Three Skull Merchants Tonight

Yes, this was discussed in many other threads I think. You do something to someone and that person in return punishes others in subsequent matches.

I'm curious, nonetheless, how long the matches lasted.

I do not understand how one can stay for longer than 20 minutes not to mention 50. I would start taking risks which would either work (in a good team) or would result in me being sacrificed (with team mates having fun extending the match for eternity).

I'm in Europe (Central, GMT+1). I barely see any SMs but Weskers (the tunneling / camping kind) are aplenty. I would gladly switch with you.

Damn that's #########

Damn, I barely ever see SM in my lobbies, it's all Ghostfaces, Weskers and Nemesises (Nemeses?).

When I play SM, I go super aggressive rather than committing to a 3-gen early on, which is probably why I lose a lot of my SM games (except where Survivors DC as soon as they see me or they get downed at 5 gens because they didn't realise my drone speeds me up).

3-gens are annoying, but the new rift came out, and it seems all the actual challenges you need Skull Merchant.

No way, are you saying that the killer who is meant to control the zone controls the zone? no way

don't forget to call the police if you see legion using hit and run or ghostface using stealth

its simple, a lot of m1 killer are so bad to the point that moving 5% faster, i.e 120% m/s is respectable power. The loops for m1 killer are so safe for experienced survivor loopers that there is zero point in playing most of m1 killer cast. All that m1 killer can do is pallet break simulator. Skull merchant deletes bad pallet design by just 3 gen stalling and breaking every pallet until its dead zone.

Just for example, what am I suppose to do as freddy when it comes to chasing survivors around the map. His snares slow him to 100% when placing a snare and he has merger 15% hinder for 3 seconds. Pointless anti-loop where pre-drop pallets and camping long pallets is free win.

What do survivor mains like Pulsar expect? Do they expect the killer to chase you on Garden of joy god window loops and press space-bar simulator for pallets? Its more boring to play pallet break simulator for killer then it is to 3 gen and get w's on skull merchant.

No I know how to use it in chase, it's extremely simple. It doesn't take a degree in Skull Merchantry to figure that out

You put a drone on a tile and the survivor either leaves and takes a normal hit or stays and gets screwed.

This playstyle is rewarded even more if you exclusively run purple addons, but none of that changes the fact that there's no actual skill to the power. The skill comes from basic M1 killer fundementals, knowing how to play tiles, when you can and can't get a hit and so on.

Again, you might not use the power to protect gens and that's cool but her power is literally designed to be used that way. The tome challenges are proof that this is the intended way to play her by the devs.

As for "not real SM players" Not only is that implying that this "chase SM" is the only valid way to play her (it's not) but you're also implying that the people doing it are trolls? I would assume it's because it's the path of least resistance. It takes no skill and it's just easy. Why would anyone play this "chase SM" playstyle when you can just put drones on gens and play normal m1 killer and get basically the same results for less effort?

Changing gen spawns isn't gonna change the fact by design SM has an objective defense oriented power. Knight has the same thing, his guards are made to patrol gens and can even kick them/destroy pallets.

I had one that held a 3 gen on Suffocation Pit but then also held us hostage. She downed Leon and I was the 4th survivor on the other side of the map working on a gen. So of course I now know I'm looking for hatch. Except she didn't kill leon. She slugged him for a while but kept going back and picking him up and letting him wiggle off till she found me but she never did find me. Occasionally she would down leon presumably to see if I would come pick him up but I'm not that dumb. She just kept looking for me forever. Anytime she would let leon wiggle off she would walk to the other side of the map to look for me but if I was next to leon I would help leon with the gen. We got 2 more gens done before she FINALLY found me. Every time she would come back I would simply walk away and she would down leon again. Not only is skull merchant being able to force a 3 gen OR drone both gates a problem but killers holding hostage because the world will apparently end if they don't get a 4k is a problem too. I 100% believe we would have spent an hour in that match if she didn't eventually get lucky and see me.

in the post game I told her she was holding hostage and she said I could have done gens. She didn't realize that I was right next to leon doing gens with him. Something needs to happen for survivors if killers refuse to end the game because they don't get their precious 4k.

I failed to address 3-gen mainly because I feel it's a flaw that's inherent to the game concept and I'm not certain myself as to how to fix it. I toyed with the idea of having an extra generator but then I feel that would make the role of killer even harder since you'd have more to patrol. Ideally, a solution to 3-genning should ideally be organic and not create hassles for either the survivor or killer. You could change some maps to help in that regard by tweaking the generator spawning a bit but I feel it won't always be possible without making some maps bigger.

Okay, saying that only the SM can 3-gen was incorrect. The problem is that people quickly found that holding a 3-gen was the easiest way to win with the way the Skull Merchant works. Powers in the game usually are usually designed in a way that you'll want to be on the warpath and seek and destroy the survivors. Even more passive killers like Hag or Trapper typically require you to move out of your way away from the gens in order to prepare the battlefield to catch survivors off guard. But SM has no incentive to go out and prepare traps, you could just find the 3-gen setup the map has and just hold it down until survivors die of boredom. Why try to do any better if this bare minimum effort is enough to win?

Either the game finds a way to break out 3 gen setups altogether or her kit must be retooled so that doing the bare minimum will not get you a win.

That's kind of the problem, though. For all killers, barring maybe a few exceptions, finding a 3-gen and defending it is the surest way to victory, and unlike camping and tunnelling there's not much survivors can really do against it. Skull Merchant is in no way unique in this regard, it's just that something about her kit made certain players want to 3-gen for whatever reason. Maybe to annoy the opposition or something?

It's not even that she's weak, Sadako is weak and she doesn't have a reputation for holding 3-gens for 40 minutes. It's not that there's no other way to use her power because there absolutely is. I genuinely cannot grasp why SM has become the poster child for this issue...

Regardless, I would personally say that if SM is complained about this much, and we understand that she's really no different from almost any other killer in this regard, it should stand to reason that the game does need to move away from 3-gens as a viable option. There's no way to avoid it otherwise- make SM somehow incapable of doing it and those who want to will just move to the next best thing, since she's not actually that much better at it than the alternatives. Again, unless there's something I'm missing, I'm always open to the idea that there may be.

CoB/Overcharge were nerfed, though? I'll admit I haven't tried using them for 3-gen stuff since I find that playstyle immensely boring, but they shouldn't allow killers to stall generators forever like they used to and there really isn't anything that could take their place to be "similar". Plus, if you disable the drone, there is something stopping her from dropping another one- if everyone's alive and everyone disables a drone, she doesn't have any more to drop. If not everyone's alive you'd lose a 3-gen scenario against any killer (and she probably wasn't gunning for it straight from the start), and if only you disable a drone she's really not that fast.

The part I'm really curious about is how you know she's the only killer that holds games hostage with 3-gens, though. Do other killers actually try? There's killers who would categorically be better at it than she is, by virtue of being the top killers in the game, so that can't possibly be true.

I think her ability to lock down 3 gens is a bit undersold, to be honest. She can render gens unrepairable in multi-floor buildings because of Exposed+Undetectable. That effectively turns a 3 gen into a 2 gen unless the survivors are just dumb/don't know any better or have tight comms+Balanced Landing. And people tend to forget about the delay each drone causes on top of taking players with claw traps out of gen repairs. There's a whole lot of steps survivors have to take just to start a gen against her.

Those pre-requisites aren't there for other killers who can play around a 3 gen. You can take the infection and W early against Plague, but she has no natural stall like SM. Hag can be turned into a meme if everyone W's up the map walls away from the 3 gen, and again, no natural delay. Oni is on a timer, and you can jump in a locker to force him out of his power if you get caught out and want to prevent a snowball.

SM is much better at locking down gens because she has natural delay and a combination of stealth+lethality to make certain gens too risky.