Merchant Rework! Merchant like in the cutscenes <3
As we all know, Skull merchant is in the reworks: the killer with a niche community, lovers of "lasertagging" and a killer that had to be nerfed to the ground, not because she was strong, but because she was easy.
That is why I wanted to help give ideas on how we can turn her into an amazing killer. But first, let's take a close look at what she's about, before we can turn her into an amazing killer, and bring her fantasy to life:
When looking at her trailers and cutscenes, we find a killer stabbing people in the back, and sending terrifying drones at them, that stalk them, track them, and perhaps even kill them. This is the fantasy that I wanna bring to life with this rework!
The goal is to make her skill-based, fun to play against, viable, and keep some love for the original "laser tagging" merchant players!
Let's get into it!
HER MAIN ABILITY:
Bouncing Drone:
- She shoots forward a hovering drone that moves in a straight line
- It can fly over pallets and windows
- It can bounce off walls a total of 2 times similar to trickster's knives
- Deploying this drone doesn't slow her down
- It has 2 modes. Stalking mode & Scan mode. By default it flies in stalking mode and by pressing the ability button again it enters Scan mode
Stalking Mode:
- The drone simply flies in a straight trajectory, being able to bounce until it breaks on a 3rd bounce off of an object, or after 8 seconds disables
- If a drone hits a survivor in stalking mode, the drone will attach itself to the survivor "lazily following" that survivor in an small ring around them. If for example, the survivor moves north, the drone will be south, but if the survivor starts to move west after moving north, the drone will slowly move from south to east of the survivor
- A stalking drone attached to the survivor hides the killer's red stain and applies the LAZER effect whenever the survivor looks into the direction of the drone
- Hitting a survivor with multiple Stalker drones will cause the drones to fuse and applies 1 stack for SWARM
The LAZER effect will blind the survivor in the direction of the drone (which is around 160 degrees of their FOV), where the exact spot of the drone shows this flickering white star, while a dotted pattern of red dots keeps moving in different directions at different intervals. Skull Merchants Red eye will also show as a bigger red dot whenever she is looking at the survivor in line of sight (see subtle red dot right side of the star)
- The survivor can easily remove this drone by passing a somewhat quick skill-check which grabs the drone out of the air (Which is somewhat difficult mid chase, as it renders them immobile) They can also cancel the skill-check/fail it by just starting to run again
- If you're shooting a new bouncing drone, other Stalker's drones lazer will disable for the duration that new stalker drone didn't hit anybody or entered Scan mode
- The skull merchant can "Lock" the stalker drone by "Upgrading it"
Upgrading stalker drone:
- Press the second ability button + hold mouse button to upgrade the Stalker drone attached to any survivors
- Upgrading the drone significantly slows down Skull Merchant, and lasts longer than it takes for a survivor to remove it with the skill check
- If successfully upgraded, the survivor can no longer use a quick skill check to remove the stalker drone. It will be attached to them until they are downed, or if they hide in a locker for 30 seconds (uncommon)
- If a survivor has an upgraded stalker bot attached to them, they can also no longer hear the killer's terror radius
SWARM:
- If Skull Merchant holds the active ability button instead of pressing it, she releases a Swarm bot for every survivor that has a stalker bot on them. The swarm drone will move to the current location that particular survivor was at at the time of activating it
- The swarm drone moves slower than a survivor's speed
- The swarm drone will burst shoot 3 bullets at a survivor if it's in line of sight at around 8 meters from the survivor, injuring them or downing them
- For every stack of SWARM on a survivor, their swarm bot will move to their new current location again after reaching their previous location
- After it has used all stacks, the swarm bot and the stalker bot on that survivor will disable
- Swarm drone can't shoot when within 16 meters of the killer
- While swarm is active, the killer can see the locations of all survivors with a stalker bot on her tablet.
- You cannot use swarm again if another swarm is already active or there are no survivors with upgraded stalker drones
Now you understand the Bouncing drone's default mode stalking, let's explain Scan mode!
- If after pressing the ability button to shoot a bouncing drone in stalking mode, you press the ability button again, it stops its trajectory and enters Scanning mode.
- Locked in position, the drone starts scanning clockwise, injuring/downing any survivor it hits
- The scan scans only in 1 direction, and starts in the direction the killer is looking at at the time of activating Scan mode
- Activating scan mode slows the Skull Merchant down, to give survivors predicting the scan time to crouch, which dodges the scan
- The scan moves for the duration of 2 full rotations before disappearing. The bot then disappears
- Pressing the ability while the scan is up changes its direction, with a minimal direction change cooldown of around 0.8 seconds, unless at the start, where double clicking the ability button will cause the rotation to start counter clockwise
- If a survivor gets hit, the scan disables and the survivor's aura is revealed for 5 seconds
AMBUSH
- Press the secondary ability button + the ability button to activate AMBUSH
- Ambush is Skull Merchants mobility, that allows drones to lift her up and quickly moves her over a pre-planned path
- When she activates ambush, you enter a mode where you can quickly create a path, similar to knight, while unable to see any survivors while creating that path
- The speed at which you create this path is rather quick
- After releasing, Skull merchant gets picked up by drones to follow quickly fly over that full path (which can go over pallets and windows). She cannot cancel this path and will be dropped off at the end
- If any survivor bumps into her while she flies over this path, she "Crashes", breaking her out of her path and "Fatiguing" her for an extended duration compared to the nurse, giving survivors ample time to reach a pallet. During this fatigue she cannot hit survivors and moves at around 10-20% of her normal movement speed
- If she reaches the end of her ambush, she can't instantly attack, and will be slowed down, giving survivors some time to get distance, even if she guesses her end location rather well without bumping into a survivor
NOW YOU UNDERSTAND THE WHOLE KILLER, let's talk about WHY! ❤️
With this setup, she has the ability to injure in chase, with Bouncing drone + Scan Activation, which has counter play as survivors can crouch + her slowing down to compensate, and keeps the "Lasertag" love and skillsets of old school Skull Merchants relevant, as they deserve!
She will be able to apply group pressure and abandon chase using Stalker mode, being able to leave survivors who weren't able to predict her leaving them and didn't manage to get the stalker drone off before she managed to upgrade it, as well as apply slowdown with SWARM, fitting perfectly into her theme and cutscenes!
She will be able to mindgame using the Stalker drone's blinding effect from 1 direction, to suddenly come from the other, to fit in perfectly with her theme of stabbing people from unexpected locations, like in the Cutscenes!
She will have mobility to keep her from falling behind in bigger maps and can so called "dash out" of the Stalker's drone blind spot to ambush survivors from the front, to create an intense experience while not being too oppressive due to her not being able to attack straight out of it, as well as it offering super satisfying moments for survivors who predicted her path and managed to crash her out of it.
And overall we'd have a brand new killer with super unique features, some of which may only truly befit her lore and theme! If we could make it happen 💖
Let me know what you think!
Comments
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Now it's finally finished 😉
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It's kinda difficult multitool.
I've said that the Merchant after rework except for the speed/slow was kinda ok. Not fun or interactive, but fun. To be honest, I'm not huge fan of BHVR rework idea, because it will make her more difficult to play while leave her being one of worst killers. This idea seems way too complicated. Can you do a summary in short sentences of how would the playstyle go?
I kinda imagined her having selfmoving drones that hover around map and search for survivors. Once they spotted someone you can speak about the propulsion or how it was called.
Post edited by Elan on0 -
What you would do in chase is Shoot a bouncing drone and try to injure or down them with Scan mode (stopping the bouncing trajectory and locking it in place for a scan), or you can try to hit them directly in Stalker mode (Aka normal bouncing trajectory), which will make it easier to mindgame them with M1, cut them off with Ambush, or try to leave the chase and get the Upgrade off successfully to quickly move to a new target (with ambush) so you can give more survivor stalker drones for a strong SWARM to slow down the game.
That's the quickest summary without getting into the super details of how every ability works.
Since her main chase is dependant on survivors having to "duck" when she does scan mode, she will be able to mind game with this too as well, since if she doesn't activate Scan mode to lock the drone in place, the stalker mode (aka normal bounce trajectory) will hit a survivor whether or not they're crouching
Also a mini summary of all her abilities (without game implementation details):
- Can shoot out a bouncing drone in a straight trajectory (called stalking drone) that will bounce off walls twice and if it hits a survivor will follow them and blind them if they look in that drone's direction. Being hit by this drone applies 1 stack of SWARM. It can be removed with a skill check
- She can upgrade all stalking drones attached to survivors, preventing them from removing it with a quick skill check. It can still be removed if the survivor enters a locker for 30 seconds
- She can hold the ability button to send a SWARM out for each survivor with a stalking drone attached, which will chase their latest past location for each stack of SWARM and shoot the survivor if within LOS and within 8 meters if the killer isn't within 16 meters of that survivor
- When shooting a bouncing drone in stalker mode, she can press the ability button again to lock it in place, entering Scan mode, where it scans and injures/downs any survivor scanned by it if they aren't crouching
- She can use Ambush to create a fixed path and quickly travel over it, without ability to break off of it once she's traveling it. If she bumps into any survivors while flying over this path, she gets fatigued for a prolonged duration0 -
It sounds well. But I still can't fully imagine that as a gameplay. I defienetly would like to see her be more appealing to both sides. But same as BHVR, you offer way too difficult multitool. But in your suggestion it might make her stronger. In BHVR suggestion I don't see her being better than C tier with a long set up which as we know requires some time that you don't really have.
My idea was to make deployed drone start harrassing survivor as soon as they see them, being completely stealthy. When drone sees survivor they follow them and revel them to SM. SM gains undetectable for as long as the survivor is chased by the drone. She would have 4 of them. Her second ability would be to shoot bullet from her mechanical weapon. Once survivor gets harrased by drone enough to fill the lock on meter, lets say 30s, she can shoot them with this bullet to damage them with this power for as long as they have lock on. Lock on would last about 60s. So the gameplay would be that you see survivor being harrased by drone that follows them, you prepare your bullet ability and once they have full lock on you can shoot them. This would give her antiloop as well as more interactive power.
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When I'm trying to explain it more closer to a game design document it looks a bit more complex than it is, since a lot of small details aren't as necessary to understand and are pretty intuitive.
She would play a bit similar to huntress, You would essentially just try to dodge her projectiles & duck her scans
Her sending shooting drones out would also be pretty intuitive to understand. It can simply happen if you have a stalker drone on you and you just run away for a bit
Her ambush would also be a bit more noob friendly. It's a long dash across a predetermined path, that you can interrupt. Since survivors can outplay her by predicting it and bumping into her, it would probably end up in fun survivor clips pretty fast, like trapper being able to step in his own traps, and would be understood by the community as a classic outplay of skullmerchant
And it keeps lastertagging in for SM for the OG fans, which I think they deserve 😊0 -
Where are all the Skull Merchant mains at. I heard from someone they scrapped the new rework idea?
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Honestly, the only rework I wanted from Skull Merchant would be a Mori rework. Idc that she's bad, but that Mori is awful 😭😭😭😭😭
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The mori is actually the main reason I play her, I love it 😭😭😭
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But think of the possibilities!! It'd be awesome if it were just a bit different
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I think the first part of the mori should change. Maybe the stab could be more spectacular, but I also wouldn't want the mori to last longer because I do love lategame builds
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That's true, I agree. Maybe she could tag the survivor in the ground and >then< impale the survivor, maybe from the gut to the throat, you know? Upwards
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I really like your design it’s much more creative than what BHVR usually does (taking parts of old killers, mashing them together, and turning them into a new killer). However, there are some things I don’t fully agree with, because they might make her too difficult to play, which could make killer players not enjoy using her.
- Bouncing off walls up to 2 times I think the drones should serve more as patrolling or scouting tools. Personally, I’d like them to patrol randomly or have certain trigger conditions, similar to Nemesis’ zombies.
- Path-setting mode (similar to Knight) where you can’t see survivors while placing the path Skull Merchant is just a human; she doesn’t have the fantasy elements that other killers do. Not being able to see survivors during this feels a bit illogical. I think AMBUSH could be more like placing a zip line in an FPS game (similar to Pathfinder’s zip line) something you can set up and it disappears after a set time. This would make her feel more like an assassin or spy, which fits her lore.
- Scan Mode I think after activating the scan, it shouldn’t just disappear. It could instead temporarily stop working and stay stationary for a short moment, then resume moving. It could be usable again after a cooldown.
Other than that, I’m fine with everything else. Your design is excellent, and I truly wish they would read it.
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I dunno, grabbing the face as the 2 blades are shoved in and up from behind through the kidneys, liver and lungs, while suspending the body off the ground seems a pretty cool kill to me...
Looks to me like a Predator kill (and where I think a lot of the Predator conpariaon subconsciously comes from), and I'm pretty sure if it was Predator instead Skull Merchant doing, no one would bat an eyelid.
Honestly the only thing a little goofy about her mori is the drone hovering around weirdly in front of the survivor first. If it were me I'd have had the drone shine a light in their face as she closes in to blind them, then she rakes at their face with her claws on her left hand, kicks the back of the knee, and finally grabs their throat and goes into the same final blow... however I largely see this as nitpicking.
The blades sticking out the other side of their torso/chest would also be a nice touch.
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First of all, I love how much attention you paid to the original posts! That's the passion I love seeing in the community
Regarding your points:
One of the reason I wanted to make her ability very skillbased was because of the original skull merchant causing problems bc she was considered "too easy to play", as SM's could just put a drone down without much thoughts and all the effort would be on the survivor to avoid it. Considering her previous negative reputation, I thought it would be a good idea to reverse that idea to truly remind ppl that this SM is new. Any passive value that doesn't require involvement from SM herself might garner the same critiques she already had.
As for the pathfinding, it'd be kinda like how you'd plan a route on the radar, but then pathed from a persons view. It would make sense why scratchmarks or players aren't visible imo
For the scanning, I wanted to make sure that as little of it is passive and it'd require the typical type of "lastertagging" and rotation aware knowledge that good skullmerchants have and make it viable. There'd even be other small changes such as making the scan only deal damage after 1-2 seconds of rotating, so you'd have to plan ahead depending on which loop etc0
