Design Preview | The Skull Merchant
[Reposting the Design Preview here to help centralize feedback and discussion]
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Today, we want to dig into a topic that we know many of you have been yearning to know more about: our vision for the future of The Skull Merchant!
REEVALUATING THE SKULL MERCHANT
We know that Skull Merchant is a divisive Killer who, regardless of her performance in a Trial, carries a lot of history and strong feelings among players.
Many players feel she’s not fun to play against and her kit is exceedingly complex. This scares away potential Killers from trying her and makes it difficult for Survivors to consider counterplay without dedicated research.
As we look to reworking Skull Merchant, our aim is to:
- Strike a balance between being fun to play as and against
- Preserve the intel focus of her kit, while making it intuitive to understand for both sides
- Move away from a passive power with limited player interactions and embrace a more active playstyle, while ensuring her power is compensated in interesting ways
Those last two points may be particularly difficult to hear for long-time Skull Merchant mains, but we feel it’s important to be clear about our intentions here. While the future we envision for Skull Merchant is quite different from her previous iterations, we feel this rework brings some exciting new tools of torment to the table!
DRONES 2.0
Skull Merchant can deploy a Stealth Drone (she carries a total of 5), which scans its immediate vicinity and provides intel back to her. After a short activation period, the Drone gives off subtle audio and visual indications of the area being scanned, revealing any Survivors on the Radar who are caught by its two rotating detection zones.
Importantly, we’ve slowed their rotation speed slightly and toned down the visual intensity of these zones, removing the large scan lines to replace them with something more subtle. Namely, you'll see the direction of each detection zone as they rotate, but the detection zone itself is invisible. This gives Survivors an impression of the space that’s being actively scanned but requires them to proceed cautiously.
While we know they had their supporters, the original scan lines were visually loud and often clashed with the rest of the game’s look and feel. The intent here is to strike a balance between giving Survivors just enough info to assess the threat (a subtle, rotating field of detection) without that threat overwhelming the space and feeling incongruous to Dead by Daylight’s visual identity.
DRONE CONTROL
Once a Stealth Drone has been active for a short period, Skull Merchant can choose to take control of Drones from a distance. During this time, she becomes Undetectable, as her controlled Drone becomes the primary threat. These Stealth Drones move slightly faster than her base movement speed and consume a new resource – Power, unique to each Drone – while being controlled.
Power is consumed slowly as the controlled Drone idles and slightly more is consumed while moving. Skull Merchant is also able to use a burst of this Power to activate Drone Propulsion. This charged power sends the Drone flying forward at high speed, relative to how long it was charged.
Put simply: Stealth Drone go brr
Hitting a Survivor with Drone Propulsion causes them to lose a health state. If you hit a Survivor or collide with an object during this action, the Drone will be destroyed and return control to Skull Merchant.
With these new Stealth Drones, we want to give players something that feels familiar (using drones to gather intel) but also opens the door for unique skill expression opportunities (re-positioning Drones and Propulsion skill shots). Using technology to hunt her prey is core to Skull Merchant’s identity and so it’s important that we stay true to that!
We have opted to remove many of the background effects – Hindered, Haste, Lock On, Claw Trap – that were previously tied to these Drones, though. Rather than doing a little bit of everything with her Drones under layers of complexity, we want their use cases to be clear to Killers and Survivors alike, on the fly. Basically, if they’re static, they’re likely scanning for Survivors. If they’re moving, they’re a collision hazard.
DRONE HACKING
Like Drones themselves, Drone Hacking returns with a greater degree of risk and reward. Like before, Drones can be disabled by Survivors by inputting a series of button presses while close. If a Drone is disabled, Skull Merchant’s aura is revealed to that Survivor, providing useful intel. If the Hack is failed, they are revealed by Killer Instinct and are prevented from attempting another hack for a short period.
The intention here is to introduce a greater degree of tension to hacking, while offering a clear way for Survivors to interact with Skull Merchant’s kit in a meaningful way. The intel reward is greater than before, but the risk of being revealed is more impactful. With intel at the center of this tension on both sides, we hope it makes this interaction easily digestible by players.
RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT
In addition to her Drones, Skull Merchant has another power that ties into her Radar. While the name is currently TBD, let’s refer to it as a Global Detection Power. Once this power is charged and activated, a global warning plays for all Survivors. For a short period afterwards, any Survivor who actively sprints is revealed on her Radar. Of course, crouching, standing still, and hiding in lockers all prevent detection. Added to the intel provided by Stealth Drones around the map, this should help ensure Killers are easily able to keep tabs on Survivors’ movements.
In line with our rationale above, we want Survivors to have a clear understanding of what’s happening when they face Skull Merchant. Where the overlapping timers and status effects of Skull Merchant’s previous kit often obscured what the expected result of an encounter might be, structuring this power around a well-known game – red light, green light – provides a clear and readable threat, a clear benefit for the Killer, and a clear path for Survivors to try and overcome it.
TENTATIVE RELEASE
We are currently evaluating a timeline for Skull Merchant’s rework but do envision it being quite far out as our primary focus is on driving quality-of-life updates. Once we have a timeline to share, we will be sure to keep you informed via future Design Preview updates.
Phew – that was a lot! How do you feel about this rework? We want to hear from you! Jump into our survey and share your thoughts right here:
See you in The Fog!
The Dead by Daylight Team
Comments
she had a 70% kill rate because crybaby survivors would stop playing as soon as they saw her. What is this absolute dishonest bullshit you are spewing?
No one should take you or anyone seriously when this is the level of your argument.
Yeah it says that crybaby survivors like to go next on hook. Can't wait for BHVR to finally punish them for that bullshit. Go next prevention can't come quick enough.
BHVR addressed that as well.
Obviously, DC's are already excluded from KR stats, but Hook Suicides accounted for just 2% of SM's KR.
BHVR literally told us it was only like a few % that were ragequitting, so she was still massively over performing regardless.
I think the direction this rework is heading is all wrong. I believe the problems her kit has can be linked to two things, 1) the counterplay to getting scanned can be unconventional for some players, and 2) the clutter her kit has can make it really overwhelming to face. The problem with her counterplay being a bit unconventional is that getting scanned is the direct prerequisite to her lethality (claw traps), but the solution here, in my opinion, is rather simple. The Skull Merchant should gain charges of a secondary power every time she scans a survivor; and that secondary power should have more conventional forms of counter play. By letting her keep an emphasis on scanning survivors and being rewarded for doing so, she remains recognizable to her player base. However, but giving her a secondary power, where her power budget mostly lies, then her counterplay becomes more conventional and telegraphed. For the sake of the argument lets just imagine that Skull Merchant gains charges of huntress' hatchets. If that were the case, it does not matter if survivors can't dodge a scan line easily because that's not what they have to worry about, it's the more conventional and traditional projectile that they should try to avoid. This would mean that you can keep the claw trap and lock on system as is but remove all status effects tied to it.
I think the approval is very low given the context for such a change.
In addition to that, while I didn't play Skull Merchant that much I always appreciated how unique she was. She was only the third or fourth killer (depending if you count demo) to place her power as an interactible object, and the spinning feature was completely unique. She was not the best designed the killer in the game, but she was the most interesting and weird, and now losing the that uniqueness for "look at Survivor, press power button, launch something/yourself at Survivor", which is like half the Killers in the game by now, just doesn't sit right with me.
I hear a lot of people claiming that Merchant in her current state is unsalvageable. I severely disagree, but I'd like to hear from the designers behind this new iteration and get their take on it to see where they stand because regardless of whether or not SM 2.0 is salvageable, the designers seem to have no desire to try.
Other Killers have had wildly successful reworks where their existing playstyle and mechanics have been kept, but have had the fat trimmed and pain points worn down so the Killer's strengths can shine without causing grating points for the Survivors. Knight is the perfect example: dropping guards in tiles was his most hated playstyle, so the devs toned that down and buffed him in other areas. Knight became more skill expressive, more fun to play and play against and became overall stronger after this rework.
So the question I'm asking is… what's with the designer's aversion to doing the same thing for Skull Merchant? She has TONS of mechanical and strategic depth in her scan-and-stack state; I have made two gigantic guides to showcase that depth. So far there's been no acknowledgement of that depth or any desire to preserve it with the rework: everything that made scan-and-stack Merchant fun and interesting has been nuked and judging by everything that's been said, restoring that is not a priority.
Yep, that's probably how the numbers came to be.
I just made a meta-analysis of the survey, looking at the 51% number in relation to the questions that were asked, how they were asked and the wider context of design previews in other games. It's on Unlisted right now but it'll be incorporated into a larger video when the second round of design preview feedback comes.
Let me know what you think of the video: in my opinion, the survey's figures are WAY more damning than it first seemed, even assuming the unconscious bias I noticed in the questions wasn't a factor at all. Here's hoping a CM sees this, or one of the designers behind the rework, so the next survey that's done for this design preview doesn't have the same issues.
https://youtu.be/GFRdGueX2XsThis video really sums up everything I have issues with the survey and the preview
The survey just came off as bias and gave no room to opinion, didn't add a text box which bhvr usually adds in past surveys, really didn't acknowledge about current merchant to see what people liked about her and could find a way to incorporate in her new rework
Saying they're on the right track despite being clear as day that they're not if this rework goes through, 51% approval rating shouldn't be something that's worth going for
When the next survey and preview comes in the next couple of weeks, I sincerely hope we get our say in this
Though to be quite honest I'm not optimistic about this preview either
There is zero way they can account for people giving up. Also giving up can be more than just hook suiciding. It is when you stop trying to play the game. Which also happens a lot.
As long as BHVR chooses to listen to people who hate the character over the people who have actually played as her, this rework is doomed to failure and the game itself likely doomed to be dumbed down to sameness on all sides.
so then prove it.
Since when is the burden of proof on the person who rejects a claim? BHVR claims they can filter out games where survivors give up. I am not gonna believe them until they prove it. And hook suicides are only a small percentage of the way people give up.
You are contradicting the facts of the matter.
Either give us some proof or admit that it's conjecture and doesn't really mean anything.
You could say that for literally anything in this game and the awesome part of it is, you don't ever need to provide any proof to back up your statements!
With so many changes made to the core game of DBD such as 8 kick limit on gens and the haste and hinder stacking being removed and more telegraphed with a % number showing and few other changes made. May add well just revert her back to her 2.0 state with a few tweaks so she's at least in a playable state.
Just really don't want another failed rework like Twins. Made players wait for years for a rework and only for it to be a disaster with overwhelming backlash that made them even worse and had no choice but to throw it all out revert everything and toss in a few number changes.
This is kind a weirdly confused way of approaching this.
BHVR specifically said they looked for games where a survivor died on their first hook. So I could see some reasonable discussion about "this method had too many false positives or false negatives to be accurate", or "this doesn't account for everything" (which you kind of try to say at one point).
But you're going full bore into "I don't believe they can even track this at all" which seems unreasonable. It's fully within a computer's capability to record stats like this, and we know BHVR looks at game stats regularly.
And, as a thought experiment for you: I personally don't believe your claim that this is impossible for them to do. Which of us has the burden of proof? were both denying a claim at that point, and we both can't be right
Its on BHVR to explain how they determined whether a match had someone give up or not. They did not do so and until they do I call bullshit. Simple as.
Edit: they also just don't have a good track record at actually having done the things they claim to do. They claimed to have fixed flashbangs twice in a row and they were still broken. I don't think it is unfair to want an in depth explanation of what they did.