Bad Day for people who want SkullMerchant Nerfed

One reason it was so bad was they also tied an Exposed effect to the drones, which required counterplaying the drones, but they made counterplaying the drones very ineffective. It still is ineffective.

It's a pretty ominous sign for everyone, but I'm crossing my fingers it won't be too bad. The way I see it, there are three broad directions this rework could go, and while none of them will actually address the problem (because the problem is "people don't like her" and their reasons aren't actually moored in anything real about her power for the most part), ONE of them would be a good thing in general.

The three directions I see this going are:

1: They completely gut her power with a series of huge nerfs. Nobody will be happy with this; people who like her get their killer ruined, and the people who hate her aren't going to suddenly reverse course because she's a bad killer now.

2: They do another huge overhaul that fundamentally changes her power, like the change that got us to her current kit. This probably won't make people stop hating her - the previous rework didn't despite fixing all her issues and adding very few appreciable new ones - and it'll suck for the people who like her. Small chance it's also an improvement and people who like her now will still like her afterwards, but it'd still suck to lose her current design.

3: They address the problems her kit ACTUALLY has with a fairly large number of individually somewhat small changes. This is what I'm hoping for, but y'know, it obviously won't fix the problem on its own since her actual problems rarely come up in complaint threads. Since this would include "drop something at loop, survivor runs away", it would at least help, so it's worth pursuing as an option from BHVR's standpoint, but it's not as though most people fully understand even that problem, so. Y'know.

Any one of these options would probably take time, so I'm not too surprised by the timeframe we've been given. There's no way Merchant is a super high priority, and changes take time even disregarding that.

Our best hope, whichever option the devs go for, is that the fire kind of fizzles out and everyone moves on to complain about something else so we can finally be free of this exhausting discourse. I'm not holding my breath, but it's a hope.

That'll only happen if people stop complaining about her afterwards, and I'm not convinced that'll happen.

It wouldn't matter, she is already a pretty weak killer yet survivors still keep giving up against her for some reason, even if she become lot weaker she would still have super high killrates thanks to all those strange survivors

Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I don't think the tone of the complaints are going to change if she becomes super weak and bad. Maybe they'll become less frequent, but you'll still have people talking about how her design sucks and they hate going against her even though she's weak.

It's not like she has a super high pickrate or super high strength right now, after all. I wouldn't call her weak, but she's pretty middle of the pack, and people still act like she has no counterplay and there's no skill expression for either side.

In games that are balanced correctly, this rarely happens.

But you have a game where a 4 year old can get a 4k with a killer. Killer is way way easier and more rewarding than survivor. If both roles required the same skill level, it wouldn’t be a problem. Every killer added makes the game even harder for survivor because it’s a whole new set of rules you have to memorize. Killer, just requires you to know one killer.

yes they will because if nobody plays skull merchant, you can't complain about a killer that you never play against. For example Twin is slugging killer. Survivor CONSTANTLY complain about slugging but they do not complain twins. Do you know why? Because killer is almost never played.

I still think that skull merchant d/c are silly because summary of skull merchant kit is a killer with Clown tonic traps. I don't see anyone D/C vs Clown when he uses giant speed boosts and giant hinders. You don't see people complaining that they need to "Leave loops" vs Clown. Survivors in my opinion are d/cing because of skull merchant power-level but skull merchant power-level is no greater then Clown's power-level. Most of their kit is nearly identical in function with only added component being stealth+broken component. The garnish kit with 16 meter wall-hack makes up clown not having a radar. that add-on might as well be a radar. those stealth and broken component only exist so that skull merchant is not a worst clown, but alternative pick to him.

Wrong, balance doesn't matter, the reason why it happens a lot is game is fundamentally flawed and hook suicide is completely free

The only way to fix giving up is literally removing the capability to give up, this is an objective fact

Stop making literally everything a killer problem

I had a pretty good rework idea for her and posted here a while ago

Can't find the post anymore

If I find I will edit this comment

Weak != fun.

For example, Legion is not strong, but is certainly not a pleasant experience to play against. Same with Knight.

There are Killers who are oppressive, like Nurse, whose strength creates unfun matches. That is not the only way to be unpleasant though.

honestly at this point for me it’s mostly the people who play her they know she’s the most hated killer in the game so they deliberately play her in super unfun ways to instigate a reaction

I still think Nurse is a much bigger issue, and shes not getting nerfed, ever.