I really don't see the point in playing against a Skull Merchant
There's nothing engaging about her playstyle. 20-minute games in which you desperately try to break her 3-gen that she guards from the very start is not fun in any objective way, and I am not convinced her changes did anything to address that. Against other killers, you can usually break the 3-gen, even when you can't coordinate with other survivors. If you're not in an SWF against her? It's essentially futile. I only had one game in which that worked and I clocked it at closing in on 30 minutes.
There's also the problem that many players just give up when it seems like the game has grinded to a stand-still, and I don't blame anyone for that. I'd rather move on as well at that point.
Honestly, if she gets nerfed because of an artificially inflated kill rate because of that, then good riddance. That killer was a disappointment ever since her identity was revealed and continues to be.
I'm not sure what could be done to improve her without completely reworking her power (which, let's be honest, should be done. She has drones and they don't even fly around and scout the map or something?!?), but something needs to happen. IMO, she's starting to become as much a plague as basement-camping Insidious Bubbas, and at this point, I'd rather face those over her.
Comments
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Tbh i enjoy playing the occasional match as Skully focusing on a complete totem build, but i agree she should get a rework.
I feel like we should have only 1-2 drones but controllable like Victor, and have add-ons like Doctor and Hag which severely affect the playstyle. An add-on that attaches a taser to disrupt survivors like Doctor, another one that has an AOE that applies status effects or reveals survivors via Killer Instinct, an iridescent queen like static charge, one which traps totems, windows and pallets and applies a claw trap when survivors interact with it etc.
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I can't remember the last time I had a skull merchant match last more than 5-10 minutes. At least one person immediately gives up in nearly every SM game I get. Then others usually follow. Worst case is the SM gets upset and bleeds everyone out.
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They deserve to play against bots and that’s it. If you load up the game with the intention of just holding people hostage for as long as possible, they have no right to get mad when people opt out.
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If it's a 3-gen situation, there really isn't much of a point playing it out. Though, that said, far too many people immediately DC or give up as soon as they see Skull Merchant without actually ascertaining how they're playing, and that's pretty indefensible. That's straight up just leaving because you don't like the killer at that point.
As for how to fix her, you don't need to radically overhaul her power. You just need to lean into it being versatile and strategic, while lessening its direct lethality and removing certain addons. It's already capable of doing far more than 3-genning, just not very well. So... make it better at those things with number buffs, and retool her addons to better support those playstyles, while nerfing its area-denial capability by removing Lock-On. That's my pitch.
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I give up straight away because screw the possibility of the match ending in a 3 gen I don't care about their excuses of oh I'm not like other skull merchants the majority of sm plays like that so I'm going afk until the match ends
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As I said, pretty indefensible. You should at least give players a chance not to be playing like scumbags.
You wouldn't insta-DC or go AFK against a Leatherface before ascertaining that it's a Basement Bubba, so the same principle applies.
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I'm sorry but if the match starts with someone disconnecting I'm going afk because 99% of the time before the alien chapter meant it was a skull merchant and screw playing a skull merchant match with a man down
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A bit more defensible, but to be fair, we do have DC bots now, so you aren't actually a complete man down.
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The bots are worse than having a man down.
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Honestly, I disagree, the bots have been pretty good in my experience. They have an annoying tendency to miss skill checks marginally more than a real human, and they aren't as good in chase as you might want, but they're significantly better than actually lacking a fourth player.
If nothing else, they're a body for the killer to chase and hook while you're doing generators. At best, they go for saves and tick up generator progress a little.
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I actually did have a Skull Merchant say postgame that their goal was "to waste your time as much as possible". We 4 outed in 25 minutes. This is a rare case where a killer needs to be disabled until they're reworked. I haven't run into a Skull Merchant who played the game normally in over a month, and I usually run into one every day. Every single one that I run into is playing a 3 gen hostage game.
We know why the killswitch exists. We're asking for an exception to be made. This killer is only being played by griefers 90% of the time.
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You're completely in the right for not objecting yourself to a skull merch match. The killer is almost always intentionally played to ruin the xp of the survivors in the lobby.
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Oh Ok show me a game where a skull merchant couldn't easily handle a bot with said bot working on gens instead of opening a chest and doing dull totems
Because bots are ######### easy to take care of heck I leave them alone and go for them last when playing killer because they ######### around a majority of the time instead of doing gens
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Make that 100% of the time now that xeno is out there's a reason why skull merchant is not picked often because only people who are looking to ruin people's day's play skull merchant these days
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This is my experience too. She was released at the start of the year, it's now September and I've had *2* SM not try drag the game out. Only 2. And I don't duck out until everyone else starts to, so I do wait and see how they're playing. The ones who drag the game out also don't want to hook, which tells me they're purposely doing it as a form of griefing.
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Well, you've got two situations.
Either the Skull Merchant is doing 3-gen strats, which means it's already justifiable to not play it out.
Or they aren't, which means the bot is at minimum a distraction for the killer.
Again, if that bot weren't there, the killer would just be on one of you and there'd be zero chance of an extra body on gens. Even if the chance of the bot working on gens is low, it's not zero.
Though, for the record, I've already said not committing to a game where someone gave up instantly is more fair. My criticism is about the people who do immediately give up as soon as they see a specific killer, no matter which one it is.
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That bot isn't going to do anything to the 3 gen and the skull merchant knows that bots tend to hang around outside of the 3 gen radius especially if its booby trapped by skull merchant and they rarely go towards the mid unless chased there
Killers with a decent amount of play time already know what bots are capable of and know to ignore them for the majority of the time as you could be using said pressure on someone who's actually doing an objective instead of fumbling a chest around and if your really paranoid just slug the bot no one sane would go and help the bot out
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Exactly. I don't think a killer should be disabled simply because they're unfun. But this is a different case. This killer's power is so flawed that they're being used specifically to grief other players.
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I've been playing for a year and never DCed. Pretty sure next time I hit Skully I will.
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After a particularly long Skull Merchant match I found the new win condition against her. She was doing the normal hostage merchant build and refused to leave a 3-gen from the onset of the match, so the only other living Survivor and I started tapping gens. At the end she said WE were boring at the end. I have never felt more accomplished in my DBD life. That was like a Blight saying "dang you are fast!", or a Nurse saying "good job phasing through walls!". The killer acknowledged we were better at what they were doing then they were. So now my goal is to legally hold the match hostage against hostage merchants.
The rules are if you don't touch gens for 10 minutes, and the Killer provides video proof, you can be banned for holding the match hostage. So simply tap a gen every 9 minutes and you are 100% legal! Watch a Youtube video on your 2nd screen or phone, and use the timer of the video to know when you should tap the next gen instead of whatever you were doing to prevent AFK crows. Let 2 of your soloq teammates out, and 2 of you take the bullet to legally hold her hostage back.
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Not every SM wants to hold games for 30+ minutes. It's rly boring on Killer side as well. I would say the only people who do nothing than just 3-gen are doing it not because Its fun as of gameplay for them but because they want Survivors to suffer.
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You should see how they react when you play in a 4 man, have everyone run Potential Energy, and blow through her 3 gen en route to a 4 man escape. Gamer words aplenty.
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100% of the sm I faced did not 3 gen.
they chased and killed the survivors. or tried to at least.
let me put emphasis on this... ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.
so no. stop dcing the second you see her. it is not justifiable until you see they are in fact holding the 3 gen. at which point, you do you.
honestly... this must be a regional thing. people keep saying they see her everyday holding a 3 gen, why do I not see any?
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Wonder when y'all be tired of your perceived notions of "Every SM = 3 gen for 30 minutes" - which you'd never know because you DC anyway the second you saw her.
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Well, I do know because I don't d/c the second I see it and every SM game for the last month or two has played out that way.
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Gee it's like we had nearly all of our matches go that way against a snooze merchant
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Oh please let us trade skull merchant matches because ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of mine were 3 genners before I hit ######### that mode when I went against the killer
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You get very little for your time investment in a SM game, that's for sure
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I don't DC against SMs and as I said above - I've had only *2* since her release that did not 3 gen from the start. So no, people aren't just automatically DCing against her. I'm happy for you though that you've had a positive experience.
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that wasn't even a reply to you...
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I know that. But the point of your post was that people are DCing too early without seeing whether the SM they're facing is 3 genning or not, and that based on your experience theyre more often not. And I'm saying that is not my experience.
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and are people DCing on sight or not?
if it doesn't apply to you, great. that means I wasn't talking about you
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Easy fix: drones cannot be drop near generators.. Make her power usable only in loops or other areas, give more drones to compensate, reduce the active zone (cause is huge) but reduce the re-activation cooldown of the controller for inactive drones and make the speed boost addon while inside the area basekit in exchange and of course keep the lock on build to not feel just like an M1 killer with speedboost.
To avoid people just running behind her and destroying her drones, the drones don't destroy when a survivor interact with it but instead the drone get locked (similar to the singularity eyes) for and amount of time and the SM cannot re-activate them while so and obviously drones don't return anymore to her "infinite magic bag", making available to retrieve only active drones.
And there you have a fun female trapper with some variations imo.
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I'll definitely wanna try her once she gets fixed. Got over 40k shards saved and was thinking of getting her with her costumes but not at the moment cause she's hated.
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Who cares?
If you want the character, get it.
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To be fair, trying to play Skull Merchant right now is miserable. As has been acknowledged in this thread already, people just give up immediately. I don't blame someone holding off until that changes lol
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I played her yesterday and no one quit. it's doable.
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I know, I play her too. It's a dice roll, some days you'll get reasonable games, others you'll get insta-DCs and abuse in the endgame chat.
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ps4 wins again! no end game chat!
which is mostly annoying...
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Pffft. Ignorance is bliss, as they say...
It's not unbearably awful, to be clear, but I understand why someone might be wary of it anyway.
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still wish I could talk to people more easily.
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In my opinion there is no way to fix her, because her whole build up is horrible.
Stale Drones, nothing to interact.
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While I agree that disconnecting isn't the right move, you immediately know the match will not be fun the moment you see her drones for the first time. It doesn't matter, if she intends to defend a 3gen or only wants to showcase her lack of counterplay in chase. You're screwed either way and there is no fun to be had. Deactivating drones isn't fun. Breaking a 3gen for 20 minutes isn't fun. And a killer that presses M2 to immediately put you in a lose-lose situation with no effort isn't fun either.
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As for how to fix her, you don't need to radically overhaul her power. You just need to lean into it being versatile and strategic, while lessening its direct lethality and removing certain addons. It's already capable of doing far more than 3-genning, just not very well. So... make it better at those things with number buffs, and retool her addons to better support those playstyles, while nerfing its area-denial capability by removing Lock-On. That's my pitch.
Do you have a full concept for her?
Skull Merchant isn't a part of the Old DBD, so she is outside my area of expertise. I'm genuinely curious to know what her players wanted to do with her.
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If someone refuses to even -try- against new SM, who isn't nearly as strong at 3-genning as she used to be, then these people simply shouldn't be playing DBD really. You queue up knowing you may well end up against any killer.
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Interesting how any comments with "I don't play/refuse against Skull Merchant" is deleted
It just add more fuel to my fire
I payed my real money for this game, I refuse to play and not have fun
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Because those comments are admitting to breaking the rules and could be seen as encouraging others to do the same. They've locked other threads for promoting breaking the rules too.
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What rules are being broken?
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By refusing to play against SM. If they play the game for any length of time they will eventually end up against a SM, and thus would then be breaking the rule for non-participation.
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Sure
I wish good luck to the people responsible to analise whether the player is refusing to play the game or just playing badly
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