I don't understand this Skull Merchant hate train

This. Must presume still bear the mental scars of her first iteration and must sunwise can't let go of the past and have it ingrained in their head: you play SM = you barely qualify as human. I was literally told so several times when playing her, or variations there of ("imagine being such a douche and subjecting others to play against SM in 2024").

And just has a different kind of slowdown in that she deals a first health state to random survivors around the map, but nearly never can she directly capitalise on that. Occasionally she'll run into a hurt survivor, sometimes survivors will spend time healing, other times the drones just activate their Resilience perk and further the survivors gameplan.

read it again I made some edits to the first one already and made it more obvious for people who don't know the numbers

yeah but doing it before a chase then being chased over there makes no difference because she isn't slowed at all recalling it and then replacing it and you still can't even use the loop

it might not be unique to her but she attracts that kind of player very often so yes this one is more player dependent

still waiting for refutes on any of the other ones sir no rational reason to dislike skull merchant

It is all because of her release.

The best way to understand this situation is by looking at the only other killer who had the exact same problem: The Legion.

When the Legion was released they had an inherently flawed design that was even worse than Skull Merchant. The entire community agreed that Legion was a problem that had to be changed. They were easily the most hated killer at the time, and honestly it is justified.

Well, Legion got changed together with patch 2.7.0 and his power was no longer an actual problem. But the hatred didn't go away immediately, it took time. Many players still disliked Legion and would disconnect / suicide on hook against them, regardless of the changes.

With Skull Merchant it is the same thing. Her power is no longer the problem its original iteration was, but the release had its impact. Just like Legion, it will disappear with time.

Fair enough but I still don't like her mechanics they just irk me and it could stand to be a more interesting design or have more notable counterplay like if a drone is hacked she can't recall it for X seconds so you can actually use the loop a hacked drone is at

-> 10k hours

-> run in all drones' beams without any reason outside of chase

Sadly, this is survivor devs should keep in mind while balancing the game. Wow.

Agree with you i dont really get the actual hate.

Before? Yeah strong 3 gen perks and 1 hour game.

Now? Just an antiloop killer decently strong.

You repair a gen under a drone? No problem you are inmune.

SM its 3gening? Not now, just 8 hits to that gen.

I guess is PTSD and thats it.

Wait, you did drones before. Now she is changed. Shouldn't your first thought be "i should try do drones again possibly", even if you don't know about what is changed about her?

I'll take a crack at these, if you don't mind.

1: Massive amount of faith being put in an algorithm, here. No matter how well the MMR gives you evenly matched games, you're still going to get idiots who don't know what they're doing in specific matchups. That's unavoidable. However, I agree that the loading screen tips should be a lot better and I'd also suggest that better in-game tutorials and explanations would be good outside of the loading screen too.

2: I feel like the obvious answer is that you just don't greed loops that hard against Skull Merchant? It's not substantially different to other killers that can either slow you down, speed themselves up, or otherwise hit you over pallets.

3: Won't contest this one, there should really be a cooldown between rotations. Annoying part of her kit, worth mentioning- though obviously not justification for how hated she is, of course.

4: If you see you've just been tagged (which doesn't even require looking at the HUD) you play more cautiously. Don't greed loops against a killer you know can punish it, this doesn't just apply to Skull Merchant.

5: That's still irrelevant information. Any killer can bring 3-4 slowdowns, and it's obnoxious on almost all of them. It is worth contesting that as something that makes Skull Merchant specifically this hated.

6: While her kit does have a lot of individual status effects in it, they're very condensed into intuitive and understandable sets. She's stealthy, and getting scanned is bad for you specifically because it makes looping her harder. The argument that it's bloated and hard to understand doesn't really hold water, because it all makes a lot of sense. Sure, if you want to understand every nuance there's a lot to keep in mind, but for the average player all they really need to know is that getting scanned makes you vulnerable, and that not hearing a terror radius doesn't mean you're safe.

7: Not sure I understand this one. Why wouldn't you always be keeping an eye out and expecting her when you know she's pretty decent at stealth? Genuine question, I'd appreciate elaboration so I better understand the argument.

6 drones with a big radius can create a massive area denial. That combined with most solo Q players having no idea how her mechanics work, like not even knowing they can crouch to avoid the beam.

Most people did try playing against her post-rework. It didn't take long for her reputation to be reaffirmed, when most matches go something like the following.

Sneaking into her 3 gen area completely covered by drones, disarming them 1 by 1 over the course of a minute, starting on 1 of the gens.

10 seconds later, all her drones start automatically reactivating, she comes back to check her gens, you see her coming and try to leave early but get injured by a drone that you already countered by hacking a minute ago. Now you have every negative status effect in the game and have to take a chase where your only choice is continue holding W to the next loop. The possible outcomes here are usually:

A. she downs you with all the skillful outplay of having a 20% speed differential, and now you're hooked in the middle of her 3 gen.

B. she drops chase to return to her gens. now you get to spend the next couple minutes trying to find your solo queue teammates to reset so you can then go through the whole cycle again and possibly make another 4% progress on a gen.

That's not exactly a cracked team, lol. I didn't watch the whole thing, just up to back to back fast downs of survivors who weren't even affected by her power at all. Trapless Trapper would look OP from that. The 2nd chase lasted like 5 seconds, which is impressive to drop THAT fast without being affected by her power and the 3rd down was roughly the same.

Sidenote... At the time you see the killer get the 3rd down, you ALSO see the streamer who was not in chase gain a drone stack. It was right about here that I turned it off. This was a team getting decimated by basic M1s.

But they are both no longer actual problems.

Both Legion's rework and the Skull Merchant's rework got rid of certain aspects that made their powers genuinely unhealthy for the game. That doesn't mean they're fun to go against. For some players, they will never be.

1: I don't disagree with this point, but I also think it's fair to point out that none of this is really a Skull Merchant problem? It's a matchmaking problem, and while more in-depth tutorials and tips from a variety of accessible sources is a good thing on its face, I don't think they'd even really help with this particular issue- nor would the issue be different against other killers.

2: Well, there's a difference between "not greeding" and "predrop to run away", you can still play the loop. Even in the worst case scenario where you're claw trapped and being hindered, it's equivalent to looping a Clown, it depends on the loop and how safe the pallet is. In most scenarios where she only has Haste and is trying to get you on the side of the loop that actually has you scanned, you've got room to actually position before dropping and running away. Even if you find it annoying, it's not particularly stronger or different to similar killers.

3: Just putting 3 for clarity, we agree on this point.

4: I think if a killer is being forced into relying on Bloodlust to get a hit, that's already kind of a win for you. It means her power is almost certainly doing very little, even if she's getting single scans on you. Still, this harkens back to point number two, which is that playing cautious doesn't always mean just running away, it just means being more willing to use the resource you're dancing around. There are loops where you can't do that, but that's where we pull back and ask: Is that actually worse for you against Skull Merchant versus it happening against other killers?

5: Even setting aside that SM's gameplay isn't even that much more repetitive than other killers (even if she's just dropping her drones at a loop to force you to run away, that brings her to the same level of repetitive as other killers doing the same thing), it's still not that relevant. It's not unique, and it's not about her power.

6: I just don't agree with the idea that getting survivors scanned takes no skill. Skull Merchant is, first and foremost, a trap killer; they do require skill to play, it's just a different kind of skill. Assuming the survivors aren't playing worse than bots and getting themselves scanned constantly outside of chase, you have to utilise a lot of positioning and mindgame skill to force them into the drone's beams. Rotating without cooldown does make this easier, but we've already agreed on that being a problem, so I think it's fair to separate that from the overall point. The argument could be made that a Skull Merchant could win a war of attrition by just forcing single scans now and then, but that isn't fast enough for her to not lose, she'd be better off crutching on Bloodlust- and even that wouldn't be enough for her to not probably lose the match. You have to think about it as "how much quicker could she get this injure by not using her power and going for an M1", and if the answer is "not quicker at all", that's because the player knows what they're doing and isn't trying to play passively + let the drones do all the work.

I'd also like to highlight, still on this point, that the counterplay isn't always to hold the W key, that's not how you play against a Skull Merchant that isn't just dropping drones at every loop. There are loops where you can counter the beams with crouch walking, there are loops where the beam can't even get you if you time it right, and then, yeah, there are loops where you just run away. This is the case because the status effects in her kit aren't random, they happen extremely predictably (outside of idiot teammates giving her slight Haste, but still) as a result of a highly visible light show you're both trying to play around.

7: Sure, that is why her stealth can be good, but I don't think it translates to her stealth being a problem that justifies hating her. Even if most Skull Merchants don't use their stealth much, you as a player still know they could and should be keeping an eye out all the same, right?

I never played as or against pre 2.7.0 Legion, so take this with a grain of salt but I really think Skull Merchant is flawed in every aspect. Even now.

Her name is completely random (it has nothing to do with her or her power and the explanation for it is pretty bad too), her power is area denial even now, which is always disliked by survivors, she is incredibly simple with neither mechanical nor strategic depth, which also makes her unappealing for a lot of killer players, her visual design does not fit her power nor her lore (quite the opposite because this mask is about the least stealthy thing imaginable) and it isn't menacing in the slightest, her animations are terrible (mori is a worse copy of Freddy's and her walking animation is beyond awful) and her sound design isn't better. A 4 seconds loop for her chase music isn't exactly nice to listen to after a 20 seconds (it's quite annoying imo).

They took too many things and just mixed them all together when they designed her. Drones could make for a very interesting power. She could have been somewhat similar to Singularity or they could make her drones mobile. Literally anything would be better than this. And as long as that remains, I doubt players will ever be willing to give her a chance. It's not exactly fun trying to loop her only to be forced away from that loop as soon as she presses M2. She has a severe lack of counterplay and is incredibly easy to get results with. There is no penalty for changing the rotation so you can do it as often as you want, which basically takes away any chance of her messing up in a loop.

Legion is still not very popular among survivors but at least you actually have counterplay in the second half of the chase. As opposed to SM, who leaves you with literally nothing other than pre dropping pallets and leaving the loop. She cannot be beaten by performing good in the 1v1 but only by outperforming in the 4v1 aspect. You can barely delay her, so your only chance is to finish the game as soon as possible.

Like I said, both Skull Merchant and Legion got changed to eliminate a problem, but it didn't make them fun to go against.

But it seems to me all this hatred towards her is still because of her release, as it happened with Legion, rather than her current state.

She does require another change, but it should only concern her power (so no changes to her visual, mori, lore or name) and it definitely shouldn't take priority over other characters.

I honestly disagree with certain points here.

In my opinion her name works, her lore is alright and I really like her visuals. Her mori is similar to Freddy's, which is my favorite mori in the game so I'm okay with that, and her chase music isn't that bad.

What I can agree with is her power not being enjoyable to go against, although I don't think it is the worst in the game. When she gets changed again, it should be power and add-ons only.

My main problem with her mori is that it lacks originality. It's Freddy's mori in worse. She sets up a drone for the mori that does absolutely nothing. Literally nothing at all. It has no purpose other than making it slightly different from Freddy's. On top of that, the survivor screams when they go down, they scream again when they stand up, then they scream again when she touches them as if they didn't know she was there and then they scream when she finally kills them. That's 4 screams! That's a little overkill, isn't it? I like Freddy's mori for it's simplicity but Skull Merchant's lacks this too.

The problem with her lore is that there are so many things in there that don't go anywhere. It's mentioned and that's about it. It's like they couldn't decide which direction to take her and then went with everything at once. Her default outfit doesn't make sense for her. It's neither stealthy (which is what her power partially focusses on) nor does it suit her power in any way. She looks like a mercenary but she also has a glittering mask. Probably to show us that she's rich?! In which case Doctor must be the richest man alive, if we consider the electricity prices.

There are a lot of good ideas in her design, that could all work out, if they were fully fleshed out. But it's so many that they can't do that in a single killer. Take one thing and focus on that, then build her lore accordingly. That'd make her more compelling. A business lady gone mad could work perfectly fine. But then they'd need to focus on exactly that and not a billion different things.

It should take priority because literally nobody will play against her