Asking about potential changes to the skull merchant
Hello all,
First off, I want to say that I love playing this game. I have nearly 2000 hours in it (I know there are many players with MANY more than that - it's a wonderful game!) My mains are Jill and Ghostface - the first Resident Evil chapter hooked me, so to speak, and I just love playing as Ghostface and doing silly stuff with survivors.
I enjoy playing the game, but as I'm sure the community and maybe the studio have noticed, there is a severe flaw with the gameplay design surrounding the Skull Merchant. I posted a reddit thread talking about players trying to unhook themselves and intentionally failing in order to "skip" games for a variety of reasons. One of the most frequently brought up reasons as to why people try to skip games is because they do not want to go against certain killers, and lately the most cited killer for this is the Skull Merchant.
This killer has an unprecedented ability to force the game to proceed in their favor. The killer works to create a 3-gen situation by deploying their drones on the 3 or 4 closest gens to each other, and then they use a combination of addons and perks (Eruption, Overcharge, Jolt, Oppression, Scourge Hook, Pain Resonance, etc.) that work together to keep generators as close to 0% worked on as possible. The gameplay overall is combination of putting drones on closely-positioned generators and then essentially ignoring every other generator in the game. The changes to the perk Dejavu were nice for helping to fight "3-genning", but a player playing as skull merchant can essentially hold the game hostage or make it EXTREMELY difficult for survivors to work on the 3-gen web the killer has created unless there is near-constant visibility of the killer with MINIMAL obstructions to track her position or for survivors to be in communication via voice and be darting in and out to work on gens when the killer isn't nearby.
The stealth that the killer gains when in her drone's aoe either needs to be removed, have its time to activate increased, or some other way so that solo queue survivors aren't caught unawares when trying to break the 3-gen she creates. In the same vein, her addons need to be considered for their ability to so strongly hold a 3-gen together (the brown noise addon, for example, which afflicts survivors in the drone's aoes with Oblivious).
I'm sure there are other gameplay aspects regarding the 3-gen manipulating/exploiting gameplay that I haven't mentioned.
What I'm wondering is this: are there plans to change the Skull Merchant that address her gameplay-exploiting potential with regards to 3-genning? If so, can those plans be shared with the community to alleviate the sore reputation that the Skull Merchant has among the player base?
Thank you for reading this. I am looking forward to the Alien chapter, as I have been a fan of Alien for many years and can't wait to see the content Behavior will bring us. <3
Comments
Doesn't she also give survivors exposed if they stand in her drone areas for a certain amount of time?
She has basically everything to make a strong killer but every good thing she has, she has in the most annoying way.