General Discussions
General Discussions
People still dc against skull merchant
During my games with skull merchant I still see survivors dc/self unhook whenever they see her even after the nerfs
Makes me wonder what was the point of nerfing her if people are still gonna dc no matter what
Comments
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Yes, even though she is the worst killer in the game currently, they will still disconnect. This just proves that the problem was never the killer, but the survivors who are spoiled.
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I'm aiming to play devil's advocate with this response.
The nerfs didn't really change her overall power from what it existed as a chase-oriented tool, it just made it way weaker of a tool. If the survivor disliked her power for how it incentivized the killer to play, then it doesn't seem like anything changed. The power can be strong and fun to play against, just like it can be weak and not fun to play against. This excludes the people who just rage quit for whatever reason, but the common explanation on these forums for the dc's/self-unhooking is almost exclusively spoiled survivors who don't learn the counterplay almost 100% of the time. There needed to be adjustments to Skull Merchant, and I personally still dislike her power even with the nerfs. The nerfs in my eyes didn't address the frustrating things that I disliked and I don't think the nerfs were done to reduce the number of dc's but instead adjust the killrate. The killrate was excessively high and even removing hook suicides didn't lower it by much so clearly there is something there that needs to be addressed.
I only hope they make good healthy changes that improve the strength of the killer while making sure her kit is less frustrating/complex to go against.
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The thing about Skull Merchant hate is that it's always been at least partially irrational and arbitrary, even when the actually problematic version of her power existed. I don't say that to shame or lambast anyone, it's just a neutral observation.
That's why the most recent round of changes was a mistake, or at least one reason. It doesn't help that the changes weren't aimed at any of the killer's actual problems and just sorta nuked her basic gameplan to the ground, but even if the changes had all been sensible… people don't DC against Skull Merchant because of what the state of her power is. Most people barely even understand what that power even does.
It's still a good idea to change SM, I've supported that for a while, but you necessarily have to de-link the changes from the fact that people DC against her. You can't expect that even a full rework that solves all her issues would stop people from DCing against her because… well, they did that once, and from a design standpoint it was a pretty serious success. Yet, still people DCed, because it doesn't actually matter what Skull Merchant does.
I don't envy BHVR because I truly don't know how you'd fix that problem. If I were in their shoes, all I'd do is fix the killer's problems and leave it to hope things die down eventually.
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It's not that people think she's still powerful or because entitled survivors or whatever. She's just ######### boring to play against. There is little interaction between her power and survivors. Unironically, trapper is more fun to play against because you never know when a window may be trapped, or Doctor because he makes skillchecks harder. Even twins is more interactive to face, with kicking victor and such.
She earned the nickname Dull Merchant for a reason more than 3 genning.
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Pleasantly I can report in my Skull Merchant games I have had less DCs. Though I can also report a lot more memeing around. I am a Pig main at heart, so someone being goofy does always make me stop in my tracks.... maybe they feel bad for me... (and to be fair when I get whooped, I get badly whooped).
I used to like trying to loop effectively against Skull Merchant, some aspects were a little BS sure, and I wasn't completely against all the nerfs they gave her... the single scanline change if the speed was appropriately buffed would have been a solid change... but it was definitely overboard.
I don't disagree with the Undetectable being in her kit, but having a better way to trigger it would be appreciated... you should be creating a web of drones purposely, rather than just throwing them down randomly to get Undetectable. (Which is what you do now, cause there is literally no point pre-setting traps anywhere)
With all that said, I have to say though, I have no idea where BHVR are gonna go with her. A lot of the complaints against her just don't make sense, and I suspect a lot of them were more about feelings than logic... the fact her old version was just universally hated without even entertaining the idea of improving her, leads me to think she's a poisoned chalice, where even if SM 3.0 is somehow the objectively greatest rework ever, we're still gonna have people whining about her...
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I don’t see people give up vs her in my games anymore
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What are these mental gymnastics taking place?
It's wild that anyone would claim Merchant doesn't have interaction and then unironically declare Trapper is more interactive when Merchant's powers works the same, but is far more forgiving. Merchant gives you 3 chances to not be stupid before you are injured, where as Trapper doesn't give you any; you just get injured (or instantly downed if he is running the addon).
Imagine what she would be like if she couldn't deploy her "traps" mid chase. She would be Trapper, but 1000x worse because she has no way to stop or slow people down. She's already worse than Trapper, just not as much of a magnitude.
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Chess merchant was so universally hated that the casual player still thinks she can do it or something. When a killer gains such bad reputation it's difficult to wash that stain away. I don't think pre-gutting skull merchant was even bad to go against. Killers like Twins have an unhealthier playstyle that needs a rework first but we all know how that turned out last time. Most killer reworks are just flops so I have no faith BHVR will do the skull merchant's rework justice.
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It's funny cause Singularity could always do it better than Skull Merchant could, and still can, and has even more nasty builds to his name... yet... not a peep.
@TheSingularity used Skull Merchant perfectly as a scapegoat of the 3 gen meta... none of us can comprehend the brilliance of his AI machinations in the background.
I better be quite... otherwise I might have to start worrying about getting Skynet hacked and my PS5 coming alive like a Transformer to kill me in my sleep.
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Remove her Undetectable after flying a Drone, give her footsteps a sound or rework the Add-On that transfers her Terror Radius to the Drone. Problem solved.
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Many survivors will DC of the smallest thing, it's crazy. They DC at certain killers, certain offerings, being hooked once, even DC mid mori... Why? 5sec Mori v 45sec minimum penalty for DC. Lost count how many times I have been in the middle of a tombstone with Myers and the player DC before the Mori is complete lol. I get an image in my head of some angry survivor throwing a tantrum throwing the computer at the wall screaming the second something doesn't their way so the DC is the moment of impact of them throwing the computer 😂
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This is incredibly short-sighted.
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@jasonq500 I stopped playing DBD around the release of Nicolas Cage - Alien, and started playing again this month. I've run into 3 Skull Merchants in the past 2 weeks and I have to say…I have absolutely no idea how she is different than she was on release.
I am a veteran player who nows comes into the game with a casual lens. If I cannot identify the changes, I do not trust that the average player will feel confident SM has 'watered down' or 'redesigned' to provide a more enjoyable experience for all.
I can describe how every single killer in the game works to any player looking to learn the game.
For the life of me, I could not tell you how Skull Merchant works, and I see that as a massive design flaw.
There is simply not enough context clues in the game to tell me why I should hack drones, what the drones do to help the Skull Merchant, and what benefits and/or risk rewards there are for choosing to hack/not hack at any given time. I imagine add-ons go a long way to adding to that confusion.
Last night I played against a SM on Lery's who ran Surge & Sloppy—maybe even Pop—with an add-on I think made you hear her terror radius whenever you hacked a drone. We didn't get a single gen done. It felt like OG 3-gen lockdown Skull Merchant to me.3 -
Thank you for thinking of me dear friend 😏
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If I were BHVR, I would just let those people DC, and punish them with the penalty, until they finally just leave the game. No game needs players like that, where no matter what, they're just gonna be entitled and DC against something they don't like. The devs are literally eating out of their hands with how often they nerf stuff in response to very casual complaints about gen defence, stealth killers, killers being "too fast", killers being able to find them, etc. And they don't appreciate it at all. It still isn't enough for them.
I never hated Skull Merchant. I hated that every time I went into a match against her, literally nobody would play well because they instantly gave in to the self fulfilling prophecy of, "Oh no! It's Skull Merchant! We're not gonna win anyway, so just DC, or don't care to play that well!" thus giving her repeated easy wins, thus creating the illusion that she's unbeatable. They've done this with everyone, rather than even attempting to learn the counterplay: Wraith, Hillbilly, Clown, Freddy, Pig, Spirit, Deathslinger, Pyramid Head, Pinhead, Twins, Trickster, Chucky... All of them nerfed due to casual complaints. It's a shame people can't simply consider killers strong/viable without also considering them overpowered and in need of nerfing.
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Just read the power description or search up gameplay, bro. That is available to literally everyone. There's tons of info that isn't immediately obvious to a brand new player either, like Alien's turrets, Singularity's cameras, Chucky's stealth, Myers' stalking. Are they unexplainably unfair as well? So I think that's a really bad and selective argument to make.
"It felt like OG 3-gen Skull Merchant." Except it couldn't be. The gen kick limit is there. 3-gens are over. How can you even compare her 3-gen potential now to what it was then?
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I'm pretty sure they will stop when she gets her rework, and only if its a complete rework, no drones anymore
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And once and for all, people didn't use to DC against her because she was strong, its because she is a faulty killer, badly designed, thats all. And the fact that she is way weaker now just means people will pick her just to spite survivors, and play as nasty as possible. Nobody wants to deal with that. I don't blame anyone wanting to DC or to go next. I also prioritize my fun.
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It's just carry over from the old chess merchant days and it'll be a stink that'll carry even through to her rework unfortunately. The hate will never go down no matter how fun you make her to verse. Although the idea that people DC against her for "not being fun" is a bit silly when the Legion still exists and being the least interactable killer in the game. She's not a very hard killer to beat these days and not very strong either and yet, I still have people kill themselves on hook on what are totally winnable matches.
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So nerf her even more than she already is? Hardly sounds fair to the killer.
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They can compensate by giving back some of the other Nerfs like 2 detections beams and other stuff I can't remember.
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Yeah, I had a game about two days ago against Skull Merchant - including a friend of mine who hates Skull Merchant and I don't really mind her. They really defanged her and not in the ways that she needed to be nerfed in my opinion. I always said I hated her stealth mechanic specifically - yet they made it easier to avoid getting injured by her drone and her in general.
Still had the random kill themselves on hook against her. She's very easy to outloop, instead people still think she's strong when she's very much a weak sauce killer now.
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Yes, I never understand this. Even when I'm not having a good time - yesterday I had a Wraith run NOED, Rancor, Blood Warden, and No Way Out and he just left me on the ground slugged (I was obsession). I still didn't DC and I bought my team valuable time to do gens as he just followed me around on Lerys while downed. He was wanting to obviously mori me when the gens popped and NOED everyone, but the game was such a slog throughout and I did not DC in this situation.
People do DC over the smallest things - I had people kill themselves on hook against an Artist (Claudette got found in a locker while injured), killing themselves on hook against a Clown, dcing on the hook, dcing when the entity brings them into the sky, it's gotten really bad especially last night for me when I was playing with a friend.
Constant dcs, constant killing themselves on hook, constant misplays (Claud) and then wanting to kill themselves on hook - Honestly, made me get off and take a huge break from the game because some survivors act like literal children not getting their way and I say this as a predominant survivor player.
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You could carry certain players to the exit gate an they will still dc for some reason lol
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Because even if she's the worst killer in the game she feels awful to play against.
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I promise this is a sincere question asked in good faith - why?
Her power barely does anything anymore, what makes it feel bad to play against?
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I had a Skull Merchant the other day, and the teammates threw on hook (and I don't blame them). But I don't think it was because of Skull Merchant herself, but rather the build she was using (Ruin/Pentimento/Thrill of the Hunt/Blood Favor). That'd be a nightmare build on any Killer.
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It's a really complicated question to answer because it's not something that innately has a totally black and white answer like "Oh Huntress feels bad to play against because her hitboxes are questionable". It's a VERY grey area and the answer differs for many people.
Before I try my best to answer that I just wanna say that I want to talk about her power in a vacuum. Separated from the lore/design/controversial release/previous versions of her power etc. Retreading old "this sucked" points doesn't matter for the current version of SM as that was in the past. It's not the current version of her.
The current problems I see in her design are the following
~ Trap based killers have always been hated to be played against. I genuinely cannot remember the last time I encountered a player who said they enjoyed playing against killers like Trapper or Hag. It simply doesn't feel good to try to run to an area only to see the bear trap/phantasm/drone already set up there and going "this loop has the power set up here, this could be risky. I don't want to be here". Many players simply don't like this interaction and others always seem to tolerate it to a degree. But it's always a tolerance, never a distinct love. Ofc there are people out there who do love playing against this type of killer, but they're VERY few and far between.
~ The barrage of status effects. One of the biggest criticisms against SM is how she can bombard you with status effects. Hindered, Haste, Undetectable, Deep Wound, Broken, all status effects that she has in her BASEKIT and that's not factoring in her add-ons which can add worse skill checks, blindness, silent skill checks, oblivious, exhausted, hemorrhage, mangled, and aura reading. That's a literal laundry list of status effects and its a dump of information that can very easily overload someone in a chase.~ Unintuitive counterplay. Being able to crouch the scan lines isn't exactly super intuitive. With other killers their main power makes more sense to play around. You dodge Wesker's dash or the tentacle for Nemesis, you don't stand in the massive glowing rectangle against pyramid head and don't step in his goo, you go to the funny highlighted box to remove a RBT for pig etc. Something that any new player could easily intuit during their first match against the killer. "Don't let the big scary matrix man get me" "He has a tentacle, I don't want to be touched by it, it's slimy and yucky" "The big glowing rectangle under my feet is probably not a good sign" "I didn't see the boxes until I got a party hat, I'm going to go over to them, oh hey I remove my trap here". SM simply doesn't have that. Not saying she isn't the ONLY killer with this issue, but it's still an issue regardless. Nobody sees the massive glowing cone and thinks "Yup, I can duck under that." The cone doesn't even communicate that it does work like that because you'd have to be standing under the drone to not get hit by the scan line itself. If it was just a horizontal laser? Maybe it would help some of this issue.
~ She's genuinely been changed so much that people don't even know what she does anymore. This isn't a game issue perse, it's 100% a player issue. But most casual players don't boot up the game and stay totally up to date on all the patch notes and what they mean. Sadako has this same issue. People literally just don't know because there was a period of time it felt like she was being changed every other patch.
There's probably more I'm missing but those are the main ones from the top of my head. It should also be worth noting
Just because a killer is weak does not mean that they are not fun to play against.
Release Legion was honestly really bad. Like to the point where many people on the Steam forums (this was before the official BHVR forums if memory serves) said the ONLY thing he could do was moonwalk people. Being a 110 M1 killer was certainly a design choice. Did that make Legion somehow fun to play against? No. Absolutely not. Because being moonwalked to death wasn't fun. You can't use the argument of her being bad as a means to makeup for some of problems (both perceived and actual) as weak or not they still impact the game she is in and that effects the other players.
Also just wanna say the go next epidemic is out of hand and I hope BHVR nukes it soon. SM or not, it's ridiculous.4 -
I appreciate the detailed answer. I considered giving my answer to the points, but I think you're right that it's subjective and we're not likely to change each other's minds.
I'll part ways by saying I do agree about her power not being intuitive enough, that's been my one major complaint since the rework, so we can find common ground there at least.
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A very well reasoned and articulated analysis.
That said, I pretty much fundamentally disagree with all of it.
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The fact that there is an in-game enclyopedia for me to teach myself how a killer's power works does not make up for poor game design. bro. It is a convenient response, that ignores the real issue with Skull Merchant.
Players learn a game through experience, and their understanding of the game comes from playing it, not reading about it. More invested players, like those who spend time on the forums, will supplement their in-game learning with reading wikis or watching youtube videos. But your casual player who hops on Friday and Saturday night to SWF with friends isn't going to read every killer description just so they can enjoy the game.7 -
I have absolutely no idea how she is different than she was on release.You can't possibly be serious. She's NOTHING like she was on release.(Good thing, BTW.) She can't three gen like she could on day one, she can't give exposed like she could on day one, you can out right ignore her drones by avoiding the scan lines or crouch walking through them, you can turn off her drones without her even knowing you where even there unless she's constantly checking her radar, and of course, unlike her release, there is no longer a HUGE GLOWING ORANGE CIRCLE that shows where her drones are from a mile away.
So I seriously have to question if you ever even played with/against her release version if you think the two are even remotely comparable
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Skull Merchant on Release (Survivor P.O.V.): Killer places stationary drones around the map which scan a small area. Survivor can temporarily deactivate the drone by approaching it and hacking it.
Skull Merchant today (Survivor P.O.V.): Killer places stationary drones around the map which scan a small area. Survivor can temporarily deactivate the drone by approaching it and hacking it.
Small visual changes and minor number adjustments are not going to reassure players who HATE Skull Merchant to the point of disconnecting that she is worth playing against. If it walks and talks like a duck, people are going to think its a duck!2 -
Usually if I notice that the killer runs Thrill of the Hunt, I just focus on gens as it's too time consuming to destroy the totems. Luckily, that Skull Merchant wasn't running Devour, as many killers typically do with Thrill of the Hunt.
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I think you're downplaying how big those changes obviously were, to be fair here.
I mean, the drones went from an AOE that immediately started building a visible meter, to big and highly visible beams that rotate, that's pretty gigantic. She went from a passive trap killer to an active chase killer, the experience changed pretty dramatically.
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I'm not downplaying anything.
I'm providing a real, personal account as someone who played against OG Skull Merchant and first rework Skull Merchant, then dropped DBD to live their life, only to return to a Skull Merchant who feels no different than the killer I did not enjoy playing against 2 years ago.
If you have been here the whole time, then I would expect she feels quite different to you. Especially so, if you have been playing as her in the killer role.
But my comments were never on behalf of those who closely follow and regularly play the game.
From the Survivor P.O.V., Skull Merchant is not a chase killer. She sets traps and she walks away.0 -
I suppose I can't disprove your experience, but I am surprised that you didn't notice her power being fundamentally different in almost every way.
I understand not knowing how the new power works, but you really didn't notice that it doesn't do basically any of the things it used to (from the survivor perspective, anyway) and looks completely different?
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The problem is a lack of care to be informed. Casuals don't care ti waste their time if they remember their last negative experience with her. BHVR should put notifications or badges on certain characters when they recieve changes, and they should also encourage killer kits to be read by survivors
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They've kinda done that recently, actually- the patch notes get shown to everyone when they log in after a patch, in a news popup. Most people probably won't read it but the info is there now in a way it wasn't before.
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I strictly recall not having a vested interest in learning the 'counterplay,' as a solo-queue survivor, because the coordination required to beat her was asking too much of my teammates.
I would imagine that contributed significantly to my imperfect memory for all things Skull Merchant.
I think its also worth noting that the reputation surrounding Skull Merchant transcended her 3-gen lockdown era. I can recall many a game at the height of her infamy in which people would run bleedout builds on her, and exploit Survivor altruism. Matches often felt like unecessary personal attacks, which is ultimately what really stuck with me about the killer.1 -
It will likely never stop. She'll be the stain DBD has to endure unfortunately.
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Last skull merchant I went up against abused knock out to slugg us all game so no we're not spoiled it's just the killer's attitude and the way they decide to play I think it would be fun to play against her now she's balanced (giving us a peg/dot for disabling a drone something we HAVE to do was overkill) but these greedy abusing tunneling camping killers apparently don't know how to play decently there's a reason why mama disciplined us as kids when we didn't play fair it makes it fun for no one except you
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she's absolute trash now, and stil i get 2-3 DCs just by showing up with her... It's so annoying...
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absolutely, as they always are. And BHVR always listen to those players first...
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Just toxic survivors who still suffer from skull merchant derangment syndrome. People need to be banned from the game if they consistently throw games or DC against specific killers maps or perks.
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Unfortunately, running Pentimento made it too time-consuming to bust out the gens as well.
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I don't really have issues with Pentimento, other than it being combined with Thrill. I don't really see it all that much in all honesty and it usually becomes a factor when the killer runs Hex: Plaything.
I don't usually cleanse my Plaything as many killers run that combo, so I just run around oblivious and do gens.
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Yeah, I rarely cleanse my Plaything either (partly because I run Soul Guard, so having a hex will let me pick myself up when necessary). I can deal with oblivious, as I usually know what other sounds to listen for when the Killer is near (like Ghostface's flapping cloak or Nemesis's heavy footsteps).
Strangely enough, the match right after that Skull Merchant was a Spirit who ran Thrill/Pentimento/Plaything, and we cleansed a bunch of totems while doing gens (and somehow Pentimento still remained active despite all the totems cleansed, and I was like, "How many stacks does she have??" And my Plaything was never cleansed either. We got a 2-escape in that one. Perhaps the difference between this match and the Skull Merchant was that no one gave up…
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Interesting, probably a Pentimento totem was overlooked because I've never heard of Pentimento still lasting even with no totems available (other than your Plaything).
Yeah, I don't really use Soul Guard on my end as much due to not many killers running a Hex totem, but it is pretty good with Unbreakable for the faster pickup speed. It was very strong during the time when killers would run Hex: Ruin before it's inevitable nerf. 😋
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Oh come on, dont stop now! More SM hate plz! More stories! More.. whatever!
The only good inclusion of SM is on these forums, through text. Aside from her cosmetics recently, there's nothing good about her. Her stigma will never go away. LIke, ever.
There, Im sure someone can quote some of that and keep this going.
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Only thing I love about the washing machine killer is that she took away most if not all of trickster hate.Ji woon mains rejoice
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