Feedback and Suggestions
Feedback and Suggestions
Skull Merchant changes. Hack to remove lock-on stacks. Delayed "leave the loop" drone play.
- Hacking a drone removes a Lock-On stack.
- 20 second cooldown after a successful hack, before another hack attempt can be made on other drones.
- The special ability Deploy Drones is replaced with Summon Drones.
- Drones are no longer placed by the Skull Merchant.
- Drones arrive from the sky 10 seconds after summoning and hover in the spot they were summoned to.
- Summoning a drone within 16 meters of another drone will relocate the nearest drone to the designated position instead of summoning a new one.
This gives survivors a way to remove lock-on stacks, but the cooldown prevents them from removing too many too quickly and prevents them from completely disabling her power by hacking multiple drones back to back.
By delaying her drone placement, survivors in chase have more time to loop and/or decide where to go next, instead of immediately being forced to leave the tile. Relocating nearby drones reduces the Skull Merchant's ability to pack several drones side by side to lock down an entire area.
The durations and ranges can change.
Comments
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That'd basically delete all of her chase power. Not a good idea.
7 -
The hack idea is good, that is a dead cert should be added mechanic. CD is fine.
I'm not necessarily against the deploy delay. I myself have considered that she takes a second or so longer to deploy a drone, just to limit the ability to effortlessly close off a loop in chase. The problem I have, is I don't genuinely think she is that strong without it... and the real issue, is I don't think anything that is done to change her would change how the community feels about her.
I'm not convinced even a total rework would help her, the hive mind has spoken, the character is irredeemable by virtue of the fact she isn't a rush killer like Blight, Wesker, Chucky and now Hillbilly. Any deviation of this style of design, killer sucks.
7 -
So she basically is not able to use her drones in a loop, she has to set it up in advance and on top of it, you want reward survivors even more for hacking them? This doesn't make any sense.
If you want that summoning feature, then it will only make sense when survivors will get a lock on stack from hacking it instead. Kinda like you used to before her rework, when you got claw trap instantly...
3 -
First two suggestions are great, I've seen the first one around and I really like it.
Third one... I think this sort of fundamentally misunderstands her leave-the-loop potential, because this is a pretty huge sledgehammer levelled at the least offensive of the killers that can do this. There's already a second or so delay before the drone's even up and active, let alone the delay before you actually get the bonuses from scanning survivors.
If there's any tell that SM has just called a drone with this change enabled, wouldn't the outcome be the same? The survivor - if they're smart - stays in the loop for long enough to reposition, and then leaves before the drone becomes an active threat? It's still the same situation overall, the survivor spends a brief window getting away and the loop's still shut down. It's just more annoying on the killer side, rather than actually all that beneficial on the survivor's side.
Wouldn't we get the same benefit and less annoyance from the killer if the drone just took an additional second or so to activate after being set? That's even assuming such a change would be helpful, too, I think SM's leave-a-loop potential is slightly overblown- insofar as it's not that you immediately need to leave the tile, you have time to do it smartly.
4 -
I've been playing her a lot lately and even I wouldn't want the changes that I posted above. I just figured she's going to get a sledgehammer to her entire kit like Freddy if she stays as is.
I heard the "hacking removes lock-ons" idea tossed around, and I saw people complain about her "hold W" leave-the-loop chase mechanic so I thought changes could be made to appease the angry mob. The numbers can be changed so that it doesn't have to be as big a nerf as people make it out to be.
But as others have pointed out, players will hate her regardless. In which case, why bother nerfing her?
Post edited by Nos37 on2 -
wow. i get punished for pressing my ability. that is remarkable design. Losing stacks of lock-on might as well reduce drone count to 1 and fixing leave loop might as well reduce drone count from 1 to 0.
2 -
She doesn't need a nerf. She's not very strong and she's one of the few killers that are quite playable on console.
5 -
I did just think of 1 problem with the hack idea that is worth bringing up.
If we make it so that you can hack a drone to remove a stack immediately, it means getting scanned can be immediately undone by simply hacking a drone... This means a survivor wants to disable a drone, they can freely run up to it ignoring the beams and just eat the scan then immediately remove it.
We can consider putting a minimum time after getting scanned, but the idea would be to make her power less confusing, not more.... that said I can't think of a way of doing it without making it more complicated...
My revised suggestion would be:
- Make is so while you are on Skull Merchant's radar, the scans on the HUD are coloured red.
- While on the radar (scans are red) your number of scans is locked.
- Once the scan ends your scans on HUD returns to yellow.
- Hacking drone while yellow now removes a stack.
The scan duration is 12 seconds, so that's basically equivalent to you cooldown, you can't remove a stack while you are scanned seems fair, and since disabling the drone already can be seen by SM, this is likely a fair trade off.
This has the nice side effect of also making it clear to survivors that they are on SM radar at a glance.
Post edited by UndeddJester on1 -
So basically what you're saying it you only want Skull Merchant to play defensively and an area control killer with no real chase power? Hmmm sounds familiar....
I also don't get the remove lock on stack obsession people have right now. Why are you getting scanned outside of chase anyway? You really shouldn't be. Allowing Survivors to remove lock on stacks when it takes 3 to get a Claw Trap would make Claw Traps nearly impossible to get. If you're getting scanned outside of chase that is 100% your fault, the killer shouldn't be punished for your mistakes.
3 -
So, you want skull merchant to have to three gen?
0 -
No, it's not what I want.
I'm really enjoying Skull Merchant right now and woulnd't mind her staying as is. Her being at the top of the kill rate stats has me worried about a witch hunt.
I don't want her to get "Freddy'd," so I look at the most commonly suggested and commonly complained about mechanics and tried suggesting changes.
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As far as "how are you getting scanned outside of chase," I will place random drones during my patrol just to maintain my stealth and will often get free tags because survivors turn a corner and don't even see the drone until it's too late. It's like stepping in a random bear trap because it's not next to a pallet, window, or hook and it's unexpected.
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