drawings, I'll riot.

I think the buddy drone system is a decent idea. It's removes the worry of becoming twins 2.0 but comes with it's own problems;

• It has inherently nerfed the power quite a lot and you haven't addressed that lack of power elsewhere in her kit. Since she can't down from a distance.
• It's complicated the power much more than it was before since now you need to to claw trap a survivor before you can down a survivor.
• It used a different down mechanic to putting a claw trap on a survivor/injuring them. Meaning the power is weaker, more complicated and needs more skill expression because you need to know dash killers AND an AOE explosion killer such as unknown to get value out of merchants kit.
• The claw trap removal system is going to re-encourage heavy territorial gameplay like chess merchant (we'll get into more detail in abit).

I'm just worried here that you'll need to put in way too much effort to get a down with your power compared to other killers. This all really depends on the execution of the powers and how hard it is to down survivors with it, but it needs to be inherently strong for the amount of effort you're putting in. Especially since you'll be remotely controlling a drone to claw trap, then needing to close the gap on the survivor to get the down. If getting the initial hit is too hard when you already need to waste time closing the gap, noone will play the killer.

I don't know how you plan on setting each power up, but I'd recommend doing almost 1:1 Chucky dash on the initial injure/claw trap infection if you want to keep the drone hit for the injure. Getting the claw trap on a survivor should be easy but it should also be fun, so maybe a middle ground between old slice and dice speed and current slice and dice speed.

The reason I recommend making the claw trap hit the easier one is if you have someone injured without a trap on them, you'll need to drone them before you can down with your power. If it's too much effort to do that, it will heavily discourage committing to chases pushing her back towards the 3 gen playstyle.

The AOE shot sounds pretty fun depending on the execution from the drone buddy, we'll need more info on it though.

Lastly the claw trap removal.

Everywhere on the changes you've noted that survivors can just hold the interact button to remove the claw trap. That's not my issue, my issue is it's able to be removed IMMEDIATELY from what I can read. There NEEDS to be a a period where you cannot remove the claw trap once it's on you.

The reason being is if a survivor who is far enough away can just remove the clawtrap before you catch up to them, it will heavily discourage skull merchant from doing a distant claw traps then pressuring it since they would need to re-claw trap a survivor if they wanted anti-loop in the chase. This will then encourage you to only infect people in your vicinity which will have the same problem 1.0 skull merchant had where you would claw trap a survivor, see where they are but not be able to do anything about it.

If you put a timer on of 10 seconds or so before being able to remove a claw trap AND you make it so it takes 10 seconds or so to remove the claw trap, it will give merchant time to actually pressure survivors she traps which will actively encourage her to play less territorial since she will feel she can actually go for a chase. You could even implement a mechanic similar to hound master where if you're out of chase and someone gets a claw trap, you get haste to help her pressure the map alittle better.

Not all the changes, but just something so merchant actually has the ability to pressure someone she injures.

Lastly, I love that you brought back claw traps. It's massively helps her retain her identity and if they are easier to apply like 1.0 merchant, it will bring back her addon variety which is something that I missed heavily when she was reworked. The general gameplay seem to harp back more towards the 1.0 merchant design of trapping a survivor then using that info to hunt down the survivor, only now she actually get anti-loop outside of addons for doing it.

I do have one big request though and that's implement some kind of undetectable back into her kit. The stealth aspect of her kit was something I was really attached to in both 1.0 and the current merchant (before I quit tagging merchant I played her as a stealth killer) and seeing absolutely no stealth in her new kit outside of undetectable when controlling a drone (which will be borderline useless) is disheartening.

In conclusion, you need to buff the information aspect of her kit. Make sure she can actually pressure claw trapped survivors and don't make the first and second power hits too difficult (especially not both. It's okay if 1 is more of a skill shot that the others). Please add some form of stealth to her kit.

Karth

do you reckon keeping her current lock-on mechanic and her new emp dart giving 1 lock-on stack on non-clawtrapped survivors will be too much together with what we currenty have?

the claw-trap injury after hitting someone with a drone was a favourite of mine

or maybe they can indeed spice up the red-light green-light mechanic by allowing it to be able to track survivors that are interacting with stuff