jesterkind
jesterkind
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Three flop chapters in a row? We've only even had one if you're looking solely at Skull Merchant herself as opposed to the chapter as a whole.
People really gotta stop referring to chapters they personally don't like as 'flops'.
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@radiantHero23 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3526841#Comment_3526841
We all know that this is not realistically possible for most killers against an efficient team.
Excepting for extreme edge cases, like massive matchmaking failures or situations where you're playing Trapper with a meme build and you're facing a 4-man with a hardcore genrushing build, you can perform perfectly well as most killers without tunnelling, camping, or jealously hardcore defending a 3-gen.
It's straight up just a skill issue to say otherwise.
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@mca240 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3527010#Comment_3527010
Google it. It has been datamined. From what I remember you start out at 1100. The soft cap is at 1600. You go up 10 per win.
The cap itself was datamined, yes, but is there any hard proof that most players are at that cap?
I know we got confirmation from the devs that the first soft cap had very few players at it, comparatively, so if it didn't lower that much presumably not that many more players would be there now.
Either way, if all we know is what the cap is... that means people are looking at it, thinking "that seems low", and then deciding it's an objective fact that a majority of players must be at that cap because of it.
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@mca240 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3526857#Comment_3526857
Most players are in “high MMR” with a low soft cap
I've seen a lot of people very confidently state this, is there anything that it's actually based on?
If there's some proof that most players are at the soft cap, I'd love to see it. Otherwise it sounds kinda like people hear the cap seems low and assume that most players must have reached it.
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@MikaelaWantsYourBoon said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3526866#Comment_3526866
Yes but they are killing themself on hook because of penalties. This is also bad design. And when survivor do this, you are losing teammate and you are not getting bot to replace them.
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3526868#Comment_3526868
I did? And it was not problem at all. People was dc'ing whenever they lose. And it helped to matchmaking as well. Queues was fast.
That's more of a separate issue, but I do agree. That doesn't mean that we should remove DC penalties, it means we should be looking very critically at whether or not hook suicide should be allowed.
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The reason is that people will DC at the slightest provocation otherwise.
That's not a healthy element you want to encourage in a game like DBD. For other games (like any battle royale, for example) it can be acceptable, but on a team game where your presence matters to your teammate's overall performance you shouldn't be able to routinely DC out of matches without penalty. Even with DC bots, it's a hit to the team's performance, the bots aren't perfect.
Plus, it fosters an unhealthy mindset of only engaging if things go exactly your way, instead of trying to play the game as a whole.
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@[Deleted User] said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3526841#Comment_3526841
So tactically letting survivors complete distant gens in order to shrink the area a killer has to patrol isn’t playing the game properly?
To be fair, even with a complete obliteration of 3-gens specifically (which we have no basis to assume will or won't happen), you'll still be able to do that. You can choose to ignore the most far-off generator without suddenly creating a 3-gen, there's middle ground there.
The comment was mostly geared towards the other examples, though, I'll admit. Camping and tunnelling, plus "gen perks decimated" which you can only reasonably think happened if you think stuff like CoB/Overcharge and post-buff Eruption were a solid baseline for strength instead of unhealthy.
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@Grigerbest said:
Yeah, I mean... They should tell at least if they change something or just leave as it is... Thats all.
I find it weird, not to communicate such things.
While I'd personally prefer to see a dev update because I find them fun to read, they are going to tell us. That information is going to be in the patch notes, we won't be left in the dark as to what changed.
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@Kius said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3526783#Comment_3526783
Then what is next? gen perks decimated, "camping" (will be soon addressed with the self unhook feature), 3 gens (decimated and punished most likely) When will the "how to play killer" manual be released then? killing most of comebacks or only ways that sometimes killers have to turn back the game are going to be removed or punished it will only encourage focusing more than anything else.
But this is what the majority seems to keep pushing for killers only to "tunnel" more than ever before..
The game will be even more stale than in the current state is.. but by all means..
I'd imagine what comes next is playing the game normally and not trying to take shortcuts to circumvent skill expression, personally.
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I mean, we're gonna know tomorrow with the patch notes, so it's hardly a failure of communication.
It is weird though. Would've been nice to see a dev update, but it's hardly something to get worked up over.
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@Pavel_Ch said:
it's not even a buff or a nerf, but the survs are already afraid of something new. guys need generator repair simulator xD this would be a challenge, am i ready to go against swf, whether to arm myself with the strongest addons or play quietly. this is a fair offer that will not affect matchmaking in any way
You'd have to make one extra change in order for that to be true, though.
If you made it so that you could see SWFs in the lobby, and also leaving a lobby once you load in incurs a long timer before you can queue again, that'd be true. Otherwise, killers would just leave the lobby when they see a SWF because the perception is that playing against a SWF is a guaranteed bad time/sweaty match. If killers just left the lobby, that forces the matchmaker to backfill, which results in mismatched games more frequently.
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What I really want to see and what's realistic are two wildly different things, alas.
For instance, I would love to see a Worm chapter with Khepri as the killer. Figuring out a survivor for that chapter would be hard anyway, so it'd fit as a killer-only thing.
That won't ever happen, though, so for things that are likely... I'm not sure, tbh. It'd be funny if it were FNaF just because the forums would completely explode, but I don't have any horse in that race enough to actually want it.
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@lav3 said:
Somehow devs considered Cowshed and Abattoir were more problematic than Garden of Joy and Borgo which is nonsense.
To be fair, Cowshed was that problematic. Abattoir less so, but I'd imagine they just decided to do that one since they were already tackling a Coldwind map.
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I feel like a brief look at just the Steam charts would dispel this notion.
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A lot of people are touching on the toxicity angle, and it is a very valid one, but it's not the main reason that voice chat would be a bad idea for DBD.
The main reason that voice chat would be a bad idea for DBD is that it'd be a lot of manpower and effort put towards implementing a feature that would have extremely slim returns, insofar as it would only even work for some players in some regions some of the time.
If your goal is to increase the information that a solo queue player has, voice chat isn't even an option for achieving that, let alone the best one. A solution that relies too heavily on factors entirely out of the specific players' control isn't going to do absolutely anything to increase solo queue's effectiveness as a whole; if your goal is to acknowledge the advantage of communication and balance the game around expecting survivors to have that information, the game has to give them that information. There is simply no way around this.
Let's say you're a solo queue player, and BHVR have implemented voice chat. Let's set aside toxicity for a moment, even though it is a pretty huge immediate barrier to this working. Let's say you (like myself) play in the EU servers. What has to align in order for you to get the benefit of voice chat?
- Everyone in the match has to have a microphone.
- Everyone in the chat has to have the willingness to use that microphone.
- Everyone in the chat has to speak the same language, which on EU servers is extremely far from guaranteed.
- Everyone in the chat has to know what to convey and when.
If any of these things fail, which is extremely likely, you are back at square one and voice chat did nothing. If we factor back in toxicity, voice chat did nothing but add extremely annoying noise you have to spend time muting while you're in a match. That's not only not achieving what you want, it's a net deficit.
I saw you ask further up what people expect BHVR to do. The answer is, implement information sharing that comes passively from the game, not actively from players. The solo queue HUD was a great start, but there's more to do; basekit survivor-aura Kindred, showing teammate's perk builds in the lobby and in the pause screen, and better instances of perks giving visual cues (EG, survivors in lockers with Head On highlight that locker), would all be great ways to give solo queue players that want to coordinate the tools to do so without relying on all the facets necessary for voice comms to work.
When you add toxicity on top of the things I've laid out above, it becomes obvious why voice comms are a bad idea for DBD. I don't know enough about TCM to know if they were a bad idea there, but I'd imagine probably.
As for showing survivors in a group, the reason that's a bad idea is lobby shopping. That already messes up the matchmaking a lot, we really don't want it to get worse.
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@rvzrvzrvz said:
Do you think trapper sack add-on basekit is too strong ? That's what I want honestly, Hag doesn't have to go pick up her traps around the map at the beginning and she has unlimited amount
Too strong, probably not, but it's still not a good idea.
It'd emphasise and encourage the most boring ways of playing Trapper (EG, 3-gen, basement defence, proxy camping your first down), which isn't a road you really want to go down. Having the traps spawn closer so you at least get to use all of them in every match would be a much safer way of buffing him, because the player still has to think about where they're putting their traps, and wanting to set up something like the above examples would have the barrier of being time consuming.
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@ThatRedPyramidThing said:
”apply pressure" and "spread pressure" are survivor main’s gaslighting terms.
"boring” is survivor code speak for strong killer they want to see nerfed.
You can spot survivor mains easily by the language they use. It's all gaslighting and code speak.
Setting aside that gaslighting as a term really shouldn't be misused this way-
I've seen multiple killers talk about spreading pressure, it's not just a survivor thing. The idea of spreading pressure isn't exactly wrong, after all, it's only a problem when it's misapplied to situations where it's either impossible or wouldn't have helped- like the OP's scenario where spreading pressure on a map like Disturbed Ward is very difficult due to its size.
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As others have pointed out, this would cause more lobby dodging, which is one of the biggest reasons matchmaking fails currently based on what we know.
I'd also like to point out that SWF doesn't automatically mean you're in for an awful sweaty time. There are plenty of SWFs who goof around, and there are definitely teams of solo players that are very hard to beat. It's a general indicator but it's not a specific one, so a lot of killers would lobby dodge (already a bad thing) and they wouldn't even be gaining that much of a guaranteed benefit from doing so.
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@ProfessorDunwich said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525381#Comment_3525381
EMPs ruined the Singularity and people were saying “just wait.” You never see him at least partly because BHVR poorly implemented a counter play that is still too strong.
I'd personally argue you don't see Singularity played because he's really hard.
EMPs really aren't that big of a deal as they are now, after all the nerfs. Singularity just requires you to keep a lot of different things in your head while playing really fast and aggressive, on top of being really difficult to use on controller. Basically, he was never going to be popular even though he's good.
Plus, to be entirely fair, EMPs were changed from PTB to live, which is what's relevant here with Xenomorph.
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I certainly hope not, considering I personally really like running Inner Healing lmao
I don't mind it, I get that there's challenges to do and perks to activate. Not everything needs to be 24/7 generator repair in order to play well enough to win, so it's not exactly throwing the game.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525308#Comment_3525308
Yeah but you loose that ms once they step out of it whereas the claw trap speed stays for 45 seconds. People should split up anyway, so when more than one person is in a drone radius thats already a mistake on their side.
I guess it would be nice to not have it behind addons, but I don't see that with skull merchant anyway.
The speed might've been the wrong element to highlight. It'd probably be smarter to remove the drones if she's trying to use their other effects, to be fair.
It's not that hard to see it happening with Skull Merchant, she's already halfway there.
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@FFirebrandd said:
I agree with you. To be honest I was super excited when I saw SM's kit. A killer who puts down AoE buff/debuff zones that are customizable sounded absolutely fantastic to me.
I don't think they need to remove Lock On entirely to fix things. For example, if it were changed to stack up if the Survivor is running and instantly go off if the Survivor does something that causes a loud noise. That would nerf its interaction with people on gens, but make it stronger in chase.
Possible, though I'd be wary of it. I think the Lock On might be workable but it's already kind of incongruous with the rest of her kit and it's one of the things that makes it so problematic now, so I think removing it is probably safer.
I don't think it's required, though, the devs could definitely think of some ways to make it work. Yours seems like it's doable, though it'd naturally have to be tested.
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@TeleportingTurkey said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525312#Comment_3525312
people would actually have some time to learn about to changes after ptb and prepare for them.
look what happened when sadako's major post-ptb changes weren't revealed until the very last day.
Prepare how, though?
I did see what happened with Sadako's changes. I wouldn't be surprised if the devs wanted only a single day of that nonsense, instead of a full week or similar. Learning about those changes earlier doesn't mean people would have time to come around to them, because actually playing with them is required for that.
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@TeleportingTurkey said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525306#Comment_3525306
it doesn't because it's pointless to post that info on monday when it has zero relevance as patchnotes would be dropped the very next day.
Out of genuine curiosity, what relevance would you say it would have if it were posted earlier?
It'd be the same patch notes leading to the same update, after all.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525286#Comment_3525286
Yes ofc but earlier you were only referring to the purple addons, when you said removing the drone to get rid of her bonus movementspeed, which only makes sense when refering to the addon, bc by removing a drone you gain a clawtrap and therefore she gains bonusmovementspeed because you are now on her radar, so either we take that into account or we don't. But then it cannot be a reason as to why survivors would have a reason to get rid of drones. Which would mean we basically have almost no reason to remove drones again except for getting rid of her stealth areas.
Well in that sense maybe, but just because the idea is versatile does not mean the execution is good. I mean when we take for example Hag or Myers, their addons allow them different playstyles, I would like the idea if skull merchant. The amount of changes you would need for that, complete rework of her addos, changing numbers and interaction with drones and so much more, I still disagree that her core design is good. Maybe just the general idea about her in the widest sense, but that's all.
It'd be for removing access to more than one person's movement speed. Give her the amount from the claw trap, prevent her from getting any more from multiple people in the radius. It also denies her info on more than one person, and would deny her stealth if that's what she's doing with it, or getting chase buffs if that's what she's doing with them.
Basically, there's already a few reasons to hack drones, and there'd only be more with the kind of changes I'm talking about. Relying on survivors choosing to would be a risk, but that's how some other killers like playing already, so it'd just be a niche strat.
Myers and Hag are good examples of the kind of versatility Skull Merchant almost has and could have if her 3-genning were weakened + everything else were buffed. You don't need that many changes to achieve that all- though I do agree she'd need an extensive addon overhaul either way. Her current crop are... fine, I guess, but they don't do a good job of supporting the versatility her kit has.
Though, it's worth mentioning that the difference between her and the two killers you mentioned is that her versatile builds wouldn't be locked away behind specific addons, they'd be supported by a few different addons, at least ideally. In my opinion, that's even better.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525270#Comment_3525270
Yeah and so do addons on other killers Knight for example has an oblivious and an undetectable addon, this is already the case many killers have such addons and when we talk about what already is in addons, we might as well take those things into account, Skull Merchant also only gets bonus movementspeed via the drones through two purple addons as far as I know? My point is that many killers already have stealth or tracking addons integrated into their kit so skull merchant really is not something special. Freddy already has aura read addons when someone interacts with a dream pallet. Trapper has an aura read and a movementspeed addon, if we talk about potential in that sense then no matter how small the aspect of the kit is and how neglectably its part of the power in total is we can still call it potential right? And that's just how I feel about all those ifs and whens when it comes to skull merchant because all those small things are just so weak and not worth using currently almost comparable to those before mentioned addons. If this all is potential then basically every killer is very versatile in the same way as skull merchant.
I think the stealth should be enough to get closer but not to get so close that she can get a free hit or a gen grab. For that reason 5 seconds should be enough.
I don't know for worse players their counterplay is not obvious enough, which is why they often cleanse a lot or heal.
No. Skull Merchant gets her stacking Haste for any survivor that is tracked on her little tracker pad, which includes both claw trapped survivors and survivors who are inside her drone's radius. There are two purple addons that give Haste (though afaik one of them, the Prototype Rotor, is still broken and doesn't work), but the idea that being in a drone gives the Merchant movement speed is basekit.
I think you might have gotten some wires crossed somewhere along the line. I did briefly bring up making addons basekit as a way of improving her basekit chase potential, but that has not been an ongoing thread in my arguments. Everything I have talked about aside from that (and aside from explicitly talking about addons being changed or improved) has been about improving what is already present in her basekit.
She has, basekit, stacking Haste, lingering Undetectable, and tracking. Those are not addon effects, though there are addons that improve them. They are a part of her basekit potential and relatively important to her kit's core design, insofar as those are the effects her AOE drones give her and therefore they're a part of her identity even if they aren't strictly necessary for the fundamental concept.
That is why she is a more versatile killer than most. Those things are all there regardless of what you bring into the trial, which means that with some tweaks and changes, she'd have the ability to utilise any of them more potently in dedicated builds. You don't have to bring a stealth addon to use her stealth, it's just there already, but you could bring addons that improve her stealth elements in a dedicated stealth build if you wanted to use that more than anything else.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525213#Comment_3525213
That's just so many if's and when's. Sure ok she is generally able of all that things so what? So are many more killers in the game if you change variables. If you just slap status effects on everything ofc almost every killer is able to do almost everything. Give trapper undetectable when someone disarms a trap, make freddys pools of blood far bigger and give aura read when someone steps in. Like that's what I said before, potential to be something is just soooooo far off when we talk about something like that. Let's take Knight: What if he had guards that just spot survivors for you? Or a stealth guard, that stalks similar to ghostface for a potential exposed and so on and so forth. If we are just talking about what could be then everything could be. It is not even something special at this point. That's still far too much that would need to change, she would be almost a completely different killer.
If the survivors all have claw traps on them she gets 7% extra movementspeed, thats more than enough to get a rather quick hit/down and since the claw trap lasts only for 45 seconds you will get them back on the fly unless all survivors just decide to get rid of your drones simultaniously, I still don't think it changes what I said before.
How much stealth do you want to give her and why even at this point? Lingering effects don't last that long for a reason, sure give her 1 minute of lingering stealth, that's just ridiculous 5 seconds is a lot considering how far she will go in that time, take a small map and you can probably traverse the entire map if you have 5 seconds, someone would need to do the math, but i would say even on a bigger map that should be enough to traverse without emitting a heartbeat. You get 23 m every single time you leave the drone radius so without even counting in the drone radius itself you are already at 4x23=92m ... Discordance has a range of 128 m and it basically covers the entire map, maybe a few maps are bigger I don't know exactly. But think about it, you could be in stealth around the entire map, with just 5 seconds, try it on Coaltower for example and you can probably almost reach the edges of the map with that stealth.
There are already other addons on killers that provide them with undetectable and I always think of them as a terrible choice just because it robs survivors of the chase, which is basically the most if not only fun thing about survivor gameplay, maybe besides goofing around with friends.
I find Legion a weird example, most people hat going against legion because it is nothing but mending simulator. Also the strategy against legion is pretty easy if you re not completely new to the game, don't heal unless you must and spread out. that's basically why some people complain that the killer does not have a power if they play right, same goes for Plague where they had to give her a fountain from the start so the survivors could not keep her power hostage for the entire game, both designs are problematic and not really good examples for your statement.
I'm genuinely very confused on these points.
Sure, if you slap status effects on everything, etcetera etcetera, but you... don't have to do that. We've already gone over how these are all already parts of her power. This is already how her power works. There's no fundamental change involved, when we discuss these elements we're quite literally talking about number changes and addon tweaks. All those Knight examples would be changing how the guards work, which is not what we are discussing. We are discussing improving what is already there in the Skull Merchant's drones. It's not a change to her power or identity, this is already how she is designed.
To the stealth, sure, five seconds is longer than some would think, but considering it's stealth - IE, you won't be walking in a straight line, you'll be taking off angles and using line of sight blockers - it would need to be higher than five seconds. I'd probably spitball ten seconds as a good number for the basekit, with addons that can bump it up higher and such. The idea wouldn't be for her to be able to cross the map off one drone's stealth, but rather have enough time to both actually reach survivors, and walk between different drones to refresh the timer if she needs to.
As for Legion, whether people like playing against them or how difficult their counterplay is aren't really relevant. What's relevant is that they're very popular to play as, and they have obvious and straightforward counterplay. Some do think they don't have a power if people spread out... and they're very popular to play as all the same. They're not even bad at this point, those complaints are generally overblown, but that's a topic for a different thread, let's not get too far off topic. The point is, their counterplay is obvious, and yet they aren't a problematic design - just sometimes disliked based on personal preference.
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Depends on what's changed from PTB to live.
Based on PTB versions, though, probably not that much. There are good addons for dealing with them, and they aren't that big of a deal to handle even without those addons.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525145#Comment_3525145
If they want to be in a safe spot, why would they be next to a drone? When they know that the drone can track them if they go in there or a killer might approach without heartbeat from the area the drone is placed in, when you just want to go through you can just run around it. It kind of contradicts itself to want to be somewhere safe when the location is riskier because of the drone.
Ormond is a huge map, so you would probably need to put your drones in somewhat close proximity to each other if you don't want to run across the entire map all the time when you spot something on your radar, ok let's say you use it to track people doing the main generator and then what? Maybe they just won't do the generator at all? Either you protect a generator at a crucial location, because it is needed for a 3 gen or to avoide a perfect 2 2 split on the opposite sides of the map. Either this generator is so important that you want to prevent them from doing it or they can just ignore the generator and go for others in different locations. This is the whole point of why her 3 gen power is an issue, either the survivors ignore the gen or they reeeeeally need to do it. Either you 3 gen or you have not much of a reason to put it there, because survivor might do the drone and just run off when you come because the map is huge like ormond and they can just run to the edges of the map.
Ok let's say she gets like the stealth lingers for 5 seconds, you see a drone like 20 m away, you're healing. The skull merchant could theoretically reach you with no terror radius, only this drone is in a radius of 35 m around you... So you just look into that direction bc if she wants to be stealthy she needs to come from there, or otherwise she will have a heartbeat. Now what? Her stealth is still way too predictable. Also she has only 4 drones, giving her more might make it possible to cover smaller maps too much, so there is a pretty high chance that you will get to a place on a medium sized map with no drone in a 40 m radius around you, if you are somewhat in the corner of the map.
Yeah sure 5% haste is good, and they might want to get rid of it, but only if it is in some crucial position, but then again, when you get rid of it, she almost instantly gets it back, so where is the benefit? My point is let's say you reach a certain tile that used to have a drone, she puts a new one up again, you either try to loop her despite her movementspeed or you try to leave the tile and find another one or you get hit. Disabling the drone only gives you so much time until she puts it up in the same place again. Yeah sure they need to decide to disarm it or not. But how is it a playstyle if all that happens is the survivor making an informed decision on what the best play for the current situation is. You as the killer are still not doing anything. The question for me would rather be how pallet heavy the map is and if it is ever worth it to take a claw trap since you instantly destroy dropped pallets by vaulting them.
You can state that this proves anything as long as you want, it just doesn't a dog does not become a cat just because you call it a cat. I just don't think any other playstyle even remotely works on her, her chase power is basically non existent.
Without changing the movementspeed bonus to something else she will probably always be something like knight/artist or worthless. Because either the movementspeed bonus is so significant that you will actually be able to reliably get a hit, or it will be so neglectable, that her chase power sucks.
At this point (when the movementspeed bonus is significant) it does not really matter if the drone is already at that spot or if she just put it up in no time, you are already in the Knight/Artist Scenario, you are either able to reach another tile or you get hit. The problem is this point does not really change whether you set the drone there earlier to chase someone into it or if you just set it now when you reached the tile. Mindlessly removing the drones doesn't help either because she can basically recall or replace them almost instantly. The worst part of her current kit is by removing the drones you also give her movementspeed. It is just lose lose for the survivors. If you remove a drone to avoid the movementspeed it grants her she just gets 3 % because of the clawtrap. There is just no reason to get rid of it for the movementspeed.
See, again, we're getting way too far down into whether or not you think this killer is particularly good, or would want to use her. That isn't the bar, the bar is whether or not she is capable of doing these things and if her doing them would be problematic for the game. She is, and they wouldn't be.
You may not think setting up webs of drones and navigating between them would be all that fun or impactful, but there are plenty of people who would enjoy it. Ditto for trying to bait survivors into hacking drones to use claw traps, or for setting them up ahead of time as traps. Separately these would all be enjoyable killer designs for some players, and Skull Merchant has the benefit of (potentially) allowing players to do all three and more depending on what they want for that game.
Some of this also seems to showcase a bit of misunderstanding about how Skull Merchant works currently. Stuff like saying hacking a drone is meaningless because she can put it up again immediately, when hacking a drone actually takes away from her maximum placed drones until that claw trap is dealt with- not that impactful if she's 3-gennning, sure, but if she's trying to use all her drones in different spots to actually play actively, it's a pretty big deal.
At another stage you suggest the stealth only lingering for five seconds, which is only a three second buff from where it currently is - two second buff counting her with the stealth addon. That's hardly a buff that would make her stealth viable, so it's not exactly a surprise that the value you're using results in not thinking that her stealth would be particularly useful. What if it actually lingered for an amount of time that would be noticeable, even if only with addons? What if addons granted you undetectable for other actions, too? What if some imagination were put towards actually buffing the stealth?
As for survivors just choosing the right informed decision at the right time, and that being "you as the killer not doing anything", that's how other killers work too. Whether you like that or not is personal preference, but Plague seems pretty popular and that's how she's designed. Same for Legion, there's a right call for Legion that doesn't really change, but their power is still fun and popular because people just like using it. The same would be true for Skull Merchant's strategic planning and positioning, albeit less popular than Legion. That's not hard, though, Legion are among the most popular in the game.
(Not that popularity matters. Not every killer has to be a good fit for a large number of players.)
So, again, I'll state the most important part of this response: What matters isn't if you think this potential version of SM is strong or useful. What matters is if it's usable, and if it's problematic in the way her current version is.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525131#Comment_3525131
Just because the main building is centralized does not mean they would go there, why would they?? What is there for them to do besides the generator or maybe looping the kiler there, and even if they went there the whole thing has like 5 entrances, I don't understand you at this point, to be at a specific location in the map you always have a reason, an objective like a generator, maybe a totem, maybe a chest whatever, but why would you go there when there is nothing to do? And if there is a generator, then you are camping a generator.
If survivors are healing or doing something else, they will sure as hell not do that right next to or in close proximity to a drone, unless they don't know what they are doing, because why would they take such an unnecessary risk?
You say they have plenty of reasons to run into the shack, give me reasons to go there outside of chase that do not involve the generator there? Because like I already said, there is no reason to be in an area when there is nothing to do.
Sure, but would you seriously go as far as to call haunted ground a playstyle?
"Deny her her tracking and speed" dude... if they see it, in an obvious position where it is easily avoidable to not go inside, why on earth would you remove it? That's my entire point, you have no benefit, and to remove her bonus 5% ms seriously, why ???? Those are terrible reasons and no semi decent player would remove a drone for those two.
It seems to me that some of those "playstyles" just require players to have no clue what they are doing:
- being in areas where there is nothing to do, outside of chase
- deactivating drones that serve no purpose since they are in the middle of nowhere or obviously placed not providing anything
- healing in terrible positions close to zones that provide undetectable and easy to sneak up on
- running into an area with a drone despite drones being easy to spot
For me those just seem like things more experienced players would not do, because they only provide unnecessary risks and give no benefit, and that's one of the many problems I have with this.
How would this prove anything? It once again just comes down to her being an area defense killer, nothing more. She creates risky zones around the map, just like trapper and hag ok, but how is this versatile? All the things that are not about constantly hovering around a specific part of the map just require players to have not clue what they are doing.
I'm gonna try and condense my responses here a little bit:
Survivors go into places like the main building on Ormond because it's central and it's safe. You'd cut through it to get to other parts of the map, and there's a generator there. Again, I've already asked why it's a problem for drones to have generators in their radius if it's not a 3-gen area defence thing, and if there's no answer to that then using drones for information on top of generators too is perfectly fine. It's an option. You can also use this information/haste in chase, just because that isn't the sole intention doesn't mean it's mutually exclusive.
If the stealth is actually buffed, survivors don't need to be in super close proximity to the drone for you to take advantage of it. I feel like you're applying her current stealth to these hypotheticals.
Good survivors are going to know how powerful something like SM's Haste is, so wanting to turn it off is entirely reasonable. It'll come up to their judgement whether they think it's a good idea in the circumstance and if they can figure out what it is she's trying to use most. Using her Haste, using her stealth, or trying to lure you into traps? Disable it. Leaning on her claw traps? Leave it up.
It proves that she's not just a 3-gen machine and she can do things that aren't area defence, as I've been explaining.
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...What difference does it make, though? The changes happen either way, the literal only difference is how much time there is for players to discuss it before it hits.
Don't get me wrong, I'd probably prefer earlier dev updates because I enjoy thinking about changes in theory before I get my hands on them in practice, but it's hardly a requirement because it doesn't make any material difference.
I've never understood some parts of the community's take on communication and transparency. It feels really arbitrary a lot of the time.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525104#Comment_3525104
The question was how to use her power in a playstyle to win the game, how to you get downs from protecting a totem? You can add it to a strategy and then use her power to protect that totem sure, it cannot work on its own, therefore it is not a playstyle in itself.
Yeah drones have a pretty big range, and their circle is really easy to spot, you have to be blind to not notice it before running in, sometimes the exact border of it are not that easy to notice, but it is like impossible to miss them, I have not once not seen the drones radius, I don't know what to tell you.
I mean the game ends after 1 h and all 4 survivors die, seems like a win to me...
Easier to hack is the point, they would need to be close enough so you can use the stealth to sneak up on people but not to close for them to notice? Drones are so easy to spot unless you're on an indoor map you always see them, it is really not hard to not run into them, I don't know what to say, they would need to be stealthier for this stuff to work.
For the hard to reach places, why would survivors go there in the first place? Survivors would always need a reason to be in or close to the drones radius for any of this to work, why would they be there? Mostly because there is an objective, so back to camping gens I guess.
How do you bait it though? What could you possibly do to make them break the drones?
3 Of those things are just hoping that survivors react a certain way even though they don't have any reason to do so... What can I tell you man, how is it a playstyle when you are not doing anything, you place a drone and hope for them to disarm it wow, how is this supposed to be a playstyle? What even defines a playstyle if that counts as one in your book?
Disarming the drones is a decision on the survivor side whether it is worht it or not, you as the killer can only influence this decision by the location you put the drone, but in the end it is the survivors decision.
So tell me what defines a playstyle? I would say on Trapper for example there are several possibilities, you can spread your traps out around the entire map, you can try to hold a 3 gen and put all traps in close web around that (basically just starting the game out with placing all traps at hand at this area), you can just use the traps in chase when needed, or you can use the traps only to shut down one specific location for example basement. I would call trapping totems rather an additional strategy and not a playstyle since you're just securing your perk, for that to matter you need to down and hook survivors in other ways, so this one does not qualify as a playstyle you can use for the entire game, you can just add it to the playstyle you chose. Just to give you an idea on what I see as a playstyle, you can generally divide them into defensive or agressive playstyles on all killers, it is just easier to show on setup killers.
Some of these you seem a little confused on.
There really isn't much I can say that hasn't already been explained regarding herding survivors into active drones. It works, I'd recommend you try it if you don't believe me, just be sure not to activate the drone too early.
If your stealth lingered for long enough that you don't have to be inside the drone's radius to be stealthy, why would the drones need to be so close to the generator that survivors are also inside the radius? On top of that, what about survivors that aren't on generators, because they're healing or taking care of something else?
For hard to reach places, the drones have a radius. Just because the survivors don't go down into the basement or up to the second floor means they never would walk into the shack or into the main building. Take a map like Ormond, for example. Survivors have plenty of reason to run into the main building because of how central it is, which means a trap in one of those two spots would give you information and would probably take longer to be disarmed. Without the threat of Exposed, more survivors would feel inclined to let the drone stay up, too, since it'd be a pretty noticeable time investment for not much immediate reward.
As for how to bait it, that's what makes it an RNG luck playstyle, as exist for other killers too. Heck, Haunted Grounds is pretty exclusively used in builds where you're banking on the right thing happening, as an example. But for how you'd actually do it, you'd put them in obvious locations, most likely. Survivors do hack drones, and I'm sure some teams would want to try and deny the SM her Haste and tracking when it's a low time investment.
Playstyles would be defined as the way you play the match. Your perks and your addons feed in to your playstyle, which is why totem defence is a playstyle; it's a way you're approaching the trial and something that affects your behaviour within it. It's how you approach the game, and how you use the tools you brought into it.
Now, I need to mention this, because it can't go without being acknowledged any longer: We're drifting away from the point here. The point is that Skull Merchant can do these things, not how useful you personally find them or whether you'd personally consider them a full playstyle. The point is that she has these tools available, and they prove that she doesn't need her power redone from the ground up to fix her current issues. That is the argument that is currently being discussed here, we shouldn't lose sight of it.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525090#Comment_3525090
How is totem defesen a playstyle? What if they just ignore your totems? Defending a totem like that is somewhat camping it, it can be partially used but it is not like a full thing if you know what I mean? 1. You would only need to use like 1 or 2 drones for that and 2. you still need to somehow get downs and stuff to get value out of probably devour?
The chasing people into the drones is tricky because unlike trapper or hag your drones are visible so they might just not go there, because it is fairly obvious, especially experienced players will notice when the skull merchant goes faster while being close to her drone, so they will just take different pathing.
Set up between generators only works when they are close together and you need to have line of sight blockers, I don't think that one is viable and as long as this works you might as well just place it on the generator itself.
Hard to access spots? You need to explain that a little bit further, the whole problem about her drones is that they are rather easy to avoid going into, unless you place them on a generator, why would a survivor enter a drones radius if he can just go around it and loose like 2-3 seconds? Unless in chase i guess.
Why would they hack the drones though? That in itself is also not really a playstyle, that's just something that happens or not, it is not even in your control if it happens... Right now in the 3 gen scenario at least eternal thought in the end that removing the drones is not even worth the time, which is why they ignored them, which brings up the question how to design it to be worthwhile to get rid of.
Out of the 5 you mentioned I would argue only 2 qualify as playstyles: Trying to force survivors into pre set drones, and setting them up in between or on top of gens... So ok, we now have 3 total playstyles... Out of which only 1 is viable currently.
Totems do things, and those things both affect how you play and are things survivors want to stop. Totem defence is a playstyle for other killers, it'd be a playstyle for SM. I'm not even necessarily saying it's a great one, I get how totem defence can be annoying, but it's there and it wasn't mentioned, so it warranted being on the list.
I don't know what to tell you, man, it works. Survivors have to run away from you, and the drones have pretty big ranges. Plus, they're a lot harder to see when they're in scouting mode, so if you hold off on activating it until the last second they often don't have anywhere else to run. This is Skull Merchant's best playstyle on live, imo, as long as we're looking for a playstyle that leads to you winning and not the game force-ending after an hour.
Set up between generators would be a little map dependant but it'd work. It really depends on how the stealth is buffed, if you can at least make it last a noticeable amount of time with addons you'd have a lot of freedom to put the drones in more spots. Either way, it's a playstyle that would be possible with the right changes. Remember that this is to use the drones for stealth, not for chase or area defence, so placing them on generators would just make them easier to hack and wouldn't necessarily help you ambush survivors doing anything except working on that one generator.
For the hard to reach places, I'm thinking like the top floor of stronger structures, or down in the basement, or just generally not immediately out in the open. It's finnicky because you can't get mapwide coverage (and nor should you be able to), but it is doable. Remember that drones are only super obvious when they're in active mode, they can be easy to miss and depending on where they are you may not have a choice of where to go anyway. Plus, if they aren't actively threatening, more survivors might choose to just stay in the zone without hacking the drone. It'd be hard to use and I'd imagine you'd usually want to do that plus something else, but it's definitely an element of her kit.
For hacking the drones, that's why I said it'd be inconsistent. You'd be baiting it, basically, and it's another one you'd probably want to split with another playstyle. Still, people run RNG type builds on other killers all the time, so it'd be something some players would want to do.
So, out of the five I mentioned, we have... five. It doesn't matter how many are viable currently, because we're talking about changing her kit to better enable these playstyles. It's also important not to fall into the trap of just nitpicking apart how useful any one of these playstyles would be, because the wider point is about how her power is one that can enable a wide variety of approaches and how she's not just a 3-gen machine inherently- especially when she's even capable of some of these things on live right now.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525071#Comment_3525071
When there is a connected tile the playstyle of put power down at loop of Knight and Artist still does not guarantee a hit, but it is really annoying.
I was talking about the different effects of the drone because undetectable means nothing in chase, other than hiding your red light but you can just moonwalk so not that big of a bonus. So if her drones should give her chase abilites that already exist now then it has to be a movementspeed bonus ight? Because that's what some of her addons do, and basically that is clowns power - the blurry vision part... How does her power shine when not being used mid chased except for controlling a 3 gen currently? Isn't that the two current options? 3gen or putting down in a chase at a tile similar to knight or artist, what else is there currently with her drones?
What other playstyles are there? Are you going to play a worse Ghostface or what? :D That's my whole point when you think so much about what could be we don't really have certainties to grasp we cannot really say what will be good or bad with uncertain changes so we can only focus on what is now or if we agree on certain changes. So to be clear...
Currently her power does those things:
- deactivating them gives you a claw trap that will insta break pallets if you vault them with it
- exposed if you stay in there too long
- bonus movementspeed according to how many people have a claw trap
- tracking over the thing in her hand when people are in her drones/have traps (not sure how this one works exactly to be honest)
- no heartbeat while in drones area
And now you said get rid of exposed and buff the other ones, correct? So just we can have a base on what to argue.
The stealth aspect is worse than Myers or Ghostfaces or Wraiths, the movementspeed part is basically clown and the insta break with clawtraps only comes into effect when you deactivate a drone which we would need to argue about why you would ever do that.
Is there anything to add to her power and would changed with your proposed changes?
Right, I can see where the confusion is.
So, no, those are not the only two options. In terms of what her power does and what playstyles could be used with a few buffs, you'd have the following:
- Set drones up ahead of time and chase survivors into them, for chase buffs. (This one works on live right now and is her best build, but requires purple addons)
- Defend totems. (This one also works on live, but would be harder without Exposed)
- Set drones up in positions between generators to be stealthy and get the drop on survivors. (This one doesn't work on live but is the easiest to make possible)
- Put the drones in hard to access spots and use them for information, bringing chase perks to basically be a speedy and well informed M1 killer. (This one kiiiinda works on live but it's always going to be the most finnicky)
- Bait survivors into hacking drones so you can use the claw traps. (This one is always going to be a bit inconsistent because it relies on survivors performing certain actions, but it should be an option. )
Part of the issue with conversations about Skull Merchant is that a lot of people don't really consider any way of using a power that isn't 3-genning, very straightforward mid-chase activation, or sometimes camping. Skull Merchant has a power that you'd use to empower your killer fundamentals more than activating in the middle of chase, and that's okay, not every killer has to have something that's geared solely towards chases in the most straightforward way.
I do think it's a little misleading to start asking "well isn't that just [x] killer" because there are only so many power effects in the game and there's going to be overlap. You could easily argue that Sadako, Ghostface, Myers, and Wraith are all too similar because they're all stealth killers, but that would ignore that they all work differently and all bring their own specific flair that a player might prefer over others.
In short, you do not have to use a killer power just in the middle of chase. When I talk about buffing her other elements, they are not all intended to be chase abilities in that way.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525054#Comment_3525054
Ok then, but I would still not agree that a small tweak will work. Let's just say you did that and putting the drone down at a loop has a proper effect to the chase, then what? Will it make facing her more fun and interactive or will it just be Artist/Knight all over again? How do you create such a power that gives you more choices than leave the loop or take the hit with such a concept? We have a rather limited amount of effects those drones could grant currently and if we don't add any and removed exposed we are stuck with undetectable and movementspeed changes. Is she just gonna be clown then? In the sense of her power will be undetectable + movementspeed changes to her, the surv or both? I think it should be something that is different to other killers.
What would be an effect good enough that still allows interaction in chase? There needs to be at least a general concept how that could be accomplished otherwise this is way too cloudy and undetermined.
You do bring up a good point with the Knight/Artist problem, that's kinda why I'm on the fence about giving her some chase effects basekit. I do think she'd be less obnoxious than those killers because those killers pressure you away with guaranteed loss of a health state, whereas Skull Merchant just gets a buff/debuff out of the situation and she also has to wait for the drone to become active, but it is a concern to be aware of.
Still, to be entirely fair, lots of killers can just force survivors to run out with their power, so it isn't a unique problem. It's kind of a game-wide issue to solve, rather than a specific-killer issue.
To your other points... Clown doesn't have Undetectable, I have no idea what you're talking about there. They also function completely differently? Like, the mechanics are completely different, as well as how you'd use them. Clown has a straightforward mid-chase power, Skull Merchant has a versatile power that shines best when it isn't used mid-chase.
You're still focusing a lot on mid-chase interaction when that isn't the only thing this power does. Remember that the strength of it is how it's used overall and in how many other different playstyles it would enable, not just by dropping a drone mid-chase.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525048#Comment_3525048
Is removing or adding an effect to power not a form of changing effects? Like I said semantics...
I wouldn't agree that powers necessarily help in defending a 3 gen, most of them help gettings downs, except for the area defence killers. Her power however directly allows you to controll the area around a gen.
...But I'm not suggesting adding any. The only change to effects I propose is removing one, and the one I am proposing removing is the one that helps the least for when she's played normally. That's not a Freddy-tier ground-up redesign that makes the power completely different, that isn't a case of semantics at all. The power remains roughly the same for everyone that wasn't 3-genning with her, it's just improved and tweaked.
Her power does that now. If there weren't any direct threat from Exposed, it wouldn't. My entire point is that her power only needs changes to the power itself, not starting from scratch like people suggest, to fix that issue.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525040#Comment_3525040
But if we change what her drones do, we do make her power do make completely different things? Her drones are just a place holder do apply certain effects, her core is put something down that applies effects, so the essential part is the effects that are being applied. Just as Huntress and Clown both throw things at survivors the core is the effect of what those things do.
I would say it still helps in defending a 3gen, because you may get an easier hit with sloppy to then kick it again or even a down to activate surge/eruption. A power that let's you control gens easier will (almost)always be problematic for a 3 gen scenario.
If I were suggesting changing those effects to something else, yes, but I am not. I am suggesting removing one effect, and improving all the others.
Again, her power does everything I've mentioned right now. Boot up the game, launch a match of Skull Merchant, and your power will give you information, chase, and stealth. It won't be good chase without addons and it won't be good stealth no matter what, but it does it right now.
What will change is how people play her, but that's not even slightly the same thing as her power being fundamentally changed.
Also, any killer's power makes defending a 3-gen easier, that's not the bar. The bar is bringing her down to where other killers are, as well as making her better at doing other things to make 3-gens less appealing.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525029#Comment_3525029
That's a rework then, are we just debating about semantics or what? If we basically need to change her power so it does completely different things then that's a rework, depending on if you see her core just as puts drone down or as drone that does specific things we could even argue that her core gets changed but in the end she needs big changes.
But if you use her drones for stealth, where other then on gens would you place them for you to have a longer duration of no heartbeat for a survivor that stays somewhere long enough for you to go there? That's like the problem of it? Basically the only usefull place to put those drones is around generators.
It's a rework, yes, but it's not a Freddy tier rework that makes her power do completely different things. Her power currently does everything I've just mentioned, I am solely and specifically asking for those to be improved while her area defence (in the form of Lock On) is weakened. This has been my position the whole time, to be clear, even if I maybe slipped up and used the word 'rework' when I shouldn't have. I don't know if I did, I'd have to go back and check lol. To be even more clear and direct: The Skull Merchant does not need a Freddy tier rework that fundamentally changes her power. She does need a Leatherface and Doctor level suite of changes that keep her power intact while changing specific elements of it.
For your last question, you'd probably want to put them between generators rather than directly on top, because if your Undetectable actually lingered for any meaningful amount of time you'd still be stealthy while the survivor wouldn't necessarily know to expect you at any second because they aren't sitting inside the radius. Putting them between generators would also usually translate to them being better placed to use in loops, and while stealth isn't the most useful mid-chase power, it's not nothing either.
But, I do have to question- at what point does it matter if they're put on generators? If they aren't being used for area defence/3-genning (because they aren't actually directly threatening) and they just happen to be near generators because that's where you'd get the most information/stealth/chase potential out of them, is that actually a problem?
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3525018#Comment_3525018
What prevents them from staying there is the combination of lock on exposed and stealth because if you play the 3 gen way and only ever chase them away maybe destroy some close by pallets they used to not get one shot then at some point people are unable to do that gen without going down for sure, the only reason that didn't constantly happen in the showmatch was because they were on coms and called out when she was coming back to another gen.
If you removed the exposed in a loop then she just plays normally, even the bonus movementspeed is somewhat a bad idea because an m1 killer with 120% ms or 125% or whatever just plays differently and often leaves the survivor with not much space to outplay the other side because even safer loops are becoming really unsafe.
It is up for debate if that would still not be a rework, but if you change how a killer power works without small number tweaks it is basically a rework, I mean think about doctors rework, where they got rid of his two modes, he kept his shock in loops in the end they changed a part of his power to do something else, which I consider to be a rework.
I would even say the changes to Bubba were basically a rework, when they gave him charges for his chainsaw, and that is not really that much in terms of what changed, 3 instead of 1 short charge.
I would not say either that rework and core elements are excluding each other like, bubbas core that he uses a chainsaw in the way he does did not get changed, he did however get reworked. And if you need to change for example what the drones do overall, then that is a rework, it doesn't necessarily change her core elements, but her core gameplay, if the drones couldn't be used for area controll. But maybe just tracking?
I've been consistent in saying that she does need changes and that when I say she doesn't need to be redesigned, I am referring to changes like the ones Freddy got. I even cited Doctor and Leatherface in another response as the kind of changes I think she does need; the core power remaining the same, but the way it's implemented being tweaked to be healthier and smoother.
If you remove the Exposed, players who want to utilise her drones for chase would need to bring tools that make the drones better in chase. Maybe implement one of the current chase addons into the basekit so she's not totally dependant on them, but other than that her addons need to be overhauled to better represent her modular nature. She needs better chase addons that aren't purple tier, basically.
And that's just if you want to use her drones for chase. Let's not lose sight of what her power design's actual strength is: you don't need to, because it does other stuff as well. You could lean into using it for surveillance, or try and bank on the Claw Traps instead of the drones themselves, or you could use it for stealth. She doesn't need to either be "nightmare 3-gen simulator" or "use drones directly in chase". There are currently other options, and those options need to be improved alongside the 3-gen element being nerfed.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3524991#Comment_3524991
But overall all they do is prevent people from staying in a certain area, and that's a problem, her basic design of area defense works in that way. It is not the same with Hag and Trapper whereas they make loops in a certain area unsafe but don't necessarily give you disadvantages for doing a generator in a certain area, it is just riskier. The problem with Skull Merchant is that by applying all these effects onto you while you are doing a gen, Trapper and Hag take quite some time to put their web up again if you remove traps or disarm them, whereas all skull merchant has to do is be close to the gen and press the button, you don't even need to think as gens are highlighted, you don't need to chose a good space as to where exactly place them in the loop just the general direction close to the gen is alright and that is a big issue, as many said before with this being the most effective way to play you don't need to learn much, you just put the dron down and that's it. The single most skillfull thing for example we saw in the skull merchant vs. team eternal showmatch was that he placed the drown in the basement, making it harder to disable, but since the correct play seemed to be to just ignore the drones even that didn't matter.
I don't think of it as good design to just put things on the floor and then they just work in a wide area without any imput from you. How can you possible tweak some numbers or change smaller things without a complete rework and have a different outcome? As harsh as it sounds, what else are you supposed to do with the drones? All area defense killers choose a certain area (usually like 1/3 of the map or so) in which they place their web, shut down loops and then basically never leave them, because why would you? But as skull merchant why would you place the drones on loops?
I think it is hard to describe like... The reason you place something on the loop is to make it less safe, or shut it down completely like hag or trapper. But with skull merchant you already protect your goal with the drones and scare everyone away by patrolling them, you don't even need to keep chasing. Removing any of the abilities she currently has on her drowns would probably significantly weaken her power to 3 gen, take away stealth and you can pre run earlier, take away exposed and you can a hit and just keep running, and so on, but then she would be even worse, because then the drones just would not do anything in a chase either? without exposed or bonus ms what is the reason to set it up on a loop? You can just moonwalk to avoid showing your red light. I just don't see a way to remove her capability of 3 genning without completely ruining her chase as well and turning her into the worst killer in the game. The easiest thing to avoid 3 genning is probably just to removed the ability to place them around a gen and basically force you to chase, but then she would be literally the worst killer in the game. that's my whole point, her core design is flawed. And if you basically need to change entirely what her power does then that is a rework.
The thing is, her drones don't inherently prevent people from staying in a certain area. Think about it, the drones themselves are just a light show, the thing that makes them potent is what they do.
So, then, what parts of the drone make staying in that area unthinkably dangerous? It's not the tracking, that just means you have to be a little more careful. Ditto for the stealth, unless you're doing a generator in a really cramped area with only one entrance (So like, the upper story single person generator on Badham, that kind of thing) you'd just be playing as if against a stealth killer in general. The Haste is useful in chase but less useful for actually closing significant distance, so it's not that either.
What that leaves is just the Exposed from Lock-On as the threat, and that can very safely be removed from her kit with the right additional changes. It already barely helps for chase and doesn't help at all for information or stealth, so playing Skull Merchant actively/properly won't be affected, it'll just stop the drones from being thoughtless area defence.
That isn't a full redesign, it's a pretty small change all things considered. I didn't go super into detail on that in my original post because I was more interested in elaborating what I think the distinction between 'core design' and the killer's specific implementation is, but that is where I think the devs should go. Remove Lock-On, and buff her other playstyles now that 3-genning is back down to where a killer like Sadako or tier-2 Myers would be able to achieve the same thing.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3521521#Comment_3521521
Also I already tried to adress your post in the proper way and did not get a response to it so I guess when it comes to not readings posts you belong to majority of people who don't read it...
There were a lot of posts, and after enough of the mocking ones I kinda checked out, sorry about that.
To address your points now, though, I haven't the first idea where you're coming from. The drones aren't individually versatile, they're versatile because all of them do a number of things that you can choose to build into. Each drone is capable of providing information, giving you chase buffs (via addons), applying Claw Traps when hacked, and enabling stealth via Undetectable. That makes them versatile because you can use them in a number of different ways, the drones don't need to individually do different things to be versatile.
They're versatile right now. My preferred outcome is for BHVR to lean into that and not completely redesign her.
As for the 3-gen issue, I believe SM can be brought down to in line with the other killers in that regard. I don't think the drones being a stationary AOE must always necessarily lead to 3-gens being impossible, it all depends on what the drones actually do and how they're interacted with on both sides.
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@[Deleted User] said:
Sorry, but as others have stated already: literally everything about her is terrible.
Interesting to invoke "others have said" in a thread where maybe three respondents actually bothered to read the post, lol.
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@FFirebrandd said:
There's so much that its hard to pick.
But I think I have one. Every killer that's been given a rework is given a brown addon that reverts them to pre rework status. That includes but is not limited to Freddy, Doctor, and Trickster.
Why Trickster?
Freddy I understand, and Doctor was at least mechanically different so there'd be some novelty in going back, but Trickster was only ever directly buffed. There wasn't a rework to go back to, you'd just be playing a numerically worse version of the killer you selected.
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@Boons123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3524395#Comment_3524395
Yes, it is required. In Caleb's story, it was mentioned that he failed or made a mistake in some parts of his story, and this gave the story more realism.
Everyone in life will make mistakes sooner or later, but Adriana is portrayed as a person who never makes mistakes.
I am even surprised at how she can carry a heavy weapon with only one hand, even though she has no background that she entered a gym or that she trained for that.
Caleb's weapon had failed prototypes. That isn't the equivalent of Adriana's teenage website needing to be shown having technical issues or whatever, that'd be pointless bloat.
If they showed her designing the drones, yes, some reference to failed prototypes would be a good call. But they didn't, so there's not really anywhere in her lore that failure would be particularly relevant or impactful, it just wouldn't make a difference.
We don't see her day to day life, we only see a handful of situations where it's expected she'd do well. It wouldn't add anything to arbitrarily say "oh also this one time something bad happened".
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@Boons123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3524268#Comment_3524268
Well, her story is that she never fails
-At no time did the site fail or have problems and everything on the manga site was in perfect order
-She made no mistake in her practical life, not a single mistake. Everything is as she wants
-She managed to invent high-tech drones, invent a claw with razor-sharp blades on the first try, and never had failed prototypes.
-She has never failed in her life of crime and she has never made the mistake of killing them, if she wants to kill someone she will kill him and she will never fail in that.
So do you want me to believe that she is a woman full of intelligence, cunning, and strength, and that she cannot commit even one small mistake in her life?
???
Why would the site failing or having problems possibly be required or even relevant to her story? What would that add to the lore, genuinely, if it were included?
What mistakes are we supposed to have seen in her practical life, too? Does constantly getting into trouble for being aggressive and violently competitive not count? Hell, does becoming a serial killer because of jealous spite not count as a flaw?
We didn't see anything about the drones or whether she invented them, which is an issue of its own but not one of her never failing.
Why would it improve her story for her to fail in killing someone? She's a killer. Surely, when designing a killer for DBD, you start from the premise that they're going to be good at killing people?
So... yes. I think it's a fair thing for you to believe that she's intelligent, cunning, and successful. It's not even close to unbelievable, because most of her accomplishments are either pretty grounded in reality or are just, the obvious baseline any killer in DBD would be able to achieve.
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@Seraphor said:
Who is genuinely having issues as killer with MfT?
Because I barely notice it and often find on the scoreboard that the MfT user is the one I killed.
Much more preferable to Sprint
I do notice it sometimes, but that's usually when it's being paired with another source of Haste. Other than that, it's mostly the occasional whiffed swing that I correct for in the next chase.
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@Archael said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3524268#Comment_3524268
"By her mid 20'" means untill she was around 25. So its "up to" 7 years, not "at least".
Kind of a difference without distinction in this context. It's about how much time she had to invest to achieve her goal, so it happening over the course of seven years is still a rebuttal to the point I was responding to.
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@Batusalen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3524201#Comment_3524201
Look, I'm not going to repeat myself, even less when you are obviously just cherry picking what I said instead to make mental gymnastic with it instead to counter argument what I'm really saying.
One example of this, is that I already specified the setup of my "hypothetical example": The real world. No superhero, no another universe with less gravity, nothing that justify for a normal, average human being able to jump that high. But, because you can't argue that point, you just picked part of it and used it to argument something that I already explained posts ago about suspension of disbelief and how the Skull Merchant lore fails to make you suspend your disbelief, including all the "Brazilian manga web page making sheer amount of money" and "Library Investment and Economics degree" part.
And no, the lore doesn't specify she was 5 years doing it:
By the age of 18, barely with a high school degree, she had already become a self-made millionaire. [...] Before long, she had the kind of money that allowed her to buy small companies—companies that she would gut, replace with non-union workers, and sell at a profit. [...] By her mid 20’s, she was regularly flipping companies.
So, less than two years, and she was doing it regularly.
Another thing you are doing, and that is the main difference between you and me, is that I'm sticking to the info the lore gives us. You, in the other hand, are adding your own bias and assumptions to it. The perfect example is that you are assuming that her "robust and expensive education" has something to do with her being able to be an expert investor, but the reality is that her lore doesn't say such thing anywhere. In fact, answering your question, it would be a much better explanation that she had learned "Finances and Economics" in that expensive academy that recruited her instead of just reading a bunch of books in a library. But they didn't write that. And it's work of the lore to give you that kind of information if it is relevant or important. So, as it says nothing about it, I'm going to assume that her education had nothing to do with her being able to learn that much of investment and economics in a library to triple her money like it was nothing, because as far as the lore told us, the closest thing she could have learned in that academy about Economics is math.
And the same goes for the "don't caught" thing. If the writers didn't thought about it or didn't saw relevant to justify why she wasn't caught, I'm not going to do their job for them. I would stick to the info they decided to give me, and that is that the only reason she wasn't caught is because she is so cool that can get away with murder without anyone noticing the obvious link between her and all those companies who CEOs disappeared.
Also, having a "keen mind in general" doesn't means that you are able to even get all the knowledge needed to do investments, much less from a bunch of books. I'm pretty sure that even Stephen Hawking had a bunch of brokers hired to invest his money for him.
And you are right, she is good at things she is shown doing, and she did everything that has being shown to us perfectly. So, you are agreeing with me that they show her as a perfect, flawless character that does everything right. Because again, in a story you should give all the relevant info about the characters that you want the reader to have, so they can have an image of them based on it. If you only show me her doing nothing but gaining net profits in everything she does, then you are painting her as the flawless character that is good at everything. And it is not only in terms of business and investments, again, it's in web designing, manipulating people, stalking them, killing them, and every other thing she does. Maybe she is bad doing crosswords or cooking, who knows... as far as the lore conveys, everything she proposed to do, does it at perfection and everything always goes her way.
You also keep pointing to her being "bright and educated" as justification for her to be able to do whatever she wants perfectly. But again, being bright and educated is just a bad generic excuse for that. There is no background to justify she being able to do all of what she does, besides her "Library Investment and Economics degree", which is able to achieve thanks to the same generic excuse. And this, again, is why her lore is bad writing, because obviously the authors never asked themselves "How", "Why", and "Would it make sense", she is simply "super cool and smart" and that's about it.
And I would continue to answer your other points, but I have already invest a lot of time in it and I think I already prove my point beyond doubt, so if someone doesn't see why the Skull Merchant is bad writing is because just don't want to see it, and that won't change whatever I say.
I will only say that I never said that the other killers lore was masterpieces or something, but this doesn't change the fact that the Skull Merchant one is just bad. But like I said, if someone likes it I don't have any problem with it.
I'm not cherrypicking anything, I'm responding to each of your points in turn and addressing how they relate to your wider point- or at least, the wider point you conveyed to me, which is that Skull Merchant's lore is badly written due to how it fails to justify the unbelievable things that Adriana does.
So, then, discussing how the things she does aren't that unbelievable and are textually justified is directly responding to you, wouldn't you agree?
To continue: The lore passage you copy-pasted here literally says it was longer than five years, in fact. Eighteen when she got enough money to start, "mid-20s" (so, at least 25) when she was doing it regularly. That's at least seven years, not two.
You keep talking about investment as though it's some immensely complicated thing you need years of study to master, and while I'm not about to say I could go and do it skilfully, I do know enough to know that that's not the case. All she'd really need to learn is the way those systems function on a basic level, which is exactly the kind of thing you'd learn in the kinds of books you can pick up at the library. Again, there are people IRL who have achieved this, and most of them - to my knowledge - had about the same priming for it that Skull Merchant did.
One thing I am doing here, and I'll freely admit to it, is that I'm applying actual analysis and critique to the work as provided to me. Rather than cherrypicking specific sentences and asking bad-faith rhetorical questions, I read it, paid attention to what was said, and then also interpreted it as a piece of fiction, not a wiki page. You do, as a matter of fact, have to meet a piece of writing halfway and apply some extremely basic interpretation before it can fairly be critiqued, otherwise you end up with the level of understanding you'd see displayed in the average CinemaSins video.
At this stage, after demonstrating some of the things you've said are completely wrong and the others are rather bad-faith and overblown, I think the point has been made thoroughly. Anyone who still thinks the Skull Merchant's lore is significantly worse than the average and any worse than simply "fine, but flawed" has already made up their mind not to meet it halfway or apply any good-faith interpretation, so I don't think there's much more I could say to change their mind.
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I'd imagine that thought did come up during the design phase, since they slapped two separate restrictions on it.
Not sure why it has Endurance, though, that part feels overtuned to me.
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@Batusalen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3524166#Comment_3524166
If it is exaggerated, then is not believable for the simple reason that is not realistic. If I wrote an story where someone that is a simple human living in the real world makes a 10 meters high jump, would you believe it? Would you accept it if I just said "Well, it was an exaggerated concept around real life things as people can jump a couple of meters into the air! You just need to high up your suspension of disbelief!", or would you still think that it is dumb?
Well, have you seen how much money do you get from a web page advertisement space? 0,008 to 0,020 dollars per add view. And this can be higher or lower depending on the location of the person that view the add, content of the page, and many many more factors. But on average, 1.000 views could pay from 0,2 to 2,5 dollars. Now, you can say "As she is so good at everything and everything she does comes being perfect, she would always get 2,5 dollars so with 100.000 she would be making 250.000!". Yeah, alright champ... but what about costs? Because even if her lore specifies that she tricked a bunch of kids to work for free in the page somehow, running a web is not free. And more visits means more bandwidth and more bandwidth means more money you have to pay!
To end it short: She getting a sheer amount of advertisement money and the web being so profitable that anybody would just pay her a good sum for it is ridiculous. But, as she is super smart, and super good, and super cool she does it with a self created web page about Brazilian manga, non of the less!
And yes, there is people that have made money in investment at 18. How many of them have being able to do that just by reading a couple of books in economics available at the local library? And the thing here is that even people with a degree in economics wouldn't be able to invest their money as a Wall Street expert, as making investments require more things and knowledge than just "Library Economics". In fact, if you want to really learn how to invest and manage money what you really need is knowledge about "Library Finances" in any case, as it is the discipline that really does those things. And no, even if Economics and Finances goes by the hand and both of them are needed in those fields, they are not the same.
Oh yes, 6 months more of "company flipping" instead of just 2 years would make it have more sense and make it being better written in her lore, without doubt. And we don't need the "granulated details as of how", but as it is written in her lore, it implies that she is not "in the process", but have done it multiple times already. But again, she is so smart and cool that doesn't have to worry about legality, paperwork or cost of buying companies, rehiring all the workforce and looking for someone interested in pay for that company more of what she has spent "flipping it". For her is just like eating candy.
And again, the problem is not that she isn't caught, the problem is that she isn't caught when is so obvious she has something to do with all those murders. Even The Trapper lore, who bodycount reach the 3 digits, have the decency to specify that the authorities never had enough proof to demonstrate that he killed all those people. In contrast, Skull Merchant lore implies that she killed multiple CEOs just before buying their companies and nobody sees a connection apparently. Again, it would be great that they specified "She paid the cops to never look at her with all that advertisement money she got", but it doesn't, because whoever wrote it never even thought of it. And things like that is why her lore is just pure, unadulterated, 101 bad writing.
And yes, her lore says she is so cool that she is good at everything. Both implicitly and literally:
Adriana excelled in all facets of education. A house full of art and music honed a brilliant mind, and her intelligence was only exceeded by her obsessive drive to be the best.
She was good at everything at school. She is super intelligent. She was so cool and good that was the private academy who get to her. She somehow learned web developing and created her own web. She is so cool and good at everything that she was able to convince people to work for her for free. In fact, so cool that those kids she tricked was the brazilian version of Stephen King, as the articles they wrote were so good they made her web page gain a lot of money. She is so good that learned economics by reading books in a library and transformed in the Wolf of Wall Street. So good that she controls every aspect of trade and business to the point of being able to buy and flip companies for a profit in no time. So good at everything that she decided to kill two peoples because she felt like it and did it perfectly and without leaving trace. So cool that he kept doing it with another bunch of people and nobody ever suspected anything when there was a clear connection to her. So good and and cool that she created her own drones and Predator blades, as if her just bought them or asked a company to made them that would be another link to her and another plothole.
She is good at everything she does. Without having the required background to it, without having to work it out and gain it, and without having any kind of problem or consequence for anything she does. She is perfect.
She is just that cool. Or at least that is whoever wrote her lore thought. In reality, this only makes her a bad written boring character. And if you like it... hey, you do you. I also have my guilty pleasures. But nothing would change the fact that her lore is badly written and makes no sense.
So, couple things here.
First, that hypothetical example. If the character being able to jump 10 metres was important or central in some way, and had a grounded (if exaggerated and unrealistic) explanation, sure, I'd buy it. It all depends on how it's done, why it's done, and what kind of tone it's done with. That's basically the basis for any superhero story that comes out without an attached shared universe; someone living in the real world can do things no other person can do. It isn't inherently a flaw.
Second, I've already acknowledged that part of the exaggeration is how much money she gets from certain sources. You do actually have to demonstrate that this is a flaw, though, rather than just point at it as existing. Yes, she is implied to get more money from advertising space than is strictly realistic. Does that actually harm the story? It's working on real mechanisms, it's playing on real concepts, and it's just giving them the occasional nudge. This is true of most stories in general, let alone most of DBD's stories.
For your next point, I still don't see why this is such a sticking point. Considering she already had a robust and expensive education and has been portrayed as having a keen mind in general, the idea that she'd do well with investments isn't that unbelievable. Seriously, would you rather it just didn't say she went to the library specifically? Would it improve the story for you for her to have gotten that information from somewhere else...? This is such a weird issue to take with the story, and once again is a case of something with grounded, real mechanisms behind it, this one isn't even all that exaggerated.
If six more months of company flipping would've fixed it, then the five years the lore actually says she spent (bare minimum) should render this particular complaint solved.
So, then, when we come to the idea of her not being caught, it seems like we've shifted the complaint to being that the story should've put in a line about how there wasn't enough proof to actually charge her. I'm not saying that wouldn't be better, but if it would really be fixed with such a simple addition, I feel like that addition is kind of a fair assumption to make and its absence is at worst a bit of an oversight. It's hardly a monumental failure that ruins the whole thing and it definitely isn't "bad writing 101".
Her lore says she excels at school and then very clearly states that she isn't perfect. It's not that she's so cool and perfect at everything, it's that she's good academically which translated to being good at business. I'm not even going to entertain the notion that her being good academically is itself a flaw, so what's the issue here?
She is good at the things she is shown doing, which are the things that are relevant to her character and that she should be expected to be good at. They do a perfectly adequate job setting her up as bright and educated enough to take advantage of the system around her, so the idea that she doesn't have "the required background" is a non-starter. As for not having any consequence... what consequence would actually improve this story? What consequence do most of the other killers get? Most of the early ones vanish immediately following their big crime and pretty much none of the others are caught to my recollection.
There is nothing that actually sets the Skull Merchant's lore apart from the others in terms of quality. If you don't like it, that's perfectly fine, there's plenty out there that just isn't for me either, but that doesn't change the fact that her lore is pretty par for the course when it comes to this game and isn't so heinously flawed that it deserves being torn apart over the others we've gotten.