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Regarding the Future of "The Skull Merchant"

Revvium Revvium
in Feedback and Suggestions

The Skull Merchant has been through a very rough set of updates and so i thought i would take a crack at a rework concept that focuses on making her more active around the map in order to find her value while still maintaining her core audience:

My core idea stems from her very own "style system" but themed around data collecting and building up to an activatable Super mode, Here's some key idea notes I'd run by:

Drones:

  • 1 beam half of the line is visible (coined "stubby beam" by the skull merchant community)
    • otherwise drones function as they do now but are deployed and arm faster than currently in order to promote "Laser tagging" as this is very good for skill expression and currently too in survivors favor to avoid.
  • Remove vertical raise and height limit (anywhere merchant can stand the drone can be placed)

Hand device:

  • Has 3 modes that you can toggle by TAPPING the current "use radar" key similarly to how Freddy can toggle between Pallets and Snares; Surveillance mode, Marksman Mode, and Hunter Mode (this last mode cannot be activated until you earn enough scans/darts)
  • Holding the CTRL button still allows you to look at the radar for scanned survivors as usual.

Surveillance Mode:

  • Functions as current device does with all of its functionality.
  • Rotating Drones.
  • Drone placement.

Marksman Mode:

  • Drone buddy becomes visibly "online" for clarity
  • Tapping the M2 button toggles between Shock Dart and Recon Dart.
    • Shock Darts
      • Explode in a small burst.
      • Hit survivors gain 1 LOCK-ON stack.
      • Hit survivors who are Claw Trapped lose a health state.
    • Recon Darts
      • Expel a Scan Wave in a large area from where the dart hits that is visible to both Survivors and the Skull Merchant. This area is blocked by line of sight. (think Sova from Valorant)
      • Survivors affected by the Scan Wave are affected with 1 LOCK-ON stack and 20 seconds of "detected" on the Hand Device.

Darts are charged like "drawing a bowstring" by Holding m2, and increase in velocity/speed based on how long they are charged.

Skull merchants movement speed is reduced while charging a Dart.

Hunter Mode:

  • Activatable only after 15 LOCK-ON stacks have been applied to survivors by tapping the CTRL key (you cannot swap modes between surveillance and marksman modes while this is available)
  • All survivors gain a Claw trap (that doesn't injure them) and you become undetectable for 60 seconds.
  • Survivors are alerted globally that you enter this mode.
    • During this mode your drones do not have visible scan lines and rotating drones during this mode makes you gain double the haste value post scan as normal.
    • The cooldown of Darts in this mode are significantly reduced.

Everything beyond this I've not thought about and deciding exact number values is not something I'm very confident in. This idea could be 4.6 m/s or 4.4 m/s it really depends on tuning.

There is also the hypothetical of being able to add bounces to the "Darts" as you charge up the darts further, giving interesting gameplay variety from both perspectives.

Thanks! and interested to hear what you all think!

- Revvium 😀

Comments

  • Rebeccubus Rebeccubus
  • Emeal Emeal

    That is a lot of mechanics which better work well and not be too complicated or Survivors might start quitting more against her.

    Here is a question: Are you really preserving her core audience by adding these mechanics? What even is her core audience?
    How do they play? What gameplay do they like?? I dont know the answers to these questions, do you?

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