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Just got out of a 40 minute Skull Merchant game
Comments
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We few Twins mains dont want her. Put her somewhere else lol
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Lol this genuinely made me laugh
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Then you need to team up and bait and taunt and make the game interactive. You have the power to do that why not try and exercise it during the game?
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Snare Freddy has depth though. You could have chosen a better analogy.
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The order of the gens literally does not matter if the killer is playing for a 3 gen from the start of the match. The 3 gen exists whether there are 5 remaining gens or 1 remaining gen. The killer is under no obligation to leave the area. What you're referring to is an accidental 3 gen that the killer stumbles into, not a planned one. Leaving a gen on the opposite side of the map does nothing if the killer doesn't patrol there and breaks off chase any time a survivor leaves the 3 gen. It's why teams just take the points and complete the gens outside of the gen cluster at the competitive level. Killers aren't dumb enough at a high level to patrol there when they're playing for a 3 gen, so the order doesn't matter. If they're not going to leave the 3 gen, it doesn't matter whether you do those gens first or not. A 3 gen happens at the loading screen when the map spawns, not when survivors complete gens in the wrong order.
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Skull Merchant solos
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She certainly does solo my will to play the game
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Acting like she chases you lol
"Do gen, get hit, SM kicks gen, places drone, you go reset with another Survivor, gen regresses" repeat for an hour.
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As @edgarpoop said, it doesn't matter what order you do gens when the killer comes in looking to play around the 3 gen.
I'm notorious for working on the same generator for an entire game, because I pick the middle-of-the-map gen that every killer comes back to kick during and after every chase. I learned pretty quickly that trying to break up the 3-gen alone, against a killer playing into it, is futile.
Survivors are much better off doing all the gens Skull Merchant will give them for free, and then making a coordinated effort attacking the 3-gen, when there is nothing left to do but the last gen.
A single survivor will waste a lot of time--and potentially hand SM free pressure with a down or injury--trying to play in her territory alone.
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DbD doesn't occur on a spreadsheet. Things you are not factoring in off the top of my head: killer perks, healing time, the wait time for Active mode of drones, the hacking time of drones, the fact that players with claw traps can't hack drones (leads to survivors having to rotate positions while gens regress under drones), the loss of efficiency from having to pre-leave gens because going down in the 3 gen throws the game, etc.
I can keep going. Point being, DbD isn't a simulation that occurs by plugging in some numbers.
Regarding Potential Energy: I feel like I say this every day. DbD is not a counterpick game. For every 1 game that the stars align and every player has PE to perfectly counter a Skull Merchant, you have 1 game thrown because 4 players are running PE against a Blight.
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I don't understand why the SM is still not disabled from the killer roster till they fix it...
It is unplayable... her 3 gens is way too strong and it is literally impossible to do those gens...
The killer is game-breaking, remove it, fix it and reintroduce it...
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Here are some facts for you...
I get a generator in the middle of the map to 90% progress, after PR has popped it 3 times.
The killer meanwhile has been chasing my teammates, who have gotten very little progress done as they juggle healing, unhooking, and looping the killer.
At 90% progress, the killer comes over to me, kicks my gen with CoB and Overcharge, then commits to a chase on me. My teammates don't go tap my gen while I'm in chase.
I take the killer on a minute long chase before they give up and go back to chasing the bots they can down in 15 seconds.
I return to my gen and it is back to 0% progress.
I work on the generator again.
I get the generator back up to 90% progress, after 3 more PR proccs.
The killer comes back over to me and forces me off my generator, then commits to another minute long chase with me.
I get back to my gen and it is back at zero, because for some reason my teammates all prefer to start on brand new gens instead of finding the one I had at 90% progress.
That is how the game plays out.
You can crunch the numbers all you want, but you fail to account for the 3 other survivors in my game who can't hold chase for longer than 30s.
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What's wrong with her?
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i wouldnt feel any type of way if she got removed from the game. she is an abomination, and should be deleted from existence.
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"It's simple math"
Fella we all know how long it takes to repair a generator/how much is lost on a kick
It doesn't change the fact that slogging through SM matches is a boring chore, you could be the best survivor in the whole world who never makes mistakes and it would still be a boring chore win or lose
Also @edgarpoop is completely right, I'm sick of this notion that to counter Slog Merchant we need to run 3 gen builds every game just in the off chance.
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well yeah... if you just bolt in a straight line to the far side of the map then no she won't chase you, you gotta play around the 3 gen. Expecting her chase away from the advantageous position is a fools errand.
There is a high chance you'll go down but then the game ends and you can move on.
What kind of fool is sitting in a 40 min game grumping about the 40 min game. Get in there and mix it up and if you fail and die then move on to a new game.
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"Literally throw the game if you don't like it"
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What does Nurse have to do with this thread?
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PR = Scourge Hook: Pain Res
This isn’t about winning every game. It’s about increasing our chance of success—particularly in solo queue.
Because solo queue lacks comms, the best way to make sure everyone is focusing the same objective is to let SM 3-gen and attack it together.
With my specific example, it isn’t something that happens every once in a while. It would happen every time the Killer runs full gen regression—which last patch was VERY frequent.
This patch, we’ll see. I’ll probably have more success tearing thru the middle gen. I played against a Myers yesterday who lost their game making sure my gen never got done. I hopped on in it the first 15s of the match, was hooked once, and all 5 gens popped before I could finish mine.
He lost the game defending my gen, which is why I like to work on the mid gen. But it’s usually pretty easy for Killers to make sure I work on one gen the entire game.
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That's not what I said at all. That's a stretch at best.
Don't misuse the term literally, it gets misused enough by people who don't know what it means.
But hiding on the far side of the map or not playing as a team around the gen to try and distract the killer and then complaining about the lack of interaction is just kinda silly.
If you're not happy with how the mechanics of a killer work provide some objective feedback in the feedback section, that's what its for.
The OP starts with the sentence "I don't really have anything constructive to say about the killer."
If you're just gonna say "game took to long waah, get rid of this waah"... well that's just whinging and people are gonna rightly say hey stop whinging you whinger.
Or more productively they might say hey try this instead, you might still have some fun, like I did (in the second post admittedly the first is more a lil chuckle).
Post edited by EQWashu on0 -
it's not that deep
someone making a rant thread on the dbd forums to blow off some steam isn't that big of a deal lol
Post edited by EQWashu on4 -
Imagine someone talking about "looping a Nurse" trying to condescendingly give "advice" on how to play against Skull Merchant.
Yea guys, you all are obviously just doing it wrong if you aren't running Potential Energy every single match on the off chance you're matched against a Skull Merchant in a game with 31 killers. /s
Because perks should definitely be the solution to poor game design?
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"There is a high chance you'll go down but then the game ends and you can move on."
Quoting you directly.
Throw the game so you can die and go next. That's exactly what you said.
Post edited by EQWashu on9 -
This is honestly my biggest issue with this tome. I actually have to play SM.
She is just awful. Boring to play as and against. They should really go back to the drawing board with her and her completely rework everything from the ground up.
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Playing survivor on controller is perfectly fine? You think keyboard and mouse would make it any easier? It wouldn't.
Post edited by EQWashu on2 -
I'm not even sure where to begin with this. It's throwing the game to go on a chase with the killer inside of a 3 gen. It locks your team out of progressing the gens. If you get hooked inside of the 3 gen, the game is over. You can play the contrarian and claim that you aren't suggesting to lose intentionally, but that is in effect what you are suggesting.
Post edited by EQWashu on9 -
I'm well aware of that in fact I'd go so far to say that nothing on these forums is of any real consequence as its a computer game... in the wide scheme of things who really cares.
But it is a discussion forum and we are here to discuss, so why not discuss it... otherwise why are we here?
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I had three consecutive 3-Gen Skull Merchant games the other night (my first three games of the day, too). When it was clear the second game was going the same as the first, I was like "again, really?", and as the third went the same, it filled me with an feeling of malice I have rarely experienced in DBD.
With the Knight, you at least can play them another way. The SM was designed for it, and is totally ineffective at doing anything else.
Trash.
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And if SM just ignores me and continues to moniter her 3 gen?
Can’t bait and taunt someone who isn’t even focused on survivors period
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Then each focus on a gen you keep tapping them till you either complete it or die trying. Either way you force the interaction and bring the game to a conclusion.
Before someone else accuses me of promoting throwing the game, the primary complaint was that it went on for 40 mins, that only happens when neither side is trying to progress the objective.
Remember we aren't discussing whether or not the mechanics of the skull collector are broken, we are whining about a 40 min game these are two different things and my response is to the topic of the latter not the concept of the former.
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I took a break after her release because I had already finished last rift anyway and didn't want to keep playing against her while people were going for Adept. I came back day before this rift started and it was nice, not one Skull Merchant. Now I have back to back matches against her and it's not fun at all. At this point I just commit to a gen, either it gets done or I get killed but either way I'm not stuck in a ridiculously long match because she picked a 3 gen at the start and didn't leave it.
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Whenever I think of Freddy, I think of him freshly after his rework where he was so simplistic that you could probably fall asleep while playing him. I can't think of any other killer that's simplistic to that level for the comparison.
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I don't agree with this thread. 0.25 c/s regress is incredibly slow. a team that completes a 45 charge(50% of generator) takes 180 seconds to regress. that is 3 minutes. 3 minutes is eternity to regress gens. Resetting/disable drones does not take 3 minutes. Keep in mind that 2 survivor progress gens very quickly. Like what does it take for a survivor to get 50% progression on a gen? 25 seconds or something? bottom line is that survivor win war of attrition.
That is also why Overcharge and COB were heavily problematic perks in their old iteration because call of brine and overcharge combine with default regress would regress gens up 47% every 60 seconds. if you did math, it was 11%+15%+15% on Overcharge/COB/Default regress combine. The new values are like 2% and 4%. 2 survivor commit to gen for 25 seconds would do 50% progression but in 60 seconds, a killer almost erased entire progress of a survivor leading to grim-stalemates.
At most, a good survivor team should take 5-15 minutes tops to break 3 gen. the match at its longest would be around 15-20 minutes. 40 minutes is completely excessive and is display of survivor incompetence.
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If SM wants to hold the game hostage, I would say it is fine to kobe off of hook. She is intentionally abusing game mechanics without progressing the match, those players are breaking the rules and should be reported.
If it's just a SM and people quit, then that's just entitlement.
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Yeah, that's the problem. It's pretty obvious to anyone with any time in game that the play is to bait the killer away. But the killer has to play along.
Now I get just sitting on a three gen if they're the only three gens left and the entire game up tot that point has been normal. In those cases, the survs are usually just lying the bed they've made for themselves.
But if a Skull Merchant just sits on them from the start, and will only chase you within the three gen radius (actively ignoring anyone outside of that zone), there's essentially nothing you can do as a surv. All she has to do is keep deploying drones around her three gen, occasionally smacking and hooking exposed survs and she will win the war of attrition.
It's DBD at its most brainless (save maybe facecamping Bubba).
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Ok so you do think its ok to "quit" against the killer in the same way I supposedly think its ok to "quit" against the killer by making a risky play with little potential success. I'm glad we see eye to eye.
Welcome back to the mud.
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That was never my point.
My point was that your advice was to literally quit if you didn't like how she played.
I pointed it out. That's all.
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Even with the nerf, SM gets more value out of the combo because of the delay her drones in active mode can cause in stopping gen regression. If a surv enters the drone area to stop the regression, SM knows and can come back. If they don't, then they lose more progress. It's essentially a lose/lose if SM prioritizes gen regression over chase. She can still add a third regression perk into the mix and while she might not get as much value out of them, getting any value compounds what she can already get from COB and Overcharge.
Add in extended heals from Sloppy and a lot of gen progress can be lost repeatedly.
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Also, if this would be such a big issue as you claim, everyone would use potential energy, and its rare that i see that.
That's because almost no one plays Skull Merchant. Yes, PE is a counter to it, but the idea of taking a perk for the chance you hit the annoying killer is not going to happen.
Also, here's where your presumptions go wrong:
Let's say a 3 gen where there is a 10 second gap between the ends, 20 seconds for a loop.
Let's even assume we still have 4 survivors left and they've split off to work on either side of the 3 gen. We'll go with the argument that survivors should just ignore the drones and take the exposed.
So yes the pure math looks easy - with 2 survivors you get 37 charges from the time the killer leaves to when she return.
But here's where the problems come in.
Being the survivors are exposed they are going to need to leave the gen before skully gets to them. Probably quite a bit sooner or else they suffer a quick down. They also aren't going to be able to just run back to the gen because of possible mind games/backtracks, etc.
So survivors rush off the gens, wait for it to be clear, move back to the gens, but pretty soon skully is headed back for them. So maybe you get 10 seconds of time fixing the gens - lose 4, gain 17, net 13.
Okay, that will take a little bit, but doable. But throw in soloQ and lack of coordination. That ten seconds probably drops down to 6 or 7 seconds on average of time. At 7 seconds that's 11.9, lose 5, net ~7.
Of course any mistake significantly resets the process.
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So more and longer DBD is a bad thing?
Yes, game relies on tension and rush.
Example: professional sports - tripling the length of games would not triple the fun.
Same way chases are the most fun part of the game but getting chased all game, aka tunneled, is a bad thing?
Just because something is the most exciting part of the game does not mean it should be the only part of the game. Also, many people who talk about loving chases don't mind being tunneled, but that does not mean they represent everyone.
The same way trying to achieve you own objective by any means is good but when your opponent does it its sweaty and bad?
Saying game elements should be changed is not the same as criticizing how someone plays.
The same way bringing the best perks yourself is good play but not the same as your sweaty take it too serious opponent who brought the best perks because they're bad?
Saying game elements should be changed is not the same as criticizing how someone plays.
The same way laying on ground for four mins is too long and bad but waiting out the endgame timer till the very last second for three mins is ok time use?
Neither is okay.
The same way that getting eliminated early is bad but having to stay in game for too long is also bad and pretty much any scenario in between?
Same response as the top. 4 minutes of DbD is not a lot of fun, neither is 30, sweet spot is found in between.
This community is interesting sometimes, they really hate this game, they hate playing it, they hate investing time into it, they hate everyone else who plays it, they hate anything that might happen in game... yet they keep playing it. Its fascinating.
Not really fascinating, fairly basic. When things line up DbD is great. Probably the best multiplayer game I've ever played. But on many occasions its also been the worst game I've ever played. Now whether it is possible to cut down on the bad games while still keeping the good games is an open question, but shouldn't really surprise anyone that people want the good and not the bad.
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I feel like people don't play survivor or don't understand how Skull Merchant's power works. And I've already explained to another poster that these theoretical gen speeds aren't factoring in many basic realities of DbD. Survivors aren't warping to the gens and back.
If you have a 3 gen and 1 gen is in an unsafe dead zone, you have a 2 gen. Every time she sets a drone, you have to wait 10 seconds to disable it. Every time a survivor disables a drone, the killer comes over and places another drone. The player who has a claw trap can't disable the new drone, so the next survivor waits to disable the drone. It's a repeating cycle on each of the available gens. Even if you have one survivor ignore the drone and one disabling, then one survivor has to take body blocks to get the exposed survivor out safely and that introduces healing slowdown.
This notion that survivors can just do the gens if they believe in the math hard enough is pure fantasy. Unless you are building a 4 man for a very specific 3 gen game, it's a stalemate.
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Janitor is probably a legitimate gamer. I don't think they play their own game, or at least not like we do.
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disagree. its not stalemate after the perk adjustments. first of all, there is no reason disable her drones in a 3 gen at base-kit because exposed status effect does absolutely nothing because skull merchant has a normal terror radius of 32 meters. what this means that you can hold-w around 15-20 meters ahead on skull merchant meaning that skull merchant has to catch-up if she wishes to chase a survivor. it does not matter that you are exposed because expose means nothing if killer cannot confirm hits. I am not entirely sure what to call this, but you are holding-w pre-chase and having good positioning. Otz tend to call this technique yoyoing generators because survivor is standing at perfect distance where they will get to a pallet if killer commits to chase but is able to come in reach of a generator if killer moves away. All you need to do is stand 15 meters away as skull merchant places drone and keep gen-tapping the gen until you finish gen. You avoid taking any hits to avoid wasting time healing. The killer kick regression is laughable without perks. you can beat killer regression by gen-tapping and yoyoing generators. The skull merchant drones are nothing more then distraction. you can entirely ignore their existence. The only time i would say disabling drone is good is when skull merchant commits to a chase and there multiple survivors the drone area, you can disable drone to decrease m/s bonus while you push the generators.
Overcharge and call of brine were only perks that made 3 gens difficult to break. they could stall out the game if the survivor make a mistake and take unnecessary hits in 3 gens. As the survivor spends time healing, the two perks would regress generators potentially leading to stalemates especially against high-tier mobility killers that counter shift-w and yoyoing tactics from survivors.. Higher-tier could use these perks to stall out the game and kill survivors while low tier killers like skull merchant could stall out the game for 60 minutes if the survivor was incompetent at defeating 3 gen-lock. As a result of killer taking game hostage, they weakened the perks to make them less obnoxious to go against.
If your struggling to beat 3 gen's post-update, I would say its skill issue from survivor side. Not a problem with the game balance.
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I knew the changes BHVR made wasn't going to reduce camping. All it did was improve her chase potential letting her go back to camping gens afterwards faster.
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We are complaining because skull merchant forces these match’s where she can basically guarantee a win unless survivors have great coordination. Saying to “force interaction” is literally just throwing the match
But at no point in this game should the option be “throw the match or spend 30+ minutes”. That’s too long and not interesting
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Some play normally but then there is the other side who 3 gen since the start and will not go to other generators. Always camps at one spot, disable their drone and she quits chasing someone to go back to you to reactivate it. Over and over.
I have played skull merchant and I have played against her, I only needed 3 matches to finish her achievements cause she was so easy, you don't need any aura perks for her, her drones give you way too much information 24/7. And how easily she can replace drones in a second even while in a chase even tho it takes survivor close to 30 seconds to take it down.
Her lock on expose is incredible long, it feels like a minute till it goes away and she knows where you are. They could have nerfed her to only able to use 2 drones at the same time or nerf its range by 2x but keep 4? Also her grey addon where survivor can destroy pallets by vaulting needs to be changed or removed, that is at least purple add on yet they made it grey lol?
Its better getting somekind of nerf rather than nothing at all towards her 3-gen potential, its incredible long, boring and people will DC more. We need more killers that are fun to play and fun to go against not freddy mixed with knight gen camp type
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Overcharge and CoB add 55% extra regression speed in the best case scenario where Overcharge reaches 30 seconds. That's barely anything.
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If it can only happen once, sure, but when it can be consistently be reapplied in a short window of time and with the ability to deny progression consistently, then it's significant.
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It can't be applied in a short window of time because Overcharge takes 30 seconds to build up. 55% extra regression is nothing. It would stil take 232 seconds to fully regress a gen.
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That's incorrect
COB has no cooldown, it is active on a gen for 60 seconds but if regression is interrupted and it's rekicked the 60s timer resets. Every generator you kick will have 60s of COB regression unless it's interrupted by a survivor
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