What if BHVR gives Skull Merchant the Sadako treatment?
Sadako went through three stages:
- Original version
- Reworked version
- Hybrid version (Current)
This rework pattern follows a path of taking a Killer who's power was initially considered underwhelming, but had promising aspects that just needed adjusted and buffed, to a Killer who then received an unpopular rework, to a Killer who then received a major update reverting it to the original version with aspects of the kit spliced from the reworked version.
Right now, Skull Merchant is the equivilent of eating a bunch of sweet grapes and comong across a sour one, leaving you with the urge to spit it out. Some don't mind the sour grape but most hate it and just disgard and dispose of it (excuse my poor analogy). She's a Killer that despite not being the strongest, has a particulary pesky chase power to face combined with heavy stealth elements. She has garnered such a hate following that trying to play her seriously, and fairly is pointless half the time as many will just throw themselves at you to get to the next game. If you're a SM enjoyer, good luck trying to get consitent serious games.
It leaves me wondering, was her rework fully neccesary? Just like Sadako?
With the implimentation of the 8 gen kick limit, and the current drone features which prevent motionless survivors from being detected, I beleive we COULD bring back the old AoE ring drones that inflict exposed instead of injury. We could augment her old drones into a power that are less for defence, and more for chasing, but with some information abilites still present.
- Drones now create an orange Area of Effect that will slowly build up detection on survivors in motion.
- Survivors in an active drone's radius are revealed on the SM's scanner.
- Survivors who are fully detected are exposed and hindered.
- The scan meter will degrade when outside the radius of a drone.
- SM now only has 4 drones, but the radius of drones are now bigger.
- The SM is now undetectable while within the drones radius and for a short while after.
- Disabling a drone will disable the drones detection for 45 seconds and prevent the drone from being recalled for 10 seconds.
- Drones will apply a claw trap to survivors who disable them and they will be revealed to the SM for the duration that they are on the survivor and provide the SM with a haste effect.
- Claw traps will be automatically removed after a set duration.
- Survivors with Claw trap cannot disable drones.
This, at it's core, means that The Skull Merchant would then focus more on direct hits and using her power for chase and info assistance rather than using the drones to get easy injuries and haste even on survivors that don't have claw traps. Haste is now only applied to Survivors that interact with drones and she now relies more on her stealth and tracking to get hits. Exposed means she needs to apply the damage herself rather than relying on drones.
This seems to be close to a full revert, but focuses on taking away her heavy defense playstle that she had before and focuses more on information and chase utility.
Comments
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I really think we just need to get away from the Stationary Drone AOE thing.
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In theory a full revert would also work, since it is literally impossible to hold a 3 gen in the exact same way she used to be able to. Though I'm not sure what would that do to her actual strength.
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I don't see the point. SM is really in a pretty good state right now, despite what many would say—A lot of the hate for her is residual, more owing to her original rendition and the initial teaser being a bit misleading. People just refuse to learn what to do against her, for the most part. She's certainly not perfect, but she needs a little fine tuning rather than a full rework or reversion.
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While some(including myself) don’t mind facing SM there just arnt that many people who think she is fun to go against. I can see where they are coming from with just how much she gets in her base kit with very little effort put in. The same thing was true as of to post rework Freddy. Truthfully to get people to stop DCing one if two things needs to happen. Either she is nerfed to the point where she is so weak she is a free escape. Or two conpleatly rework her kit. There is too much hatred left over from what she used to be and since her power is so similar a lot of people will just give up.
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"Pretty good state." Yea, with a 70% killrate and ppl dcing and giving up on 1st hook at a more higher rate than other killers. Nah, she will be adjusted in the future just like sadako. And we all made it known to them on this forum with multiple posts, including dueing sadako's rework discord stream where even the devs acknowledged how SM is not fun to go against when the community commented. Yea. She will be dealt. It may not be right now, but i imagine it will be later this year.
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Just remove the entire drone concept
it doesnt work anymore
give her a completely new power, something like a range m2 attack that latches onto survivors and give them different effects, idk, something that the killer players actually needs to be good at it
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I honestly will say she can go back to what she first was now that killers cant constantly gen spam kick holding game hostage anymore now. Which that should have been what was done ages ago instead of making her power even way more annoying.
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She has that high a kill rate because you're all really stubborn and bad. It largely just owes to nobody trying to learn the counterplay, or even trying to play the game. She's not hard to play against, I swear, you're all just hoping for even more homogenization so you don't have to adapt.
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I honestly dont care. Im fine with playing against her. But it becomes my problem when the majority of the community has a problem. Because my experience is ruined and there is nothing i can do at 3v1 at 5 gens. And bots as the devs said, are not a reliable replacement. Just as it was during sadako's previous mechanic.
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Then people should learn to cope with it. The fact this community is so bad does, in fact, suck, I agree, but it's not grounds for changing the killer. There are people who try to inform the community about what to do, this community is just stubborn—that doesn't mean we give people everything they want, because if we did, this game would be awful.
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Meh. In due time we will see what they decide. Because the community in this forum will continue to have the same discussion about her.
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I’d like to see OG Skull Merchant again. Scrap current version. 3 gen system is in place. Sadakos current version needs work….small qol changes to chase and demolished her condemn
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So make her useless to the point of sadako?
…wait, reverting skull merchant actually makes her better.
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Current SM is fine.
Reworking her again might be the worst thing they can do. BHVR really ought to break this habit of releasing flawed killers and then redesigning them every few months like with SM or Sadako. Even people who regularly play the game have trouble keeping up with these changes. (Seriously, what's the optimal strat against Sadako now? I don't even know.) Now imagine how newer and casual players, still trying to learn what all the 30+ killers do, must feel…
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I mean they gutted Sadako, so I’d rather that not happen to SM. I actually play a lot of SM unironically and do quite well.I’ve had comp players in the groups I’ve played against too. She’s got more potential than people give her credit for.
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judging from feedback of Pulsar, lot of people still have some sentiment of disliking to play against her. I am guessing that Sadako's negative changes stem from dislikes against playing vs her. SM might suffer same fate as Sadako. dislike playing vs x killer, don't bother learning → negative changes.
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Yup that’s what I think he was saying as well.
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Sadako right now is literally unplayable vs decent survivors though. The rework is a failure across the board, bad players still get rolled, good players can delete her power. She is horrifically balanced in her current state.
As for skull merchant, it does not matter what they do to this killer. She herself has had 3 reworks and players haven't liked any iteration. She has such a bad reputation at this point that it doesn't matter what they do to her, people will still hate her just because of her reputation.
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I think you’re right about both points. I personally preferred reworked Sadako but get why it was frustrating. I felt like survivors that actually dealt with tapes were fine though, it was those that let stacks passively build and didn’t bother to get rid of it. She was a solo q stomper, easily.
Skull Merchant is fine as she is, but you’re right, it’s her reputation that hurts her the most. Unless she receives an entirely new power or gets nerfed into the ground, I don’t think a lot of people will be happy about her existence.
The other day I had four survivors run up to me and give up, telling me to play a real Killer. I mean…the game hadn't even started before they gave up. I’ve been stomped by good survivors as her, so she’s totally beatable.2 -
The answer to SM looks like a similar answer to many soloq issues. Give real penalties to dc’ing and remove unhook options that promote purposeful removal from game. The issue is mentality/maturity. Play the game or do not. Giving up disrupts 4 other peoples experience, it’s just simply immature behavior. If a meaningful penalty would be given to their behavior they would stop. Then if the removal of quitting on hook was there they would have to play longer.
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70% kill rate with so many giving up is pretty low. Means she is not a strong killer but mid-tier or even lower. And you can't let losers giving up dictate they are the ones BHVR need to remove not the killer. Perma ban these survivors this is the solution.
Legion and Clown are not fun to play against either, or Nurse, Blight, Plague etc. But they might be fun to play so let people play their killers and do your best to win against them.
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The problem is you can't literally delete her power. I'm actually doing a post on it right now. When I play vs a Sadako, it's rare that she pushes more than 2 stack of condemn on me the entire game. I push more stacks on myself than she pushes on me and when I play with my friend she has literally nothing to use because interacting with her power actively deletes her only other power. There is nothing you can do to surprise a survivor despite being a stealth killer either because you are given so much information that you have complete and total control over her.
6 -
I agree completely!
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I agree with both parts. Current Sadako targets especially noobs, who struggle extremely hard. It‘s so frustrating playing as her against decent survivors. She is literally only a noob stomper by design, because she got no power against decent survivors. I really liked the og version, which was the simplest to understand and fairest. All og Sadako needed were buffs and some improvements, but no reworks. For skull merchant you are right, it does not matter what they do to her. She will always be hated.
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I don't see pallet breaking on claw trap, so not interested.
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It's stupid this is 2024 and we still have hook suicide.
Just give survivors 3 free chances of escape and remove skillcheck on second stage, it's that easy, but no somehow game must inflate killrate through suicide.
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"What if BHVR gives Skull Merchant the Sadako treatment?" You mean, kick her down a well and leave her to die?
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Let's be honest, that is what most players would like… Kinda sad
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Yea....no. You can kick and scream for perma bans for ppl giving up, but they will never do that. That's what leave a match is for and they get a temporary penalty.
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Facts
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0
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Maybe they could rotate around the map to find survivors? 😅🤪
I’m teasing please don’t roast me my friend 🤣
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seeker drones could be interesting
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How would that work? I mean the same complains we get with Knight would come up before the PTB would even launch. Also detection on its own isn't all that great, its just a less effective Doctor, her undetectable would need to be buffed to Ghostface level to make up for it if she doesn't get anything else.
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I have no further thoughts on it.
I think it's an interesting idea
2 -
Agreed.
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