I still don't understand skull merchant hate
The only issues with versing her is the vital targeting processor add on. If you hate the hindered chances are you hate that add on giving you too much of it.
It's physically impossible to 3 gen anymore.
Besides the undetectable (which is only 8s), she has to earn all of her status effects through scans. People enjoyed old chase merchant running geo readout and strobes, I didn't see anyone complaining those add ons "gave her too many status effects (🤓)".
Honestly I think she's in the best spot she's ever been in, and despite the hindered lasting a bit too long I think she's one of the better designed killers in the game rn.
Maybe when people get good and hop off the sm hate bandwagon they can finally have fun against her and not give me free bloodpoints by giving up at 5 gens.
Comments
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I'm sorry but am I missing anything here? I and majority of the community (from what I have seen/heard) wholeheartedly disagree with this post.
In all due respect, the only thing she is still viable for IS three genning. If she actually chased survivors then she would not have the highest current 70%+ kill rate as per the statistics. This is most likely contributed due to survivors not wanting a miserable experience and k0’ing themselves on hook.
Literally out of the 10 SMs i've faced today none of them chased survivors after their instantaneous 3 gen set up from the start of the game. She is a flawed killer with the worst design who is rewarded for practically clicking m2.
There is legitimately no enjoyable way to verse her if she is playing with the 3 gen strat and it is definitely not eliminated at the moment at all. She is as bad as her release and I will never enjoy playing her or against her. Had to disagree with this post, but then again, we are entitled to our different opinions. :)
Her power gives her way too much value, mobility and stealth with no work made to get it at all. And on top of that, she can just blurt out her drones after they've been disabled with almost no consequences whatsoever. She is still needing a complete overhaul change in her power.
**Edit to 3-gen comments: She literally has a 3 gen basekit in her killer power. The “3-gen nerf” is non-applicable to her as she can injure survivors with non-removable scans and repeat the process with almost 0 consequences at all.**
Post edited by Bloodwebs on34 -
How are you still being 3 genned by her when the anti 3 gen mechanic exists. She is absolutely nowhere near as bad as release where she had a 400m tall cylinder of exposed around a gen.
You can crouch drones, disable them. Even mid chase you can crouch given you're in a decent position.
She has to earn her scans through good drone placement, aiming, and rotation. A bad SM will get their drones easily crouched and disarmed. She's easy to pick up but not to master.
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With an addon she has perma undetectable. I don't blame survivors for suiciding on hook when I play her, it must be miserable.
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That 70% killrate is inflated by people suiciding on hook and throwing the match, this should be pretty obvious if you go into any match as or against SM, there will be at least one DC or thrower in every match which will inevitably lead to a 4k against most teams, SMs power is also laughably good at stomping SoloQ players who have no idea you can avoid drones by simply holding the crouch button
Breaking a SM 3-Gen is genuinely not that difficult, disable the drones and that's it, her power is shut down and she has to waste time replacing it, giving you time to move out of the drone's radius before it activates again, SM 3gens are a war of attrition that you are more then capable of winning thanks to the regression changes
And no, 3-gen Merchant is not the only viable way to play her, her chasing and anti-loop are very good simply because she gets Haste and gives you Hindered, she can shut down a ton of pretty strong loops and main building structures with one or two drones
If you're only using SM for 3-gens, you are playing her wrong
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???
They removed that add on 128 days ago. Have you played since then?
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It has nothing to do with get good. It has only to do with the lack of possible skill expression and frustrating mechanics like random drone hits.
Where is the skill expression on the survivor side against the drones? Survivors get hindered and she gets faster, rendering all loops deadly.
Where is the skill expression on Terror radius reading when she can have without any effort 8 seconds complete stealth (not even Ghostface has comeplete stealth, you can still hear him in close proximity).
Where is the skill expression on scanning drones? While she is faster and you get hindered, you have to crouch or stop during chase. Thats a certaint hit if she is not missplaying.
Why do we not know when drones are reactivating?
Why is it not possible to destroy a drone? Disabeling is not helping at all, they will reactivate right in time when you run by it next time.
This list could be near endless, but i leave, one more time, this accurate and still true video for a more detailed explantion:
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And how does that give her perma undetectable?
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LMAO I watched that video I didn't know he was that bad at versing her.
He sounds mad during the entire video, like I just match against him and wswswsws'ed him on the ground after getting scan teched into next century.
Yea nah that video is engagement bait considering he goes back on his points many times and he just wants to hop on the bandwagon. Absolutely nothing of substance in that considering he doesn't even bring crouching drones as a point and thinks disabling drones isnt counterplay.
Have you tried crouching the drone.
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The anti-three gen mechanic is only there to stop hour long matches. It did very little for solo queue players who can't coordinate and still get destroyed by the tactic. Saying that she can't hold a three gen because the anti-three gen system exists isn't accurate. She can't hold a high level, coordinated SWF hostage anymore, that's about it.
Although it's true she isn't anywhere near as bad as she was. Unfortunately her toolkit is now bloated. Stealth, haste, hindered, tracking and traps. Most players don't understand how she works. Not because they are stupid, but because the game does an awful job at teaching players anything.
Then when you finally understand how she works, you realise it's not interesting to play against. She's still chasing you away from gens, and counterplay to her looping is at times completely non-existent. If there's no time for you to duck under the beams, she gets a free hit or the beam hits you. If you manage to avoid getting hit by vaulting something, you get hit by a beam. If you are hindered and she has haste then you are getting mowed down. Even if you outplay her under those circumstances you're gonna get hit by a beam and potentially lose a health state regardless.
She's just not well designed. She's oppressive in the most boring way possible.
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I don't hate SM because games are so fast against her. Thankfully we are moving too fast to next game. So it's hard to hate her when you barely see her.
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I don’t have any interest in fixing the last gen five seconds at a time while SM patrols a ten foot circle.
I legitimately believe they should remove her from the game and issue refunds.
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The reason why crouching the drone is not mentioned as counterplay is because it is not counterplay, its loosing distance. Loops are nowadays designed that you have to play it close to perfect to not get hit.
Geting stuck on a tile for 0,2 seconds or crouching for that time (its longer then that, especially when you go with it clockwise) is a hit or down for the killer.
Leaving a loop and then crouching the scan is the same story. Distance has to be timed usually (against M1 killer) perfectly. We are not in 2016 anymore where you get every 8 meter a playable pallet. You can not affort any shenanigans during chase anymore. Especially on a killer that just gained haste.
Crouching only works on certaint tiles, on McMillian for example (long junk tile comes to mind), but the majority of structures is not.. "crouchable".
Yes, i tried it out. Playing a lot of 1v1s, and also against some of the best SM in the world. Said that, chating with them on how to avoid hits is basically the same answre: You dont.
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If you don't understand at this point despite the numerous thinkpieces on the killer then I fear you never will.
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When Legion got their rework, many players still DCed against them and hated the killer, even if they no longer caused an actual problem for the game.
Skull Merchant is no different. We're still in the "post-rework" phase where these things happen, but I think it will dissipate eventually. It just takes time.
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While you don't understand SM hate I can't understand Hillbilly love
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In my opinion, it's a combination of two factors.
The first is the most important: Inertia. There used to be a valid reason to hate her, and even back then people would spin their hate out into irrational and uncomfortable avenues. Remember how people decided her lore was worth hating her over, even though it was obviously fine and not related to the single thing wrong with her? That's still ongoing, but hopefully it should be in the dying-down phase as the fuel's been cut out of the fire.
The second is the reason the inertia gets to carry forward: Her design isn't one of the damaging-dash ones that have the broadest appeal, so a lot of people who currently hate her are probably never going to really like playing against her, they'll just get to a point where she's one of the less-fun killers to them. There's nothing about her substantially worse than any other killer, you could make similar complaints to the ones you see about Skull Merchant about a lot of killers - and for them, most might even be accurate!
Whatever the real cause, it's really annoying. At this point it's just distracting from the killers and mechanics that do need attention.
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Yeah, I don't really get it either. I don't hate going against her kit really. A lot of the common complaints don't really make all that much sense.
I don't get the complaints about "too many status effects". Pretty much all of them require the Skull Merchant to actually chase Survivors, and a few of them are uncommon (as in Hindered requiring like 4 scans at least).
The lack of feedback on Haste would make sense as a complaint, but the issue is that the Survivors get just as much feedback on the Skull Merchant's power as she does. You can see when people get scanned or are Claw Trapped, and how much Lock On progress a survivor has (which SM can't see), and play accordingly. If two survivors are Claw Trapped or recently scanned, then play a bit safer, it's not super hard.
I think I saw someone complain about how she "doesn't apply a speed boost" on a Claw Trap. Like c'mon, that's just straight up wrong. If you stayed in a match long enough without immediately giving up then you'd learn that real quick.
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Good on you if you actually refrain from 3-genning (which, frankly, I doubt you do, sorry, I haven't seen a Merchant player that doesn't 3-gen), but pretending 3-genning is not her most potent strategy anymore or let alone "physically impossible" is nothing but Merchant player propaganda. Sure she doesn't excel at holding matches hostage for an hour anymore, but instead now she just actually kills people around her 3-gen with ease. You still get 24 regression events across those 3 gens, which is more than enough to close out the vast majority of matches, and that's ignoring that you can capitalize on and benefit from protecting a gen cluster entirely without regression too. It's also ignoring things like Ruin, Dead Man's Switch + Ultimate Weapon, Grim Embrace, Overcharge, all of which can incur regression and stalling much beyond the already more than sufficient limit. And the idea that "drones don't do anything to survivors sitting on gens so they can't be used to 3-gen anymore" is nonsense. Survivors need to move to get to and away from gens.
Merchant simply is much too easy to play when compared to the difficulty of playing against her (both in chase and in contesting her 3-gen), and she gets a boatload of strong effects for next to no investment. Injuring without hit sprint, Deep Wound, Broken, Hindered, Haste, Undetectable, tracking. All for pressing M2. Add-ons exacerbating things. Drones can be recalled and reset at will, including hacked drones. Any group that isn't coordinated (i. e. full SWF) will lose against a 3-genning Merchant most of every time, even if the Merchant player is generally much worse at the game than them. And I don't understand why there is this mystery and discussion about this. Just do it, the "play" button is right there. Use some mix of Surge, Eruption, Weasel, Overcharge, NTH, STBFL, Sloppy, pick 3 reasonably close-together gens and keep droning and patrolling them. See how often you don't effortlessly win doing so, getting free downs left and right.
Also, even regardless of her strength, she simply isn't engaging or interactive to play against. And not only because of her propensity to patrol 3 generators, but because the level of interaction with her power is literally "stand still". And in chase you can't really do much of anything about it, you can try to avoid the odd beam but you will sooner rather than later inevitably get clawtrapped, losing a health state and thereby half the chase, without a hit sprint, then also having to deal with Hindered, Haste and Undetectable. It's not like her chase strength is S-tier in and of itself, but it's easily the strongest when compared to how mindless it is for the killer player. All you have to do is press M2, you will injure the survivor, hinder them, become faster, and lose your terorr radius and red stain with which survivors could read your movements. You just press M2 at every loop the survivor may make it to and hold W and most chases will be over under a minute just doing that, little to no mindgaming or thinking necessary, let alone anything mechanically demanding.
I also dislike her visual and audio design, from her model to her animations, her terror radius, chase music and voice. That is subjective to certain extents of course, but it is something rather common among people I know, talk to and watch.
Just a bad design that regularly makes for gameplay that is tiresome and boring at best, or frustrating and obnoxious at worst. Doesn't help that there seems to be a not miniscule amount of players playing her that know perfectly well that people don't like facing her and enjoy precisely that, being happy to BM, keeping people in the match when they clearly want to get out, refusing to kill them, slugging them for minutes, then picking them up before they bleed out, refusing to kill the players left over when others have killed themselves or disconnected. Those kinds of things are much more common with Merchants in my experience.
She isn't this irredeemable evil that some may make her out to be, but she just isn't a good design, with an ability that innately lends itself to area control, is incredibly easy to use while being difficult to play against, and doesn't promote any really exciting or engaging interaction.
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As a game system, the purpose of Survivor's chase is not to escape indefinitely. The main purpose is to earn time for other survivors to completing gen. Even if the Killer eventually takes the survivor down, the Survivor wins the chase if they buy enough time to completing gen.
Therefore, the killer's ability exists primarily to shorten chase time. There is an element of tactics involved, and as a survivor, it is enough to earn about 40 seconds per chase. Serious survivors can complete 5gen by repeating this process.
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The problem with what you're describing is that any killer with a halfway threatening power can do this, and most of them can do it better than Skull Merchant.
3-genning does, to a degree, still exist and is still powerful as a tactic if your goal is to actually close out the match. Any killer whose power actually threatens survivors more directly than a drone maybe scanning them once as they leave the gen (and only doing anything once three scans are hit) will be able to leverage that tight space to gain pressure. Skull Merchant is no longer a noteworthy figure in this regard.
There is, genuinely, no reason to highlight her anymore. If anything, doing this with her is weaker than doing it with, say, Blight, or even a more direct-threat power like infinite tier 3 Myers.
(Also, you DO get a post-hit speed boost when you're claw trapped, she doesn't deny that hit-sprint)
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I don't think you really get how Skull Merchant works. Claiming she gets literally all of those status effects "just from pressing m2" is disingenuous. She actually has to have good Drone placement, zoning and m1 skills to capitalize off of these effects. They're not active all the time.
Also, again, you get the hit speed boost when injured from a Claw Trap. If you actually stuck around to play a game or two instead of just instantly giving up just because it's Skull Merchant, then you'd figure that out.
Her 3 genning is far less effective now. With the nerfs to her area control and changes to regression mechanics as a whole, there's only so much she can do. A hard 3 genning killer will exhaust all of their kicks and then lose.
It seems like you hate literally everything about her, not just gameplay wise. I don't think there's anything they could do to make you enjoy the Skull Merchant at all.
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You can still get 96% uptime on stealth with no footsteps / sound undetctable, EVERY single other killer with any form of stealth mechanic in the game has either footsteps, breathing sounds, whoosing sounds, an uncloak, a uncrouch, a cooldown when they exit it, laughing, slower movement speeds, ect to make it stealthy but not too stealthy or to balance out how stealthy they are sm has nothing
5 basekit status effects is still a lot
Hacking drones can instantly be recalled so even if you hack one in advance at a loop they just instantly recall and replace it so you can't even use a loop if you took time to make it safe
lock on stacks don't get removed which they definitely should decay or be reset if you hack a drone
at least every other skull merchant feels like they use quad slowdown or some permutation of 3 slowdown + sloppy butcher
It has unfun mechanics and attracts unfun players compound those and you have something that people don't like, even if you are one of the "good ones" its not enough to forgive the sins of the father
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werent you a made for this hater? Then you should be able to understand
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- You can't really get that much uptime on her stealth practically. If she had infinite drones and no placement restrictions, maybe, but in practice it's absolutely nowhere near 96%.
- Having status effects really isn't a bad thing. Like every killer comes with their own new one these days.
- Replacing Drones isn't a huge issue because she has to be there to do it. It's not like Singularity where he can place pods at a range, she has to physically walk there.
- I've seen people suggest that hacking a Drone removes 1 Lock On stack, might be a reasonable change. Completely resetting or having passive decay wouldn't be good though.
- Stacked Slowdowns aren't an issue unique to Skull Merchant. It seems that every other killer in general is running 3-4 slowdowns these days honestly.
Like honestly she really isn't that bad. Maybe a couple of tweaks are needed to get her kill rate down a bit (if the kill rate isn't just from hook suicides lol) but I think most of the hatred towards her is the post-old Legion effect.
Most of her complaints can be applied directly to other killers who have nowhere near the kill rate/give up rate.
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It really doesn't matter how you feel or anyone feel with all due respect about defending SM. If majority of the community have a negative reception about her powers, which was acknowledged during sadako's 2nd rework stream by the devs when saying they rework killers that cause too many dcs, then your defensive response for her falls on deaf ears.
It literally only takes one button at a loop to get value. Be it through her scan or getting a free hit because you left the tile because she doesn't lose speed unlike other trap killers like Hag or trapper. And on top of that the number of status effects from 3 scans that's can't even be removed unless you just take it or get hooked is too much.
Personally I find it as a waste of time for the devs to even have reworked her in the first place if they were going tackle the 3 gen problem months later. That was the only issue survivors had with her and why they would leave.
But if they not going to change her completely, they need do some major adjustments on her base kit. I don't care. This issue will continue to be a problem from the community because we are still talking about it to this day. The devs knows it and acknowledged. And sooner or later, even though it's not in the current schedule they already given us, she will most likely get some adjustments in the future like sadako's 3rd time of adjustment. Trust, she will be dealt with again.
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"the best spot she's ever been in" isn't really difficult to achieve knowing how busted she was and isn't really saying anything. I still remember arguing with people about how she was apparently balanced.
"one of the better designed killers in the game rn." Let's just be for real right now and not exaggerate to make a point.
"Maybe when people get good and hop off the sm hate bandwagon they can finally have fun against her." I'm pretty good at the game and no matter how hard I try to have fun, she drains the soul out of me and escaping doesn't even feel rewarding. Tedious game with a lack of skill expression will never be fun.
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I disagree that Merchant is not notable in that regard. How you can think that when drones can injure people for her, force them to mend, render them unable to heal, slow them down, speed her up, give her stealth and tracking, is beyond me. As you patrol gens, survivors will be forced off them over and over again, regularly unable to avoid beams, they will quickly build up scans and inevitably become clawtrapped. If they avoid drones on their approach to gens, they are spending a lot of time doing so. If they hack them, you recall and reset them. Contesting hooks within the droned gen cluster makes avoiding them extra difficult. She will also regularly be Undetectable and get the jump on survivors on her 3-gen. Add-ons additionally play into things, such as the ones affecting skill checks. I legitimately don't understand your stance that her ability is not noteworthily suited to 3-genning, or noteworthy in its potency for that strat. Another notable problem again being the "ease of use" of it on this killer.
I invite you as I did in that post to just put it to the test. Play a couple of 3-gen Merchant matches and then try it with infinite Myers or whatever. See who you have an easier time demolishing most opponents with just strolling around your gens.
What I'd also consider is that people simply 3-gen on Merchant more frequently than on other killers, and be that because of her past, reputation or because it simply makes sense to set up drones in an area surrounding gens. And so even if she wouldn't be particularly, disproportionately problematic in terms of her 3-gen prowess, it could still be a problem that she disproportionately promotes this gameplay. I think when looking into her stats, the incidence of matches that are won at 1 gen left would be comparably as (if not more) notable than that of hook suicides and disconnects.
I don't think you need "good drone placement" or zone people in order to accumulate scans on them. You set up a drone on any tile in chase or around a 3-gen patrol and that's it. Unless you majorly mess up the placement I don't see that there is too much to think about. M1 skills are naturally still beneficial, but they are not as needed as they are on killers that don't get all of these effects, downing most survivors is fairly trivial once Deep Wound, Undetectable, Haste and Hindered are in play.
I must have been thinking about being fully scanned once already injured, in which case I'm pretty sure you don't get a hit sprint. In the matches that I do stick around and play against Merchant I tend to make her M1 me if I'm healthy and at risk of getting scanned for the third time, for obvious reasons, so I suppose I just haven't had too many healthy-to-locked-on instances to remember that there is a hit sprint.
I don't hate everything about her, I did say I don't think she is irredeemable, that would be silly, she's just a bundle of design choices that could be reconsidered on, mechanics that could be altered. I have made various suggestions in the past regarding things that could make her more engaging to face.
What staunch defenders of this killer character will have to acknowledge is that much as you may think or feel she is completely fine and any hate unwarranted, the fact that there is hate is a problem from a game dev perspective regardless. A 70% killrate (excluding matches with disconnects, at that) as well as a fairly resounding dislike of this piece of gameplay design among the playerbase to an extent where people will often "go next" simply are an issue if the devs care about creating gameplay experiences people enjoy. I'm not sure whether you enjoy people killing themselves or disconnecting in your Merchant matches, but on the wager that you don't, you would also want them to do something that changes things. Forum posts will not change people's minds on this, not least because the vast majority of people never read these posts or even visit these forums - not wanting to play against Merchant is their natural reaction and inclination based upon their playing experiences. So even if you genuinely believe there is nothing wrong with her design and swathes of people are holding the opinions, feelings and reactions they do regarding her irrationally, that still doesn't mean some redesigning isn't reasonable.
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She'd really rare already and I dont have any issues with her. When I do get a game vs her almost always some one else just gives up and throws the game for everyone else. I see it as a skill issue just need to actually learn how to counter play against her instead of being a dam baby about it. Only thing that's absolutely garbage about her is her perks, all useless and needs some changing.
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The only thing you listed that the drones actually do just as soon as the button is pressed is stealth. The other things only happen as people get scanned, and some of them only once they've been scanned over three times.
Leading on from that point, I really don't know how you can say avoiding beams as you approach gens wastes a lot of time. What time does it even waste? Maybe like a second if you have to stop and let the beam cross over you? After that, you're at the gen and you can just keep repairing with zero risk until she comes to harass you off.
My stance comes from two factors. One, her power has to build up before it does anything more than a slight Haste boost and some Undetectable, where other killers can immediately threaten you straight away. Two, when she does build up, what she gets is a worse Clown bottle on an injured survivor. If she's not committing to that down, at which point she's breaking away from her 3-gen, she's not getting all that much. All she has going for her before she builds up scans is some Undetectable, and while that's okay in some 3-gen scenarios, it's not outpacing the fact that she can't keep defending those gens and therefore the progress keeps ticking up-- and it's definitely not better than what other killers can provide.
As for playing her and finding out, what would that prove? Whenever I try and play Skull Merchant at all, people give up and go next quite frequently. Obviously I'll have an easier time doing anything when I'm in a 3v1 early. Also, I don't like 3-genning? It's boring.
To the point about her inevitably getting changed in your other response there: Yeah, that's going to happen. We just need to acknowledge why, and it's not because of anything to do with her actual power. It's because people are still refusing to engage with the killer in good faith and are just immediately giving up. People were spoiled by the fact that they had a reason to give up before, and its led them to believe that they're justified in giving up against a killer that they just don't like whenever they face her now, after her problems were fixed.
Her inevitable fourth rework is going to be a damning reflection on the state of the community, not the killer itself. I know I won't be able to prevent people from feeling validated instead of shamed whenever that fourth rework happens, but still, I'm going to keep acknowledging it.
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10 second drone cooldown, 8s undetectable duration, 20% increase with the addon, keep 1 drone on you at all times to spam place and recall, 96% undetectable uptime
having status effects is pretty normal but most killers have 0~2, she has 5 and its some of the least fun ones to face, hindered, haste, broken, deep wound, undetectable (on her because she makes no sound)
While she has to be there to do it you never can buy any space or areas on the map to "loop" her effectively you just need to perfectly space between resources running in a straight line and hope she doesn't have a drone around there, if you try to "loop" or try to do anything that would let you "loop" you can't
hacking a drone should remove 2 stacks, and every 30s should remove a stack automatically, theres no good reason for them to be permanent
Stacking slowdowns isn't unique but it feels more often than not if they play skull merchant it attracts that kind of player. I don't see a oni and expect 4 slowdown, or a blight and expect 4 slowdown, I see a skull merchant and I expect 4 slowdown, its an association that skull merchant players created for themselves
Most of her "problems" can be compared but none come close to it, you can say she has the same problem as X killer or Y killer but she doesn't just have their problems she has the problem of X Y Z W and V killer all rolled into one and thats why I don't like her its not a single problem its everything together in one package.
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The only thing you listed that the drones actually do just as soon as the button is pressed is stealth. The other things only happen as people get scanned, and some of them only once they've been scanned over three times.
I think you are calling back to an earlier point about her getting all these effects "just for pressing M2". Obviously that's a bit of a hyperbole (although it is pretty much the extent of her gameplay on the killer player side of things), but that's not what we're talking about here. Again, in a 3-gen scenario survivors will inevitably get scanned as they scramble from Merchant approaching their gen. This happens incessantly, 3 scans build quickly and reliably, and it isn't only 1 drone they have to worry about either.
Leading on from that point, I really don't know how you can say avoiding beams as you approach gens wastes a lot of time. What time does it even waste? Maybe like a second if you have to stop and let the beam cross over you? After that, you're at the gen and you can just keep repairing with zero risk until she comes to harass you off.
You have to cautiously approach as Merchant can still be around. You have to worry about multiple drones and beams. And yes, as being chased away from gens and having to go back is something that happens numerous times, the seconds spent not being able to run when approaching gens will add up significantly. Stealth mode drones can be even more time-consuming to approach, and harder to avoid the beams of.
One, her power has to build up before it does anything more than a slight Haste boost and some Undetectable, where other killers can immediately threaten you straight away.
That's not a concern in and of itself, defending a gen cluster yields drawn-out games, her gradually building a power (that then very much is threatening) if anything is an argument as to why it's such a good strat on her as opposed to not doing it. Undetectable is also threatening from the get-go, it leads to survivors being caught out around her gens, realizing too late she is approaching.
Two, when she does build up, what she gets is a worse Clown bottle on an injured survivor. If she's not committing to that down, at which point she's breaking away from her 3-gen, she's not getting all that much. All she has going for her before she builds up scans is some Undetectable, and while that's okay in some 3-gen scenarios, it's not outpacing the fact that she can't keep defending those gens and therefore the progress keeps ticking up-- and it's definitely not better than what other killers can provide.
Survivors will constantly be injured, regularly suffer from Deep Wound, Broken, Hindered, while she has Haste, Undetectable and can track their positions. This is much scarier than a Clown around a 3-gen, who has to get M1s to injure people, from which they can also heal much more quickly and reliably, who doesn't innately have any capacity to get the jump on people, find reset locations. These things allow her to reliably get hits in ways Clown never would, precisely making it so that she can often "break away" from her 3-gen because the time investment is so little to get a down on a survivor that got caught by surprise, is injured, hindered. Not seldomly not even having to break away but getting downs within her setup.
As for playing her and finding out, what would that prove? Whenever I try and play Skull Merchant at all, people give up and go next quite frequently. Obviously I'll have an easier time doing anything when I'm in a 3v1 early. Also, I don't like 3-genning? It's boring.
I wager it would prove to you that 3-genning on Merchant is a very potent and very easy strategy to employ. Cruise control 4ks whenever I or the people I know and watch tried it. Tangibly more so than on many or most other killers. You'd obviously ignore any match in which people give up prematurely or the like. You could also get some friends to play against your 3-gen Merchant and 3-gen Myers or Clown in custom matches.
I don't like being told "maybe play against Merchant and perhaps you would understand her better" (which you didn't do), not least because I have played my share as and against her and usually only go next once it becomes clear that other people don't want to play or that she just wants to hold a 3-gen. But if you really don't think 3-genning is a particular problem with her despite it being one of the foremost complaints about her, I think you'd do well to find out for yourself by actually seeing and experiencing it in play.
Her inevitable fourth rework is going to be a damning reflection on the state of the community, not the killer itself. I know I won't be able to prevent people from feeling validated instead of shamed whenever that fourth rework happens, but still, I'm going to keep acknowledging it.
I'm not sure it is damning or all that grim an outlook even if it were the case that there is nothing rational justifying people's feelings against this character (anymore). She absolutely is an exceptional outlier in this game's 8-years-spanning history, not even original Legion came close to garnering this type of response (Legion by the way being a story that goes to show collective perception on killers can change with reworks), so I wouldn't worry about this type of reaction being something common that will affect the game's development in years to come. Sure, it's unlucky for the people that do enjoy Merchant in her current state (although again, those players still stand to benefit from her being changed such that there aren't as many people disconnecting and suiciding against her), but it's only a game and only one of dozens of characters in it, I'm sure not even the staunchest of defenders are too married to the idea of what Merchant is right now to consider it a great tragedy should that change (fingers crossed).
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To tackle those points in order:
1: But which is it? It can't be that they're only getting scanned when they leave the gen and that it happens quickly and reliably. If she's pushing people away from three generators, those scans will build quite slowly because they aren't even guaranteed to happen every time they're pushed away, let alone factoring in that she's pushing people away from multiple generators at once. If she's only focusing the one generator, sure, those scans build quicker, but she's also not defending her 3-gen if she's doing that. She has to choose, does she push to build stacks or does she patrol the 3-gen.
This is also where I'll note that disabling the drones matters here, because if you force her to come back and replace it, she's doing that INSTEAD OF getting scans on you as you leave. Don't do it every time you approach, obviously, but it does matter and does make a difference.
2: Approaching cautiously in this context just means stopping once for a brief second if the beam happens to cross over you, though. Even adding up, that's very little extra downtime compared to just running back to the gen normally. The power isn't an AOE anymore, it isn't just a big circle affecting you no matter what.
3: In a drawn out game versus a killer whose power doesn't need to build up, the effect is even more potent. There's no lull, the power is just already affecting you. That is an argument for why Merchant is weaker at this compared to other killers defending 3-gens; we aren't looking at her doing it vs her not doing it, we're looking at her doing it vs other killers doing it.
4: The point is that she only gets a worse Clown slow if she's built up to that point, and building up to that point takes time if we assume the survivors aren't just recklessly getting themselves scanned out of chase. She might be more threatening in a 3-gen scenario than Clown once she's built up to that point... but she has to build up to that point, where other killers don't, and she's still weaker than those other killers at doing it once she does.
5: If I voided every game where people gave up, I'd have way too small of a sample size to mean anything, that's more what I meant. You can't do experiments like this with Skull Merchant because all the data is irreversibly tainted. People giving up on top of all the massive misconceptions about her power on top of people randomly getting themselves scanned for no reason out of chase... it's just a mess, you can't glean anything from it.
6: It would be extremely damning, because it's only happening due to baseless outrage. Still, if they can manage to fix her without fundamentally altering her from the ground up - and "fix" in this context means appeasing those who have it out for her, so I doubt that's possible - I wouldn't be too annoyed. I would, however, be annoyed if her entire concept gets scrapped because people can't step back and realise it's not as big of a deal as they think it is.
I do like her. I've already lost parts of her that I liked, and that's fine, I'll accept losing those things to make her healthier for the game. Thing is, that's done. She is healthier, she only has minor problems... and she's still on her way to getting another round of big changes, over killers that actually deserve it, because of complete nonsense. I have every right to be annoyed at that - though it is just a game, it's only a minor annoyance - and I do think it's relatively important for the state of discourse that someone try and make sure this is remembered the way it actually happened. Can you imagine how obnoxious people will be if this gets remembered as "Skull Merchant was so badly designed they had to rework her four times before they gave up and scrapped her"?
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No, her lore is actually horrible, I don't know if any Tomes have made it better, but her release lore is something I could do better.
She needs more attention, preferably having her current ability nuked and giving her a better and healthier power.
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Excellent example of the exact kind of thing I was talking about.
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I agree. I’m P19 with her and I get a lot of DCs 🤣 it’s totally silly.
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I agree with this completely honestly.
0 -
Uh huh.
Care to enlighten us all about how her lore is some outstanding piece of literature? A modern classic perhaps?
It spends over half the entry talking about her father and extremely little time talking about her as this "dark Brazilian manga" character that she decided to cosplay.
The whole premise and justification of the idea is absolutely ridiculous, it's horrible writing which has been the unfortunate norm for a while.
The actual premise is fairly interesting, which really makes it worse. A CEO that uses their wealth and technology to hunt down rival company's for a competitive edge? That's not bad, it's like a evil Batman, in a sense. Add everything else in though? It creates a mess.
Also, her power is still bad, please make it healthy and strong.
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They are confusing being able to hold matches hostage (absolutely ridiculous how that somehow went live and then took MONTHS to fix) and 3-genning.
Her 3-gens are still almost impossible to break due to her Drones time wasting ability and her own buffs from them, as well as the 5% regression that must be repaired.
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No? Why on earth would I talk to you, specifically, about this?
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You mention a lot of things about skill expression as if survivors cared about skill. Most are casual players and barely know where the pallets are and we are talking about skill expression.
It takes skill to thoughtfully place your drones in specific areas that you think the specific survivors are going to walk-through, or run through and chase. It takes skill to try to hurt survivors into the drones to get scanned in the first place. If you want to get any value out of your drones, you need to know how to use them, it’s not just about putting them up at loops and gg you win otherwise everyone would play her. There is a lot more thought that goes into the character then people give her credit for whether they want to admit it or not.
Do you know what takes zero skill expression? Sitting on a gen holding M1.
The skill expression is the same as looping skull merchant.
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I'm genuinely curious on how someone could think of it as good. Mid? Maybe, I could be swayed to that, yeah.
Unless you can relate to it, which I hope nobody can relate to a CEO serial killer, then I don't see any draw to it.
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The trope of "character weirdly obsessed with one harmless hobby and manifesting it into violent reality" is good writing and you cannot tell me otherwise.
Her fathers manga being the interest is so niche, but I love it because of that reason. Imagine if her "inspiration" was something generic like video games or car racing. She is unique in literally every aspect, coming from an interesting background and having a unique life unlike any killer in the game.
Also her tome is one of the best tomes in the game but considering most sm haters are just on a bandwagon I'm guessing you and many other people are not gonna take the time to read it.
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People are going to hate her no matter what you do. I’m tired of trying to defend her. It’s exhausting…people are people. They’re so easily swayed to the “hate train” it’s unreal.
It wouldn’t matter if behavior made her the most exciting and fun killer in the game with the best balance. People would find reasons to hate on her per usual because they got nothing better to do.
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If you do want to have a conversation, then yeah, I'll follow suit.
Basically, the problem is that people only went to go nitpick her lore because they already didn't like her. It doesn't help that BHVR decided to go for a slightly campy route, which is something I find people have a hard time recognising and appreciating even when they aren't already mad, but it's mostly the first thing.
The lore's just fine. It has some fun ideas, it executes on them fine, and it has the BHVR-typical poor pacing and lack of focus. It does spend too much time on her early life compared to later, and I separately also have an issue with it not going into the origin of her drones at all, but those are two fairly small problems in the grand scheme of things.
The whole obsession with her father's manga thing is overblown as bad writing, in my opinion. It's just kind of campy, there's nothing really wrong with it - and since learning about how Brazil has a massive manga scene, I can appreciate BHVR writing that into her story. I think it does aid in her vibe a little bit - she's basically the Colonel (? it's a military rank don't @ me it's been so long since I read this) from The Most Dangerous Game, and that character's also meant to be a larger-than-life kind of figure. Characters like her should have some kind of flair, I'd argue. What she has is fine.
I'm not gonna come out here and say it's a masterpiece. BHVR do have some really good writing, but most of it's exactly the same level of quality as Skull Merchant: It's fine. Fun ideas, decent enough execution, I've never really liked the voice they're written in and I've always thought they had poor pacing. SM's isn't unique, people were just already mad and didn't take to the slightly goofy element very well because of it.
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Adds 2 seconds lol. What a problematic addon 😂
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That's why I asked if her Tome made her lore better.
Also, most DBD original characters are "unique". Take Artist for example, can't really think of anyone else turned into a bird-hybrid by a cult for a lovecraftian horror.
She also starts stalking people and obsessing over people "better" and planning ways to get to them before that manga is even mentioned. I don't know if you meant to make it sound like her obsession with the literature made her into what she is, but that's kinda what it sounds like and that's not really true.
She's just cosplaying the character, which is kinda not that cool. Personally, I would've liked it if the manga had been written when she was younger and she forgets about it over time. Sort of keep the rest of the story the same, maybe have her father die earlier due to overworking and but past that, keep it the same. Have her re-discover her father's manga and have her realize she's pretty much become that character, but at this point, she's in too deep. Gives it a little more of a tragic twist whilst still keeping her wholly evil.
Idk, that's just off the cuff, haven't given much thought to lore corrections.
2 -
I agree with this. She is a terribly designed killer imo and 3 genning is definitely still happening. It might not be the same as it used to be, but it’s definitely still there.
ive played this game since beta and honestly she is not it. Doesn’t fit well whatsoever (imo)
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Or because she has actual reasons to dislike her. It's been about a year and I'll say every time I've played against one the chase music gives me a headache.
7 -
I think he's a General, iirc.
The real issue, I think, is that she's just campy (in more ways than one lmao). If you take it like that, then yeah, I could see how it's fine. She's goofy, she's a little silly and maybe that's alright for some people. Like Army of Darkness-lite. Still horror but just silly horror.
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