Something must be done with Skull Merchant

Any time I am unhooked when I don’t want to play the match, I just Alt+Tab away. If people don’t want to play a match, they won’t. Better to let them move on unless they haven’t fully given up.

Come to think of it, NOT failing the skillchecks while focusing the gens would actually be even better, since now the killer has to choose between either putting the survivor out of their misery or letting them win. No chase points either way.

Not that I necessarily disagree with these changes, but you are kind of implying that the only way to counter her is to hack her drones, which kind of ignores all the in-chase counterplay her drones have.

This is kind of a problem with the broader discourse about Skull Merchant and why saying "something must be done" isn't quite as simple as it sounds. I'm not saying you, specifically, don't know how to counter her drones in chase, but a lot of people don't and they also act like she doesn't HAVE any counters outside of hacking drones. That makes their feedback particularly difficult to act on, as you can imagine.

Although for the record, I think just increasing the time before a drone turns on would do it. You want her to recall the drone, because it means the drone has to be replaced and can't affect anyone in the meantime, so having it be useless for longer would push killers into doing that a little harder.

It is not against the rules, so do not report them. All you will be doing is further muddying the waters and creating more work for BHVR to do when it comes to tackling real reports.

This is no different than reporting for tunneling or camping or teabagging.

If you need a refresher on the DBD Game Rules they can be found here:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/139-game-rules

When you queue as killer, you accept that survivors may be running perks or items that you don't like to play against.

Except you can just dodge any lobby you don't like, while survivors don't have that luxury.

If you are unable to even attempt to play out games against Skull
Merchant and resort to rage quitting, then you should be the one looking
for custom games where you don't have to play against her.

There are far more killers who are NOT SM, and there are far more survivors who don't want to play against SM. If the 4% strat happens in literally every SM game, and not in most other games with other killers, then probably the problem is in SM.

But since it's clear you would rather throw a fit instead of getting good, there's nothing more I have to say to you.

But since it's clear you would rather repeat the same strawman catches and ignore all counter-arguments in order to explain why people have to waste their time on something that is generally hated, there's nothing more I have to say to you.

“Report this player for purposefully losing the game”

It’s a form of ragequitting which is indeed reportable.

They both need to be overhauled already. Well, SM is a lost cause so they just should nerf her and move on away from her. Permanentlely.

As a killer main, I don't really have an issue with survivors getting they're three attempts to unhook themselves, but with no advancing the sacrifice meter with each attempt

The problem with Skull Merchant, as far as I can tell, is that she's area denial, stealth, and chase all in one.

I mean, Hag and Trapper are very much area denial killers. They set up their web, and their goal is to push survivors into it. They're not exactly strong chase killers.

I haven't enjoyed a single SM merchant since she released. 3-gen Merchant was boring, but equally as boring is a killer who can deny such a large part of the map.

While I could come up with ideas that would make her more enjoyable to play against, I don't know that those ideas would also make her fun to play as. I don't want to take away the enjoyment from the few people who do play her.

It's funny how you say Killers can just D/C, but that action invokes a penalty. Removing suiciding on hook would force survivors who want to quit to d/c otherwise they risk getting banned if they are intentionally throw the game.

If you absolutely refuse to play against Skull Merchant then don't queue for a mode where facing her is a possibility. Find other people for customs who will agree to not play Skull Merchant.

These type of things tread a very thin line that gets blurred when we literally have to drag in the IN GAME Definition of what is rage-quitting, Rage-Quitting is commonly referred to DCING; Refusing to play a match is something that's not within the lines of Rage-Quitting, but it's debatedly close.

Dying on hook is a mechanic of the game that rewards the killer with points for completing their task.

Dying on hook is a mechanic of the game that barely rewards the survivor for "Doing their best" Despite the fact that they failed the trial.

Bleeding out is a mechanic of the game that rewards the killer with points (but arguably less) because they killed a survivor.

Bleeding out is a mechanic of the game that barely rewards survivors for "Doing their best despite the fact they failed the trial.


If you think that reporting a player who made use of a mechanic of the game to get out of the match is something that'll work out in the long run, you're in for a rude awakening. Matching Petty with Petty wont work in this argument because killers LITERALLY CANNOT get pettier than survivors.

This whole topic of "Report them for refusing to face me" Falls short when both sides are mechanics in the game that's meant to be there. Whether or not you like it, Choosing to kill them or bleed them out will result in a loss of your side of the debate because Survivors get what they want.

A means to escape the match.

Nurse, for her many… many… problems, and the way she breaks DBD's game design over her knee and suplexes it for good measure… is at least engaging to play against.

And when she's not engaging to play against, because the player behind the wheel has spent 2000 hours mastering her and can predict your every futile attempt at freedom before you've even conceived which direction to run… it's over quickly.

Skull Merchant was just a mistake in every measure.

(Though to be perfectly fair, I think her problem at this point is as much reputational as it is mechanical. People don't want to vs Skull Merchant because the people who play her always play an obnoxious zero-fun playstyle, so they DC upon seeing her, and this leads casual killer players to avoid touching her while ragebaiters flock to her for her ability to get survivors to ragequit, and they play zero-fun games, and so on… I suspect she got some of the runoff when facecamping Bubba got nerfed.)

You're still missing the point, though. I don't think anyone disagrees that hook suicides should be punished. They ruin the game for everyone. The problem you're avoiding is that it's basically impossible to implement a mechanic that prevents survivors from throwing games, because on paper, the reportable behavior - essentially griefing or quitting, depending on what flavor it takes - is indistinguishable from survivors playing badly. And you can't report being bad.

It's a moot point, because successfully reporting anyone in this game is extremely difficult, but it's a problem that's more involved than simply saying 'this game mechanic needs to be reportable.' Because survivors will then move onto the next action that is not reportable but gets them yeeted from the game immediately.

To a human eye, it's obvious when a player is trying to ragequit versus when it's just a confused newbie, but without match replay to provide that human eye… the data tracking this game currently employs is incapable of making that distinction and thus punishing players for it in a timely fashion (and a fashion that doesn't rely on other players having active video software as they play, and being in a position to record the player trying to get themselves killed.)

If you remove hook suicides, you remove my ability to dip out so that the last player can get hatch or gun for a hail mary 4% in a losing game and you gut luck builds, and you don't actually fix the problem because the players who would have hook suicided to ragequit are now just going to run at the killer or spam noise notifications or just go AFK under the hook.

Ah, yes, so I need to be running video recording software every time I play DBD when my laptop already burns like the fires of hell playing it, just to be able to police players because BHVR won't implement a means to do it in-house. No thank you.

The report system in this game is broken and apart from chat offenses, actually supplying sufficient evidence requires too much retroactively unattainable third party involvement on the part of players to be reasonable. And without that video evidence, a report is worthless and won't be acted upon. I suppose the solution here is to establish a report system that doesn't rely on third party software and player line of sight to actually be able to address bad behavior in-game, but I've resigned myself to the fact that that's not happening.

I edited it into my post and you likely missed it, but it's worth addressing - removing the ability to suicide on hook removes legitimate plays I can use to help my team or myself and, more importantly, will not stop players from trying to kill themselves. See what happens whenever you rescue a hook suicider before they can miss the second skillcheck. They don't go back to playing; they chase the killer or spam noise notifications or just grief you. How do you intend to deal with that? The problem isn't mechanical, it's with people. You'll delete one mechanic and they'll move to the next, and if you delete that mechanic they'll move to the next, and you end with salted fields for little gain.

If removing hook suicides would actually prevent players from getting mad and trying to ragequit, I would agree with you.

But they demonstrably do not, so removing them is just removing a game mechanic and pushing the problem onto another game mechanic. Once again circling back to the point… removing the hook suicide mechanic will not stop bad faith survivors from trying to die as fast as possible to get out of a match. The underlying problem still exists and is fiendishly hard to address at the source. You're advocating plugging leaks where they appear, except this is a case that when you seal one leak, a new one immediately blows open elsewhere. Unless you also have plans to address the new leak, dealing with the old one is actually worse than pointless, because now you have the same problem and less game mechanics.

Like I said, It's a futile effort to report them but if you believe this is the best course of action, then by all means. Commit to it.

Also, the point of me bringing up lobby dodging and Hook Suciding was to point out the fact BOTH sides of the means to avoid issues they don't want to deal with. Survivors can't lobby dodge killers because they don't know what killer they'll face to till they load in, while killers get the ability to see what survivors they'll face and what Item's they'll bring and how they'll counter it; resulting in the uptick of Franklin's Demise & Weave Attunement.

Case and point being, both sides have a way to avoid people. This whole "When you play DBD, you accept the fact you'll deal with things you don't like" crumbles when killers can freely lobby dodge without criticism, that's filtering what survivors they go against; that's also what custom lobbies are for.

Your own argument has such hypocritical flaws, it's best you just DONT use that anymore.

This, This right here; someone who actually understands. Thank GOD.

The fact you can't see the flaw in your own argument is insane to me, I literally broke it down to you and anyone else with your sentiment 3 times already. You must really believe your logic is sound, huh?

Hell, even Laluzi understands the point I've made; so how could you not?

In all my posts referring to you or anyone else with your sentiment, I didn't state nor imply a single time that Hook Suciding was okay, there is no excuse to be made, merely just the facts that somehow; you haven't concluded too. There's no justification to be made because you CAN'T Justify it.

If I'm putting this bluntly, this whole debate is a moot point. It is quite literally the Minority going against the Majority, It's doesn't work out in the favor you want it too. Any solution you've presented will be met with another creatively annoying idea to avoid having to face the killers, that survivors don't want. It's a fact that cannot be ignored or denied, a survivor will do whatever it takes to get taken out of a match they don't want to play. Full-Stop.

It is a fact the minds of the masses won't be changed by forcing them to play the match. Full-Stop.

It is a fact that You won't be able to filter every survivor out because they don't want to face XYZ Killer. Full-Stop.

There is nothing more to be said on this matter.

How on earth did you come to that conclusion from my post? I complained about Nurse breaking the game in that post. I'm saying I'd rather vs Nurse than Skull Merchant because Nurse either allows entertaining counterplay or is over quickly. Skull Merchant is a slog.

I misread your post then, sorry thats my bad