PixelBush
PixelBush
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@ThatRyanB said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3989532#Comment_3989532
Good question! If you've been left in the Dying State for 90 seconds and self pick-up, the 90 second timer doesn't reset. That means that if you're left in the Dying State again, you'll be able to self pick-up again if you fully recover.
I'll reserve full judgement until we get to play it, but this seems terrifying. There are innumerable combinations of perks that force a Killer to slug aggressively to play around them: after all, this is how basekit Unbreakable got shot down last time it was tested. Not to mention Twins exist, a Killer who will build up those 90s as part of normal gameplay. Here's hoping the sabo mechanics and those perks (and Killers, looking at you Twins) get looked into at the same time…
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@Mandy said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3990152#Comment_3990152
I'm guessing because it's a simple number change on Oni, I think pretty much everyone would agree, that a simple number change on Twins won't really do anything.
I disagree. Beef up the Haste when switching back to Charlotte and the free Unbreakable becomes far more manageable. Twins are possibly the only Killer in DBD who would naturally cause Survivors to be on the ground for 90s in the course of regular gameplay because it takes so long to pick up your downs. Minimising their downtime between downing and hooking by buffing the Haste would go a LONG way to help this.
Failing that, make the 90s timer pause/go slower while Victor is attached to someone else. This encourages Twins to latch onto someone healthy and split pressure instead of leaving Victor to camp the slug and punish Survs for not kicking Victor and allowing Twins to snowball.
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@Coordi said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3976884#Comment_3976884
Respectfully, considering how long it takes to even exploit the bug, it isn't affecting games enough to meet the criteria. I am not discounting the frustration or feedback about how it is being used. However, until it is gamebreaking, it will not receive a Kill Switch. It is a nuclear option.
The "gamebreaking" threshold has not prevented use of the kill switch before. Back in the Bone Chill event, Houndmaster's bonus movement speed from Search could be maintained permanently by hopping into event snowmen while using the Chase command. This resulted her being killswitched during the entire Bone Chill event, which lasted almost a month and meant players could not enjoy the new Killer in the new event.
The Streetwise bug is far more gamebreaking than Houndmaster was in the event since even a few uses of the exploit will give an item so many charges it is functionally infinite, and the case to keep the brand new Killer playable after she had been out less than two weeks was far more compelling than a single perk.
If Houndmaster deserved the killswitch back in December, I fail to see why Streetwise doesn't deserve it now.
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@PetTheDoggo said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3965566#Comment_3965566
Like scanline immunity in vaults
This change was what completely made her useless...
Genuinely the dumbest change they made in 8.3.0 and that's with stiff competition. It wasn't even on the PTB; they just shoved it on because they were bored, just in case someone might actually want to play her after the turbo nerf.
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@drag27 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3965506#Comment_3965506
yea, I say just revert her back to 2.0, no rework is needed
I think a full revert to 2.0 would be a mistake, but until the rework comes I'm on board with reverting the more knee-jerk nerfs and giving her safe numbers buffs. Like scanline immunity in vaults and the Hinder going to 8% would be welcome. Maybe make the Undetectable activate faster (like Ghostface and Pig), maybe reduce the scanline immunity to 2.25s, base kit Prototype Rotor, maybe an extra drone... But one beam should stay; two beams were the source of her exceptionally low skill floor and as such it should stay at one.
Merchant 2.0 did have some problems and the nerfs did address a couple of them, but only in the most pig-headed ways possible.
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@Spirit_IsTheBest said:
No.
Skull Merchant is receiving her rework this year, and if they buff her in the current state she is, she’ll be like her previous version where no one wants to verse her and people will complain, the current power she has is boring and uninspiring, she needs a total rework where they make her much more interactive and fun to verse, that is what she deserves, not buffs in the slightest.
There's no way on Earth this rework drops this year. Nine months since the nerfs hit and we don't even have a current design preview. It took BHVR six months to get to the MS Paint doodle stages of the first design preview: there's no way we're going from a design preview to a dev build to a PTB to a live release in five months when we've also got game health stuff, the Grimoire and the Trickster rework in the pipeline.
There is only one more midchapter in 2025: the late September PTB in about three months, and that's the last window we have for the Merchant rework. Do you seriously think we're going from nothing to a PTB in that time?
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Here's an idea: seperate Clown's yellow and purple bottle ammo counts. That way using a yellow bottle doesn't feel like you're wasting a purple. This will encourage Clown to use both bottle types instead of forcing him to choose (when the choice will inevitably always be purple).
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Any chance of some numbers improvements or the removal of fast vault immunity for Merchant? She's atrociously weak and the rework that was promised to be coming by the end of the year is looking increasingly unlikely to arrive on time. It seems fair to give her some interim buffs to tide her players over until the rework comes if it's going to take longer than anticipated, does it not?
The changes all look solid, especially the item adjustments. It just doesn't feel good to be playing a Killer kneecapped almost a year ago and seeing a bunch of other, stronger Killers getting lots of polish and changes.
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@GeneralV said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3956531#Comment_3956531
Yep! Your guide was very helpful friend!
Thank you for your comment and the updated information, I appreciate it.
Honestly I had a suspicion that compass tech no longer worked after trying really hard to use it and failing, but before having confirmation I thought it was a skill issue on my part. I've experimented with M&A in a couple of games and, yes, it does seem like stealth is a good approach, if nothing else then only to give survivors less time to react to your presence.
and unless she gets more balance changes or the rework at some point soon I don't think much is liable to change.
I agree, and it is truly unfortunate because the design previews for the rework are bad and, in my opinion, not needed. I still think reverting her nerfs is the best option.
I'm working on a video "The State of Skull Merchant" right now to talk about the future for this Killer. For what it's worth I'm still playing her and loving her, even if I acknowledge that actually 4K-ing with her is FAR more difficult than it should have any right to be. And if you enjoy what she can do that almost no other Killer can, and can handle losing a few more matches than you'd like to, I would recommend you do so too. And if nothing else, the first two design previews getting thoroughly rejected by the community means she's gonna be the way she is for a little while, so I'd say… get used to her, I guess.
Playing her during the anniversary feels nice because the invite powers give her a lot of extra efficiency and options to offset your relatively crappy power.
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Scrolling back, I can see you're familiar with my work. In terms of stuff that's happened since I made my last guide…
- Compass tech has been patched, but so has the bug that causes her drones not to rotate on deployment.
- Your best perk right now is Monitor and Abuse. Her Terror Radius went down to 24m in the Kaneki patch which means Monitor takes her to 16m: the same as a Tier 2 Myers. This, combined with your drone deployment Undetectable, means you have legitimately decent stealth now.
- Finesse doesn't count as a fast vault for the purposes of fast vault immunity, and Vigil doesn't reduce the Hinder duration from clawtraps. These are both major assets to you.
- More people are running Made for This since Ghoul dropped which sucks for you, but more players are also resetting more aggressively because they have a morbillion healing perks. This means scanning Survivors who are injured becomes more valuable: you can leave them at 2 stacks injured, take a new chase, they'll reset but resetting at 2 stacks is basically 99'ing yourself to get instantly re-injured again. Bear this in mind if you notice they're stacking reset perks: Survivors being injured and Locked On is still good, and if they bring reset perks and Exhaustions that means fewer perk slots for anti-tunnel. Do with this information what you will.
- The Penti build is still good. Nowhere near what it was, but still good.
Everything else I can say, I already said in my 2025 edition of the Grandmaster's Guide to Skull Merchant, and unless she gets more balance changes or the rework at some point soon I don't think much is liable to change.
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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?
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@ThatRyanB said:
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!
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.
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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
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@ThatRyanB said:
In addition to the conversation going on in this thread (which we're closely following - thanks for being so in-depth with your thoughts!), I wanted to pose two other questions:
1. What do you feel is the most complex-to-understand aspect of this Killer's gameplay flow here?2. What would YOU name the Drone Buddy? 👀
Regardless of anything else, I like the name Valentina. Her father's first manga was named Adi Valente and it's clear she formed an attachment to his work that she carried into the world of business (the V in her company logo, for example). Valentina just feels natural for a little drone pal that follows her around.
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I'll be making a proper video on this when I'm not on a mini-break, but I'll be relatively brief here: there's still a TON of problems with this version of the character.
-The power still gets hard countered by lockers, small rocks, trees and fire barrels but gets the first health state for free if none of those things are around.
-the large number of aforementioned safe zones + 100% visible scan lines + the fact she can't down remotely ever means that her days of being a trap Killer are completely gone. there is no point setting up drones as traps if Survivors can always see the beams, disarming a drone sends it back to the Killer and there's a huge number of areas where the drone is incapable of hitting you. it is LITERALLY not worth your time any more to set them up.
-the global tracking system is still useless because it can't find anyone on gens or healing (i.e. the players you want a tracking system to find)
-she can still check through the cameras to get a remote health state on someone repairing a gen, meaning she can still turbo 3-gen. you haven't fixed that problem at all.
-If you stay injured the power is completely useless. A clawtrap you can immediately remove whenever you like in exchange for the drone going away forever is a net positive for the Survivor player even if you make every single mistake you can possibly make (run facefirst into the stealth mode drone and then fail to evade the attack).
The EMP dart and the beams only reaching halfway down to showcase crouch counterplay are the only significant improvements made in this version of the power, and those mechanics could easily be retro-fitted into current Merchant's kit, replacing the Deep Wound, Haste and Hinder. This would make her more fun to play and play against without causing all of the above issues, issues which I believe are inherent to the unfixable drone propulsion design.
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@VibranToucan said:
I think the approval is very low given the context for such a change.
- Skull Merchant is the most hated Killer in the game. There will be tons of people who just voted yes, without engaging with the changes, just because they think "anything must be better than what we have now."
- This change will likely make Survivors more happy than Killer, due to Survivors disliking her more than Killers. For the game to work, 4 times as many people need to play Survivor than killer at any given time. If Survivors said yes to something and Killers no, the results are 80/20. These results mean that even sizeable chunck of the Survivor community didn't vote yes, despite how much they dislike current Skull Merchant.
- 1 and 2 and my interaction with the community generally paint a picture. People who said yes generally, like the changes and think its a nice thing. People who said no, generally absolutely despise the changes and think this might be one of the worst things ever to come to dbd. I am not nearly as confident that people who voted "yes" will actually like the changes, as I am that people who voted "no" will hate the changes.
- Yes, 51% of the community said "Yes", but 25% of the community said "No". This means half as many people are unhappy with the changes as happy. If this was an "implement A or implement B" choice, then yeah going with A would make sense. But it is an "implement A or keep B" choice, this would be the biggest rework in dbd history, so you are using immense resources on a change you know a large part of the community will be upset by, meanwhile the people who said "yes" said they would like the change, but you can't know for sure until they actually tried it. It is just a big gamble.
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 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/GFRdGueX2Xs -
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.
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@Thusly_Boned said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3910468#Comment_3910468
To be fair, if they just wanted her gone, they'd leave her as she is now. And I doubt they really want any killers gone, because they don't make money that way.
I honestly feel for those who main(ed) her and invested a ton of time mastering her kit, but the thing some people seem unwilling to see is how universally and apocalyptically despised she was/is. You simply can't say "well, they did this for X killer, why won't they do it for SM?" as if everything else is equal. SM is not Billy, SM is not Onryo. SM is her own whole own phenomenon.
Skull Merchant has been an historically and singularly reviled killer, on a level not comparable to any other I can recall. Why that is the case is may not be wholly rational, but it's largely irrelevant. It just is what it is.
And I think that logically speaking, keeping her as she was or reverting her makes a lot less business sense. The fact of the matter is that the SM main community is tiny compared to the community at large, and this is a business above all else. They not going to bend over backwards to placate the like five Skull Merchant mains, even if one of them is outspoken and has a notable YT channel.
Dead killers don't make money, and they've already got at least one killer who is effectively dead (Twins) and a few who are close to it, and I am guessing the don't want more. This is a salvage operation, and wholesale change was the only real path forward to a future with her in it.
And if nothing else, I'm actually encouraged that they're willing to essentially remake a killer. I think their hesitation to do so has doomed other killers. And she may yet be doomed, but I applaud the effort if not the details.
If they want to salvage this Killer's reputation, then turning her into 5-Victor Twins with a Ph.D in 3-genning, camping, slugging and camping slugs is quite probably the worst possible way of doing it.
Regardless of my personal feelings about the Killer herself, the rework proposed by BHVR is a laughable failure and anyone who's played as much Twins as me, with all the issues that Killer has, will recognise that. Hell, BHVR themselves in the above post acknowledged these would be issues they're trying to address… we'll see if they manage to address those issues though. If removing the ability to camp and slug from a kit was as easy as that post suggests, then they'd have done it to Twins already.
This rework is a complete joke, a waste of development time on a conceptual level, and if they want to save the Killer's reputation long term it'd be a better use of that time to improve what we already have than it would be to unleash the horrors of 5 Victor Slugging Chess Merchant onto the game.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3910250#Comment_3910250
I also think that Clown is rather intuitive to understand how to play against.
A lot of SM's 2.0 kit was not intuitive. Lock-on Hindered you, but she also got Haste. She could be stealth, pallets don't work with a claw trap, she enforced a leave loop or die playstyle which was pretty much every new Killer release at the time, not an issue specifically with her, but it didn't help.
Just a lot of bloat on her kit.
"Lock-on Hindered you, but she also got Haste. She could be stealth, pallets don't work with a claw trap, she enforced a leave loop or die playstyle which was pretty much every new Killer release at the time, not an issue specifically with her, but it didn't help.
Just a lot of bloat on her kit."
… I agree! But the scanline mechanic itself wasn't a problem; it was the "random bullshit go!" approach in terms of the payoff for scanlines. They could have streamlined her power significantly, cut out the Haste and Hinder and given her some new method of lethality against clawtrapped Survs, but kept the scan-and-stack + clawtrap system the same and we wouldn't be having this conversation. I've been pressuring BHVR for that in my videos for the past 18 months!
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3910155#Comment_3910155
When has BHVR ever brought a previous version of a Killer back?
It makes little sense for BHVR to bring back a Killer that was so, nearly, universally reviled that they dumpstered her rather than try to rework her previous iteration.
Makes more sense to try to find a new way to make her work. If you want her to focus on traps, sure, that's good feedback and I'm sure they are considering that aspect. Don't envy them, because Trap Killers are usually non-interactive and are tricky to balance fun with strength. Regardless, that is valuable feedback even if I disagree with it.
Insisting that she be reverted is not good feedback. They are not going to do that.
"When has BHVR ever brought a previous version of a Killer back?"
They've done it before. Sadako and Billy have both had problematic reworks wound back because their mains yelled about it. Sadako 3.0 is basically a rebuild of her original version with a lot of the problems ironed out, and Billy mains were overjoyed with Billy going back to a non-Overheat state.
Why do Sadako and Billy mains get to have what they want but not us?
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@ThatRyanB said:
Two weeks ago, we shared a Design Preview focused on a proposed rework for Skull Merchant. We saw so much amazingly in-depth discussion come out of this and your participation in the survey helped us dig deeper into how you felt about the specifics of the preview!
Looking at these survey results, 51% of respondents were satisfied with the changes and 24% had a more neutral outlook. That’s a great starting point! It shows we’re on the right track, but that there’s room for adjustments. First, let’s look at some of the interesting points we saw come up:
- There was a lot of love for her drones! The two most positively received mechanics were the ability to control drones and the Drone Propulsion action.
- While the concept of drone hacking was well-liked, we also heard your concerns that the value of this action felt like it could skew towards Survivors, specifically because it would reveal the Killer.
- The global detection power sparked a lot of interest, but its practical value wasn’t totally clear. We’re taking these points into account!
So, what’s next? Drawing on your feedback, the team is taking this rework back into the workshop to make some adjustments. In a couple weeks, we’ll be back with an updated preview and look forward to hearing your thoughts! Specifically, a few of the key topics we’re investigating are:
- Focusing on Skull Merchant’s identity as a crafty Killer who meticulously tracks her prey with high-tech tools.
- Balancing her map pressure so she has (and can benefit from) wide awareness via her drones, without the playstyle feeling like it supports camping, slugging, or 3-gening.
See you in The Fog!
The Dead by Daylight Team
Not gonna lie, this is a heartbreaking read.
Were there any considerations given to the assassination of her established identity, the removal of all of the skill expression and unique technical gameplay of her current version? The sentiment among Merchant's players right now is morose; we're not getting a rework we're excited for, we're counting down the days before the our favourite Killer is taken out back and shot and it feels like our pleas for a stay of execution are going unheard
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@ThatRyanB said:
Howdy folks! I wanted to pop in here with a lil update. We haven't forgotten about this - I may have just been a little bold with my estimation on when we'd have an update to share.
We've had some great chats behind the scenes about the next stage of this Design Preview and will have more to share about it shortly, so stay tuned!
That's good to know; thank you. Your transparency in this process has been appreciated.
If it can be noted, I found the survey we were given to fill out was a little limiting in terms of what we could express and how we could. A lot of the questions were framed in a way that assumed the changes were doing what they intended to do, or that that was a good thing. E.G. the survey asked "does this rework giving the drones more counterplay increase your enjoyment as Survivor?" and not "does this rework give the drones more counterplay?" Because if we believe the rework does not give additional counterplay and in fact removes a lot of it, we haven't got a way to effectively express that.
Same with the "passive/active playstyle" assertion. The survey took for granted that the rework had fulfilled its design intentions when I and many others do not believe it did, but the survey had no room for us to express that. It didn't help that there was no "Anything to add?" text box at the end to add our own written thoughts in more detail, and the survey questions were overwhelming focussed on the Survivor experience playing against this new power and didn't acknowledge the Killers who would have to play with it, or would lose the Merchant we know and love for it.
In the case of future surveys with regards to Merchant and other Killer reworks, it'd be nice to feel less pigeon-holed into positivity and more capable of lodging concrete design criticisms with the changes themselves.
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@AssortedSorting said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3818017#Comment_3818017
So, to generalize her chase:
- Place down a Drone, possibly to get a "snipe" upon placement depending on if the survivor is in an animation lock or not (which they nerfed with the Fast Vault Immunity and inconsistent initial beam projection)
- The Drone is placed at your feet, or was placed in a loop prior if you were preplanning a chase in an area/already chased someone there and they didn't remove the drone (perhaps because you hid it's placement via the stealth mode).
- If the Survivor continues to run the same loop, utilize the beam rotation swap and your own movement to cut them off/zone them into the beam/force them to slow down and take a hit from you/leave the loop.
- If the Survivor leaves the loop, cut them off if they positioned themselves badly, or repeat the previous points until the survivor is in a position that they cannot avoid the beams.
- After scanning survivors three time, the Skull merchant successfully "hits" the survivor with a claw trap.
To me this is a bunch of stale anti-loop, outside of the pre-placement of drones for surprise activations (that is now no longer a thing as stealth mode is no longer a thing). But at the very least it's something that needs to be done three times in a row unless you just get a hit.
Do Locked-On stacks ever fall off?
Regarding her information:
- Hold your radar up the entire time as it's free information (though with the 4.4m/s nerf it's now a penalty to peek at the radar)
- This radar is only useful on Survivors with a Claw trap on them, and not for any other survivor that may have started to gain stacks of Locked On.
- Somehow you're able to keep track of the number of stacks of Locked On each Survivor has, even if you're not visually tracking them (does the radar give a ping if a Survivor gains a stack of Locked On?)
- Placing traps in obvious places that survivors want to disable them allows you to get some knowledge of where survivors are based on deactivations.
I don't like how Locked-On stacks don't have any use unless the Survivor suffers from all three stacks. Nor do I like the idea of just holding the radar up all the time.
Fast Vault Immunity IMO does need to go. 4.4 should stay (but the radar improved to the point that reading it is valuable compared to that slowdown). Beam bug should be fixed, stealth mode should be re-introduced (Can you explain to me how stealth mode worked? Why was there a ring anyway to indicate the stealth mode drone was there instead of being pure stealth?) and possibly tweaked.
And then the macro map knowledge of Drone auras/deactivations should be revamped into a more active-use ability by the drones that the Killer can activate somehow to get cross-map information pings.
A few direct responses to your talking points:
- "a "snipe" upon placement depending on if the survivor is in an animation lock or not
The arming time is 1.8s, which means the arming time is too long to hit them in animation lock like Huntress or PHead. You have to actually predict where they'll go and aim it there, or they have to run into it.
- "Do Locked-On stacks ever fall off?"
They only get removed when a Survivor is downed or when a Clawtrap is applied. This means Survivors who are already injured with 1-2 Lock On stacks can and often do grab a clawtrap from the nearest drone to reset their stacks once it falls off. This means they can get a heal and be healthy at 0 Lock On without losing a health state.
- "Somehow you're able to keep track of the number of stacks of Locked On each Survivor has, even if you're not visually tracking them (does the radar give a ping if a Survivor gains a stack of Locked On?)"
You get a score event "Stealth Detection" if a Stealth Mode Drone light someone up, and "Target Detected" if a Scouting Mode Drone spots someone. The radar also beeps sometimes, but not all the time.
- This radar is only useful on Survivors with a Claw trap on them, and not for any other survivor that may have started to gain stacks of Locked On.
That's not quite true: any Survivor who gets picked up by a drone can be seen on radar for 12 seconds. Stack tracking is useful because it can help you find Survivors who are at 2 stacks, and therefore about to get a clawtrap, and inform you about WHO just got scanned; you know someone set the drone off, but a lot of the time you don't know who set it off unless you can keep track of everyone's Lock On progress.
For pre-nerf Skull Merchant, she got Haste for every Survivor visible on the radar, whether clawtrapped or not.
- Can you explain to me how stealth mode worked? Why was there a ring anyway to indicate the stealth mode drone was there instead of being pure stealth?
Stealth Mode drones rotated slower (65 degrees per second) but the Survivors could not see the beams directly. They can see the ring on the ground and see the position of the lights on the drone's housing to tell them where the invisible beams are looking though. The ring exists because Survivors are ass at looking around, that's why.
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@AssortedSorting said:
What are the basic mechanical elements you like about the previous Skull merchant?
To someone that hasn't played her, what is a synopsis of how you approach her Power?
There's three elements that really make Skull Merchant who she is.
1: Precise beam management to stack up Survivors quickly and at the right moment. This can be done through lasertagging (aiming a drone beam at a Survivor as you're deploying it to give them an instant stack as soon as the drone turns on), rotation switching at the right time to double-back a beam onto a Survivor, and Skull Merchant's techs like look tech. This has a pretty significant skill ceiling, including sniping with beams through holes in walls and stairs and getting the scanline immunity window down so you can double-stack Survivors (scan them once and then rotate your beam at the right time so they get scanned again as soon as the immunity window ends). This gives you the tools to precisely time your Hinder or remote injuries to do some really silly stuff like firing a Survivor into a deadzone with the post-hit speed boost.
2: Clever setups using drones as traps. You can hide the alert ring that Stealth Mode Drones leave on the floor by hiding them in special sneaky spots to make them hard to spot and disarm, meaning she can set up traps in the environment to catch people out. That gives you Lock On stacks and map information, making your chases quicker when you track the Survivor down later.
3: Info management and macroplay through the radar, stack tracking and monitoring your drones (which is helped by the other two). You can keep track of how many Lock On stacks each Survivor has (since you're not told yourself) so you can work out WHICH survivor just got scanned by keeping track of who has how many stacks, you can take or drop chases based on how many stacks you need to get your injury, you can set up 2 taps where you chase someone at 2 stacks and instantly shred both health states. Plus, since you can tell when a drone is disabled if you peep the radar and check, you can work out where Survivors are going by the trail of destroyed drones they leave in their wake.
Fast vault immunity, 4.4 and the drone deployment bug kills the first element, the removal of stealth mode drones and one beam kills the second, and 4.4 and the removal of stealth mode kills the third. She has NOTHING now.
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@SoGo said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3816442#Comment_3816442
So, first thing is that I don't suggest this because of hatred against her, but because I see an opportunity to fix up some issues which can't be solved wuth a classic rework. Plus, these nerfs were intended to destroy her until her eventual rework later on, so why not just go through with it completely?
Also, I'm not suggesting full on replacing the lore and cosmetics, just some small changes, such as:
• Cutting fluff out of her lore and focusing on the main character instead. Why do we have to go through multiple paragaphs just to explain that her dad wrote a manga which defined her and dipped. This whole part could be explained in 5 to 7 sentences. Also, where did her drones come from? Are those actual skulls or just props?
• Decide which tone her character is going to go with. Right now, you have a bond villain esque femme fatale, a cutthroat bussinesswoman, a serial killer inspired by a dark manga, a tactician and a hunter. And all of these ideas are shoved into a single character.
• As for her cosmetics, I mainly just want the base cosmetic mask replaced with something that doesn't look like it was made last minute by spray painting a styrofoam cast with a metalic paint. Most of her cosmetics can stay as they are, it's mostly just the base one that looks weird.
Of course, I get where you're coming from. If my favorite character got destroyed, I'd be outraged too.
"these nerfs were intended to destroy her until her eventual rework later on, so why not just go through with it completely?"
Because whenever BHVR have tried to "Freddy" a Killer, it has literally always gone wrong and given us something as bad or even worse than we started with. Hell, I've never seen an example of that working in any video game ever; it has ALWAYS caused problems.Freddy obviously completely failed,. Almost everyone agrees that an attempt at rebalancing old Freddy would have gone down better than the total mess we have now and it wouldn't surprise me if the Freddy rework we get next year harkens back more to old Freddy. They tried it with Twins too and PTB Twins was… well, PTB Twins. Literally the most absurd Killer BHVR has ever created, would have destroyed the game if it hit live servers.
The best reworks in DBD's history were Leatherface, Knight and Doctor; all targeted at ironing out their pain points and modernising their kits while keeping their identity and what works about their gameplay loop intact. Skull Merchant needs this too: there's a lot about the Killer that works really nicely. She just needs changes that make those interesting elements shine and trim the fat so that the Killer is forced to use the skill expressive elements of her kit to succeed (something her pre-8.3.0 iteration failed to do), while also making using them rewarding (something that live Merchant failed to do). Making Skull Merchant's current iteration work is not an impossible task; BHVR have just never actually tried it.
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@diegaster said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3816442#Comment_3816442
Dont act like its the first time that this happens, it already happened with Freddy (in the way that survivors doesnt know how to counter the power so the killer is gutted) and happened with Legion (the killer’s power is so bad designed that needs to be gutted) so why Skull Merchant should be the exception when she is the most hated and poor designed killer ever?
Yeah, because Freddy's new power went down so well! It's blatantly obvious with hindsight that what happened with Freddy was a mistake: they completely pulled him apart and rebuilt him into a crappy, crappy Killer to when they didn't need to, and the result is, well, current Freddy.
And Legion at least got to keep running and stabbing. They were run and stab Killer before, they are run and stab Killer now. Old Legion had zero depth, there wasn't anything to save. Skull Merchant has plenty of depth, she has a lot going for her that's worth keeping. Like Knight, she just needs the power stripped down and the fat trimmed to give her room to get buffed in ways that aren't obnoxious and allow the Killer to be both viable and tolerable. It's not that hard to do.
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@SoGo said:
My opinion on her is still the same no matter how they try:
They should remove her from the game (and compensate her mains, ofc), rework her from the ground up, maybe even with a brand new power, change her lore so it's not a mess, change her base cosmetics, so they don't look so inconsistent, and after all that, re-release her back into the game.
If we're exterminating characters that people who don't like them don't like just because they don't like them, then I have a small list of characters I'd like that done to. I physically can't play as or against Spirit because my hearing is bad, for example, so should she get pulled apart to accommodate me? Singularity's lore and visual design is a complete joke that makes Skull Merchant's look flawless and his power is a snooze fest, especially after the huge buffs he got, let's drag that robot to the scrap heap!
Why are we so insistent on carving up a Killer just because people don't like them? Every Killer has people who don't like them. There is no compensation that BHVR could reasonably give for straight up deleting my favourite character, especially if the lore and visual design and everything got changed too.
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@CosmicScarab said:
All of these changes feel awful, but the biggest biggest problems I have so far are the removal of stealth mode, the removal of one beam, and the slowdown when using a drone.
The removal of stealth mode is the most mind boggling choice, as it removes her as one of the very few trap killers we have in the game and makes skull merchant an exclusively anti-loop killer, which is what survivors complained about the most about her in my experience. She isn't even decent at being an anti-loop killer either, due to the bug with laser tagging and the ability to ignore drones entirely if you fast vault. In this regard she feels like a significantly nerfed version of Clown.
The removal of one beam also hurts her significantly in my experience and seems to make her too easy to play around, but that could just be a skill issue, and I could just need to get used to it.
The slowdown is also a baffling choice, as you get a measly 5% haste for tagging a survivor. That is the exact same amount that you slowed down for simply using your power in the first place, meaning you functionally get nothing.
I genuinely think SM might be one of, if not the worst killers in the game now. There is almost never an instance where using your power would be better than M1ing. Even Freddy, who people consider to be a terrible killer at least has some form of map mobility and can slow survivors significantly easier than SM can.
I really hope the upcoming rework actually happens and isn't thrown on the back-burner like Freddy, or abandoned like the Twins were. And if it does happen I hope it at very least brings back her trapping playstyle, because it was so much fun.Yeah, I think SM's the worst Killer in the game right now. With lasertagging fixed then maybe she's better than Freddy and Trapper and Myers, but in her current state… yeah she's in the toilet.
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@PriestessPoppy said:
Old Skull Merchant was weak and whatever, but they can't keep a killer with a 80% killrate in the game. They didn't have time for a full rework and decided to put the killer "on hold" for now so that there are no outliers in their stats. I think this was the best way of doing it. Either that or a Killswitch.
She definitely needed changes: I don't think anyone is arguing that she didn't. But the changes they chose to go for were way too heavy handed and, in my opinion, came from a position where they didn't understand the Killer well enough to know what to do. It's like the Hillbilly changes from years ago when they realised his addons were a bit too good so they added Overheat and smashed the Killer with a welding mallet where he was underwhelming for years, except worse because Billy's power at least FUNCTIONED on a fundamental level.
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@AssortedSorting said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3815790#Comment_3815790
Oh, so survivors had no chance to dodge the initial beam?
They did. The beam takes 1.8 seconds to deploy: 1.5 as she puts the drone up, 0.3 while the drone turns on. This gives plenty of time for the Survivor to dodge the beam.
In addition, the range is extremely limited, and if a Survivor stands still or crouch walks instead of running the drone won't see them, they won't get a clawtrap and the Killer will be forced to basic attack instead.
EDIT: You can't flick a lasertag: the drone stays where it was when the Skull Merchant deploys it and it will always spawn EXACTLY where you pressed the button, before the animation to deploy it starts. It does not benefit high DPI. It's not in the power description, but BHVR intentionally added it when she got reworked this time last year. It's not a secret tech: it's how the killer is meant to work. I just named it.
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@AssortedSorting said:
haven’t played SM.
When placing her drones, is it kinda like a nurse blink?
Holding the placement button causes it to fly to the point (or go up/drop down at the point), with the point going further and further away until the maximum?
(Probably being able to cancel it like a huntress hatchet)
Or is it just dropped at your feet?
It's deployed at your feet, and the initial beam where the drone turns on deploys in exactly the direction you were facing where you pressed the button. This was a technique called lasertagging, where you could line up the beam on top of a Survivor to give them an instant stack.
Well that's dead now lol
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@UndeddJester said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3602456#Comment_3602456
Hmmm... fair point, although it was my understanding that Doctor was disproportionately punished by the MFT era. The 3% against him was especially punishing due to the need for him slow down to shock, consistently screwing up his ability to catch up when using his power.
Not that I have data outside of Nightlight.gg to back up that claim of course, there is a mysterious bump for Doctor last month, maybe a correlation with the gen regression meta? However very recently Doctor seems to be on a bigger bump since MFTs nerf.
I did notice the hindered effect was significantly reduced, maybe its fine? However it feels a little band-aidy to me to keep it, and I'd prefer not to balance around "what if you have a bad ping?", as this disproportionately punishes players with good connections.
I do actually like Skull Merchant, and I want her to succeed. The shock seems nice, especially in favour of hindered (I'm also keen to hear other ideas if anyone has any).
However do you have any thoughts on my suggestion for removing her scaling speed, to make it more consistent so survivors aren't having to perform calculations on how many scanned survivors are in effect to understand her speed?
Lots of decisions get made with respect given to player ping: hit/Dead Hard validation being the big one.
If her strength would be fine without the stacking Haste buffs or the Hinder, I'd be okay seeing them go but the goal isn't to nerf her here: it's to raise her skill floor while also giving her more reward for intelligent gameplay so playing her closer to her skill ceiling gives you more tangible rewards.
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@UndeddJester said:
While I might be doing a minor Necro here, I believe the suggestions here are very healthy and would improve the counterplay vs. Skull Merchant considerably. Generally I believe all of this is a very good take.
The only thing I don't understand is this:
When Neuroshock is used, every Survivor currently Clawtrapped on the map is instantly shocked (in the vein of Doctor's shock) for 2.5s and receives a 5% Hindered effect for the same duration. Shocked Survivors cannot interact with objects for the duration of the shock and scream, interrupting any actions they were doing.
I thought the whole point of giving her the neuroshock was to remove the breaking the survivors ankles hinder effect that makes her feel so cheap to go against? Considering a single scanned survivor already grants 3% haste to SM, this gives her an 8% movement speed swing vs. the pursued survivor.
The biggest consistent complaint vs. Skull Merchant is the fact her power forces you to leave loops. I don't think this necessarily a problem perce' as this is not new... its something that can already be done by Hag, Trapper, Nurse, Clown, etc. Between the fact she has a speed boost (that is hard to track/get a feel for how fast she's actually going), can hide her red light using her drone (without really losing any speed), see you on her radar once you're tagged AND have Killer instinct (making mind games almost impossible), and with the ability to force you into a neuroshock and prevent use of windows/pallets, this seems like plenty of strength without the hinder effect as well to me.... and given the shock from Doctor doesn't have the slow down, it seems curious SM would get one in conjunction with all the other things in her kit.
So to try and resolve the above frustrations and give some compensation for the complete loss of hindered, I would consider ditching the scaling speed boost based on the number of scanned survivors, as this will rarely be above 2 anyway (but still makes her speed inconsistent and hard to track at loops). I'd suggest making her movement speed a consistent 3% whenever a scanned survivor is within her TR, regardless of how many survivors are scanned, and 5% (or 6%) whenever a claw-trapped survivor is within her TR, again regardless of how many survivors are claw-trapped.
This makes her a more potent when she commits to a survivor, and gives a natural chase incentive. Getting caught by a claw trap means you now have a faster Skull Merchant coming for you, who can see you via the radar, and if you get hit by another scan, she will get killer instinct and easily catch you at windows and pallets. It also means there is a trade off for her while planting drones to become undetectable, so successfully dipping and getting to another loop means you can buy yourself a reprieve from her speed while she sets up a new drone.
This also means that it is the chased survivor that is at fault if they are getting pursued by the Skull Merchant, rather that someone else being the cause of the speed boost going against them, so rewards a more skillful survivor who is better at avoiding getting tagged, rahter than them being punished for a teammates mistake.
I thought someone would ask about this: the 5% Hinder for 2.5s is basically there to mitigate the issue Doctor has with Survivors on high ping. Doctor's power routinely doesn't work against Survivors with high ping because on their screen they've dropped the pallet or vaulted the window before the shock hits them. Maintaining a very small Hinder (half her current Hinder strength for less than half the duration) would give her some agency against Survivors whose net sucks without being overbearing.
Similarly I would not mind Doctor also getting this effect: Doctor's a pretty garbage Killer by all accounts.
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@Rafii2198 said:
As cool as the Neuroshock sounds I think it is a bit too much, like think of it, she would have: Tracking, Damage, Haste, Hinder, Undetectable and now Shock.
I personally think that she has a bit too many layers, weak layers that just add to something bigger, and I personally do not think it is good and adding even more would be too much. I believe removing some of her layer and escalating the ones that left would be a better approach. For example, I personally would remove everything related to Haste and Hinder which would leave Tracking, Damage and Undetectable aspects of her kit, mainly because juggling with speed modifiers is hard to balance and from survivor perspective, having less or no options because killer is suddenly a lot faster than you doesn't feel nice.
The ones that left also kind of match the rest of stealth killers, they are usually about taking victims by surprise or exposing them from the shadows, with Skull Merchant, she wouldn't be that lethal, but she would know a lot about her prey due to her tracking capabilities. Additionally, playing her was made so much easier after removal of cooldown after recalling a drone, which I personally think hurt her depth more than it helped.
Another side of her that needs to be looked at is the survivor perspective. She is pretty terrible there, you have no idea for how long you are scanned for, you have no idea at a glance if a drone is hacked or not etc. and on top of that she creates some specific scenarios due to her ability to aim drones that will activate quickly. You addressed some of her stuff like changing rotation direction, but there are few more things needed.
With that said, I have my batch of changes. These changes are not connected to your changes, they are independent of each other. I also must say that I am not a game designer nor an avid gamer, you probably have more knowledge on her, so I hope these ideas will give you another perspective that perhaps you will be able to refine.
- Skull Merchant
- No longer gains Haste based on tracked survivors
- Makes a bit more sounds while moving as she is so quiet. I know she supposed to be stealth killer, but she is the only one that doesn't make any sounds or have no effects.
- Undetectable effect will now be given to her when the power is on cooldown and will linger for 1 second
- Checking the radar will put you to 4.4m/s speed
- Drones
- Cooldown increased to 12 seconds
- Recalling a drone will put an 8 second cooldown
- Changing direction will make the drone fly up for a short duration, just like walking under it. This in turns means it will be put into Stealth mode
- Initialization durations increased to 1.5 seconds
- Drones will rotate too while initiating
- Detected survivors without a claw trap will have the scan-lines effect for the whole duration, as well as the animation pre rework while inside the drone radius.
- Hacked drones will be put into stealth mode after 45 instead of being recalled.
- Hacked drones will emit a glitching light as well as make some faint sounds when nearing the end of duration.
- Claw Trap
- Now only injures survivors and reveals them on the radar
- Being scanned while having a claw trap will inflict broken status effect for 45 seconds. Already broken survivors will not get this effect.
- Being scanned while having a claw trap and having the broken status effect will reveal your position via killer instinct as long as you are in the area of any drone until the claw trap wears off.
- Hacking Minigame
- Now require 6 inputs to complete
- The next button will also be shown instead of only current one.
These ideas are intersecting with each other. Having survivors revealed via killer instincts will give an advantage while chasing and mind gaming, but will not make it impossible, at the same time you will have ability to get undetectable which will you even stronger, but you will have to be mindful with your cooldowns, as survivors are only revealed in drones' radii, just spam placing/recalling will not be beneficial as you either need to have some spare drones at hand which means they are not doing anything elsewhere or constantly recall a drone which will slow you down. In chase, she will be similar to basic M1 killers with harder time to mind game as she will know more than you. At the same time, outside of chase she can catch or at least slowdown survivors as well as having a way to surprise survivors using the Undetectable effect, but it has a cost of not being able to use drones properly. Also, the lack of built-in deep wounds makes it harder to tunnel off the unhooked survivors.
Again I do not expect these ideas to be perfect or anything but is there to give a different perspective in terms of her power. I would be glad to hear your opinion on them.
OK, so you've nerfed her ability to aim a drone actively by reverting the arm time buff, removed the Haste and Hindered, made her Undetectable clunkier to use, made the radar worse to use, increased her downtime... so how do you plan on making her not absolutely terrible?
She's already a mediocre Killer at best and what you're suggesting is taking a lot away but not replacing it with anything substantial.
If she has no lethality to help her down injured Survivors, the Killer is just a harder to play, weaker Legion.
- Skull Merchant
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@miniccino said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3597280#Comment_3597280
Thank you for the visual reference. I actually played a game after reading this and kept it in mind, but still struggled to keep track of stacks since they're difficult to see. May be a bit of an accessibility issue on my end.
You're not the first person I've seen to say this: the indicator could definitely do with being brighter I think.
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@miniccino said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3597203#Comment_3597203
I'll be honest, I never noticed as survivor or understood what was happening, probably due to sheer confusion. It feels a little less intuitive and distinct than other killers, but that could be due to more experience against them compared to SM.
This is the difference between 1, 2 and 3 stacks. See the little triangles in the filled circles? That's how many stacks you have, with them becoming full circles if you get a clawtrap. Those circles then go away back to black as the clawtrap batteries run out until it falls off.
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@miniccino said:
I think survivors should be able to see their stacks of lock-on similar to how you can see stacks of condemned with Onryo. It would remove a lot of frustration caused by players simply not understanding the power, along with your other suggestion of having an audio queue when drones are rotated.
Survivors CAN see their Lock On stacks. The Killer can't, but the Survivors can. One filled circle on the indicator is a single stack, 2 filled circles is 2 stacks, 3 filled circles is a clawtrap.
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@bjorksnas said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3597017#Comment_3597017
No she was turned into a stealth killer with the patch but it was a poorly thought out buff because it doesn't match any other stealth killer and it just seems like a massive oversight with how poorly it was slapped into her kit
pig, long crouch / uncrouch can't act immediately must either stand up or ambush
wraith, loud gnashing sounds and has to uncloak
dredge has to be earned and even then massive whooshing sounds passively
ghostface, again loud passive sounds
onion, has to uncloak before acting and has a lullaby radius
chucky, footsteps around the map and constant laughing sounds
every killer with stealth in their kit has either sounds or inactionability or both along with their stealth skull merchant has no passive sounds, has no uncloak / uncrouch time or other factor like a lullaby, its a clear gap in their normal formula and isn't fun on top of the fact that its still skull merchant outside of that
since her stealth is secondary benefit of a chase / set up power id expect reasonably audible sounds with a ~16m range or so
I definitely agree she needs some actual ambient noise: be that louder footsteps or the clanking/whirring of her servos being louder.
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@bjorksnas said:
I just want her to have footstep sounds, literally one of the best stealth killers because they don't exist
That is fair enough chief, but tbh she is an inherently stealthy Killer with built in Undetectable so she should be pretty quiet I think.
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@Peanits said:
On Shattered Square: To clarify, this is not a guaranteed number, but the absolute maximum. The short version is the game tries to place pallets a certain distance away from each other. If the minimum number of pallets have been reached and there's no more pallet spawn locations available far enough away from another pallet, it will stop spawning pallets prematurely. Or in other words, once the deadzones are filled, it will stop spawning pallets. You are not guaranteed to have 18 pallets spawn- in fact it would be very unlikely to happen.
For The Skull Merchant, Low Profile mode was causing an issue which allowed her to stay Undetectable indefinitely (the cooldown was shorter than the duration of the Undetectable effect). This new version offers a different way to use her drones, letting you set up a static 'scan wall' of sorts rather than a rotating beam.
If the issue with Low Power Mode was the infinite Undetectable, wouldn't a simpler solution to have been either to A) nerf the number slightly so the overlap doesn't happen any more? or B) add a reduction to the Undetectable duration to the effect of LPM?
Either of these solutions would have addressed the infinite Undetectable problem without effectively deleting one of SM's staple addons: LPM was the kind of addon you could run every game and feel pretty good about (the Toy Sword or Engravings of this Killer) and straight up removing it in favour of a new, situational effect is, from the POV of a dedicated SM fan, nonsense.
I don't mind the effect of new LPM, but I do mind that we completely lost old LPM to do it. If an addon had to be deleted to make room for the new non-rotating drone effect, why not remove an addon that's genuinely useless and nobody uses like Adi Valente Issue 1? SM has a clutch of pretty garbage addons and to lose one of the truly good ones feels awful.
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@Erd69 said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2839671#Comment_2839671
I don't care about that? Why tf would anyone want a Michael Myers blighted skin? That ruins the character. Skins should be from the movies or the games they come from but the blighted skins are just crazy
...but the Sadako skin you were complaining about in this post *is from the movie she comes from*
Have you watched Ringu?
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It literally IS Sadako. It's her body that Reiko and Ryuji dredged from the well in the first movie. The green colour palette and everything.
If you're gonna make bold claims like "this isn't X character", at least get it right.
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Plague and Oni are the absolute apex of design in this game, with Pinhead and Huntress in the conversation.
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@GoodBoyKaru said:
So yeah, uh, Ringu is the next chapter.
If it's another anti-loop no mobility killer I'm going to cry. Please just give us something different and fun. Give us another Blight idk.
"if it's another anti loop Killer I'm going to cry"
"give us another Blight"
...
Blight has one of the best chases in the game idk what u smokin champ
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
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@jesterkind said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2677990#Comment_2677990
That's true, I neglected to mention Twins- so that's one (sadly super neglected and maligned) killer and a few extraordinarily niche circumstances for Exponential to get any value.
I admit to not really having a concrete idea for how to best nerf CoH, though. I don't want it to just be nuked into nothingness, but it really can't stay as it is- a cap on self healing and a limit on how much it can stack with for altruistic healing, maybe?
I think it's the kind of perk that will sadly have to be gutted to make it fair: healing yourself is one of the most powerful things a Survivor can do, and being able to do so efficiently without wasting resources out of a perk your teammate brought is obscene. It's why old Self Care was so busted and had to get GUTTED to become fair: if Self Care on its own is ever good, that's terrible for the health of the game.
Circle of Healing is just old Self Care on steroids.
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@jesterkind said:
Boons as a core mechanic aren't where we should be looking to balance them- though they do have some problem areas, mainly the ability to go through floors and the fact that totem spawns weren't updated to account for both sides needing to find them, even those problems would be minor annoyances if it weren't for the actual problem, which is that Circle of Healing is OP. Let's take a look at the others:
Shadow Step is annoying, certainly, but there's nuance to it; you can still track through blood and sound, you can still use non-aura tracking perks, it's certainly something that makes chases harder but it's by no means unwinnable even for that specific chase. The balance of this perk is pretty much fine.
Exponential is garbage. The only time this perk is going to actually let someone get picked up is if the boon itself is on another floor than where they get downed, and if the killer makes the unwise decision to slug to either go find someone else or go find the totem. Otherwise, it's such a situational, niche effect that even if boons couldn't be snuffed at all it'd only be mediocre.
Contrast that to CoH, which with only half a regular healing build can completely obliterate the killer's ability to spread pressure, and lets survivors heal themselves quicker than other people healing them normally. It's way overtuned, and needs pretty dramatic changes to bring it in line- either nerf the absolute hell out of it specifically, or my preferred solution, implement a hard cap on self healing so it can't get too crazy without someone else's help.
Also, to everyone trying to use a false equivalence between hexes being permanently removable and boons being infinitely relightable: Hexes are permanently removable because the player who brought them isn't.
I fully concur.
Shadow Step is honestly fine, and Exponential is basically just a Twins-killer (and that's because Twins buffs need to happen, not because Exponential is a problematic perk) that sucks against basically any other Killer.
Circle of Healing is absolutely gigabusted. No question about it.
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@zarr said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2673907#Comment_2673907
While it's undoubtedly true that particularly the DBE ruleset benefits Twins, it's still a fact that they suffer tremendously from coordinated and strategic teamwork, and in tournaments the level of coordination and strategy is higher than you will ever see in pubs. Survivors can team up to counter Victor, in fact in tournaments you will regularly see them abuse lockers alongside bodyblocks to completely deny Victor downs. They can heal each other reliably, and there's even certain healing perks such as We'll Make It and Desperate Measures that are allowed.
Twins are not far behind the big three of Nurse, Spirit and Blight in terms of consistently having a chance to 4k teams in tournaments, in more than one tournament they even outperformed some of them statistically, and that does go to show that they're a top-tier killer. Again, more than any perk or item itself, coordination and practiced strategies hurt Twins, and the disparity of coordination and strategy between the vast majority of pub groups and tournament teams is immense. The fact that Twins players can still compete against that consistently makes it easier to understand how it is possible that someone could get 199 4ks in a row with them in pubs, killing 796 survivors without a single one escaping. Victor just has no meaningful counterplay much of the time, even tournament teams that coordinate to make it as hard as possible for Victor to snowball regularly get grinded down by them. In pubs Twins regularly just dominate.
As I've already agreed, Circle and Exponential are particularly problematic for Twins. I did suggest the Twins-specific buff of enabling Victor to snuff Boons. I've also suggested general Boon nerfs in the past, such as making it so that each player can only bless each totem once, meaning if it gets snuffed they'd have to find another totem to bless. I'm also for limiting the amount of perk and item stacking that can happen in SWF groups. I think Twins (and other killers) can compete perfectly well against random survivors with uncoordinated loadouts and plays, even if they each have some of the strongest loadouts (which is awfully rare). But SWF groups not only get the benefit of being able to communicate and coordinate their plays and strats, but also their loadouts, so they can reliably boast some of the most powerful survivor side loadouts. Personally I would like to see SWF groups only be able to equip any perk and item/add-on at most once between them, so they would all need to have distinct loadouts.
Why should the regrow time be longer when you lose huge amounts of distance every time you get kicked and can get kicked after every single attack (miss or hit)? Like I didn't know whenever Blight landed a rush or Huntress threw a hatchet, they teleported back 40m and were unable to use their power again for 15 seconds.
Again, we are talking about a top-tier killer here that has proven in pubs and tournament settings that they are able to hang with the best. Not just that, we are talking about buffs for this killer, prompted by the introduction of perks that survivors might very well not be using in any given game (and in the case of Exponential much more often than not will in fact not be using). I think a little caution is in order.
With a pretty much instant wake up after regaining control over Charlotte as I've suggested, you are not losing much distance at all. Victor is a unique ability in that he not only has little counterplay, but he obviously can pressure survivors on the map while Charlotte is still being a threat elsewhere. If you could control your hatchets mid-flight, stopping and starting and seeking targets, and also leave them around the map and switch to them at will, maybe then it would also make sense why there should be more of a penalty for missing with them, and why it should not be possible to spam them. If there is a sensible nerf for Twins to compensate for the buffs I lined out, I think it's an increase of that regrow time. And again, that's especially because the quasi-instant wake up time will make it much more attractive for Twins to chase survivors with both characters, and if a survivor manages to actually crush Victor in such a scenario it would be ridiculous if they both get no distance from Charlotte and Victor is back out a handful of seconds later too.
Morever, I think you will find that many players just do not enjoy facing Twins (or playing them, for that matter), because they naturally encourage some of the more oppressive and unpleasant playstyles, such as slugging and camping. If BHVR is neglecting Twins (at least in the sense of not buffing them), I think that would be the reason. I've suggested entire reworks for Twins in the past for that reason. I think the coolest thing about them are ambitious and tricky Victor pounces, as well as surprise pounces over obstacles - I would want to see a rework that actively encourages those things, because in their current form the optimal play is always to get Victor as close as possible and guarantee the hit, which is pretty boring. I would also want them to put more focus on Charlotte, currently she is kind of just the vehicle for Victor, the latter being who you want to be controlling as much as possible, Charlotte mostly just being there to take care of the chores.
Dowsey's winstreak, as impressive as it was, was done in an age of DBD far more favourable to Twins.
It was done with...
-Twins being able to ignore BT and DH
-OLD Ruin Undying
-None of the collision bugs that arrived post-Resident Evil
-No MMR, meaning going on streaks was much easier than now
-no Circle of Healing, DH validation or Exponential
-The old 3 second fatigue rather than 5 seconds
-they were really new so nobody knew how to play against them
Twins were top tier for a bit, but they've fallen from grace so spectacularly hard and only remain relevant against uncoordinated messes who don't know how to travel in pairs or teams who've been prohibited from bringing any of the super strong items or perks that stop them from doing their thing, specifically chosen on a map that favours them. For Twins to be able to "hang with the best" pretty much every meta tool the Survivors can bring have to be taken away from them. But we live in a world full of god kits, impossible maps and supercharged healing and recovery perks.
Compare them to an actual top tier like Blight and the differences are stark. Blight has several strong add-ons banned, several perks banned, is given a much less favourable map (Gas Heaven) and is given fewer Survivor perk and item restrictions and still does substantially better than them. Twins aren't nearly top tier. They're good, at least in a world without Circle and Exponential and stupid medkits, but they're still just a worse Oni at the end of the day.
For the game as we have it now, Twins are inexcusably badly equipped to deal with it. Something has to give.
Otz did 50 wins in a row with 3-perk old Trapper, does that make Trapper top tier?
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@zarr said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2671865#Comment_2671865
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2672218#Comment_2672218
While I do agree that Exponential (and Circle) is particularly problematic for Twins who obviously excel at building pressure and snowballing by injuring and slugging multiple survivors, my argument is that not only will it be awfully rare to see Exponential, but even when you do the game is not at all "unplayable".
The moment Twins released, experienced players already understood that the optimal strategy against them is to team up in duos, such that if a person gets downed by Victor, the other person can kick him and potentially even heal the slug back up in time. And yet despite that being an obvious and optimal strategy from the get-go, Twins still performed exceptionally well. Most survivors (even when grouped up in SWFs with voice comms) are just not that "clever" and coordinated and make suboptimal and downright bad decisions and plays all the time, and Twins thrive on chaos. Not only that, but healing a survivor up takes 16 seconds, and in those 16 seconds Charlotte can cover a distance of 73.6 meters, more than two terror radii worth. Accounting for the 3 seconds it takes to regain full control over Charlotte, it's still 60m. And even in cases where she is so far away that she can't get there in time, she will obviously still get much closer, and will have Victor available again, ready to create mayhem with Charlotte now around to capitalize on it. Even in tournaments Twins have performed surprisingly well despite the levels of coordination there obviously being much higher.
With Exponential it also takes 16 seconds for the survivor to recover, and if there's no other survivor around, Victor will still be positioned close to the slug and so you can just switch back to Victor should you not be able to get there in time. Plus that Boon obviously has to be set up first, and a survivor has to make it into its area before they go down (and for that they first have to even know that that Boon is Exponential). It's just not something that I can see will ruin her chances even in the rare matches where it does come up, not least because Twins' playstyle can be adjusted - even if it isn't optimal, one can adopt a playstyle of mostly using Victor as a short/medium range chase tool, where you will first initiate chase with Charlotte and only unleash Victor when you are close enough to capitalize. They can also be played with more of a focus on defending hooks rather than constantly injuring and slugging survivors, where you commit to chases even as Charlotte to secure hooks, and then leave either of the two at the hook while pressuring the map with the respective other twin. Similar to how Oni can also be played for short-burst Fury activations where rather than trying to cause as much damage as possible within any Fury, you try to get one down as soon as possible, and instantly pick and hook the survivor so as to conserve Fury for the next chase, also regularly being able to defend the hook with Fury at the ready.
That said, Twins do suffer disproportionally from Exponential and Circle, and the latter is obviously actually commonly used. And rare as it may be, against well-coordinated groups all members of which know how to play against Twins and play to abuse these Boons, Twins' game plan will actually be heavily disrupted by them. I do think Twins adjustments to the new Boon reality are in order - Boons are a new category of perks the value of which is strictly tied to an area on the map, and Twins are the only killers in the game that are limited in terms of what they can do in certain areas (wherever you are while controlling Victor, that is an area you cannot pick survivors up in, kick generators in, break pallets in, and so forth), and so I do find it perfectly reasonable to make concessions for Twins with regards to Boons.
I wouldn't be opposed to decreasing the "wake up" duration from 3 to .25 seconds when switching back to Charlotte, same as when switching from Charlotte to Victor. I don't see a balancing reason that would even necessitate this long period where you are unable to control Charlotte. It feels bad and if anything the "surprise attack" quality of catching survivors out that are being bold around a dormant Charlotte is something Twins should have. It would also improve the chase interaction where the killer player can switch back and forth between the two in order to catch a survivor out on tileplay, and this quality of "chasing one survivor with both twins" is pretty cool and something we barely see with the current 3-second wake up duration.
Furthermore, I think Victor should be able to snuff Boons (and rekindle Hexes, for Pentimento).
On the other hand, I think the time it takes until you are able to unleash Victor again after he regenerates should be increased. Crushing Victor should be more meaningful, especially considering that "being chased by both simultaneously" would be much more common with the fast switching between them. The "regrow" time is currently 6 seconds, I think it should be at least twice that. Add-ons that currently pertain the "wake up" duration can then be used to decrease the regrow time.
1) Why should the regrow time be longer when you lose huge amounts of distance every time you get kicked and can get kicked after every single attack (miss or hit)? Like I didn't know whenever Blight landed a rush or Huntress threw a hatchet, they teleported back 40m and were unable to use their power again for 15 seconds.
2) Twins do well in comp play because medkits and healing perks are banned against them, and other perks are restricted from stacking so you can't run more than one UB. Those restrictions don't exist in regular play.
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@zarr said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2671865#Comment_2671865
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2672218#Comment_2672218
While I do agree that Exponential (and Circle) is particularly problematic for Twins who obviously excel at building pressure and snowballing by injuring and slugging multiple survivors, my argument is that not only will it be awfully rare to see Exponential, but even when you do the game is not at all "unplayable".
The moment Twins released, experienced players already understood that the optimal strategy against them is to team up in duos, such that if a person gets downed by Victor, the other person can kick him and potentially even heal the slug back up in time. And yet despite that being an obvious and optimal strategy from the get-go, Twins still performed exceptionally well. Most survivors (even when grouped up in SWFs with voice comms) are just not that "clever" and coordinated and make suboptimal and downright bad decisions and plays all the time, and Twins thrive on chaos. Not only that, but healing a survivor up takes 16 seconds, and in those 16 seconds Charlotte can cover a distance of 73.6 meters, more than two terror radii worth. Accounting for the 3 seconds it takes to regain full control over Charlotte, it's still 60m. And even in cases where she is so far away that she can't get there in time, she will obviously still get much closer, and will have Victor available again, ready to create mayhem with Charlotte now around to capitalize on it. Even in tournaments Twins have performed surprisingly well despite the levels of coordination there obviously being much higher.
With Exponential it also takes 16 seconds for the survivor to recover, and if there's no other survivor around, Victor will still be positioned close to the slug and so you can just switch back to Victor should you not be able to get there in time. Plus that Boon obviously has to be set up first, and a survivor has to make it into its area before they go down (and for that they first have to even know that that Boon is Exponential). It's just not something that I can see will ruin her chances even in the rare matches where it does come up, not least because Twins' playstyle can be adjusted - even if it isn't optimal, one can adopt a playstyle of mostly using Victor as a short/medium range chase tool, where you will first initiate chase with Charlotte and only unleash Victor when you are close enough to capitalize. They can also be played with more of a focus on defending hooks rather than constantly injuring and slugging survivors, where you commit to chases even as Charlotte to secure hooks, and then leave either of the two at the hook while pressuring the map with the respective other twin. Similar to how Oni can also be played for short-burst Fury activations where rather than trying to cause as much damage as possible within any Fury, you try to get one down as soon as possible, and instantly pick and hook the survivor so as to conserve Fury for the next chase, also regularly being able to defend the hook with Fury at the ready.
That said, Twins do suffer disproportionally from Exponential and Circle, and the latter is obviously actually commonly used. And rare as it may be, against well-coordinated groups all members of which know how to play against Twins and play to abuse these Boons, Twins' game plan will actually be heavily disrupted by them. I do think Twins adjustments to the new Boon reality are in order - Boons are a new category of perks the value of which is strictly tied to an area on the map, and Twins are the only killers in the game that are limited in terms of what they can do in certain areas (wherever you are while controlling Victor, that is an area you cannot pick survivors up in, kick generators in, break pallets in, and so forth), and so I do find it perfectly reasonable to make concessions for Twins with regards to Boons.
I wouldn't be opposed to decreasing the "wake up" duration from 3 to .25 seconds when switching back to Charlotte, same as when switching from Charlotte to Victor. I don't see a balancing reason that would even necessitate this long period where you are unable to control Charlotte. It feels bad and if anything the "surprise attack" quality of catching survivors out that are being bold around a dormant Charlotte is something Twins should have. It would also improve the chase interaction where the killer player can switch back and forth between the two in order to catch a survivor out on tileplay, and this quality of "chasing one survivor with both twins" is pretty cool and something we barely see with the current 3-second wake up duration.
Furthermore, I think Victor should be able to snuff Boons (and rekindle Hexes, for Pentimento).
On the other hand, I think the time it takes until you are able to unleash Victor again after he regenerates should be increased. Crushing Victor should be more meaningful, especially considering that "being chased by both simultaneously" would be much more common with the fast switching between them. The "regrow" time is currently 6 seconds, I think it should be at least twice that. Add-ons that currently pertain the "wake up" duration can then be used to decrease the regrow time.
One thing that's worth saying: Twins do well in tournament play because in Twins tourney matches, basically everything that heals you is banned. According to DBE rules, Circle, Self-Care, Exponential, Soul Guard and Botany are banned against everyone, but Twins also get more or less every other healing perk banned (WGLF, Desperate Measures, Inner Strength, Resurgence and ALL MEDKITS banned). Twins, for their part, have no perk bans beyond the general perks that are banned on every Killer, and can use any addon except Ultra Rares.
And perk stacking is also restricted, so you can't have more than 1, say, Unbreakable, Dead Hard or BT. That's not a restriction in pub games.
Twins do well because the stuff that massively counters them is kept out of their tournament matches. In pubs, you can go against 2-3 strong medkits with addons, 3 Circles, 2 WGLFs and an Exponential or two and that's just something you can run into on a regular basis.