Skull Merchant
I logged into the Dead By Daylight today and my first match was a Skull Merchant trying to hold a 3-gen. I assume this is thanks to the video that Hens put up on YouTube. Behavior, what are you going to do about this killer? I stayed in this match for over 30 minutes because of this player using cheap tactics:
- Kick Gen
- Go to next gen, kick gen
- Rinse and repeat until you find a survivor out of position
This is not how the game should be played. As a player who has been playing since 2019, this killer is the worst addition to the game. There is literally no skill involved on the killers end.
On top of it all, I was the 2nd last to be downed, so of course they slugged to get a 4k, so I dc'd so the other survivor could get hatch. In my opinion, I should not receive a DC penalty because of this killer and playstyle. When the survivor bots come in, in my opinion, DC penalty should be removed, and these cheap skull merchant players can play against bots all day every day if behavior won't fix skull merchant.
Comments
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It's crazy they haven't even acknowledged the situation after mutiple disccusions with a crazy amount of replies, and up votes scattered around, were published.
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The literally addressed it back during the AMA. They are working on an update for her, but they didn't give a timetable because it is very early in that process considering she's not even been out 6 months.
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I'm talking about acknowledging that a Skull Merchant held the best team hostage for fifty minutes. Just replying to the threads and saying an update for her will come asap or saying they are aware she's that broken. They addressed Skull Merchant but not the recent event associated with her.
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What is there to address? People do eventually lose games.
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That the BEST (huge emphasis on it) team (scary coordinated SWF killer mains tend to complain about) STRUGGLED WINNING (after winning lots of tournaments) against a INEXPERIENCED (very big emphasis on it) Skull Merchant holding the game HOSTAGE with their DESIGNATED THREE GEN.
If the best team in the world barely got an escape from an INEXPERIENCED Skull Merchant main, think about their effect on solo queue.
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I made a post to kinda remedy the whole three gen issue which I think would work out, wouldn’t even be necessary to change killer powers
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Best team based on what? There's official leaderboard to show that these 4 survivors are the best in the entire game. Also even if they are proveable the best, why does BHVR need to make a statement over them losing a game?
For a game that everyone keeps claiming to be a party game, you guys care so much about unofficial competitive play.
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They didn't lose, they got a four person escape. Don't reply to issues if you're unaware of the context surrounding it.
BHVR needs to make a statement because if the killer was slightly more experienced, they would've lost. This team can win against any killer but they struggle because of a terribly designed killer. Their three gen potential is simply unfair and miserable to face.
Also, who calls DBD a party game? 🤣
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So 4 people escaped and you want BHVR to make a big statement about it? There's nothing to make a statement on.
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I also want bHVR to do a big statement about my losses.
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You literally know NOTHING about what happened apart from what I said. If you want to go against Skull Merchants that play like that please be my guest. Take them all for yourself.
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Your argument of DBD being a party game makes it even worse if you think about it. In a party game winning is not everything. So 1hr match where barely anything happens is by definition HUGE flop. Like worse then gen sometimes not being fixable. Worse then Greg being invisible in his nightfall. Because those ruin part of game/a few minutes. SM ruins almost an hour of game IN A PARTY GAME! It's VERY MUCH worth killswitch provided we are indeed talking about just a party game.
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Escaped after 50 minutes. in a game averaging <10 minutes. In a game where the server shuts down after an hour.
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You want BVHR to make a statement over 1 game, because it involved 4 specific players. That's just ridiculous.
Not to mention it completely ignores the fact that BHVR already made a statement on skull merchant and 3 gen during the anniversary stream.
Like I really don't know what you want, because it just sounds like you want BHVR to play favorites.
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There is a lot of caveats to that game. The major one being it was played under comp rules which severely limits the ways they could have approached setting up to counter Skull Merchant. They also just flat out didn't even attempt to break the 3 gen early when the Skull Merchant wasn't actively trying to defend it.
There isn't anything to say about a comp team playing a game under comp rules who went into a pre-arranged game where the understanding was that the Skull Merchant wasn't even going to attempt to win the game. The goal was to time the game out for Skull Merchant in a scenario that isn't indicative of how normal players play the game and how experienced players who don't play comp understand to deal with Skull Merchant.
What do you want the devs to address? They already know that her kit has issues and that game has had a 3 gen issue for years which is exacerbated by the design of Skull Merchant power. They already addressed that they are working on the issue, but it takes time and there more things to consider than whether or not Eternal almost lost a game where they played suboptimally for the situation they were in and had their hand tied by playing with a self imposed ruleset. Hens didn't prove anything that everybody didn't already know and agree with. That match was pointless and the fact that people are losing their minds over it also pointless.
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Where did you pull that conclusion from? Each reply of yours surprises me even more than the previous one. Also, those four specific players are the best, no need for the word specific.
They made a statement and then let us deal with her for another month whilst the Skull Merchant mains get inspired from this event and she gets more regularly played because it's an easy win.
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Address the fact that whilst they keep delaying updates to her, more people suffer for it in public games where they are forced to DC or feed her free kills. It's disgustingly miserable facing her.
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Whether or not they are truly the best players, there's no leaderboard or such to truly determine such. They are 4 specific players that you want BHVR to recognize by commenting on a game that has nothing new to discuss.
Also the event is already over. People love to keep talking about Skull Merchant and then wonder why people are playing Skull Merchant.
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They can't just drop everything they are currently doing and spit something out which in likelihood just make the situation worse.
Game development isn't something where you just get to address whatever you want when you want. They have schedules and deadlines for updates that have planned and worked on for month or even possibly years in advance. Fixing Skull Merchant's kit or reworking it entirely on top resolving the systemic issue of 3 gens because that unto itself is a issue regardless of Skull Merchant, is months of work at least. Work that has scheduled, allocated staff and then all of the work that is required to make substantive changes. It takes them around a year to make a single killer from concept to finished product and rework outside of a minor ability shifts and numbers changes requires about the same amount of time.
This killer hasn't even been in the game for 6 months and while I get that folks aren't having a great time and have hated her since day one because she wasn't Predator thus meaning she has no good will coming from a majority of community, some of us actually play her and like things about her and go out of our way to not play her doing 3 gens. There is a community of players who have spent money to play this killer that also need to be accounted for which another that is super important to game dev. What ain't important is addressing something they already addressed.
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People keep talking about Skull Merchant because they are desperate for changes. Very simple to comprehend. They are the best since they won the most tournaments. Watch their highlights if you care enough and then come back here and call them specific.
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You're talking about unofficial tournaments that have their own rules. This does nothing to show they are the best players.
And the devs have already stated they plan to make adjustments to skull merchant. There's no need for them to state it again, because 4 players you like won a game against her.
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So I should suffer three gen Skull Merchant games because you and a very small number of people that main her don't do that? I don't know if you've heard about the Trolley Problem but it definitely works in this scenario. If they are so busy, why not just nerf the range of drones temporarily or just do something minor to compensate?
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There are no official tournaments. Tell me where I can find the best players if not there. In solo queue?
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It's very clear that you simply don't pay attention to things that BHVR actually announces and just want them to play favorites with 4 players you like.
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Does skull merchant suck? Yes, big time, and everyone already knows this.
But some people in this thread really need to relax and touch some grass.
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The trolley problem is both inadequate and flawed even in the proper philosophical context it was created for.
The Greater Good theory is often far too binary to truly be applicable to basically most situations in life that don't boil don't to "Do X or Die". Situations in life are often more akin the outcome of Kobayashi Meru test in Star Trek where the only real answer was to not engage with the binary choice to begin with.
Also they do something minor to compensate, they buff the heck outta Deja Vu specifically to aid in pointing out a potential 3 gen cluster and giving you a decent bonus to repair speed so you can do those gens faster. They also made slight changes to Merchant herself to try and encourage more players to do other playstyles outside of hard 3 gen, but minor number changes can only do so much when the power itself is so centralized to whether or not she can make full and free use of her drones. Ultimately, every other way of playing her is suboptimal compared to just playing her in a highly territorial way because from the killer's side, she NEEDS survivors to interact with the drones to have a power at all. From the Survivors' side if the killer doesn't place the drones in areas where they need to be interacted with it is exceptionally easy to just path around them and Skull Merchant doesn't exist as a result.
Her power has good bits to that make her fairly decent in a chase and it has potential make her an excellent stealth killer, but those factors are contingent on her drones rather than her and need addon from addons that are a bit pricey.
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She's not being purely used to hold the game hostage and there are fun aspects to playing her.
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Oh Community Cups. Literally anyone can sign up for it. It's not as competetive. Also, stop saying playing favorites, it's something YOU came up with and it's out of context because you don't understand what I'm saying. Additionally, I do pay attention but I simply do not care about Community Cups. Don't say it's very clear that I dont pay attention because I forgot about something I find irrelevant. Stop assuming.
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The Deja Vu buff is ueseless against her. A minor inconvenience. It mainly causes a bigger problem to all the other killers. No one really runs it if you haven't noticed because it's not crazy good.
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Otz called KnightLight one of the best players in DBD. He also called Team Eternal one of the best teams in the world, if not the best. You know, the Fog Whisperer with a huge reputation who sometimes commentates competetive DBD games?
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Devs should seriously think about kill switching her.
Don't take my word for it. Check the number of DC's or suicides against her. Check how many ppl stopped playing dbd altogether after facing her.
It's very easy - you will have many more players and games if you just killswitch that abomination for a killer
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The game can't distinguish between a suicide and fair hook so that is a useless thing to look at.
DC's are such a rampant issue no matter what killer is played and again the game can't determine reason for a DC only that it happened which makes it useless to look at as well. There is a reason why people constantly complain the devs making decisions based on stat lines and you're asking them to do that very thing.
How does one determine the exact reason why someone stopped playing DBD? Unless people self report there is no way to know that answer so how would you remotely use that as a factor.
Please be a bit more reasonable. With your logic the devs might as well Killswitch everyone but Trapper and Hillbilly.
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They're going to change her at some point.
So all you can do is use the in-game tools to deal with playing or not playing against her and the contrarians who enjoy her can continue to have multi suicide/dc lobbies.
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1, if all killers have 10% DC rate and 1 have say 40% DC rate, it either means she breaks the game, or ppl don't want to face her
2, if all killers have 10% people dying on first hook and then you have killer that has 50% people dying on first hook, you know you have a problem with that killer (either suicides, or too good kit for camping)
3, if you track what people (connections) play and when they log off from game, you can easily collect information which killer was the one that they faced as last. If killer is played in say 5% of all matches, but is still 20% of all last games for said connection/player, you know you have problem with that killer.
There is very good and strong and vocal majority of people that clearly say, that the killer is problem. Compound it with stats and you have good data with good interpretation = good information. Problem with behavior's decisions based solely on stats is with missing context followed by wrong interpretation of data. There's 0 chance in that if you look at overwhelming feedback given to her.
Killswitch is PERFECTLY reasonable in this case. The only people defending her are exclusively those playing her (and even good part of those will admit she needs changes) - which is similar to say survivors asking for OG MoM - without any regards to the other side and to the pain it brings.
I'd rather have her killswitched for a long time (like bloodlodge) until they really fix her, then have broken thing spoiling games for all the players facing her.
And yes. I HATE HER WITH PASSION. I don't care if I win the match, because it's going to be boring anyway. At her current state, 24 hrs ban might be preferable - because you can do something more entertaining at the same time - like cleaning the house or literally anything else
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Not all killers have a 10% DC rate and I highly doubt Skull Merchant for as much as people hate playing against her even has a 40% DC rate. Though that isn't really the point, the point is that context matters which you pointed out and while you can and sometimes will have to infer context you shouldn't make a nuclear option decision based solely on inferred context. There is no way to tell the difference between DCs in terms of context and you could infer many other reasons that as plausible. It's just a bad metric to use especially in this game where DCs are just as likely to due to people having performance issues or throwing their toys outta the pram over getting downed first.
We can safely say that Skull Merchant doesn't have anywhere near 50% first hook deaths as if that was true, that would be something they would probably inform folks of since that is insane rate. Now that said, again context matters. Did they die on first hook because on purpose or did they die due to not being saved? If they died on purpose was it purely because it was a Skull Merchant? This stat can't even have like a worthwhile inference made into its context because even if there is higher than normal rate you have literally no way to know what the situation is other than it was a game that featured Skull Merchant.
You want them to do a data study of people's playing habits, specifically last time they played and against what killer then from that astronomical data set you want them to parse the games that featured Skull Merchant and then further parse if players that didn't log back in again. Alright, cool let's run with that. What's the context? What can you infer from this metric? How do you expect the devs to know why someone hasn't logged back in with just this set of data? How do you actually attribute the reasoning to it having to have been Skull Merchant that made them stop playing specifically? It just as easily could be that they are fed up with the game as a whole and Merchant was the last killer they faced. Could be they had life stuff that got in the way of playing. Could just be taking a break or they switched to a new platform and are actually still playing the game just under a different username. It could literally be anything, but yet let's killswitch Merchant. That'll bring the folks right back to game.
Bloodlodge and Haddonfield for that matter were killswitched because on top of being bugged they were also slated to receive changes anyway. So it just made sense to leave killswitched since the changes and bugfixes were gonna go hand in hand anyway. Skull Merchant may be extremely annoying when using the 3 gen strat, but she isn't bugged in a way that necessitates being killswitched. Just because people don't like a playstyle choice doesn't mean it should be killswitched.
Be reasonable.
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They themselves said they didn't prepare or practice on skull merchant and just kept testing how to counter it during the game.
Next game would be way faster. You could see panicking gameplay from Skully when they just stayed injured and focused all gens.
Btw since when is prestige 100 inexperienced?
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She is quite fun to play as, if you like M1 killers.
She has many similar aspects to Legion imo. I enjoy both.
People should really learn what hold the game hostage means...
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If people dc on average in X amount and against specific killer X times 4 amount, you can be sure there's something specific to the killer that makes people DC that much more specifically on that killer.
Same goes for last game and same goes for dying on first hook.
You can expect that people will actually complain about the reason why this abnormality happens (say if she had game-breaking bug that kicks players from game, you would see many posts about it). And this is in fact already true - see the sheer number of threads about deleting/changing the killer with so many replies (like this one).
There's just no other viable explenation why would people DC more against her (random chance would be so astronomically improbable, that you can win lottery much easier), then what you can see in all these threads - that she prolongs the game by insane amount. Just show me 1 other plausible explenation that would explain it considering all the feedback that is given. But you can't. Because there needs to be reason why it's always SM that has so many DC's instead of say Billy - or Knight for that matter. There's no other feedback then people saying she is insufferable.
Killswitch under these conditions makes perfect sense - the killer is doing more harm (to whole survivor population), then good (to a few killer mains that enjoy her). This is perfectly reasonable response to the issue at hand - limit the damage to the game
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Legion is perfectly fine. You can't have 30 mins game against him if you are actually trying.
I just can't say the same tging about SM. She is one huge problem right now
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I can't? Of course I can, it I want to.
I can simply focus on mending anyone who gets near gen to get same effect as merchant.
Wesker, Wraith can do same thing.
Issue is that skull merchant has problem to actually end the game. All of those can easily hold 3-gen to win, but they are going to actually down survivors because of it.
Legion used to have exactly same issue, that's why they made it, so they can down survivors with his power.
Merchant doesn't do that, because she can't really. She is M1 killer only, unless she goes double purple add-ons, but those won't really hold 3-gen.
They figured out counterplay against it and it's same as Legion. Just stay injured.
Which is even easier with MFT, resilience meta...
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They got their money for that chapter, they don't care
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Sorry, but I have yet to see a game where there are 4 live survivors that can't fix all the gens in 30+ minutes (counting all the killers you mentioned). Provided we are not talking about skull merchant. Like sure - there's knight that can come semi-close to it, but he's still weak in comparison.
Huge difference is, that you can actually dodge legion's hit (FoV tech, pallet, locker, 360, etc) or even if you don't you can still fix the gen while being injured and for some time also while mending. You can also hide next to gen while legion is not in frenzy and so on. His kit is just bad in comparison to SM in holding 3gen. Like he can postpone the game, but not keep the gens at 0...
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You're making a heavy amount of assumptions, but it all comes down to the last thing I said: Just because people do not like something doesn't mean that it warrants a killswitch. A killer being able to extend the length of a game by an excessive amount is not unique to Skull Merchant, it is a years old issue this game has had. Killswitching Skull Merchant for an undefined length of time until they get around to reworking her is not a viable solution. It makes absolutely zero sense when the killer is more or less functioning as intended. She's not breaking the game or exploiting a bug, she's just being played in the way that gives her the most use of her power as it exists currently.
She's not getting killswitched no matter how much folks desire that just for being a killer that can use the 3 gen strat to lengthen games. Every killer can do it to a varying degrees and to killswitch a killer simply because they can do it more consistently is nonsense.
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After going against a skull merchant that kept me hostage for about 45 minutes, yeah she gotta go. Remember before end game collapse were survivors would hold the game hostage?? Yeah me too, I see that DEVS fixed that situation so hopefully they fix this skull merchant situation cause it's flat out ruining the game.
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None of the previous killers (except knight which resulted in rather prompt change to perks) were able to hold the game until server shut down. Meaning none of the previous killers were EVER a problem. So no. It wasn't here for a years - skull merchant is not in a game for years. The shutdown mechanics (and it's shortened time to 1 hour instead) was meant as a bandaid fix for cheaters holding players (especially streamers) hostage. It was never meant to be "legit tactics". Her design is so flawed, that people abuse this design bug into server shutdown. A very much unintended win condition (that is not reversed against killer just because survivors can hide for an hour to create same issue).
This is not about "not liking". It's about (design) bug abuse that is actively being abused. That warrants killswitch - a feature that was specifically designed to turn off parts of the game that are broken so they are not being abused.
Also - killer is NOT functioning as intended. 1 hour long win-condition is absolutely not intended gameplay. It's (design) BUG ABUSE. It's the same thing as people trying to defend sky Billy (except, that bug was fun and hilarious). It's clearly a bug that wasn't intended. It doesn't matter that it was using his power to the fullest. It was still a bug. And it still got patched (there was no killswitch at that time).
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You're literally sitting there trying to classify her design as a bug when it most definitely isn't a bug. It's bad design, but it isn't a bug for better or worse it was intentional and intended. Like her kit didn't just materialize and have a bad reaction at random that folks are exploiting. Skull Merchant's kit went through both internal and public testing, there very little chance that the possibility of this being the way she was going to be played was unknown at the internal stage. At the public testing stage WE KNOW for a fact that everyone and their mother demonstrated how effectively she could hold a 3 gen and how terrible she is comparatively at anything else.
It is not bug, it is intended design are worst and at best it is just gross underestimation of either players' desire to push the limit of what was shown to be possible or the limitations of the design itself. This is nothing like Sky Billy or Space Billy which were actually bugs that just happened to be fun and harmless. Billy turning into Elton John's Rocket Man was never intended design in any way where as Merchant just playing around holding a 3 gen with her highly territorial area denial power is exactly intentional. The unintended part is the lengths to which people have gone to hold a 3 gen for the maximum allowable amount of game time.
Other killers can most certainly come to achieving the same feat with the right perks and depending on the killer right addons. It takes much more work and is less consistent overall as you'd need to account for the use of specific maps, but it is possible. If you look back at DBD's past Doc actually held games hostage for far longer than Skull Merchant ever could purely due to the games didn't timeout during the peak of hostage Doc. Forever Fredboi was notorious about drawing games out to insanely long degrees and didn't get hard disabled for doing the vast majority of time he had his original power set. Legion in the past actually drew games out to huge degree due to how mending and deep wounds used to work on top of having bugged addons that made mending essentially impossible. They can't just make you have an infinite mending issue anymore, but they can just keep wounding and kicking with their most recent addon pass giving them buffs to damage actions while in frenzy.
3 genning as a strat has been in the game for years because it has been in the game since day one. Most killers just weren't built to take advantage of it and perk support to make hard 3 genning didn't come till later. The biggest issue with 3 genning isn't the killer it's the way gen spawns are handled! It's a years old issue that killers outside of Skull Merchant have been able to weaponize to varying degrees based on their personal kits and perk support available at the time. Killswitching Skull Merchant does not change that fact.
You either don't know enough about the history of this game or you're so extremely biased that you beyond incapable of being reasonable..
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You need to be so for real, clearly you don't know what holding the game hostage means either - It's when a player will hold out a game for a long period of time to the point where the opposing side can't do anything else but lose in order to get out of the game. Before end game collapse, survivors would hold killers hostage in end game by continuously staying in the game until the killer finally DC's or actually manages to get a kill.
Exact same situation with skull merchant, SM will actively patrol 3 gens and not commit to any chases or hooks in order to stop the survivors from completing the gen and in turn keeping them hostage until they either DC or just die intentionally.
That's not how the game was designed to be played, killers are supposed to KILL. SM simply keeps survivors held hostage
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The Skull Merchant hasn't even played DBD for one thousand hours. You could tell they were inexperienced by silly mistakes throughout the game even though all they had to do was patrol generators. That's the only reason Team Eternal won. They wouldn't have won no matter how much they prepared if the Skull Merchant took advantage of them all being injured. Did you even watch the game where one survivor pulled off a easy dead hard?
Prestige 100 doesn't equal experience anymore when events like Bloodrush and the 7th anniversary just recently happened. Getting Bloodpoints isn't a problem anymore. Prestige one hundred isn't a flex anymore.
Also, make sure to send some tips to KnightLight, seems like you know exactly what to do in such situations. They don't need to practice against a low tier killer if they can handle the best. KnightLight went against that Skull Merchant as well, that's why the Skull Merchant made fun of him and then KnightLight called them out. It's not like they've never been against a three gen Skull Merchant.
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Too busy giving everyone false hope with PlayStation linking for absolutely ZERO reason...
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You are still missing the point. It's huge difference if "forever Freddy" was able to stall the game. It's very much different when OG ruin with OG undying prolonged the game by insane amount (you had to possibly get rid of up to 5 totems or you had to reliably hit great skillchecks). It's entirely different that doctor had a build that made skillchecks super hard for some people. These are all just "broken OP" things. It's just not the same. None of these and none other then SM can force the game be so long, that the server just shuts down. That's unique just for SM and her alone. That's why she and only she breaks the game. That's why she and only she needs to be killswitched. None of your previous examples were able to hold the game forever (and also - server shutdown was possible even before - it's that the time to shutdown got changed to 1 hour. But you could have done that for a long time - and some survivors were indeed abusing it - that's why crows when not doing anything was implemented).
So again. She is the only one that can abuse (and was able to abuse - again - not counting knight on certain map for a brief period of time) server shutdown feature that was ABSOLUTELY not intended as a win-condition. So she is the only killer in whole game that warrants killswitch. No other killer can do that. Not even OG legion (which BTW had issue with no counterplay to him stabbing you in ability - instead of not being able to progress gens). It's just SM and her alone
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