My Skull Merchant Rework (Warning: Lengthy Discussion) (details can be changed)
As of recent people have realized with skull merchant you can extend the game for excessive time up to an hour and by default, the killer wins when the trial hits one hour. This leads to boring gameplay which is just the killer trying to stall the match in order to win.
I personally and I think plenty of others would agree that playing a one-hour match against the same killer who's just trying to stall the game isn't fun.
- Before we go into changing every living detail about the Skull Merchant in an effort to try to make her a more fun killer we have to talk about what makes the Skull Merchant unfun in the first place.
The skull merchant's power is supposed to give information to the killer on where survivors are located. Whilst making survivors feel like they're constantly being monitored. While also making droned areas dangerous because of the possibility of being exposed for being in an active drone area for too long.
I think the zoning part of this power is the issue with skull merchant. Yes having tabs on where all survivors are at a time can be very useful. But the issue is that the skull merchant isn't given the tools to do anything about the information they gather on survivors. Leaves skull merchants with add on's that encourage stalling and unfun tedious gameplay with little to no counterplay except for waiting out a very boring lengthy match.
- Zoning - It may give useful info but no tool to do anything about the info. Since zoning is a strength of the skull merchant it makes players lean into that strength rather than engaging in actual fun gameplay for both sides.
- Base kit Status effects - The skull merchant has a ton of status effects to help her deal with all the info she's fathering. But status effects aren't interesting for survivors and feel so punishing. The skull merchant base kit comes with haste, undetectable, exposed, and more with add-ons.
- Things that The skull merchant needs to be more fun
- Counter Play - The current skull merchant leaves you with two options. One is exposed and the killer knows your general location or the Skull merchant knows your exact location and she has haste to catch up to claw-trapped survivors. making survivors feel like they have to pick their poison.
- Power needs to focus on a more aggressive chase style. Zoning makes the current skull merchant really defensive and even makes some skull merchants drop chase for purely defense reasons. The power incentivizes defense play rather than killing survivors.
- Skull merchant rework
Drone changes
Drones will still have their scanning ranges and will scout for survivors. Once a survivor has been found the drone will notify the killer with a small noise and highlight on that specific drone. Then the drone will build a lock on a gauge similar to the singularity (this is done automatically). Once the drone has reached its maximum lock-on the drone will then proceed to follow survivors. The drone will then follow survivors for 15 seconds and will show the general area of the survivor on the skull merchant's radar but not the exact location. Once the drone has reached its 15 seconds of following the survivor the drone will then force a claw trap onto the survivor showing the survivor's exact location on the radar.
Claw Traps
Claw traps will still give then give the skull merchant a new charge meter. This charge meter will increase the killer walking speed and lunge range. To make Chase feel more fair once in chase the skull merchant gets in chase with trapped survivors her speed will go down, but her lunge range will increase. This makes it so if the survivor is across the map the killer can get to you quickly but not instantly beat you to a pallet or window vault but makes looping more risky if you decide to loop an extra time around a loop because of the extra lunge.
Each claw trap will give more speed and more lunge length/speed once the skull merchant is in the chase with trapped survivors. Since your speed will go down once in the chase in order to keep you from getting in chase sooner your terror radius will get slightly smaller for each trapped survivor.
Claw Traps will stay on for set times once that set time is up the trap will instantly break by itself
Claw traps will still break pallets but at a slower speed of 6 seconds, each pallet you vault will cut the battery of the claw trap in half meaning to pallet vaults will break the trap.
Being in a chase with the claw trap will make the trap battery timer go 1.5x times faster so the trap will break sooner.
Small details - if survivors are not claw trapped they will have the regular terror radius not the decreased one meaning your speed will go away sooner and you will not gain the lunge speed. Those effects are only towards claw-trapped survivors. If you are in a chase with a claw-trapped teammate near you, you could be vulnerable to the extra lunge if near that claw trap chase.
Counter
- Vault two pallets and break them to remove the Claw trap as soon as possible
- Be in the chase and avoid extra long lunges and make your battery go dead sooner.
- Wait for the timer to end and the trap will break itself.
Add-ons
Now that we have removed the zoning aspects we can get rid of her terrible skill check and other status effect add-ons and give her add-ons that can increase her chase potential rather than gen defense.
- Add-ons that increase the battery life for even longer trap life
- Add-ons that give deep wounds once the trap instantly breaks by itself
- Exhaustion add-ons
- blindness add-ons
- Add-ons that make you destroy breakable walls and pallets and gens faster when in a chase with claw-trapped survivors
- Slower heal add-ons
- This is very important NO oblivious add-ons (since your terror radius is smaller to survivors it is important to make sure that chases start sooner so survivors don't get instantly beat to a pallet) It's okay if the skull merchant commits to perks that do give her undetectable or oblivious like a plaything. Because then the killer has to commit to a build that is risky and requires some sort of action in order to gain those benefits.
You get the jist add-ons that just make it a little bit unbearable to where you will break pallets and open up the map just to get rid of it.
Minor fixes
Make it take longer to remove already placed drones and replace them. (Longer than what it currently is)
make it so that drones can't sit super close to each other. (Farther than what it currently is)
No drones near hooked survivors. (Farther than what it currently is)
Comments
Interesting suggestions though it might be difficult to implement.
I think at least as a simple hotfix they should just make it so the drones can't expose when a generator is within their radius. This would help a bit at least in the short term and I feel it wouldn't be that hard to code given they already have mechanics for hooks.
@Skitten56 Once again this is just an idea, if parts of it are hard to implement things to this can change. The goal was just to remove the intensity of the zoning.
You could remove the exposed status effect as a short fix, but I don't think it would change anything about her current playstyle because even the skull merchant that went against Eternal just ignored the fact that they could have gotten an instant down and just kept kicking gens. But yeah I think that would weaken her a little but doesn't fix the long matches and boring gameplay.
Why bother with following by drone, when result is just claw trap anyway?
It makes this rework simply unrealistic, when there is not really a purpose for it.
If you can outrun it, then it is completely useless, if you can't outrun it, then there is not really reason to bother with chasing.
All those chasing drone reworks usually end up as a bad Knight.
I want Skully rework to focus on information and claw trap. Those things are unique to her. Another following AI is just copy paste.
I like the idea with increasing Lunge, it's more interesting then just adding hindered for sure.