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Has skull merchant's previous preview design been entirely scrapped
Will her previous preview design be entirely scrapped?
Cause I really didn't want my favorite killer to be removed and become another dash/mid range killer that removes aspects that I like about her from her 2.0 variation
Best Answers
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We have no idea. We'll only know when they tell us.
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We can but hope.
Ostensibly that should be the point of doing a preview at all, the ability to just scrap it if it isn't working because they haven't passed the point of no return on the basic design and the work done on it.
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This should be the last time they rework the drone
If it doesn't work then they should just give her a new power
-1
Answers
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I think they said her rework should be in november, but Im not sure.
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I sincerely hope so.
I stand by what I said that Skull Merchant 2.0 was perfectly fine. She no longer held games hostage, she no longer caused problems in the same way the first design or OG Legion did. The nerfs she received were unnecessary.
And if the nerfs were unnecessary, the design preview, both of them, are worse. Skull Merchant shouldn't be transformed into another dash/mid range killer, we already have enough of those and it would kill her identity completely.
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All they're looking at is trying to make this killer fun to play against so that means she's going to completely suck
-6 -
Exactly. Survivors don't find good killers "fun to play against."
-5 -
I hope so, their idea of controlled drone would definetly not end well as we have seen with Twins/Houndmaster. I don't really want her to become buggy mess.
I would definetly want undetectable to stay as part of her power…3 -
Should just get rid of the drones and rework her power at this stage, clearly never gonnae work.
-6 -
They need to just undo the stupid nerfs they gave her last year.
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Yep, that is pretty much it, to be honest.
-4 -
yep. specially with the game as it is, literally impossible to hold a 3 gen till the end of the servers with a hard limit to gen kicks.
just gotta revert her back and go from there. I don't think any changes are needed beyond that, but they can just let her be for a while in that state to make sure it's ok if they want to.
-1 -
Exactly, my dear friend!
It is really, really bad that the design previews were trying to make her something she shouldn't be. We already have more than enough dash / mid range killers, far too many of them in fact. Skull Merchant shouldn't have her identity murdered and turned into another one of those.
I strongly support the idea of simply reverting her.
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I miss the "m1 killer on crack". of the 2 m1 killers in crack, I'd prefer SM over Clown.
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I prefer SM over most killers in the game, my friend.
Even current Freddy.
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I thought the idea of the new skull merchant was interesting, but skull merchant is unique currently and to change that into something rather generic would be an odd choice.
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I miss my pre nerf skull Merchant (she's almost p69 now)
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Even odd that they are willing to change everything about her and not bother how they can incorporate her 2.0 variation in her rework
Makes me wonder if they only did this preview sp they can please the survivors
-2 -
Hello folks! Coming back to what we shared after the second Skull Merchant Design Preview, the community's feedback was shared with the design team, who took this into consideration when looking at what's next for Skull Merchant's rework. Not only did this feedback highlight aspects of the design that folks liked the concept of, it also highlighted aspects that didn't land well. That's okay! As I mentioned before, both sides of this are important parts of the design sauce!
We will share more about Skull Merchant when the time is right, but don't currently have any updates to share at the moment.
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I wouldn't say perfectly fine... but it was definitely on the right track. There were many directions you could go with SM 2.0, and I've read some really good suggestions. The talking points had so much potential... IF you could actually get anyone to talk about it.
The biggest challenge I personally had with making Skull Merchant suggestions is you almost had to purposely undertune her, cause the backlash from daring suggest anything shy of kneecapping her was so intense, if you wanted any discussion at all, you had to massively low ball it...
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Even though it's died down, I still subconsciously do it even now, to which @Orthane and @PetTheDoggo have to keep correcting me xD
Regardless, I'm watching the Skull Merchant changes with intent. As a wise man once said.. I don't care if she's not particularly strong... I'll take her just being playable...
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Honestly, my friend, I would say perfectly fine. I think she could be left as she was and it would be fine, she was no longer causing any problems for the game.
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I really hope they simply bring back the original Skull Merchant. She would not be able to do half what she did back then, now that her perks are gone and there is a gen kick limit. We don't have enough map control killers in the game and she was really unique in that aspect.
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It would be nice if an Iri add-on gave her the original gameplay back, but that's wishful thinking. I just really wish I didn't have to say goodbye to my main and favorite character. Her model is still there, sure, but her power would be completely gone for a second time.
I was there at her release. I've already dealt with one rework already and relearning her. I'm tired, Boss.-2 -
Have you guys considered undoing any of the nerfs handed out to her last year? You realize you made her basically unplayable right?
-2 -
i genuinely don't understand how skull merchant can even BE your favorite killer, everything from her weird mishmash lore to her fortnite skin design to her obnoxious power was an abject failure
she literally has no redeeming qualities. this game has produced a lot of really great original killer ideas, but holy ######### skull merchat was a flop in every way possible. the devs have 3 options
- keep the character in the game as-is perma gutted and nerfed into the ######### floor so nobody plays her and nobody has to be reminded she exists
- actively just ######### remove the character and refund everyone in auric cells
- completely reformat every single facet of the killer to the point where they're basically just making a new one
since 2 is out of the question by default and 3 is too much work we can realistically only expect 1, but i think 3 is the best case scenario if bhvr can ever spare the resources. i don't count any health update to the game as a health update until they remove the festering blot that is skull merchant by perma killswitching her or replacing her with a competent killer concept
i just cant believe the same game that brought me original killers i love so dearly like unknown and houndmaster also somehow produced skull merchant, and bhvr at this point is also aware of both her unpopularity and design flaws
who knows what could happen
-7 -
I'm sure they stated that Skull Merchan't rework would be out by end of the year with some improvements from preview 1 into preview 2. I personally hate the buddy drone idea, make her shoot darts from her mechanical weapon. Listening to drone up your shoulder whole game? Jeeez. Also I don't really find the global detection very usefull unless they drastically change how it works or give it ridiculously short cooldown. :D
2 -
Same way as other people who like certain killers despite the controversy she got, with skull merchant I just really like her (especially the 2.0 variant). A killer that has the ability to track survivors with a stealth ability
Hate her all you want, but she's a killer that deserves respect just like the rest of the others killers that some people actually like even if they're flawed
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It's about as simple as the fact that her lore has always been fine, her visual design has always been fine, and her second power design was a pretty reasonable success. Flawed, in a few important ways, but easily fixable and pretty engaging to play as and against.
There's no grand conspiracy or something, people just feel differently to you.
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i agree on your first two points (other then her walking animation needs another cycle) but her power has never been engaging. even the second version.
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I disagree, I think it's always been pretty engaging to dodge the drone's beams. Hell, it's engaging to do that now, you just don't really need to anymore.
The only really unengaging thing about her is her throwing drones down at loops to force you to run away, and even that's not as potent as it is on other killers.
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I disagree. If she had literally any redeeming qualities what you said would've had some merit but I fail to see a single positive thing she brought to the game.
-8 -
Yeah, pretty much.
Though I don't even think the "place drone leave loop" thing is a problem, drones are your power, they have to be useful.
Last year when many discussions were happening specifically regarding SM 2.0, I remember that me and a fellow Forum friend were trying to explain how to handle it in a chase and how her kit wasn't problematic. It still is very unfortunate that she got nerfed, her kit was fine as it was.
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As I said earlier, I like skull merchant because I do, has nothing to do with if she brought something positive into the game (which clearly she didn't in release)
The whole argument I'm getting at is she deserves to be treated the same way when players like playing her, just like other killers.
it's fine if you don't like her, most people do. But we the player deserves some respect for her especially since she's getting a 3rd rework preview down the road
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Me disagreeing with people isn't me instituting a grand conspiracy im just regularly dumbfounded that people can actively play this game and hold that opinion at the same time
In order to facilitate discussion, what exactly do you like about her? What character fantasy is she supposed to fulfill or portray? What does she do compared to other killers that makes you want to play her?
Genuinely curious what merit other people see in her and I've never gotten a straightforward answer so maybe the BHVR forums can give me one
-4 -
For me it was simply because she's 1 of 3 area control or trap killers in the game along side Trapper and Hag, but they're all really bad in since way. Trapper too easy to shut down and takes too long to set up his traps, Hag can't chase and SM quick setting up her traps with a large coverage, but was less lethal than the others. Few problems they all have survivors hate playing against them claiming they're too boring so they either gotten nerf in SM case or feel so bad to play as no one gonna want to play as them.
I just never understood how SM was still hated so much in her 2.0 state when that was her best version. Her drones are clearly obvious from across the map with large neo lights going off like fire alarms and people really couldn't figure out how to avoid them? I never had any issues going against her and the proposed changes will potentially ruin her identity and make her into a worse version of twins and becoming a 3 gen monster again if they keep trying to push for active controlled drones.
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I like killers that focus more on positioning and macro gameplay than they do a dash or projectile, for the most part, and Skull Merchant's power is one of those. I did also like her original version for similar reasons, but that version had a lot more potent problems so it's reasonable she got changed.
As she was prior to the nerfs, you have a killer with a fairly versatile toolset that still has a clear identity and gameplay loop surrounding scanning survivors. Depending on your preferences you could lean on trying to out-position survivors mid-loop (assuming they understand that you don't need to leave a loop just because a drone is in it, anyway) with your own movement and the drone beam reversal button, you could focus on "laser tagging" survivors by sniping them with a beam as soon as the drone initialises, and you could focus on stealthy, hidden drones you chase survivors into.
Each of those tools can be leaned into at the loadout screen, but all of those things are available mid-match too, making her reasonably flexible without losing sight of the core mechanics of her power.
She also has pretty good stealth, if you like stealth playstyles. Her basekit Undetectable is pretty good despite the short timer, and Undetectable from other sources is even better. If you like stealth killers whatsoever, it's fairly obvious why that'd be appealing.
In short, her appeal is that she has a set of tools that emphasise positioning and prediction in the micro element, and planning + tracking in the macro element. We don't have many killers like that and most of them suck, so Skull Merchant 2.0 filling that niche and being a solid middle-of-the-pack B tier was a really nice breath of fresh air.
Unfortunately, she now sucks too, so. Womp womp, I guess.
People often shoot back with how you don't need to do any of that, because she can do "place thing at loop, zone survivors away", but I have two things to say to that: The first is that people broadly overstate how impactful that is, since her power is designed to be played around in loops, and the second is that I like doing those things. It doesn't matter in this context if she has less skilful elements too.
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At the bare minimum, it's because she does something different.
I'm so incredibly bored of all of the dash and projectile killers. They might as well all just be skins because they all basically do the same thing with a different coat of paint. We desperately need more variety in killer play styles. Not everyone want's to play 1000 different variations of Blight or Huntress.
Her fantasy is about being a stalker, hunter, and projecting her sense of superiority through strategy and intellect rather than raw strength. Her trailer covers the idea rather well; Renato and Thalita unknowingly fall into her trap. It's about map control and macro game play rather than microing around in a circle. Needing survivors to utilize a different strategy to win is not a bad thing.
Turning her into some aborted chimera of Twins and Singularity (one of which survivors hate and the other they tolerate at best) is the absolute wrong thing to do and goes completely against her fantasy and design. That's why the "previews" were garbage.
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Yeah I liked planning ahead with drone placement and slowly weakening survivors and then sneaking up on them for the down and going zoom when I had to chase instead. No other killer played like Merchant did and ever since her gutting no other killer has been anywhere near as interesting to me. She was a trap killer that could actually be aggressive when she needed to be and that was cool.
Also I feel like all the flak she got for her story and design could have been bypassed if they made her original purple outfit her default and just made her an actual cyber ninja from the future instead of just cosplaying as one like if she was singularity before singularity. I could be wrong but I think people would have liked that a lot more.
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she's a unique killer with unique gameplay that no other killers plays
She is an area controlling trap killer (just like killers like trapper and hag) I usually don't like trap killers as they tend to take forever to set up only to do nothing in the end, but with merchant, her set up feels very different and very engaging for me. A trap set up killer that has the ability to track survivors
I don't really read a lot of lore to have this sort of knowledge, but for what I know she is meant to be a sort of stalking type hunter that uses whatever tools she has (aka her drones) to track people down and take advantage of that information, which is what skull merchant is from her gameplay as well, I also come around liking her base design despite not being well liked by everyone
That's my reason why I like skull merchant and why I don't want her 2.0 variant to just straight up go away and just become another dash/projectile ability that so much others killers already have
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Well, there isn't much for me to say that hasn't already been said in the other replies here. What I'll tell you though, is that I completely agree with @ObsidianButterfly , they said it best.
Skull Merchant is completely unique, appealing to those who enjoy macro gameplay and don't want another dash / mid-range M2 boring mess, and she should, undeniably, keep her identity.
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Y'all please keep this discussion alive. I like seeing everyone thoughts on Skull Merchant because i enjoy her gameplay as much as you do
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