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Freddy vs Skully
So the entire reason survivors supposedly complained, whined, and got Skull merchant killed after her rework was supposedly because 'she has too much'. She could go undetectable, get haste, and slow people down but that was just far too much for people to keep track of I guess. Yet strangely, I am not seeing these complaints at all with new Freddy!
Isn't that weird? New Freddy has even more bloat than SM ever had and can do way more than she ever could yet wheres the demands to nerf new Freddy? Why dont I see 1000 posts about how new Freddy needs to be gutted? Why isn't everyone DCing against him? Maybe its the fact that the complaints about Skull Merchant were never actually valid after her rework and stemmed from people just wanting to complain and holding bitter resentment because their favorite content creators told them too? Really weird and funny how that works.
Comments
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Don't be so sure.
He hasn't even hit live yet.
However, I do agree with you that most of the Skull Merchant hate came from her 3-gen days.
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I'm on PS5 and haven't even gone against new Freddy yet so, much as I did with SM way back when, I'm reserving judgement
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That's not true at all.
Her rework was also miserable to face. She got so much power for no skill. You can blame survivors as much as you want but nothing will change.
Survivors did not like her and BHVR had to take action. Simple. And BHVR gave her enough time maybe survivors will adept and stop give up but it did not happen anyway.
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Her rework was perfectly fine the problem is no one ever gave her the chance. She was extremely balanced in her reworked state in all honesty nothing made her OP or broken and with a basic understanding of her kit a survivor could hold a good chase with her. Hating her is and always will be a meme. Im confident even when she's reworked there will be plethoras of people complaining saying shes OP and three genning them no matter what her power is
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How do you know people did not give her a chance? I assume you are working at BHVR and you have all data? Because if you don't, then you have no idea what happened against her.
People most likely gave her chance but there was not good counter for her power. It was also insanely boring to play against her. Her power was rewarding her way too much for how braindeadly easy she was. So they most likely decided it's not worth it to play against her.
If one survivor do that, it's fine. But when your majority of survivor players do that, then yeah there is problem. BHVR can't ignore things like that. When they add something new to game, it need to be fun for both sides. And SM obviously was not good design for survivors.
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Uh because content creators have normalized hating skull merchant i can name like 5 right now who make shorts twitter posts and youtube videos advocating for DC'ing and call sull merchant OP and unfun and every other name in the book and so have the devs by doing a absolute gutting on a mid killer that served no other purpose then to please the survivors who whine about skull merchant rather then trying to improve
Not to mention that her getting gutted was all the conformation bias that fourm and reddit users needed for their baseless OP allegations
Maybe if the community focused on improving rather than complaining about every single killer / perk or really anything, we'd actually have a healthy and balanced game where the devs can take actual constructive criticism about certain things that could use changes
Instead, we have a community that can't be trusted in regard to balance opinions
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Because even though Freddy has a lot going on, all of his abilities have fair counterplay. Staying awake helps negate parts of his power, you can dodge dream snares (and even if you don't, they don't necessarily lead to a hit either), you can avoid fake pallets. You can completely negate his healing teleport by waking up and not healing in the dream world.
Skull Merchant wasn't like that. Her stealth was never an issue, but for how easy it was to drop a drone at a loop and get haste + injuries + Broken status + potentially deep wound + a massive Hindered effect after that, combined was far too much for how easy it is to use her drones and how little effort was required to play her. It's not fun to play survivor against a killer power that requires basically no thought or effort from the killer and/or where the power (in this case the drones) do most of the heavy lifting for them, and especially with SM's drones creating as many lose-lose situations as they do. It's not solely about how many things a killer can do, it's also about the overall strength of those abilities combined and what options survivors have to play against them.
Btw, the whole assumption regarding the dislike for SM mostly being tied to her 3-gen Merchant days is not true. Her rework was also horrible to play against and she would not have been complained about post-rework nearly as much as she was if she wasn't still a problem. At least for me personally, I no longer care about old 3 gen Merchant at all, that's over and done with, it doesn't matter anymore because it's no longer in the game. It's not fair to judge the current state of a killer based on old abilities they no longer possess, but it is perfectly fair to judge them on their current power, and her current power is very unfun to face albeit for different reasons than her original version (and was very obnoxious until she was nerfed).
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Freddy was so hated in the early days that it took nearly 8 years of being kept down at the bottom for him to finally see a buff that moved the needle, and he only just now gets some power back. He ain't even been buffed long enough for people to complain about how they hate him again…Give it time. 😂
Let it go lil bro she got nerfed and no one outside of a handful of people will ever care. She isn't some victim of content creators and the community outrage, she was a victim of her own bad design (repeatedly). Skull Merchant screwed Skull Merchant.
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I am not that concerned.
His PTB-Perfomance means the following:
No one will ever use Dream Pallets, because they are bad. The Alarm Clocks are super strong like OG EMP-Boxes of Singularitv. I hope they get toned down a lot.The Dream Snares are fine and not OP at all. Freddy basically has no power while survivors are awake (and they are a lot awake).
Dream Projection (PTB-Version) is very easy to calculate, because you cant cancel them.
Survivors just need to wake up and they are pretty much playing against a pure M1-Killer.In my conclusion, Freddy needs buffs from his PTB-Performance before making it to Live-Servers, such as Alarm Clocks are too strong, Dream Pallets are utterly useless and not being able to fake your teleport to generators only (!!!) is a massive nerf. This needs to be reverted (Faking Teleports to Gens), Alarm Clocks needs to get the EMP-Box-Solution and the Dream Pallets needs love.
Also and important: Dream Pallets are bugged for YEARS, because you cannot place them on certain maps in empty Pallet-Spots like on RPD - on RPD, there are so many empty spots and the only pallet you can set is in the mainhall… for years!1 -
No. That's not the case. The reason why Skull Merchant was nerfed was because she had some very fundamental issues, that would take another rework to fix. You put a drone in a loop and now that survivor was screwed no matter what they did. That is extremely unfun and demoralising to play against. Factor in that many still hated her from her 3-gen days and you got yourself a very understandable reason why people hate the character. It's not just her mechanics but pretty much everything about her.
With the press of a button you suddenly got information, haste, a way to injure survivors remotely, hindered and undetectable. All of this could be activated with a single press of a button and there wasn't really anything much you could do against that. Especially not in chase.
The devs knew that they couldn't fix her issues immediately, so they decided to nuke instead her and sweep her issues under the rug. That wasn't a good solution (especially considering that some other killers at the time were higher priorities when they were fine) but it is the solution they went with. Skull Merchant will get another rework at some point but unless they change the foundation on which she is built on, people will still hate her.
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This, this, this.
I'll also add that SM had three major indicators that somethibg was wrong:
- Killers said she felt weak.
- Devs posted stats saying that even ignoring games with disconnects and deaths on first hook (giving up) her kill rate was still a statistical outlier.
- Survivors saying she was awful to go against.
All of these together mean that the only real option for her is another rework. That's the only way to address all 3 at once.
Typically it feels like these posts are offended that she wasn't simply buffed, which would've only made two of the three main issues worse.
The devs decided a "break glass" solution was necessary in the meantime until they could rework her, which they handled poorly imo. But at least they have a plan to rework her this year.
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Literally day one of her rework people were saying how OP she was and how she had the same problems as before, neither of which were true in the slightest. People were PETRIFIED of drones outside of chase for some reason and even up until her extreme gutting as well as a little after people complained about her 3 genning which is proof no one tried to actually face her they just deemed her broken and OP and thusly never stopped complaining.
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Freddy hitting his snares and getting massive slowdown is easier than SM's. The speed difference between SM's haste/hinder and one of clowns bottles requires SM to have 2 people being actively scanned at once while clown gets it with an M2 so wheres the effort required for him or is that only reserved for Skull Merchant who only got those benefits from her playing well and survivors making mistakes which is the part everyone likes to conveniently leave out.
She was never problem, like many others, you never learned her or her counters and just hated her because its a meme to hate her and come up with any excuse under the sun to justify/continue it. Every complaint she has other killers have a more powerful version of which is why I say it was a meme to hate her and just that.0 -
Clown
Trapper
Hag
Do the literal exact same thing. Throw something down at a loop and it becomes unusable yet its only a problem when she does it lol. And if a survivor is being injured without being in a chase with skull merchant thats a fault on the survivors end. Her drones were extremely easy to dodge outside of chase so to try and say 'remote injures' made her OP then thats like saying Trapper's downing add on and Trapper in general is OP because of his 'remote injuries' with no effort on his end.0 -
They're never going to rework her lol they're just lying and going to keep her at the bottom for the rest of time because again it was a meme to hate her so much so it inflated kill rates.
Deaths on first hook didn't count but any death followed after did same with disconnects. If a survivor disconnected but the rest stayed and died then her kill rate was inflated 3x instead of 4. This has already been explained.0 -
Hag doesn't apply any status effects (except for that one addon, that isn't even good) and is a killer that survivors typically rate extremely unfun to play against. Her kit however is much less stuffed than Skull Merchant's. She also doesn't punish you for the mistakes of your teammate like Skull Merchant does. Trapper doesn't apply any status effects either and he only has 2 traps on hand at max. Disabling his traps also comes with a much greater payoff not to mention how much more counterplay a Trapper has. Clown has to reload and is countered by pre dropping and, you guessed it, isn't considered a very fun killer to play against.
What I meant by remote injuries was that you don't go through the normal hit cooldown. That's a huge difference in the distance that a survivor makes after being injured. That may have been a poor choice of words on my part.
The 3 killers you mentioned do something similar to Skull Merchant but to a much lesser degree. She simply combined too many things at once, leaving survivors with minimal counterplay and making her overwhelming for many players.
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The real question is would SM be that bad of a Killer if the 8 gen kick regression was in place before her release?
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