Skull Merchant set a bad precedent

To be fair, its very much depending on context. Should the devs cave into every brat's whim the game is pretty much going to die on its own. What we know about merchant is that she had a "high kill rate" and that there were many DCs against her. Why? Was it because she op? Was it because people held a grudge? That first one we'd agree Bhvr should do something, that second we'd argue ignore them cause then your practically enabling and telling the children "if we do this then we can nerf anything we want". There needs to be a balance.

According to SM players, everyone was DC'ing as soon as they saw it was SM.

Twins are not exactly well-liked. It could have been a grudge there too.

You are treating it like there's some coordinated effort from players to make sure SM is unplayable. Most people don't care that much.

As someone who was playing SM, they were running to the hook and pointing.

In my experience, even the Doctor can turn survivors into bots.

Let me ask you what they didn't like about my build?

It was like a joke. The survivors were smart enough to know that cabinets save you from STATIC BLAST. However, they were unlucky enough that one was taken out of the Locker, and his neighbor got hit by Iron Maiden. These were the two easiest hooks. Who in their right mind takes Iron Maiden instead of the slowdown meta? Then there was another chase with a third hook. During my fourth chase, all the survivors turned into bots. The last one was the one who got hit and hides behind a match with perks.

This is taking into account that I was inclined to play hooks at the time, and did not take the slug build.

The North Remembers. November 2017.

I seem to remember that initially if Freddy played slug. The survivor had to wake up first and only then start heal the survivor. Perhaps the survivors received psychological trauma from this and remembered it to Freddy. But I don't remember if it was on PTB or release.

You know, I find it a bit ironic that Freddy could become a proto slugger. I personally used it to defend 3 generators for 30 minutes in 2022, when Skull Merchant was not yet in the project.

I loved it, but now it physically hurts me to play it.

The data tells you something is wrong with SM because even other hated Killers aren't that high.

It's something unique to her. Pinhead isn't like that, Nurse isn't, Knight isn't, etc etc

That was on release, yes. But the slugging alone shouldn't have been enough to cause such distress. Waking someone up takes, like, 3 seconds? Shouldn't be impossible to deal with.

Because the other hated killers didn't have a problematic release.

Well, Nurse was always OP, but it was a vastly different game back then. None of those have a "Chess Merchant" of their own (though that had more to do with the build, rather than the killer power, but that is beside the point).

That makes the data for her different than others, but still doesn't tell you everything.

It did feel like a bait and switch at the time, and her look is definitely…uh, not my cup of tea. All of that is subjective though.

Her lore, on release not sure how it is now, did suck. It was objectively poorly written. Her power was…yeah, I think we all know what a master-class disaster that was.

What do you propose to do if the Killer is still vehemently hated after another rework? You can't leave her alone if she's a consistent outlier in DC's and suicides.

I am aware, he didn't know, I even pointed that out.

I was mistaken, my bad, this has been seven years now, forgive me.

Knight was considered very problematic on release due to his Guards and his being able to hold games hostage.

Looks like he's checking gens for progress while hitting the power as soon as it comes out of CD rather than trying to put drones at gens. Without lethal, this is basically the only way you're gonna spot survivors on a map like this early game.

This is abit older, but still gives an idea of what survivors were doing to dodge the penalty. A guy tried to die, got saved and followed the killer.

More in line with Legion, honestly.

Not actually OP, just really unfun and bad design.

Is SM not also a victim then, by your standard?

Her father dies and it forces her into this ruthless lifestyle. It's a different way, but she's still a victim of circumstance.

So then, what's the solution? Just leave her with a 70% KR and massive community hatred with no SM being able to finish a game? That's what leaving her alone would do.

I can think of a few other killers who fit this description.

While you're mostly correct, I do think Chucky and Dracula show that BHVR is willing to deviate a bit from the standard formula. Chucky bringing in 3rd person and Dracula with his shapeshifting between multiple forms opens a lot of doors.

Houndmaster even incorporated 3rd person slightly with her redirect function.

I just hope future designs use it in more creative ways. If Twins was made today, 100% Victor would probably be third person

True, but I'm talking burrowing, dynamic map destruction from some Killers, better effects, more verticality etc etc

Denying that SM was used the most to troll is silly. We all know her history, how people picked her not to win, but to make others miserable by trapping them in a game.

If we don't really change her, but just give her number tweaks, that isn't going to make the SM mains happy. Her issues run deeper than what number changes can provide, she wouldn't be viable. It would also do nothing to improve their ability to play the game.

We're going to have to just disagree on that.