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Skull Merchant set a bad precedent
Comments
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As I said in my last post, we going to have to agree to disagree and move on. Im not going to waste any more time of my life arguing with someone like you. What they did to SM was wrong and bad game design no matter what the reasoning is and we never going to see eye to eye on that.
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As a company, I don't think you'd last very long if you sold a product, then severely gutted the proformance of that product afterwards with the sole intention of detering people from using said product and instead buying one of their OTHER products. The nerfs that were done in the past to various perks/addons/ect were all done for the sake of balance, not to try to lower it's usage to 0.
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Perhaps not, but I've seen that argument made for whenever BHVR nerfs something in their first balance patch after release, which is coincidentally usually when they start hyping up a new chapter.
Where did they say they wanted SM's pick rate to be zero?
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You understand they can't openly say those words because it would be grounds for a lawsuit, correct? There's a massive difference between small adjustment for balance sake and what they did recently which would be better defined as sabotaging a product that was already sold.
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Thing is - was this organic? Because I don't think there's anything particularly annoying about SM that isn't more true of other killers.
Or was it a forced meme that got out of hand?
Regardless, it does indeed set a crap precedent. Because now people know that they have the power to force BHVR to completely trash killers at will by simply killing themselves.
I mean - I'm a Hag and Artist main. Two killers that people don't enjoy facing. Would it be fair to completely gut these killers?
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It's really amazing how you thought people would be using something that's plagued with bugs and actively getting tweaked still. Alot of us are waiting for them to figure stuff out before wasting time on her IF not shards or money.
Alot of people tried her when she released, saw a buggy mess and took a step back.
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You said the people complaining about her don't play her. I said the people complaining have plenty of reason not to play her after their initial assessment. I included a screenshot to show that I did infact play her.
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You said... "It's really amazing how I've gone against maybe 3 Houndmasters in the last 50 hours of gameplay yet hundreds of people who have never even used her..."
"Also I never said NO ONE plays her "
So yes, you claimed the people complaining never used her, before taking a hit at the addon usage itself. Please don't try to gaslight me when I can easily read your initial post, lol.
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So you're just basing it off of conjecture?
Like you said, could be grounds for a lawsuit, probably need more evidence to say they specifically wanted to make sure nobody played her.
What's more likely is that BHVR say a super high KR, likely super high DC rate and a majorly unhappy community, even after changes, and decided to nerf her. They overestimated her power level, but have decided to just let her be in hopes of redesigning hee, hopefully. That part is probably wishful thinking.
I think it's less likely they did it on purpose, more likely they did it on accident.
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Do Hag and Artist have a 70% KR, likely fueled by suicides and a super high DC rate?
Probably not.
I don't think it's hard to see a HUGE difference in community perception between the 2nd most hated Killer and SM
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This has been a crazy talk, lol. I can show you why a the 70% is as it is... because of survivor hissy fits. I can show you clips of survivor behavior skewing stats and you acknowledged that THAT had 0 to do with the killer performance that match. So we can agree that it wasn't due to a balance issue rather than popularity. People were adding "I hate her lore and the way she walks" to reasons they hate her, lol.
You can look at this, look at a reduction of effectiveness of over 50% and then honestly tell me it was an attempt at balance rather than to appease people who hated her mere presence in the game and would often ask the character to be deleted entirely? Are you claiming the nerfs put her in a balanced state NOW? That the devs plans for future changes arnt needed? The only reason the complaints about her existing stopped is because her pickrate is abysmal.
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And I'm sure I can find clips of SM holding people in games post-nerf.
That wasn't my point, my point was that BHVR has never done a great job at looking at the context of a stat line. They often seem to look at the data how it is presented.
I think, much like Old Legion, there IS no way to balance her in her current form. She will either always be too weak, which isn't good for people who want to play her, too strong which allowed her to hold people hostage or too unpleasant to face.
Actually, it IS rather like Old Legion. A Killer hated like no other before, who's intensely poor design allowed horrible mechanics to take root that nobody enjoyed playing against. Legion got demolished three months after he released and waited six months for a tiny balance adjustment then over three years for a rework that made him okay, all the while he sat at the bottom of the barrel of Killers.
This exact scenario has happened before, and I had kind of forgotten.
I think they did genuinely mean to change her and try to balance her out. I think they ignored the context of the data, because it was likely more convenient, and nerfed her. I do not think she is balanced, I do not think she can be balanced in her current form. More than that, I do not think she will ever be fun to play against in her current form. I hope, I stress that word, that BHVR does a ground-up rework and scraps the stationary Gen Watchers for something else, maybe Hunter Drones or something, idk.
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Even if SM nerfs were justified (which were not) her playstyle was enabled by Call of Brine, Overcharge, and Eruption. So BHVR could either nerf those perks, or nerf SM to solve the "problem".
So they nerfed SM, the slowdown perks that she used, and the basekit gen kicking mechanic.
Imagine being SM and going to the killer monthly meeting to explain that you everyone nerfed.
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her playstyle was enabled by Call of Brine, Overcharge, and Eruption.
Yeah, this is something I have noticed recently as I tried to learn everything I could about the original Skull Merchant.
People seem to overlook the impact this meta had and the fact that it was probably the main culprit behind the "Chess Merchant".
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Oh yeah…gen kicking meta I believe was one of the driving forces why Chess Merchant became a thing. It's also why Knight was kinda in the same camp as well. These two killers came out near the peak of that meta I believe.
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You don't make changes to something followed by "we'll fix this later" if your changes were meant to make things balances.
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I mean, you can, provided the changes come in a timely manner.
They did it with Nurse. They said, "Hey, yeah, so Nurse is super bugged right now and instead of letting you play her, we're actually just gonna killswitch her until we fix those bugs"
The OG Legion nerfs. He was a weak Killer prior to those nerfs, he was just extremely bad design.
Twins nerf in 4.7 with promise of rework that never turned out.
I'm sure there are more, but those are what I remember. This isn't a new phenomena
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Exactly.
It was a meta that caused problems and was allowed to exist for far too long. Things would have been different if that meta in particular had never existed.
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The nurse thing can be tossed from the conversation entirely. That was killswitching bugged content. That's WAY different than what we're talking about.
Your twins example is basically going AGAINST your point. If BHVR had a pattern of speedy turnaround for their "fixes" they'd have earned more patience and goodwill with the community to these things. They don't though... Their track record is terrible.
As for the Legion example... Please point out a patch that was anywhere NEAR what happened with SM. I'm use to seeing a nerf here or there, SM got an execution. Legit though, I wanna see what patch you're referring to that nerfed Legion.
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Well I think Pulsar is agreeing they don't have a speedy record and saying it would acceptable if they did (but they don't)
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No. But what if they did?
What if some streamer decided to start a meme where people just mass DC and suicide against Artist?
Would that justify gutting Artist in expectation of some nebulous 'we'll fix her in a few years haha just don't play her for a while' statement?
Because if not, how was it justified for SM?
Freddy nerfing. Which is what's going to happen with SM, I'm almost completely sure. 'We'll rework down the line', getting pushed back and finally forgotten.
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Acceptable... still no. It would just be easier to bare knowing that an execution of something was short term. The "fix" that the SM nerfs aimed at was effectively deleting her from the pickrate rather than trying to balance anything. They repeated this trick with the Houndmaster addon knowing no one will bother using the addon anymore. That's what Pulsar and myself are in disagreement on.
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That's my entire point, BHVR is bad at moving at any pace resembling speed.
IIrc, the Legion patch was 2.7.0
That would've been the patch that got rid of the horrible Legion moonwalking/Frank's Mixtape playstyle that was so hated. We all knew that the Legion was a pretty bad Killer, but that playstyle allowed them to make sure one or two people died, no matter what. Horrible stuff that removed any and all skill expression from Survivors. I remember people DC'ing upon seeing that it was Legion way back when.
That nerf pushed him to the bottom of the barrel with Trapper (and old Freddy and Bubster) for the next few years. He got "executed", just like SM. There are no Dev comments from back then that I can find though.
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Yes, that is what I am saying.
The idea is fine. Responding to mass outcry and revisiting is a good idea. Doing half of that and waiting three years for the other half isn't.
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So putting aside the absurd nature of the base for your argument, it would be appropriate to respond to people's concerns.
Streamers don't have enough influence to tell, say, 25 million players what to do.
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Hardly absurd. Let's say someone with a massive platform like Hens or Ayrun decided to do this. It always propagates from there.
But address the hypothetical rather than deflecting. Assume that a meme started where people decided that they didn't like playing against Artist. Forget the specifics. A case where a killer that isn't OP (Artist) became disliked for some reason.
Should Artist be given the same treatment as SM?
I'm all for making common sense changes to balance an obviously broken killer, but this wasn't that. This was burning a killer to the ground rather than a few small changes to reign them in, with the express purpose of people not playing that killer - likely for multiple years, possibly indefinitely.
This is why the SM gutting is so frustrating.
It's not just Mandy gloating about it on a stream or that it was clearly done in a cynical, meanspirited way that goes beyond a simple overreaction.
It's not that BHVR had their arms twisted by a manipulative and petty portion of the playerbase, setting the precedent that all survivors need to do to get a killer nerfed is creating a meme.
It's that SM mains know, fairly conclusively that 'next year' will turn into 'it's on our radar but no changes are expected at this time', to 'we'll revisit it in 2028'. It's all but a certainty because that's BHVR's track record.
See also: Freddy rework.
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Throughout this thread, you keep quoting statistics and then not seeming to understanding how the devs came by those numbers.
SM (before the recent nerfs) had a 71% official kill rate. That kill rate doesn't include any game with a disconnect already.
They even went the extra step before the nerfs to give us extra data that if you threw out games with a disconnect and any game where a survivor died on first hook (so, gave up, was left hanging, etc) she still had a 68% kill rate. Games where anyone died on their first hook only made up 3%.
That's insane, and also means that "giving up" isn't including her numbers enough to claim she was in a good place there.
SM had 3 major problems:
- Devs saying she is a statistical outlier for a high kill rate.
- Killers saying she felt weak.
- Survivors saying she sucked to go against.
While I still say the recent changes weren't handled well by the devs, the only reasonable answer to solve all of these problems is to rework her. Which is the stated goal of the devs as well.
I'm not entirely sure why the devs decided to use the "break glass" response per se, but no one was saying she was in a good place across the board either.
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The 2.7.0 patch is when he was made into a 115 killer. Some addons were nerfed, some buffed. The moonwalking thing was obviously not intended. This whole thing would be a side grade essentially rather than a full on sledge hammer nerf like SM got. There wasn't anything added that tried to balance out what she was losing.
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And when the rework does come around, it could end up in a Twins situation where the quality of changes didn't justify how long it took for them to drop on a ptb only to get a few minor qol stuff since the ptb changes were just not thought out at all.
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You must've missed the 2 videos that showed examples of players instantly giving up that STILL would've been included in dragging up her killrate.
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I see a lot of survivors go AFK nowadays rather than suicide, especially when they get rescued when trying.
Regardless, that's neither here nor there.
Let's say SM was prenerf Blight levels of OP.
Why not simply adjust her kit a bit, rather than setting out to deliberately make her all but unplayable? That's the issue - because it sets the precedent that rather than being tweaked, killers that are too powerful could simply be gutted and left to languish for…Freddy years before getting a rework.
Maybe.
If the devs are in a good mood and a SM player doesn't annoy Mandy on Twitter.
Yeah I'm still cross about that. Especially since the QOL changes made to Twins seem to be gradually getting rolled back too.
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To be fair, my friend, it wasn't hard to influence the stats.
Games where people try to suicide on hook but fail because someone else saves them, people who just keep pointing at the hook, going AFK. Not to mention, the moment one survivor is out prematurely the others are basically doomed.
We usually agree on most things here, but SM I believe was perfectly fine before the recent nerfs.
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The hypothetical is ridiculous because it hasn't ever happened before. There is no basis for a mass case of a "meme" getting out of hand and causing a Killer to be gutted.
Also, as for your CC comment, maybe Hens or Ayrun could influence a sizable portion of the NA and Europe playerbase, MAYBE. Asian players play an entirely different game and I know DBD has a huge Spanish-speaking community as well. At MOST, Hens and Ayrun could maybe convince 20% of that playerbase to do something. How in the hell could they make all Survivor players throw for a "meme"
I hate to break it to you, but Artist is already disliked and has been since she released. She's another, "Place power at loop, Survivor must leave loop or die" Killer. The reason the hatred isn't as strong is two-fold. For one, she wasn't used to hold people hostage. For two, even if she plays in that "boring" way of placing a Bird at a loop immediately, the Survivor DOES still get to interact with the Killer. When SM was used in her "boring" way, there wasn't any interaction, there was tedium.
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I'm using 'meme' in the original way, not the colloquial one. A self propagating phenomenon within culture. It's why crouching repeatedly is a fairly universal way of being BM. It's a meme. Not in the 'picture plus text' internet way.
Again, no hypothetical is perfect. So fine, since you're just going to keep attacking the hypothetical rather than entertaining the question, let's rephrase. People decide to start mass suiciding against x killer. BHVR nukes the killer to a deliberately non-viable state where the killer is left to languish indefinitely.
Is this an appropriate action to take, and if so - why?
The 'use power leave loop' is maybe half the killer roster but that's also besides the point.
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Alright, let's break it down. Keep in mind, I do think these changes were all positive, in the long run. They needed to happen, but they did hurt him a lot.
Legion can now search lockers in Frenzy. Okay, sure, not really important but alright.
Legion m/s went to 115%. Consequential, very helpful, but just being 115% doesn't make a Killer good.
Attacks outside of Frenzy only reduce the power bar by 50%. This should not have even been a thing. You are still punished for landing M1's.
FF duration buff. Good, nice.
Bigger TR hurt him a lot back then. Monitor was a popular pick to play a little stealth Legion since he almost looked like a Survivor.
No pools of Blood was weird, but not really consequential.
FF movement speed reduced. That hurt a lot, you couldn't close distance as effectively on loops, even with the longer duration.
Vault speed reduced. Really hurt him on loops, made it impossible to get hits at certain structures.
FF cancels on miss. Massive nerf, really hurt Console players locked to sub-30 FPS.
Recharge time increased. Big nerf.
Fatigue increased. Survivors make even more distance on you.
FF must be fully recharged. You HAVE to wait for the full 20 seconds, unless you M1 someone, then the gauge halves.
Deep Wound no longer ticks down in TR. Pretty massive nerf for a Killer dependent on Deep Wound.
No longer able to reduce Deep Wound by FF hit. Again, massive nerf to his lethality.
He got dumpster'd. His entire power became completely non-lethal and unthreatening.
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It depends. Is it, at least, somewhat grounded in reality? Do they have some basis for their actions in your hypothetical?
Also, yes, and it was okay for the first 10 Killers. Now it's a little repetitive.
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Base gen regression is laughable. A solo repairs a gen 4x faster than the killer regresses it. If they reverted Skull Merchant to her original form, she would not be able to do half of what she did.
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I wanna make a note. The locker thing was actually big since people figured out you could jump in a locker to force Legion out of his power. It's the same thing they'd do against Victor until they gave Victor the locker hold thing he has now.
Overall, this update set alot of groundwork. Definitely wasn't perfect, but set a situation where they could simply buff numbers. This isn't similar to SM... They didn't shift power, JUST remove.
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It wasn't quite as impactful because his Fatigue wasn't as long, and Cold Dirt was very popular, iirc.
They didn't shift power here either, they made it so that they could build off of it later.
And then got around to it 3 years later.
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SM got nerfed because she was complex, which lead to her having the highest kill rate in the game. Survivors are too lazy to think, so killers that have unintuitive powers which require you to do something besides doing gens end up having high kill rates. Just look at the top killers according to stats, it's generally SM, Sadako, Freddy, Pig, and Pinhead. None of those killers, besides Pinhead, can be considered above average. However, they are still getting reworked and nerfed in basically every patch.
This is terrible, since it limits BHVR in how complex they can make a killer as they always have to account for the brainless survivor player base.
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It ment instead of being in deep wounds and setting up your team for chain hits, you could at most force an M1.
By removing power from his ability to buff his normal M1 gameplay (which making him 115 is the basis of) it means he's not overly reliant on FF to down ppl. 3 years is still alot, but at least we could see where they were trying to go with this. Can you say the same about SM? Do the SM changes give you ANY idea on their plans or do they give you the idea she will be completely different from how she is now if they ever get around to her.
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Well it DID happen thats why Skull Merchant was gutted. Hating her was a meme and solely a meme, there was no basis to 90% of hte complaints because the complaints were all left over from her first introduction. The meme to hate her began before her PTB even did with people trashing her design then trashing her all over the PTB then trashing her on launch when 'chess merchant' became a thing. She was a meme to hate during her entire conception.
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You genuinely think gutting a killer and leaving them in a deliberately non-viable state expressly to stop people playing that killer as some sort of community scapegoat is appropriate, especially when you've sold cosmetics for that killer - rather than simply tweaking that killer…?
I'm hopeful that you didn't put that right because that's genuinely vindictive.
No, SM had some aspects to her kit that were a bit much.
Thing is, simply removing the dormant drone state (this was the problem imho as it could be incredibly hard to spot them mid chase and always gave one scan) would have sufficed.
But it wasn't about balance.
It was about placating community QQ by basically deleting a character indefinitely.
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I think that her problem was more to do with perks. If they reverted her now, she would be fine.
And yes, I find it quite outraging that a character that people payed money to and also bought cosmetics for is essentially unplayable now. This is basically fraud at this point.
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Hopefully different, like I still maintain Legion should've been.
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That would mean her current state is not working towards her "ideal" state. There's no data to collect from her current state to balance towards.
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Like I said, hopefully, but I doubt that's what is going to happen.
They'll probaboy do something ala Twins and then scrap it and call it a day with some QoL
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Do they have some basis for their actions or not?
Is there some sort of design issue that's being exploited? Or is this just a normal Trapper
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People disliked her in the PTB. She was not what a lot of people thought they were going to get.
She was weak, except for when you held onto gens. She was not a typical-looking Killer with her bedazzled and glittery mask.
You cannot seriously be blaming people for hating Chess Merchant, which, let's be real, is all people really played while it was available.
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Sure.
Thing is - that was reworked. And the reworked version while it might have been a little too strong was totally fine to play against, especially after the anti 3gen mechanics were added in.
So…it's okay to gut a killer because people have a grudge based on an incarnation of the killer that no longer exists?
Again - vindictive.
Exploited…how exactly?
We talking 'exploiting' Trapper by hooking in basement and locking the area down?
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