Design Preview | The Skull Merchant Part 2
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Welcome back to another edition of the Skull Merchant Design Preview! As we mentioned in our recent status update, we received a great deal of valuable feedback from you on our initial rework proposal. Today, we’re excited to share an evolution of this rework!
This places a considerable focus on Skull Merchant’s role as a high-tech hunter – a modern slasher, if you will – who uses the tools at her disposal to generate a network of information as she keeps tabs on her prey, weakens them, and then goes in for the kill when the time is right.
Let’s first dive into the specific changes:
WHAT’S CHANGED?
- We’ve removed the Killer aura reveal when hacking a Drone.
- The Global Detection Power detects Survivors who are running or walking, keeping this consistent with how Drones detect players.
- Stealth Drone scan lines are now visible, but will not extend entirely down to the ground, providing a visual indicator for Survivors to crouch-walk as a counter action.
- Skull Merchant has two different types of Drones:
- 5 deployable Stealth Drones, as previously mentioned
- 1 Drone Buddy (name pending!) that hovers directly over her shoulder. Note: This is not a separate AI-controlled entity.
- Stealth Drones function as previously stated, but Drone Propulsion only injures – not downs – Survivors.
- Any Survivor hit by Drone Propulsion is tagged and tracked with a Claw Trap.
- Claw Traps can be removed by Survivors following a held interaction.
- Skull Merchant gains an activatable ability that fires an EMP dart from her Drone Buddy.
- This ranged attack has a small AOE and downs Survivors tracked with a Claw Trap.
- The EMP dart does not hurt Survivors if they are not tracked with a Claw Trap.
Sound interesting? Let’s break this down by looking at it in the context of an example chase from the perspective of Skull Merchant:
DEPLOY AND DETECT
Your first order of business is to make use of the tools in your arsenal to figure out where Survivors are. You begin by deploying a Stealth Drone and piloting it to a high traffic loop, where you leave it passively scanning. Switching focus back to Skull Merchant, you head towards another loop, activating your Global Detection Power in hopes of catching a Survivor heading to their first gen.
Both the Global Detection Power and your passive Stealth Drone detect separate Survivors, notifying you of their whereabouts on your radar. You’re now perfectly situated for a chase...
TAG AND TRACK
Switching focus back to the idling Stealth Drone, you see the Survivor who was detected running away. Making use of the Stealth Drone’s increased movement speed, you give chase.
Mid-chase, you see an opportunity to strike, launching your Stealth Drone forward with Drone Propulsion and hitting the Survivor. Not only does this injure them, but it attaches a Claw Trap to them. This inflicts the Broken status effect and tracks the Survivor on your radar.
While Drone Propulsion can’t be used to down a Survivor, this opens them up to her other ability...
USE EMP DART TO DOWN
At this point, Skull Merchant could take matters into her own hands and hunt down the Claw Trapped Survivor by hand with an M1 attack, but where’s the fun in that? Hovering over her shoulder at all times is her prized Buddy Drone, which hides a secret weapon.
By charging up and releasing the activatable ability when in control of Skull Merchant, her Buddy Drone fires a short-to-mid range EMP dart that hits with a small AOE. If a Survivor is being tracked with a Claw Trap, the dart will activate this fearsome contraption, downing them. Good hunting!
A SURVIVOR PERSPECTIVE
All that’s well and good, but if you’re a Survivor, how are you supposed to deal with these high-tech tools?
- Stealth Drone passively scanning an area? Either crouch-walk to avoid the scan lines or hack it to send this Drone back to Skull Merchant’s personal stores.
- Hear the Global Detection Power notification? Same as above – begin crouch-walking or stop moving altogether to avoid having your location given away.
- Notice a Stealth Drone being piloted? Keep to tight loops and be ready to juke to prevent the Stealth Drone from attaching a Claw Trap to you.
- Afflicted with a Claw Trap and see Skull Merchant approaching? Be ready to juke her EMP dart. It has a short charge time, so use this time to put an obstruction between you both.
- Afflicted with a Claw Trap and feeling hidden? Hold the interact button to remove it.
With that, we’d love to hear what you think of these changes! We’ll be keeping a close eye on all our community channels and relaying any feedback back to the team, so don’t hesitate to share your thoughts with us (i.e. in the replies right here)!
While we won’t be running a survey this time, we are taking note of the feedback you shared from the last iteration to inform future surveys.
See you in The Fog!
The Dead by Daylight Team
Comments
I think the EMP dart idea, giving SM an Unknown-like spin as a clear reward for the Claw Traps is very solid, but I still think Drone Propulsion is a miss. Here's my personal random idea:
Blindfiring would still serve a similar purpose to drone propulsion, but reorients the power into a trap/zoning power instead of a dash power. And if an SM can correctly guess a Survivor is sneaking under a drone or trying to hack one, she gets a nice reward, leaning into the idea of her being a trap killer who specialises in information and tracking Survivors.
Another wall of text, in case the first part was not enough. No power should be so complex, a couple of lines should be enough. Even Vecna and Dracula, with three powers each, are easier to understand than this.
Cannot believe we get it here because of the literal childish >BEHAVIOUR< of people who couldn't crouch against Skull Merchant yet knows every loop on the game against Clown (a killer with better hindered effects) and you all buy this bunch of crap. What's next? I think Hag teleport to traps are so unintuitive and unhealthy to the game, make her 3.8 and throw mud at survivors. Trapper should also get rework in some sort of Mortal Kombat Scorpion's chains but with his bear trap. Like seriously, this has to be survivors only mains most busted weapons: the power to change killer's kit. Could I also ask for a rework on 4 DS, 4 OFR, 4 DH, 4 insta-heals and 4 syringe + Badham map offering? Smh, I'm so utterly dissapointed yet no surprise at all.
This feels promising, I like that now throwing a drone at them does more than damaging survivors. While you are at it maybe she can receive a chase music update? It feels too monotonous and doesnt provide much hype playing as or against. I'm not talking about Wesker music but something more cunning to fit her new kit
I agree with a lot of the sentiment being expressed here— that this could potentially be very fun to play against with some tweaking, that there are good ideas at play— and, most importantly, that this really doesn't feel even remotely like a Skull Merchant rework.
If the goal was to make her simpler in function and counterplay, then this is several steps in the wrong direction. Expecting unfamiliar players to deal with multiple different skillshots and their respective windups and a more specific condition behind the global detection power is a lot, especially when players complained so much about her conceptually much simpler previous iteration. Speaking of that global detection power, I don't see what this is supposed to change. This is still an ability that offers extremely near to nothing to people playing at any skill level past complete beginner. The only real utility it'd have would still be getting vision on survivors mid-chase to avoid being tricked by unique pathing on tall loops/tiles. The real kicker is that all this change does is make it slightly harder for fresh installs to figure out how it works, because unless a big flashing prompt tells you that you need to crouch, it isn't going to be super intuitive to someone new to the game or the matchup that that's the specific thing they need to do.
As for the scan lines… Why? Why reintroduce something that was initially being removed because it was supposedly too visually noisy and clashing? And why do that after every other gameplay change made to the character has made them pointless? I don't think anybody is under the impression that the old scanlines were genuinely impactful information gathering tools, nor is having them back going to change the matchup. This is another instance of something that only affects extremely new players being treated as if it's a consistent factor of her gameplay. It almost feels like it's supposed to be a consolation prize for the fact that her previously pitched ability to down remotely is being removed, which is a massive blow to the core map control, macro-centric core of the character and to the high skill bracket viability of a high setup, zero mobility killer.
I think the best way to summarize the flaws with this pitch are by explaining what this character would actually be able to do:
With the zero risk, obvious reward, and minimal time/opportunity cost of hacking drones, it's almost never the wrong thing to be doing on survivor, so unattended drones are pointless. With a limited range on the drones themselves, how you approach chases would depend a lot on the balancing of the drones, ranging at her strongest to a Twins sort of arrangement where you regularly throw them out to snag injuries on survivors, to a more Artist-like style at their weakest, where drones that are unreliable for direct attacks would be best set up ahead of time and used on cornered or caught-off-guard survivors. From there, you're at best a short-range Deathslinger that can secure the down with a quick projectile, or at worst more of a Xenomorph sort of deal where your power is more about prediction and zoning than a reliable ability to land shots within its range. With one of your two powers being completely reliant on the other to do anything, it would rarely be worth committing to chases with non-claw trapped survivors, and conversely, it usually wouldn't be worth using drones on survivors you don't intend to chase. With strong drones, this and the ability of survivors to remove unattended claw traps would be a major annoyance, enforcing a specific order of operations on her chases and with it, monotonous gameplay. With weak drones, this would be a death sentence for this killer, regularly forcing her players into their own lose-lose of taking the extra time to set up a drone hit or chasing as a powerless M1 killer.
Any reasonably powerful combination of these elements would end up playing out somewhat like Clown— a killer with minimal map pressure made up for with strong chase potential. Attaching this kind of playstyle, one where a single survivor is rapidly honed in on with a broad and complicated set of tools and mechanics, to a killer with the Skull Merchant's current reputation would be a massive mistake and would heavily exacerbate the issues the community has with her. Any suggestion I could make towards improving this would be along the lines of shifting away from the chase-focused direction proposed here and back to something with its own macro play, and would be another drop in the bucket of Skull Merchant fan tears hoping that we don't lose one of the game's only trap killers to this rework. I still 100% believe that no changes made to SM can cleanse her of the way a vocal minority of players see her, and that trying to cater to people that hated her before is only going to leave everyone disappointed.
I personally really like the idea, the chess merchant can’t really seem to down people from far away which eliminates the bleed out issue, the drone charge idea sounds very fun, the emp dart it just the funny part of the unknowns power. However I feel that the global detection should also detect survivors performing actions, like gens, chests, etc because they are technically “moving”. that way survivors have to either crouch walk somewhere or stand still doing nothing during the duration or risk giving her info on high priority targets(however the duration of the GDP should remain very short of this does happen, maybe 5 seconds of GDP and if you are detected you are revealed a little longer let’s say 10 seconds after you are last detected you will be revealed on her radar? I don’t know)
I'm going to be cynical here, but Drones not downing and applying claw traps is basically a desperate ploy to make current SM like the rework, but the issue is, this rework basically guts the entire kit and replaces it with something else, so claw traps can't really make up for that.
Scan lines are being added so the killer won’t be able to ambush survivors with the drones. It also gives survivors lots of counterplay if the killer tries to chase them towards a drone, because the survivor could easily see the drone, and would often be able to just run somewhere else instead.
BHVR is so concerned about survivors getting “unfair hits”, that the drones will be super useless.
And honestly, why bother spending all the extra time and effort to get a drone propulsion hit, when you could be Legion instead and get free injures? Skull Merchant doesn’t look like she’ll have stealth, or haste, or hindered, and her drone propulsion can’t knock a survivor to the ground… and the EMP dart idea just sounds bad because the survivor can manually remove claw traps, and they’ll be able to dodge the EMP dart.
The fact that she can track Survivors on her radar is a huge reason why I'm a huge proponent of bringing back her release PTB mechanic of displaying a tracking icon above the heads of Survivors who are trackable - not just by the Global Detection Power.
Notably, not just the moments where she's actively looking at her Radar but at all times that a Survivor's actively trackable. This will clearly communicate to Survivors gameplay information (I'm trackable right now) so they have less to keep track of mentally, while create a sense of unease in knowing there's nowhere they can hide without providing too much precise information on the Killer's activities (i.e. the specific moments she's checking her radar)
Something that I want to add, is that one of the things that most enticed me about the idea of Skull Merchant on initial launch is the fact that she was a stealth-based trap Killer. She felt like a high-tech bounty hunter, and that fantasy was really cool! The way the drone zones lit up the map and created a web of both information and stealth for her to weave through was so interesting and cool, even if it did end up being too powerful for macro gameplay.
I do personally still think that this proposed iteration is a really cool idea, whether for Skull Merchant or for another killer. However, I will admit, a lot of the recent killers are kind of beginning to blend together.
I know a lot of people really enjoyed Wesker, but almost every killer that has come out this year that would have been worked on during the time period where we saw the live launch reaction to (and the general negative pushback on the insanely creative Killers of Knight and Skull Merchant, and to a lesser extent Singularity) has had some form of a dash in the kit. Dracula, Houndmaster, AND Kaneki all have double dash powers in their kit! Killers are beginning to feel like they're just trying to emulate the success of Wesker… and the Killers are beginning to blur together and feel super repetitive, and a bit less distinct from one another.
("X is just a better version of Y, Z is just a better version of Y. Why play X or Y when you have Z?" I think these conversations are reductive of the nuances of each Power, but I think the fact we're seeing these conversations more and more often speaks to how recent killers do have a lot of similarities)
And, admittedly, Drone Propulsion (while cool) does sound like…. another dashing power.
I personally love the new and creative ideas that have come in recently - I think years 7-8 had the most unique lineup of Killers this game's ever seen!
Not that this proposed iteration doesn't feel unique - I do personally LOVE the idea of a Killer that has multiple skillshots - but I would be remiss to not mention my observation that I must admit that yet another dodgeable dash would be added to the game.
Even with this addition, I will admit she has a lot of moving parts in her kit that would make her really stand out! But she would still have that dash element.
One thing I forgot about in my first post here was SM keeping the passive scanning from the drones. Actively control the drone yourself to place a claw trap or let the passive beams do it instead. Why there 2 completely different powers that gives the same results, wouldn't that create a conflict?
The kit overall seems a bit better, but actively controlling the drones part should really stay out of the kit as it will give SM the potential to be a 3 gen monster again.
I would say it's better than last version, but drones are passively simply information thing, no?
So why is exactly need for this:
It will simply never detect survivor outside of chase. Is it doing more than just few seconds reveal on radar?
I've thought since the first design preview that the GDP should be something like Dredge's Nightfall, where it charges throughout the match and gives her a short duration of mega-tracking she has to capitalise on.
It being strong is okay if it's limited, either way.
I can understand the desire to implement drone attacks. They look cool. Depending on how they are implemented, they could become a tool like a sub-weapon for the current trap killer, which is what I personally hope for. (It would be even better if you could use an add-on to configure it to specialize in drone attacks.)
But I don't understand what's so appealing about global detection ability... why would you want to implement it so badly?
EMP darts should be implemented in another new killer. In fact, shooting darts that are easy to hit on a marked opponent seems interesting, but I don't think they should be incorporated into the Skull Merchant in terms of simplifying the controls.
However, I think that two design previews have given us an idea of what kind of killer the developers want the Skull Merchant to be. It seems that the drone's ramming and global detection ability are what they want to implement. I think that the claw trap and EMP darts are ideas that were found and refined from the feedback from the previous preview. I think this is hundreds of times more meaningful than suddenly starting the rework ptb without any preview, so I am grateful for this forum and the preview.
This version feels like a more unified version of the various proposed or playable Skull Merchants. That being said, I'm confused about alot of these proposed features implementation. Is she going to keep the dual identity as a Stealth/Trapped Setting killer, or does this push her entirely towards a target hunting design?
Based off the comic, it looks like my earlier wish of returning the Watchful Eye UI element and Scan Panic animations was heard. These are crucial for theming, but also for conveying information.
My biggest question is, where does her stealth factor in? Currently she gains Undetectable after deploying a drone, does this remain part of her kit? Will it be baked into the global detection power?
Unfortunately, scan lines not extending to the ground is not entirely accurate, as her drones can scan above and below it's elevation. Regardless of whether or not this changes, the current shift from orange to white signals enough.
Since one drone becomes a sort of passenger, leaving her with only 5 drones seems to work against the information aspect of her kit. I would suggest maybe bringing back drone fields, possibly only having one active at a time and only for tracking. The Exposed status of her original kit was unnecessary but if she was able to use her radar to turn on one drone field at a time I feel that would be reasonable.
To build on the prior, the best aspects of Skull Merchant was the choices presented to the Killer. For example, if a target was Claw Trapped it would be easy to track and down them, however you could also use the Haste bonus to focus on someone else. With drone fields you had the option to commit to chases or protect generators knowing where to prioritize. I'm not going to argue what was problematic and what wasn't, but with the drone buddy dart there is only one choice available: down the Claw Trapped survivor. This leads to a predictable gameplay loop and makes her feel one dimensional.
Do these drones apply Claw Traps by scan lines as well, or is it strictly by propulsion? I'm hoping for the former, as having the scan aura visible leads to a lot of potential with aura reading perks and really cements her identity as a trap killer. If the latter, there really needs to be more utility in the drone buddy.
Tldr;
When is stealth active? How are Claw traps applied? Will her new kit offer choice, or simplify gameplay to one single strategy? How will the Radar play in her new kit?
This is really just trying to do too many things that aren't connected. Emp dart is just a copy of unknown, and drone propulsion is the like 100th dash attack power. Global detection sounds unfun or useless depending on its implementation.
Skull Merchant had a cool and unique playstyle that this takes away from completely, replacing it with a combination of things we already have as other killers.
My idea:
- Skull Merchant may take control of drones, granting them a small terror radius while doing so. She will be unable to see survivors through the drone camera, but every so often she may scan the area around the drone to highlight visible survivors for a duration, giving them a Claw Trap (or just a stack of Lock on)
This could add a stealth aspect for survivors as well, where they must find a spot out of the drones view if the SM takes control of it. It also adds more incentive to get rid of drones in the first place
Your never going to get to use Emp dart unless you hit them with a drone and clawtrap them in chase. If you ever get a claw trap on a survivor from a distance they can instantly remove the clawtrap before SM can even get there. Currently this SM is a weaker Unknown
The only solution is we need to keep the Battery system where the battery has to fully drain before it can be removed from a survivor.
Maybe fix the fact that most of the killers who can traverse the map in seconds have the same base movement speed as the trapper…
I am back from my little break!
My full feedback video has been made - I can provide the script if written text would make things easier. Fair warning before you take a look: it's absurdly long but there's a lot, both good and bad, to talk about.
https://youtu.be/w2C-VxFUISk
The only thing I disagree with is the drone buddy and EMP. I think it's terrible and stupid and should be thrown in the bin like the rest of the rework. Turning her into the aborted chimeric off-spring of Twins, Unknown and Singularity is the completely wrong direction they should be going and for the life of me I don't understand why they seem so dead-set on this projectile/dash focus idea without considering the alternative.
I loved the cake example because it showcases just how many breaking points the design has. One of the (objectively wrong) things people say they hated was how un-intuitive and complicated her power is. This new version is just as complicated, if not even more so with WAY more moving parts than even pre-nerf Merchant had.
Personally, and I said this last time, if we absolutely MUST lose Merchant as a trap killer, then the rework should be focusing on the "hunter" aspect of her design and personality: a kit that focuses on surveillance with drones and hunting down survivors with stealth and Wraith-style invisibility. The only thing that actually has potential is the GDP, but not in the form they currently have it (aka useless 99% of the time).
At least that would still be in keeping with her identity rather than…whatever the hell they are currently thinking with this.
In the shortest nutshell: This whole direction is stepping on Twins' toes.
I'm a Merchant player, I liked initial merchant, I liked second merchant, I don't like Twins-Merchant.
Another projectile that will always land due to Favor The Killer and how hits are still handled on The Killer's end! This sounds so fun and wonderful. Who doesn't like getting hit despite moving out of the way or around a corner?
This seems awesome! I absolutely love this two-phased attack process as this new power seems incredibly fun to play as and against!!! As a skull merchant player & as a survivor player, I am really looking forward to seeing this implemented! 10/10 This version seems much more interactive and refined than any previous form of her power as-well as the previous design preview.
As far as suggestions, I am curious as to how flying the drones will feel. It shouldn't feel too sluggish or clunky. Real drones are very sensitive and have a sort of exponential acceleration when changing directions! I don't think it should feel quite as sensitive as real drones but I reckon the devs & designers should get a feel for flying real drones to help with the drone flying perspective!
I also think that if the drones were flown in third person it would Improve handling, prevent crashes, and align more with the recon aspect of the drones. I imagine it would be very difficult to see when flying the drones unless you are in third person. This could also make the drones more oppressive than they should be and make counterplay too difficult so it would need to be tested to some degree but I think it might be worth considering!
Make sure the skull merchant and the drones make a noise before firing her dart and dashing to smash to alert survivors who might not see her or the drone! You know how to do this ya'll done it plenty times before, this is more of a friendly reminder!
If I think of anything else I'll leave another comment. If you read this I hope you are having a lovely day and I sincerely thank you for reading what I have to say! :3 Love you <3
It might bring the kit together if survivors hit by drone scans or the global scan are given claw traps because that ties all of her kit together with her phone! I kind of assumed this would happen already but I realised I should write this as a suggestion!!! <3
No it's not a good thing. The actively controlling her drones and looking through them like how Singularity is able to will potentially make her a 3 gen monster again like her first version. Can't disable the drone because she will know and replace it, ignore it it'll crash into you and your forced to leave the area to remove the clawtrap before she shoots you with the EMP dart and the drone gets replaced. ClawTraps will be either useless or impossible to take off during chase since it'll work similar to mending.
There are too many different things that are going on with this new version that will demand very fine tuning to get it right or it's gonna be either useless or overpowered potentially making her worse than before. Might be best just to revert her back to 2.0 with a few tweaks, remove the haste/hinder and let her have the drone buddy.
It’s more likely the killer will have the Twins problem, where they start chasing a survivor with their drone, the survivor immediately runs away from the killer, and by the time the drone gets a hit, the survivor will be really far away and can remove the claw trap before the killer gets there.
The killer will end up wasting so much time, just because the killer stays in one place the entire time the survivor is being chased.
I really like this pitch, but I think it's worth addressing some issues.
Many people (myself included) acknowledge that this version has the potential to make her extremely powerful at 3-genning. I'd like to hear about some sort of safeguard to this issue. Perhaps assuming control of a drone eats a large chunk of the battery life so it prevents her swapping between drones rapidly to check for survivors. Maybe assuming control of a drone and then exiting that drone incurs some kind of lockout where she cannot go back to that same drone again for some time. Anything works really, there just needs to be something.
Global detection should detect any survivor doing anything other than crouching. Crouching is already indicated as the best way to get around drone scans so I don't think it's terribly unintuitive. You could also make standing still avoid it but I think it should detect people doing gens, totems, opening chests, healing, etc. Those are the people you'll really want to be finding anyways.
The drone dash is effectively countered by small loops and lockers alike. I think it's totally fine for one of these to be the case, but both seems a little overkill and like it might negatively impact the killer experience. My suggestion is that, while the drone is "chasing" someone, she can put it into an autopilot mode at, say, 90% base speed (potentially reusing some of the code that allows Knight's guards to chase) at the cost of continually consuming battery. This would allow her to pull an "alright I'll just do it myself" and go after the survivor. If the survivor stays at that loop she'll eventually reach them and deal an injury. If the survivor leaves there's a chance she'll swap back to the drone and crash it into them before they can make it to a similarly safe area or create enough distance from the 90% speed drone. This would allow for mind games that aren't really possible with any other killer and would make for a unique addition to a rework that's already notably similar to The Twins. I understand this makes the power more complex but, at this rate, she's already going to have the most complex power in the game regardless. May as well make her specialize in being complex on the killer side and less complex on the survivor side, which I think is still accomplished here compared to her previous versions that slap a billion status effects on survivors. It's okay for a killer to be extremely complex to play as, but not against.
I would also like to suggest that, instead of a mending bar to the claw trap, it functions as it used to where it has a set battery life and then can be manually removed after expiring via the hacking minigame (throw up a prompt at the bottom of the screen for survivors that indicates the remaining battery life in seconds or something to make this less complicated for them). Maybe survivor actions can deplete the battery life faster somehow? Otherwise, I think just holding until the bar fills up is a lame way to go about it.
Just to ensure it's attached to the discussion, linking my dead thread here on this Skull Merchant Rework to ensure it's in BHVRs view.
TLDR: -
This does sound fun, I like the idea of the drone shooting darts and giving her more things her drones can do.
I do think this will make her more fun in chase, but we don't need more Killers that get countered by things like lockers, collision objects, etc.
What is the point of the Stealth Drones now? They don't seem to be useful for monitoring AND she still has to set them up, which is a bad design concept these days in such a quickly paced game. There's a reason we don't do trap-setting Killers anymore. And as pointed out, with cameras similar to Singularity's, she can STILL 3gen.
I’m still wondering if the drone dash will be changed so that it gives a claw trap that inflicts exposed (and doesn’t directly injure the survivor), so the killer is forced to commit to chasing the survivor.
That would stop the killer from injuring survivors from across the map.
That wouldn't make sense with her attack drone being in toe though.
One of the big issues of this new design is unless SM hits a drone, she is an M1 killer with no power... the drones can't down, and her attack drone can't down (or injure) either until someone is claw trapped... the big question is, how hard is it to hit a survivor with a drone?
So currently survivors have no real incentive to heal, and even if they do, either way for Skull Merchant it's basically hit drone or bust... (a problem that doesn't go away and in fact gets worse if you make claw traps expose only, since she's basically Ghost Face with extra steps).
If the claw traps were permanent until healed or downed/hooked (debates for either)... that might be something... having permanent visuals on someone fits the surveillance direction of the killer and gives a good reason to heal against her, since she can play the macro game extremely well while survivors remained claw trapped.
The drone dart would be considered eligible for exposed, for balance reasons.
Interesting... bound to the claw trap? Or just exposed in general? 🤔🤔🤔🤔
The EMP dart, since it only works on survivors with a claw trap, would be able to trigger the exposed status that the claw trap would give.
Ah, so not exposed effects in general.
Hmmm... seems a nerf for this power to me personally, and I'm not convinced it needs a nerf. If you can remove the claw trap and remove the exposed effect that means the survivor isn't injured, thus you must commit to that Survivor, because if you don't, your successful hit on a drone is meaningless...
Whereas before you at least got an injury to perhaps capitalise on later (even as an m1 killer with a regular hit), now you have nothing to show for it at all if you don't get the down. In all other scenarios there is no difference, but in the scenario you don't want to or can't afford to commit to the claw trapped survivor, your trap hit is rendered obsolete... and currently I'm more worried her power will be too weak rather than too strong.
It's also unnecessarily confusing, cause this configuration would be contradictory to the usual application of exposed. Exposed is exclusively used for basic attacks... in this setup we're making a strange exception for SMs attack drone that muddies the definition of exposed... we could hand wave it as an either or situation/double damage power... but I don't really see the value of doing so compared to just applying an injury as it does now.
Skull Merchant being able to injure survivors from across the map, was easily in the top 3 complaints that survivors had. BHVR would likely need to fix that, or have the drone time heavily limited, so the killer can’t spam drones.
And if the semantics is confusing, then the drone dart can just say it detonates claw traps, which places survivors in the dying state, unless they have endurance.
And there probably needs to be something to prevent killers from camping a hooked survivor with a drone.
Remember this entire rework is revolving around survivors, and whether or not survivors think the killer is fair. It’s a much lower priority to have the killer actually fun to play as.
Hey folks! I wanted to drop in to share thanks from the team and give you a little update.
First off, from myself and the rest of the team, thank you SO much for all the time and insightful thoughts you've offered up while sharing your feedback on this Design Preview! It's been immensely helpful in giving the folks working on this design a good idea of what players are liking the sounds of, and what they feel may not be landing. Both sides of this are important parts of the design sauce!
With that said, the team has taken this feedback - drawn from both Design Previews - and are working through it as they consider what's next for Skull Merchant's rework. This process may take some time, but we will share more about Skull Merchant when the time is right.
In the meantime, thank you once again for your help in detailing all of this valuable feedback!
I'm absolutely terrified about what sort of horrific abomination that completely goes against her identity you guys are going to come up with next.
Thanks for the open-ness Ryan! You've been nothing but helpful and transparent this entire time: there's been a lot of frustration and hot-headedness from basically everyone and you deserve credit for the clarity of communication you've enabled between designers and players. Hope the designers figure out the next steps in good time and I'm very much looking forward to seeing what they cook up.
Since we're here, it might be worth asking though: there's no way we're going to meet that Q3-4 2025 deadline that the designers and Mandy originally communicated if we're wheeling it back into the workshop halfway through the year… so is there any chance we could get some buffs to tide us over till then? If you ask anyone, Merchant is the worst Killer in the entire game after the 8.3.0 nerfs, so if the rework is going to take longer than expected it'd be nice to get some buffs so she feels a bit less toothless in that time.
Removing fast vault immunity from scanlines (which was a knee-jerk change from PTB to live) would be the best here, but there's a lot of ways she could be buffed. Ultrasonic Speaker or Prototype Rotor added to the base kit would make a lot of people happy, since those addons feel borderline mandatory to play the Killer these days.
Thank you for the transparency! I wanted to repeat some feedback I previously gave on twitter
If the global-scan power stays, it could be re-tooled into a boost for her drones instead of just info on any moving survivor anywhere, which then could be adjusted to be stronger because of the now-reduced AOE that survivors can see and remove (by hacking the drone). For some ideas:
- Drones have a bigger radius and can't be hacked
- Survivors anywhere within the drone's radius are detected, unless they are in a locker
Please keep clawtraps a part of her kit, they are core to her visual identity and themes.
And also keep Undetectable/stealth too! Being able to approach survivors unheard and unseen is a core part of the tech-based hunter fantasy. Maybe add a bigger parameter to be met than just placing a drone, so survivors can piece-together that you are undetectable and potentially coming towards them?
A long while ago on these forums, I suggested a major rework to SM's kit that allows her to gain value from by pressuring and chasing survivors, based on her current gameplay identity and lore (including a debuff for survivors called 'Information'). I believe some of my ideas may provide solutions to current qualms with her gameplay! https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/388103/a-skull-merchant-rework-idea
I sincerely hope the next preview that her identity is kept in some way, I was never a fan of the Drone propulsion due to her becoming a dash/projectile killer and the global detection ability as it's just does nothing since it's easily countered by crouching/doing gens
Since SM's going back to the workshop, I thought I should put my suggested rework here. It's built on the back of SM 2.0, keeping the scan-and-stack system and drone beam manipulation that makes her special, but includes features from SM 1.0 (active zones returning) and SM 3.0 (mobile drones and the EMP Dart/drone buddy). That's why it's called The Neapolitan: it's three flavours combined together!
The gameplay loop is as follows: send your drone somewhere and it'll zoom over to set itself up as a trap, but if it spots someone on the way you can cancel its path to instead take a shot with the blue beam. It's a proper classic skillshot: if they don't dodge it they get instantly clawtrapped, they, but if they do you probably end up wasting the drone. It's a risk-reward that recycles the mobile drone concept from 3.0 that everyone liked, but does it in a way that can't be easily used to 3-gen or zone Survivors: instead it becomes a remote way to collect information or set up traps, meaning she doesn't have the issue Hag and Trapper have where she spends 12 years setting up. Tell them where to go, and the drones will set themselves up!
Once it's set up as a trap, it's a tripwire until someone steps in it and spins around once someone sets the tripwire off, so the scan-and-stack system and drone rotation wizardry that makes current SM fun still exists in the power. It will also mean that if you played against current-era Merchant, there's less to learn since you'll know how this element of the power works already.
When you're not using the blue beam out of Recon Mode, you apply clawtraps in much the same way you do now, but instead of relying on Haste/Hinder to get the down, you have the Drone Buddy from the last design preview to finish the job!
The Survivor counters are many and plentiful: when you step in a drone's active zone, take cover from a potential blue beam! If the Killer is close you can run to gain distance, but if she's far away you might want to take a risk and hang around so you can disarm the drone once it enters Stealth Mode.
If she's chasing you and you enter a tile with a Stealth Mode drone, avoid the tripwire so the drone stays in Stealth Mode as long as possible.
If you enter a tile with a Scouting Mode drone, crouching, standing still and using LOS breakers to evade a moving beam will be your priority, which will be easier than it used to be with only one fully beam to worry about.
What do we think?
#########? It's been 8 months since she got nerfed, and you guys are still in the CONCEPT phase? Seriously?
Considering what the concept is, that's a good thing.
Pushing this to a PTB without checking would've been disastrous.