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Something must be done with Skull Merchant
Comments
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That's just normal killer queue.
If you queue up as survivor, you accept to play against any killer. If you don't want that responsibility then go play customs.
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I think it's a balance issue.
Whenever I play against her, I try, I really do. But it feels like trying to counter her (disabling drones, for instance) always end up in you getting hit. With her stealth and speed, and how she can just saturate an area with drones, see when one's disabled, whack you for even daring and instantly replacing it, her counter isn't a counter, it's a death trap.
I propose:
- Skull merchant cannot see from a distance if a drone is hacked, she has to see, in person, if it's in a hacked state
- Skull merchant cannot recall hacked drones. Alternatively, destroy the drone and refund it to skull merchant after 45 seconds
This should at least ease the fact that hacking a drone is high risk, and less than 0 reward. Hacking a drone ensures either 45 seconds of that area being open or reduction of Skull Merchant's drones for a time, letting a survivor hack a drone and, even if they take chase from it, gives other survivors breathing room instead of the often instantly replaced drone causing favor for the skull merchant.
4 -
Yeah it’s a huge problem that players can hide unsportsmanlike conduct behind being “bad” at the game.
At the end of the day we know that people are hook suiciding against SM. It’s unsportsmanlike and unfair for the Killer and Survivor players who want to play as and against her. Regardless of why they do it, it’s still wrong. They’re still ruining games for people who want to innocently enjoy the game on its own merits.
Every person who engages in any kind of sabotage when SM is in play should be reported.
6 -
People agree to play against her in the normal queue, they just use the special competitive 4% strat against her. If you don't like how people counter her - then seek players for your custom games you have been repeatedly telling about.
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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.
1 -
When you queue as killer, you accept that survivors may be running perks or items that you don't like to play against.
When you queue as survivor, you accept that the killers may be running killers or perks that you don't like to play against.
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.
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.
10 -
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:
1 -
The reason I suggest those is because I have no problems with skull merchant in a direct chase, it's when she plops down her entire collection of drones in a 3 gen and just patrols that and never leaves it. You just cannot play the game, at all. They won't chase, they'll boot you off gens at every opportunity. The most effective thing is walk around the opposite side of the map until your teammates die and take hatch.
I suggest not being able to retrieve hacked drones to counter the fact that they'd get hacked, and in 8 or less seconds skull merchant is there, most likely has hit you out of stealth, and already recalled and replaced the drone. Your point on "You want her to recall the drone" means nothing, because they'll only recall it when replacing it.
2 -
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.
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Oh, I see.
I mean, why even hack drones at that point? They don't affect you while you're repairing, so at MOST you're at risk of a single scan when Merchant approaches to scare you away. At that point, she's getting progress so slowly that the gens being repaired should absolutely outstrip it. Merchant can't effectively 3-gen anymore for that reason, she just isn't threatening until she's built up three scans on someone and that takes enough time for gens to get serious progress, even assuming that every time someone runs away they're guaranteed to be scanned, which they aren't.
Merchant is basically a glorified M1 killer in 3-gen scenarios. She has a bit of stealth and a tiny bit of intermittent speed, that's kind of it. That's why my response was geared towards making the disable state last longer, because she already basically doesn't get anything substantial out of 3-genning, I legitimately assumed you meant other scenarios.
Like, setting aside anything else about her, the rework absolutely fixed 3-genning, especially in combination with the regression events limit.
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“Report this player for purposefully losing the game”
It’s a form of ragequitting which is indeed reportable.
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It is not, actually.
Once again, here are the rules.
You can very clearly see that giving up on hook is not bannable.
Unless a Dev/CM has clarified and you have that source, stop spreading information that is false.
2 -
I think that opens a very dangerous road.
The user they responded to is talking about banning players for "not trying"
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Giving up just because it’s SM is breaking the rules and players must be held accountable for that.
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Yeahhhhh, no.
Those rules are not up to date, so far as I remember, they have remained exactly the same since I started playing SIX years ago, while the rules on the website were updated in late 2023. As we know, reporting for DC'ing isn't something you should be doing. If it isn't mentioning in the list literally on this website, it's not a bannable offense, no matter how much you want it to be.
So stop sending false reports lol
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This is beyond Dc’ing which is handled automatically. It’s that people openly admit to breaking the Unsportsmanlike conduct rule, and since it “can’t” be enforced it creates a loophole to ruin other player’s games.
Pulsar, I like you. But you have a way with words in that it feels like you are trying to convince me that purposefully losing the game against SM is somehow not purposefully losing the game under the Unsportsmanlike rule.
Giving up against a Killer you don’t like is Unsportsmanlike conduct, full-stop. It may be protesting conduct but it’s still against the rules.
8 -
Ask a CM or Mod for clarification then.
Is letting go on hook, not playing optimally or otherwise giving up a bannable offense.
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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.
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They should just have a killer ban list option for 1/2 killers per survivor Que people who don't want to engage in a game with a character that is going to make them ruin the experience of others should not have to and killers shouldnt have a problem with this solution as they desperately claim it's just forum bandwagoning so I'm sure it wouldn't effect que times.
And if the community has a whole as 1 or 2 killers on a ban list that seems like a really telling problem to look into
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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
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Nurse has the lowest kill rate in the game, while SM has the highest. So no, they are nothing alike.
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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.
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I feel like what people aren't understanding is that survivors will genuinely always find a way to remove themselves from a game they don't want to be in, just like how a killer will DC from a match for any numerous amount of reasons.
Attempting to punish the majority of survivors, punishes ALL survivors, unintentionally or not; and if I'm being frank, punishing all survivors because they refused to face a killer that is genuinely unfun to face, doesn't seem healthy. Sure, you could hit the report button and be done with it, (Because they refused to play a normal match in which often results in a 4K no matter what type of circumstance.) but the situation wouldn't really be resolved; In a situation like this,
Killers CANNOT MEET Survivors' level of petty. It literally will not work, there is no idea or source that someone could come up with that Survivors couldn't immediately find a workaround to continue not having to face said ANY number of killers they despise.
If you take away their ability to hook-suicide, they AFK. (And you literally cannot stop a player from Afking. That just doesn't work out.)
If you take away their ability to AFK, they STILL get what they want. (Say if they AFK too long in the match and they get turned into a bot, it's still in their favor.)
I guarantee you that no one wants to sit in an hour-long match, this is the only option that works to no one's favor.
If this topic is about Skull Merchant and subsequently, getting people to stop giving up against her for "fun matches." The issue here in lies that most of the survivor base and even part of the killer base don't find Skull Merchant fun and frankly never have since the start.
(It seems like there's an actual minority of killers who enjoy Skull Merchant in comparison to the rest of the community, who despises her more than any other killer in this ENTIRE GAME.)2 -
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.
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"instead of fixing an issue, we'll punish everyone who thinks it's an issue. Don't like this thing we know is an issus? Play something else."
L take tbh
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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.0 -
You missed the point of my statement.
If Survivors don't want to play a match, They wont.
If Killers don't want to play a match, They wont
Survivors have Hook-Suciding.
Killers have Lobby Dodging.
Also, I love how you willingly cherry-picked some type of flaw in the statement I made to prove your point. So, allow me to break it down to you a little further because you seem to still not understand (That or, you're willingly choosing to ignore it and if that is the case, this is the last time I will be responding to you. I won't face someone who chooses to weaponize ignorance, that's a waste of my time. )
If you take away Hook Suciding, Players will simply AFK. If they AFK and you kill them or bleed them out. They. Win.
- Subsequently, if you stoop to the survivor's level of Petty and force them to stay in match for an hour; that's a waste of your time and theirs; no one wins and everyone suffers.
It takes two seconds to simply let them leave the match and move on to something else. Reporting the masses for AFKing will backfire because a massive chunk of the community IS survivors. If you look at this long-term, eventually, people will get used to being reported and suspended for refusing to face the minority of the game and queues will eventually slow down.
You won't be able to filter every single person who refuses to face XYZ killer because XYZ reason (Now this stems beyond Skull Merchant just for a brief moment because if we're being brutally honest, something like this can happen in every game if weaponized. )
This is a losing debate. You can't change the mind of the masses and any attempt to do so will be met with more protest and backlash; more ways to NOT have to face 1 killer out of the many, more ways to not face any number of killers because XYZ reason.
Do you understand now?2 -
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.)
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Survivors can also lobby dodge and lobby dodging and hook suiciding are two different things as only one of those is quitting mid match.
If you want rage quit matches, you should be punished. Hook suiciding is not a punished especially when you can no longer depip. Hook suicides need to be removed or harsh penalties need to applied to survivors who do hook suicide, because the rest of the teammates don't even get a bot for your rage quit.
It's irrelevant that most of the players are survivors when it comes to reporting people for throwing games and ruining it for the rest of the survivors. Reportable behavior is still reportable.
Again if you want to filter what killers you are willing to play against, that is what custom lobbies are for. If you queue for survivor normally you have to accept that people will play things you don't like. If you cannot then DBD is simply not the right game for you.
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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.
2 -
You can submit video evidence via support ticket alongside a report, fyi.
So the excuse that players will just find ways to throw the game is a terrible excuse for not removing hook suicides.
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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.
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As for removing "legit" plays with hook suicide, hook suicides to rage quit are by far the main use that people use the system. Which is why in my first post I said "The downsides of it existing far exceed any benefits."
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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.
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Ppl pull this all the time for no other reason than they got downed too fast on their first chase. Frankly... every other game has penalties in place for throwing in a team game. If you pull this in LoL or Overwatch, you get a temp ban. What's the difference?
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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.1 -
they are full of L takes
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This, This right here; someone who actually understands. Thank GOD.
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Killers cannot lobby dodge perks. Meaning at the end of the day the killer will have to face things they don't like.
Also it's irrelevant that survivors can't lobby dodge killers when both sides can lobby dodge other survivors. Killers have no way to quit a trial early, because they don't like how it is going without penalty and survivors shouldn't have a free get out of trial card they can pull.
There's nothing hypocritical about it, you're just making up excuses why you think it's okay to rage quit as a survivor and if you are spending this much time trying to justify not playing out matches you queued for then maybe you should stop playing a game you spend effort to not play.
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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.
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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.
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For me, the problem with this character is that she easily controls the Triangle. She can constantly receive information about the whereabouts of survivors. During a chase, she can immediately deploy a Drone and force the survivor to immediately run in the RIGHT DIRECTION without taking damage (IF YOU'RE LUCKY), while matches with this killer last a very long time and most players in random matches do just that. I don't want to try to restore a triangle that this killer can easily control(Sorry for translation errors, I translate using Google translate)
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Or I can play the game normally how I want to because I bought the game and it’s an option.
Sass aside, I don’t typically give up against anybody unless it’s 4 gen slows or a 3-gender Merchant. If she doesn’t play the 3-gen style, I’ll go against her. If she plays the vile way obviously nobody likes with her insanely high kill rate, then I will die on hook. No thank you, I’ll join the 80% kill rate she has, and I’m clearly not in the minority.
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Agreed. Plus it isn't like the killer gets a 4% chance that a survivor trips mid-chase for a free down, so why should survivors have a 4% chance for a free hook escape?
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this is what i always do when i want to go next. i keep "trying" but not nearly as hard as i do when i actually want to win…oh i just got hit through the window a second after i was done vaulting? thats so weird my youtube video just randomly started playing and now i cant hear anything in game…oh well!
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No terror radius in drones is the issue with SM. Remove that and I would bet people wouldn't DC or kill themselves on hook.
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She is fine! stop complaining.!
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Hot take: Revert the rework and change a few things. Like allow a Survivor with a Claw Trap to hack another drone in exchange for their Lock on instantly filling (which exposed instead of injured before) which would allow a single Survivor to remove 50% of Drones from play in exchange for them going down in 1 hit, forcing her to at least take a chase. As well as have the first lock-on which took about 20ish seconds of sitting within a Drone's Active Radius to give a Claw Trap and only Expose when you already have a Claw Trap. With the new changes to gen regression max I think it would be better. Old Skull Merchant wasn't bad because of her mechanics like she is now, where she's just turbo bloated, she was bad because everyone 3 genned with her. I played her a lot before the rework and her chase was easily A tier with Geographical Readout but no one chased with her because her 3 gen potential was so easy. Old Scans were not nearly as punishing as they are now and your lock on ticked down passively so you weren't instantly punished for a single scan. She also had direct interaction with her drones thanks to the "Activated" state of drones that she could manually do compared to now where's it's literally just a "Put down and forget about it" power.
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For the record, that's not how her stealth works. It's not stealth inside the drones' radius anymore, it's eight seconds of stealth after deploying a drone.
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I did mean that.. but yeah, get rid of that :) … I can't see any other reason why people DC?!
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