Addressing The Skull Merchant

If that's all you've got to say on the matter, I think this conversation has concluded.

Okay, I was actually in game so I went and checked, you're right, there's twelve.

The reason I was thinking there weren't so many is that were some I wasn't counting for this purpose. Like the ones for extra Hindered percentage and time, those don't really matter to our conversation because they're only for chase.

So, let's tally up the addon effects that are only for chase. To me, this includes: Extra Hindered percentage, extra Hindered time, Exhaustion, and arguably the aura when the claw trap is first applied and the Mangled + Haemorrhage. I say those last two because cross-map info isn't useful when you can already see them on your scanner, it's more useful for mindgaming in chase, and because the Mangled one requires you to get a down on a claw trapped survivor. Taking these off the table, we have seven addons.

These include: Blindness, battery life duration, smaller skill checks, silent skill checks, aura reveal when the claw trap is removed, Oblivious, and the Expired Batteries iridescent.

The next step is to see which of those are actually good. In my opinion, both skill check addons and the Expired Batteries are bad now + won't get worse with my hypothetical changes. The skill check ones are a meagre effect for a small duration only if you're ignoring survivors with claw traps entirely, and the Expired Batteries are just a hot mess of backwards effects that don't do anything noticeable.

Taking those off the table, we're left with four. Blindness, battery life, Oblivious, aura reveal when removed. Do these get worse with the proposed changes?

Not really. Blindness and Oblivious are still somewhat useful in chase anyway, battery life is useful for if you choose to drop chase on a claw trapped survivor, and aura reveal when removed is... fine? Honestly I don't think those last two are good to begin with, especially the aura one which feels very vestigial from an earlier design of her power where it made more sense, but I'm trying to be as generous as possible here.

Considering you'd still be able to spread your Lock On stacks with careful play, and considering most of the addons that affect claw traps at all seem more geared towards either using them in chase or dropping chase after getting the claw trap anyway, I don't think much changes here.

Honestly, the bottom line is, the addons here that aren't good need reworking anyway. My changes don't really change much at all for them.

1: You should have to do most things manually against teams that aren't outright bad, though. That's not a bad thing, that's part of the point.

I'll also point out, once again, that survivors can only remove every stack they get if you leave drones out for them to do so. If you want to spread Lock On stacks, you would need to pay attention to how many drones are out and evaluate how likely they are to be hacked. In other words, building split-pressure Lock On would require active effort and wouldn't be passive.

2: You do actually have to support this point with some kind of argument.

What it actually encourages, if anything, is recalling drones instead of leaving them out. I don't see any reason why it'd encourage 3-genning in someone who didn't already want to 3-gen, and, we've already laid out why attempting to build Lock On stacks in a 3-gen wouldn't actually work with these new changes.

3: Just saying that they're fire and forget doesn't make it true. The mechanical depth in exactly how the beams work and how you'd play around them exists either way, so placement and positioning still matter a lot.

Skull Merchant is a trap killer, that much is true, but she doesn't work exactly like Trapper and Hag. There's more mechanical depth to her power than those two.

4: Or, instead of changing the injury to Exposed, you could just make it so the claw trap is very unlikely to trigger outside of chase, so the killer only gets the Haste and the tracking on someone they aren't actively chasing.

The whole point of these changes is that getting a claw trap shouldn't be passive. The other stuff, sure, that much can be relatively passive and I think it'd be fair, but the claw trap should require active effort.

If you want to take another shot at specific questions, I'll try and answer them. These messages can get a little long and so some things get missed out unintentionally.

While I agree that those addons are bad, they aren't made any worse by my changes, they're just bad. Though, to speak up for one one of them mildly, the Mangled + Haemorrhage only applies when the survivor is hit, which downs them, which breaks the claw trap, so they're not actually afflicted by all three status effects at once.

Either way, though, they're just bad. They're not good addons being made bad by these changes, so it's kind of irrelevant to bring them up.

Well... yes?

Dropping chase and spreading Lock On stacks is made harder because that's the thing it's currently easy to try and cheese. The thing that requires you to be more on point with aim, positioning, and placement is unchanged because that's the thing that currently requires skill expression.

If you aren't putting skill expression into 1v1 chases then you're going to lose, it'll take too long to get to three stacks and you'll only have it on one person. If you aren't putting skill expression into spreading the stacks, it can still work out for you because you don't actually have to put much effort into it to benefit from claw traps. It isn't guaranteed, mind, but when it works it doesn't require nearly as much from you.

I don't think that's necessary, getting multiple claw traps on different survivors is a very strong position. It really doesn't need to be more rewarding than it currently is.

Again, I don't think so. Sadako's Condemned stacks are removed from a static map object that Sadako has no control over.

Lock On stacks would be removed by hacking drones, which Skull Merchant doesn't have to leave out if she doesn't want to.

Maybe not when they're downed, that would need to be tested, but they should definitely not keep Lock On stacks when hooked.

We don't want Skull Merchant to be too good at tunnelling with her power.

Which also raises the question, when would keeping Lock On stacks when downed be useful, and the answer is kind of just "slugging", so I don't love that either.

Considering there's only sometimes a way to remove Lock On with my suggestions, and considering the killer can completely deny survivors the opportunity to use it at all, I don't mind Lock On resetting when the killer gets a hook or a down.

What?

How is it a bullet proof system for getting rid of Lock On when it gives the killer a free hook? That doesn't make any sense, the reason it clears when you get downed is so that the Skull Merchant can't tunnel you out with a claw trap and thus Hindered when you're unhooked.

You do not get punished for playing well as killer because you get a hook. Those progress you to your goal, killing survivors, so they are a reward. Your power exists to make those easier to get.

Removing Broken wouldn't change anything here, because it's the Haste and Hindered that help tunnel someone out. If someone's unhooked, you should start from zero again, because the stacks you put on them did their job: They made that survivor easier to down. That, or they weren't needed to reach that goal in the first place, in which case it doesn't matter.

Also, I would appreciate if you'd stop insulting my gameplay, especially when you haven't actually seen it. You have no idea whether I'm using Lock On correctly, you can only judge based on the way I talk about Skull Merchant's power-- and I could be just as unhelpful by saying that it sure seems like I understand it better than you do. That wouldn't achieve anything, though, it'd just devolve the conversation into name-calling.

We've also talked at length about how other playstyles would still be viable, that's just repetition without anything to back it up.

That doesn't make it a bulletproof strategy, it just makes it a thing that'll happen as the game progresses. It's not a way for you, the survivor, to actively remove your Lock On progress, because the Lock On does its job in this scenario: it makes you easier to down.

That's why you're not "punished" by "losing your power progress". The whole point of your power - any power, even if it's sometimes indirect - is to make survivors easier/faster to down. Once it does that job, it is totally fair for it to reset where applicable if it can't be removed manually, because you already got rewarded for using it with the one thing it's meant to do.

Claw Traps don't make her better at tunnelling now, because the stacks get reset. If someone could come off the hook with two stacks, especially if the power still inflicts Deep Wounds to cancel their anti-tunnel, they'd become extremely easy to tunnel out with a claw trap. That is, obviously, a bad thing.

While talking doesn't always mean agreeing, you have failed to really evidence your argument. Take your statement here, where you say it gets less effective: How? Getting multiple claw traps is completely unchanged with my suggestions, so how is it less effective on top of being harder?

Right, so, this comes back to the same thing I have to keep repeating: Letting survivors remove stacks of Lock On by hacking drones DOES NOT MEAN that stacks are inherently temporary. They have to have drones nearby to hack.

So, does this make spreading stacks less effective? Nope! Once you put in the effort to keep your drones away from their reach, spreading stacks is just as effective as before. The thing that changes is the barrier of effort before you get to start doing it, not how effective it is once you've started.

I'll hit that point again, because it's important: If they get a stack, you recall that drone. If you want to spread stacks, you do not keep drones out as a rule. There may be exceptions for specific drone spots, but by and large, if your strategy is to spread stacks, you would put the active effort into making sure the stacks aren't removed by recalling drones. This is the part that cannot be ignored or waved away, it is THE most important part of this argument.

Which leads to, getting multiple claw traps is not less powerful or less impactful than before. It is harder to do, though it's not even close to impossible, but it's not less effective.

As for your last question: You... place the drone down by them after/as they're unhooked? You're tunnelling them in this scenario, so you use your power in that chase. It wouldn't be immediate, but no killer currently gets to down someone as soon as their feet touch the ground, it takes a few seconds for their power to circumvent anti-tunnel where applicable.

It's not hard to understand, but there's a hole in the logic.

If a drone is tripped outside of chase, there is a delay before the survivor starts to hack it. The more hidden the drone, the more the delay, generally; usually the hidden drones require navigating around an object before you can actually reach the model itself. If your active strategy is to spread stacks, you'd put drones in those hidden spots and react to the survivor being scanned, recalling the drone before they can hack it. Generally, you're probably not going to be relying on this, but they'll be the exception to the whole "don't leave drones out" thing- the drones that take a second to get to, giving you time to recall them after someone's scanned.

(I have considered making it so drones can't be hacked while you're on the Skull Merchant's scanner, to embolden this playstyle, but I'm wary about buffing her when she currently needs nerfs + does fine otherwise.)

Additionally, if your active strategy is to spread stacks, yes, you would be dropping chase on survivors after tagging them directly. That wouldn't actually be changing from the way it works now, that's just a part of playing Skull Merchant this way.

I keep italicising "active strategy" because right now you don't need to do those things, right now you can passively benefit from stacks spreading across the map without putting in any effort at all. That is the thing I want to change, and anyone who wants to benefit from multiple survivors having stacks at once should need to adapt to that requiring a small amount of effort.

You aren't inherently going to lose based on this if you're actually good at it. If you know the trap spots, if you know the right time to drop chase versus the right time to actually progress your objective, if you're good enough with the drone's mechanical skill expression to reliably force scans quickly... yeah, it'd be viable. It'd be kind of a risk/reward playstyle where the reward is way way higher than the more traditional chase-based playstyle, but it also requires more management so there's more room to mess up.

You would lose if you're just tagging survivors once in chase, recalling the drone, and aimlessly wandering to someone else. That's good. Killers putting in that little effort should do noticeably worse than killers who do put in effort.

Still, there's middle ground between those two scenarios, and real games are messy. You'll face survivors who just don't react to being scanned properly, you'll face survivors who make the wrong decisions about when to hack, you'll face teams that accrue more scans accidentally than there are drones to remove them, etc. I don't anticipate this being something you have to do perfectly in order to get value, you'd just have to put in some effort.

Two things: First, hidden drone spots typically also remove the ring on the ground. This is one of those things about Skull Merchant that people don't realise, and over time will separate decent Skull Merchants from very very good ones. These drones aren't just placed wherever, you're taking advantage of the specific placement restrictions and quirks that come with her power to remove as much information from survivors as possible. There are also plenty of structures where the drone's beams shoot straight through the wall because of a small gap, and even if you know there's a drone there, you can't know if the beam's actually passing through that gap while it's invisible and the drone itself is blocked from view.

Pixel Bush's video on Skull Merchant showcases this pretty well, though it's also pretty long and I don't have a timestamp for when he talks about those parts specifically on hand, sorry.

Second, I'm not saying that reacting to the scan and recalling the drone will be incredibly easy. It'll require you to remember where you've placed your drones, and quickly ascertain which one just turned yellow, on top of whatever you were doing. I will remind you that you're doing this in service of spreading your Lock On stacks, which is a very powerful outcome to be in; even if you never get a claw trap out of it, having everyone at two stacks means any chase you take is going to be quite short.

I'll also say again, if this does end up too difficult, I have a buff in mind to alleviate it, as I already said.

Finally, you're doing it again. The "funny how" and the "I'd like to see you try" while alluding to my gameplay or my games specifically. It's not constructive, I'm politely asking you to stop.

No, not like that all. Because I'm making arguments that I back up with evidence and explanations.

Sure, some of it's map dependant. I don't know off the top of my head if every map has those hidden drone spots, though I think every map does have the gaps in walls + structures that let you scan through them- think Trickster knives and Deathslinger harpoons, it's that kind of gap you need.

I think you would probably be able to spread stacks on every map, the map will just affect how easy it is.

Let me ask this. Assume everything else I want to do happens, but we add this buff: While a survivor is shown on the Skull Merchant's radar, they are not able to remove any Lock On stacks by hacking drones. That way you'd always have time to react to a survivor tripping a drone so you can recall it. Would that be more acceptable for you?

I've not had an issue with the actual arguments you're making (beyond thinking they're wrong, obviously), I am specifically talking about when you'd say things like "I'd like to see your gameplay", or "You aren't using Lock On correctly", or any other attempt at making the discussion personal and pointed. That is extremely different to making an argument in favour of your case, which we've both been doing.

I'm glad we could come to some kind of agreement, at least. The changes would be healthy ones, it seems, the question is whether there'd need to be a compensatory buff. I don't personally believe it would be necessary, but it wouldn't be harmful either, so if both happened at once we'd still get the part that matters. It'd be nice QoL in general, too.