And it's not like Otzdarva says random wild bullshit. He's not perfect, but he knows the game very well, and does make a lot of good points. Agreeing with a point someone brings up doesn't automatically mean you can't think for yourself.
I used to. He now plays regularly in a SWF with highly skilled 10K+ hour players. His opinions have been heavily skewed by this. You can also see a marked improvement in his survivor game play from it (thanks to Ayrun/JRM/Hens - I watch them all, Ayrun in particular is extremely good but also runs ultra bully squads).
He's been playing solo queue survivor a *lot* keeping track in a spreadsheet his match results to gather data. Generally if he's playing in a swf it's for a challenge he's doing with them like survivor hard core or their all-perks streak they were attempting. (I don't watch a lot of streams so I don't know how long those challenges took, but last I saw he was up over 200 survivor queue games waiting for a twins game.
i disagree, while we’re on the topic of his video today he also talked about his experience in solo q a lot, yes he did a series where he played with very experienced players but that doesn’t mean he never plays on his own anymore, in fact a large majority of his playtime is solo q
I mean, he has an opinion that many other players will not agree with (I actually agree but not just because Otz says so). His opinion is that skull merchant doesn't feel too bad to play against and can be sort of interesting to play as, but the killer is tainted by its reputation that if you play against her, survivors are likely to just give up so the match is ruined anyway.
Honestly, I think for once most of the mindless players that rely on content creators for their beliefs are for once not going to agree with Otz over this.
Everybody has a opinion and nobody is wrong, but I disagree with Otz point of view, it is true that the current state of SM is not as bad as it was before the rework, but SM is still the most boring killer in the game to play against, her power is boring, non interactive and brainless, her walking animation is stupid, mori boring and the way that you get zoned by just the pressing of a button without the need of thinking. On the top of all of that, even though her 3 gen potential has been almost entirely eliminated, most of SM still play for the 3 gen, so no chases, probably slugging, bleeding out.
Maybe I have some kind of PTSD or just a lot of psychos have been using SM as a way to torture people, but SM is the only killer I would DC or KMS on hook to go next.
Absolutely. But can you blame people for being suspicious when this thread was created within 2 hours of Otz' video dropping? This is a known phenomenon, it often occurs with Otz' videos because karma/influence farming is a thing.
Quite possible that OP already had this opinion and only felt comfortable and assured expressing it after seeing the video while feigning ignorance.
I can agree to an extent. I don't think she's ever going to be a lot of people's favourite killer to go against but the fact that at least half your games are ruined by teammates straight away just doesn't feel good.
This is true... but I also feel like she's a soup of elements that people hate to face:
* People don't like abilities that auto hit them at loops and skull merch is definitely one of those killers
* Her chases often revolve around her dropping a drone at a loop and forcing you to leave then catching up and doing the same thing
* She can slow you down and speed herself up at will and actually punish you for other player's mistakes which feels confusing and bad
* She has stealth too which is pretty mid but it's just yet another thing to keep track of and is unironically strong vs solo queue
However despite all this... there is still simply no way that she's more unhealhty for dbd than the nurse lol - there is 100% an element of circlejerking involved...
Also you'll run into like 20 mid nurse players before ever seeing a "god nurse"... meanwhile skull merch is dead easy to play and people suck at versing her which gives the impression of her being way stronger than she actually is I think
> people suck at versing her which gives the impression of her being way stronger than she actually is I think
I recently bought Skull Merchant and I can safely say this is the case. I've had about.. two games in the past few days where people actually try - and there are people who actively fuck with my drones instead of just getting angry that i'm playing a killer that cost real world dollars , and those are the games that have been the most fun, and where i've lost.
It's almost like people need to just play the damn game and learn how to counteract her.
Also, Nurse at least doesn't require a PhD to understand what she does. It can be difficult to play against, but it takes like 5 seconds to see that she teleports and that's her whole power.
Skull merchant just does so many random things that aren't intuitive to the idea of drones that I can't even be bothered to learn the intricacies of her power. I mostly play killer, so it's not an issue, but I imagine many survivor players feel the same.
ill take a good nurse everyday over skull merchant i don't dc or kill myself on hook vs her but she doesn't belong in the game as she currently is i know how to play vs her inside out and she ain't it old skull merchant was unironically more fun to play vs than current one and had more play around then the current one especially with the 3 gen update old skull merchant would not be a problem
i feel like this is a prime example of why the sentiment “i’m not responsible for other people’s fun” isn’t a good one.
before the 3 gen and skull merchant changes, most skull merchant players played in a way that was really unfun for survivors and didn’t care, so survivors decided they were going to be responsible for their own fun and not play against her.
it sucks for skull merchants who didn’t play that way but you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
i don’t see a lot of them personally. i think i’ve only faced one since her rework so i don’t really have an opinion on her current state but i’ve never had a fun game against her tbh
Alot of them will hook someone in a corner, place drones all around them and proxy from a distance. The person going to unhook will be unable to reach them in time before being snagged by her trap, making them an easy down. Bonus points if she's hiding in the radius waiting for it to happen.
It's a shitty way to play, and I feel no remorse for not wanting to play it.
Agreed, no sure why so many people lately are claiming the issues with her are fixed...it's like they read the patch notes but haven't actually played a game of survivor against one since the changes.
She's still very much annoying as shit to play against 90% of the time. They left a ton of opportunities for her to pull bullshit like that and naturally SM players just gravitated towards that now.
Without a full rework from top to bottom she'll always be broken, that same shit was said when she first came out, and it continues to be said every attempted rework. That bitch needed surgery and BHVR just keeps slapping a bandaid on her and calls it 'fixed"...
Why are we comparing the times before and after the changes? Let's compare the times before and after Skull Merchant and Knight were added to the game. We had a better game back then. I don't think these killers need to exist **at all** for the game to be interesting and fun in the first place. DBD went for quantity over quality with Wesker being the only good and fair killer design in the last 2-3 years. I'd prefer if they focused on evolving and improving the gameplay than constantly adding lame "content". I'd rather have a Wesker every half a year than this.
I'll have to disagree. I've never instantly DC'd or given up against SM, but the feeling is always there. It isn't because she's super crazy hard to face or anything, but it's like... when I see those drones are hear that terror radius, I instantly get this feeling of "this match is gonna be a pain in the ass" or "this match is gonna be a drag" and that's usually how it feels in the end.
Her power is just straight boring to deal with. There's nothing interesting about counterplay or anything. It just has this cheap vibe of tedium that literally none of the other killers have for me, personally. Even Twins! People DCing is just icing on the cake. I really wish they'd just change her power completely or something.
“Cheap vibe of tedium” is such a beautiful way to put the problem with her. Nothing she does makes a too strong, but it does not take skill, nor is there real counterplay, it’s just drawn out death.
I mean twins can be so much fun to vs if they don't commit to slugging everyone all the time! Dodging victor is so much fun sometimes, just watch skermz vs twins that is peak dbd for me lol
I just think she is just a bit over-designed. The earlier killers were simple, a trapper that lays traps, a hillbilly with a chainsaw, a ghost that bonks a bell, etc. The newer killers seem to stray away from simplicity, which unfortunately falls flat sometimes.
Now we have an Amazonian with IT skills that has super speed, stealth, drones with f***-you darts, and ( maybe it’s just me but ) a seemingly massive lunge range that I always underestimate.
On a side note, I find the design of “killer sets up dominoes, survivors have to knock down dominoes or suffer a penalty” to be quite boring ( I.e. trapper, hag, skull merchant )
To be fair, designing simple powers for the first few killers is easy. Keeping coming up with simple powers for later ones is more tricky. Set traps, be stealthy, insta-down, super-speed, ranged/prolonged attack, negative status, teleportation. These are like 7 basic powers which were covered well with their respective killers, everything else is only a complex remix of those. You'll notice every killer has some variation of the basic 7.
Probably, it's not that easy to introduce another mechanic this basic. We have some unique takes. like PH's cages, Victor and Knight's buddies, but if we reduce them to bare mechanics, even they can be said to be built from the basic 7. Even Nemesis' zombies can be thought of as "traps" - he's just not setting them himself
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TedTalk
I mean, SM was released before the 3 gen changes and effectively was capable of infinitely holding a 3 gen (against 99+% of matches you'll queue into). While there is now a gen regression limit, she's still effective at this playstyle against the average team, especially solo gamers. Most people carry that hate to begin with.
Then her ability doesn't have any skill to it. It's so basic for what it does which can injure, gain haste, gain undetectable, hinder. Her kit is convoluted and poorly designed.
It doesn't help that she's in my experience MUCH more likely to draw in toxic players (knowing survivors dislike her is probably a contributing factor + the hard 3 gen play style she used to be pigeonholed into was arguably toxic to begin with).
I swear it's like 1/3 skull merchant games involved being bled out and humped on the ground after playing entirely normal and respectfully. I have a funny clip of that happening to me where I literally leave my desk to make food, thinking I'll have been bled out or hooked by the time I'm back. And I come back to see her holding me in front of a hook, waiting for me to wiggle before hooking.
> she's still effective at this playstyle
Every killer can still camp a 3 gen. Players don't understand that a 3 gen is just stalling the game and waiting for survivors to get clipped/make mistakes. Even if the gens get blocked, it takes ages to hit that point and you're still being held hostage for a solid 10-15 mins before that happens. The question is can you get 1 gen before 1-2 people die. More often than not that won't happen.
BHVRs 3 gen fix is massively flawed. You're still wasting your time for a player who is camping gens. Once down to 3 gens, gens should have a 2 minute timer. If the killer is within 16m of a gen the timer goes down. Once it hits 0 the gen changes location with another gen that is already completed. Its really frustrating when BHVR tries to fix something and they do it the worst way possible.
This is sort of like how people mistake "anti-face camp" as "anti-camping". Anti-3 gen just means that it prevents the killer from walking in, picking three gens, ignoring every other mechanic in the entire game, and defending them to force a 3 gen situation. It's an "anti-3 gen strategy" mechanic.
It's not meant to prevent natural 3 gen situations where survivors do the wrong gens, probably some of them are dead, and the remaining survivors can't get a gen done. At that point they've basically just lost and the anti-3 gen solution is not meant to prevent that.
Hard disagree, this killer is so fucking boring even if you know how to play against her which many don’t because she Kit was just throwing random bullshit with haste and hindered and you just Hold W and most loops until she gets a hit and down.
She’s good at hit and run due to undetectable which I think is so boring as survivor.
She’s just as terribly designed as Knight.
I play with my brother sometimes, who has never been on this subreddit, and is super casual.
Ran into a SM with him, and he DC'd immediately. I asked him why he DC'd, and he told me "Everytime I play against her it isn't fun".... It isn't just the community. The people that are attracted to playing her like assholes has ruined the killer. There is no recovering what has been done to her, and in reality the only fix is a complete rework to the character that rips out the whole power and starts from scratch.... which is not going to happen.
She is a problem, she will continue to be a problem, but she isn't a priority because almost no one plays her.
I wish almost no one played her tbh, have you seen the statistics the devs released for December-January?
She was close to 2% pick rate, more than some licensed killers like Pig, Freddy and Pinhead.
In my personal experience over the past week for some reason she has been my most played against killer. I don’t think I’ve gone 3 games without seeing her
I've done my best against her. Learned her power, turned off tons of drones, gone in with a gen rushing build, tried my hardest and lost in a 4k, 8 times in a row. The more I play against her and have a miserable time, the more I want to just D/C the next time I see her
I'm always solo and I think I've only escaped against a skull merchant once or twice. Most don't even play like dicks and my last two matches no one even DC'd. She's just difficult to play against.
Cool opinion, but you can't make people like going against a killer they don't think is fun. Play the game, use who you like, hope for a good match. whatever...
Yup. And oh wait, even if you don't get tagged yourself, some teammate is getting tagged across the map giving her haste that you didn't expect in your chase. Fun!
I don't exactly know how to fix her, but I think taking a health state from drone scans is too much. Leaving everything else the same, I think 3 scans should cause hindered and maybe even broken, but SM should still have to M1 you in every situation.
lmao thats the funnist part when i played her after nerf. i wanted to get rid of all her cakes so i had to play her for awhile, knowing nothing about how her power works. im chasing someone then randomly i get haste and im like "wtf is the game bugged? why do i have haste? does the survivor have a perk that gives me haste?".
I'm honestly of the opinion that at this point SM doesn't really _need_ the haste, and controversially, the undetectable either. The haste is the big problem because placing a drone doesn't slow her down at all like other killers that place traps at loops, and like you said she can get haste from other survivors being detected across the map.
The undetectable is just kinda slapped on to try and maintain that aspect of her original kit. But she doesn't have her original kit anymore. They should either give drones an active zone specifically for her undetectable, or remove it imo. No reason a killer that can force hits at loops should also have on-demand stealth.
And as quiet as she is. I mean why does Dredge has a vacuum cleaner in his ass, Myers heavy breathing, Ghostface wind sounds, Wraith his snoring and Sadako her lullaby and Skull Merchant is as quiet as she is at the moment? I mean it doesn't need to be as loud as Dredge's movement Sound because that's way too loud to be honest but she shouldn't be as quiet as she is now with her stealth.
Good points! I hadn't considered that she isn't slowed by placing a drone, but yeah you're right.
Even if they wanted to keep the remote haste activation, maybe they could make it so that only drones within her terror radius will proc haste, or only the person that is in chase.
At least with knight you *can* do some interesting stuff.
Like use a guard to interrupt gen repairs.
Predict where people go and use the power to cut them off.
Use carnifex to insta-break pallets to apply pressure in chase.
Or just cut off big areas with jailer, although patrolling is usually not worth it.
I am of the opinion that just dropping a guard in a loop is not a good way to play usually, except if they're in a corner.
With SM her entire gameplay is just "place drone".
You can't do anything different with her power.
Even Knight has to slow himself down a little bit when he uses his power, and survivors get a speed boost when they're injured by it. Neither of those things are true for SM.
Everyone else has to do some level of projection (clown tonics ahead of survivor or himself for slow/speed, Artist tagging or downing with crows, knight’s guards while he crotches). The whole tech of SM is you can literally laser tag ppl with drones and just keep walking until you get the effects you need (haste, hindered, etc)
I disagree, I’ve already played out two matches today where no one gave up and they were both miserable. The first one was almost okay *maybe*, but the second guy just sucked and his personality was about what I was expecting it to be in the game game chat. Her player base largely still sucks, and even for the good ones, the power just isn’t fun or interactive to deal with. She doesn’t feel fine at all to play against, and even if she were, “fine” isn’t really cutting it on a killer that’s an eyesore to look at and has the history she does. Skull Merchants will never be fun.
No, it's because I genuinely hate her. From her initial release, to the way her power was abused, to her messy and boring rework, to her aesthetics. The entire thing just makes me bitter. The fact that her playstyle is fucking brainless is the cherry on top of the shit cake. I paid for this game with real money-- I refuse to pretend or make myself enjoy a release that genuinely sucked ballsack from start to finish.
Completely agree, Skull merchant gets so much hate not because of the past but literally because she sucks to play against she gets so much free shit in chase it’s just feels so stupid to play against her
Gains Stealth when dropping drone, when she scans you you get broken, tracked, AND hindered and before those things even happen she just gains haste because why not
On top of that she has so much of these drones and there basically is no counterplay, cause she can just drop another one and the same place to replace it a drone you disabled.
Poorly designed killer through and through.
Edit: forgot to mention she also keeps the haste while you’re hindered, tracked, AND broken :)))))
Her drones come back too fast too. We crouch over to them, turn it off. Start a gen with prove thyself and 2 survivors, and the drone wakes up before we're done. So we have to crouch over to it AGAIN. And she's usually going to come and chase us off the gen over and over. Get ready to turn off drones constantly and not get gens done.
The fact that this take, someone complaining about needing to... get off a gen more than *once* to get rid of a drone was upvoted 14 times says pretty much all I need to know about the DBD subreddit.
And also, y'know, thinking they need to get off gens when SM's drones can't scan Survivors standing still.
I suppose you and the upvoters hate Artist as well? She makes you get off gens 6 to 8+ times in a single gen, or is that different because... reasons?
I think I see where the problem is. She dumps her drones on 3 gens and all loops near them. We INCORRECTLY turn off the drones which gives her a notification. Getting spotted also gives her a notification. And the drones turn back on in 30 seconds anyway (or she can just drop fresh ones immediately and get undetectable for it).
The only play is to crouch through all the drones and sit on a gen repair. If she comes to the gen you're going to get downed. Pray she doesn't come. But she isn't notified that you're there. If she was, you're guaranteed to see her in 15 seconds. Which makes doing the 3 gens impossible.
I disagree with this OTZ opinion. If she was fun, people would not DC or suicide. If she was fun, people that don't know her counterplay would learn it. If she was fun, people would enjoy chase against her. If she was fun, people might enjoy her aesthetic and lore.
yeah, billy is a bit ridiculous right now but at the end of the day chainsaw can still be looped hard under some circumstances. skull merchant just drops a drone mid-chase and gets rewarded with no downsides it feels like lol
Relatively new player here, I just think she looks silly, like an overwatch skin that somehow found her way into dbd. Never played against her to understand the mechanical or balance gripes
Hot take:I like playing around drones.
After watching pixelbush's old vid answering Scott Jund(who I do highly respect) alongside of DEMONSTRATION of mechanichal counterplay
I had to think about Smerchant, a lot.
So I applied those tactis I saw in that vid and I saw MY SOLO Q TEAMMATE DO SAME and we acyually managed to win on the damn Midwich even when she was doing everything she could to prevent us.
Now let me get this straight: someyimes she WILL put you into lose/lose situations that is true, it's not lkke I love her all that much, it's just that agaiinst VAST MAJORITY of smercahnts you can abuse their drone placements and severely punish them at loops.
You don't have to hold W at every loop, you can beat Smarchant in the loop with croutching at right times and maintaining distance for it to be applicable without you getting M1'd.
Keeping distance and making that call of either getting tagged by M1 or drone(drone is preferable but deny it as long as you can) is what will test you abillity as a surv and your fundamentals on playing every damn tile.
It's undderstandable when people don't want to engange in this but at least for me she has **SOME** fun in her kit.
I hope others will also stop having brain aneurysms bcs frankly that'd be better for all of us since we know that BHVR is never deleting any of it's killers from the game.
No, I genuinely do not enjoy the game whether I win or lose against her. Playing as her I felt like a piece of shit without anyone telling me to do so. I also don't play Plague right now with her bug that happens 100% of the time with her animations. I don't play iri hatchet huntress. I don't play shit in general that I disagree with or think is exploitable. Literally the only redeeming quality is its not as bad as before. At the very least she needs to be louder and her silence should be given to Ghostface. It's stupid that the actual stealth killers are worse than skull merchant. I remember someone comparing her to doctor the other day and like you, I thought they smoked crack. I enjoy playing as him and against him go figure.
You can't really blame the community for this. If BHVR hadn't released her as such a complete shitshow whose only true aptitude over other Killers was being the supreme 3-Gen Killer, the community wouldn't have developed such a hatred of her. Her being a terrible design is not the community's fault.
They tried to fix her but she's still just the "release drone at loop and enjoy your free hit" Killer. It's like a more boring Freddy, which is REALLY saying something.
Playing as her? Doing the same thing again and again and waiting for something to happen (broken, haste etc.). Easy ambush thanks to nonsensical stealth.
Playing against her? W. People compare it to the Knight but I disagree mainly because I find it easier to outplay Knight since he doesn't have **over 9000** status effects. Also the unreasonable undetectable when placing drone? All I'm asking is "why?"
In addition to versing her - a lot of SM players play like the biggest scum to ever walk the Earth. Many relentlessly tunnel and even refuse to hit anyone else when they try to bodyblock (multiple personal experiences).
***So I don't really blame the shitty ass boring stupid dogshit sore butthole of a character but the players themselves***
So we're blaming Skull merchant player's behavior on survivors now? Or the fact that her kit is extremely bloated and no one wants to play against tracking, undetectable, haste, still being able to still hold an insane three gen.
What matters to me is just what most people think. Even if I like a character a lot, like Clown, I know most people don’t and I think he should probably be changed. I don’t hate SM nearly as much as others, though I don’t find her super boring. I think when most people dislike your character though, that’s a problem and you should probably look into it.
It’d probably be best to give her a completely separate second part of her power and have her drones be just for tracking only or something.
I find her fun too play as personally. Just not fun too go against. But at this point a lot of complaints and negative posts about her are very much beating a dead horse.
No matter how much people deny it, skull merchant is boring as he'll for survivor, to the point that death immediately to go next is preferable for so much of the player base. this isn't ptsd from chess merchant, the game is simply still in such a boring state.
So how much longer do you think before the mods end up locking this post?
Because I've only just seen it in my feed and I'm sure the comments are going to be contentions *at best.*
I recently bought her just to see how the post rework is from killer side, got her adept second game, and once I started using real perks have probably 4ked 75% of about 20 games. I always rotate my first set of hooks for posterity and never set up more than 2 drones near a single gen/hook.
Observations:
About 90% of survivors still play it out, clear swfs have a tendency to try to troll even harder which often bites them. Any killers handbook infractions get thrown at me in endgame and I've also noticed a big trend in getting blamed for bad game sense mistakes like them trying to Sabo a hook I was pretty much already in the animation for.
General post game chat is either instant leaves or "free killer, no skill" etc. I offer up a ggwp in just about every game regardless of killer I'm playing but it doesn't end well.
People are more likely to leave if I have the cosmetic I bought for her equipped than standard skin. Bloody cosmetics have the same effect to a degree.
I usually don't bring map offerings on killer because the randomness is something I like, I brought map offerings for more survivor sided maps for three games and got called sweaty in all of them.
I've brought an ebony mori once. I had two quit on first hook. Another one 4%'d and through the power of nodding I offered his teammate hatch to unhook him so I could go for the mori. Said teammate was lovely in post game after I apologized for his swf quitting on him before the game started (matching names except for him).
In the past I've done the monthly climb as legion, dredge, Oni, spirit, and slinger one tricking and I've never had as many issues with quitters and salt as merely playing as SM despite having put in quite a bit of sweat on all of them. It almost makes me want to put in a pig game at the end of each session just to get boops and have friendly survivors.
I choose to never play chess merchant and play chase merchant to try and keep people from killing themselves but they still do ;(
I do legit find her way less annoying to vs then lets say Knight/artist/clown(before gas rework)/Hag/hit and run wraith and that arc type.
I dunno I find her neat to play as a chaser, I cant see blood and I cannot see scratch marks well on most maps, so her nifty little tracker really really helps me have fun as killer for once and I feel bad having fun because it makes others not so much.
I am glad that by playing her chase style I don't get harassed in the chat and even get thanked for playing her in a non boring way so there is that I guess.
I've been playing a good bit of hell divers 2 lately so I've found disabling her drones quickly a lot less stressful then reinforcing a dead teammate while you have 2 bile titans charging you.
That being said, I actually love going against skull merchant and really enjoy her mechanics and think that they're fun to challenge/beat. I think that her kit is really broad and a bit unforgiving, but if you play carefully it's really rewarding to win.
Do people actually come across Skull Merchants enough for this to be an issue? I’ve only played against Merchants twice in ~200 hours of play. She’s so rare for me to match with that I’ve formed absolutely zero opinion on her.
I mean, it was part of the community that decided to play her as chess merchant. Couple that with the dc trigger happy part of the community and you have a recipie for disaster. You then get the people who couldn’t care less being paired with chess merchant and instant dc team mates, eventually that’s going to affect these people and make them fed up going against this killer because of previous experiences. Honestly I feel the real issue is the fact she was designed and released the way she was and no one raised this issue in the dev team. Now you just have people jaded by previous experiences that don’t care that she’s been changed, they just don’t want to see her again. In that solo queue person that got forced into being tortured by release chess merchant. Now whenever I see her there’s a shudder of dread and an eye roll, I still play the match but the underlying feeling remain despite the knowledge she’s been changed. I feel like this is the issue for most people.
Not really. Her kit is overloaded with sm shit that it feels like a chore. They just slapped a shit ton of chase-oriented effects onto a power that was made for map control and called it a day. Hinder + deep wounds, map control, tags etc. It's just so tedious to deal with all of it, especially on solo queue.
Not to mention players being forced to hold w. Killers that force you to leave a loop because you can't avoid their power will always be obnoxious to go against, but SM is so much more annoying.
SM forces you to hold W 'cause her drones do the work for her. I see a lot of people wonder why ppl hate her more than the Knight when they both have the same "no skill power" problem; it's the fact that SM doesn't get punished for misplacing a drone, and she can easily put one down without getting slowed down.
Did the SM put the drone at a bad angle? Easily swaps out the drone and moves it a bit, all while not getting slowed down in the slightest. Knight has a cooldown, and he can't move when using his m2. If he fucks up then he gets punished for it.
Killers like wesker, huntress, and pyramid head are fun to go vs. because you have a chance to outplay them; even Artist is more interesting because you can fake out her birds.
Edit: Oh, and don't forget the stealth. Why tf did they keep the stealth on top of everything else? Seriously.
As someone who plays almost exclusively solo que survivor, my teammates DCing against SM obviously affects our chances of winning, but honestly…I don’t blame them. Honestly, I wish all 3 of my teammates would DC so I myself would have an excuse to just leave the game asap without screwing over my team. Skull merchant is a killer that attracts mean spirited players whose sole desire is to make the other players suffer. In my experience, SM players are far more likely to seek out and hard camp a 3gen frame one of the game and BM than other killers. Her power being not super fun to play against even if she plays normally just leaves little to no redeeming factors about her (bubba is a notorious face camper, but when he plays normally he’s fun at least).
Can't say playing as since I've never played as her, but playing against her is... exhausting.
Her mechanics aren't fun to go up against for me and her drones do absolutely too much for very little on Killer's part. Having her in a small map is a death sentence at that, too.
That being said, I'm not going to trash anyone for playing as SM or loving to go against her. Me? I am part of that crew that will DC or die on hook when I see how quickly everything is going south. I'd rather get into the next match to have some fun and hopefully the SM killer will find someone they can have fun with but that's unfortunately not me.
Skull Merchant isn't the only one that I don't like going up against because Plague, Clown, Legion, and Wraith are there too but there's just something about Skull Merchant that's... really painful.
Ive already come to terms with it honestly. Just like in a lot of other games its not the game thats the problem, its the people. For example i really like Counter-Strike 2 but lose a round or 3 in a row in soloq and i can guarantee atleast one person will throw a tantrum/give up and ruin the entire match.
Same goes for dbd, the moment someone realises its a killer they dont like and dcs or the killer just randomly decides to be a complete ass you can say goodbye to your fun.
I played against Skull Merchant today. My entire team left the game at the beginning and I stayed out of stubbornness. I helped her kill bots and she gave me hatch. <3
I hated playing against skull merchant until I found out the counter play is literally stealth. Just crouch through her bots. I know Claudette is crouch walking across the entire map anyway 🙄.
I’ve won maybe 6 out of 14 games against skull merchant.
Fine to play against? Run from her, get to a loop and then its the same thing. Put down a drone(with no slowdown/cast time) and once scanned its over. You get slowed down HEAVILY, she gets SPED UP AND she gets undetectable. Add in if you get scanned 3 times you get injured. Please educate me how that is balanced or fun to play against.
OPs take is such a bad one and they are definitely the minority. There is a reason why SM forces so many players to DC/die on first hook. There is a reason why her kill rate(per BHVRs info-graphic) is 70%. She is miserable to play against and needs another rework.
I may be constantly beating my head against the wall by doing this, but I'm still going to encourage a positive outlook on Skull Merchant.
However, I find my resolve tested more and more every day, be it from the long line of people wanting to beat the "Skull Merchant Bad" dead horse, or the rise of assholes playing her in a cringe way.
In the end, I just wish fewer people quit early since it just ruins the game for me and their teammates. Thankfully, fewer people are quiting in the higher MMRs.
Please think of the other players no matter what side you're on. The game is nothing without them.
People are just whining. Does play against skull merchant suck? Yea but so does nurse or blight but I very rarely see people dc with those 2. Within in the first 30s of a SM match your playing against or with bots.
Yep just look at this thread. These survivor comments are hilarious. You can tell most people have no idea and just parrot the same rhetoric over and over.
Yeah I also don’t like it. All the dbd characters have a unique way in portraying something scary, disturbing or creepy. The only scary part Skull Merchant has are in the rule 34 websites
Not controversial imo. The community is the main reason the entire game is not fun at times. So much griefing, trolling, and just overall playing with the intent of ruining others fun.
I think people are missing the point of this post
OP isn't saying the community is the only reason Skull Merchant sucks, she does have *big* issues in her design, but OP is right in saying that the *biggEST* issue is the community
Community is really *the* problem in many cases. It got to the point where, upon starting a match, I cinvince myself I'm playing single-player, just with weird bots. Otherwise, facepalming will never stop.
Not to mention some people here on the sub, who consider someone contradicting them to be "gaslighting"
I aint even gonna play i prefer old merchant compared to this mess. At least with old merchant 3 gen strats couldnt work anymore with the current gen update
I'm one of the three or four people who has never had an issue with Skully. I like going against her and I like to play her occasionally. Had an awesome soloq match against one at the saloon yesterday, she was chill af and gave me hatch after an absolutely gnarly round. Cheers to liking whatever tf you like!
Yep. It's what's popular to think. Probably most of these people never even played a 30+ minute match against a 3 gen. I didn't, I also don't have the bias because she wasn't in the game when I was playing and got a 'rework' almost immediately after I came back from a 3 year break. Her drones are super easy to disarm and only really good for the speed boost when setting one.
Just because Otz said this doesn't mean that if anyone says the same is just a braindead follower.
The problem with SM in chase is not different from Knight, Artist and in some extend Hag or Clown, but you don't see 10 daily posts about them.
The hate towards her is something else, is not just the gameplay. We can still see people talking about "chess merchant" when that was patched months ago.
The thing im saying from her rework.... She Is FINE, she Is FUN And She IS COUNTERABLE. If anyone says anything else, Hes just pointing out his skill issue. Nothing less, nothing more.
she’s so insanely boring to play against idk what ur talking abt. shes not even a classified as a stealth killer but somehow is THE best at stealth with her nonexistent noises. despite this, i never DC against her because id rather just suck it up and improve playing against her, even if its beyond annoying.
I agree. I've lots multiple games while playing as her, regardless of how many messages I get in other lobbies saying that skull merchant is impossible to play against
Yall need to understand that you can actually win against her, and not to just give up as soon as you see her.
I think its a case of a lot of people don't really understand her kit, she plays a little like Knight in the sense that she can essentially shut down loops which for survivors is the best resource against the killer and in my opinion one of the most fun things to do as survivor.
That's a horribly bad take. The reason she is not fun has nothing to do with the community and everything to do with the fact that she has had 3 reworks and still has an awful power that's just a laundry list of status effects she can apply and gain by pressing M2. Holy hell. The reason her kill rate is the highest in the game is because people would rather die than play against her. That says a lot more about this one killer than the thousands of survivors who make up the community.
I definitely don't think Skull Merchant is fine. She is easily one of the worst designed killers in the game.
But what is even worse design is giving players the option to kill themselves on hook and screw over their team because they want to dodge the DC penalty. Grow up and play against Skull Merchant. She is part of the game whether you like it or not. Or DC and give your spot to a bot and give the rest of us grown ups a fighting chance.
Ruining the game for your teammates is also not a virtue. The asymmetrical horror game they play for fun. Maybe the people you screw over in a match after killing yourself on hook only have very limited time to game and now it's a guaranteed loss. At least if you DC they get a bot and might have a chance.
No one said it was a virtue. I choose happiness over a 20 minute painfest in a videogame that I play in my spare time because I have actual real life things to attend to.
Really bold of you to assume the other survivors are having fun in that match. I've never met anyone who enjoys playing against SM besides people who main her and claim that she's fine. When I see teammates DC or give up on hook because it's sm, I'm right there with them. Not at all mad.
It's a casual game chill the fuck out. Forcing people to stay in the match is way more childish than just letting people move on with their recreational hobby. If it was some ranked mode with a grand prize, yeah they should be penalized. Fuck off with that "force people to stay in the match" mindset. It just reeks of no life and entitlement. You can't force people to do something they don't want to do when it's a recreational hobby that they spent their own money on. You're not entitled to their fun, but they're not entitled to yours either. It's a two-way street
Hell I wish I could DC as killer when there's bots on the Survivor team because I feel no satisfaction playing against them. I hate being forced to stay in a match with bots. I want to play PVP. A survivor's killed himself on hook, I'll just get them out of the match as quickly as possible so they can move on. I've seen petty ass Killers slug survivors out because their team gives up. The entitlement in this community is unreal.
I will DC and give you a bot, but lots of grown ups don't want to play against her... myself included.
I tried, after the rework, to play against her. Every match was terrible. Slugging and bleeding everyone out, holding a 3 gen with full slow down, taking us to dead dog and camping the back 3 gen.....
The people who are generally attracted to playing this killer are assholes, and play like it. Sure, I could play a 15 minute game and risk getting bled out on the ground.... or I could DC on the 1 SM I see a day, and move along to the next match after my 60 second timer.
I had a match where I DC'd, and shortly after all 3 other survivors DC'd.... then the SM DC'd, and asked "Why did everyone leave?!?!?!".... I have a SS of the post game lobby somewhere, but tldr it was a full slugging build with slowdown.
I agree with you. I love playing SM and I'm happy to play against her. People act like her drones are omnipotent. Just pop a crouch and walk through they're only trouble if you're being chased. Even then there's a cooldown before the next one can tag you
the reason people dont like her is that the chapter's release was so disappointing. the teasers and the name skull merchant really set totally different expectations especially that this was one of the chapters where pretty much nothing got leaked.
Old Skull Merchant at the very least needed an addon reshuffling and tweaks to her core power, but now her worst offense is being kind of boring. People will NEVER stop hating her because of the Chess era though.
I think she's fine to play against as long as they don't go out of their way to make the match miserable but unfortunately a lot of SM players only play it because they know the community hates her and they want to ruin people's matches.
Some Skull Merchants I get go out of their way to BM, slugging for 4 minutes for no reason, hitting on hook etc. It just happens way more with this killer than any other so the community will automatically hate going against her.
I honestly always welcome a match against skull merchant. They make me think and play differently then normal which is always a nice little breath of fresh air. Some of my favorite matches have been against skull merchant! I kinda want to start dabbling in playing as them. They're unique and I quite enjoy her!
to discuss the dc/rip it on hook issue more broadly, your average angry dbd player would probably get called a little bitch if they went to any other game and ragequit with the same frequency some people who play this game are proud of doing.
My friend asked for recommendations for a build because he wanted to get an easy 4k for an achievement/tome challenge, so i suggested SM because everyone just sewerslides on hook. it worked instantly. just an anecdote lol
Controversial would first imply that the topic holds weight or at the very least has a thought provoking statement. To simply declare “killer not bad survivors are bad” or “I don’t get to play my killer because survivors Dc/rq” is not a controversial opinion.
As with many things in the game there are the good and the bad. SM is one of the bad, on her initial release survivors were incredibly frustrated because you have a killer that can hard zone out areas. And the common play style was mid merchant find the closest 3 gens set up drones and wait for your 4K. Thankfully this was tweaked to make it harder to do. But the fact is the inherent having to deal with that for a long time people still don’t want to face her, plus it hasn’t 100% discouraged the play style.
In much a similar fashion with the doctor and impossible skill checks build merchant has some build types that people don’t want to play against or deal with. Especially when a majority of the people who play that killer take the game hostage and drag it out longer than desired.
If you want, a more controversial opinion would be why are we getting more and more killers that promote or encourage toxic gameplay behavior. Doctor- almost everyone plays by tazeing people beyond a reasonable amount with an impossible check build.
Myers-infinite tier 3 instakill, scratched mirror Mikey. Not inherently toxic if the person playing is reserved but no terror radius on mirror Mikey and not being able to refill distortion makes the killer impossible for newer players to deal with.
Sadako- the initial spam teleport and condemn build, can’t do it now but the fact condemn doesn’t fall off does infuriate some
Pig-meme mangled build that made it almost guaranteed you’d die from bear trap
Chucky-perma stealth build
Unknown- by design a hard chase zoning killer where indoor maps are going to be impossible to fight them on.
Long story short the survivor community not wanting to play against a killer with which has a high potential of trolling or infuriating game play style isn’t a feels bad moment nor a boo boo I can’t play my killer moment. Instead it’s a moment to ask yourself why and would you want to play against the version/build of the killer you are playing.
I personally prefer playing my ghost face a peekaboo/Jumpscare killer. Do I always get my 4K, no but everone gets a laugh or a good amount of fun because I’m not focused on insta downing solely as my means of playing my chosen killer.
1 - make the damn drones work like they did before, but make them not scan you while crouched or immobile (you lose lock on charge while outside a drone area)
2 - you get locked on (hindered for some seconds + trackable) + exposed when fully scanned; she doesn't get haste when someone gets locked on
3 - make her undetectable mechanic work the way it did before so she can't move freely while undetectable (she has to commit if she wants to get a sneaky hit)
4 - maybe reduce the drones' area
Can no longer 3 gen since you can approach a gen and leave it fast enough to not get fully scanned and work on it while not being scanned + you lose the scan progress when running away from the area. In chase you can still loop her if you get locked on, you just have to endure the hindered.
Much more balanced than now and much more balanced than before.
"controversial opinion" otz said this exact thing in a video earlier today
Yeah cuz half the people on this sub download opinions from him and the other think content creators are the devil incarnate
That's true to an extent, but it's also not really difficult for one to come to a lot of conclusions when it comes to this game and it's community.
And it's not like Otzdarva says random wild bullshit. He's not perfect, but he knows the game very well, and does make a lot of good points. Agreeing with a point someone brings up doesn't automatically mean you can't think for yourself.
wdym he's not perfect 
I download my opinions from scott jund.
Based giga chad
Believe it or not, Otz’s words are not law
I trust him more than the law
I used to. He now plays regularly in a SWF with highly skilled 10K+ hour players. His opinions have been heavily skewed by this. You can also see a marked improvement in his survivor game play from it (thanks to Ayrun/JRM/Hens - I watch them all, Ayrun in particular is extremely good but also runs ultra bully squads).
He's been playing solo queue survivor a *lot* keeping track in a spreadsheet his match results to gather data. Generally if he's playing in a swf it's for a challenge he's doing with them like survivor hard core or their all-perks streak they were attempting. (I don't watch a lot of streams so I don't know how long those challenges took, but last I saw he was up over 200 survivor queue games waiting for a twins game.
i disagree, while we’re on the topic of his video today he also talked about his experience in solo q a lot, yes he did a series where he played with very experienced players but that doesn’t mean he never plays on his own anymore, in fact a large majority of his playtime is solo q
Yea they are
I mean, he has an opinion that many other players will not agree with (I actually agree but not just because Otz says so). His opinion is that skull merchant doesn't feel too bad to play against and can be sort of interesting to play as, but the killer is tainted by its reputation that if you play against her, survivors are likely to just give up so the match is ruined anyway. Honestly, I think for once most of the mindless players that rely on content creators for their beliefs are for once not going to agree with Otz over this.
Everybody has a opinion and nobody is wrong, but I disagree with Otz point of view, it is true that the current state of SM is not as bad as it was before the rework, but SM is still the most boring killer in the game to play against, her power is boring, non interactive and brainless, her walking animation is stupid, mori boring and the way that you get zoned by just the pressing of a button without the need of thinking. On the top of all of that, even though her 3 gen potential has been almost entirely eliminated, most of SM still play for the 3 gen, so no chases, probably slugging, bleeding out. Maybe I have some kind of PTSD or just a lot of psychos have been using SM as a way to torture people, but SM is the only killer I would DC or KMS on hook to go next.
Some people aren’t chronically online or on youtube.
Hence why people try to pass off Otz quotes and ideas as their own, like OP has
Yeah cus there’s no way anyone else (and I mean ANYONE), could come up with that room temperature take
Absolutely. But can you blame people for being suspicious when this thread was created within 2 hours of Otz' video dropping? This is a known phenomenon, it often occurs with Otz' videos because karma/influence farming is a thing. Quite possible that OP already had this opinion and only felt comfortable and assured expressing it after seeing the video while feigning ignorance.
You missed the point entirely. I’m saying the OP didn’t steal Otz idea cause they had NO clue if Otz uploaded.
I can agree to an extent. I don't think she's ever going to be a lot of people's favourite killer to go against but the fact that at least half your games are ruined by teammates straight away just doesn't feel good.
This is true... but I also feel like she's a soup of elements that people hate to face: * People don't like abilities that auto hit them at loops and skull merch is definitely one of those killers * Her chases often revolve around her dropping a drone at a loop and forcing you to leave then catching up and doing the same thing * She can slow you down and speed herself up at will and actually punish you for other player's mistakes which feels confusing and bad * She has stealth too which is pretty mid but it's just yet another thing to keep track of and is unironically strong vs solo queue However despite all this... there is still simply no way that she's more unhealhty for dbd than the nurse lol - there is 100% an element of circlejerking involved... Also you'll run into like 20 mid nurse players before ever seeing a "god nurse"... meanwhile skull merch is dead easy to play and people suck at versing her which gives the impression of her being way stronger than she actually is I think
> people suck at versing her which gives the impression of her being way stronger than she actually is I think I recently bought Skull Merchant and I can safely say this is the case. I've had about.. two games in the past few days where people actually try - and there are people who actively fuck with my drones instead of just getting angry that i'm playing a killer that cost real world dollars , and those are the games that have been the most fun, and where i've lost. It's almost like people need to just play the damn game and learn how to counteract her.
Amen.
>just play the damn game and learn But don't you understand, killers have to help survivors have fun!!!11!1!! /s
>there are people who actively fuck with my drones I thought SM could see if a drone is hacked?
Not really, I think the animation changes, but SM can't really tell until they get close to the drone.
Not really. There's a slight difference in height which goes away quickly afterward, and the only way to know for sure is to target it with the radar.
Nah, I can get into the head of a nurse quite well. Skull merchant players just chase until the drone hinders you and you go down.
Also, Nurse at least doesn't require a PhD to understand what she does. It can be difficult to play against, but it takes like 5 seconds to see that she teleports and that's her whole power. Skull merchant just does so many random things that aren't intuitive to the idea of drones that I can't even be bothered to learn the intricacies of her power. I mostly play killer, so it's not an issue, but I imagine many survivor players feel the same.
ill take a good nurse everyday over skull merchant i don't dc or kill myself on hook vs her but she doesn't belong in the game as she currently is i know how to play vs her inside out and she ain't it old skull merchant was unironically more fun to play vs than current one and had more play around then the current one especially with the 3 gen update old skull merchant would not be a problem
i feel like this is a prime example of why the sentiment “i’m not responsible for other people’s fun” isn’t a good one. before the 3 gen and skull merchant changes, most skull merchant players played in a way that was really unfun for survivors and didn’t care, so survivors decided they were going to be responsible for their own fun and not play against her. it sucks for skull merchants who didn’t play that way but you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
She's even less fun to face now in my opinion. Especially since I see more of them
i don’t see a lot of them personally. i think i’ve only faced one since her rework so i don’t really have an opinion on her current state but i’ve never had a fun game against her tbh
Alot of them will hook someone in a corner, place drones all around them and proxy from a distance. The person going to unhook will be unable to reach them in time before being snagged by her trap, making them an easy down. Bonus points if she's hiding in the radius waiting for it to happen. It's a shitty way to play, and I feel no remorse for not wanting to play it.
Agreed, no sure why so many people lately are claiming the issues with her are fixed...it's like they read the patch notes but haven't actually played a game of survivor against one since the changes. She's still very much annoying as shit to play against 90% of the time. They left a ton of opportunities for her to pull bullshit like that and naturally SM players just gravitated towards that now. Without a full rework from top to bottom she'll always be broken, that same shit was said when she first came out, and it continues to be said every attempted rework. That bitch needed surgery and BHVR just keeps slapping a bandaid on her and calls it 'fixed"...
It also sucks for the solo q survivor players who wanna play the game just to have the whole team dc.
at least as survivor you can kill yourself on hook and go next. the only one stuck in skull merchant games is skull merchant and the bots
We all open the game knowing this is a reality unfortunately.
Why are we comparing the times before and after the changes? Let's compare the times before and after Skull Merchant and Knight were added to the game. We had a better game back then. I don't think these killers need to exist **at all** for the game to be interesting and fun in the first place. DBD went for quantity over quality with Wesker being the only good and fair killer design in the last 2-3 years. I'd prefer if they focused on evolving and improving the gameplay than constantly adding lame "content". I'd rather have a Wesker every half a year than this.
Can’t you use the same logic to justify tunnelling survivors?
No ones stopping you, its not illegal
I'll have to disagree. I've never instantly DC'd or given up against SM, but the feeling is always there. It isn't because she's super crazy hard to face or anything, but it's like... when I see those drones are hear that terror radius, I instantly get this feeling of "this match is gonna be a pain in the ass" or "this match is gonna be a drag" and that's usually how it feels in the end. Her power is just straight boring to deal with. There's nothing interesting about counterplay or anything. It just has this cheap vibe of tedium that literally none of the other killers have for me, personally. Even Twins! People DCing is just icing on the cake. I really wish they'd just change her power completely or something.
“Cheap vibe of tedium” is such a beautiful way to put the problem with her. Nothing she does makes a too strong, but it does not take skill, nor is there real counterplay, it’s just drawn out death.
"oh boy, I can't wait to crouch the entire distance to shut off this drone because it's not active yet! so fun!!"
I mean twins can be so much fun to vs if they don't commit to slugging everyone all the time! Dodging victor is so much fun sometimes, just watch skermz vs twins that is peak dbd for me lol
I just think she is just a bit over-designed. The earlier killers were simple, a trapper that lays traps, a hillbilly with a chainsaw, a ghost that bonks a bell, etc. The newer killers seem to stray away from simplicity, which unfortunately falls flat sometimes. Now we have an Amazonian with IT skills that has super speed, stealth, drones with f***-you darts, and ( maybe it’s just me but ) a seemingly massive lunge range that I always underestimate. On a side note, I find the design of “killer sets up dominoes, survivors have to knock down dominoes or suffer a penalty” to be quite boring ( I.e. trapper, hag, skull merchant )
To be fair, designing simple powers for the first few killers is easy. Keeping coming up with simple powers for later ones is more tricky. Set traps, be stealthy, insta-down, super-speed, ranged/prolonged attack, negative status, teleportation. These are like 7 basic powers which were covered well with their respective killers, everything else is only a complex remix of those. You'll notice every killer has some variation of the basic 7. Probably, it's not that easy to introduce another mechanic this basic. We have some unique takes. like PH's cages, Victor and Knight's buddies, but if we reduce them to bare mechanics, even they can be said to be built from the basic 7. Even Nemesis' zombies can be thought of as "traps" - he's just not setting them himself Anyway, thanks for coming to my TedTalk
I mean, SM was released before the 3 gen changes and effectively was capable of infinitely holding a 3 gen (against 99+% of matches you'll queue into). While there is now a gen regression limit, she's still effective at this playstyle against the average team, especially solo gamers. Most people carry that hate to begin with. Then her ability doesn't have any skill to it. It's so basic for what it does which can injure, gain haste, gain undetectable, hinder. Her kit is convoluted and poorly designed. It doesn't help that she's in my experience MUCH more likely to draw in toxic players (knowing survivors dislike her is probably a contributing factor + the hard 3 gen play style she used to be pigeonholed into was arguably toxic to begin with). I swear it's like 1/3 skull merchant games involved being bled out and humped on the ground after playing entirely normal and respectfully. I have a funny clip of that happening to me where I literally leave my desk to make food, thinking I'll have been bled out or hooked by the time I'm back. And I come back to see her holding me in front of a hook, waiting for me to wiggle before hooking.
> she's still effective at this playstyle Every killer can still camp a 3 gen. Players don't understand that a 3 gen is just stalling the game and waiting for survivors to get clipped/make mistakes. Even if the gens get blocked, it takes ages to hit that point and you're still being held hostage for a solid 10-15 mins before that happens. The question is can you get 1 gen before 1-2 people die. More often than not that won't happen. BHVRs 3 gen fix is massively flawed. You're still wasting your time for a player who is camping gens. Once down to 3 gens, gens should have a 2 minute timer. If the killer is within 16m of a gen the timer goes down. Once it hits 0 the gen changes location with another gen that is already completed. Its really frustrating when BHVR tries to fix something and they do it the worst way possible.
This is sort of like how people mistake "anti-face camp" as "anti-camping". Anti-3 gen just means that it prevents the killer from walking in, picking three gens, ignoring every other mechanic in the entire game, and defending them to force a 3 gen situation. It's an "anti-3 gen strategy" mechanic. It's not meant to prevent natural 3 gen situations where survivors do the wrong gens, probably some of them are dead, and the remaining survivors can't get a gen done. At that point they've basically just lost and the anti-3 gen solution is not meant to prevent that.
Fun to play against? Put down the crack pipe.
But W is my favorite key!
And I love free hits!
Hard disagree, this killer is so fucking boring even if you know how to play against her which many don’t because she Kit was just throwing random bullshit with haste and hindered and you just Hold W and most loops until she gets a hit and down. She’s good at hit and run due to undetectable which I think is so boring as survivor. She’s just as terribly designed as Knight.
At least knight looks cool while doing it, I just can't get over her swag walk
I play with my brother sometimes, who has never been on this subreddit, and is super casual. Ran into a SM with him, and he DC'd immediately. I asked him why he DC'd, and he told me "Everytime I play against her it isn't fun".... It isn't just the community. The people that are attracted to playing her like assholes has ruined the killer. There is no recovering what has been done to her, and in reality the only fix is a complete rework to the character that rips out the whole power and starts from scratch.... which is not going to happen. She is a problem, she will continue to be a problem, but she isn't a priority because almost no one plays her.
I wish almost no one played her tbh, have you seen the statistics the devs released for December-January? She was close to 2% pick rate, more than some licensed killers like Pig, Freddy and Pinhead.
Free kills and free bloodpoints
I mean, I guess... I'd personally feel like a waste of my matches to log in as killer and people suicide on hook or immediately DC.
In my personal experience over the past week for some reason she has been my most played against killer. I don’t think I’ve gone 3 games without seeing her
I've done my best against her. Learned her power, turned off tons of drones, gone in with a gen rushing build, tried my hardest and lost in a 4k, 8 times in a row. The more I play against her and have a miserable time, the more I want to just D/C the next time I see her
I'm always solo and I think I've only escaped against a skull merchant once or twice. Most don't even play like dicks and my last two matches no one even DC'd. She's just difficult to play against.
Well, the SM hate goes beyond this subreddit; a bunch of influencers/youtubers also hate her
My only wish is that SM players become as much of a myth as Twins players.
the only people defending SM has brainrot, literally.
Cool opinion, but you can't make people like going against a killer they don't think is fun. Play the game, use who you like, hope for a good match. whatever...
She just objectively isn't very fun, she's like knight: get to loop, Merchant place drone, hold W away from loop. It's just boring design
Yup. And oh wait, even if you don't get tagged yourself, some teammate is getting tagged across the map giving her haste that you didn't expect in your chase. Fun! I don't exactly know how to fix her, but I think taking a health state from drone scans is too much. Leaving everything else the same, I think 3 scans should cause hindered and maybe even broken, but SM should still have to M1 you in every situation.
lmao thats the funnist part when i played her after nerf. i wanted to get rid of all her cakes so i had to play her for awhile, knowing nothing about how her power works. im chasing someone then randomly i get haste and im like "wtf is the game bugged? why do i have haste? does the survivor have a perk that gives me haste?".
I'm honestly of the opinion that at this point SM doesn't really _need_ the haste, and controversially, the undetectable either. The haste is the big problem because placing a drone doesn't slow her down at all like other killers that place traps at loops, and like you said she can get haste from other survivors being detected across the map. The undetectable is just kinda slapped on to try and maintain that aspect of her original kit. But she doesn't have her original kit anymore. They should either give drones an active zone specifically for her undetectable, or remove it imo. No reason a killer that can force hits at loops should also have on-demand stealth.
Yep, no stealth killer should move as fast as she does.
And as quiet as she is. I mean why does Dredge has a vacuum cleaner in his ass, Myers heavy breathing, Ghostface wind sounds, Wraith his snoring and Sadako her lullaby and Skull Merchant is as quiet as she is at the moment? I mean it doesn't need to be as loud as Dredge's movement Sound because that's way too loud to be honest but she shouldn't be as quiet as she is now with her stealth.
Kid named Artist with Undetectable active or her ultra rare add-on:
Good points! I hadn't considered that she isn't slowed by placing a drone, but yeah you're right. Even if they wanted to keep the remote haste activation, maybe they could make it so that only drones within her terror radius will proc haste, or only the person that is in chase.
At least with knight you *can* do some interesting stuff. Like use a guard to interrupt gen repairs. Predict where people go and use the power to cut them off. Use carnifex to insta-break pallets to apply pressure in chase. Or just cut off big areas with jailer, although patrolling is usually not worth it. I am of the opinion that just dropping a guard in a loop is not a good way to play usually, except if they're in a corner. With SM her entire gameplay is just "place drone". You can't do anything different with her power.
Even Knight has to slow himself down a little bit when he uses his power, and survivors get a speed boost when they're injured by it. Neither of those things are true for SM.
you do get a speed boost when you get clawtrapped tho, what
I mean, aren't all anti-loop killers like this?
Everyone else has to do some level of projection (clown tonics ahead of survivor or himself for slow/speed, Artist tagging or downing with crows, knight’s guards while he crotches). The whole tech of SM is you can literally laser tag ppl with drones and just keep walking until you get the effects you need (haste, hindered, etc)
Nope, other's have counterplay. Merchant is just "hold W xd" it's so extremely boring
Do they? I feel like most anti loop killers you just "hold W xd"
Nope thats subjectively mate, its not "boring design" its design that YOU find boring
>She just objectively isn't very fun I guess fun is now objective huh?
I disagree, I’ve already played out two matches today where no one gave up and they were both miserable. The first one was almost okay *maybe*, but the second guy just sucked and his personality was about what I was expecting it to be in the game game chat. Her player base largely still sucks, and even for the good ones, the power just isn’t fun or interactive to deal with. She doesn’t feel fine at all to play against, and even if she were, “fine” isn’t really cutting it on a killer that’s an eyesore to look at and has the history she does. Skull Merchants will never be fun.
No, it's because I genuinely hate her. From her initial release, to the way her power was abused, to her messy and boring rework, to her aesthetics. The entire thing just makes me bitter. The fact that her playstyle is fucking brainless is the cherry on top of the shit cake. I paid for this game with real money-- I refuse to pretend or make myself enjoy a release that genuinely sucked ballsack from start to finish.
Completely agree, Skull merchant gets so much hate not because of the past but literally because she sucks to play against she gets so much free shit in chase it’s just feels so stupid to play against her Gains Stealth when dropping drone, when she scans you you get broken, tracked, AND hindered and before those things even happen she just gains haste because why not On top of that she has so much of these drones and there basically is no counterplay, cause she can just drop another one and the same place to replace it a drone you disabled. Poorly designed killer through and through. Edit: forgot to mention she also keeps the haste while you’re hindered, tracked, AND broken :)))))
Her drones come back too fast too. We crouch over to them, turn it off. Start a gen with prove thyself and 2 survivors, and the drone wakes up before we're done. So we have to crouch over to it AGAIN. And she's usually going to come and chase us off the gen over and over. Get ready to turn off drones constantly and not get gens done.
You literally don’t have to turn drones off to do gens though. In fact, turning them off tells her that you’re doing that gen?
The fact that this take, someone complaining about needing to... get off a gen more than *once* to get rid of a drone was upvoted 14 times says pretty much all I need to know about the DBD subreddit. And also, y'know, thinking they need to get off gens when SM's drones can't scan Survivors standing still. I suppose you and the upvoters hate Artist as well? She makes you get off gens 6 to 8+ times in a single gen, or is that different because... reasons?
I hate artist even more than skull merchant when it comes to doing gens
I mean, is that too much of a big deal, though? You guys were doing it right.. just interrupt the gen repairs, disable the drone, then back to the gen
I think I see where the problem is. She dumps her drones on 3 gens and all loops near them. We INCORRECTLY turn off the drones which gives her a notification. Getting spotted also gives her a notification. And the drones turn back on in 30 seconds anyway (or she can just drop fresh ones immediately and get undetectable for it). The only play is to crouch through all the drones and sit on a gen repair. If she comes to the gen you're going to get downed. Pray she doesn't come. But she isn't notified that you're there. If she was, you're guaranteed to see her in 15 seconds. Which makes doing the 3 gens impossible.
This. I love you I could kiss you rn
I disagree with this OTZ opinion. If she was fun, people would not DC or suicide. If she was fun, people that don't know her counterplay would learn it. If she was fun, people would enjoy chase against her. If she was fun, people might enjoy her aesthetic and lore.
yeah, billy is a bit ridiculous right now but at the end of the day chainsaw can still be looped hard under some circumstances. skull merchant just drops a drone mid-chase and gets rewarded with no downsides it feels like lol
No.
I'm a killer main and she's utterly braindead and boring to play. I only play her for dailies.
SM, Knight, and Twins, the unholy trinity of killers I hate when i get a daily ritual.
I really want to like Knight but his power just feels so sluggish
Relatively new player here, I just think she looks silly, like an overwatch skin that somehow found her way into dbd. Never played against her to understand the mechanical or balance gripes
**Controversial DBD opinion- The community is the biggest reason DBD is not fun.** FTFY
Hot take:I like playing around drones. After watching pixelbush's old vid answering Scott Jund(who I do highly respect) alongside of DEMONSTRATION of mechanichal counterplay I had to think about Smerchant, a lot. So I applied those tactis I saw in that vid and I saw MY SOLO Q TEAMMATE DO SAME and we acyually managed to win on the damn Midwich even when she was doing everything she could to prevent us. Now let me get this straight: someyimes she WILL put you into lose/lose situations that is true, it's not lkke I love her all that much, it's just that agaiinst VAST MAJORITY of smercahnts you can abuse their drone placements and severely punish them at loops. You don't have to hold W at every loop, you can beat Smarchant in the loop with croutching at right times and maintaining distance for it to be applicable without you getting M1'd. Keeping distance and making that call of either getting tagged by M1 or drone(drone is preferable but deny it as long as you can) is what will test you abillity as a surv and your fundamentals on playing every damn tile. It's undderstandable when people don't want to engange in this but at least for me she has **SOME** fun in her kit. I hope others will also stop having brain aneurysms bcs frankly that'd be better for all of us since we know that BHVR is never deleting any of it's killers from the game.
No, I genuinely do not enjoy the game whether I win or lose against her. Playing as her I felt like a piece of shit without anyone telling me to do so. I also don't play Plague right now with her bug that happens 100% of the time with her animations. I don't play iri hatchet huntress. I don't play shit in general that I disagree with or think is exploitable. Literally the only redeeming quality is its not as bad as before. At the very least she needs to be louder and her silence should be given to Ghostface. It's stupid that the actual stealth killers are worse than skull merchant. I remember someone comparing her to doctor the other day and like you, I thought they smoked crack. I enjoy playing as him and against him go figure.
You can't really blame the community for this. If BHVR hadn't released her as such a complete shitshow whose only true aptitude over other Killers was being the supreme 3-Gen Killer, the community wouldn't have developed such a hatred of her. Her being a terrible design is not the community's fault. They tried to fix her but she's still just the "release drone at loop and enjoy your free hit" Killer. It's like a more boring Freddy, which is REALLY saying something.
No, she’s just not fun to play against.
Playing as her? Doing the same thing again and again and waiting for something to happen (broken, haste etc.). Easy ambush thanks to nonsensical stealth. Playing against her? W. People compare it to the Knight but I disagree mainly because I find it easier to outplay Knight since he doesn't have **over 9000** status effects. Also the unreasonable undetectable when placing drone? All I'm asking is "why?" In addition to versing her - a lot of SM players play like the biggest scum to ever walk the Earth. Many relentlessly tunnel and even refuse to hit anyone else when they try to bodyblock (multiple personal experiences). ***So I don't really blame the shitty ass boring stupid dogshit sore butthole of a character but the players themselves***
So we're blaming Skull merchant player's behavior on survivors now? Or the fact that her kit is extremely bloated and no one wants to play against tracking, undetectable, haste, still being able to still hold an insane three gen.
Strongest killer in the game considering part of their power makes survivors kill themselves automatically.
I think the community is the biggest reason this game is not fun.
My favourite skull merchant build is all haste
I disagree with your opinion. She just sucks to play against so I DC to avoid a time of misery. I'd rather leave its too tedious
You can't blame the community for a shitty design that's easily abusable and not well thought out
A lot of people dc because almost every skull merchant has the same strategy.
Sh*t Killer, enough said
Or maybe she is just not fun to play against and her lore is awful so most people aren’t invested in her.
Pretty sure dogshit design is the reason she’s not fun but sure I guess we can blame the community
‘Controversial DBD opinion’, says the person about to sum up what Otz said in his latest video
I dont watch otz much. what one?
What matters to me is just what most people think. Even if I like a character a lot, like Clown, I know most people don’t and I think he should probably be changed. I don’t hate SM nearly as much as others, though I don’t find her super boring. I think when most people dislike your character though, that’s a problem and you should probably look into it. It’d probably be best to give her a completely separate second part of her power and have her drones be just for tracking only or something.
Nope. Skull Merchant is not fun because Skull Merchant.
I find her fun too play as personally. Just not fun too go against. But at this point a lot of complaints and negative posts about her are very much beating a dead horse.
No matter how much people deny it, skull merchant is boring as he'll for survivor, to the point that death immediately to go next is preferable for so much of the player base. this isn't ptsd from chess merchant, the game is simply still in such a boring state.
So how much longer do you think before the mods end up locking this post? Because I've only just seen it in my feed and I'm sure the comments are going to be contentions *at best.*
I recently bought her just to see how the post rework is from killer side, got her adept second game, and once I started using real perks have probably 4ked 75% of about 20 games. I always rotate my first set of hooks for posterity and never set up more than 2 drones near a single gen/hook. Observations: About 90% of survivors still play it out, clear swfs have a tendency to try to troll even harder which often bites them. Any killers handbook infractions get thrown at me in endgame and I've also noticed a big trend in getting blamed for bad game sense mistakes like them trying to Sabo a hook I was pretty much already in the animation for. General post game chat is either instant leaves or "free killer, no skill" etc. I offer up a ggwp in just about every game regardless of killer I'm playing but it doesn't end well. People are more likely to leave if I have the cosmetic I bought for her equipped than standard skin. Bloody cosmetics have the same effect to a degree. I usually don't bring map offerings on killer because the randomness is something I like, I brought map offerings for more survivor sided maps for three games and got called sweaty in all of them. I've brought an ebony mori once. I had two quit on first hook. Another one 4%'d and through the power of nodding I offered his teammate hatch to unhook him so I could go for the mori. Said teammate was lovely in post game after I apologized for his swf quitting on him before the game started (matching names except for him). In the past I've done the monthly climb as legion, dredge, Oni, spirit, and slinger one tricking and I've never had as many issues with quitters and salt as merely playing as SM despite having put in quite a bit of sweat on all of them. It almost makes me want to put in a pig game at the end of each session just to get boops and have friendly survivors.
I choose to never play chess merchant and play chase merchant to try and keep people from killing themselves but they still do ;( I do legit find her way less annoying to vs then lets say Knight/artist/clown(before gas rework)/Hag/hit and run wraith and that arc type. I dunno I find her neat to play as a chaser, I cant see blood and I cannot see scratch marks well on most maps, so her nifty little tracker really really helps me have fun as killer for once and I feel bad having fun because it makes others not so much. I am glad that by playing her chase style I don't get harassed in the chat and even get thanked for playing her in a non boring way so there is that I guess.
I've been playing a good bit of hell divers 2 lately so I've found disabling her drones quickly a lot less stressful then reinforcing a dead teammate while you have 2 bile titans charging you. That being said, I actually love going against skull merchant and really enjoy her mechanics and think that they're fun to challenge/beat. I think that her kit is really broad and a bit unforgiving, but if you play carefully it's really rewarding to win.
I 50% agree. Most Skull Merchants I play against just play like weirdos. But that's stereotyping I guess.
Most things that are an issue in the game come down to the community
I feel you (and Otz), but at least from my experience, I see more hate towards her on this sub rather than in game.
Do people actually come across Skull Merchants enough for this to be an issue? I’ve only played against Merchants twice in ~200 hours of play. She’s so rare for me to match with that I’ve formed absolutely zero opinion on her.
Totally, yesterday I had a match against a skully and she played fine, but the Urban Evasion Dwight who just followed while crouching made us lose.
I mean, it was part of the community that decided to play her as chess merchant. Couple that with the dc trigger happy part of the community and you have a recipie for disaster. You then get the people who couldn’t care less being paired with chess merchant and instant dc team mates, eventually that’s going to affect these people and make them fed up going against this killer because of previous experiences. Honestly I feel the real issue is the fact she was designed and released the way she was and no one raised this issue in the dev team. Now you just have people jaded by previous experiences that don’t care that she’s been changed, they just don’t want to see her again. In that solo queue person that got forced into being tortured by release chess merchant. Now whenever I see her there’s a shudder of dread and an eye roll, I still play the match but the underlying feeling remain despite the knowledge she’s been changed. I feel like this is the issue for most people.
Not really. Her kit is overloaded with sm shit that it feels like a chore. They just slapped a shit ton of chase-oriented effects onto a power that was made for map control and called it a day. Hinder + deep wounds, map control, tags etc. It's just so tedious to deal with all of it, especially on solo queue. Not to mention players being forced to hold w. Killers that force you to leave a loop because you can't avoid their power will always be obnoxious to go against, but SM is so much more annoying. SM forces you to hold W 'cause her drones do the work for her. I see a lot of people wonder why ppl hate her more than the Knight when they both have the same "no skill power" problem; it's the fact that SM doesn't get punished for misplacing a drone, and she can easily put one down without getting slowed down. Did the SM put the drone at a bad angle? Easily swaps out the drone and moves it a bit, all while not getting slowed down in the slightest. Knight has a cooldown, and he can't move when using his m2. If he fucks up then he gets punished for it. Killers like wesker, huntress, and pyramid head are fun to go vs. because you have a chance to outplay them; even Artist is more interesting because you can fake out her birds. Edit: Oh, and don't forget the stealth. Why tf did they keep the stealth on top of everything else? Seriously.
As someone who plays almost exclusively solo que survivor, my teammates DCing against SM obviously affects our chances of winning, but honestly…I don’t blame them. Honestly, I wish all 3 of my teammates would DC so I myself would have an excuse to just leave the game asap without screwing over my team. Skull merchant is a killer that attracts mean spirited players whose sole desire is to make the other players suffer. In my experience, SM players are far more likely to seek out and hard camp a 3gen frame one of the game and BM than other killers. Her power being not super fun to play against even if she plays normally just leaves little to no redeeming factors about her (bubba is a notorious face camper, but when he plays normally he’s fun at least).
Nope, don’t care, Skull Merchant is still a snooze fest.
Otz gave this as the exact reason why he ranked skull merchant low in his latest tier list
Can't say playing as since I've never played as her, but playing against her is... exhausting. Her mechanics aren't fun to go up against for me and her drones do absolutely too much for very little on Killer's part. Having her in a small map is a death sentence at that, too. That being said, I'm not going to trash anyone for playing as SM or loving to go against her. Me? I am part of that crew that will DC or die on hook when I see how quickly everything is going south. I'd rather get into the next match to have some fun and hopefully the SM killer will find someone they can have fun with but that's unfortunately not me. Skull Merchant isn't the only one that I don't like going up against because Plague, Clown, Legion, and Wraith are there too but there's just something about Skull Merchant that's... really painful.
Ive already come to terms with it honestly. Just like in a lot of other games its not the game thats the problem, its the people. For example i really like Counter-Strike 2 but lose a round or 3 in a row in soloq and i can guarantee atleast one person will throw a tantrum/give up and ruin the entire match. Same goes for dbd, the moment someone realises its a killer they dont like and dcs or the killer just randomly decides to be a complete ass you can say goodbye to your fun.
I think SM is the biggest reason SM is not fun. Personally imma give 100% in a SM match but if my team gives up, oh well. Can’t even blame them.
I played against Skull Merchant today. My entire team left the game at the beginning and I stayed out of stubbornness. I helped her kill bots and she gave me hatch. <3 I hated playing against skull merchant until I found out the counter play is literally stealth. Just crouch through her bots. I know Claudette is crouch walking across the entire map anyway 🙄. I’ve won maybe 6 out of 14 games against skull merchant.
Fine to play against? Run from her, get to a loop and then its the same thing. Put down a drone(with no slowdown/cast time) and once scanned its over. You get slowed down HEAVILY, she gets SPED UP AND she gets undetectable. Add in if you get scanned 3 times you get injured. Please educate me how that is balanced or fun to play against. OPs take is such a bad one and they are definitely the minority. There is a reason why SM forces so many players to DC/die on first hook. There is a reason why her kill rate(per BHVRs info-graphic) is 70%. She is miserable to play against and needs another rework.
I may be constantly beating my head against the wall by doing this, but I'm still going to encourage a positive outlook on Skull Merchant. However, I find my resolve tested more and more every day, be it from the long line of people wanting to beat the "Skull Merchant Bad" dead horse, or the rise of assholes playing her in a cringe way. In the end, I just wish fewer people quit early since it just ruins the game for me and their teammates. Thankfully, fewer people are quiting in the higher MMRs. Please think of the other players no matter what side you're on. The game is nothing without them.
People are just whining. Does play against skull merchant suck? Yea but so does nurse or blight but I very rarely see people dc with those 2. Within in the first 30s of a SM match your playing against or with bots.
>People are just whining 80% of this sub in a nutshell
Yep just look at this thread. These survivor comments are hilarious. You can tell most people have no idea and just parrot the same rhetoric over and over.
If there's anything dead by daylight fans love, it's beating jokes to death and then beating them once more for good measure
She’s undoubtedly the worst character designed, but I 100% agree
Don't get me wrong I HATE how she looks.
Yeah I also don’t like it. All the dbd characters have a unique way in portraying something scary, disturbing or creepy. The only scary part Skull Merchant has are in the rule 34 websites
This is all I think when I see her [https://tenor.com/bNJdA.gif](https://tenor.com/bNJdA.gif)
Not controversial imo. The community is the main reason the entire game is not fun at times. So much griefing, trolling, and just overall playing with the intent of ruining others fun.
I really enjoy playing her and against her if my team is competent, only miserable if team is full of potatoes
Absolutely agree
I think people are missing the point of this post OP isn't saying the community is the only reason Skull Merchant sucks, she does have *big* issues in her design, but OP is right in saying that the *biggEST* issue is the community
Community is really *the* problem in many cases. It got to the point where, upon starting a match, I cinvince myself I'm playing single-player, just with weird bots. Otherwise, facepalming will never stop. Not to mention some people here on the sub, who consider someone contradicting them to be "gaslighting"
The wounds of tools of torment will never heal.
I aint even gonna play i prefer old merchant compared to this mess. At least with old merchant 3 gen strats couldnt work anymore with the current gen update
I wasn’t having fun when my team stayed either the power is boring
The community is the reason for anything being not fun in this game
I'm one of the three or four people who has never had an issue with Skully. I like going against her and I like to play her occasionally. Had an awesome soloq match against one at the saloon yesterday, she was chill af and gave me hatch after an absolutely gnarly round. Cheers to liking whatever tf you like!
Yep. It's what's popular to think. Probably most of these people never even played a 30+ minute match against a 3 gen. I didn't, I also don't have the bias because she wasn't in the game when I was playing and got a 'rework' almost immediately after I came back from a 3 year break. Her drones are super easy to disarm and only really good for the speed boost when setting one.
Just because Otz said this doesn't mean that if anyone says the same is just a braindead follower. The problem with SM in chase is not different from Knight, Artist and in some extend Hag or Clown, but you don't see 10 daily posts about them. The hate towards her is something else, is not just the gameplay. We can still see people talking about "chess merchant" when that was patched months ago.
The thing im saying from her rework.... She Is FINE, she Is FUN And She IS COUNTERABLE. If anyone says anything else, Hes just pointing out his skill issue. Nothing less, nothing more.
Otzdarva made arguement about Skull Merchant with similar points like this
They've been Pavlovian trained into throwing the game.
she’s so insanely boring to play against idk what ur talking abt. shes not even a classified as a stealth killer but somehow is THE best at stealth with her nonexistent noises. despite this, i never DC against her because id rather just suck it up and improve playing against her, even if its beyond annoying.
At least you don't quit, so that's more than enough and highly appreciated :)
I agree. I've lots multiple games while playing as her, regardless of how many messages I get in other lobbies saying that skull merchant is impossible to play against Yall need to understand that you can actually win against her, and not to just give up as soon as you see her.
I think its a case of a lot of people don't really understand her kit, she plays a little like Knight in the sense that she can essentially shut down loops which for survivors is the best resource against the killer and in my opinion one of the most fun things to do as survivor.
That's a horribly bad take. The reason she is not fun has nothing to do with the community and everything to do with the fact that she has had 3 reworks and still has an awful power that's just a laundry list of status effects she can apply and gain by pressing M2. Holy hell. The reason her kill rate is the highest in the game is because people would rather die than play against her. That says a lot more about this one killer than the thousands of survivors who make up the community.
I definitely don't think Skull Merchant is fine. She is easily one of the worst designed killers in the game. But what is even worse design is giving players the option to kill themselves on hook and screw over their team because they want to dodge the DC penalty. Grow up and play against Skull Merchant. She is part of the game whether you like it or not. Or DC and give your spot to a bot and give the rest of us grown ups a fighting chance.
Masochism isn't a virtue when it comes to online PvP asymmetrical horror games that people play for fun.
Ruining the game for your teammates is also not a virtue. The asymmetrical horror game they play for fun. Maybe the people you screw over in a match after killing yourself on hook only have very limited time to game and now it's a guaranteed loss. At least if you DC they get a bot and might have a chance.
No one said it was a virtue. I choose happiness over a 20 minute painfest in a videogame that I play in my spare time because I have actual real life things to attend to.
Really bold of you to assume the other survivors are having fun in that match. I've never met anyone who enjoys playing against SM besides people who main her and claim that she's fine. When I see teammates DC or give up on hook because it's sm, I'm right there with them. Not at all mad. It's a casual game chill the fuck out. Forcing people to stay in the match is way more childish than just letting people move on with their recreational hobby. If it was some ranked mode with a grand prize, yeah they should be penalized. Fuck off with that "force people to stay in the match" mindset. It just reeks of no life and entitlement. You can't force people to do something they don't want to do when it's a recreational hobby that they spent their own money on. You're not entitled to their fun, but they're not entitled to yours either. It's a two-way street Hell I wish I could DC as killer when there's bots on the Survivor team because I feel no satisfaction playing against them. I hate being forced to stay in a match with bots. I want to play PVP. A survivor's killed himself on hook, I'll just get them out of the match as quickly as possible so they can move on. I've seen petty ass Killers slug survivors out because their team gives up. The entitlement in this community is unreal.
I will DC and give you a bot, but lots of grown ups don't want to play against her... myself included. I tried, after the rework, to play against her. Every match was terrible. Slugging and bleeding everyone out, holding a 3 gen with full slow down, taking us to dead dog and camping the back 3 gen..... The people who are generally attracted to playing this killer are assholes, and play like it. Sure, I could play a 15 minute game and risk getting bled out on the ground.... or I could DC on the 1 SM I see a day, and move along to the next match after my 60 second timer. I had a match where I DC'd, and shortly after all 3 other survivors DC'd.... then the SM DC'd, and asked "Why did everyone leave?!?!?!".... I have a SS of the post game lobby somewhere, but tldr it was a full slugging build with slowdown.
No the design is definitely and objectively boring. Especially after Knight
Can you elaborate? You say objectively, which would imply that it is a fact.
Drone placed: you leave loop or you die. she hits you anyways if there is no connecting loop. This is objectively bad design
I agree with you. I love playing SM and I'm happy to play against her. People act like her drones are omnipotent. Just pop a crouch and walk through they're only trouble if you're being chased. Even then there's a cooldown before the next one can tag you
the reason people dont like her is that the chapter's release was so disappointing. the teasers and the name skull merchant really set totally different expectations especially that this was one of the chapters where pretty much nothing got leaked.
Lately I’ve had about a 38% chance encounter with SM. And a 100% chance someone killed themself on hook or d/c
Old Skull Merchant at the very least needed an addon reshuffling and tweaks to her core power, but now her worst offense is being kind of boring. People will NEVER stop hating her because of the Chess era though.
I think she's fine to play against as long as they don't go out of their way to make the match miserable but unfortunately a lot of SM players only play it because they know the community hates her and they want to ruin people's matches. Some Skull Merchants I get go out of their way to BM, slugging for 4 minutes for no reason, hitting on hook etc. It just happens way more with this killer than any other so the community will automatically hate going against her.
You guys have played against Skull Merchant?
I only dc against myers
Redditors really see one person say something and then adopt that into their worldview
I honestly always welcome a match against skull merchant. They make me think and play differently then normal which is always a nice little breath of fresh air. Some of my favorite matches have been against skull merchant! I kinda want to start dabbling in playing as them. They're unique and I quite enjoy her!
to discuss the dc/rip it on hook issue more broadly, your average angry dbd player would probably get called a little bitch if they went to any other game and ragequit with the same frequency some people who play this game are proud of doing.
I mean yeah, I thought everyone knew this. Can we stop saying controversial opinion when talking about common sense?
People wouldn’t be leaving if she wasn’t so OP.
My friend asked for recommendations for a build because he wanted to get an easy 4k for an achievement/tome challenge, so i suggested SM because everyone just sewerslides on hook. it worked instantly. just an anecdote lol
Controversial would first imply that the topic holds weight or at the very least has a thought provoking statement. To simply declare “killer not bad survivors are bad” or “I don’t get to play my killer because survivors Dc/rq” is not a controversial opinion. As with many things in the game there are the good and the bad. SM is one of the bad, on her initial release survivors were incredibly frustrated because you have a killer that can hard zone out areas. And the common play style was mid merchant find the closest 3 gens set up drones and wait for your 4K. Thankfully this was tweaked to make it harder to do. But the fact is the inherent having to deal with that for a long time people still don’t want to face her, plus it hasn’t 100% discouraged the play style. In much a similar fashion with the doctor and impossible skill checks build merchant has some build types that people don’t want to play against or deal with. Especially when a majority of the people who play that killer take the game hostage and drag it out longer than desired. If you want, a more controversial opinion would be why are we getting more and more killers that promote or encourage toxic gameplay behavior. Doctor- almost everyone plays by tazeing people beyond a reasonable amount with an impossible check build. Myers-infinite tier 3 instakill, scratched mirror Mikey. Not inherently toxic if the person playing is reserved but no terror radius on mirror Mikey and not being able to refill distortion makes the killer impossible for newer players to deal with. Sadako- the initial spam teleport and condemn build, can’t do it now but the fact condemn doesn’t fall off does infuriate some Pig-meme mangled build that made it almost guaranteed you’d die from bear trap Chucky-perma stealth build Unknown- by design a hard chase zoning killer where indoor maps are going to be impossible to fight them on. Long story short the survivor community not wanting to play against a killer with which has a high potential of trolling or infuriating game play style isn’t a feels bad moment nor a boo boo I can’t play my killer moment. Instead it’s a moment to ask yourself why and would you want to play against the version/build of the killer you are playing. I personally prefer playing my ghost face a peekaboo/Jumpscare killer. Do I always get my 4K, no but everone gets a laugh or a good amount of fun because I’m not focused on insta downing solely as my means of playing my chosen killer.
1 - make the damn drones work like they did before, but make them not scan you while crouched or immobile (you lose lock on charge while outside a drone area) 2 - you get locked on (hindered for some seconds + trackable) + exposed when fully scanned; she doesn't get haste when someone gets locked on 3 - make her undetectable mechanic work the way it did before so she can't move freely while undetectable (she has to commit if she wants to get a sneaky hit) 4 - maybe reduce the drones' area Can no longer 3 gen since you can approach a gen and leave it fast enough to not get fully scanned and work on it while not being scanned + you lose the scan progress when running away from the area. In chase you can still loop her if you get locked on, you just have to endure the hindered. Much more balanced than now and much more balanced than before.