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The skull merchant situation.
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Idk what twitch chat this is from but this was posted on Reddit today so the dumpstering of Skull Merchant seems to be intentional.
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it is how bvhr handles survivor d/c and killer complaints.
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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?
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Again, this is really #########, like unbelievably ######### and for a moment I would like anyone reading this to disregard the fact that it is skull merchant and understand this
You invest a lot of blood points into a character, a lot of time invested to level her up, and the developers of the game gut her, absolutely kill her with no sense of balance and rather break her legs. Don’t worry! They will rework her, they said so!in 1-2 years, teehee,
Im also not gonna pretend that the developers are going to see the significantly reduced kill rates and completely throw away the rework, they have done it before with legion twice so my hopes are absolutely abysmally low
At this rate, the more I learn, the more I just want her kill switched and refunded my auric cells and blood points, im already picking up a new main (Doctor is fun ngl) I would like a refund for all my wasted blood points at the very least!1 -
Yeah I think it sets an extremely bad precedent that BHVR is okay completely dumpstering killers until they feel like working on them again.
Like for BHVR this is just one killer out of a few dozen so they don't care but for the players this is their main that got trashed until further notice and now they have to find a new main. Personally I think BHVR doing this is extremely tone deaf but it's probably not gonna change anytime soon.
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People sure do love to spout they are a "majority" with absolutely zero proof of it. People bothering to post on forums are already a minority in any game. A responsible dev wouldn't maliciously nerf something into oblivion to appease whiners, especially without a concrete plan to work on and detailed updates for users, but here we are. SM is a low pick killer, you will barely ever see her. Ive gone against her twice in 800 hours of survivor gameplay.
The terrible disservice that's being done is the overly malicious act being done to people who enjoy playing her to appease the worst of the playerbase. There won't be a rework worth anything, BHVR have proven their track record here, this is her state now, and they should be offering refunds of all in-game and auric cell currency people have spent on her.
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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.
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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.
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Oh yeah, we're agreed there. "We don't know what to do so we're just soft killing Skull Merchant until we address her sometime in 2026 or whatever" is not a professional or fair solution. I'd accept it if they had a date for a rework lined up and it was in the near future, but if they did, they would have gladly announced it, and we already know they have a backlog of higher priority updates already - they've already shared their roadmap and this is as far as Skull Merchant went on it. So she could be left in this gutted state for a while. I guess I'm just saying that I understand why they're flailing. The usual solution didn't fix her.
Though they fumbled this one pretty bad. A lack of official-official transparency with some seemingly unsanctioned official transparency that confirmed what everyone suspected but they resolutely don't want to say out loud is… not the best look.
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I care.
I am here for Freddy. I have been here for the past five years because of Freddy.
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I think there is still hope for him. After five years I'm allowing myself to have some hope.
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And what is your opinion about this? Do you support it?
Post edited by radiantHero23 on0 -
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.
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It's a live-service pvp game. If they just never made balance changes, nobody would be having fun.
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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.
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This isnt a balance change and saying over and over isn't going to make it one. Yes I know it's a live service game but that shouldn't be used as a excuse. Just because it's live service game doesn't give the devs the right to completely gut a character and let that character sit in the trash for two years before they decide they now have time to fix them. As I said these nerfs have nothing to do with balance, the underline goal is to kill SM for its players so they don't want to play her anymore.
I'm for one will not allow the devs to sit behind the "live service game" shield. These devs should be called out for their bad practices and terrible decision making. They need to get their priorities straight, stop worrying about releasing new killers who powers are just copies of other killers powers(Lich and Dark Lord), and actually focus on the already promised reworks and health of the game for both sides.
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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.
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I think Spirit's nerfs were worse. She was a jump scare killer that was so silent that she could grab people off of generators… and BHVR gave her directional phasing audio, and later buffed this audio so it's no longer affected by audio occlusion. She was also heavily affected by the map reworks, because the increased line of sight breakers (combined with audio occlusion), made it much more difficult to hear survivors while phasing.
The problem is this game has fake tier lists, based on less than 0.0001% of the players, where Spirit is ranked really high, so people pretended the nerfs weren't impactful. But remember there used to be floods of complaints about Spirit on these forums every week, where she was constantly being complained about… and those complaints are mostly gone now. Obviously, the nerfs are much bigger than people are admitting.
The same applies to Nurse and Blight, which also caused constant complaints on these forums…. but notice those have mostly gone too.
BHVR absolutely has done the "let's nerf a killer over and over until most of the complaints stop" thing before.
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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
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I think my counter to this is that the nerfs in all of those cases were warranted. Those were all the strongest, hardest to counter, and, with MMR caveats for Nurse, the most commonly encountered killers once you factored out the killers that everyone has automatically unlocked. (Yes, Spirit fell off after her first nerf and people still acted like she was S-tier in a time where it was just the Nurse and Blight show, but she was S-tier once and Nurse and Blight remained top dog much longer than that.) The purpose of those nerfs was to kick those characters back to regular killer strength and pickrate - perhaps with the exception of Nurse, who's always existed in an area outside of DBD's game design and it feels like they were trying to make her more annoying to play than anything else. So, closer to what happened here.
Skull Merchant wasn't that strong, or common to face. Everyone just hated her, and not entirely rationally. She was nowhere near meta and they gutted her on the same level they gutted the meta killers, so instead of having an average or situational killer left over, you have a powerless one.
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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.
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Honestly………. I don’t blame them. I don’t like going against legion. Mend simulator is boring, but that just me. We all have killers we don’t wanna face. I stick it out though for the terror radius music lol
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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.
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Agree to disagree
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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.
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I agree with you on that. I dont want to see another Freddy happen, therefore im against these changes unless a rework gets confirmed for a specific time in the near future.
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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
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"Nerfed to the ground"? No, that's actually survivors you are talking about. If you honestly think it's balanced for a killer to get a haste like she got.
If you want to call it hate train. I have no remorse for all the SMs that slugged a team and then humped them on the floor. Knowing she was overpowered and unfun to verse.
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Only the Skull Merchants that slug and bm on ground right? Thats many players in general. Players in this game are horrible to each other in general. Survivors have received a number of nerf over the years because the game was basicly a survivor playing ground back in the days.
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Skull Merchant currently is the top killer at average MMR, which is why her kill rate is so high, and why she gets the most complaints. She has the highest kill rate, even when BHVR removes games with DCs. That is the tier list that matters. The tier list that affects the majority of the players.
Fake tier lists, based off of 6,000+ hour comp players, don't affect the majority of the games. In the majority of the games, people aren't playing against 6,000+ hour comp players, that can massively overperform on a killer. Instead, they are facing other average players, which currently are overperforming with Skull Merchant.
And again, we know that Nurse, Blight, and Spirit got massive nerfs, because they went from "non-stop complaints on the forums", to "barely has any complaints on the forums". It takes A LOT of nerfs to do this.
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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.
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If theae nerfs go through then I guess the game will have another Nurse player. Ot several. If any killer can be nerfed because they're hated then might as well only play the strongest meta s tier killers till I get bored and move on.
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Oh my god this is so dumb. What were they thinking?
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She wasn’t remotely as fast as clown. You must think he is OP too.
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Depends on what the loadout is.
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shes trash. I want refunds on her skin. her kit doesnt make any sense now. just feels like clunk. M1 lady with a claw
Maybe actually have a kit that rewards skill?
Maybe remove the stealth?
Shes still just as annoying to play against but now even worse to play AS
Shes a complete failure on BHVR's end for development and balancing. She needs a complete rework and possible re imagining of the kit
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BHVR's balancing team is just all over the place. They nerf Skull Merchant simply because people don't like to play against her, even though she is kinda of a weak killer, and then buff Dredge, which is already a really strong killer and don't even touch Artist since her release, even though she is one of the strongest killers in the game.
Not saying that they should nerf Artist and Dredge, but they leaving them so much stronger than SM while nerfing her to the ground makes no sense. It is like if League of Legends devs decided to nerf Teemo just because people don't like playing against him.
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