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So much overblown negative reaction for skull merchant just give it some time
The changes havent even gone through yet and she would probably even still do fine. Maybe not 70% kill rate but in no way is this going to kill/gut her. I think she need more nerfs but they didnt want to overnerf her so well have to see what the kr is after
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Kill rate means absolutely nothing and does not show how strong a killer is. Case and point: Nurse and Blight have the lowest numbers, but are the strongest in the game.
Merchant only had a 70% because survivors kept going AFK or run into her on purpose to suicide on hook, which massively inflated the number higher than it should be.
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skull merchant should just be remade or removed, the killer is ugly (not in the horror sense), animations are a joke, killer power is boring for both survivors and killer
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Good news is that she's actually getting another rework, later. They're just temporarily gutting her so people will stop complaining about her until then, which frankly they could have just written in the patch notes.
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I dunno, it's pretty easy to tell they're just making her bad on purpose so people will stop playing her. Let's look at it this way, she was reworked so that her drones would functional as chase tool primarily. With the PTB changes in mind let's look at it this way.
You're in a chase with someone and at a loop, you put the drone down.
First scan: Does nothing
Second scan: Does nothing
Third scan: Attaches claw trap, injures the survivor if they're healthy and applies broken
Fourth scan: Applies -5% hindered
Of course this assumes you can get four consecutive scans off that survivor when the drones only have half their detection range now. That's PRETTY bad. Even clown has a -15% hinder, hell even Freddy has a more reliable hinder now. Even PINHEAD has more reliable hinder. It's not like you can use them for gen defense anymore, they're basically throwing skully's chase potential in the dumpster when that's all she's arguably got. Sad thing is people will still probably kill themselves on hook out of spite against her.
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Blight has a top 5 kill rate and nurse's is also above average according to nightlight.gg
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Whats the point of nerfing her, having a PTB with her being apart of it, make changes once the PTB is over to just further down the road do a complete rework anyways? is it to shut people up about her? mine aswell leave her be until then unless BHVR doesn't really plan on doing anything with her for a long long good while… Seems pointless.
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That's exactly what it is, It's pandering, the worst thing any dev team can do. The fact these change even made it into a PTB is actually insane.
Post edited by Shinkiro on10 -
Is it just me, or does this seem pretty awful towards the people that play and enjoy her?
I know, there would be an outcry if this happened to other killers.
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I can think of a few reasons, but probably the biggest: Right now their data on Skully is likely a mess with how frequently people give up against her. Is the problem her mechanics, or are the mechanics too strong? If you weaken the mechanics and survivors accept playing against her, okay, you just need to find the balance point between where she is now and the new version. If players still absolutely hate her, well then you need a massive rework.
It'll likely be a mix of the above two, but you need the data to tell you how much of a mix.
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But that's why I asked the question in this section of the forums. Balance needs to be about balance and not unjustifiable outcry because one side doesn't like something even though there is counter to it. I want to know what is the "thing" the devs use to adjust value and change mechanics around to better suit a perk or power to the gameplay. If it's just about the money BHVR why don't you do the honest thing and give the people who paid for SM and put in the time to P100 her there money back plus cells and shards.
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Even if you want to claim that people giving up inflates her numbers, that's still a huge issue and an indication of a problem.
Either the 70% is legitimate, and she's genuinely overperforming (so needs adjusting), or is inflated slightly by people who don't care for the kind of gameplay that she provides. The latter still requires adjusting. People giving up in large numbers is a huge warning sign about your game's health, and I don't think this just applies to skully, but the game was a whole right now.
Even if forever Freddy and og legion didn't have the same kill rates, the gameplay alone means they should at least try to change something about the character.
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From what I can tell 90% of the outrage comes from the way this was handled by the devs.
Like there was never a real aknowledgement that maybe her key design was already not really fun to play against or even as.
The problem that many survivor players just outright refuse to play against her and instakill themselves or just go afk was never aknowledged or adressed.
The low pickrate of her was never really aknowledged or adressed. Like according to statistics 1 out of every 230 matches is a skull merchant. That means you get on average 229 times another killer until you get a skull merchant. This also points at the fact that her design is just boring and unfun to play.
From what I can tell many people are just annoyed with the approach the devs are taking now.
Instead of actively trying to adress the problems, Experiment with new powers on the PTBs etc. , for many it feels like the Devs just threw their hands in the air, aknowledged that SM sucked and they have no idea currently how to fix her and therefor took 95% of her powers away in hopes that people stop playing her and all the crying stops. Then they promise a distant remake in the future that maybe eventually might even turn out better than the Freddy remake.....or maybe not.
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This change is a good thing for people who want to play her. I wouldn't want to hop in a game and immediately play a 3v1 because someone immediately suicides on hook. It doesn't feel good as either side to either stomp with no resistance or to just play a non game cuz you're letting people go cuz you would feel bad
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You say "overblown", I say completely justified. The devs' intention wasn't to balance Skull Merchant. They wanted to destroy her so that all the issues she has would be swept under the rug. Her rework is scheduled for the later half of 2025. That's about a year. So she will stay in a horrible spot for that long. Of course people will be unhappy about that.
This would have been acceptable, if they had made Skull Merchant their top priority to push the rework out as soon as possible but that doesn't seem to be the case.
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I'm surprised this isn't common sense.
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No the kill rate does not mean "nothing." In an asymmetrical game like this the only way to even tell which killers are strong or weak is how they actually perform in game. Nurse is just one of the hardest killers to really master but if you were too take those few players who have mastered her she would have by far the highest kill-rate in the game. Most killers are not nearly that hard to master though. In skull merchants case she is probably one of the easiest to play so that makes the nerfs even more justified (not saying Bhvr. handled it well and the nerfs may actually be overkill, we'll have to wait and see.)
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The problem is that the 70% kill rate is not some result of her being "strong" its simply survivors giving up on hook. When i play skull merchant now, generally well over half of my matches (i'd say a good 70-75%), someone literally just gives up IMMEDIATELY as soon as they see skull merchant. They drop their item, then go AFK. Giving up probably leads to a 4k most games, as its now only 3 survivors.
Now lets say i play 100 games as skull merchant.
In 50 of them, the survivors give up immediately and lead to a 4k.
In 30 of the matches, i get a draw, 2 kills
In 20 of the matches, i lose and get 1 kill right at the end
What are the results? Well i got 280 kills out of a possible 400. Which gives me a 70% kill rate. But in half the games the survivors gave up completely, now lets say we remove those matches where survivors give up. What are the results?
Out of a possible 200 kills, i got 80 kills. Which is a 40% kill rate.
You can see how massively these numbers are inflated simply due to survivors giving up. I'd guess skull merchant's actual kill rate is probably near 55-60% when you factor out survivors giving up. Maybe even less.
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She will without a doubt become a bottom 5 killer if the changes go through. 10% hinder should stay but haste goes. Raise the skill floor and not lower the skill ceiling to only as high as Danny Devito. Let alone 1 scan line and being able to be seen from beyond 16 meters is already a huge gut to her kit. Maybe they really want people to be able to play with their monitors turned off against SM.
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With the change to corrective action having synergy with hyperfocus+another survivor with those perks? I'm more convinced of this every day.
I already saw some people defend that combo because 'distortion nerf.'0 -
she actually had a 72%killrate excluding afk games suicide on hooks (meaning the first guys getting hook kills himself right away) dev left some stats on there discord also twins and hillbilly are right behind her but no i've faced her enough to know she that overturned even tough i've won a decent amount vs her she need a rework from ground up i also suspect the knight change recently is sleepted on and hes gonna go really high himself soon if ppl catch on of some of the obscenest stuff you can do with him now
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also for blight and nurse you're also misleading ppl by saying this because they take a lot of skill to master them that's why they don't have a "high" winrate on average skull merchant not so much there also free as the og's killers witch inflates there number even further
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Nightlight's numbers are irrelevant to the conversation.
The kill rates people quote from are those supplied from BHVR directly and do not coincide with those from nightlight.
Furthermore, the BHVR kill rates are very inaccurate because they do not account for people killing themselves on first hook or intentionally running at the killer/going afk as is the case with petty survivor players who refuse to play against Skull Merchant.4 -
Remember Mettle of Man, and Made for This? Remember how everyone screamed for the heavens that this should not reach the live game under any circumstance and that doing so would hurt the gameplay experience in the long run? Remember how there were people who literally said to give it a chance and give it some time before we jumped to those conclusions? Remember how everything we said would happen actually happened exactly how we predicted it?
This is one of those.8 -
I think it's the inevitable lower kill rate and higher skill ceiling that has people upset tbh. So this reaction is to be expected and actually understandable. She will require more effort to get the same results.
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nightlight and BHVR stats are a heck of a lot better than anecdotal "well I figure" arguments when it comes to directly discussing kill rates. I have my own problems with the site but it's better than anecdote and it's certainly better than nothing
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It solved nothing. People are still going to complain because of how they gutted her. It was a bad move on BHVRS part. A few small nerfs…sure…or leave her until they rework her. Not destroy her……
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BHVR just made Skull Merchant the second Freddy.
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They did state the current kill rate was 72% in the pre ptb dev thing on discord, and even accounting for first hook suicides it was around 68-69%
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That's the thing... they DID change her. They've changed a ton to mitigate the issues about her. People still bring up things that are now obsolete when complaining about her. You'll see people constantly talk about the hour long games where skull merchant would 3 gen for example. Not only is that iteration of skull merchant not in the game, but 3 genning itself has been changed.
They can change her power to be ANYTHING and you'll still have a slew of ppl who will ruin the match ASAP and curse people for playing her.
Saw this earlier and the first game showed an Ace who refused to play after getting downed from JUST M1 gameplay. The power itself had nothing to do with it.
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I don't think the reaction was overblown. Playing her in the PTB earlier today was absolutely miserable, she basically has nothing left.
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A spook n'jukes video on any subject will automatically make me take the opposite side. Insufferable self righteous tool. If I found out I shared an opinion with him on anything I would have to rethink my viewpoint
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These changes do not intend to balance her, but to make her so easy to play against that nobody will give up against her anymore. While this is a noble idea, the excecution is horrible.
BHVR. This is not how problems should be tackled persiod. No matter the reputation of the character.
DO NOT let all these changes go to live.
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I gave it time
It sucks
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I think he has the viewpoint that breathing oxygen is good. Maybe something for you to work on.
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Id rather use their data then youre own made up stats. There is a undeniably a portion of games that are won to survivors giving up but her kit gave too many buffs and debuffs for just dropping a drone at a tile. The amount of players who also dont know when or how these buff are applied is also a massive design problem.
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killrates are innacurate to determine strength across all mmr (which is where the 70% skully comes from). Nurse has consistently had the lowest KR in the game because most players are trash at her.
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Overblown? Hardly.
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70% accross all mmr is insanely problematic. Here kit was also too free. Every other killer you can dodge power or counterplay it in some way. Her most meaningful counterplay of hacking drones could be too easily mitigated by taking 1 second to recall and place it back down
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So you are going to believe that skull merchant is the most powerful killer to ever exist in the history of a dead by daylight. Even surpassing nurse, and i don't just mean nurse now, but nurse with 5 blinks?
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thats not even close to what im getting at. Nurse is incredibly punishing for missing her power. There is no missing your power as skull merchant.
edit: i think the mod accidently removed a portion of what i said when he edited it
Post edited by CursedPerson on0 -
You can only believe 1 of 2 things about the data:
- The data is not accurate and does not show a proper representation of what is actually happening because it is heavily biased due to things like:
- A killer being really hard to play (like nurse) for the average player
- Survivors killing themselves on hook and giving up
- Survivors not knowing how to counter a killer properly (sadako)
- Killers afking and farming in games lowering the killers win rate (doctor)
- The data is accurate, and skull merchant is the best killer in dead by daylight history, and again, more OP than 5 blink nurse.
You can't have your cake and eat it too here.
1 - The data is not accurate and does not show a proper representation of what is actually happening because it is heavily biased due to things like:
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B and D are data outliers and would be bias, A and C are normal gameplay but are not bias. Again with the disingenuousness. The goal he is to get rid of the most annoying and unforgiving aspects that effect a large portion of the player base. You're using the fallacy that win rate = the best killer in the game but thats not what this discussion is about. You are purposely moving the goalposts here.
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We don't disagree on that, but the point is that this killer is simply not that good currently, she is just annoying. You don't nerf things because they are annoying, you rework them. What she needs is buffs in other areas to deal with this problem.
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I think its perfectly fine to remove or nerf the most frustrating aspects of any game. You dont keep a healthy playerbase by making your players play against one of the most unfun things in the game. Its part of what hass lead to the rampant hook suicide and dc problem. Players are showing they will leave the game and stop playing so it does need to be removed in order for them to keep their playerbase. But the other aspect theres no indication for her haste and other status effects. She is too much of casual player stomper which makes her bad design. This is important to address so most of the playerbase can be in a better spot.
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That's cherry-picking.
There were also many adjustments on the ptb that did NOT got live, due to the negative feedback. E.g. Pyramidheads range attack applying torment, that was scrapped after PTB feedback. Or quite recently, the whole Twins rework being rolled back after PTB outcry.If it's really problematic, things do not go live, there are plenty of examples for that, at least in recent PTBs. About your examples, mettle was insane, thats for sure. But thats also from another time, when there were many other OP things still existing in the game (instant health states with syringe/styptic, Mori after firdst hook). And Mft, the devs even communicated that they know it might prove an issue and claimed to have a backup plan for it. Which is a perfectly reasonable approach, they just took to long to finally change it, imo. Also, initial Mft was strong, but not as broken as Mettle or other things that did not see live.
So pls, wait until changes hit live to complain about busted things and devs not listening.
Edit:
In b4 "But only killer changes get scrapped, survivor changes always get through":
When Lucky Break was changed to hide scratch marks besides pools of blood, the duration was not changed (180s) in PTB, so killer mains complained about it being too strong. So the duration was cut to just 45s for live. Sadly too much of a nerf between PTB and live, but the devs listened and adjusted here.0 -
That's literally the opposite of what's going on now. The devs are not introducing a new broken thing into the game, they are nerfing something problematic to make it more healthy. For a comparison, Skull Merchant shouldn't have been released with such a problematic power just as Mettle of Man and Made for This shouldn't have reached the live servers overpowered as they were in PTB. People complaining about her being nerfed now despite how problematic she is are closer to the few people who wanted Mettle of Man to stay as it originally was and insisted it was "balanced" just because of the aura reveal, or who complained about Made for This' nerf. It's something that needs to be done for now in order to fix a problem within the game.
And seriously, many killers and perks that were nerfed got adjustments before the changes reached the live servers. When the Pig got nerfed during the introduction of Endgame Colapse, her Reverse Bear Trap's timer would stop when inside the killer's TR. That changed was reversed after a backlash, making the nerf less extreme. After her last base-kit nerf, Spirit was intended to leave small puffs of dust where she passed while phasing, and the devs gave up on the idea, making her nerf less extreme to how it was originally intended. Eruption (a perk that was overpowered and problematic for some time) was also going to be completely gutted when it got nerfed, as the 10% regression would be from the gen's current progress and not total progress. That got reversed, and the perk still remained somewhat useful, at least until the 3-gen solution got implemented (Eruption really fell behind after that). Something being nerfed doesn't mean it will go live exactly as it is on the PTB even if it underperforms.
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