jesterkind
jesterkind
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@Batusalen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3523909#Comment_3523909
I think I have explained there is more to it than simply "it doesn't explain enough" in my others responses to other people here, so read them if you want my extended opinion apart from my answer to you.
But I don't expect the lore for the Skull Merchant to be "detailed to the minute". What I said to you is that all those details that you said were "obvious to anyone reading it in good faith" wasn't there. Not a single one of them. Nothing that you said the "lore is conveying to the reader" is true, specially the "She gets away with murder because she is rich" part. So, again, that I expect her lore to have Tolkien level of details is something that you said, not me.
And the problem with her lore is that there is not enough suspending of disbelief that can make you accept her story. Because fine, she made the Holy Grail of Brazilian manga news site and made a lot of money. Now, next step: She self taught so much knowledge in economics by reading books in a library, that she became an expert Wall Street broker and triple whatever the sheer amount of money from Adsense and the selling of the web she did and become a millionaire soon after when she wasn't even 18.
I repeat: By reading books of economics. In a library. Before 18. And that alone give her all she needed to know to be able to understand the markets, how and when invest, and make millions of it... totally believable.
By the way, we have to note here that she was in the last semester of middle school a little before she made the web page. Now, this is a problem, as if it is as in USA middle school that would mean that she created that web, tricked a bunch of other kids to work for free and studied those economics with only 13 - 14 years. But, if we take in count the Brazil middle school, she would had 17 years in her last semester, meaning she would have done all that in less than 1 year. Sincerely, I don't know what is more believable of those. Or what would be worst writing, either.
All right, fine, what's next? By 20 she was flipping companies. Plural. How many companies? Who knows, a lot! Just flipping them, one after another. Screw legality, screw paperwork, screw all those months of negotiations, lawyers, market rules or all the time that it would take to just rehire the whole company with non-union workers AND sell it for a profit, as somehow, after all she would have to invest just to be able to do all that she was still able to find someone wanting to buy it all just after she did all that for even more money that she has spent. Nah, screw all that, she was just flipping them, dude! Like they were cards in a deck. In two years. And all of that while she was reading comics. She is just that good!
And so on, and on, and on. And we have to just believe and accept that she is so cool and perfect that she can do all that like it is nothing, and still have the time and ability to get her Predator blades and kill a lot of people between readings of her father's manga, or we are all haters... sure, why not.
About your next point, not much to say: You are wrong. The problem isn't she wasn't caught with murder, the problem there is that she wasn't caught with murdering CEOs of companies she is directly related to. Again, just like the "company flipping", the way it is
badlywritten implies that there was multiple CEOs killed. A lot of them. So incompetent is Brasil police that they wasn't able to deduce that the woman that bought all those companies maybe has something to do with their CEO mysteriously disappearing? It's absurd.Like I said in other posts, the lore of this character is just over the top bad writing and defines her simple as a "Good at everything" character as her only characteristic, and whoever wrote it just slapped in a lot of things that sounded cool in their heads without any thought. Simple as that.
Let's go through a couple of these steps that you're calling out as unrealistic and requiring too much suspension of disbelief.
So, first, the website. I'm not sure why this is a sticking point for anyone, frankly. It was a popular website that had original content and revolved around something that a lot of people in the area enjoy, the idea that she'd make some money off the advertising space on that website makes perfect sense. It's exaggerated, of course, advertising space doesn't usually translate to all that much money irl as far as I'm aware, but that's obviously fine. It's a story and it's going for a specific tone, so exaggeration of real life elements is 100% acceptable and even better in a lot of cases.
Then, the library. People really hate this element, huh? Despite that, it's still not that unbelievable in the context of a work of fiction. There are people irl who have made millions off investment before they're eighteen. They're rare, of course, but it's happened. The idea that an academically minded and intelligent girl with an expensive education would be able to learn economics through textbooks and become good at trading is exaggerated, again, but plays on real things. This is not an unbelievable element of her story.
Then we get to the flipping companies, and here it really does just sound like you want more details. Or maybe you just think it should've taken place over a couple years instead of just one? To be fair, I think you might misremember a small detail here, because it actually says she's flipping companies by her mid 20s, implying she's at the process for a couple years. We don't need the specific granular details on how, because that kind of thing happens irl all the time. Vulture capitalism is a real thing.
Finally we have the murders, and I've expressed already that I find this critique contrived. Killers aren't caught in horror stories like this, even ones whose crimes are more exaggerated and their standing in society less protected than someone like Adriana. But, to take it seriously and answer, I don't think the lore needs to show us that she's a suspect in these investigations for us to assume that's the case. I think it's reasonable to fill in that she just doesn't leave enough evidence tying her specifically to these men. Maybe if she hadn't been swallowed by the Fog, that would've changed, but as it stands it's not a particularly flawed element of the story. It's not as though those CEOs only existed in the world to do a business dealing with Adriana, there'd be other suspects too and even if there weren't, there'd need to be some kind of proof before Adriana would be caught.
Her lore does not define has as "good at everything". It defines her as good at specifically two things: Business and murder. Since the latter should be expected of most killer lore, it really just defines her as being good at business, which it gives us some reasonable backstory to justify - she's intelligent and had an expensive education.
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@Boons123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3523959#Comment_3523959
So it is logical that you resist and try to keep him away from you in order to gain a distance, not that I watch as she stabs the leg and I do nothing
Well, as I said in the zombie example, if it grabs you or knocks you down, you will try to keep that teeth away from you because one bite and your life is over.
But at the Skull Merchant, he didn't even try to kick it with his other unbending foot and push it away, he just pleaded.
In other words, he gave in to a small pain in order to receive a much bigger and worse pain
Isn't that just how these animatics are drawn? Like, I've seen a few of them, they're not animated so much as they transition from one still image to another still image.
Also some people would freeze up in that scenario, if we must go there.
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@Boons123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3523954#Comment_3523954
It's like you're saying you're so afraid of a zombie and you let it bite you
...Huh? No, you'd... run from it. Because putting distance between you and the thing trying to harm you is a natural response for all living things, let alone just humans.
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Like I said, running from someone trying to kill you is a pretty realistic response. I don't see why that's a criticism.
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@Boons123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3523909#Comment_3523909
Her story is not a horror story, and most of the killers' story is not a horror story, even if she was caught, the story could have continued
Also, just because you went to the library and got rich on a book that universities couldn't do even in a very few years, that's totally unrealistic.
And if that were the case, I would have left the universities, went to the library, and became a millionaire in one year, and all this because of a handful of books, and the university was oblivious to these expensive books in order to improve their teaching.
Her story also tells you that she is lucky and that everything should move as she wants
All her victims accepted to go to a secluded area, and he never complained about that, because she was naturally lucky
The funny thing is that none of her victims tried to resist and defend themselves, they are all brainless and just run aimlessly, and she just follows them and kills them.
It is not mentioned what to do with the corpses after killing them and enslaving them she burns them because the forest will burn with them
Well, someone may find the body while hiking or exploring the forest, and then they will report it, and then they will discover that the bodies were killed with a strange and distinctive weapon, and after knowing the identity of the bodies and the method of killing, they will know that it is a woman, and then they will know that Adriana is the criminal.
But will that happen? No, because she is the lucky lady and she can never make a mistake, and no one will doubt her because she is lucky
No one escapes from her, only the brother and sister survived, but they were taken by the entity because she is by nature the lucky lady
All killers' stories are horror stories, I'm not sure why you'd think they aren't. DBD is the horror hall of fame, and there'd be no reason for them to not do horror stories for their killers anyway. It's... obviously how you'd design killers.
She had an expensive education and an aptitude for business before she started going to the library. That was just to cover the gaps in her knowledge.
I'm not sure where you're getting that all her victims "accepted to go to secluded areas". She stalks them, and they're going to be alone sometime. The only one she got lucky with, textually, was the guy who liked going on retreats to secluded areas, and even that just made it easier.
I'm not sure where you're getting that none of her victims tried to defend themselves, the lore doesn't really say either way (unless that's in the tome, which I haven't read yet). Either way, though, running from someone trying to kill you is... pretty realistic.
Even if someone did find the body, how would the police know it was her? They'd suspect someone involved in the business dealings, sure, but they wouldn't leap directly to her without investigating. (Also how would they know it's a woman?)
I don't really see the criticism that she's just lucky. The story goes out of its way to establish her as someone who'd put in the effort to do these things, she doesn't just decide to on a whim and it all works out.
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@Batusalen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3523721#Comment_3523721
Sorry, but anything you said there would make sense if there were even a glimpse of any of it written in her lore. Seriously, where did you get all that? Because the only thing we know about why she gets away with murdering multiple companies's CEOs just to buy them and get more rich without anyone saying "Hey yo, did you notice that all of this people disappeared just before Ms. Imai bought their company?" is simply that they killed them because one day she was like "Ugh, another negotiation meeting just because this guys don't want to sell?... Screw it, i'm going to get my Collector's Edition Razor-Sharp Dual Blades and kill them" and she liked it. That's it. That's the only thing the lore says to us.
It would be cool that they added something like "She paid the authorities with all her Brazillian manga money so they never investigated them", but that isn't there. Sorry, but all what you said is just your interpretation of the story with your own bias filling the blankets.
About Trickster, you are right as he was even letting clues to police and one of his last victims was a fan of him that he met. The difference with him and why is more believable than Skull Merchant one is that as far as his lore implies he just had a handful of victims (about five accounted in the lore, without counting his band and the last one were he kills the executives), so it can be that he was captured in The Fog before the police could catch him, while the Skull Merchant lore implies that she did what she did many, many times.
And I'm not going to say that some people may have a problem with her and mix in-game hate with other things, but what I'm going to say is that other people thought the lore was stupid the moment it was announced. I also don't think her visual design has nothing to do with her lore really, I would even affirm that if her lore had being any good more people would like her more despise not liking her visually.
The problem is, it wasn't. So, people that didn't like the design disliked her even more.
So, I went and re-read the Skull Merchant's lore just to make sure I was refreshed, after seeing this and a few other of your posts in this thread.
Nothing about my take has changed, of course. Her lore has its issues but, within a reasonable margin of suspension of disbelief, it conveys who she is perfectly serviceably.
I think part of the issue here, at least insofar as what you've said to me, is that you're expecting the Skull Merchant's lore page to bend over backwards explaining everything in minute detail, which of course wouldn't be expected of any lore for a killer people don't already hate. There are exactly two points where belief must be suspended, and neither of them are particularly devastating for a story's tone:
The first is that her website made her "significant advertising dollars"; while that's somewhat unrealistic, it's not exactly a giant break from reality. It's not too hard to believe that a popular website with original content (that she duped other kids into writing, explaining where it came from neatly) would be popular for advertising space, and the story even makes sure we know that it's the site being bought that gives Adriana enough money that she wants to show it off.
The second, as you alluded to in your responses to me, is that she gets away with murdering multiple businessmen, some CEOs, without being caught. I have very little patience for this as a serious criticism, if I'm honest. It's a horror story, of course the villain isn't caught straight away. It's allowed to be exaggerated and schlocky, and that hasn't been a problem for literally any killer up until now, and there are killers even 'worse' than her for it. I wonder what the difference is? Perhaps we'll never know. /s
Everything else, while hardly a masterpiece of prose, flows well enough. I've seen you criticise her reading up at the library, as if that's magically enough for her to become a business extraordinaire, which somewhat conveniently misses that her story establishes her - very reasonably - as already very intelligent and well educated. She already attended and graduated a prestigious school, if you recall- the stuff she read at the library, presumably, was just to get a better sense for that industry specifically and fill the gaps in her already robust education.
Is it perfect? No. Is it noticeably worse than the average killer lore in DBD? Not even close. People only think it is because they approach it with a hyper-critical gaze, and they only do that for her because they already dislike it.
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That isn't what the killswitch is for, and I think it'd be a really bad precedent to set to expand the killswitch to this too.
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@thisislastyearsmodel said:
Iridescent stone is overrated, and the worst part about is that it is one of his best add-ons. The issue is that it's so inconsistent that half the time it feels like you would be better off running something else. I can count on one hand the amount of times in the past few weeks that the trap I need to open has actually opened instead of the throwaway one I put at a pallet on the other side of the map.
IMO the most reliable add-ons you'll get with Trapper are the purple bag and honing stone. Keep your traps on the side of the map with more gens (speaking of, I had 5 gens spawn on one side of Suffo Pit the other day. I've never seen that.) and put them in loops. Either the survivor will have to cut wide and give you a hit or they'll forget about the trap and go down.
So... what do you think of my proposed change, then?
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I had this same issue, chases wouldn't start without an M1 or occasionally when breaking a pallet, and would end very very quickly after starting.
I was playing as the Trapper on the Game, and the only perk in common with the video was Jolt. I also had the new tome challenge for being in chase for 240 seconds enabled, if that makes a difference.
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@Devil_hit11 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/388982/the-trapper-iridescent-stone
in my opinion, iri stone is trapper's strongest add-on. it saves invaluable walking time for trapper if a trap is disabled and it allows you to place your trappers anywhere on the map. base trap setting speed would just put unnecessary drawback.
With makeshift wrap, you can place it in the middle of loops. makeshift allows you to walk through your own traps so survivor need to path around it but you can walk directly through it meaning you can m1 hits for survivors avoiding the trap because they're thinking longer route compare to you. If you want to play somewhat lame with trapper, you can just put traps pallets directly and just lockdown large parts of the map.... like near 3 gens. the add-on also good for locking down basements areas... though that is more of trapper meme. I wish add-on was base-kit for trapper but I can see why it is not because of dislike of the possible promotion of lock-down gameplay.
I understand the theory behind why that's true, but it honestly feels as though you're never gaining anything meaningful from running it. Even with all traps laid down on the map and therefore being reset every thirty seconds, the RNG makes it a nightmare to try and actually utilise in any meaningful way.
Trapper needs a lot so I wouldn't call this the only change I want, but I would like to see this addon be more reliable than it currently is.
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@RpTheHotrod said:
Here's a valid argument against it:
Kindred gives an aura reading of the killer. That's 100% accurate picture perfect information. Exactly where the killer is, exactly which direction he's facing, exactly which direction he's going, and exactly what action he's taking if there's an animation with it.
Even in an SWF, that 100% accurate information is not easy to relay to your team. "He's over by the tractor!" Okay, which side of it? Which end of it is he heading towards? Is he locked in an animation? If the killer has broken line of sight, then the person on hook wouldn't be able to tell you EXACTLY where other than he is simply nearby. An aura read gives ALL of that information. In essence, basekit Kindred would actually provide much more information than if it was simply SWF comms.
Would you be in favour of only the other half of Kindred being basekit, then? That is, to be fair, typically what a lot of people mean when they say to make the perk basekit, as far as I can tell.
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I have to confess, I've never understood the idea of "M1 killer" as it's currently used.
It's hard to make broad sweeping statements about the combined balance of a group that contains both the worst killer in the game (Trapper), and some of the better killers (for example, Pinhead). The range of strength is so broad that "M1 Killers" aren't suffering anything at all as a group, because what's detrimental to Trapper barely matters for Pinhead or Plague, or even someone that's just "decent" like Wraith or Legion.
Map design and easily-chained tiles are a problem, of course, but I just don't agree with this idea of all M1 killers are suffering. Almost all of them, Trapper excluded, have strong and viable builds, and half of them aren't even weak to begin with.
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@Batusalen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3523628#Comment_3523628
Well, first of all, your second example is an "gameplay mechanic", nothing to do with "lore". Obviously, game mechanics don't need to have "realistic standards", or you should be dead the moment the killer cut you with his machete.
The other one about The Huntress is not illogical at all, and if you read her story, you would see it gives you plenty of reasoning for that to happen:
- She has being living alone in the forest since she was a child. For this reason, she is more an animal than a human and knows little more about life than hunt and survive. Much less, the needs of a child.
- She herself and her mother lived through extreme conditions, being the only reason of her death that they were trying to hunt an elk so they didn't starve to death. In fact, "Living in such an extremely remote and dangerous area required skill and resilience".
The girls she kidnapped "wasted away and die of cold or starvation or sickness", so we can deduce that they died mainly because of the extreme conditions The Huntress is used to live in, but not the girls, and as she doesn't know another way to live she is not capable to realize that a child needs to stay warm, stay fed, and not exposed to the winter. So, this is not illogical at all.
Yet again, without it being a masterpiece, The Huntress story is good and well written and presents you with a well thought argument and a good representation of the flawed character The Huntress is. The Skull Merchant, in the other hand, is a bad written story whose author dedicated to write a bunch of over the top things that thought sounded cool without ever asking itself "How", "Why" or "Would it makes sense".
All her story and character can be summed up to "She is perfect and good at everything, that's why she got rich by making a web about "Brazilian manga" and was able to kill a lot of people to steal their companies without problems or consequences, because she is cool and flawless and everything she does is pure perfection. Oh, and his father was a mangaka that disappeared so that's why she is a Predator wanna-be". That's it. That's her whole story and character there. It's boring, it's over the top, and doesn't makes any sense.
And no, this has nothing to do with just hating her for in-game reasons as this was a fact since the moment her story was announced.
Couple things-
Caleb's harpoon gun is very much a part of his lore, as is the fact that he supposedly wasn't killing people with it despite what it actually does. That is absolutely on the same level as some of the things people like to harp on about (pun fully intended) with Skull Merchant's lore, but that doesn't mean it's a flaw; it's fine, it's a schlocky horror plot with a clear tonal intent so you can accept some unrealistic elements.
(This is, spoiler alert, true of the Skull Merchant too.)
Won't argue on the Huntress points, that was a weak example imo.
Moving on to the Skull Merchant sections here, we're seeing a lot of reductive minimalising and also wilful misunderstanding of what the Skull Merchant's lore is conveying to the reader. Now, I'm not about to sit here and say it's perfect, because it isn't; it has some issues with putting too much emphasis on her father and not enough on her when describing her early years, and I do consider it wasted potential that the lore doesn't touch on where the drones came from-- not because that last part is a gigantic flaw, mind you, but just because it would've been interesting.
The hows and whys of Skull Merchant's lore make perfect sense, because her tonal intent is immediately obvious to anyone reading the story in good faith: It's an intentionally exaggerated story about vulture capitalism with a bit of stylistic flair in the ways that emphasise its location, IE, picking manga to be her in-universe visual inspiration because she's from Brazil, and Brazil has a big manga scene.
Her concept as a character is straightforward and easy to understand. She's the rich person who gets away with literal murder because she's rich, and she's doing it partially to benefit herself and partially because she's an obsessive, sadistic psychopath who enjoys doing it. This, at least, is conveyed in her lore very clearly. I'm surprised that DBD players have such a hard time with this considering she's the second killer to have this concept, the other being Trickster, who beggars belief far harder as to how he wasn't caught-- not that it's a problem for him, either, because a certain level of "and somehow they weren't caught" is just the barrier for entry for stories like this.
I'll restate my firm belief that people tear apart Skull Merchant's lore because they don't like her. It comes up far more than literally any other killer's lore and almost always from people who hated her visual design from the moment her trailer dropped.
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@Boons123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3523591#Comment_3523591
I am not saying this because I hate her, I am saying this because it is literally illogical and it is not mentioned how she got that knowledge to invent the Drone
My point still stands. It's not really much worse than most of the stories, all of which operate on a suspension of disbelief regarding "how did they get away with this" and most of which have some holes in them too.
I could defend it, and point out that it's pretty clearly stated how she became a millionaire from my recollection (even if the realism of it is a separate discussion), but I still think it's more relevant to point out that it's not actually all that much worse than the norm.
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You could apply this hyper-critical, bad faith lens to about half of the killers in the game, especially some of the earlier ones. It's kinda tiresome that SM's is constantly brought up literally only because people already hate her, not because it's actually all that much worse than a majority of the base lore snippets we get.
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Depends on what you want.
Chemical Trap, as others have pointed out, is going to be a niche 'fun' pick rather than actually a strong one.
Light Footed is going to be one of those perks that people consistently underrate even though it's fantastic, but it is a "break chase" type of perk which not everyone enjoys (see Overcome being easily top three Exhaustion perks, but nobody runs it).
Lucky Star is... not good, really, at least not for its main effect. There is something to be said for getting a free (if timed) Kindred and generator reveal if you're playing in solo queue, for only one perk slot, but unless it's buffed I don't think the other effect is going to be useful.
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@totallynotamegmain said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3523103#Comment_3523103
Back in 2017 trapper could place traps right under hooks so as soon as they got saved they got trapped
Yeah, I knew about that, but that's not actually what they said so I was clarifying if that's what they meant.
I mean, obviously that's indefensible and it's good that it was changed, but that's only relevant if that is what they're referring to.
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@Seraphor said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3522972#Comment_3522972
I don't know about you, but I've never felt the need to run Kindred after the HUD icons came out.
They give me more than enough contextual information to judge whether or not I need to make the save. The only thing lacking is whether or not the killer is camping, and the killers aura would definitely be too much information for basekit.
At best they should give a HUD indication of when the killer is within 16m, which will hopefully come with the anti-camping measures.
I thought I wouldn't, but then I realised that the survivor HUD only really helps you there if you can trust your teammates, which is the kind of game that you only somewhat needed Kindred for even before the HUD was added. It does nothing to help ensure that you can make decisions instead of guessing whenever your teammates aren't obviously sensible.
That's not just a game-feel thing, either. It's going to be very hard to balance survivor as a whole if even good and aware players are at risk of a game falling apart around them because they made the wrong guess about whether their teammate is actually doing the thing it would make sense for them to do. You may never be able to get solo queue teams to the same level of cohesion and coordination as a SWF, but you necessarily must make sure the survivors that want to try are able to react to poor play on their teammate's part in crucial moments like while a survivor is hooked. Obviously, there's some degree of poor play you're never going to be aware of without constant aura reading, and that'd obviously be too strong, but it's a pretty basic callout that we're discussing here and nothing too crazy.
To be more specific, basekit Kindred only covers for the basic callout of "I'm going to get the save", at least insofar as it lets you know when that's not the case. That's the kind of information the game has to be balanced around the survivors sharing, and the HUD only achieves that some of the time.
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@LBrominating said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3522950#Comment_3522950
The one shots removed because they're boring.
Trapper not beign able to put traps underneath survivors or generators.
Sabotaging beign an opportunity rather than gameplay style,flashlight rescuer and medkit have been removed due to the flashlight weakness and the "war" on healing devs have waged on.
I know these things weren't fun to face,more frustrating..but the option to have them would have been better than not have them,having more powerful perks to deal with these situations would also have made them easier to bear.
But as we stand we have 4-5 perks somehow meant to deal with body blocking: Iron Grasp,Agitation,Mad Grit and Starstruck on top of my mind.
When these perks could have been combined or added a sharing effect..
Not sure what you mean by "one shots" being removed, do you mean Exposed effects? I can't think of many of those that have been removed.
Ditto with Trapper, do you mean placing the traps directly under hooks...? I don't remember anything about Trapper being able to place traps under survivors, but maybe I just didn't notice that changing.
Flashlights and medkits have not been removed, that's very much an exaggeration. Flashlight saves actually got easier a little while back and haven't been nerfed at all, they only removed some power interactions and also locker saves, the latter of which because they were unbalanced. As for medkits, they were literally just balanced, so that they're only "pretty good" instead of "overwhelmingly powerful".
I don't think those perks are all meant to deal with body blocking, to be fair. Mad Grit is, and you could argue Starstruck is, but Iron Grasp and Agitation are both geared more towards being able to carry further to get to further away hooks; I've been running them in my Scourge Hook build for that reason. Even if they were all for the same thing, though, wouldn't it be better for the game to have more variety in which tools you want to bring for that purpose? They all work somewhat differently, meaning your build can be more nuanced and customisable. I think that's more fun, personally.
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@Tiamat_Adara said:
if you run Kindred in SoloQ you already know this won´t inspire your mates to safe you most of the time :)
I don't know if i would want it, with the new Surivor HUD they already added much information and people still don't get their priorities right ( of course the injured one on dead hook should go for the save...). Mates, that pay attention to the game progress and use their brains would be something, i would appreciate more.
On the other hand i fear the game gets stale and staler with more and more features integrated basekit, it means lesser element of surprise and variety overall, (most) people would run more meta cause there is no reason not to and you have all four slots available without sacrificing much.
And most important, if the goal is to close the gap between SWF and SoloQ they will also have to buff the Killerrooster accordingly to match the changed point of balance.
Kindred as a perk isn't used to make your teammates save you or to push them to make good decisions, though.
You run Kindred so that you can make decisions about whether to leave your generator or what have you when a teammate is hooked. If you don't run Kindred you have to guess, and hope against hope that you have semi-competent teammates so you can trust the survivor HUD- because if you don't, the Meg you thought let go of her gen to go save is actually crouching in a corner and the hooked teammate hits stage 2.
It's about enabling decision making in players who want to put in that effort, it isn't about the kind of players that would ignore it in the first place anyway.
(There'd also be more variety, not less, because you don't have to sacrifice a perk slot for necessary information.)
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@LBrominating said:
When we added DC penalties and decided the game should be as vanilla as possible...no interesting builds...or playstyle.
When we made survivors stay on generators 24/7 otherwise lose the game.
When we decided that killer's add ons and powers should be...BORING because they're unfair.
When we removed 90% of the stealth...dark maps,unevent ground,tall grass is nonexistent...
Or maybe it was Nurse & Blight release that doomed this game..
When we made flashlights useless,when we started the "wars" on healing...or repairing.
When we decided that the only content survivors should receive is just...trash perks and now cosmetics.
When we made killer's playstyle obsolete,because it was unfair and impossible to play against,since developers have added 100 useless perks that try to counter the same playstyle but are different situations,DS,Off The Record,Guardian,Borrowed Time when all of these perks could have been 1...
There's so much wrong with DBD that it'd take 1 year of just redoing and replanning and we'll still move nowhere.
I'm confused on some of these points, I'd love some clarification if you don't mind.
Specifically, when you say that "the game should be as vanilla as possible", with "no interesting builds or playstyles", what exactly are you referring to here?
Similarly with the idea of killer powers and addons being "boring because they're unfair", what changes are you referring to there?
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Nowhere...?
Aside from a few missteps, the game's been overall improving over the past two years or so.
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@Evan_ said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3522189#Comment_3522189
So is assuming that just because some SWFs can always reliably convey the location of every team-member, the average group of friends can also do that.
...No? That isn't how the slippery slope fallacy works at all.
But to tackle that idea, they don't need to, that isn't the point of basekit Kindred. The point is that when someone's hooked, all but the most checked-out of teams can muster up a quick "I'm close, I'll save", which is something that solo queue teams either have to guess about... or run Kindred so they can actually make decisions.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3522352#Comment_3522352
Only if I agree with your point and I didn't. I don't think her current design is redeemable. And she is in need of a rework.
I mean, the thread is about that whether you agree with it or not.
You also weren't talking about that disagreement, you just bluntly said that Skull Merchant has nothing to learn and ignored her other playstyles, both her current ones and her potential ones.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3522345#Comment_3522345
You said I would ignore other styles played on her, but basically nobody plays her differently so why focus on those styles? That's my whole point.
Saying that Skull Merchant has "nothing to learn" and has no skilful gameplay in a thread about her overall design kind of implies that you're also talking about her overall design, to be fair. Why bother focusing on her current issues when this isn't actually a thread about that?
Her other styles of playing are much more relevant to this thread.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3522320#Comment_3522320
Which is what 99% of Skull Merchant Players do because it seems to be the most effective strategy... Basically no one uses her differently, so why would we focus on playstyles that are neither effective nor played often?
I'm sorry, you've lost me. The whole thread is about how she doesn't need to be fully redesigned but does need changes in general, so I'm definitely not saying that most Skull Merchant players are going for her proper playstyles?
I don't think literally anyone in this thread denies that her most popular strategy is 3-genning, honestly. I think you're arguing against a position that isn't actually being held by anyone here.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3522310#Comment_3522310
Wraith is a bad example just a few days ago I heard Laser I think it was say that Wraith has a rather high skill ceiling, since you can use the movementspeed bonus to have an increased lunge attack for exampel and many other things.
It is not that a killer has to have a high skill ceiling but a killer should have some things to learn, current skull merchant has nothing drop drone at gen put around 3 gen kick gens resett drones repeat, that's it... a monkey can do that. The issue is not that it is easy, it is that it requires no learning at at all.
There are two issues with this comment.
The first is that it's not true, it's hyperfocusing on just using her to 3-gen and actively ignoring any other way of using her power.
The second is that it's by no means a hard requirement of the kind of power she has. Because she can already do things that aren't 3-gen strats (albeit not very well), it's not hard to see how her power could be changed without completely redesigning it to improve on that concept.
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@DBD78 said:
Worst is how she looks and walks. It's like she was made to please 13-16 year old guys not adults.
How does that relate to anything in this post, though?
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At least you're honest.
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@totallynotamegmain said:
Skull merchant? Oh. You mean her?
https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/8HZWS3MTWVS6/img-0446.jpeg
When you typed this up, did you think it would add something constructive to the conversation, or?
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@Xernoton said:
2 base kit perks? Sounds great. Let's add Bond for good measure. And Windows of Opportunity. The killer's aura should also be revealed to all survivors as long as one of them has a direct line of sight on the killer.
SWF has this information anyway, so it wouldn't be that much of a deal, right? Wrong. Because killers aren't balanced around that kind of coordination and information and they never will be.
With every perk you add to the base kit of either side you allow them to run around with more game breaking builds. I remember when survivors had 3 perks and BT and somehow it still worked out. Now we shift goal post from 1 perk not being absolutely mandatory to survivors having all the information in the world at any given time. Base kit Kindred would only be 1 more step towards that.
Pretty obvious slippery slope fallacy, there.
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There isn't one, really. Though, this does come with the caveat that it should only be the teammate aura half- if the killer aura half were made basekit, that would be too much and really isn't necessary.
It's not that solo queue needs to have constant info on par with SWF, that would be nuts, but they should have it for when it's most necessary and when not having it would be immensely detrimental. Not knowing who's going for a save and who's just twiddling their thumbs is a pain point, and the game should be balanced around the assumption that all players are making choices in that regard, not just blindly guessing.
While we're at it, I'd also suggest letting survivors see their teammate's loadouts. That'd help certain perks be more useful among players who want to coordinate with their teammates.
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@Pink_Ronin said:
What is this a school project? Bit long in the tooth my man
I wanted to be clear, so my words wouldn't be misunderstood. This, of course, relied on the foolish assumption that people actually read the posts they're responding to.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3521519#Comment_3521519
"One of the best in recent years"
Okay, that one did make me chuckle a bit.
May I ask what you're hoping to gain here? You don't ever seem to be interested in actual conversation about SM from what I've seen in other threads, so what's your goal here?
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@Brokenbones said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3521535#Comment_3521535
I disagree, if any Killer deserves to stand as the pinnacle of a strategically nuanced character it's Singularity
Far better represents macro-play than SM ever will tbh.
I'll grant you that, I momentarily forgot about Singularity. Conceptually, Skull Merchant would be a very close second best.
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@rvzrvzrvz said:
She's too strong they can delete either exposed or haste effect, then make her drones more instant they have a weird delay atm and they don't go where you want them to go, make drones more useful to shut loops and less useful on gens
That would also be a bad idea, imo. What you want from using the drones in chase is to set them up ahead of time and chase survivors into them, the whole "shut down loops by pressing a button" thing is the biggest problem with Knight and Artist right now. I don't think we should make more killers that can do that.
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@Brokenbones said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3521529#Comment_3521529
I do agree that a Killer using drones on paper seems like a cool idea that could be salvaged
But I wouldn't call it one of the best 'core designs' we've had in years. There was potential to the idea but BHVR chose the path they chose and we got what we got
Maybe a Doctor/Bubba tier rework would solve the issues but I don't see how outside of a heavy rework they can make the Killer anything more than putting drones over generators and not much else.
I would. Considering the skeleton of her being so versatile and modular is there right now, it can easily be refined to be the best strategic/macro killer we've ever had, as far as I'm concerned.
If we got a better version of Skull Merchant, one that doesn't require drastically overhauling her, she and Wesker would stand as the two pinnacles of the two general schools of killers; Wesker as the conceptually extremely simple but mechanically nuanced type, and Skull Merchant as the mechanically simple but strategically nuanced one.
You already don't have to just put drones on generators, for the record. It's just that it's both not quite as good as it should be to do otherwise, and the best build you can bring for it requires purple addons, so it's prohibitively expensive.
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@Brokenbones said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3521519#Comment_3521519
Bro her 'core design' was so bad it had to be changed several times before it went live and EVEN THEN it had to be changed even more because it was still bad. It took 12 months to make this character, supposedly and this is what they came up with?
I feel like by playing the core design card, you're trying to play semantics. How can you honestly say this Killer is "one of the best in recent years"? Like how can you say that I don't get it. Her power is putting drones on things when you boil it down
???
Her core design hasn't changed at all. I laid out what I consider the difference between core design and live balance, and it's not even slightly semantics. Her live balance has changed a lot, but her core design - AOE drones that have multiple effects - hasn't changed once.
The only killer whose core design has ever changed is Freddy, and that was a travesty that should never be repeated unless unavoidably necessary-- which it is not for Skull Merchant.
What Skull Merchant needs is something like the Doctor and Leatherface reworks. The same core design, but with the interactions and specifics changed to better fit in the game; giving Leatherface his tokens + speed increase, and removing Doctor's stance swap + simplifying his Madness gain, to be specific.
When I say "best in recent years", as I said very explicitly, I mean she has the potential to be because of her core design. Obviously she isn't in a good spot, that's why these threads exist in the first place. What she doesn't need is to be Freddy'd, because what's there can absolutely be fixed.
I may not have been clear enough, and that would be on me, so I think simplifying my take is a good idea. When I say her core design isn't a failure and doesn't need to be changed, the distinction I am making is that she does not need the treatment that Freddy got, where his power completely changed. She needs something like Doctor or Leatherface, where the power remained roughly the same but made healthier.
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@Brokenbones said:
Personally I believe Skull Merchant is the worst killer ever put into this game. She stands as a representation of how you DON'T make a killer.
Her power is both needlessly complicated and yet it still somehow ends up as shallow as an empty paddling pool. Her whole aesthetiic is supposed to be "ooo she's a hunter who can be anywhere ooo" and what does that translate to in gameplay?
She puts drones on generators or puts drones on tiles mid chase and that's it.
Lock-on is a joke of a mechanic that only exists to make drones something survivors can't ignore. Once you figure this out, there is very little to this character. At least Knight, as flawed of a Killer he is - has to actually think about the best ways to utilize his cycling guards
Let's talk about Lock on. The only time a skull merchant will ever down someone due to lock-on is because either the survivor let themselves be locked on or got locked on 50 seconds ago and the SM uses a drone to completely reset the progress of it I hope this goes without saying but resetting lock-on is also a completely overtuned joke.
Now let's talk about her power's "Counterplay". How do you counter this character? You remove the drones and get a clawtrap but BHVR in their infinite wisdom decided that the communities complaints about this character being essentially default m1 killer in chase needed addressing so they bolted on haste. A lazy bandaid fix they already recently added to Knight as well.
There's also the fact that SM can spam reactivate her drones with the radar, which in term re-enables the unhackable period which means survivors have to suck their thumb and wait to be granted the privilege of countering her power. This to me is probably the most annoying part of facing SM, how much you just need to sit around waiting to actually counter her power.
So let's summarise
Uncounterable tracking from various sources (Lock-on Killer Instinct, Clawtraps and the drones themselves)
Bolted on haste as a bandaid fix for a power that's only use in chase is turning an area into a "if i dont leave i die" zone
Bolted on stealth which still baffles me why it's even a thing when most people would agree it does literally nothing, to the point a lot of SMs run the obliviious addon instead since it's objectively better
A status effect that only exists to give survivors a reason to remove drones rather than giving the killer something to actually try to earn downs with. Also has an overtuned 'reset' mechanic tied into it
And while I'm at it - her lore, character design, aesthetic are all horrible with no redeeming factors. The only thing I like about her is her weapon.
That all said, I am hopeful a rework might be able to salvage the character. I just hope they don't end up making it worse somehow and I've been burned before, the Sadako rework made me straight up quit one of my fav characters.
The one thing I agree with you on here (kinda) is that Lock On isn't a particularly well designed element of her kit. In fact, considering how little it aids her in the ways she seems designed to play, I recommended removing it in my fix-it post a little while ago.
With Lock-On removed, the rest of her kit could be adjusted and she could get a better suite of addons to better emphasise what I'm talking about, which is the versatile and modular design of her kit.
Though, I do have to point out- nothing you've mentioned here is core design? It's all how she's actually balanced, like, the specific numbers and such for how she plays on live servers. In those terms, yeah, she's doing very poorly, but in terms of core design she stands to be one of the best in the past few years. She's got a kernel of something really, really good in there that got buried under some mishandling and the looming monster that is the 3-gen problem.
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@BlueHorkew said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3521456#Comment_3521456
She has multiple zones that constantly give her info, the cooldowns aren't even that long for how long the drones stay unhackable and active.
Yes, all the issues are from the popular strategy, but if her design directly promotes that strategy, then she is badly designed.
It doesn't matter that if she doesn't play the game in that strategy, most of my points don't apply, you are just making the game more difficult for yourself.
So no, if making 3-gen the only choice you have to make is which gens you want to protect and then the game just plays itself
...None of that is required from her core design, though. That's just how she's balanced on live servers right now. You don't need to start from scratch and Freddy her to fix those, that's my whole point.
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@GannTM said:
Do not compare Skull Merchant to Artist.
The major difference between the two is that even though Artist has some unfun things about her, the really fun and rewarding things about her are part of skill ceiling and are things that promote skillful counterplay from both sides. There’s probably a couple tweaks that can do to make her anti-loop not as effective and her long distance strats a little more reliable but I personally think she’s in a fine place right now.
Skull Merchant doesn’t have a skill ceiling other than placing drones at obvious spots. There is nothing else to learn with it on either side really. Also, let’s say you buff SM to be better at chase and weaker at 3-gen holding with her same core concept, it is still going to be incredibly boring because of how passive it is. There’s nothing to interact with.
I am still not convinced by any of these points, Skull Merchant needs to be reworked. I am sorry to the people that enjoy her, but I think me and many others agree this is the best direction to go. Wish BHVR would’ve understood that she would be problematic before they made her so we didn’t have to be in this mess.
I wasn't directly comparing Skull Merchant to Artist, I brought up both Artist and Knight because they have a similar issue to Skull Merchant; a negative reputation that's brought about by a single element of their kit, not the entirety of it. (Although, people don't like playing against Artist played properly either, it seems.)
I also didn't think I needed to clarify that obviously Artist is in a better spot than Skull Merchant. That's pretty self evident in that Artist isn't causing games to stall out for an hour.
From here though, you kind of lose me and I'm not sure what you're talking about. You say there'd be no skill ceiling to playing SM with the right changes "beyond placing drones at obvious spots", but... they wouldn't be particularly obvious if you had to think about it. If they weren't just dropped on top of generators to defend them, they'd be... y'know, traps, basically, whether you want to chase survivors into them or not. SM would have the same skill ceiling as Trapper and Hag bare minimum, and it works perfectly well for them. That's not even accounting for how the different builds would each require different drone placements and different macro sense to execute.
Which, that's another thing, her skill ceiling would be strategic and based on macro play, not mechanical. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.
As for interactions, there'd be interactions for both sides. The killer side we've gone over, and then on the survivor side you'd be figuring out which build the SM is going for and reacting accordingly. She'd still have the counterplay of choosing when to hack drones, after all.
I think a lot of people get blinded by the idea of if they personally would enjoy playing as or against a killer, in discussions like these, when that's not exactly a fair measure to use. There are people who loathe facing or playing as literally every killer in the game, you can't please everyone.
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@BlueHorkew said:
I disagree and think her core design is problematic.
She has passive tracking with some stealth capability and lethality on the side.
The most problematic part is the passive tracking, just got look at the Doctor rework that also got that part of his kit completly removed.
Add the fact that she doesn't have to make interesting choices or any give and take for her core strategy as she got all her cooldowns removed past the ptb. And we created this 3 gen monster.
So no, i don't think the devs can fix her while keeping her current design intact, she needs to be more active and have chances to make plays and mistakes.
I feel that you may be conflating live balance with core design here, because some of that is only true if you're looking at the way she's been implemented and isn't required at all for her core identity.
For instance, take this idea that she doesn't have to make any interesting choices. That's not even true of her live version right now... unless she's 3-genning. If she's playing for chase, she has the exact same interesting choices as Trapper, because that's how you play her for chase. That's the case right now, and that only increases if changes are made that don't involve a full redesign.
I'm also not sure what you mean by passive tracking in this context. She has less passive tracking than current Doctor, her tracking requires interaction before it functions.
Mostly though, you're referring to her "core strategy", but the thing about her actual power design is that she doesn't have one. She has a bunch of stuff she can do a little bit that she should, in theory, be able to specialise into with addons and perks. More active gameplay would mean lessening her lethality and buffing everything else, that's it; reward the player for engaging with the way her kit is actually designed instead of abusing the most straightforward and interactionless option.
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@Chocolate_Cosmos said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3521417#Comment_3521417
Well I think she needs her drones help her more if we want to make her want to chase Survivors and not just guard Gens.
The power would still be around her drones and getting info on Survivors and having control over some area, however in more creative and more fun way that would make her chasing people rather than drop everything on gens. I don't see how would you change her in her currect form without nerfing her into the ground since gens is all it takes outside of very rare few add-ons that help in chase.
We don't want to just make her chase survivors, we want to make chasing survivors one option of things you can achieve with your drones, and we want that option to preserve her current identity. We also want her to be able to leverage her drones for other things too, like stealth and information gathering.
The entire strength of Skull Merchant's power design is how versatile it could be, with some changes. You mention that there are a few addons that help in chase- what if she had more, and they were cheaper? What if entering a drone's active radius did something inherently to help with chase, but did less to help guard generators?
Preserving how a character currently works as much as possible should be the highest priority for any rework done for any reason, and Skull Merchant doesn't even come close to warranting a full redesign like that.
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@Pulsar said:
Her core design is flawed.
I was disappointed by her lore, her looks, her sounds, her weapon and her power. Much of this is personal, but some of it is objective. For example, objectively, her power is extremely problematic design.
She's better off getting a total rework ala Freddy.
I'm not sure what I can say in response to this that isn't already covered by the post.
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@Chocolate_Cosmos said:
I had idea how to rework her power to make her not Gen Merchant but Area control / Chase merchant.
Give her 3 drones, but each has different effect and only one of the same type can be present at the same time.
One drone locks down all vault and pallet locations within it's 10 m radius and after few seconds it despawns itself.
Second type of drone is like a scouting tool, you send it in a direction you are looking into and it will fly for some time and if it founds in the zone someone, it will tag them and reveal them and you can track them on your radar for a limited time.
And final one, would be like you place the drone on yourself to active it, giving you Undetectable and Haste effect to help you in chase or sneaking around the map.
That would be a perfect example of over-correcting and removing everything that gives her so much potential. You don't need to go that far because her core design right now isn't so bad as to require it.
You can keep the way her drones are designed right now, they can still be static scouting/active AOEs. You can keep the tracker pad giving Haste per tracked survivor, too, that isn't broken. Those elements of her core mechanical identity don't need to be changed.
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@BillToLast said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3520865#Comment_3520865
Otz, who is also an amazing player, made an entire video about why this perk is problematic.
Otz is not who was cited in this thread, though. If you were to cite Otz, you would also still need to cite his reasoning, not just his conclusion.
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@biggybiggybiggens said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3520964#Comment_3520964
Even better! Did the devs really mention something somewhere to tip us off about the letter "J"? That would be a bit too on the nose for "J"ason if true..
I've got no idea where that supposed teaser came from, unfortunately, but the idea that it's hinting at a combo Joker/Jason chapter would be kinda cool
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@biggybiggybiggens said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3520917#Comment_3520917
That would be sick. Hits you with the cane and throws metal playing cards.. xD
I'd give him a crowbar, personally. The ol' Robin Special.
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There are two general things to say in response to this.
The first is that the appeal to authority is a fallacy even when the authority is granted for a reason. I don't care that KnightLight thinks MFT is OP and needs a nerf, but because they're a skilled player, I might care why they think that. That reasoning isn't present here, and since I can't open twitter links right now (thank you, mr musk...) I can't check if it's elsewhere in the thread.
The second follows on from that, which is to say, what nerf do they think it needs? What are they referring to? If they say that the 3% speed boost is disgustingly OP and completely free, I'd disagree with them, because they're wrong. If they say that the Endurance is too much on top of an already strong effect, and that stacking MFT's Haste with other forms of Haste is where it becomes indefensible, that I would agree with.
TL;DR invoking a skilled player's opinions is meaningless unless you give their reasoning.
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It's good, but inconsistent.
I'd wager that it'd be best in a build that also deals with pallets in some way, maybe including something like Blood Favour? I could see the idea being that Claustrophobia funnels survivors towards pallets, but the other perks in your build make those unsafe too- but I've not actually tested that myself.
Other than that, Claustrophobia is better than before in that it's actually usable now, but it's still one of those perks that you're gambling on getting value from, which makes it unappealing to a lot of players.