Skull Merchant set a bad precedent

Best thing you can do is vote with your wallet. For the first time since twins (due to the massive buggy release) i did not purchase the new killer with money and instead used shards. And i will not be spending any money until SM is put back into a playable state.

If for some reason people still aren't convinced, we'll have to see what happens to plague and pinhead getting hit with nerfs whenever their update comes around

She was playable, but unpleasant. However, they chose to killswitch her in order to fix all of her bugs in one fell swoop, which was largely successful.

SM got changed to be less horrid to play against. Like I said originally, that's half on BHVR and half on SM players. Yes, she never should have launched in the state she did, even after PTB feedback. However, even after her first few changes, people still continued to abuse and exploit her kit to make other people as miserable as possible.

She's (hopefully) going to get what she actually needs. A complete ground-up re-design.

Did you mean to respond to me? I never mentioned anything about slugging, camping or tunneling.

"you obviously"

You know what they say about assuming.

Actually I was referring to her ability to hold gens, even after her nerfs. Also her ability to just prolong games and make them miserable, even if she ultimately lost.

I don't mind being asked to clarify my points.

The fact that you have to disable the Drones to work on gens. It's not like you can just crouch away when SM shows up. That Drone needs to be gone or you're gonna get scanned when she comes back.

The fact that Drones made any and all gen regression stronger due to their mandatory time sink to do gens.

The fact that Drones could just be instantly replaced when patrolling with zero cooldown.

The fact that it's all a lot of players would do, simply because they could. Even in scenario's where they could win by killing Survivors, they'd choose to just keep stalling.

Who'd be better?

Hag? Not likely.

Plague? Maybe? Puke doesn't really do anything once your injured, unlike SM's Haste + Hindered. It also doesn't create AoE denials.

Singu? Again, maybe? His BioPods get disabled easy though, but being Slipstreamed is more impactful than being Infected against Plague.

Has BHVR ever been good at balancing?

Deserved depends on who you ask. I think the biggest issue with double scanline Skull Merchant was that she destroyed newer players and even average players, but was actually kind of mediocre at higher levels. Because of how bloated and frankly confusing her power was, and to an extent still is, most players would die without even understanding what happened. Meanwhile, players that were familiar with her would DC or give up without even trying and refuse to even learn the counterplay. It's pretty telling that people would still complain about how she could expose them, a full year after the expose was removed.

Most SM's were already going to show up to the gen as part of their patrol. They don't get slowed down, they'll just pass near the gen and drop a drone on it while they chase people off.

That minigame is also not as easy on Console.

No, I didn't touch SM after I learned what she was. I did have the unfortunate pleasure to play against her though. If most players find something problematic why shouldn't we fix it? If SM is killing normal players at a 70% KR, but high level players at a 50% KR, that SHOULD be a sign that there's something hugely wrong.

What you actually found with SM was that it was higher level players that just went next. She was completely beatable, but she was extremely tedious to go against and a lot of those players don't like that part of the game, which is fair.

Fair points, but I still think her issues weren't with 3 genning and that they should have compromised between the current version and the previous one instead of completely gutting her. They should have looked into why average players couldn't deal with her and fixed those things one by one, the real problem was and still is the unintuitiveness of her power and how little it teaches you as you play against her.

They were on the right track with making her more easy to understand when they made the scanlines white when you can't be scanned. But there was still no way for beginners to know how stealth drones worked. Her radar isn't explained or hinted at either, so I still find people crouching in a corner when they're claw trapped, because the game never once indicates to the survivors that I can see them on the radar, or that I even have a radar. Her getting random haste across the map was lame, so I'll admit I like the new way she gets haste now more. But why not have a special walk animation when she's hasted so survivors can know that she even has haste in the first place instead of just getting downed when they otherwise would have made a pallet or window?

Tying this into the knotted rope nerf, I think sometimes BHVR read into stats the wrong way. They found that players using knotted rope with certain combos have a high killrate, but who exactly would run that kind of combo in the first place? Players that are already experienced enough to understand that said combo is powerful, or follow the meta outside of the game and heard it from some high skill content creator, which probably means they're a better player than the average because they're less casual. Then they drive up the killrate of the addon, while average players just put on some random addons. If they were going to nerf it, at least they could have nerfed it to like 5-8% instead of completely neutering it, or better yet buffed her weak addons.

If most players find something problematic why shouldn't we fix it?

Because they didn't even try, and that is the point.

Many players were so blinded by hatred for the original iteration of the character, which no longer existed, that they would DC or give up immediately, when it was absolutely not needed. If you don't stick around, then you'll never understand the fact that the character no longer causes any actual problems for the game.

This is people refusing to learn how to play against something, and it wasn't the first time it happened. Freddy's release is another example. And both got the character nerfed, when neither character needed the nerfs. Refusing to learn how to play against a character that is not problematic is something that should never be rewarded.

The previous iteration of Skull Merchant was perfectly fine, and in fact she wasn't hard to play against at all. I can even share some screenshots to prove it. Games where people decided to stick around and actually play the game.

I'm not convinced the outcry was in good faith

I'm positive it wasn't.

It essentially feels like a 'minimise complaints solve issue later' method of balancing and while I don't think it'll be done too often I do agree it's a worrying precedent because we don't know how long these deemed problematic things will stay the way they are

My bad, I forgot that 25 million Survivors have a secret society where they conspire to take down all Killer players.

They changed it fast and then left it. They are really good at breaking things, not so good at making them better.

But here is the thing, my friend, PTB Twins is not equivalent to previous Skull Merchant. When it comes to PTB Twins, the problem is actually real. Just like Old Legion, a terribly designed killer that we both remember all too well. In those scenarios the problem is actually there, which can be seen during regular gameplay.

The previous iteration of Skull Merchant is more similar to OG Freddy, where the problem doesn't exist it. The outrage is not caused by an actual issue that exists in the game, it is done in bad faith. It is the consequence of some players refusing to adapt to something that isn't a problem in the first place. It is a type of behavior that should never be rewarded, though unfortunately it was rewarded twice.

You cannot get used to something that is problematic. But you can get used to something that isn't.