Comments

• The Rework overall seems like a relatively positive approach towards taking her into a different direction but at the cost of her identity which I don't think is necessarily a good thing.

  The claw traps and lock on are a core aspect of her identity as well as the utilisation of scan lines to create expressive gameplay for the Skull Merchant player and interactive counterplay from survivor stand point too via using hacking or crouch.

  As this is the case at the very least the idea of adding both scan lines back and a type of stealth mode back to the drones is certainly a positive change whilst making their rotation slower.

  Additionally the drone control feature does look promising but is at the same time something that could remove a part of her identity if too heavily focused on and therefore should be complimentary to the current state of her power that is focused more on the Lock on and claw trap system.

  The plethora of different effects created by the drones namely the haste and hinder effect are the ones that can cause a large amount of frustration as they seem the most out of place for how this killer has been designed in a manner that focuses on gathering information, trapping and scanning survivors and then moving in for the down.

  My suggestions/feedback:

  • Focusing on the reward of the lock on and claw traps (For example, the drone control system can reward the skull merchant by making it so that survivors that aren't already claw trapped whether they are healthy or unhealthy become claw trapped and if they already are claw trapped then they can indeed lose a health state. This would offer a fresh new addition and usage of her power whilst still focusing on what makes skull merchant someone who uses her tools of torment)
  • Rather than adding so many more new layers and secondary powers to the skull merchant, implementing some of these interesting suggested changes of this rework to her current kit and replacing some of the prior features that would make her complicated would perhaps be a better idea (For example, making it so that instead of adding a new "global detection system" , making it so that at lock on 1 provides the information that this system would do on a scanned survivor, at lock on 2 the drone could provide information akin to how it does now and at lock on 3 the effect of 2 would carry on and the survivor would become claw trapped as well - this all being related to being scanned by a drone which the skull merchant can still manually change the direction of the scan rotation to allow skill expression and achieve the aforementioned effects)
  • The deployment of drones still giving skull merchant undetectable is fine and a characteristic that can be considered as part of her identity in my opinion but I'm regards to drone interaction and hacking the idea suggested in the rework from Risk reward does sound promising in the regard that successfully hacking a drone can make survivor see the skull merchant aura, but the act of failing a hacking would not benefit the skull merchant in a proportional way due to her power already being focused on gathering information. So I would suggest that her current reward of a survivor becoming claw trapped on a failed hacking as it currently does in this game state is a more fitting reward as it is more centred on her power and facilitating it in conjunction with the controlling drone feature that is suggested in this rework.

  My final point would be that finding a middle ground between making current and long term skill merchant players such as myself to be able to enjoy the reworked skull merchant by retaining her core identity and allowing skill expression through technique such as "laser tagging" is equally as important as reworking her in a way that makes her more accessible to play and play against whilst also allowing her to be more fun and enjoyable through new mechanics such as the suggested drone control (which once more I think is a great idea if tied in to her identity in a meaningful way). Not diverging from her current kit with tools such as scan rotation, scan lines, lock on level states and claw traps and focusing on the aforementioned as her reward or new tools to accentuate her reward would also help greatly in simplifying her power.

  Hopefully this helps and although this is just my opinion I hope it will be taken in consideration one way or another and hope that the rework ends up being great : D

  in Design Preview | The Skull Merchant Comment by Kur0taku March 25, 2025