What will happen to Skull Merchant? Your thoughts?
She has 70% kill-rate. And dcs are not even included, probably she is even higher with them.
It's obvious, survivors are refusing to play against her. I doubt she is that strong, it's just survivors don't want to play against her.
And this brings us to this question: Do you think BHVR is fine with her and just gonna ignore that or she will get another big update? What do you think?
Comments
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I have to wonder if people aren’t blinded by a hate boner, cause this trend was a thing from the very moment she got her first ‘rework’.
Did people even try to learn how she works? I’m getting the impression very few people cared to. Which is unfair regardless.
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Even if people know how she works she is still miserable to go against and I don’t mind if people just do wanna go against her
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Honestly i don't know. I never saw that much hate against any killer. Legion got similar issue, everyone were dc'ing against him. But after his problem solved, this ended.
Even Nurse is not getting that much dc/self sacrifice.
I just don't know what can fix her reputation. Full rework? Maybe. Billy'ing her and leaving her to die? I don't support that but i know a lot people wants that.
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that’s a contradiction.
Maybe, just maybe, she’s not miserable to go up against if they actually knew how to verse her?
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Those stats seem to be mostly from before her rework? She can still 3-gen really well now but isn’t as grueling to face as before the changes.
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You talk like she is to easy to counter and you are forgetting that she has no skill to play comparing what the survivors need to do to counter her, she just puts the drone on loop and you are forced to leave it, you can crouch when the beam is ready to hit you but you are only making the skull merchant to come closer and eventually hit you, so you are on a lose and lose scenario
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Nope. Stats are from last month. From Dec 30 to Jan 29
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DCs aren't included, but most players that want to leave a match do so by dying on the first hook to avoid penalties, and that certainly does count. I don't think saying, "DCs aren't included" really means much. If she does end up getting changed again, it needs to be because there's something genuinely wrong with her, not to feed the entitlement complex of players.
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yet that still doesn’t warrant the fact that people aren’t even humouring her in the slightest.
By that logic, Artist, Knight and to a lesser degree Nurse should be hated at the same level as her, yet it’s Merchant that gets the brunt of the hate. Since her rework, she can’t even hold a 3-gen better than Knight can.
Why SM? And not Knight?
The one thing I’ll give them is that the Hindered + Haste she gets practically for free is excessive. But even then I see very few people actually say that. It’s just “SM is bad rework her”.
What. Is. The. Actual. Issue.
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No matter what they do she’ll always be hated. Her power just isn’t fun at all. She needs a Freddy level rework.
I honestly hate this killer. Not because she is miserable to play against, but because she is so terribly designed that she needs constant reworks and just pushes back the balancing for other killers who have been waiting longer.
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Artist and Knight are also mind-numbing to play against and are also bad design.
The issue is that they didn't put in any effort when they reworked her. Actually trying to fix her kit would be a start.
Her gameplay needs to be scrapped and redone completely if they aren't going to put in effort to make it not suck.
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“The issue is that they didn't put in any effort when they reworked her. Actually trying to fix her kit would be a start.”
Elaborate. That is the crux of it.
Also pray tell what does “bad design” even mean.
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When you say DCs are not even included, what do you mean exactly? Matches where someone DC'd aren't included? Or Bot kills aren't included? Also source? I missed where that was stated.
Her issue is that she has a minor degree of slowdown/potency from working around her traps (so like Freddy, Sadako, Pig, Pinhead, she outperforms because the low to average players don't know or care about how to work around her power), and she also has anti loop similar to Clown, who is similarly disliked, but due to his lack of slowdown, there are few calls to delete him.
She is nowhere near 70% strong. My assumption is that her kill rate is effectively an organised protest from survivors suiciding on hook whenever they see her to inflate her numbers so that she gets nerf batted to oblivion. To me this looks like a similar hate campaign as what Freddy had back in the day, which resulted in his butchering much to the lament of players like @GeneralV. Survivors hated the character and review bombed the game to get the character they didn't want to learn against removed... even though mechanically Freddy was OK... even on the weaker side for people in the know.
I am hoping the community grows up a bit, and realises there are way more egregious things in DBD than Skull Merchant in her current form, and we don't get a killer (who is actually fairly pleasant to play) Freddied... but given she doesn't even have the license interest to protect her... I feel like her getting Freddied is quite likely.
That said as long as she keeps her scan based radars (I really like the modern stealth and active drone setup), you could take away ALL of her haste and hindered effects, which would gut her completely, but I'd still have fun just playing around the scans, radar and stealth. If that has to happen to stop the Survivor whining, I'll enjoy playing her in low MMR.
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She went from a killer that mindlessly holds W until she stat-checks you with anti-loop to a killer that mindlessly holds W until she stat-checks you.
The drones are the problem, they remove interaction from every loop because there's no meaningful cool down or skill required to use them. Especially considering the three tics never go away until you trigger the nine status effects you receive from getting hit by three.
BHVR does not have the creativity to salvage the drones or their zoning playstyle. So they should be scrapped entirely and made different.
Zoning playstyles are also the most boring because it's binary, that's why zoning killers are the worst design in the game.
The Knight feels slightly better to play against because he can only have one guard up at a time and the banner exists but Artist just mindlessly spams at every loop until she gets a free hit.
We need less killers like that, not more.
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If BHVR did not change their data-system, they never included dcs in kill-rates. So let's say, 2 survivors dc'ed and bots replaced them. Killing them will not be in kill-rates.
Also source:
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I wonder if the other survivors in the game still count towards it. So if I DC I won’t count towards the kill rates, but when my teammates inevitably die will they still count?
It would explain Skull Merchant’s 70% but also make the stat kind of pointless because as soon as someone DCs it’s pretty much over for the others.
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It still includes hook suicides though. I can't tell you how many times survivors will run up to me as soon as they see what killer I picked so they can show me their favorite hook... At that point, it's a given that the game is over.
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my guess is they're going to remove hindered and haste but keep broken and stealth.
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Yeah hook suicides are the biggest reason of her kill-rate. Even if other 3 survivors want to play, at this point game is over. There is no team can win game 3 v 1 at 5 gens.
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Hopefully not much.
Considering the only problem with her now is something she shares in common with killers that aren't nearly as hated, I think it's pretty unlikely that any amount of changes would make the players who suicide against her happy. Consider the following question, and anyone who gives up against SM is encouraged to try and answer it honestly:
What version of Skull Merchant that they still don't like would be enough for them to be okay with it? What would a rework look like for the response to be "Okay, I don't like her, but she's acceptable now"?
She's received two ground-up reworks and a few more additional suites of changes. She has almost nothing in common with her original iteration or her most problematic iteration anymore. When is it enough? What is required for people to begrudgingly accept the existence of a killer they just don't like, learn the counterplay, and just play out matches like normal?
Some changes could and should be made, of course, I'm not arguing she's perfect. I'm just pointing out that the crux of the issue seems to be an irrational exaggeration of even the flaws that actually exist, intensified by leftover hate from when she was actually a problem.
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She's a killer thats easy to play and only counter play to her is to press W as hard as you can while she chases you.
I don't like her one bit and i pretend to be lost when i get one so i can get hooked faster. I think she needs to lose part of her kit or at least have less drones. Didn't they make her footsteps quieter too for some stupid reason.
I don't like the fact that this Karen hair is probably the best stealther out there too. Put up a drone stealth, quiet footsteps repeat until survivor makes a mistake or gets hindered and injured.
I don't mind antiloop killers but at least killer like artist requires talent to play. Karen the Dullmerchant requires you to know how to put drone up and hit people since all they can do is to run away until she bloodlusts you.
Also why in the world does she need to get haste as well... hindered, haste, stealth, quiet footssteps, free injuries.
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For me, few changes will make her fine.
First, she should not get haste. That's so stupid, especially while she can also build bloodlust.
Second, there should be way to remove stacks if SM is not chasing you. There was idea to hacking drones will remove one stack, that's not bad idea actually.
I think i will be fine with her after few changes like that. Even she is another leave the loop killer.
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This is the main culprit IMHO. People seem to have it ingrained in their minds that playing SM is cheap and unfun and you as the killer player just barely qualify as a human for chosing her for others to verse (numerous players have told me so).
I strongly believe that this is all due to the lingering effect of her old Chessmerchant playstyle and the burning 3-genning. Now she is a stealth/controller hybrid who gets constantly random wounds across the map, which forces survivors occasionally to heal or hack drones (slowdown) or become vulnerable, but it's in the players hands if they want to stay injured, they aren't exposed just like that mid-chase.
I find her surprise Stealth one of the more fun aspects of her kit and notice all the random wounds my drones cause, but 90% of the time it happens somewhere with me not knowing where and thus unable to capitalise on it. My biggest gripe from a gameplay perspective is that information and drone hunting seems to be a big part of her kit when looking from the outside, but ingame the claw traps are so infrequent and short-lived that's its a real coin flip if I can get any info by then at all. Most of the time when I check my scanner there is just void, and this is somewhat sad.
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DCs aren't included but giving up and suiciding on hook IS included which is why she's so high. It's basically a useless piece of data because it's so heavily skewed by survivors.
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If SM need a nerf then Nurse need a buff according to the stat.
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Why shouldn't she get Haste? At that point, she only gets any chase power if survivors are gracious enough to let themselves get scanned 4+ times, that makes her substantially weaker for no reason at all. If we were to get rid of any element of her chase power - which people wanted her to have! - wouldn't it make more sense to replace the Hindered with something else? And if we're at that level, shouldn't we ask... why is it a problem for Skull Merchant to get Haste + Hindered, but not Clown, who gets a higher number for both on top of them being much, much easier + more consistent to apply?
Worth mentioning that if she's placing down drones she's resetting Bloodlust progress, also. She only gets Bloodlust if she already has the drones up in smart locations and chases survivors towards them, but at that point... isn't that just a killer playing well and being rewarded for their skill? Also, at that point, isn't that much more counterable, since the drones have to be left alone for a bit?
I do agree with hacking drones removing Lock On stacks, that's a good idea. That's one of the changes I think would be good to implement.
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I actually hope they don‘t rework her again. I really hate her, but there are bigger problems and she isn‘t even played that much. They shouldn‘t commit recources into another rework.
In the end she will always be hated, even when they do a good rework. It‘s the character that’s hated.
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Clown is not forcing you leave to loop, he forces you to drop the pallet. And Clown still need to break pallet, SM does not. If you stay at loop, you will lose health state.
Simply Clown can't zone you, the only thing he can do is forcing you to drop pallet.
And Artist is also similar, she can zone you but she can't make survivor hindered or Artist won't get haste while forcing survivor leave the loop.
SM has both strategies in one kit.
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Nothing based on this data, since the period covered is only one month's worth and changing functionality over such a short period is short-sighted.
If there are to be changes, it will be because this has been the case for several months, not just one.
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I'm not sure I agree with this, the two killers have the same outcome if you stay in the loop: you get slowed down, and they get sped up.
This is especially true if you're already injured, because at that point the drone only gives Merchant a small Haste boost, and you a moderate Hindered penalty (eventually). It's still probably a good idea to leave the loop, but if you can loop Clown (which you can), you can loop Merchant long enough to drop the pallet/hit the window and leave even once you're claw trapped.
Clown and Artist also do what they do immediately. Clown slows you straight away, and you know that, so you act accordingly. Artist forces you to leave the loop immediately because otherwise you'll get swarmed and risk an injury. Knight, too, forces you to leave immediately because being put into the... Hunt? is that what his mechanic is called? Whatever, being chased by guards is almost immediate and has a much more potent risk than Artist, those things can even down you. The threat is there straight away for all these killers.
Merchant, on the other hand, has to wait. Wait for the drone to fly up into position, wait for it to activate into recon mode, wait for the survivor to trip it and activate it, wait for the looping beams to actually scan them... and that's just to get the Haste, she has to wait even longer for the injury, then wait again for any Hindered. While it's still a good idea to leave the loop, you don't have to straight away, you have time to position yourself right and maybe use the pallet.
I do sympathise with the whole "drop thing at loop, force survivor to run away" thing being boring, and SM can do it, but she's also the least objectionable version of it because of how delayed the threat actually is. It's also her only flaw right now and removing the Haste from her kit won't really fix it, that'll just screw over any Merchant trying to play her more skilfully.
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The Haste part isn't typically an issue unless you have people who aren't being chased getting tagged. If it's JUST the person in chase, it's 3% for afew seconds.
As for providing ways to remove stacks, I feel like that would be healthy for both sides. Would provide a side objective to slow the game abit while also providing counterplay in avoiding INSTANTLY being broken once chase starts.
Currently there's not much reason to disable drones since they auto-repair, but also since they don't hamper non-moving targets. The only GOOD time to disable really is when you know the killer is about to chase someone to that area. This change idea would provide a decent reason to bother with disabling drones.
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What I hope will happen: Skull Merchant gets a rework. From the ground up. Everything. Her name (it has nothing to do with her power and appearance whatsoever), her visual design (let's face it, she doesn't look menacing in the slightest and her mask is the least stealthy thing imaginable), her sound design (her chase music is terrible), her animations (no, women do not walk like that), her lore (such a convoluted mess) and her power all are awful. Stationary drones will never be a good design.
What I actually think will happen: Nothing. They reworked her twice already and she wasn't mentioned as a killer that would receive changes in the near future. Also, they already have a lot on their plate and I doubt they have any idea what to do with her at this point. She is simply a failure. Maybe she will receive some number changes and end up like Freddy.
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Idk, you stay at the wrong loop and get hindered/intoxicated your probably getting shanked. Meanwhile artist can actually hinder survivors with a add on.
For the topic, probably not much will happen until people explode more about her (which would be something to see) since it's widely known that many people purposely throw against her, skewing data. If we had to guess BHVR is probably on the fence about her because while they probably want a "drone" killer, they also probably want their players to have fun, so the most likely thing is a rework like Freddy. But we're just guessing soooo.
For what it's worth, since the anti-3 gen system came out we're relatively fine with her, but teammates are another matter.
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Artist and Clown are also poorly designed. And ideally all three should be changed.
It is true that SM is singled out due to bias. But it's better to prioritize fixing the crappy thing people are complaining about than the crappy things that people aren't complaining about.
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Artist is one of the best designed killers in the game, except for her ability to force survivors away from loops repeatedly. It's not even that hard to fix for her, I just don't know how you'd buff her to counteract the nerf since I don't play her as much. Clown's... fine, but the visual sway from his power is kinda problematic. In terms of what his power does in raw effect, it's simple but reasonably effective and has clear counterplay, so there's nothing wrong with it.
Skull Merchant is singled out due to bias AND the only thing you could reasonably call a problem (which isn't always what gets complained about) isn't that big of a deal. Both sides of that are important.
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Well I feel like you're approaching it from the perspective of objectivity being greater than community perception. But you have to realize that her reputation is so bad due to her terrible release state, nothing short of changing her drones entirely or removing them will change it.
Nobody is willing to give her drones another chance, even if in actuality it's not so bad, every difficulty or negative associated with the killer will be amplified due to the bias against her.
That's why she needs to be reworked. There will always be a killer that is overhated. But one with stats such as SM warrants placating the masses. Even if people more educated on balance don't agree. I personally don't find her to be too horrible. But I dislike anti-loop zoning killers and I hate her visual design so I wouldn't be against a bigger rework.
Artist and Clown just need to lose their ability to spam in favor of getting stronger hits when they do land. Something like Clown getting basekit sloppy when he lands the M1 in a slow bottle at the cost of having less bottles to throw over and over would be a start.
I'm far from a game dev, but I dislike the spammy nature of most zoning killers in this game.
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Overall, I agree with you... except for the bloodlust part. It's fairly easy to cover a decent chunk of the map in drones and then just mostly ignore them. Unlike Clown that is constantly resetting BL to apply hindred/haste, SM only has to make adjustments here and there. This means that while Clown isn't going to be able to have haste/hindred trigger at the same time as BL, it can happen pretty easily with SM.
Coming from someone who actually PLAYS this killer, tweeking BL on her wouldn't be the worst idea in the world. BL is meant to break godloops in situations where they would otherwise be uncounterable, not become a tool to cheese loops where you are insistant on not breaking a pallet. In that regard, if they made BL reset if the drone scans a survivor... I feel like that would be healthy. Potential godloops would still be countered by the power which removes the need for BL to do that.
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Learning how to vs in games is too hard. Thinking too much hurt brain. That's why solo q is the way it is.
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My problem with that is, where's the line?
A lot of killers have general negative receptions depending on where you look. If we demonstrate that killers can just be removed from the game if people are whiny enough, won't that same thing be repeated for the next ones on the list that ""people"" (read: a vocal percentage it's hard to quantify) don't like?
Even if BHVR don't listen to them, it'll irrevocably harm the state of discourse and conversation in the community.
What I think is more reasonable is to make small changes that actually matter for how her kit works, and just wait. Starve the outrage fire of oxygen and it should eventually die down, even if the whiny babies make things annoying in the meantime.
(Also, Artist just needs to have static birds not swarm people and her problematic nature disappears.)
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This is a fair point, and I wouldn't mind that change either. I was more trying to highlight that the spammy, force-them-to-leave-loop playstyle is incompatible with Bloodlust, but you do raise a good point about other issues.
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DC's might not be included, but most of the time its a hookicide after running right to her from my experience. Too many people still resent her and refuse to go against her.
Imo, she is very skewed by this. I honestly wish they would cease updating her and just use the resources on ANYTHING else. But we'll see.
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We would care to disagree about the birds
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Sorry for quick replies. Really bored at work.
But I would say the line is drawn in the stats. People Also really hate Wesker and Nurse but neither have egregious kill rates to my knowledge and neither have gotten significant nerfs or reworks.
For SM to get several reworks, be very vocally disliked even by people who don't frequent fansites, and have a very high killrate makes her exceptional and needing of changes imo.
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How so? I'll admit I don't play Artist, but it seems like static birds would still have mid-loop utility if they didn't swarm people.
The way I see it, if this change were made, placing a bird at a loop would become a positioning game more than forcing survivors to leave: You want them to approach the bird from the front, so you can launch it and injure them, and they want to approach the bird from behind, so they can run into it and dissipate it.
Artist wouldn't be mechanically restricted and she'd be given an opportunity to try something new with her power, but that new thing has more interactive gameplay than the current one so it shouldn't be as obnoxious to face.
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Sure, but why wouldn't the next target get a high killrate if it becomes the norm to give up against them the way it is against Skull Merchant?
She doesn't have a high killrate because she's actually that good. People just refuse to play against her.
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I don't believe the opposition is that unified to where we would see a repeat of SM situation.
There are three benchmarks that would warrant a complete rework.
-High killrate
-Community feedback
-Already received changes from devs several times
If this cannot be applied to another killer than I don't think it warrants a rework, just changes like you suggested. Which is why no other killer is in the same position she is.
She would be a first if they reworked her entirely. But hopefully she would be the last and they would learn their lesson. If not then yes they'd have to rework that next killer too.
But hopefully it stays exceptional.
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I feel like there's room for compromise with this killer, although I'm sure ppl will still instantly give up. Currently there's no way to remove stacks for example. If they introduced a way to remove stacks while out of chase similar to Wesker's vacines... it would provide both consistency in chases for the survivors and a reason to get off gens.
Also... just spit balling here but... What if they change how she gets her drones? Currently she has 6 drones which has a 10 second cooldown once placed resulting in 8 seconds of undetectable. Survivors MOSTLY don't bother disarming them since they repair themselves anyway, and the SM can just call it back to quickly replace it.
What if... recalled drones don't go to SM but instead have to be reloaded similar to Huntress hatchets? Would take care of the complaint of "she just tosses down a drone at EVERY loop" since you don't seemingly have infinite drones to work with. Could do something like remove her cooldown to compensate. This would give more incentive to disarm the drones.
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It doesn't require unified opposition. It only takes one person in a match to give up for that whole match to be a wash in the stats, considering how unlikely it is for more than one survivor to leave that trial afterwards.
If it becomes popular to give up against a killer, even if not that many people do it, the killrate will rise by the amount we're seeing with Skull Merchant. It's only a 10% increase from the "balanced" spot, and that comes purely from the fact that people will immediately give up. Even players who don't hate her that much will probably cascade into giving up after one person does, because that match isn't realistically winnable anymore.
She shouldn't even be the first. No killer should just outright be removed from the game, certainly not a killer that doesn't even have a justifiable reason to be hated anymore. Like I said, starve the fire of oxygen, wait. If this is still true a year down the line, maybe, but right now the expectation should be for these players to grow up.
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I definitely like the stack-removing suggestion, that's a pretty genius idea so credit to whoever was patient zero for it catching on. Hacking drones removing stacks increases power interaction and decreases how much a killer player can autopilot into winning a war of attrition, it's a win/win for the game's health overall.
Messing with how she gets drones wouldn't be the worst idea, honestly. I don't love how quickly a lot of people jump to locker-reloads, but something along those lines could be workable for sure. Even just forcing her to go to a certain radius of the drone to recall it could increase the worth of hacking drones.
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It doesn't even have to be lockers. We could borrow off of Xeno for this one. Xenos tunnels act 2 fold as both the entrance/exit of tunnels, and also where survivors get flame throwers. What if SM had similar structures? Reloads drones at computers spread around the map, and survivors could interact with the computer to get rid of stacks. This would avoid the annoying locker spawn problem Huntress has.
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