Post-Release Feedback: The Skull Merchant Rework (from an SM main)

Thank you for the visual reference. I actually played a game after reading this and kept it in mind, but still struggled to keep track of stacks since they're difficult to see. May be a bit of an accessibility issue on my end.

Power-creep doctor. doctor becomes useless killer if skull merchant just does what he does. her main counter-play is sliding pallets at the correct time. the two killer that i really don't want bvhr to change as m1 killer is skull merchant and sadako. these only m1 killer that i ever feel like playing these days.

As cool as the Neuroshock sounds I think it is a bit too much, like think of it, she would have: Tracking, Damage, Haste, Hinder, Undetectable and now Shock.

I personally think that she has a bit too many layers, weak layers that just add to something bigger, and I personally do not think it is good and adding even more would be too much. I believe removing some of her layer and escalating the ones that left would be a better approach. For example, I personally would remove everything related to Haste and Hinder which would leave Tracking, Damage and Undetectable aspects of her kit, mainly because juggling with speed modifiers is hard to balance and from survivor perspective, having less or no options because killer is suddenly a lot faster than you doesn't feel nice.

The ones that left also kind of match the rest of stealth killers, they are usually about taking victims by surprise or exposing them from the shadows, with Skull Merchant, she wouldn't be that lethal, but she would know a lot about her prey due to her tracking capabilities. Additionally, playing her was made so much easier after removal of cooldown after recalling a drone, which I personally think hurt her depth more than it helped.

Another side of her that needs to be looked at is the survivor perspective. She is pretty terrible there, you have no idea for how long you are scanned for, you have no idea at a glance if a drone is hacked or not etc. and on top of that she creates some specific scenarios due to her ability to aim drones that will activate quickly. You addressed some of her stuff like changing rotation direction, but there are few more things needed.

With that said, I have my batch of changes. These changes are not connected to your changes, they are independent of each other. I also must say that I am not a game designer nor an avid gamer, you probably have more knowledge on her, so I hope these ideas will give you another perspective that perhaps you will be able to refine.

• Skull Merchant
  • No longer gains Haste based on tracked survivors
  • Makes a bit more sounds while moving as she is so quiet. I know she supposed to be stealth killer, but she is the only one that doesn't make any sounds or have no effects.
  • Undetectable effect will now be given to her when the power is on cooldown and will linger for 1 second
  • Checking the radar will put you to 4.4m/s speed
• Drones
  • Cooldown increased to 12 seconds
  • Recalling a drone will put an 8 second cooldown
  • Changing direction will make the drone fly up for a short duration, just like walking under it. This in turns means it will be put into Stealth mode
  • Initialization durations increased to 1.5 seconds
  • Drones will rotate too while initiating
  • Detected survivors without a claw trap will have the scan-lines effect for the whole duration, as well as the animation pre rework while inside the drone radius.
  • Hacked drones will be put into stealth mode after 45 instead of being recalled.
  • Hacked drones will emit a glitching light as well as make some faint sounds when nearing the end of duration.
• Claw Trap
  • Now only injures survivors and reveals them on the radar
  • Being scanned while having a claw trap will inflict broken status effect for 45 seconds. Already broken survivors will not get this effect.
  • Being scanned while having a claw trap and having the broken status effect will reveal your position via killer instinct as long as you are in the area of any drone until the claw trap wears off.
• Hacking Minigame
  • Now require 6 inputs to complete
  • The next button will also be shown instead of only current one.

These ideas are intersecting with each other. Having survivors revealed via killer instincts will give an advantage while chasing and mind gaming, but will not make it impossible, at the same time you will have ability to get undetectable which will you even stronger, but you will have to be mindful with your cooldowns, as survivors are only revealed in drones' radii, just spam placing/recalling will not be beneficial as you either need to have some spare drones at hand which means they are not doing anything elsewhere or constantly recall a drone which will slow you down. In chase, she will be similar to basic M1 killers with harder time to mind game as she will know more than you. At the same time, outside of chase she can catch or at least slowdown survivors as well as having a way to surprise survivors using the Undetectable effect, but it has a cost of not being able to use drones properly. Also, the lack of built-in deep wounds makes it harder to tunnel off the unhooked survivors.

Again I do not expect these ideas to be perfect or anything but is there to give a different perspective in terms of her power. I would be glad to hear your opinion on them.

While I might be doing a minor Necro here, I believe the suggestions here are very healthy and would improve the counterplay vs. Skull Merchant considerably. Generally I believe all of this is a very good take.

The only thing I don't understand is this:

I thought the whole point of giving her the neuroshock was to remove the breaking the survivors ankles hinder effect that makes her feel so cheap to go against? Considering a single scanned survivor already grants 3% haste to SM, this gives her an 8% movement speed swing vs. the pursued survivor.

The biggest consistent complaint vs. Skull Merchant is the fact her power forces you to leave loops. I don't think this necessarily a problem perce' as this is not new... its something that can already be done by Hag, Trapper, Nurse, Clown, etc. Between the fact she has a speed boost (that is hard to track/get a feel for how fast she's actually going), can hide her red light using her drone (without really losing any speed), see you on her radar once you're tagged AND have Killer instinct (making mind games almost impossible), and with the ability to force you into a neuroshock and prevent use of windows/pallets, this seems like plenty of strength without the hinder effect as well to me.... and given the shock from Doctor doesn't have the slow down, it seems curious SM would get one in conjunction with all the other things in her kit.

So to try and resolve the above frustrations and give some compensation for the complete loss of hindered, I would consider ditching the scaling speed boost based on the number of scanned survivors, as this will rarely be above 2 anyway (but still makes her speed inconsistent and hard to track at loops). I'd suggest making her movement speed a consistent 3% whenever a scanned survivor is within her TR, regardless of how many survivors are scanned, and 5% (or 6%) whenever a claw-trapped survivor is within her TR, again regardless of how many survivors are claw-trapped.

This makes her a more potent when she commits to a survivor, and gives a natural chase incentive. Getting caught by a claw trap means you now have a faster Skull Merchant coming for you, who can see you via the radar, and if you get hit by another scan, she will get killer instinct and easily catch you at windows and pallets. It also means there is a trade off for her while planting drones to become undetectable, so successfully dipping and getting to another loop means you can buy yourself a reprieve from her speed while she sets up a new drone.

This also means that it is the chased survivor that is at fault if they are getting pursued by the Skull Merchant, rather that someone else being the cause of the speed boost going against them, so rewards a more skillful survivor who is better at avoiding getting tagged, rahter than them being punished for a teammates mistake.

In my opinion, every killer should have a unique and distinguishable power difference. We shouldn't be asking to add powers from other killers to be put on another killer. It's like asking Chucky to be kicked like Victor. I'm all for coming up with a different type of way of catching survivors other than hindrance or doctor shocks though.

There is good argumentation in this video. Indeed the huge swing of 13% Hindered + Haste sticks out as the most unfair part.

I've held the opinion that Skull Merchant is improved, @PixelBush said in one of his previous videos that 'her power is now more importantly buffable', which is a statement I agree with, and also means it is also 'nerfable'. I know you're against nerfing her, and there is counterplay walking under drones, but the precision required by survivor is so much more than SM, it does seem a little unfair for anything outside the very best players, and I think that's where the data points most.

Unfortunately it is hard to know how much of the stats are players giving up and not playing, vs. How much is actually genuine gameplay. Assuming it is accurate to actually pkaying though... The scanning part of her drones is the direction I wanted her to go instead of the auto detect AoE she had before. I actually have fun sneaking past drones and disabling them... so this is the change that tells me we have potential here...

However I've always said her kit is really busy, with a lot going on, and this video summed up those points very well. I think the Deep wound is fine, especially as this can is countered by Made For This. Broken is probably fine to have a haphazardly scanned afar effect... realistically any player paying attention while not pressured shouldn't get scanned and can disable drones. The recall though is a little nutty, it feels like disabling a drone shouldn't permit SM to immediately just take it back, especially as the fact it is disabled is information to her as well. Something could be looked at here as well.

All of this means, I support Pixel's changes above, the nueroshock is a much nicer route in conjunction with her other changes, however I would definitely want the Hindered gone. The haste I would like normalised to only be active when scanned/trapped survivors are in her TR, and to simplify it so that its 3% for a scanned survivor, 5% for a claw trap. Throwing up a new drone to enter undetectable loses the haste, so there is an associated "set up" cost.

All of this makes it so the survivor has a clearer understanding of the 1vs1, and doesn't make looping SM an automatic death sentence.

I'm not smart enough to know if this would work, but it seems healthier to me... and I'm determined to keep pushing actual discussion around Skull Merchant, instead of just "Delete her".

I honestly kinda like the idea of limiting the Haste to two "stages" (3% and 6% max) to reduce confusion and overkill potential against inexperienced Survivors (the majority of the playerbase). Although quite frankly I still believe that Haste can stay if Hindered goes or vice-versa.

Although I'm iffy about the drone broadcasting it's been disarmed through aura change, trading removing info from the Killer for giving info to the Killer is counter-productive, unless the Killer tries to recalI it or sees the drone then a deactivated drone shouldn't show it's been hacked, I hardly ever saw anyone manage a hack mid-chase unless they had a massive headstart.

Ew you're one of those... baa for us.

The shock element is quite interesting. I think survivors should spawn with a claw trap with no charges, and for every drone they trigger get a stack, an effect based on add-ons, include a way for survivors to remove stacks that isn't too fast.

Now you have a chase power that doesn't trigger because some random across the map got a claw trap while the one who in the chase had none and did nothing wrong and has to deal with the haste (that is btw the biggest complaint i have about Skull Merchant, her power seems to be sometimes a bit out of control for both sides with that weird haste).

his traps are avoidable and can be permanently disabled unless he has a add on

skull merchants drones isn’t avoidable and no crouching and standing still during a chase doesn’t count you’re still gonna end up taking a m1 or wasting a pallet in the first 8 seconds of a chase if you do that and that’s just not counterplay and you can’t really disable them since she can just recall it and immediately replace it in under a second unlike trapper

unlike skull merchant, trappers traps require brainpower to use unlike merchant who starts out with all 6 of her traps all of which can be replaced in a second and on the go and have a massive radius

I guess what I’m trying to say is, skull merchant doesn’t require skill nor brainpower.