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If you could decide the fate of The Skull Merchant, what would you do?
Almost everyone, including me hates The Dull Merchant. So I ask, if you could choose what to do with her, what would you do? Would you delete her? Rework her? Allow her to remain the same?
Personally, I would just delete her. Too much work to fix what she has become.
Also are there any other killers you'd want to rework?
Me when I play as or against her:
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Remove exposed and lean a heck of a lot more into what her addons currently do where her Drones are little buff/debuff stations.
I don't have any specifics, but that's the direction I would go.
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And then dbd players woke up to find that the skull merchant was just a bad dream...THE END
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I would make her drones more interactive and allow them to damage survivors while limiting max drones available to two. Perhaps an information gathering mode where one could actually wander the map instead of just sitting there and maybe a mode where the Skull Merchant could pilot a drone to hunt down a survivor. Maximum number up would be two to make early 3 genning from the start less successful.
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i would delete her from the game.
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I think there isn't really any fixing her without basically creating an entirely new character.
So might as well delete her.
Her visuals kinda suck. Her music sucks. Her mori sucks. Her power sucks. Her lore is atrocious and from what I've seen from the Tome, it's not getting better.
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Full-on delete. I have only played against her a handful of times, but they were all miserable experiences.
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Delete. I wanted a drone killer but i am not satisfied with skull merchant at all.
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Completely rework power from scratch
Tweak visual design and base lore, It can certainly be salvaged with some effort. As much as i'd prefer a completely different character that will never ever happen because BHVR would never admit to a chapter being a failure
Plus there's people who actually like the current SM, for reasons that I might disagree with but it's a subjective opinion
I'd also say stop with the cringe "fanservice" but that's not happening either, I expect it to get even worse
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She's in full rework territory. The concept just doesn't work.
At a minimum: survivors with claw traps shouldn't set drones to active. This mechanic effectively causes a lockout in 3 gen scenarios if survivors want to avoid Exposed. The claw trap survivor can't play the gens because they set the drones to active by being near them.
Drones shouldn't go through floors. This makes some maps problematic as well as some gens unreasonably unsafe.
Survivors with claw traps should be able to disable drones. Again, it's far too easy for her to lock down gens.
And if they made those changes, she'd be awful. She's really bad right now, and those changes would make her worse. The only way to "fix" this power is to make it completely ineffective at anything besides tracking. The whole concept of the drones needs to be reworked from area control to something else.
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Rework would be ideal. Only problem is that the devs will have already moved onto future chapters and have little time or resources for that. They're probably more likely to chalk her up to a miss, or maybe in a year or so theyll set aside a team for it. Ultimately she's 1 killer out of 30+. Probably easier just to let everyone give up when the game drags for too long. Personal choice and all that.
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Delete her
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Keep her visual design and lore( I like the dumb anime lore)
Rework her power to be a combo of tracking utility and chase. I'd remove exposed since it hogs too much power budget for basically zero chance of being truly useful. I'd probably just make drones more like a detonating trap or give them the ability to follow a survivor who walks into it's range. The haste gimmick the devs added is workable so figure out how to integrate it more consistently I would also change the mechanics of her tracking. A survivor has the option to let the drone follow them and give Skull Merchant tracking info no matter where she is on the map or disable the drone and end up with a claw trap that provides tracking only within a certain range along with some sort of debuff that lasts until the claw trap runs out of power.
I would also give her a total perk rework because exactly none of her perks are really worth using and they don't really fit her.
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Revert the recent changes to her kit and watch the world burn.
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I'd delete Nurse. I'd much rather go against Skull Merchant than Nurse.
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Not that I wouldn't mind her poofing out of existence, I'd rather she just get reworked into a more healthy concept. There's some things that are interesting like tracking with her iphone, but how her drones just seem so clunky with how they're executed.
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From the moment I knew the killer was going to use drones, I was hoping that she would be a hunter-tracker killer. Basically, a killer focused on tracking with a lot of stealth potential.
Therefore, I would make her become immediately undetectable whenever her drones are spotting someone, instead of making the survivors become exposed within the area. This means that whenever a drone is tracking a survivor, she will gain the undetectable status effect no matter where she is on the map. The effect would also linger for a while. In addition, if a survivor deactivates a drone, the survivor would suffer from the oblivious status effect while the claw trap is on them.
Everything else would stay the same, with her having the same haste effect when survivors are being tracked, her becoming undetectable in the drone range, the claw trap causing pallets to break when vaulted, etc.
Overall, this would change her from being an area denial killer to a stealth tracking killer.
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Why not have them fly around the map randomly so like you can't just plop them on gens but they fly all over with a red stain were the cameras looking so if you watching you avoid the drone till it flys by but if you arnt paying attention and it catches you give it something to reward avoiding/destroying
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Claw traps don't break on their own anymore. Extend the battery life
After the battery is expired survivor can remove them if they want. A succesfull hit from skull merchant also removes them. And the vaulting a pallet thing we have now.
Skull merchant will eventually run out of drones if she doesn't start commiting to chases and score hits. At that point her 3 gen is marginally better then a trapless trapper
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I would slightly rework her power but keep the theme the devs had. Unlike most of you I watched the behind the scene video for SM and like the idea/theme they ran with for her. I enjoy playing as her also so I don't want her to be deleted.
Personally I do think a lot of people are blowing this whole SM thing up a lot. Honestly I still think most of you hate her bc she isn't some ugly cyborg or Terminator like killer. Before you start on the whole sexualizing thing let me remind you most ppl drool over shirtless male character skins in DBD so I do think there a double standard when it comes to visual designs and sexization in the community for this game.
Either way I would just rework her power slightly to make other play styles more desirable other than 3 genning.
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Make her become a cheese merchant instead.
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She comes across as a killer that’s had just a bunch of different ideas all rolled into one failed mess.
In a perfect world, she would be recalled and multiple good killers could be made from each part of her:
- A silent Assassin
- A Cyberpunk Scavenger
- A luring/seductive she-monster (siren?)
- A terminator/half robototic
- A girl-boss :/
- A nerdy weeb copycat killer
- An actual merchant that has anything to do with skulls lol. Like what functional point is there to add a skull to an already (I’m sure) expensive and capable drone!!
Anyway.. so many directions this killer could have gone but yeah overall in a perfect world she would be recalled.
Easy solution is to give her a non-drone related chase power or give her a permanent drone that follows her and makes chase fun somehow then change how the standard drones work to balance it all out.
Also rename her and change her default skin and fix her walk/glide animation and give her a more power-related mori and find the rest of her clothes :)
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Actually, when she was first announced and the PTB began, I was one of the middle ground people here. I was telling people to calm down, to take time to learn her before making a judgement, and to trust that any adjustments that would be needed would be made. I had no issue also with her look, nor did I have any expectations on her being a cyborg. Her lore etc doesn't bother me in the slightest. I gave the benefit of the doubt 100%. Now that I've time with her to form my opinion? 100% dislike.
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Total fail, made even worse by the fact that it was the killer straight after The Knight.
Send her back to Fortnite where she belongs. Think she is beyond saving. The changes they made to make her less painful to go against made her seem even worse! Only got out of a 40 minute game against her yesterday because she got too greedy chasing me across an Auto Haven map when I purposely made myself exposed to bait her. Painful to play against.
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Guilty, I remember when Felix's open winter pyjama came out and instantly bought it. Same when they released Carlos Oliveira.
SM is boring, the 3-gens lockdown feels nearly illegal, her power feels lacking, the only good thing is the death claw destroying pallet. But yeah, one killer among almost 30 killers, you don't like her, you don't play her, you play against her, you suffer and move on the next game. She was insta due to a rework.
I like the idea of drones pursuing survs if they are caught within their area. Also, why not make the drone explodes if the surv fails to hack it and it then injures them ?
As for her lore, I find it quiet bland, she is just a psycho murderer, just like Trickster. Nothing less, nothing more. I will do her tome but as always BHVR fails to deliver interesting reading about their characters. The only lore I liked was the Twins, their tome was nearly moving. I was pretty disappointed with David's coming out. They should hire real writers for their tomes.
But most importantly, NERF PIG
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Take her out of the game as a killer but give her a stall where she buys and sells skulls and cranium-themed memorabilia.
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Oooooh, I'd vote for that. On the opening page: The Skull Merchant Dull shop.
That would actually be kinda funny ngl, even if it had a reasonable name.
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Leave her until the devs figure out what to do. Like twins basically so no archive or really new skins since nobody wants her to be played consistently
I’m one of the few who enjoys playing her and would prefer to instead of just removing her
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Twins are fun to play !
The only thing frustrating is DBD's hitboxes with Victor but if you don't tunnel, playing with Victor and sniping from far way is actually great
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Twins are fun without a doubt but suffer from a lot of issues and have a playstyle that is boring for survivors
Victor can’t deal with slopes or stairs (try playing him on swamp), countered hard by WGLF and exponential, hotbox is buggy and way to big in a lot of cases
Skull merchant has issues but no more than twins tbh. We know she’s getting a rework so I wouldn’t be surprised if merchant gets the same treatment at some point
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Amongst the plethora of things that should be done, at the very least dramatically reduce or remove the Exposed status. I've no issue with the tracking, but Exposed lasts obnoxiously long for such a brief moment with the drones' radius.
Personally, the drones should be altered so that all they do is track when stationary (and only by using the tracker - no killer instinct or aura-reading), but make them more mobile and auto-chase a survivor (with limitations), thereby preventing the 3-gen issues.
In return, maybe add a meter whereby after a period of time of observation, the drones can become hostile and attempt to ram into the survivors, causing damage, but also eliminating that drone temporarily.
... or get rid of her. The Knight already is a similar but fairer style (not great, but as a one off the Knight earns his place). Also, in a time where killers ought to chase more, bringing in killers that promote the exact opposite doesn't seem fitting now. Chase and/or stealth is what killers should be moving towards.
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I think the drone gimmick has some potential. Just not for a "stealth" killer. I would rework her from the ground up. Delete everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) except the idea of a killer using drones and start over.
Her appearance is laughable, her animations are completely unnatural (seriously, no one walks like that!), her cosmetics are bad because they don't change the overall visual design of "evil lady with claws in mercenery attire", her chase music is, like, a 3 second loop and pretty boring, her lore is full of redundant information and very little that would actually make her fearsome and her entire power is like a set of 4 different puzzles (like for 4 year olds) all mixed up so that nothing fits together.
The way her power is designed really makes me question, if the devs have even thought about how it would work and how it would be used to make it work.
TL;DR: I hate Dull Merchant and I refuse to play her.
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I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the sole purpose of dull merchant was for future collabs with other games like fortnite. DBD needs to get back to its traditional horror roots.
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Delete her. But I've been asking that for knight and trickster too and they're still here...
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There's no chance it will happen, but if I had full power over it: delete. Don't mind the appearance, but hate to go against her and the lore is very silly.
On a positive note, probably the only killer I feel that way about, maybe with nurse being the other I'd choose delete over rework.
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She has too much and too little going for her at the same time; too much of different things to make dealing with the sheer amount of stuff going on obnoxious. But even the sum of all these things isn't able to make her actually strong; it's not stronger than the sum of its parts but weaker than the sum of its parts. So even though incredibly annoying and frustrating - it's still not actually working out.
Between snoozefest and annoying there is just very little room for engagement that leads to a sense of actually playing the game and not some kind of bot-staffed sim. - That's an issue that, to some extent, all actual stealth killers have (Ghostie, Piggie, Myers). Just that she's not even adding a side objective or side mechanic for the survivor that makes them at least feel as though they're doing sth (traps for piggie, stealth-meter and revealing for ghostie, not getting stalked & managing exposed for Myers --- that's mostly in the hands of survivors to manage). She's just locking survs out from what they're supposed to do.
I really like the idea of drones as buff-stations of various kinds. While I also don't have a clue how that could work in practise the idea seems like a completely new direction mechanic wise - which makes it exciting by default. Just have to make sure that those buffs also give her a benefit in the first minutes of the match already; if she relies on setting up buff-zones and managing buffs that would make her want to draw out a match for as long as possible.... which isn't exactly fun (and I think that a good match duration is 10-15 mins, is sth the vast majority can agree on).
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Dredge is a great design and I appreciate him and haddie being integrated quite seamlessly into the game and I believe the overarching lore. The map could use a little tlc but tbf no map, killer, survivor, perk, or anything should ever be considered in its final form and should always be looking for improvement.
Knight too is a great visual design (except the emo hair imo lol) but the power hasn’t landed with most which is a big part of the killer/survivor experience.
Deathslinger is great but could be scarier I agree.
Trickster.. I’ve gone on the assumption that he’s a one off to please the thirsty crowd but obviously I was wrong to assume that. He does work in his own way though ig.
SM is Trickster 2.0 but trickster 2.0 at home. When I’m being chased by Dull Merchant, I don’t have the same head cannon you do regarding her intentions. The lore behind the killer means nothing if the killer themselves look like they’re from another game.
Take Huntress for example, probably my favourite killer in DBD. My head cannon is she’s a dangerous and wildly uncivilised forest woman who you know is human but maybe the entity has made her more ‘animalistic’ or ‘monstrous’ over time. Hunts and kills anything without mercy that comes across her path. She doesn’t need lore and tomes and rifts and skimpy outfits to justify her place as a ruthless killer that belongs in a horror game. Side note, her voice/noise acting is impeccable!
Ive got no issue with non-traditional horror killers and trying different things but it needs to be done right. My opinion is that, while I’m sure Kris Jenner is a scary lady, she doesn’t hold a candle to any of the other killers in this game. If you like her that’s great, now that she’s been released she’s not going anywhere so it’s good that some people like her ig.
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I cant unsee this now! anyone else think the SM, resembles Kris Jenner?? lol
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Damn, is Kris Jenner going through a phase again ?
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Delete her. I dislike her looks, her gameplay, her lore, her perks and so on. Apologies to the developers, this killer could have been made by an AI, without any human interaction behind it to look at the results and ponder "hmmm, would that work on a practical level?".
Skull Merchant just takes DBD's flaws and brings them into the daylight because she needs the flaws of the core design to win. Being 3-genned sucks? Too bad, that's her only battle plan! Tunneling is bad for the player being taken out? Too bad, she needs to take people early, otherwise she'll never have the time to win. Camping's boring? Gotta stay close to the generators!
The huge problem with her power is that unless you use it to control 3 generators, the drones by themselves so nothing. A survivor running quickly through a drone zone will give SM a small speed boost but that's it. Meanwhile you could be Clown, who's already considered a weak character, throw a bottle as a reaction move, without planning anything, and get better results.
A millionaire mogul could be an interesting killer concept but SM didn't pull it off. Or go with the concept of a crazed engineer who grifts new body parts into himself to become a better killing machine. Who knows.
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See I kinda like her lore because she isn't some tragic victim of some event that made her into a killer. All the other female killers in this game are just that, they all are just victims. Spirt was killed by her dad and just turn into an angry ghost, Artist was a woman who felt guilty about her brother's death and got made a target by an artist label because she try to expose their corruption, Hag was a girl who was caught by a group of cannibals living the swamp and was torture and eatten by them, and so on and on. Every female killer in this game has a tragic background and only turned into a killer to get payback on the world that treated them so badly. None of them are pure evil or wanted to be a killer. It's nice to have at least one psycho female killer who enjoys being a killer and finds fun in it. Killers imo are supposed to enjoy killing and want to be killers. It is fine to have killers who have tragic backgrounds but not all of them need to have one.
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I like the idea of a killer that uses flying drones. Keep that concept, but execute it VERY differently.
Everything else? Toss it and try again.
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