The skull merchant situation.

She is destroyed. 1 scan bean on the drones now, really? Nerfs this hard never happen to survivors. Even with the instaheal nerfs, they got changed to a heal over time and BT in a bottle. With toolboxes, they lost usage time but got faster gen speed-up. With Buckle-Up/For The People, they lost Endurance for both people, but gained a sprint burst which gives no Exhaustion.

But what is Skull Merchant supposed to do now? What does she have? Nothing. Drones which anybody could avoid, and give Haste in very rare situations (actually getting scanned 3 times), with a smidge of Undetectable. What's the point in playing her over about killer?

Same with me and Plague. People give up against all three of those killers; they're some of the least popular to verse powers. The point I'm trying to make is that… hm. Let's say there's a baseline for quit rates, a certain percent of survivors who will bail against any killer they don't like, and certain killers that people don't like more than others, so they get more ragequits than others.

Skull Merchant exceeded that norm. She got people who did not normally quit games to immediately hit next, and that's not because her power was a normal kind of unfun to experience in DBD, it was PTSD over matches that took forever to end. Her original mass quit rates were something DBD had rarely seen before (and always signified something unplayably bad, like OG Legion), and while it got better after they reworked her, it never normalized to regular "I don't like this" levels. People still hated her and refused to even try to play against her. Hence her kill rate eclipsing that of the other disliked killers… and every other killer in the game.

If I play Plague, someone might DC at start or give up on first hook every 5 games. With Skull Merchant, it's a coin flip for me to have a game where all three of my teammates try to play the match. Worse odds, even. Maybe 60% someone quits within the first minute. Is this anecdotal evidence, yes, but her grossly inflated kill rates support it. Her reputation is through the floor and I don't know if it can be repaired without starting over.

I agree that SM exceeds the norm give up rate and I also agree it's largely due to her rep. That said I still think it's wrong to completely gut as a solution to the problem esp since we don't have an ETA on when the rework will happen. My whole issue with the SM nerfs isn't that she being nerfed but she being nerfed as a way to stop ppl playing her so the devs can take their sweet time reworking her. I mentioned couple of times that if the devs was transparent and came out to say "We know SM is a flawed killer and needs a complete overhaul. So we decided to nerf her heavy for now but we have a rework for her in two or three patches from now." Then I wouldn't complain and angry.

But that's what is happening here, no where in the dev blog was mentioned they was going to rework, we as a community had to find out by one random dev comment on a reddit thread and Mandy saying something on Oh Tofu stream. On no official channel was it said they had plans to rework her. On top of that the only timeframe we got for this rework is that it be done later next year. Knowing BHVR that could mean up two years. Gutting a killer and keeping them useless for more than 6 months is wrong, and bad game development. SM, Freddy and Myers reworks all should be thier top priority not doing some small changes to a killer like plague or pinhead. Shoot I think those three killers reworks are more important than releasing a new killer or chapter.

I care.

I am here for Freddy. I have been here for the past five years because of Freddy.

I think there is still hope for him. After five years I'm allowing myself to have some hope.

Skull Merchant could be the first contemporary killer whom we see falling to The Entety and giving in to the despair, their soul being chipped away too much. There is an in-world way of handling this, but of course, no one wants to see this through, so she will not be officially retired, just be disappearing out of 99/100 games.

Where's the quote on that?

Pretty sure the only thing that was confirmed was that the changes are intentional, and are intended to make SM less frustrating to play against until her rework.

Not everything is some grand conspiracy.

Plz... anyone with eyes can see the true purpose for these heavy handed nerfs. Of course the devs aren't going to openly admit they are killing off a killer so thier play rate can take a nose drive. Alot of ppl has said that this is the first time they seen a killer get this heavy nerfed and the nerfs will make the killer the worst killer in the game. Doesn't take a genius to figure out the true purpose behind nerfing SM this much.

For reference: Otz comment about the SM nerfs

"Skull Merchant gets huge nerf, possibly one of the biggest nerfs I remember in DBD history; no longer gets haste, her slowdown is reduced significantly (especially considering she resets bloodlust when placing drones) and the drones now only have one scan line instead of the previous two. Instead of reworking her to be more straight-forward and beginner friendly so she's not a pub stomper, the devs have seemingly gone the route of just making her absolutely terrible. Really strange decision."

Many others both CCs and normal players have said similar things.

They did openly admit they "killed her off" with the intent to discourage players from using her, until a full rework is ready in 2025.

What i dont understand is why they dont killswitch her instead

Meh, I have to disagree, I think SM nerfs are the worst in dbd history. Spirit is still pretty damn strong even after the nerfs she has gotten. I never struggle with her even after all her nerfs and map reworks. Unlike SM, Spirit was up there with blight and Nurse before she got her nerfs and the nerfs only knocked her down one level while SM even tho her killrate is the highest isnt no anywhere near the strength of nurse and Blight and these Nerfs will knock her down all the way to the bottom.

Also, I know BHVR has done this before with other things in the game, that just more of a reason to call them out on their BS and get them to change their practices

She was nerfed to the ground. They slapped 4 or 5 nerfs on her and called it a day. She was b tier at best. Your reaction to this thread shows me, you’re on the “hate” train of SM and quite honestly it’s no surprise you don’t care if she got nerfed into oblivion.

Just because you don't agree with it, doesn't mean it's not a balance change. Any time there is a nerf or a buff, it is a balance change. The underlying goal is not to kill SM, it is to make her less frustrating to play against.

Being hyperbolic doesn't make that any less true. They have their priorities straight. Reworks take time. Not everything happens overnight.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that there isn't some large conspiracy going on behind the scenes where bhvr has decided that the few SM enjoyers just deserve to suffer. Your theory is completely unfounded.

SM is already a killer who sees very little play to begin with. If the intent was to kill off SM, they would just nerf her and cancel the rework. The intent is to make her less frustrating to play against until her rework.

• You have the right to be upset about this.
• It's reasonable, even, that you would be upset about this.
• It was not done to "kill the character off"
• This was done to make the character less frustrating to play against until her rework.
• This is a live-service game, and bhvr can change anything they want at any given time. This does not entitle you to compensation.

This is a very clear-cut case of the Few vs The Many. The Many find SM unfun to play against. Weighing the enjoyment of The Few vs the enjoyment of The Many is almost always going to end up favoring The Many, rather than The Few.

i don't support survivors disconnecting vs skull merchant. the answer is complicated. i think BVHR weakening the killer for survivor to easily escape is good move in short term. the problem is that it is bad in long-term because killer often take YEARS to get changed back to relevancy/playable status.

let's say d/c rate for skull merchant is 50% and than d/c rate goes down to 10% after 6 months of skull merchant being bad. that killer now needs improvements/reverts in some cases because the killer is under-powered and not fun for killer player on average. The unfortunate reality that killer changes that positive changes often get pushed back and even ignored post-changes. A year from now, BVHR might look skull merchant stats and go like… yeah she's 59% kill-rate. that is pretty high. no need for any rework.

that how you get like freddy that is labelled as one worst killer in the game unchanged for 2 years not changed. he still has 61% kill-rate even though vast majority of killer player rate him as the worst killer in the game. I find deathslinger to also be unfun to play with his long wind-up but he is also not changed. so often, negative changes for killer persist too long.

These changes are just flat out lazy and it's obvious. Devs either don't want to or can't divert resources to properly looking at and fixing SM and so just want to nuke her so no one plays her. People mention Myers and Freddy, but those two have the excuse of being licensed characters. It could very well be part of the contracts for those two that any changes have to be approved by the license holders no matter how small.

They don't have that with SM though. They're just taking the easy way out, and by they I mean the people who call the shots at BHVR. It's the same reason a lot of players including myself call out the cash shop. It's obvious where resources are getting diverted to when an entire event tome can drop and not have rift fragments while we have 3 straight weeks of cosmetics dropped planned (and another million more on the way no doubt). It's obvious where the priorities lie and it's not with the players

We'll have to agree to disagree. They have went overboard because it's basically a killer playing ground now. I don't know anyone worth their weight that doesn't win a majority of their matches, easily. Balance is horrible.