I'm brazilian and i don't like how she doesn't have anything related to the local mythology...or even doesn't have any skulls in her costumes...she is even selling anything?
@@lemonlime8949dont be this type of person you're being. No one likes this kind of person. They never said that was their biggest issue. Its just their issue with the character. If this comment is your biggest issue then perhaps you should take a step back and be a bit more grateful
I mean as a Canadian Im not upset that legion has nothing to do with our cultures and whatnot, I mean why do they have to? Its not like these killers are supposed to be representatives or icons of their country of origin. Is doctor also a poorly designed killer cause he doesnt integrate any south african mythology into his design?
Lore and everything aside, I think one of the biggest issues with Merchant's power on the survivor side is that despite her changing so much, the way you play against her in chase is exactly the same. Get to loop, she drops drone, leave loop; rise and repeat until she eventually inflicts your survivor with every status effect in the game and then just downs you because she is way faster.
I love this play style honestly dropping a drone in a loop is pretty smart, you have to end the chase and get that hook so you can scurry and stop people working on gens
@@ink3487 Legion isn't. They're actually smaller than most survivors. Skull merchant is weird tho. Trapper and Myers are big guys and look natural same as huntress, but skull merchant looks like a stretched out PNG.
@@bigbrainonimain9226 I didn't know that lol I always just assumed the legion was bigger than the survivors and just had the worst posture on the planet
@@ink3487 yeah legion is a bit smaller than ghost face and he's shorter than the male survivor so legion is about the size of female survivors I'd say.
You hit the nail on the head with this one. I wouldn't be surprised if she got reworked a second time or just abandoned by the devs like Twins. She definitely does have cool components to her but they don't feel as harmonious as they could be. I really like the idea of an assassin killer but when I first heard the name Skull Merchant, the Kollector from MK popped into my head lol. Now, almost every aspect of her has been altered in some way since her release and people are going to gradually stop caring. Also, I think her lore could have been more connected to Renato and Thalita's. Maybe as a business partner or something. Well done with this video. ❤
You don’t understand her lore. The Skull Merchant is an Apex Predator. The entity wanted her in its realm so Thalita and Renato were the bait. They weren’t the original targets but rather stumbled upon her kill because the Skull Merchant does fail at closing the deal. There needed to be an outside source to serve as the motivator and Thalita being blinded by the entity’s illusion with Renato being dragged by her was that bait.
I think Skull just feels like a "first draft" all around - I can see some parts of her backstory and design that could've maybe worked if it had more time in the oven. ultimately, I think for me, at least, she just came out looking cheap, and it felt like a cheap grab at having a 'sexy' killer, and then on top of that, just her power being boring for other sides and extremely abusable was a final nail in the coffin for making her so hated.
to add to this, it doesn't even feel like she was originally supposed to be that sexy, and it was more an afterthought of "shit, this entire concept and design is terrible, let's give her an exaggerated hip sway when she walks and make all of her purchasable cosmetics look like a high-end (but bad taste) stripper"
thing is she is not even THAT sexy. Like yeah i also think she is hot but if it was about that you'd think BHVR would go all out in that regard, i mean even spirit shows more. The cut off limbs might just be the reason that she has not that exact effect to people. But i think if it was only about SM's appearance then BHVR wouldve made it more obvious.
@@liandre9035 that’s true! I think it was her walk cycle at the time that made me go “…seriously?” the most when I first saw her in the PTB. And tbh, I think a more like ‘sexy killer’ / femme fatale idea could also work in dbd if done right, and already has kinda in some killers already - I think that it’s just w/ SM unfortunately it was just another under done idea added to the already mixed bag of them
@@cosmicsquid9875 i highly agree. Trickster for example has a very high affect on me on that matter but he also has interesting story and is unique in being a musician-killer which we dont see anywhere else really. Skull merchant is many things but nothing of them really 100% comitted.
There was a bug with one of her add ons that allowed her to infinitely stack vault speed. What this did was make into so that she could basically leap over windows in a parkour type of way. At the time I thought this would have been a really neat addition to her kit giving her more flare.
i have a hunch that she was supposed to be a licensed character, that being the Predator. but something went wrong with the licensing agreements at the last minute, causing BHVR to scrap most of the concept work and plaster things together into a half-functioning heap of junk. this would explain her dissonant design elements.
Oh it's kind of obvious that she was supposed to be a predator license, the same way Legion were gonna be the Ghostface's of the game until they got the actual ghostface. It'd be awesome if she did get a yautja skin
Back when the SM hate was in full swing it was exactly that polarization that drew me to trying her out. I tried my best to make builds/playstyles that went against that 3-gen-camping meta, but it was very limited due to her poor game design. However by now I have actually come to appreciate her in her now reworked state and adopted her as my current main. Still, even when I play the fairest I can, never tunneling, camping, always giving hatch, I still regularly get called slurs and other stuff in the post game chat. I don't want her to become a fan favorite or anything, but I just wish people realized at this point that hating a character just out of principle only hurts their own enjoyment of the game.
The issue with her now is that she has too many mechanics. It can be exhausting to play against her whilst having to focus on so many things. Regardless, it sucks people will personally attack you just for playing a character in a game
That last sentence is important because people who openly hate on Skull Merchant and anyone who plays her, are generally very miserable people and seemingly HATE playing the game. It’s easier to see this behavior in streamers since a lot more of their behavior is recorded…but even then, you can see them leave matches at the slightest inconvenience and encouraging their viewers to do the same because “I’m not going to waste my time” or how they’ll get upset at the enemy player for anything. Often citing absurd complaints to them like claiming that the enemy killer or survivor is stream sniping or calling them a terrible person.
@@Polevolter Two extremely different points here. Accusing people of stream sniping and being a miserable person has nothing to do with hating Skull Merchant. She's a horrible design, her rework is no better than her last iteration, and people that openly despise her aren't "Miserable People", they just don't enjoy queuing into matches with a killer whose power on some maps covers an entire corridor and is impossible to avoid.
10:19 As a DBD player who recently quit, I played maybe around 4 months after the release of her rework regarding her 3 gen strategies, and most of them were using their drones to chase (I still have mixed feelings about her drones in chase) but there was one that stood out, a match where I was playing against a Merchant in Nostromo Wreckage with 2 of my friends and the SM was still trying to do a 3-gen strategy. Maybe this was because of the terrible gen placement or the bad loops in Nostromo Wreckage, but we were slaughtered in that match, and even I, who had been playing dbd for about 3 years at that time and was good at looping, couldn't hold a chase against her because she decimated every pallet in a 30 meter radius. However, that wasn't the main problem. It was her drones. She planted them at the 3 final generators and would patrol them constantly. While this isn't a problem at face value because you couldn't get stacks while repairing the generator, the fact still stands that she had Undetectable after planting her drones, which she constantly did because she would recall a drone that had been disabled and put another one down. This fact meant that we were forced to run straight into the drones beam as the Undetectable meant we had no forewarning and could only know she was coming until it was too late to avoid being locked on by the drone, making her chases frustratingly easy due to the claw trap. That match alone convinced me the SM 3 gen strat is not entirely dead.
That match alone should convince you that your communication sucks. You or your friends can easily call out where she's going by actually using your eyes. And nostromo 3 gen setups are not good either. If you were in swamp,game or garden of joy yes it is very difficult but nostromo gens are mostly spread out
@@ardaoguzhan8181 We did tell each other what generators she was leaving and heading towards, especially because we were all working on separate gens and would know which ones she left and was heading towards because we were so spread out, but she still got to each generator fast enough to stop us from working on it, and the SM also had good generator regression perks like Pop Goes the Weasel, so even if you were forewarned (which wasnt always the case because her pathing wasn't always clear) hid from her and got back on the generator immediately, it still took a huge chunk of your generator progress even if it barely had any time to regress.
@@ardaoguzhan8181I disagree because we did call out to each other based on which gen she was leaving, but her pathing wasn't always clear, as she could disappear from the main building and not know if she was going to come out and patrol from the other side or come out from the entrance, so even if we saw her we couldn't know 100% where she might to next. Furthermore, even if you were warned that she was coming, she had gen regression perks (specifically Pop) that would get rid of a huge chunk of progress on your generator even if you had hid from her successfully and started working on it immediately to stop the regression. I also think that my argument still stands because even if our communication was sucky and that was why we lost, that just proves my argument further, because if 3 survivors with communication couldn't counter this strategy, how could solo queue survivors manage to organize themselves and communicate well enough to counter this strat? Also, I guess it's kind of a matter of opinion but I think Nostromo Wreckage is a terrible 3-gen map. There is a middle gen that can be completed, but I'd argue the gens are close enough anyway. In the match we were in, there was a gen by the face hugger window, one a bit up and to the right next to the (completed) middle gen and one next to the crashed emergency shuttle. Even though we had completed the middle gen (which is usually what you are supposed to do to prevent a 3-gen) the SM still managed to patrol fast enough to completely stop the last gen from completing despite having no mobility (unless you count the haste you get from tracking people)
As a major enthusiast of modern-day Skull Merchant, this is easily the best video I've seen from anyone dissecting her problems. She's not perfect, but she's probably the most misunderstood Killer DBD has ever had and so many videos go into talking about her with the guillotine already assembled. This video is anything but: a great video that I hope many will see, and might lead some to re-examine their attitudes towards the Killer. Well done!
Who are u kidding. She fucking ass. No way around it. Horribly designed no matter how you spin it, she’s pretty much designed for noobs and players who suck at chase. She literally drops the killer skill ceiling to the bottom of the abyss.
_Most people rejected his message. They hated Pixel Bush because he told them the truth._ “Merchant is actually awesome; y’all are just mad about a version of her that isn’t even in the game anymore.”
Personally, Skull Merchant and Knight are my top two Killers (I have a lot of Killers and Survivors). I was hesitant at first but after a few games, I loved her. I know that she is one of the most hated Killers, but personally, I hate Cenobite, Freddy, Trickster, Sadakko, Pyramid Head, and Chucky. Why, because those are the Killers I struggle with the most when playing Survivor. When I play Skull Merchant, I try to be fair. I also found her mini game fun too. It's sad that not many play as her. To be honest, Trickster and Cenobite are worse than Skull Merchant. They will absolutely tunnel me off the hook every match I've had with them. I'm sorry if my opinion offends anyone, but I enjoy playing Skull Merchant and Knight, and no nothing will change that.
@@Vulpecula-Enfield I tried to play her because I needed to burn some bp offerings on her and I was actually bored halfway through. I just felt so powerless since people just simply went from one loop to the next when a drone was up and there did not feel like anything I could do to outplay them. I play a ton of Wesker, billy and used to play blight so I am used to looking for opportunities for hitting a nice dash or saw to outplay a survivor when they don't expect it. With SM I could not do anything like that except just put up the drone and hope.
For me, its the lore and the look. The lore doesn't, at all ,mesh well with the defaults look; In my opinion, the overall look of the killer should at least reflects the lore, not contrast it.
I agree, you have to admit that you thought it was very silly the first time you read The Wraith’s lore and found out he was a guy named Phillip who worked as a car wrecker.
Her lore is kinda funny, she's just a super rich weeb that fell into her dark desires and became a cosplaying murderer (I like to imagine the entity might have pushed her along), but in game she looks... like a mishmash. I see the technician part, the rich part, the murderer part, but they manage to clash in a way where I'm not sure they could have done it worse.
@@WalterCDS I agree the whole chapter needs a redo, where they should redesign SM, keep the survivors the same and maybe give their perks some tweaks, redesign the map and give SM a better power
I think skull merchant is another case of tease the exact opposite of what it is. The most down to earth description of the skull merchant is a Brazilian weeb cosplaying her dad’s favorite character who is called the skull merchant. We aren’t getting the actual thing, we are getting some unusually successful person ‘hard to believe’ who gets away with killing people when they don’t merge with her company. Her drones are just an extension of it. She’s quite literally just a person embodying a character she enjoys, taking it to the logical extreme. I’d have taken us getting the actual FICTIONAL skull merchant rather than Adriana ‘granted they look the same according to the one of the iri addons’ Cause it would be neat in concept having fiction become reality in the DBD universe, so much like Onryo, spirit and Oni, who are based of the belief of Yokai, which is technically depending on the lense you look at it, a form of fiction. But no, we got a character cosplaying her favorite character, that her father made and becoming one with said character. Meanwhile her gameplay was grossly advertised poorly. Remember the box of her companies logo next to a hook? Whatever happened to that? I’d have preferred her kit revolved around her having limited amount of drones in her inventory and her having to restock in drones every now and then. Hell I think it would fit this current design for her way better, since that means her chase potential becomes limited as well as incentivizes disabling drones. Cause restocking drones could be considered a full on drone clear so she can reapproach the situation. But we got this hyper chase fixated killer, and with the right build can still 3 gen.
It’s Brazil and she’s rich. Idk why you find it so hard to believe that a wealthy person who can cover their tracks and buy people’s silence can’t murder tons of people and get away with it in a country that isn’t as heavily policed as America or other 1st world countries. Furthermore, her being the cosplayer of her father’s character IS her being the Skull Merchant. The lore is a time paradox. He saw visions of her in the entity’s realm and so he put that on paper, inspiring the Skull Merchant but also being inspired by the Skull Merchant. They are the same person. Besides, her current design is very nuanced and fun. Y’all just hate cuz y’all wanted Singularity first
I completely forgot about the boxes they teased. I remember thinking that she was some sort of field upgrade killer that could modify their drones or themselves to suit the needs of the current match. That alone I think would make for fun swingy gameplay that players desire. The inclusion of fiction becoming reality would also be a very interesting topic because it would mean that the entity can take the fiction from other worlds and make a reality which not only opens more doors for interesting lore, but maybe even unique designs for gameplay
@@uwu-ul9mm I don’t hate skull merchant as a whole, I can see her appeal, simple as, however, that doesn’t mean I don’t have her issues. If you take time to read her lore there’s a lot of stuff that just makes you turn your head. The fact she became basically what the describes as a billionaire at assumedly at a young age after her father disappears is so far out there and hard to believe. Furthermore, she was still consequently inspired by her father’s visions, rather than it making a gradual descent into her becoming the skull merchant she WANTED to become the skull merchant. It’s hard to like a character written like this because it’s a way of simplifying her writing so they can go ‘unga bunga she’s now in the realm now’ and the sudden shift to her being a billionaire is what makes it worse. They TELL you, rather than simplifying it or elaborating it to you, they fuck up the writing style of show don’t tell, show us abusing her wealth, show us using it to our advantage rather than telling us a long winded story on how she became one, remove all of that and show her abusing her wealth to merge companies and killing those who don’t conform. It was such an unnecessary detail that makes her hard to like. I don’t hate her as a character. I hate how she’s written, portrayed and how she’s designed, I personally hate singularities story because it’s mind numbing, but I’m not going to go on a tangent about his. I can see what the devs were going for with her game design, but it was so poorly executed that it can’t be justifiably defended, and hearing most defenses of her being ‘you just hate women’ and a whole lot more is mind numbing. I appreciate the devs trying something new, but the time she was added was not right, plus there was a lot of shit going against her, along side the negative reception of the knights chapter. Again, I don’t hate her, I appreciate the attempts the devs made and I see what they were going for, but it wasn’t going to be a well received chapter just from how it was both from teases plus how it was initially advertised. It was a PR disaster from the start, exactly the same issue with legion.
@@bunnalope Along side this, it allows fictional characters to change to better fit DBD’s style. Which by technicality’s stance opens up Manga’s and so much more to become a thing and make the characters look more naturally human as well. Specifically like Ajin.
@@LynxRecruit the fact that they never tell you what I’m about to tell you means that you can’t glean anything from a show don’t tell writing style. Her mother owned a restaurant. Her mother owned a business and handled money all the time. She had a parent, a direct influence over her, who knew how to deal with currency for a small business. She was raised in an environment where she had access to first hand knowledge involving money. She was also academically gifted. She tried hard in school; both her parents being driven individuals. Her father is stated to be obsessive and so she took that from him. She was also competitive which drives her to be the best. Study more. Get higher grades. Understand the material better. Then she gets kids to write for her manga site, realizing she’s better at managing and delegating rather than writing herself. But this means that she’s becoming the exact kind of person who cut her father’s manga from their publishing list when he asked for more royalties and the same kind of person who fired her father when he asked for a break at his job at the canning factory. And instead of her father stepping to say that disappoints him, he disappears. The entity was probably involved in that disappearance because the entity determined that her father’s purpose was served and now he would only hinder Adriana with his presence. In the wake of this trauma, Adriana probably falls further into confusion about her identity. She latched onto her father’s creation who is so much like her already. It’s narcissistic to be the Skull Merchant as everything the Skull Merchant is, she already is. But it’s also comforting to be the Skull Merchant because it’s her father’s creation. It feels like affirmation. And it also feels like a guideline and so it serves as security. Then we get even more show don’t tell in her tome lore where we see her hunting a military vet. We see her use a new forearm mounted display and use her penthouse as the arena. That is them showing her abusing her wealth. We also have her addons. All of them are tools (of torment) that she used on her countless hunting expeditions. We get even more lore on her own map. Scattered around her base lay various “women in business” magazines. All of her victims are shown to be men. It’s never stated but we never see a female victim. We see body parts in the fridge and tapped onto the dummies. She’s a Medusa-like character. She’s an apex predator. She uses her intelligence, knowledge, beauty, and athleticism to maneuver herself into position, charm/intimidate/coerce her prey, and then she plays with them for a weekend where she confuses them, terrifies them, and tests them before finally killing them. If you have any knowledge of psychology, then you really see just how well crafted this character is. The Singularity’s lore is very mind numbing, I agree. But it’s because all the writing went to both Gabriel’s development and then the world building. However, with Tools of Torment, all their writing went to fleshing out Adriana. She’s not meant to be likable. Most if not all of their original killers aren’t meant to be likable. They are “bad” people. They are murderers and abusers and rapists and narcissists and overall jerks. They aren’t meant to be cool outside of their appearance when you play as them. I have wanted a character like Skull Merchant for so long. I have wanted an actually evil woman who wears shoes and isn’t body horror gored to all hell to be a killer ever since I started playing this game around the Clown’s midchapter. I specifically wanted a female vampire who looked badass and beautiful, who felt superior and evil. And Skull Merchant is that. She’s vampiric in the sense that she uses her victims for both her tech and their money/companies. She consumes them for her own benefit. And because she’s cos playing, there is so much room for skin ideas because they aren’t forced to do tiny deviations of one idea over and over. Deathslinger skin, for example, are all so the same. He’s always going to be a cowboy in a hat and every skin he gets will always keep him as a cowboy in a hat. And Hillbilly will always be a fucking country bumpkin and Spirit will always be in a fucking kimono. Being a cosplayer who is more human and who carefully curates her appearance means there is so much they can do with her. Even her base skin reveals so much about who she is. Furthermore, her base skin shows that she is functionally a sequel to Trapper. They both wear overalls with a green tint and they both make their own weapons, masks, and traps. They both have fathers who massively impacted their lives and they both are involved in business. But Skull Merchant is sleeker than he is, faster than he is, stealthier than he is. She actually likes murder. She actually succeeded with her goals in life. There is a reason she is on his map. She’s the better female version of him in both a narrative sense and a gameplay sense. In her mid chapter trailer, the narrator says, “This IS Dead By Daylight” as if to make a point about the state of the game and how this new killer does a job the poster child for the game does but is better at it. She starts with all her traps, he doesn’t. She can recall them from anywhere, he can’t. She can place them quickly, he can’t. Hers are huge aoe zones, his are tiny. Etc etc. all the complaints that people have about playing trapper are fixed on her but people then say she’s too easy, too simple. I could rant forever about Skull Merchant. The bandwagon of hate for her is so unjustified.
She hasn’t got a good power design sadly,and I don’t think even a rework could fix her.Maybe only an entire power change,remove the stones and add something else, could work if done well.
They should make it so that she can manually fly a drone around the map. Two options; ping a survivor to track them, or use it to attack them. Cooldowns and stuff would apply, but it's way simpler, makes her a legitimate stealth / ambush character, and way more interesting
If they do rework her I want her to keep her tracking aspect somehow. Her tracking Is better them any other killer IMO except maybe legion with his huge killer instinct. Plus the tracking she and legion share aren't perk dependant and could be fun and synergistic and interestingly powerful in many gamemodes to come. Plus her current lore was her basically tracking people to destroy them I think.
For me, the main reason I dislike her so much nowadays is that she is way too complicated. Her power does so many different things that it makes it hard to even tell whats happening when playing against her sometimes. For example, one of my first games against her (this was post rework) she snuck up on me with undetectable right away (had no idea she could even stealth), then proceeded to get 2 hits on me that felt like I got cheated out of an extra loop I would've normally gotten (later found out this was because she has a small haste boost built into her power). Its just so frustrating to play against a killer that has no clarity on what they actually do
Regarding the clarity part, If I heard a killer got a rework, the first thing I’d do is go online and read what was changed so I know what to expect when going against them. No offense but this sounds more like a you problem than an actual game issue.
@@definitelyaduckdoesn't matter all game's SM does is pre camp or tunnel somebody out to win giving her skillless mechanics in match cause other casual survivors just to give up
Her main issue is that there is no counter play to her power, except holding W and hoping you get distance. If you disable her drone (trap), you only get 45s at most. Then her power comes back. Also she can remotely reactivate it from a distance. These are things Hag, Trapper, or Freddy can’t do. So disabling her drones gives no benefit really. It would if they went away. The other thing is her drones apply 3-4 debuffs on you all while she gets faster and is undetectable. Killers with no real counter play that can’t be looped are going to be unpopular.
Honestly I really love the skull merchant and she is one of my favorite killers. That is definitely due to the fact that I started playing dbd right as she came out so I wasn’t let down that she wasn’t what everyone thought she was going to be. If the took away all the status effects and just make her a tracking killer then I’d be happy with that.
I enjoy playing all killers except Nurse and Blight. Both give me vertigo from the jerk movement. Skull Merchant is a killer I enjoy playing because of how you have several options, as of her slight reworking. You can force a survivor away from loops with your drones. You can use the drones to temporarily gain undetectable to mindgame with no red stain. You can overwhelm certain areas of the map preventing the survivors from swarming you when you go to hook, as they risk being injured and granting you a LOT of movespeed. While I agree the camping stuff is no fun, her chasing is more interactive than most killers. Also, her design is not goos by default but nearly all of her skins look great. Her mori is especially an egreigious offender in a lack of thematic. What I would change thematically for her: Base outfit - No more overalls. Instead, she wears a jumpsuit Kill Bill style. On the Jumpsuit would be high tech looking armor plating to defend her against her prey-- she's not immortal, superhuman, or a monster. Pallets would hurt without protections. Radar - Not a handheld device, now a wrist mounted touch screen device, a lot more modern tech looking. Expensive looking. Mask - Both eyes are covered with a high tech visor with enough opacity to see through to her eyes. Her mouth is fully covered with a respirator with a tube coming out to oxygen on her back-- she's so pompous that she doesn't even need to breathe the same air as lesser life forms. Decoration - Throughout the entire costume, she would have bones of past victims attached to the high tech metal. Trophies of her games. Mori - Instead of stabbing the survivor, she decapitates them, and calls a drone to take the head away for extraction later.
Her power? Interactive? Are we talking about the same killer here? What's so interactive about her putting up a drone, forcing you to leave a tile and then getting a free hit on you? Or putting up a drone, but you still decide to stay in the tile and she gets a free health state with the drone either way? It's stupid. She is the ONLY killer in the game that can get a 4k by doing absolutely nothing. It's stupid.
@Dillion Meyer Your redesign idea for her is great would actually make her look cool, would like to add one thing to the design Weapon - Instead of being attached to her arm (by what I’m assuming is tape and hope) her weapon IS her arm she removed it in order to make way for her tool of death.
Yesterday I fought a p87 Skull Merchant that held a 3gen from the start of the match, my team wasn't a swf but we all understood we needed to break it. The SM would place drones over all the escape routes from the generators so if you needed to flee you had to take the broken status effect. My team would waste so much time attempting to disable the drones, eventually everyone got tired of the 20 minute match we all threw in the towel. I hate this killer, it's so dumb what she's capable of doing for literally 0 effort. She deny's areas you can run through but sometimes those areas are the only places you CAN run through. Even when disabling drones she can replace them super fast making it useless again.
The new SM can't 3 gen, you can literally do gens without getting scanned by her drones, and the new anti 3 gen basically killed the tactic so either you're new or just capping
I personally don't dislike her (I hate clown more) But I only played three times against her. In two she weren't that bad in comparison to other ones and in one of she helped me defeat an extremely toxic survivors, who sabotaged all of us the whole time.
She’s always gave me borderlands 3 vibes due to how similar she looks to the cyclipso twins in that game. Only upside however a unfortunate one in my opinion is it’s a good thing her power came with her and not predator considereding how ppl wanted her to be predator. I don’t think ppl would of appreciated a wanted killer to have such a hated power concept that is good for 3 genn’ing. I feel she could of been muuch better just a bit unfortunate character over all.
I really want to like her, especially as someone who plays primarily killer, but even with all the reworks she doesn't feel fun to me. I think her power does too many different things, a stacking haste buff and stealth as well as injuring, broken, deep wound, hindered, killer instinct... it's just way too much. Her traps also differ from other trap killers like trapper or hag, she doesn't have to slow down to place them, her setup and anti-loop is way too fast that makes it feels uncounterable, even if it is counterable. I really want to like skull merchant, even if I don't like her design, but I feel they need to simplify her kit to be less about applying every effect in the game, decide whether she should get haste or stealth, because both is excessive, and maybe make her drones move or patrol or something so they feel more avoidable. I use the word feel a lot here because even though things are currently fine, while playing as or against her they don't feel fine. This was a great video that I hope people look at and reflect on so they stop treating her too harshly, a lot of people just hate without explanation, this was the best critique of her I've seen since she's been added.
In my opinion, the only thing that can "save" Skull Merchant is a complete rework. Changing her lore, which is bad, her design, which is very bad, and finally her power or the way the drones work. Because until she has a complete rework, she will continue to be the community's punching bag. It surprises me that Behavior thinks this was a good killer idea. I don't have much to complain about both survivors because they are actually really good in terms of design, lore, etc.
Personally, I would say her name "Skull Merchant" don't fit at all, it makes it sound like she is a bounty hunter or something not a manga reader, also her walking animation just makes it looks like she is floating forward. But other than that, I would say she is okay. Doctor on the other hand is the only one I kinda feel I wanna DC from because he is way to powerful. I never do DC but a Doctor game makes it really tempting. :(
I get she's rich and the name relates to her cosplay, but tbh the only skull thing she does is her drones and she doesn't actually sell anything, even in her lore I don't think, besides company ownership or something
I feel like her aesthetic, her teaser, and her story could all be separate parts of different killers... I don't hate her or even dislike her, I just think they had the ideas right but couldn't mash them together properly.
Its honestly sad for me personally because The Skull Merchant is the only killer that actually speaks to me visually and gameplay wise. She is the reason I started to play killer more and play survivor less because none of the killers gave me that girlboss vibe she has that I just love and resonate with. I would just stick to playing Elodie and Yun Jin and never touch killer. Now I rarely play survivor. And while I was completely loving everything about her, to her looks, power, and her story back in the PTB, people started hating on her. Its like every character I like is everyones most hated. Its like when i was a Symmetra main in overwatch 1 before her rework, plus mercy before her rework as well, and Seraphine from LoL, etc. I wish people would give Adriana a chance because she is a really cool character. Or at least, I think so.
You think your main killer hated? I started main Nurse from the day she was released. Just because... She was cool? That is, her lore, the exterior design, the story of how she froze in the air like in a noose + her choked breathing and screams. I was just visually pleased. And I still love her the most. But as if I feel guilty? That is, as if if I just play it and win, then I become the most typical nurse mainer. But... I just love her strength, her design and her story... I just like not because she's meta, but cool(
@@user-sh6xt8ky7e Yeah that honestly sucks. I actually love playing against the nurse. It's fun to me trying to hide from her so she doesn't blink at me and stuff. Her power is fun to use as well 😁. At least you've probably never had the experience of 4 survivors DCing at the same time the first 15 seconds after hearing my terror radius 😂
@El_chara well that seems like a overly pessimistic view. Yeah there's a lot of toxic people but I've also met a handful of friendly people too who don't like merchant. And it will be very clear they don't mind me and they just dislike the character. Hatred for the character doesn't equal hatred for me.
@@user-sh6xt8ky7e I agree with you on Nurses lore being awesome but it’s just yet another reason she should be reworked entirely. I would play her too. The problem is that even if the survivors win, they have little agency in the game. Having said that though I let way too many survivors go and never hook the same person consecutively unless they actively prevent me hooking somebody else. I think too much about whether the other side is having fun and thus could never play Nurse. A shame you like her for those reasons. I at least have Joey to like.
Personally my issue with Skull Merchant is she's too complex to play against. There's too many mechanics and features to her power that it can be genuinely exhausting to play a full match against her. Her entire kit just needs simplifying. Nearly a year later I still stand by my original impression on her; she should just have the ability to manually fly a drone around the map, and use it for either recon or lethality. You know, LIKE SHE DOES IN HER LORE? The mind games with the drone would be insane; is she tracking you? Is she trying to damage you? Or is she luring you straight to where she's hiding to ambush you? Way simpler. Way more engaging. Way scarier. No status effect spam. No 100 mechanics to have to focus on.
@@Tem07 Is the drone in stealth mode or scout mode? Do you deactivate the drone or leave it? If you deactivate it, you gotta do the minigame. If you're detected, she can see your location AND gets a speed boost. When is it safe to take the claw trap it and hindered effects in chase? You also have to keep track of your teammate's trap progress to figure out when she has her speed boosts, and if she's spamming drones for undetectable. There's even more to her kit and it's headache inducing
@@therandommikaelastealth and scout literally only make it so you dont get double tapped by the same drone the speed is mostly just a leftover of her old kit, the main thing (like with a bunch of killers) is just to not mindlessly run into areas you know she was previously at Edit: plus again like a lot of killers just use your crouch: hag traps, SM drones, p-head's trails, any projectile killer, and prob some others i cant remember right now Crouching around ISNT a meme
This video is extremely well done. As a skull merchant main, I understand that her power has issues and so does her design. I would love to see her get a redesign and a slight rework but because everyone will just keep hating her, bhvr will most likely ignore her. Thanks for presenting both sides because there are things about her that should be praised, but she’s not perfect, like most killers. (Also about her long nails not being practical they’re nail rings that can’t be chipped or taken off, so they are kinda practical)
I think Merchant from purely a gameplay standpoint is fine now. May not have played against her enough but her power feels like you can actually interact with it and you can engage her in a way that's healthy. This is something a significant amount of killers lack. I think many people are misinformed about the fact Merchant can't do the three gen anymore and the fact drones can't detect you while still or crouched. Which to be fair the game does nothing to explain to people.
I actually kinda like her but i hate how you get punished for being chased through her drones. She already gets so much for them why do they have to bring you from healthy to deep wound just because your trying to get away smh
I love this video. This is a breath of fresh air from just reading out the results of your community polls and then trying to write a script around that. This feels very thought out.
I was the type of people who wanted a cyborg as killer (specially after i theorize about a killer name "Monstrosity" mentioned in lore) but i already know that BHVR loves to troll people in original trailers (especially Deathslinger's teaser) but when i discovered it was another human, i said "okay, another trickster, this time i will give her a chance" Read the lore: Completely done by someone who wrote a self insert creepypasta back in 2015, CEOs getting murdered by a random girl that wasn't happy, everything is working as planned, casually... where are the security guards? Did the CEOs hire them from GenSec? (Payday pun), since when the manga was so popular in Brazil? I thought the tome was going to fix some contradiction on her base lore, but no, we learn that she is jealous and stalks a classmate because he is better than her in a test.. Visual: Military outfit with a huge metal claw and a mask (Why in first place does she has a white shiny mask?) (Why does she has a very tight suit?) etc... She doesn't even resemble anything about Brazilian culture, not even in her skins. Until we discovers she is cosplaying a manga character... Imagine killing people cosplaying as Yor Forger Power: I remember expecting in the PTB doing like 4 different stuff with my power, such as controlling drones (this was because of BHVR teasing them in military crates) such as Twins and Knight combined. I place a drone and that's all... even the survivors i was facing, were so disappointed, even one of them asked me. "Did you even test the killer?" Nothing good comes from Adriana, and honestly this is the only case that if she leaves the game, nothing would change.
Really, I don’t have them yet but want to get them, I enjoy playing against them because they give you something else to do while not being overpowered and overwhelming me
Honestly, I like your thinking behind the outfits. It makes a lot of sense to me how you explained it and the changing of her power was mostly due to complaining which is sad. I've not played her much, maybe 2 games. But I've come away from this with a little bit more understanding of merchant so thank you dude
The PR at Behaviour is at fault for wrong expectations. The point of trailers, teasers etc., is to make people think and talk about the product, they had enough time to redirect expecations, but they didnt. Its not the communities responsibility to carefuly analyse and criticise a teaser, the market isnt a court house.
DBD community probably thought the Death Merchant was going to be the scientist from the Re-Animator horror films which considering its public domain now would actually be a good killer if done right.
I remember wanting to have hope for Sm when testing her out in the ptb. Well, both ptbs, but she just still doesn't hit the mark for me. I find her counterplay in chase so incredibly boring. Run to loop, she drops drone in loop, leave loop. If you stay, you'll become hindered which I genuinely believe to be one of the most boring status effects known to man, or if you leave you'll probably just die. Either way, you lose. I like the idea of her drones as a lone concept. It can be fun dodging the beams in order to disable them, but in chase? It's just boring as hell.
I can respect the idea behind the killer, but I think the execution is just quite boring and not very interactive. Not only that but she does not represent her name "Skull Merchant" at all. What does she have to do with skulls? The Pig would carry that name much better then she does because of her head traps
There is also something you really don't touch upon that also doesn't help, her playerbase/fanbase are just awful. They will harass you and call you sexist for not liking her and in game more skull merchant players love and i mean LOVE to bm, every skull merchant i have gone agasint one my limited time as survivor (i'm a killer main) is basically hook hitting, slugging at 5 gens, toxic and very VERY bigoted in the end game chat.
hey man, sorry for your experience, I am a SM main and I personally hate people like that, all the times I play with her people think I'm going to play like someone like that, and when I just play normally, they just DC or lose at 4 gens, because nobody knows how to counter her nowadays
Yeah it's almost guaranteed at this point that when you get a SM that they will BM and be toxic, even after the rework. There's just something about killers like her that lure the trolls. If I had to guess, it's because her design is so terrible that she is guaranteed to make people mad, especially when you throw tunneling and camping into the mix.
As a SM main this is so sad to hear, I never play toxic even when bombarded with flashlights, t bagging and head on strats from survivors, I always just try to play nice and fair, often letting people escape for free and simply having fun with her power and small interactions. It’s sad that many people hate her so much but I hope I can bring back a little bit of hope as a nice skull merchant main
Probably the biggest thing that will keep her hated is that people know she is hated, so a good number of people playing her are playing her because they want to make people miserable. Probably 3/4ths of the games I play against Merchant, rare as they are, its just better to DC. Otherwise you will all just be slugged and dry humped until you bleed out.
While going against mainstream takes often grants interesting insights, the hatred towards the Skull Merchant is none of these cases. Because sometimes, the masses are actually quite justified in their assessment. The problem is that her anti-chase is just far too automated. It gets great results, while asking very little of the player. Just like the Knight can spam guards at every loop, she can do so with her drones. Which also turns recommendations, like just standing still, deactivating the drones or urban evading, into moot points. Because these are things that you obviously don’t get to do mid-chase. She just forces holding W and using suboptimal pathing, by leaving every loop ASAP. So you just get run down and every map against her feels like fucking Midwich, with it’s never ending hall ways. Or you choose to stay and get injured by three scans (which often will happen really fast) anyway, while you get slowed down and she gets sped up …. mind you, all of that is enabled by just her base kit. THAT is why people hate her. Her design gift-wraps injured states and downs to a very boring play style, with zero mechanical counter play, because most mind games go out of the window against her. And all of that is carried by passive buff/debuff elements, which is not interactive at all. It just feels like you are getting cheesed against her. Because that is pretty much what happens.
You have described my issues with her base cosmetic so well. She has the wealthy flair and pragmatic industrialist sides of her personality, but her base cosmetic doesn't blend these two together well. She's got a diamond bedazzled facemask and duct tape holding her weapon to her arm 🤔I agree her purchasable cosmetics do a much better job leaning in to one side or the other or even blending the two sides together.
In all honestly. I appreciated killers slowing the game down with how fast the game is now due to power creep. I miss the first few years of the game. I liked knight specifically. Even if he could have been handled better. If you wondering the type of player I am regardless of what role I play. I enjoy 30 minute games.
I think it was an interesting concept that was completely pitched wrongfully. The idea of a high tech killer who’s prime target is business CEO’s is a very interesting concept. Skull Merchant had potential and they didn’t use it
I stopped playing around the end of the demo chapter and came back for the alien chapter. Skull merchant is my least favourite killer to go against, it just feels like she throws down her drone (which she loses nothing for) then you’re forced to leave that tile.
I've been playing Skull Merchant since she came out, and while I do understand the initial reason she was so hated, but I do genuinely enjoy playing as and against her. I've found so many different ways to play her that I would compare it to the various ways you can play Doctor. The builds i enjoy playing most as her are chase, stealth, anti-heal, and anti-loop. I also do think her base design is bad, but her other outfits are great. She was definitely a problem before her big rework, but if people would pick her up and try some different builds, they could find some enjoyment from playing.
@Baby-Blue-102 Sure, let's hear it. My anti-heal build is Leverage, Gift of Pain, Sloppy, and Surge as a fill-in perk. I then use the purple rotor add-on and the one that extends the stealth after placing a drone
@@Exitium96 Okay, so Unfortunatley i swear i had a really strong Anti-Heal build in particular, but it's been so long since i used it i can't remember the full build, just most of it. this is what i remember and what i THINK would be good though. It was based around getting fairly consistent use out of both caulrophobia and Powdered glass and downing people with traps where possible to consistently disrupt heals and have them be basically 75% slower. I've Watched People take 40Ish seconds or more to heal, infront of me, especially with failed skill-checks. 1. Addon's Are: Powdered Glass, and Then Probably Either Ultra-Sonic Speaker, High Power Floodlight, or brown noise generator. I think this slot might have been the Low power mode pre-Rework. Brown Noise Gen MIGHT be the best because you want those traps frequently for Powdered glass, but high power floodlight is also good due to the Pub Windows Meta. 2. Perks are: A Nurses Calling, Caulrophobia, And Forced Hesitation. Running Powdered glass Instead of sloppy free's open a perk slot, while Caulrophobia remains fairly brutal and consistent thanks to nurses to Know, Interupt, And Further Delay Heals, Especially when Hemmorrage is involved thanks to Powdered glass. I don't remember the fourth perk, but here are some i think would probably work well with this: Bamboozle/Enduring (Chase), Blood Echo (Anti Exhaustion), Blood Favor (Early Game Ramp), Barbeque/Gearhead (Gearhead Counter's Distortion Well), Franklin's/Shattered (Anti-COH/Medkit), Zanshin (Drone Placement). Some Wild card Picks Might Be Deathbound and Forced penance but im not sure how much value they'll get you. Offering: Probably just throw on Anything you want, but if you're tryharding to win or want to test in a balenced state, pick either a small map or maps with high visibility to stop healing, or macmillians/Asarovs in order to find/play matches on balenced maps. (I will try to rediscover the final perk though. Right now Im thinking it's deathbound but i might be mistaking it with my "Night 2 Philosophy" Bubba build, which i can also provide if you're curious and i can find it. If i had to make a guess, the last perk was probably either blood echo, blood favor, Gearhead, or franklins/Zanshin. i use those perks a fair bit on plenty of killers.)
@Baby-Blue-102 Impressive, I'm gonna have to try that build. I don't have access to dbd until Tuesday because my wifi to a dump, but when I get it fixed I'll let you know my chase and stealth builds for her
It’s a real shame because Skull Merchant embodies so many things that I’ve always wanted in my perfect killer, I LOVE the idea of tracking down survivors and setting up zones of control to install panic in a tactical manner, and she’s sexy. There’s a lot of boxes she ticks on paper, but the execution and the meta of the game just leads to a toxic conclusion across the board. I don’t hate her like other people do, in fact I really like her, but something just isn’t ’clicking’, and I think it’s her confusing design overall.
It's three fold she's a lack luster designed implementation of bad girl gone killer archetype with her backstory having nothing to reflect that as its lazy planned and weakly implemented and has no consistency. Two shes a bad chapter that came after a bad chapter which everyone was expecting it to be predator or a cyborg only to be let down and finally the absolute high level of PTSD from 3 gen skull merchants potent level of bullshit giving her a bad rep. She's unfortunately built to hate and this is coming from a skull merchant main who's come to really enjoy the new her she is extremely warranted of the hate.
I’m from Brazil and I can tell that her lore doesn’t fits with anything here. The same can be said about the lyra brothers. They are just a Frankenstein of terrible ideas, none of them makes sense here
I can understand why at the start but other than that I don't get it I personaly think she's an amazing killer especially now without the 3 gen strat I do like her disign and you can't say it doesn't go with the game the tricksters out fits go with the game way less
I still think Knight was and still is overhated. I understand that his guards ai power is both buggy and not something you'd expect from a medieval knight... but it's still a sick ahh Knight imbued with pure evil and a drippy ex-farmer that learnt multiverse exploration via magic. I'd argue that if the map didn't ba re-used assests and felt more chivalir the Knight's power would've been overshadowed and the chapter would've been appreciated a lil more.
I honestly love the knight. The concept behind his power is amazing. Summoning minions sounds really fun, but yeah... Unfortunately he's really buggy and many people prefer to heavily stall the game instead of using guards in chase. Hope that BHVR will fix his issues(especially when he returns)
For me She and Sadako suffer from the same thing. They get changed so often that you dont really know what she does anymore. And each change brings about a different way to play againat her and her power. It doesnt help that shes got a like 70% win rate according to BHVR, which means either A. Her power doesnt immediately have any drawbacks or weaknesses B. She gets changed so often that people forget what the current iterationis from the previous. C. Nobody actually talks about the current iteration enough to know her strengths and weaknesses Or D her strengths and weaknesses arent clearly defined enough
I feel like her story could get a revamp. And I like her design, but she could have had a more horror aspect to her. But she is one of my mains and although her power could be better, at least it isn'ta 3 gen power anymore.. But yeah as much as I love her, she really needs a lot of changes, mainly with her design and her lore. I love her costumes, keep them, but her base design needs work, especially with her mask. And her lore is not so great, so we need changes there.
As a skullmerchant main, I was guessing people whould hate her power but didn't knew they had a problem with her look Guess I have a different sense of fashion, cuz I kinda like how she looks
heres my thing with the discussion of "oversexualization" of Skull Merchant. i think a lot of it comes from a misunderstanding of what oversexualizing a character means. oversexualization happens when a character wouldn't act like the way they do. let's be clear, she IS sexualized. but it makes sense for her. we see with her little mannerisms that her personality is a bit flirtatious - the way she touches the survivors during her mori, her walks, even the clothes she has on her bed in the hunting camp - and so it isn't odd for her to dress the way she does, because she's a sexy person who seems to be aware of it and enjoy it. y'know who IS oversexualized, tho? Vittorio. it makes no sense for Vittorio, a man from the 15th century whos likely Catholic, to be shirtless the way he is. he's shirtless entirely for the viewing of others, whereas Skull Merchant at least seems to enjoy being attractive. Vittorio is oversexualized, Skull Merchant is not
I personally think she needs yet another rework, but this time it would be her final. This rework will ensure that Skull Merchant won't have to rely on sleezy tacticts, And can focus more on normal killer gameplay. This rework would be a combination of: Demogorgon and Dredge's Nightfall with Skull Merchant's over all theme. - She has 4 drones that can be place almost anywhere on the map. - Her drones spew out a dark green gas that obscure vision similar to Dredge in a 55 meter radius. any survivor within these gas zones are inflicted with oblivious status effect. - Survivors are able to dissarm these drones, how they are currently. When the drone is disabled, they will recieve a claw trap that can be tracked. On top of being tracked the marked survivor will be inflicted with exposed that lasts for 40 seconds. - Her drone will be disabled and return back to the Skull Merchant. - Skull Merchant now has a new Special attack: Flesh Rip Hold (CTRL) to charge up a devastating slash. When you realese the button SM will fling forward similar to demogorgon dash but shorter in distance. When you are dashing you lose collision, meaning you can pierce and hit multiple survivors in one dash. Imagine Pyramid Heads Special attack with a Demogorgon movement added to it. This will be extremely effective in bodyblock scenarios. But also really great at unhooking scenarios where you can hit both of them at the same time.
First, this new series is amazing. Is it the second installment, starting with Myers, right? Second, one important part feels left out. The one thing that feels to be overlooked here about TSM no matter the iteration is that her power is not interactive on both ends. Even worse, she actively punishes survivors for interacting with her kit in any way. TSM 1.0 has proven that disabling drones is ineffective, to the point where people did not heal. As for killer, Adriana rewarded you for tinkering with drone positioning as little as possible and keeping them around gens, not even trying to create stealth passages our playing around hexes (which was totally possible). TSM 2.0 is somehow exactly the same. Yeah, using drones in loops may be useful, but placing 2-3 drones around a gen creates a deathtrap for any survivor to enter. Disabling a drone would be alerting a killer to your location, not doing it would be increasing chances to get into a beam, which is to be avoided at all costs. Therefore, killer is rewarded way more for locking down areas with high gens per square meter, which leads us back to square one. And I’m not even sure if people know you can change drone rotation patterns, lmao. I believe this to be a major reason as to why survivors hate TSM - and that’s definitely why I, a killer main and an avid Hag (and Trapper) player, hate Skull Merchant. She’s just way too boring.
Aside from my gripes with her design and her overall power, another thing that makes me hate skull merchant is just how often i personally have come across SM that solely tunnel due to her lack of in chase power. I know this isn't a SM issue, but its somwthing i have noticed myself when i do go against her. It makes me like her less and less. But there are times where i have gone against SM who try different strategies and those have been fun. Juat sadly not an abundance of them from my own experience
Honestly, while my relationship with the skull merchant definitely is complicated, I wouldn’t say that she should be removed from the game. I remember back when the PTB with her came out and I played as and against her I absolutely hated her and that still didn’t change the first day she came out on live servers, but in all that time my fiancé didn’t have a problem with her at all. It all changed after the release tho, when we faced her a lot of times as survivors and most of them were playing for a 3 gen, then he started hating her too, while I actually started to enjoy playing as her myself. But I think I overdid it and played too much and eventually the survivors knew how to play against her a bit better so I started disliking her again and I think the changes she got after that didn’t help with liking her more either. So I get how people hated her from the start and didn’t feel like trying to play as her, which resulted in them never getting a chance to try liking her.
I have no opinions on Skullmerchant as I have rarely gone against her in both her pre and reworked form. She came out at a time where I decided to take a break from DbD, and when I came back for anni+Nic Cage, I only went against her once and then 3 times when she got reworked. I can see why many dont like her, and the only reason why I dont care enough is because almost all of her cosmetics+base outfit are just lame.
As someone who was playing when Skull Merchant dropped and saw the horrendous 3-gen "strats", I think Skull Merchant (and Tools of Torment as a whole) still gets a bit too much hate in spite of it I've seen people call it the worst chapter release of all time, when, like...were people not around for how buggy Binding of Kin was? Or how the game was basically unplayable for a while when the first Resident Evil launched?
I haven’t played in a while, but when I was playing the most I ran into a few merchants and all but one seemed to be there just to hold the game hostage. Many people I played with had the same issue. I didn’t hate on people for trying her or even pulling a Kris Three Genner, since their power literally begged them to, but I did start hating the character’s very existence when I realized so many were using her just to ruin matches for other players.
I like her. I bought her about a week or 2 ago and she's pretty damn fun. I play her much like I do Trapper. Her drones feel like an easier, but non-lethal trap. Bear traps are hard to snag survivors with- *BUT* If a survivor steps into a bear trap, they're Mega Fucked. As for the skull drones, they're easier to catch survivors with (infact survivors practically walk into the fuckin' things wingingly) but they arent as lethal. Trappers traps are higher risk, as its harder to catch mutha fuckas. But higher rewards cuz they're basically dead already if they step in one. Meanwhile Skull merchants drones are lower risk, lower reward. Easier to spot survivors, but you still have to do the chasing yourself. Of course there are plenty if other differences, but my mindset when playing Skull-Mommy aint too different from when I play Beartrap-Daddy.
The lore, the unbelievably boring playstyle, her “walking animation”, her looks - it’s all utter trash. Had she been released with one of her buyable cosmetics as default - it would have been better. Her entire concept makes no sense. I admit it - I usually DC or leave the game in first hook - cuz I really don’t wanna waste my time with such a boring killer
9:50 this 100%. I fucking LOVED the idea of a tracking info killer like how she has her little iPhone. it was soooooo freaking cool to me and I wanted that side to be encouraged, but then once she came out and was the 3 gen queen I backed off from her.
playing skull has one of the most overlooked benefits: that every few games or so, you are literally handed free bp and free kills. People hate her because of her established 3-gen strat, but that fails to see her fantastic potential as a stealth and speed killer in chase. You can run super goofy builds too without worry, because sometimes survivors will just hand you a win so your mmr doesn't tank. hilarious how this all worked out for her
My girlfriend is a Skull Merchant main and told me she's stupidly high in MMR because some survivors just suicide on first hook which... I simply cannot understand. Ive been up against S.M maybe 6 or 7 times in the past month and 5 times Ive escaped.
The majority of people defending her completely lack the understanding of gameplay. If you get free hits what’s the reward of the survivor gameplay? That she will down you even if the killer player is a bot. You go to a loop, leave the loop but if there is no other pallet near by you just die, no options. It feels like people that play her lack basic brain functions.
@@Insanity-vv9nn Why would you leave the loop? Just loop her. Killer countered, ez. It feels like people that are against her lack basic brain function and the understanding of HER gameplay and her power.
its not suprising its way worse than forged in fog mori bad lore awful look dissapointing and not all that good animations and mori are bad gameplay is bad on both sides there is no reedeming quality to this character, she utilises awful mechnics and is entirely based on the most hated strategies possible
Really to me, it just comes down to SM being a character that failed on every front. Expectations definitely helped sour her image, but this is a community that also likes to find the good in the bad so I believe there is more to this that goes way deeper into the root of her entire design. Story: Fanfiction cringe; I'm amazed it was greenlit and expected to be a part of DbD lore. I'm fairly sure most of the community just outright rejects or tries to forget about it. Self taught millionaire with a genius IQ at 18 is just ridiculous. Gameplay: Very stale and half-assed, if not detrimental to the game. The drones could've been a cool power had they been fully developed into mobile AI that searches for targets. (Following Nemesis and Knight who do have mobile AI, this concept failed to reach expectations) Instead, they were half assed. I think most people can detect the lack of effort from BHVR on this character purely just from how the power was executed. Design: She looks both visually cheap and silly. Her default outfit especially is a clash of ideas that don't work. This has been voiced to death so I'll leave it at that. Execution: Very, very bad. People intentionally DC'ed to escape her lobbies because her power incentivized holding 3 gens for eons. If the majority of your community refuses to play against your character, something is likely very much wrong with their gameplay loop. The only positives I have for her are that I like that she is unique in some sense, being from South America which is quite rare to see. I also like some parts of her concept like the drones for instance.
The things i hate about skull merchant: 1. Her mask. It looks like someone's first attempt at modeling a gas mask, something a highschool 3d modelling student who just started class made. 2. Her outfit. It looks like unreal assets that they bought and just threw on her model hoping it would stick. 3. Her Gameplay loop. She is unfun to play as and against. Her power is so easy to counter that its practically useless and gets no use. As you stated ppl prefer playing agaiinst and as her the easiest way. Ergo: Get to loop, she places Drone, go to dofferent loop. Rinse and repeat. The skull merchant will always default to 3 genning, especially near the end of the match. She isnt engaging and chase is boring because of her hard core anti loop. 4. Her lore. Its bad. The only cool thing about it is her smarts and thrill for hunting her victims. I like the hunter idea. Im fine with her being a wealthy ceo but leave that story line there, erase the dad's manga part, and just have her as The Skull Merchant, a name whispered on the winds known for kidnapping people and forcing them into playing twisted games of cat and mouse. The Merchant being the cat, the victims being the mice. Have it be a sick twisted game she loves playing as a fucked up sadistic psychopath. Things I like: 1. Her weapons look cool 2. Her cosmetics are not that bad. Yes they're a bit excessively sexy but imma be honest there is a reason trickster cosmetics sell well. She is inconsistent, as you said with her look, and her drones are under utilized in terms of gameplay. Instead of an aoe circle the drones i feel should function as remote turrets she manually controls. Rework I propose: Pushing the power button sends out a drone you control manually, while controlling a drone you have undetectable. Drones she is piloting are seige weapons, when your controlling a drone press the basic attack button to fire a dart that damages a survivor upon impact. From here she can down them with the drone, stop controlling it and leave it where it downed the survivor essentially functioning as it currently does showing anyone in the radius, there is no stealth mode and only serves as a beacon for the skull merchant to get to the downed survivor. When a survivor does the minigame it destroys the drone, putting it on cooldown for 15 seconds. This would make the power more engaging and fun to use. It may seem strong but she can only have one drone out at a time, and if she downs the survivor on the opposite side of the map you gotta walk all the way over there.
Idk, Dbd has one of the most pig headed communities I have ever seen. Her old version I used totem defense and that was really fun. People would assume I was chess Merchant and try to rush gens only to be hit with Devour Hope. Her her new version is fine too. I mean she also didn't have a mountain of bugs when she first came out. Twins still feel like the Beta version of that killer and they have been out for years. And poor Freddy is just a blank killer at this point. Design wise she is a bit of a mess. I think they should have either swung for either rich assassin or crazy weeb but not both.
Imo i liked both skull merchant and knight theyre really fun makes u feel like an actual killer and not some goffy chaser survivors can troll which is the best part
Give us a break with the players overhyping themselves. Of course they would expect a mechanical killer after that trailer and not a manga obsessed heiress.
Tbh i kinda like SkullMerchant nowadays. At least to play as her. Against is fine, but not the best. Believe it or not: I liked to play against old 3-gen Skull Merchant more lmao
One of the decent ways to efficiently criticise a character is to initially start with some positive traits. When i look at boring merchant, there is absolutely nothing going for her. Terrible lore. Terrible game mechanics. Terrible power and abuse by community. Terrible design (awful for dbd lore). She has nothing going for it.
My main issue with this killer is she’s just boring to go against she isn’t fun to deal with in chase because her drones make every pallet useless if she’ throws one down when you’re looping and most killers just tunnel one person out and then 3 gen dealing with her just isn’t fun.
I see everyone’s arguements on merchants design from beta, after bet, and the multiple updates/reworks she gets. Her for lack of a better term defensive play style certainly did not make her too well recieved, but one point brought up I think that REALLY solidified all of this hate was the timing of her release. The gen kick meta, and after the knights chapter (which I feel like was hated on a little much as well) with 2 amazing chapters before, just made it an absolute uphill battle for her. Just really unfortunate timing.
I agree that part of the probum was and posobly still is playstile. I usualy compare her and knight 3 genning to basement/insidius buba, verry toxic or disliked playstiles that they just happened to exell in.
I've mained her since release. I've been told to stop playing her because noone finds her fun. I've been told to off myself multiple times for just playing her. I get dc's and survivors giving up against me especially if I make a comeback in my games where survivors are kicking my butt with gens. I love playing the killer, I love her lore and her look, it has a Deathstroke type of look to it. In the end survivors will always complain when they are not winning or have any little challenge when going against a killer that gives them trouble. I do agree she does need a bit of a nerf, take away the hinder effect from her traps and give her back the max of 4 drones and she will be fine. I have mentioned this to BHVR in multiple tickets but all I get is the, "we will take your suggestions under consideration". Makes me feel that they don't even listen to the players who main the killer. And an additional side note. I have had multiple players, especially streamers, say they want old 3 gen merchant back. Makes me laugh everytime.
🎵 Shakira Shakira, I’m on tonight You know my hips don't lie (no fighting) And I'm starting to feel it's right All the attraction, the tension Don't you see, baby, this is perfection 🎵
Hot take: Skull Merchant is now in a healthy spot, way more ballanced then most of killers who still have a lot of issues, yet Skull Merchant just feels liie she doesn't lack at anything. She is the one of a few killers who I don't feel like I have to play with 4 same perks all the time to keep up, I can just slap anything I wanna and go play a game. Plus, she feels so frustrating due to peopoe not countering her power, like at all! I played almost 40 matches of her and only in 5 of them people were actualy disarming drones. I think people hate her because they don't wanna do anything on the side of looping and gens. Similar thing why headpop Pig, condem Sadako, box harrasing Pinhead, etc. If people would go out of their way and learn to counter such killers, there would no further reason to hate them so much. Just think, people, think!
In many ways, Skull Merchant was a bit of a wake up call as well. I'll admit, I was in many of the camps leading up to her release. I loved the chapters before, was incredibly lukewarm about the Knight, and thought the skull Merchant was going to be a type of cyborg killer. She released, and I found her play boring. But it also made me realize something else. I had been playing Dead by Daylight regularly since June/July of 2017, and by that I mean a few hours daily. The boring, exhausted feeling wasn't just tied to her, it was a realization that I was starting to find the game boring as well. End result was me stepping away from the game. I do go back to it from time to time, play a couple of rounds, and have fun. I even have fun going up against Skull Merchants. I think for many long time DbD players, it wasn't just everything you discussed, because I'd agree with it all. But I also thing game fatigue was starting to set in for a lot of us, exacerbated by just how toxic the community was at the time. I'm happy to play rounds and actually get 'GG's" across the board in matches, I'm happy to not be getting overly stressed out in matches, and I feel like some of the toxicity has left the community. I hope some of that toxicity leaves the Skull Merchant some day as well.
I liked using her as a chase breakdown killer. Putting her drones in spots that helped drive survivors away from powerful (or over powered) loops and pallet farms. But after the changes and updates she feels worse than before, no active slowdown to survivors or boosts to her. It’s a worse form of damage because it’s super avoidable and when I last played (right after the change) it didn’t do anything to hurt survivors, making her feel like a worse version of Legion stalling. I don’t know if they changed her more but I wish they’d take killer main input into her rework instead of just making her worse and worse.
It’s dead by daylight; not a very mechanical serious game. Would you say plague gets too much for mindlessly vomiting on generators and windows ? You have to remember at the end of the day Skull is a basic M1 killer who cannot down people with drones. They gave her things like haste and hindered on survivors who stay in drones because the era of M1 killers who can be looped infinitely are over lol, she’s a stronger M1 killer and that’s a good thing, it’s 2024
You can crouch to avoid drones. She gets a bit of slowdown as you crouch towards the generator to repair it or disable the drone but that's it. As the video says many people are stuck in the mindset of the way she used to work. To be fair though, the game gives no way of relaying this information to players so I can't entirely blame people for not knowing. The drones could hover a bit higher to make it look as though if you crouched you would be undetected but that would require BHVR to be good game designers to have that level of foresight.
Personally I enjoy her kit feeling like a bunch of mismatched parts added together. Though I know that makes her unbearable on the survivor side for a lot of people, it reminds me of a Yu-Gi-Oh deck having many small effects that synergize with each other and add up to a competent strategy. ^^ I think if the drone hacking was a bit more punishing and/or easy to pull off mid-chase she'd be in a perfect spot because what survivors really want is productive counterplay against her - but skull merchant with coup de grace and other chase perks is one of my fave killers personally
Honestly, I do not mind skull merchant at all. I think that the community is trying to build up one mindset for other players, that she is bad and no one likes her. She is one of the few characters that I enjoy playing, right next to killers like Chucky and Knight(who could use some buffs). Your almost able to play in any play style due to how much is in her power. I mostly play chase merchant for how good the speed combined with the anti-loop can be. I like the base outfit, but the diamond mask is a bit weird to put on the base. I don't mind going against her, in fact I like going against SM. Not many people play her, yet people still complain. Right now I'm working on getting her to prestige 100. To be honest, her backstory and lore doesn't really matter to me. I never try to focus on it. If there was a killer that I would get rid of, it would honestly be either Wraith, spirit, or doctor. I'm not here to say that she is perfect, but I think that the community created a mindset for everyone to hate skull merchant, and I think that it makes the game unhealthy for any current/upcoming killers. Hopefully players can give some sympathy for Skull Merchant and open their mind a bit to see they're personal opinion, instead of relying on the community's opinion.
Honestly, SM should have gotten a unique multi task chase power instead of zoning with drones, I find Singularity, who released after SM, more creative and unique, in a way that SM should have been
She started very complex and is now a different very complex. I would have no idea how to play against or as her because 1. At this point I feel like she'll just be changed so it's not worth learning and 2. The roster is so expansive that I can pick literally any other killer to do what I want to do.
I'm brazilian and i don't like how she doesn't have anything related to the local mythology...or even doesn't have any skulls in her costumes...she is even selling anything?
I’m not Brazilian and if a lack of mythology is your biggest issue then perhaps you should step back and be a bit more grateful.
@@lemonlime8949can't he have an opinion
@@lemonlime8949dont be this type of person you're being. No one likes this kind of person. They never said that was their biggest issue. Its just their issue with the character. If this comment is your biggest issue then perhaps you should take a step back and be a bit more grateful
I mean as a Canadian Im not upset that legion has nothing to do with our cultures and whatnot, I mean why do they have to? Its not like these killers are supposed to be representatives or icons of their country of origin. Is doctor also a poorly designed killer cause he doesnt integrate any south african mythology into his design?
She wasn't programmed to sell the skulls
Unrelated to Skull Merchant, but did you see that cruel limits value at 12:46??? Insane.
I hesitated a second irl because I was so shocked it did something for once lol
Someone call 911 because we witnessed a straight up assasination there
100% value
@@AZHYMOVS I ran it in my demo build for a couple weeks and got so much value from it. It's extreamly powerful WHEN it works.
@@AZHYMOVS
Your discord link might be dead. I can't join
Lore and everything aside, I think one of the biggest issues with Merchant's power on the survivor side is that despite her changing so much, the way you play against her in chase is exactly the same. Get to loop, she drops drone, leave loop; rise and repeat until she eventually inflicts your survivor with every status effect in the game and then just downs you because she is way faster.
Cry louder
@fabimogar9994 you're so edgy
I love this play style honestly dropping a drone in a loop is pretty smart, you have to end the chase and get that hook so you can scurry and stop people working on gens
@@creepykno4865 I know she has her fans, don't get me wrong, I just think that is why she is generally disliked. I am glad that you enjoy her!
@@creepykno4865 if this is what you consider smart gameplay I feel bad for you tbh
I think her backstory is stupid, convoluted and just unbelievable. And why is she like a giant compared to the survivors?
Aren't almost all the killers larger than the survivors? Iirc even legion which is literally a teenager is larger than the full grown adult survivors
@@ink3487 Legion isn't. They're actually smaller than most survivors. Skull merchant is weird tho. Trapper and Myers are big guys and look natural same as huntress, but skull merchant looks like a stretched out PNG.
@@bigbrainonimain9226 I didn't know that lol I always just assumed the legion was bigger than the survivors and just had the worst posture on the planet
@@ink3487 yeah legion is a bit smaller than ghost face and he's shorter than the male survivor so legion is about the size of female survivors I'd say.
Spirit is also taller than the male survivors. They aren’t consistent with the heights of their killers.
You hit the nail on the head with this one. I wouldn't be surprised if she got reworked a second time or just abandoned by the devs like Twins. She definitely does have cool components to her but they don't feel as harmonious as they could be. I really like the idea of an assassin killer but when I first heard the name Skull Merchant, the Kollector from MK popped into my head lol. Now, almost every aspect of her has been altered in some way since her release and people are going to gradually stop caring. Also, I think her lore could have been more connected to Renato and Thalita's. Maybe as a business partner or something. Well done with this video. ❤
The Twins have a rework coming up.
why they suck just leave them to die. Everyone hates playing them and now they have chucky. @@jeffreymonsell659
@@jeffreymonsell659that is an urban legend, there is no rework in Ba Sing Se
You don’t understand her lore.
The Skull Merchant is an Apex Predator. The entity wanted her in its realm so Thalita and Renato were the bait. They weren’t the original targets but rather stumbled upon her kill because the Skull Merchant does fail at closing the deal. There needed to be an outside source to serve as the motivator and Thalita being blinded by the entity’s illusion with Renato being dragged by her was that bait.
@@jeffreymonsell659 They've been saying that for ages, why do you still believe in it
I think Skull just feels like a "first draft" all around - I can see some parts of her backstory and design that could've maybe worked if it had more time in the oven. ultimately, I think for me, at least, she just came out looking cheap, and it felt like a cheap grab at having a 'sexy' killer, and then on top of that, just her power being boring for other sides and extremely abusable was a final nail in the coffin for making her so hated.
to add to this, it doesn't even feel like she was originally supposed to be that sexy, and it was more an afterthought of "shit, this entire concept and design is terrible, let's give her an exaggerated hip sway when she walks and make all of her purchasable cosmetics look like a high-end (but bad taste) stripper"
thing is she is not even THAT sexy. Like yeah i also think she is hot but if it was about that you'd think BHVR would go all out in that regard, i mean even spirit shows more. The cut off limbs might just be the reason that she has not that exact effect to people. But i think if it was only about SM's appearance then BHVR wouldve made it more obvious.
@@liandre9035 that’s true! I think it was her walk cycle at the time that made me go “…seriously?” the most when I first saw her in the PTB. And tbh, I think a more like ‘sexy killer’ / femme fatale idea could also work in dbd if done right, and already has kinda in some killers already - I think that it’s just w/ SM unfortunately it was just another under done idea added to the already mixed bag of them
@@cosmicsquid9875they wanted to promote hooked on you
@@cosmicsquid9875 i highly agree. Trickster for example has a very high affect on me on that matter but he also has interesting story and is unique in being a musician-killer which we dont see anywhere else really.
Skull merchant is many things but nothing of them really 100% comitted.
There was a bug with one of her add ons that allowed her to infinitely stack vault speed. What this did was make into so that she could basically leap over windows in a parkour type of way. At the time I thought this would have been a really neat addition to her kit giving her more flare.
Her purple add-on yeah. It was so good on the maps like the game because it was full of pallets lol
Can we appreciate the fact that in the thumbnail each survivor is holding the weapon of their respective killers
jeff holds clowns knife, not legions
Also isn't Jake's killer huntress?
Never mind I just realized that Jake's is Hillbilly. David has Huntress.
@@michaelfinklea9295 hahaha
i have a hunch that she was supposed to be a licensed character, that being the Predator.
but something went wrong with the licensing agreements at the last minute, causing BHVR to scrap most of the concept work and plaster things together into a half-functioning heap of junk. this would explain her dissonant design elements.
Oh it's kind of obvious that she was supposed to be a predator license, the same way Legion were gonna be the Ghostface's of the game until they got the actual ghostface. It'd be awesome if she did get a yautja skin
Back when the SM hate was in full swing it was exactly that polarization that drew me to trying her out. I tried my best to make builds/playstyles that went against that 3-gen-camping meta, but it was very limited due to her poor game design. However by now I have actually come to appreciate her in her now reworked state and adopted her as my current main. Still, even when I play the fairest I can, never tunneling, camping, always giving hatch, I still regularly get called slurs and other stuff in the post game chat. I don't want her to become a fan favorite or anything, but I just wish people realized at this point that hating a character just out of principle only hurts their own enjoyment of the game.
The issue with her now is that she has too many mechanics. It can be exhausting to play against her whilst having to focus on so many things. Regardless, it sucks people will personally attack you just for playing a character in a game
That last sentence is important because people who openly hate on Skull Merchant and anyone who plays her, are generally very miserable people and seemingly HATE playing the game. It’s easier to see this behavior in streamers since a lot more of their behavior is recorded…but even then, you can see them leave matches at the slightest inconvenience and encouraging their viewers to do the same because “I’m not going to waste my time” or how they’ll get upset at the enemy player for anything. Often citing absurd complaints to them like claiming that the enemy killer or survivor is stream sniping or calling them a terrible person.
@@Polevolter Two extremely different points here. Accusing people of stream sniping and being a miserable person has nothing to do with hating Skull Merchant. She's a horrible design, her rework is no better than her last iteration, and people that openly despise her aren't "Miserable People", they just don't enjoy queuing into matches with a killer whose power on some maps covers an entire corridor and is impossible to avoid.
Many survivors hate certain killers out of principle. It's why they have no fun in the game and I don't get why they keep playing.
No skill to play as her
10:19 As a DBD player who recently quit, I played maybe around 4 months after the release of her rework regarding her 3 gen strategies, and most of them were using their drones to chase (I still have mixed feelings about her drones in chase) but there was one that stood out, a match where I was playing against a Merchant in Nostromo Wreckage with 2 of my friends and the SM was still trying to do a 3-gen strategy.
Maybe this was because of the terrible gen placement or the bad loops in Nostromo Wreckage, but we were slaughtered in that match, and even I, who had been playing dbd for about 3 years at that time and was good at looping, couldn't hold a chase against her because she decimated every pallet in a 30 meter radius. However, that wasn't the main problem. It was her drones. She planted them at the 3 final generators and would patrol them constantly. While this isn't a problem at face value because you couldn't get stacks while repairing the generator, the fact still stands that she had Undetectable after planting her drones, which she constantly did because she would recall a drone that had been disabled and put another one down. This fact meant that we were forced to run straight into the drones beam as the Undetectable meant we had no forewarning and could only know she was coming until it was too late to avoid being locked on by the drone, making her chases frustratingly easy due to the claw trap.
That match alone convinced me the SM 3 gen strat is not entirely dead.
That match alone should convince you that your communication sucks. You or your friends can easily call out where she's going by actually using your eyes. And nostromo 3 gen setups are not good either. If you were in swamp,game or garden of joy yes it is very difficult but nostromo gens are mostly spread out
@@ardaoguzhan8181 We did tell each other what generators she was leaving and heading towards, especially because we were all working on separate gens and would know which ones she left and was heading towards because we were so spread out, but she still got to each generator fast enough to stop us from working on it, and the SM also had good generator regression perks like Pop Goes the Weasel, so even if you were forewarned (which wasnt always the case because her pathing wasn't always clear) hid from her and got back on the generator immediately, it still took a huge chunk of your generator progress even if it barely had any time to regress.
@@ardaoguzhan8181I disagree because we did call out to each other based on which gen she was leaving, but her pathing wasn't always clear, as she could disappear from the main building and not know if she was going to come out and patrol from the other side or come out from the entrance, so even if we saw her we couldn't know 100% where she might to next. Furthermore, even if you were warned that she was coming, she had gen regression perks (specifically Pop) that would get rid of a huge chunk of progress on your generator even if you had hid from her successfully and started working on it immediately to stop the regression.
I also think that my argument still stands because even if our communication was sucky and that was why we lost, that just proves my argument further, because if 3 survivors with communication couldn't counter this strategy, how could solo queue survivors manage to organize themselves and communicate well enough to counter this strat?
Also, I guess it's kind of a matter of opinion but I think Nostromo Wreckage is a terrible 3-gen map. There is a middle gen that can be completed, but I'd argue the gens are close enough anyway. In the match we were in, there was a gen by the face hugger window, one a bit up and to the right next to the (completed) middle gen and one next to the crashed emergency shuttle. Even though we had completed the middle gen (which is usually what you are supposed to do to prevent a 3-gen) the SM still managed to patrol fast enough to completely stop the last gen from completing despite having no mobility (unless you count the haste you get from tracking people)
As a major enthusiast of modern-day Skull Merchant, this is easily the best video I've seen from anyone dissecting her problems. She's not perfect, but she's probably the most misunderstood Killer DBD has ever had and so many videos go into talking about her with the guillotine already assembled. This video is anything but: a great video that I hope many will see, and might lead some to re-examine their attitudes towards the Killer. Well done!
Who are u kidding. She fucking ass. No way around it. Horribly designed no matter how you spin it, she’s pretty much designed for noobs and players who suck at chase.
She literally drops the killer skill ceiling to the bottom of the abyss.
_Most people rejected his message. They hated Pixel Bush because he told them the truth._
“Merchant is actually awesome; y’all are just mad about a version of her that isn’t even in the game anymore.”
Personally, Skull Merchant and Knight are my top two Killers (I have a lot of Killers and Survivors). I was hesitant at first but after a few games, I loved her. I know that she is one of the most hated Killers, but personally, I hate Cenobite, Freddy, Trickster, Sadakko, Pyramid Head, and Chucky. Why, because those are the Killers I struggle with the most when playing Survivor. When I play Skull Merchant, I try to be fair. I also found her mini game fun too. It's sad that not many play as her. To be honest, Trickster and Cenobite are worse than Skull Merchant. They will absolutely tunnel me off the hook every match I've had with them. I'm sorry if my opinion offends anyone, but I enjoy playing Skull Merchant and Knight, and no nothing will change that.
@@Vulpecula-Enfield I tried to play her because I needed to burn some bp offerings on her and I was actually bored halfway through. I just felt so powerless since people just simply went from one loop to the next when a drone was up and there did not feel like anything I could do to outplay them. I play a ton of Wesker, billy and used to play blight so I am used to looking for opportunities for hitting a nice dash or saw to outplay a survivor when they don't expect it. With SM I could not do anything like that except just put up the drone and hope.
For me, its the lore and the look.
The lore doesn't, at all ,mesh well with the defaults look;
In my opinion, the overall look of the killer should at least reflects the lore, not contrast it.
Not a brazilian manga afficionado?
@@SubxZeroGamer yup
I agree, you have to admit that you thought it was very silly the first time you read The Wraith’s lore and found out he was a guy named Phillip who worked as a car wrecker.
@@jackbob83 no. The only other killer I have an issue beside skull merchant is trickster
Her lore is kinda funny, she's just a super rich weeb that fell into her dark desires and became a cosplaying murderer (I like to imagine the entity might have pushed her along), but in game she looks... like a mishmash. I see the technician part, the rich part, the murderer part, but they manage to clash in a way where I'm not sure they could have done it worse.
I feel like all she needs is a power redesign and a visual redesign.
so, erase her completely and make another killer with the same name
@@EternalDead yes
@@EternalDead | also, rename her to “The Adaption”
And a lore redesign and a mori redesign and an everything else redesign.
@@EternalDeadyes
She's the only character that deserves a chapter remake
Did u forget about the The Twins
@@friezaforce387 Fair point, but at least I like their design, they evoke the french folklore killer they were inspired by.
@@WalterCDS I agree the whole chapter needs a redo, where they should redesign SM, keep the survivors the same and maybe give their perks some tweaks, redesign the map and give SM a better power
I think skull merchant is another case of tease the exact opposite of what it is.
The most down to earth description of the skull merchant is a Brazilian weeb cosplaying her dad’s favorite character who is called the skull merchant.
We aren’t getting the actual thing, we are getting some unusually successful person ‘hard to believe’ who gets away with killing people when they don’t merge with her company.
Her drones are just an extension of it.
She’s quite literally just a person embodying a character she enjoys, taking it to the logical extreme.
I’d have taken us getting the actual FICTIONAL skull merchant rather than Adriana ‘granted they look the same according to the one of the iri addons’
Cause it would be neat in concept having fiction become reality in the DBD universe, so much like Onryo, spirit and Oni, who are based of the belief of Yokai, which is technically depending on the lense you look at it, a form of fiction.
But no, we got a character cosplaying her favorite character, that her father made and becoming one with said character.
Meanwhile her gameplay was grossly advertised poorly.
Remember the box of her companies logo next to a hook?
Whatever happened to that?
I’d have preferred her kit revolved around her having limited amount of drones in her inventory and her having to restock in drones every now and then.
Hell I think it would fit this current design for her way better, since that means her chase potential becomes limited as well as incentivizes disabling drones.
Cause restocking drones could be considered a full on drone clear so she can reapproach the situation.
But we got this hyper chase fixated killer, and with the right build can still 3 gen.
It’s Brazil and she’s rich. Idk why you find it so hard to believe that a wealthy person who can cover their tracks and buy people’s silence can’t murder tons of people and get away with it in a country that isn’t as heavily policed as America or other 1st world countries.
Furthermore, her being the cosplayer of her father’s character IS her being the Skull Merchant. The lore is a time paradox. He saw visions of her in the entity’s realm and so he put that on paper, inspiring the Skull Merchant but also being inspired by the Skull Merchant. They are the same person.
Besides, her current design is very nuanced and fun. Y’all just hate cuz y’all wanted Singularity first
I completely forgot about the boxes they teased. I remember thinking that she was some sort of field upgrade killer that could modify their drones or themselves to suit the needs of the current match. That alone I think would make for fun swingy gameplay that players desire.
The inclusion of fiction becoming reality would also be a very interesting topic because it would mean that the entity can take the fiction from other worlds and make a reality which not only opens more doors for interesting lore, but maybe even unique designs for gameplay
@@uwu-ul9mm
I don’t hate skull merchant as a whole, I can see her appeal, simple as, however, that doesn’t mean I don’t have her issues.
If you take time to read her lore there’s a lot of stuff that just makes you turn your head.
The fact she became basically what the describes as a billionaire at assumedly at a young age after her father disappears is so far out there and hard to believe.
Furthermore, she was still consequently inspired by her father’s visions, rather than it making a gradual descent into her becoming the skull merchant she WANTED to become the skull merchant.
It’s hard to like a character written like this because it’s a way of simplifying her writing so they can go ‘unga bunga she’s now in the realm now’ and the sudden shift to her being a billionaire is what makes it worse.
They TELL you, rather than simplifying it or elaborating it to you, they fuck up the writing style of show don’t tell, show us abusing her wealth, show us using it to our advantage rather than telling us a long winded story on how she became one, remove all of that and show her abusing her wealth to merge companies and killing those who don’t conform.
It was such an unnecessary detail that makes her hard to like.
I don’t hate her as a character.
I hate how she’s written, portrayed and how she’s designed, I personally hate singularities story because it’s mind numbing, but I’m not going to go on a tangent about his.
I can see what the devs were going for with her game design, but it was so poorly executed that it can’t be justifiably defended, and hearing most defenses of her being ‘you just hate women’ and a whole lot more is mind numbing.
I appreciate the devs trying something new, but the time she was added was not right, plus there was a lot of shit going against her, along side the negative reception of the knights chapter.
Again, I don’t hate her, I appreciate the attempts the devs made and I see what they were going for, but it wasn’t going to be a well received chapter just from how it was both from teases plus how it was initially advertised.
It was a PR disaster from the start, exactly the same issue with legion.
@@bunnalope Along side this, it allows fictional characters to change to better fit DBD’s style.
Which by technicality’s stance opens up Manga’s and so much more to become a thing and make the characters look more naturally human as well.
Specifically like Ajin.
@@LynxRecruit the fact that they never tell you what I’m about to tell you means that you can’t glean anything from a show don’t tell writing style.
Her mother owned a restaurant. Her mother owned a business and handled money all the time. She had a parent, a direct influence over her, who knew how to deal with currency for a small business. She was raised in an environment where she had access to first hand knowledge involving money.
She was also academically gifted. She tried hard in school; both her parents being driven individuals. Her father is stated to be obsessive and so she took that from him. She was also competitive which drives her to be the best. Study more. Get higher grades. Understand the material better.
Then she gets kids to write for her manga site, realizing she’s better at managing and delegating rather than writing herself. But this means that she’s becoming the exact kind of person who cut her father’s manga from their publishing list when he asked for more royalties and the same kind of person who fired her father when he asked for a break at his job at the canning factory.
And instead of her father stepping to say that disappoints him, he disappears. The entity was probably involved in that disappearance because the entity determined that her father’s purpose was served and now he would only hinder Adriana with his presence.
In the wake of this trauma, Adriana probably falls further into confusion about her identity. She latched onto her father’s creation who is so much like her already. It’s narcissistic to be the Skull Merchant as everything the Skull Merchant is, she already is. But it’s also comforting to be the Skull Merchant because it’s her father’s creation. It feels like affirmation. And it also feels like a guideline and so it serves as security.
Then we get even more show don’t tell in her tome lore where we see her hunting a military vet. We see her use a new forearm mounted display and use her penthouse as the arena. That is them showing her abusing her wealth.
We also have her addons. All of them are tools (of torment) that she used on her countless hunting expeditions.
We get even more lore on her own map. Scattered around her base lay various “women in business” magazines. All of her victims are shown to be men. It’s never stated but we never see a female victim. We see body parts in the fridge and tapped onto the dummies. She’s a Medusa-like character. She’s an apex predator. She uses her intelligence, knowledge, beauty, and athleticism to maneuver herself into position, charm/intimidate/coerce her prey, and then she plays with them for a weekend where she confuses them, terrifies them, and tests them before finally killing them.
If you have any knowledge of psychology, then you really see just how well crafted this character is. The Singularity’s lore is very mind numbing, I agree. But it’s because all the writing went to both Gabriel’s development and then the world building. However, with Tools of Torment, all their writing went to fleshing out Adriana.
She’s not meant to be likable. Most if not all of their original killers aren’t meant to be likable. They are “bad” people. They are murderers and abusers and rapists and narcissists and overall jerks. They aren’t meant to be cool outside of their appearance when you play as them.
I have wanted a character like Skull Merchant for so long. I have wanted an actually evil woman who wears shoes and isn’t body horror gored to all hell to be a killer ever since I started playing this game around the Clown’s midchapter. I specifically wanted a female vampire who looked badass and beautiful, who felt superior and evil.
And Skull Merchant is that. She’s vampiric in the sense that she uses her victims for both her tech and their money/companies. She consumes them for her own benefit.
And because she’s cos playing, there is so much room for skin ideas because they aren’t forced to do tiny deviations of one idea over and over. Deathslinger skin, for example, are all so the same. He’s always going to be a cowboy in a hat and every skin he gets will always keep him as a cowboy in a hat. And Hillbilly will always be a fucking country bumpkin and Spirit will always be in a fucking kimono.
Being a cosplayer who is more human and who carefully curates her appearance means there is so much they can do with her. Even her base skin reveals so much about who she is. Furthermore, her base skin shows that she is functionally a sequel to Trapper.
They both wear overalls with a green tint and they both make their own weapons, masks, and traps. They both have fathers who massively impacted their lives and they both are involved in business. But Skull Merchant is sleeker than he is, faster than he is, stealthier than he is. She actually likes murder. She actually succeeded with her goals in life.
There is a reason she is on his map. She’s the better female version of him in both a narrative sense and a gameplay sense. In her mid chapter trailer, the narrator says, “This IS Dead By Daylight” as if to make a point about the state of the game and how this new killer does a job the poster child for the game does but is better at it. She starts with all her traps, he doesn’t. She can recall them from anywhere, he can’t. She can place them quickly, he can’t. Hers are huge aoe zones, his are tiny. Etc etc. all the complaints that people have about playing trapper are fixed on her but people then say she’s too easy, too simple.
I could rant forever about Skull Merchant. The bandwagon of hate for her is so unjustified.
She hasn’t got a good power design sadly,and I don’t think even a rework could fix her.Maybe only an entire power change,remove the stones and add something else, could work if done well.
They should make it so that she can manually fly a drone around the map. Two options; ping a survivor to track them, or use it to attack them. Cooldowns and stuff would apply, but it's way simpler, makes her a legitimate stealth / ambush character, and way more interesting
@@therandommikaelaSo basically turn her into a worse twins?
They should remove the drones and give her a cyborg laser cannon
@@nicomom9534 Make her throw the drones as a bowling ball lol
If they do rework her I want her to keep her tracking aspect somehow. Her tracking Is better them any other killer IMO except maybe legion with his huge killer instinct. Plus the tracking she and legion share aren't perk dependant and could be fun and synergistic and interestingly powerful in many gamemodes to come. Plus her current lore was her basically tracking people to destroy them I think.
Gonna be honest, the skull merchant outfit looks more like a c tier batman enemy rather than a dbd killer
For me, the main reason I dislike her so much nowadays is that she is way too complicated. Her power does so many different things that it makes it hard to even tell whats happening when playing against her sometimes. For example, one of my first games against her (this was post rework) she snuck up on me with undetectable right away (had no idea she could even stealth), then proceeded to get 2 hits on me that felt like I got cheated out of an extra loop I would've normally gotten (later found out this was because she has a small haste boost built into her power). Its just so frustrating to play against a killer that has no clarity on what they actually do
Regarding the clarity part, If I heard a killer got a rework, the first thing I’d do is go online and read what was changed so I know what to expect when going against them. No offense but this sounds more like a you problem than an actual game issue.
@@definitelyaduckdoesn't matter all game's SM does is pre camp or tunnel somebody out to win giving her skillless mechanics in match cause other casual survivors just to give up
Her main issue is that there is no counter play to her power, except holding W and hoping you get distance. If you disable her drone (trap), you only get 45s at most. Then her power comes back. Also she can remotely reactivate it from a distance. These are things Hag, Trapper, or Freddy can’t do. So disabling her drones gives no benefit really. It would if they went away. The other thing is her drones apply 3-4 debuffs on you all while she gets faster and is undetectable. Killers with no real counter play that can’t be looped are going to be unpopular.
Honestly I really love the skull merchant and she is one of my favorite killers. That is definitely due to the fact that I started playing dbd right as she came out so I wasn’t let down that she wasn’t what everyone thought she was going to be. If the took away all the status effects and just make her a tracking killer then I’d be happy with that.
I enjoy playing all killers except Nurse and Blight. Both give me vertigo from the jerk movement.
Skull Merchant is a killer I enjoy playing because of how you have several options, as of her slight reworking. You can force a survivor away from loops with your drones. You can use the drones to temporarily gain undetectable to mindgame with no red stain. You can overwhelm certain areas of the map preventing the survivors from swarming you when you go to hook, as they risk being injured and granting you a LOT of movespeed.
While I agree the camping stuff is no fun, her chasing is more interactive than most killers.
Also, her design is not goos by default but nearly all of her skins look great. Her mori is especially an egreigious offender in a lack of thematic.
What I would change thematically for her:
Base outfit - No more overalls. Instead, she wears a jumpsuit Kill Bill style. On the Jumpsuit would be high tech looking armor plating to defend her against her prey-- she's not immortal, superhuman, or a monster. Pallets would hurt without protections.
Radar - Not a handheld device, now a wrist mounted touch screen device, a lot more modern tech looking. Expensive looking.
Mask - Both eyes are covered with a high tech visor with enough opacity to see through to her eyes. Her mouth is fully covered with a respirator with a tube coming out to oxygen on her back-- she's so pompous that she doesn't even need to breathe the same air as lesser life forms.
Decoration - Throughout the entire costume, she would have bones of past victims attached to the high tech metal. Trophies of her games.
Mori - Instead of stabbing the survivor, she decapitates them, and calls a drone to take the head away for extraction later.
See now these changes to Skull Merchant would automatically make her so much cooler than what we currently have
Her power? Interactive? Are we talking about the same killer here?
What's so interactive about her putting up a drone, forcing you to leave a tile and then getting a free hit on you? Or putting up a drone, but you still decide to stay in the tile and she gets a free health state with the drone either way? It's stupid. She is the ONLY killer in the game that can get a 4k by doing absolutely nothing. It's stupid.
@Dillion Meyer Your redesign idea for her is great would actually make her look cool, would like to add one thing to the design
Weapon - Instead of being attached to her arm (by what I’m assuming is tape and hope) her weapon IS her arm she removed it in order to make way for her tool of death.
Yesterday I fought a p87 Skull Merchant that held a 3gen from the start of the match, my team wasn't a swf but we all understood we needed to break it. The SM would place drones over all the escape routes from the generators so if you needed to flee you had to take the broken status effect. My team would waste so much time attempting to disable the drones, eventually everyone got tired of the 20 minute match we all threw in the towel. I hate this killer, it's so dumb what she's capable of doing for literally 0 effort. She deny's areas you can run through but sometimes those areas are the only places you CAN run through. Even when disabling drones she can replace them super fast making it useless again.
The new SM can't 3 gen, you can literally do gens without getting scanned by her drones, and the new anti 3 gen basically killed the tactic so either you're new or just capping
I personally don't dislike her (I hate clown more) But I only played three times against her. In two she weren't that bad in comparison to other ones and in one of she helped me defeat an extremely toxic survivors, who sabotaged all of us the whole time.
She wasn't programmed to sell the skulls
She’s always gave me borderlands 3 vibes due to how similar she looks to the cyclipso twins in that game. Only upside however a unfortunate one in my opinion is it’s a good thing her power came with her and not predator considereding how ppl wanted her to be predator. I don’t think ppl would of appreciated a wanted killer to have such a hated power concept that is good for 3 genn’ing. I feel she could of been muuch better just a bit unfortunate character over all.
I really want to like her, especially as someone who plays primarily killer, but even with all the reworks she doesn't feel fun to me. I think her power does too many different things, a stacking haste buff and stealth as well as injuring, broken, deep wound, hindered, killer instinct... it's just way too much. Her traps also differ from other trap killers like trapper or hag, she doesn't have to slow down to place them, her setup and anti-loop is way too fast that makes it feels uncounterable, even if it is counterable.
I really want to like skull merchant, even if I don't like her design, but I feel they need to simplify her kit to be less about applying every effect in the game, decide whether she should get haste or stealth, because both is excessive, and maybe make her drones move or patrol or something so they feel more avoidable. I use the word feel a lot here because even though things are currently fine, while playing as or against her they don't feel fine.
This was a great video that I hope people look at and reflect on so they stop treating her too harshly, a lot of people just hate without explanation, this was the best critique of her I've seen since she's been added.
In my opinion, the only thing that can "save" Skull Merchant is a complete rework. Changing her lore, which is bad, her design, which is very bad, and finally her power or the way the drones work. Because until she has a complete rework, she will continue to be the community's punching bag. It surprises me that Behavior thinks this was a good killer idea. I don't have much to complain about both survivors because they are actually really good in terms of design, lore, etc.
As a nurse main I feel the pain of Merchant mains especially the Constant Hate and Dc’ing purely for playing a character with a good power
I like how you bring that one survivor to the hatch to apologise for playing merchant
Personally, I would say her name "Skull Merchant" don't fit at all, it makes it sound like she is a bounty hunter or something not a manga reader, also her walking animation just makes it looks like she is floating forward. But other than that, I would say she is okay.
Doctor on the other hand is the only one I kinda feel I wanna DC from because he is way to powerful. I never do DC but a Doctor game makes it really tempting. :(
I get she's rich and the name relates to her cosplay, but tbh the only skull thing she does is her drones and she doesn't actually sell anything, even in her lore I don't think, besides company ownership or something
I feel like her aesthetic, her teaser, and her story could all be separate parts of different killers... I don't hate her or even dislike her, I just think they had the ideas right but couldn't mash them together properly.
Its honestly sad for me personally because The Skull Merchant is the only killer that actually speaks to me visually and gameplay wise. She is the reason I started to play killer more and play survivor less because none of the killers gave me that girlboss vibe she has that I just love and resonate with. I would just stick to playing Elodie and Yun Jin and never touch killer. Now I rarely play survivor. And while I was completely loving everything about her, to her looks, power, and her story back in the PTB, people started hating on her. Its like every character I like is everyones most hated. Its like when i was a Symmetra main in overwatch 1 before her rework, plus mercy before her rework as well, and Seraphine from LoL, etc. I wish people would give Adriana a chance because she is a really cool character. Or at least, I think so.
You think your main killer hated? I started main Nurse from the day she was released. Just because... She was cool? That is, her lore, the exterior design, the story of how she froze in the air like in a noose + her choked breathing and screams. I was just visually pleased. And I still love her the most. But as if I feel guilty? That is, as if if I just play it and win, then I become the most typical nurse mainer. But... I just love her strength, her design and her story... I just like not because she's meta, but cool(
@@user-sh6xt8ky7e Yeah that honestly sucks. I actually love playing against the nurse. It's fun to me trying to hide from her so she doesn't blink at me and stuff. Her power is fun to use as well 😁. At least you've probably never had the experience of 4 survivors DCing at the same time the first 15 seconds after hearing my terror radius 😂
@@user-sh6xt8ky7e The community as a whole is toxic, stop trying to turn this into a pity party
@El_chara well that seems like a overly pessimistic view. Yeah there's a lot of toxic people but I've also met a handful of friendly people too who don't like merchant. And it will be very clear they don't mind me and they just dislike the character. Hatred for the character doesn't equal hatred for me.
@@user-sh6xt8ky7e I agree with you on Nurses lore being awesome but it’s just yet another reason she should be reworked entirely. I would play her too. The problem is that even if the survivors win, they have little agency in the game.
Having said that though I let way too many survivors go and never hook the same person consecutively unless they actively prevent me hooking somebody else. I think too much about whether the other side is having fun and thus could never play Nurse.
A shame you like her for those reasons. I at least have Joey to like.
Whens the Azhymovs asmr special???
oh god 😭😭
When???
because survivors want to cheese and loop and she counters it. making most survivors pretty crap, it hurts their egos
Personally my issue with Skull Merchant is she's too complex to play against. There's too many mechanics and features to her power that it can be genuinely exhausting to play a full match against her. Her entire kit just needs simplifying. Nearly a year later I still stand by my original impression on her; she should just have the ability to manually fly a drone around the map, and use it for either recon or lethality. You know, LIKE SHE DOES IN HER LORE? The mind games with the drone would be insane; is she tracking you? Is she trying to damage you? Or is she luring you straight to where she's hiding to ambush you? Way simpler. Way more engaging. Way scarier. No status effect spam. No 100 mechanics to have to focus on.
Scan = tracked
Scan 3 times = clawtrap
Clawtrap = broken + injured + tracked
Scan with Clawtrap = Hindered
Don't think she is complex at all
@@Tem07
Is the drone in stealth mode or scout mode? Do you deactivate the drone or leave it? If you deactivate it, you gotta do the minigame. If you're detected, she can see your location AND gets a speed boost. When is it safe to take the claw trap it and hindered effects in chase? You also have to keep track of your teammate's trap progress to figure out when she has her speed boosts, and if she's spamming drones for undetectable. There's even more to her kit and it's headache inducing
@@therandommikaelastealth and scout literally only make it so you dont get double tapped by the same drone the speed is mostly just a leftover of her old kit, the main thing (like with a bunch of killers) is just to not mindlessly run into areas you know she was previously at
Edit: plus again like a lot of killers just use your crouch: hag traps, SM drones, p-head's trails, any projectile killer, and prob some others i cant remember right now
Crouching around ISNT a meme
@@ethanpadwick6943Urban evasion meta confirmed guys, ethanpadwick6943 said it, trust in ethanpadwick6943
just hold W not that difficult
This video is extremely well done. As a skull merchant main, I understand that her power has issues and so does her design. I would love to see her get a redesign and a slight rework but because everyone will just keep hating her, bhvr will most likely ignore her. Thanks for presenting both sides because there are things about her that should be praised, but she’s not perfect, like most killers. (Also about her long nails not being practical they’re nail rings that can’t be chipped or taken off, so they are kinda practical)
Oh wait there’s a typo the nails can be taken off at any time
you don't deserve rights
I think Merchant from purely a gameplay standpoint is fine now. May not have played against her enough but her power feels like you can actually interact with it and you can engage her in a way that's healthy. This is something a significant amount of killers lack. I think many people are misinformed about the fact Merchant can't do the three gen anymore and the fact drones can't detect you while still or crouched. Which to be fair the game does nothing to explain to people.
@@Giraffedinglegirl no one gaf what you think
@@Goldrudy loser
I actually kinda like her but i hate how you get punished for being chased through her drones. She already gets so much for them why do they have to bring you from healthy to deep wound just because your trying to get away smh
deep wound, broken, hindered... I'm surprised she doesn't expose you like Ghost Face and makes you ill like Plague does at the same time
@@Sachiko_Zeingor right lol just seems so extra, she already has so much
She is a killer meant to make survivors miserable
@@markscherer3881 with this new knockout/tunnel build im using till they fix her they are definitely miserable lol
I love this video. This is a breath of fresh air from just reading out the results of your community polls and then trying to write a script around that. This feels very thought out.
I was the type of people who wanted a cyborg as killer (specially after i theorize about a killer name "Monstrosity" mentioned in lore) but i already know that BHVR loves to troll people in original trailers (especially Deathslinger's teaser) but when i discovered it was another human, i said "okay, another trickster, this time i will give her a chance"
Read the lore: Completely done by someone who wrote a self insert creepypasta back in 2015, CEOs getting murdered by a random girl that wasn't happy, everything is working as planned, casually... where are the security guards? Did the CEOs hire them from GenSec? (Payday pun), since when the manga was so popular in Brazil? I thought the tome was going to fix some contradiction on her base lore, but no, we learn that she is jealous and stalks a classmate because he is better than her in a test..
Visual: Military outfit with a huge metal claw and a mask (Why in first place does she has a white shiny mask?) (Why does she has a very tight suit?) etc... She doesn't even resemble anything about Brazilian culture, not even in her skins. Until we discovers she is cosplaying a manga character... Imagine killing people cosplaying as Yor Forger
Power: I remember expecting in the PTB doing like 4 different stuff with my power, such as controlling drones (this was because of BHVR teasing them in military crates) such as Twins and Knight combined. I place a drone and that's all... even the survivors i was facing, were so disappointed, even one of them asked me. "Did you even test the killer?"
Nothing good comes from Adriana, and honestly this is the only case that if she leaves the game, nothing would change.
Apparently Manga is pretty popular in Brazil. But still, lame character.
Skull Merchant was a mistake.
Really, I don’t have them yet but want to get them, I enjoy playing against them because they give you something else to do while not being overpowered and overwhelming me
@luxaeterna9383
Not really
Honestly, I like your thinking behind the outfits. It makes a lot of sense to me how you explained it and the changing of her power was mostly due to complaining which is sad. I've not played her much, maybe 2 games. But I've come away from this with a little bit more understanding of merchant so thank you dude
The PR at Behaviour is at fault for wrong expectations. The point of trailers, teasers etc., is to make people think and talk about the product, they had enough time to redirect expecations, but they didnt. Its not the communities responsibility to carefuly analyse and criticise a teaser, the market isnt a court house.
DBD community probably thought the Death Merchant was going to be the scientist from the Re-Animator horror films which considering its public domain now would actually be a good killer if done right.
I remember wanting to have hope for Sm when testing her out in the ptb. Well, both ptbs, but she just still doesn't hit the mark for me. I find her counterplay in chase so incredibly boring.
Run to loop, she drops drone in loop, leave loop.
If you stay, you'll become hindered which I genuinely believe to be one of the most boring status effects known to man, or if you leave you'll probably just die. Either way, you lose.
I like the idea of her drones as a lone concept. It can be fun dodging the beams in order to disable them, but in chase? It's just boring as hell.
I can respect the idea behind the killer, but I think the execution is just quite boring and not very interactive.
Not only that but she does not represent her name "Skull Merchant" at all. What does she have to do with skulls? The Pig would carry that name much better then she does because of her head traps
There is also something you really don't touch upon that also doesn't help, her playerbase/fanbase are just awful. They will harass you and call you sexist for not liking her and in game more skull merchant players love and i mean LOVE to bm, every skull merchant i have gone agasint one my limited time as survivor (i'm a killer main) is basically hook hitting, slugging at 5 gens, toxic and very VERY bigoted in the end game chat.
Skull Merchant main here. It’s a fact we’re all scum, so you’re hatred is warranted don’t worry
hey man, sorry for your experience, I am a SM main and I personally hate people like that, all the times I play with her people think I'm going to play like someone like that, and when I just play normally, they just DC or lose at 4 gens, because nobody knows how to counter her nowadays
Yeah it's almost guaranteed at this point that when you get a SM that they will BM and be toxic, even after the rework. There's just something about killers like her that lure the trolls. If I had to guess, it's because her design is so terrible that she is guaranteed to make people mad, especially when you throw tunneling and camping into the mix.
As a SM main this is so sad to hear, I never play toxic even when bombarded with flashlights, t bagging and head on strats from survivors, I always just try to play nice and fair, often letting people escape for free and simply having fun with her power and small interactions. It’s sad that many people hate her so much but I hope I can bring back a little bit of hope as a nice skull merchant main
Probably the biggest thing that will keep her hated is that people know she is hated, so a good number of people playing her are playing her because they want to make people miserable. Probably 3/4ths of the games I play against Merchant, rare as they are, its just better to DC. Otherwise you will all just be slugged and dry humped until you bleed out.
Isn't that what people did to Legion when they first came out
While going against mainstream takes often grants interesting insights, the hatred towards the Skull Merchant is none of these cases. Because sometimes, the masses are actually quite justified in their assessment.
The problem is that her anti-chase is just far too automated. It gets great results, while asking very little of the player. Just like the Knight can spam guards at every loop, she can do so with her drones. Which also turns recommendations, like just standing still, deactivating the drones or urban evading, into moot points. Because these are things that you obviously don’t get to do mid-chase. She just forces holding W and using suboptimal pathing, by leaving every loop ASAP. So you just get run down and every map against her feels like fucking Midwich, with it’s never ending hall ways.
Or you choose to stay and get injured by three scans (which often will happen really fast) anyway, while you get slowed down and she gets sped up …. mind you, all of that is enabled by just her base kit.
THAT is why people hate her. Her design gift-wraps injured states and downs to a very boring play style, with zero mechanical counter play, because most mind games go out of the window against her. And all of that is carried by passive buff/debuff elements, which is not interactive at all. It just feels like you are getting cheesed against her. Because that is pretty much what happens.
You have described my issues with her base cosmetic so well. She has the wealthy flair and pragmatic industrialist sides of her personality, but her base cosmetic doesn't blend these two together well. She's got a diamond bedazzled facemask and duct tape holding her weapon to her arm 🤔I agree her purchasable cosmetics do a much better job leaning in to one side or the other or even blending the two sides together.
In all honestly. I appreciated killers slowing the game down with how fast the game is now due to power creep. I miss the first few years of the game.
I liked knight specifically. Even if he could have been handled better.
If you wondering the type of player I am regardless of what role I play. I enjoy 30 minute games.
I think it was an interesting concept that was completely pitched wrongfully. The idea of a high tech killer who’s prime target is business CEO’s is a very interesting concept. Skull Merchant had potential and they didn’t use it
I stopped playing around the end of the demo chapter and came back for the alien chapter. Skull merchant is my least favourite killer to go against, it just feels like she throws down her drone (which she loses nothing for) then you’re forced to leave that tile.
I've been playing Skull Merchant since she came out, and while I do understand the initial reason she was so hated, but I do genuinely enjoy playing as and against her. I've found so many different ways to play her that I would compare it to the various ways you can play Doctor. The builds i enjoy playing most as her are chase, stealth, anti-heal, and anti-loop. I also do think her base design is bad, but her other outfits are great. She was definitely a problem before her big rework, but if people would pick her up and try some different builds, they could find some enjoyment from playing.
I do have an anti heal build for merchant too! Want to compare a build or 2?
@Baby-Blue-102 Sure, let's hear it. My anti-heal build is Leverage, Gift of Pain, Sloppy, and Surge as a fill-in perk. I then use the purple rotor add-on and the one that extends the stealth after placing a drone
@@Exitium96 Okay, so Unfortunatley i swear i had a really strong Anti-Heal build in particular, but it's been so long since i used it i can't remember the full build, just most of it. this is what i remember and what i THINK would be good though. It was based around getting fairly consistent use out of both caulrophobia and Powdered glass and downing people with traps where possible to consistently disrupt heals and have them be basically 75% slower. I've Watched People take 40Ish seconds or more to heal, infront of me, especially with failed skill-checks.
1. Addon's Are: Powdered Glass, and Then Probably Either Ultra-Sonic Speaker, High Power Floodlight, or brown noise generator. I think this slot might have been the Low power mode pre-Rework. Brown Noise Gen MIGHT be the best because you want those traps frequently for Powdered glass, but high power floodlight is also good due to the Pub Windows Meta.
2. Perks are: A Nurses Calling, Caulrophobia, And Forced Hesitation. Running Powdered glass Instead of sloppy free's open a perk slot, while Caulrophobia remains fairly brutal and consistent thanks to nurses to Know, Interupt, And Further Delay Heals, Especially when Hemmorrage is involved thanks to Powdered glass.
I don't remember the fourth perk, but here are some i think would probably work well with this: Bamboozle/Enduring (Chase), Blood Echo (Anti Exhaustion), Blood Favor (Early Game Ramp), Barbeque/Gearhead (Gearhead Counter's Distortion Well), Franklin's/Shattered (Anti-COH/Medkit), Zanshin (Drone Placement).
Some Wild card Picks Might Be Deathbound and Forced penance but im not sure how much value they'll get you.
Offering: Probably just throw on Anything you want, but if you're tryharding to win or want to test in a balenced state, pick either a small map or maps with high visibility to stop healing, or macmillians/Asarovs in order to find/play matches on balenced maps.
(I will try to rediscover the final perk though. Right now Im thinking it's deathbound but i might be mistaking it with my "Night 2 Philosophy" Bubba build, which i can also provide if you're curious and i can find it. If i had to make a guess, the last perk was probably either blood echo, blood favor, Gearhead, or franklins/Zanshin. i use those perks a fair bit on plenty of killers.)
@Baby-Blue-102 Impressive, I'm gonna have to try that build. I don't have access to dbd until Tuesday because my wifi to a dump, but when I get it fixed I'll let you know my chase and stealth builds for her
@@Exitium96 enjoy your fortnite character
It’s a real shame because Skull Merchant embodies so many things that I’ve always wanted in my perfect killer, I LOVE the idea of tracking down survivors and setting up zones of control to install panic in a tactical manner, and she’s sexy. There’s a lot of boxes she ticks on paper, but the execution and the meta of the game just leads to a toxic conclusion across the board.
I don’t hate her like other people do, in fact I really like her, but something just isn’t ’clicking’, and I think it’s her confusing design overall.
It's three fold she's a lack luster designed implementation of bad girl gone killer archetype with her backstory having nothing to reflect that as its lazy planned and weakly implemented and has no consistency. Two shes a bad chapter that came after a bad chapter which everyone was expecting it to be predator or a cyborg only to be let down and finally the absolute high level of PTSD from 3 gen skull merchants potent level of bullshit giving her a bad rep. She's unfortunately built to hate and this is coming from a skull merchant main who's come to really enjoy the new her she is extremely warranted of the hate.
I’m from Brazil and I can tell that her lore doesn’t fits with anything here. The same can be said about the lyra brothers. They are just a Frankenstein of terrible ideas, none of them makes sense here
I can understand why at the start but other than that I don't get it I personaly think she's an amazing killer especially now without the 3 gen strat I do like her disign and you can't say it doesn't go with the game the tricksters out fits go with the game way less
I still think Knight was and still is overhated. I understand that his guards ai power is both buggy and not something you'd expect from a medieval knight... but it's still a sick ahh Knight imbued with pure evil and a drippy ex-farmer that learnt multiverse exploration via magic. I'd argue that if the map didn't ba re-used assests and felt more chivalir the Knight's power would've been overshadowed and the chapter would've been appreciated a lil more.
I honestly love the knight. The concept behind his power is amazing. Summoning minions sounds really fun, but yeah... Unfortunately he's really buggy and many people prefer to heavily stall the game instead of using guards in chase. Hope that BHVR will fix his issues(especially when he returns)
DBD’s equivalent of 5 year old me mixing random soaps and pretending I’m making potions is the best explanation
For me She and Sadako suffer from the same thing. They get changed so often that you dont really know what she does anymore. And each change brings about a different way to play againat her and her power. It doesnt help that shes got a like 70% win rate according to BHVR, which means either
A. Her power doesnt immediately have any drawbacks or weaknesses
B. She gets changed so often that people forget what the current iterationis from the previous.
C. Nobody actually talks about the current iteration enough to know her strengths and weaknesses
Or D her strengths and weaknesses arent clearly defined enough
Ya forgot E: people immediately disconnect or let her kill them just to avoid even giving the killer the chance of making it a fun round
I feel like her story could get a revamp. And I like her design, but she could have had a more horror aspect to her. But she is one of my mains and although her power could be better, at least it isn'ta 3 gen power anymore.. But yeah as much as I love her, she really needs a lot of changes, mainly with her design and her lore. I love her costumes, keep them, but her base design needs work, especially with her mask. And her lore is not so great, so we need changes there.
As a skullmerchant main, I was guessing people whould hate her power but didn't knew they had a problem with her look
Guess I have a different sense of fashion, cuz I kinda like how she looks
heres my thing with the discussion of "oversexualization" of Skull Merchant. i think a lot of it comes from a misunderstanding of what oversexualizing a character means. oversexualization happens when a character wouldn't act like the way they do. let's be clear, she IS sexualized. but it makes sense for her. we see with her little mannerisms that her personality is a bit flirtatious - the way she touches the survivors during her mori, her walks, even the clothes she has on her bed in the hunting camp - and so it isn't odd for her to dress the way she does, because she's a sexy person who seems to be aware of it and enjoy it. y'know who IS oversexualized, tho? Vittorio. it makes no sense for Vittorio, a man from the 15th century whos likely Catholic, to be shirtless the way he is. he's shirtless entirely for the viewing of others, whereas Skull Merchant at least seems to enjoy being attractive. Vittorio is oversexualized, Skull Merchant is not
I personally think she needs yet another rework, but this time it would be her final.
This rework will ensure that Skull Merchant won't have to rely on sleezy tacticts,
And can focus more on normal killer gameplay.
This rework would be a combination of:
Demogorgon and Dredge's Nightfall
with Skull Merchant's over all theme.
- She has 4 drones that can be place almost anywhere on the map.
- Her drones spew out a dark green gas that obscure vision similar to Dredge in a 55 meter radius.
any survivor within these gas zones are inflicted with oblivious status effect.
- Survivors are able to dissarm these drones, how they are currently.
When the drone is disabled, they will recieve a claw trap that can be tracked.
On top of being tracked the marked survivor will be inflicted with exposed that lasts for 40 seconds.
- Her drone will be disabled and return back to the Skull Merchant.
- Skull Merchant now has a new Special attack:
Flesh Rip
Hold (CTRL) to charge up a devastating slash.
When you realese the button SM will fling forward similar to demogorgon dash but shorter in distance.
When you are dashing you lose collision, meaning you can pierce and hit multiple survivors in one dash.
Imagine Pyramid Heads Special attack with a Demogorgon movement added to it.
This will be extremely effective in bodyblock scenarios.
But also really great at unhooking scenarios where you can hit both of them at the same time.
First, this new series is amazing. Is it the second installment, starting with Myers, right?
Second, one important part feels left out. The one thing that feels to be overlooked here about TSM no matter the iteration is that her power is not interactive on both ends. Even worse, she actively punishes survivors for interacting with her kit in any way.
TSM 1.0 has proven that disabling drones is ineffective, to the point where people did not heal. As for killer, Adriana rewarded you for tinkering with drone positioning as little as possible and keeping them around gens, not even trying to create stealth passages our playing around hexes (which was totally possible).
TSM 2.0 is somehow exactly the same. Yeah, using drones in loops may be useful, but placing 2-3 drones around a gen creates a deathtrap for any survivor to enter. Disabling a drone would be alerting a killer to your location, not doing it would be increasing chances to get into a beam, which is to be avoided at all costs.
Therefore, killer is rewarded way more for locking down areas with high gens per square meter, which leads us back to square one. And I’m not even sure if people know you can change drone rotation patterns, lmao.
I believe this to be a major reason as to why survivors hate TSM - and that’s definitely why I, a killer main and an avid Hag (and Trapper) player, hate Skull Merchant. She’s just way too boring.
Aside from my gripes with her design and her overall power, another thing that makes me hate skull merchant is just how often i personally have come across SM that solely tunnel due to her lack of in chase power. I know this isn't a SM issue, but its somwthing i have noticed myself when i do go against her. It makes me like her less and less. But there are times where i have gone against SM who try different strategies and those have been fun. Juat sadly not an abundance of them from my own experience
Honestly, while my relationship with the skull merchant definitely is complicated, I wouldn’t say that she should be removed from the game. I remember back when the PTB with her came out and I played as and against her I absolutely hated her and that still didn’t change the first day she came out on live servers, but in all that time my fiancé didn’t have a problem with her at all.
It all changed after the release tho, when we faced her a lot of times as survivors and most of them were playing for a 3 gen, then he started hating her too, while I actually started to enjoy playing as her myself. But I think I overdid it and played too much and eventually the survivors knew how to play against her a bit better so I started disliking her again and I think the changes she got after that didn’t help with liking her more either.
So I get how people hated her from the start and didn’t feel like trying to play as her, which resulted in them never getting a chance to try liking her.
I have no opinions on Skullmerchant as I have rarely gone against her in both her pre and reworked form. She came out at a time where I decided to take a break from DbD, and when I came back for anni+Nic Cage, I only went against her once and then 3 times when she got reworked. I can see why many dont like her, and the only reason why I dont care enough is because almost all of her cosmetics+base outfit are just lame.
As someone who was playing when Skull Merchant dropped and saw the horrendous 3-gen "strats", I think Skull Merchant (and Tools of Torment as a whole) still gets a bit too much hate in spite of it
I've seen people call it the worst chapter release of all time, when, like...were people not around for how buggy Binding of Kin was? Or how the game was basically unplayable for a while when the first Resident Evil launched?
I haven’t played in a while, but when I was playing the most I ran into a few merchants and all but one seemed to be there just to hold the game hostage. Many people I played with had the same issue.
I didn’t hate on people for trying her or even pulling a Kris Three Genner, since their power literally begged them to, but I did start hating the character’s very existence when I realized so many were using her just to ruin matches for other players.
I like her. I bought her about a week or 2 ago and she's pretty damn fun. I play her much like I do Trapper. Her drones feel like an easier, but non-lethal trap.
Bear traps are hard to snag survivors with- *BUT* If a survivor steps into a bear trap, they're Mega Fucked.
As for the skull drones, they're easier to catch survivors with (infact survivors practically walk into the fuckin' things wingingly) but they arent as lethal.
Trappers traps are higher risk, as its harder to catch mutha fuckas. But higher rewards cuz they're basically dead already if they step in one.
Meanwhile Skull merchants drones are lower risk, lower reward. Easier to spot survivors, but you still have to do the chasing yourself.
Of course there are plenty if other differences, but my mindset when playing Skull-Mommy aint too different from when I play Beartrap-Daddy.
The lore, the unbelievably boring playstyle, her “walking animation”, her looks - it’s all utter trash. Had she been released with one of her buyable cosmetics as default - it would have been better. Her entire concept makes no sense. I admit it - I usually DC or leave the game in first hook - cuz I really don’t wanna waste my time with such a boring killer
The first skull merchant I’ve faced since this video came out was hardcore proxy camping the entire game, now that three genning is gone
9:50 this 100%. I fucking LOVED the idea of a tracking info killer like how she has her little iPhone. it was soooooo freaking cool to me and I wanted that side to be encouraged, but then once she came out and was the 3 gen queen I backed off from her.
playing skull has one of the most overlooked benefits: that every few games or so, you are literally handed free bp and free kills. People hate her because of her established 3-gen strat, but that fails to see her fantastic potential as a stealth and speed killer in chase. You can run super goofy builds too without worry, because sometimes survivors will just hand you a win so your mmr doesn't tank. hilarious how this all worked out for her
My girlfriend is a Skull Merchant main and told me she's stupidly high in MMR because some survivors just suicide on first hook which... I simply cannot understand. Ive been up against S.M maybe 6 or 7 times in the past month and 5 times Ive escaped.
The majority of people defending her completely lack the understanding of gameplay. If you get free hits what’s the reward of the survivor gameplay? That she will down you even if the killer player is a bot. You go to a loop, leave the loop but if there is no other pallet near by you just die, no options. It feels like people that play her lack basic brain functions.
@@Insanity-vv9nn Why would you leave the loop? Just loop her. Killer countered, ez. It feels like people that are against her lack basic brain function and the understanding of HER gameplay and her power.
thats what im sayin. Literally free wins because survivors DC or just let me kill them.
its not suprising its way worse than forged in fog mori bad lore awful look dissapointing and not all that good animations and mori are bad gameplay is bad on both sides there is no reedeming quality to this character, she utilises awful mechnics and is entirely based on the most hated strategies possible
Really to me, it just comes down to SM being a character that failed on every front. Expectations definitely helped sour her image, but this is a community that also likes to find the good in the bad so I believe there is more to this that goes way deeper into the root of her entire design.
Story: Fanfiction cringe; I'm amazed it was greenlit and expected to be a part of DbD lore. I'm fairly sure most of the community just outright rejects or tries to forget about it. Self taught millionaire with a genius IQ at 18 is just ridiculous.
Gameplay: Very stale and half-assed, if not detrimental to the game. The drones could've been a cool power had they been fully developed into mobile AI that searches for targets. (Following Nemesis and Knight who do have mobile AI, this concept failed to reach expectations) Instead, they were half assed. I think most people can detect the lack of effort from BHVR on this character purely just from how the power was executed.
Design: She looks both visually cheap and silly. Her default outfit especially is a clash of ideas that don't work. This has been voiced to death so I'll leave it at that.
Execution: Very, very bad. People intentionally DC'ed to escape her lobbies because her power incentivized holding 3 gens for eons. If the majority of your community refuses to play against your character, something is likely very much wrong with their gameplay loop.
The only positives I have for her are that I like that she is unique in some sense, being from South America which is quite rare to see. I also like some parts of her concept like the drones for instance.
The things i hate about skull merchant:
1. Her mask. It looks like someone's first attempt at modeling a gas mask, something a highschool 3d modelling student who just started class made.
2. Her outfit. It looks like unreal assets that they bought and just threw on her model hoping it would stick.
3. Her Gameplay loop. She is unfun to play as and against. Her power is so easy to counter that its practically useless and gets no use. As you stated ppl prefer playing agaiinst and as her the easiest way. Ergo: Get to loop, she places Drone, go to dofferent loop. Rinse and repeat. The skull merchant will always default to 3 genning, especially near the end of the match. She isnt engaging and chase is boring because of her hard core anti loop.
4. Her lore. Its bad. The only cool thing about it is her smarts and thrill for hunting her victims. I like the hunter idea. Im fine with her being a wealthy ceo but leave that story line there, erase the dad's manga part, and just have her as The Skull Merchant, a name whispered on the winds known for kidnapping people and forcing them into playing twisted games of cat and mouse. The Merchant being the cat, the victims being the mice. Have it be a sick twisted game she loves playing as a fucked up sadistic psychopath.
Things I like:
1. Her weapons look cool
2. Her cosmetics are not that bad. Yes they're a bit excessively sexy but imma be honest there is a reason trickster cosmetics sell well.
She is inconsistent, as you said with her look, and her drones are under utilized in terms of gameplay. Instead of an aoe circle the drones i feel should function as remote turrets she manually controls.
Rework I propose:
Pushing the power button sends out a drone you control manually, while controlling a drone you have undetectable. Drones she is piloting are seige weapons, when your controlling a drone press the basic attack button to fire a dart that damages a survivor upon impact. From here she can down them with the drone, stop controlling it and leave it where it downed the survivor essentially functioning as it currently does showing anyone in the radius, there is no stealth mode and only serves as a beacon for the skull merchant to get to the downed survivor. When a survivor does the minigame it destroys the drone, putting it on cooldown for 15 seconds. This would make the power more engaging and fun to use. It may seem strong but she can only have one drone out at a time, and if she downs the survivor on the opposite side of the map you gotta walk all the way over there.
Idk, Dbd has one of the most pig headed communities I have ever seen. Her old version I used totem defense and that was really fun. People would assume I was chess Merchant and try to rush gens only to be hit with Devour Hope. Her her new version is fine too. I mean she also didn't have a mountain of bugs when she first came out. Twins still feel like the Beta version of that killer and they have been out for years. And poor Freddy is just a blank killer at this point.
Design wise she is a bit of a mess. I think they should have either swung for either rich assassin or crazy weeb but not both.
I agree.
Personaly would have prefered them going purely on the crazy weeb route.
Imo i liked both skull merchant and knight theyre really fun makes u feel like an actual killer and not some goffy chaser survivors can troll which is the best part
Give us a break with the players overhyping themselves. Of course they would expect a mechanical killer after that trailer and not a manga obsessed heiress.
Tbh i kinda like SkullMerchant nowadays. At least to play as her. Against is fine, but not the best. Believe it or not: I liked to play against old 3-gen Skull Merchant more lmao
One of the decent ways to efficiently criticise a character is to initially start with some positive traits. When i look at boring merchant, there is absolutely nothing going for her. Terrible lore. Terrible game mechanics. Terrible power and abuse by community. Terrible design (awful for dbd lore). She has nothing going for it.
Myers or Sadako. Screw killing without hooks.
Then Bubba for ultimate camping and Twins/Oni for ultimate slugging.
Merchant nowhere close to them.
My main issue with this killer is she’s just boring to go against she isn’t fun to deal with in chase because her drones make every pallet useless if she’ throws one down when you’re looping and most killers just tunnel one person out and then 3 gen dealing with her just isn’t fun.
I see everyone’s arguements on merchants design from beta, after bet, and the multiple updates/reworks she gets. Her for lack of a better term defensive play style certainly did not make her too well recieved, but one point brought up I think that REALLY solidified all of this hate was the timing of her release. The gen kick meta, and after the knights chapter (which I feel like was hated on a little much as well) with 2 amazing chapters before, just made it an absolute uphill battle for her. Just really unfortunate timing.
This is the only character that should absolutely be scrapped from the game. No questions asked.
I agree that part of the probum was and posobly still is playstile. I usualy compare her and knight 3 genning to basement/insidius buba, verry toxic or disliked playstiles that they just happened to exell in.
I've mained her since release. I've been told to stop playing her because noone finds her fun. I've been told to off myself multiple times for just playing her. I get dc's and survivors giving up against me especially if I make a comeback in my games where survivors are kicking my butt with gens. I love playing the killer, I love her lore and her look, it has a Deathstroke type of look to it. In the end survivors will always complain when they are not winning or have any little challenge when going against a killer that gives them trouble. I do agree she does need a bit of a nerf, take away the hinder effect from her traps and give her back the max of 4 drones and she will be fine. I have mentioned this to BHVR in multiple tickets but all I get is the, "we will take your suggestions under consideration". Makes me feel that they don't even listen to the players who main the killer. And an additional side note. I have had multiple players, especially streamers, say they want old 3 gen merchant back. Makes me laugh everytime.
🎵 Shakira Shakira, I’m on tonight
You know my hips don't lie (no fighting)
And I'm starting to feel it's right
All the attraction, the tension
Don't you see, baby, this is perfection 🎵
Hot take:
Skull Merchant is now in a healthy spot, way more ballanced then most of killers who still have a lot of issues, yet Skull Merchant just feels liie she doesn't lack at anything. She is the one of a few killers who I don't feel like I have to play with 4 same perks all the time to keep up, I can just slap anything I wanna and go play a game. Plus, she feels so frustrating due to peopoe not countering her power, like at all! I played almost 40 matches of her and only in 5 of them people were actualy disarming drones. I think people hate her because they don't wanna do anything on the side of looping and gens. Similar thing why headpop Pig, condem Sadako, box harrasing Pinhead, etc. If people would go out of their way and learn to counter such killers, there would no further reason to hate them so much. Just think, people, think!
In many ways, Skull Merchant was a bit of a wake up call as well. I'll admit, I was in many of the camps leading up to her release. I loved the chapters before, was incredibly lukewarm about the Knight, and thought the skull Merchant was going to be a type of cyborg killer. She released, and I found her play boring. But it also made me realize something else. I had been playing Dead by Daylight regularly since June/July of 2017, and by that I mean a few hours daily. The boring, exhausted feeling wasn't just tied to her, it was a realization that I was starting to find the game boring as well. End result was me stepping away from the game.
I do go back to it from time to time, play a couple of rounds, and have fun. I even have fun going up against Skull Merchants. I think for many long time DbD players, it wasn't just everything you discussed, because I'd agree with it all. But I also thing game fatigue was starting to set in for a lot of us, exacerbated by just how toxic the community was at the time. I'm happy to play rounds and actually get 'GG's" across the board in matches, I'm happy to not be getting overly stressed out in matches, and I feel like some of the toxicity has left the community. I hope some of that toxicity leaves the Skull Merchant some day as well.
I liked using her as a chase breakdown killer. Putting her drones in spots that helped drive survivors away from powerful (or over powered) loops and pallet farms.
But after the changes and updates she feels worse than before, no active slowdown to survivors or boosts to her. It’s a worse form of damage because it’s super avoidable and when I last played (right after the change) it didn’t do anything to hurt survivors, making her feel like a worse version of Legion stalling.
I don’t know if they changed her more but I wish they’d take killer main input into her rework instead of just making her worse and worse.
she simply gets too much for mindlessly placing down drones.
It’s such a weird complaint to make since the top two best killers in this game don’t even apply any of those effects that SM does.
It’s dead by daylight; not a very mechanical serious game. Would you say plague gets too much for mindlessly vomiting on generators and windows ? You have to remember at the end of the day Skull is a basic M1 killer who cannot down people with drones. They gave her things like haste and hindered on survivors who stay in drones because the era of M1 killers who can be looped infinitely are over lol, she’s a stronger M1 killer and that’s a good thing, it’s 2024
They don't HAVE to do any of that. Why are you acting like it's not the devs' fault for designing her this way in the first place lmao @@Nathan-xt6mp
@@Nathan-xt6mpnope
Skullmerchant is very bad gameplay design
You can crouch to avoid drones. She gets a bit of slowdown as you crouch towards the generator to repair it or disable the drone but that's it. As the video says many people are stuck in the mindset of the way she used to work. To be fair though, the game gives no way of relaying this information to players so I can't entirely blame people for not knowing. The drones could hover a bit higher to make it look as though if you crouched you would be undetected but that would require BHVR to be good game designers to have that level of foresight.
Personally I enjoy her kit feeling like a bunch of mismatched parts added together. Though I know that makes her unbearable on the survivor side for a lot of people, it reminds me of a Yu-Gi-Oh deck having many small effects that synergize with each other and add up to a competent strategy. ^^ I think if the drone hacking was a bit more punishing and/or easy to pull off mid-chase she'd be in a perfect spot because what survivors really want is productive counterplay against her - but skull merchant with coup de grace and other chase perks is one of my fave killers personally
Honestly, I do not mind skull merchant at all. I think that the community is trying to build up one mindset for other players, that she is bad and no one likes her. She is one of the few characters that I enjoy playing, right next to killers like Chucky and Knight(who could use some buffs). Your almost able to play in any play style due to how much is in her power. I mostly play chase merchant for how good the speed combined with the anti-loop can be. I like the base outfit, but the diamond mask is a bit weird to put on the base. I don't mind going against her, in fact I like going against SM. Not many people play her, yet people still complain. Right now I'm working on getting her to prestige 100. To be honest, her backstory and lore doesn't really matter to me. I never try to focus on it. If there was a killer that I would get rid of, it would honestly be either Wraith, spirit, or doctor. I'm not here to say that she is perfect, but I think that the community created a mindset for everyone to hate skull merchant, and I think that it makes the game unhealthy for any current/upcoming killers. Hopefully players can give some sympathy for Skull Merchant and open their mind a bit to see they're personal opinion, instead of relying on the community's opinion.
Honestly, SM should have gotten a unique multi task chase power instead of zoning with drones, I find Singularity, who released after SM, more creative and unique, in a way that SM should have been
She started very complex and is now a different very complex. I would have no idea how to play against or as her because 1. At this point I feel like she'll just be changed so it's not worth learning and 2. The roster is so expansive that I can pick literally any other killer to do what I want to do.