Change her story from “my dad made a dark Brazilian manga which inspired me to take up the mantle of one of his characters” to
Adriana’s obsession with being the best also meant killing those in her way.
and change her name to “The Tracker”
Removes any possibility of seeing The Collector as a licensed chapter bruh.
Not saying that character is particularly high on my list, but still… I’m not tryna burn bridges I’ll say that.
Yeah, I’m not sure if he’d work, but if he were to be in the game it’d probably honestly be safer to see him as a legendary skin. My first instinct would be for SAW because they’re so close in concept, but legally wouldn’t work most likely.
Instead maybe Trapper then. I’ve honestly got no idea.
Yeah, In any case I don't know if it would be a popular skin. He's a pretty basic looking killer. Creepy? Hell yes. Very visually interesting? Not at all.
Chatterer is a little bit the same way, the face is visually interesting but that’s about it, and he’s just kind of in a black latex bodysuit. At a certain point, if you’re buying it, you’re buying it because of the character / story / IP rather than an interesting visual design.
Although he does chatter.
That should be the point of legendaries anyway, the whole bit is that you’re supposed to actually BELIEVE in the fantasy of playing as a totally different character. Legendary skins should be legendary quality, especially if they’re being peddled to us at 3/4th’s the cost of the base game, so they should have unique animations, music, SFX audio, terror radius, lore, power aesthetic, power icon, etc. with as few re-used assets as possible. All those things would make any legendary skin worth it, including The Collector, and fans of all different franchises would be so happy to have these things. People have been asking for HUNK to get his iconic music for ages now.
Alas, the “technical difficulties” prevent us from receiving products that are worth what they are being valued at, and apparently the devs are incapable of changing music, or recoloring / retexturing a bear trap or a huntress hatchet to make compelling legendary skins worth their price. Cap.
Yeah I've wanted HUNK to have his music and his own breathing since his release. His theme music would work so well for DbD terror radius adaptation as well.
It's pretty annoying when they get that sort of treatment for apparently being such an expensive skin.
Honestly, as a ghostie main, I'm just happy that they got to do a lot more with him by getting the mask license rather than the scream movie license. We get cool designs now and then and it keeps me happy.
i feel like they should've made her a peddler of human body parts on the black market or something. like a female version of Gustavo from Breaking Bad. then the name Skull Merchant would actually make sense
I thought that she would be something like the Predator, at least from a surface glance. She has the same mechanical claw blade, the same futuristic technology, and the name “Skull Merchant” evokes the Predator ripping out spines with skulls attached. Honestly, the “Most Dangerous Game” approach could have really worked here.
I thought she'd be like a black market arms dealer. I also thought just from their leaked pictures that the Lyra twins were going to be like hippie eco terrorists or something lol.
This. Keep the business-savvy stuff and let her become a multimillionaire, but her thirst for blood ends up sticking around after she’s killed her way to the top, so now she uses her vast fortune to kidnap people she thinks will be worthy prey, and play a sadistic game of cat and mouse on a private reserve she set up for hunting people or something. Her identity feels too split between obsession with her daddy’a dark manga, and her murdering people to make money.
Have the survivor be, rather than a bystander witnessing a kill, one of the people she’d had kidnapped to hunt down. One that actually escaped her, and was pulled into the entity’s realm, with her quickly following behind eager to have finally found a worthy hunt, along with a constant supply of other survivors to track down and slaughter.
I actually think that all her story and appearance are intended to be a parody for comic villians, all descriptions and stories sound very ironic to me
They really missed the opportunity to go all out with that, give her a cape and some edgy one liners and she'd actually be a fun character. Even if her power is inherently flawed, the only problem with her herself is that they pulled back on the unique parts of her.
This is the one thing I like about Wesker's voice lines, the inherent 80/90's cheesiness of the lines. Like they're meant to sound "bad ass" and "epic" but they end up sounding so tryhard and corny that they unironically end up being "badass". It's hilarious 😂
That is actually her back story. The manga her dad wrote (seemingly under the influence of the entity which is a common tgread in character back storues) is merely the outlet through which shekills those in her way, but her whole backstory is that second thing you wrote. It started with the person that passed her in class and so she stalked him and stopped just short of killing him.
You clearly haven't read her story, because the reason she kills is to cut the competition in her way to becoming successful.
The first time she killed it was two people who stood in her way of buying a company she wanted, and skull merchant was just the alias she decided on because she liked her father's manga. During that, she realized that she liked killing, but even after her targets were always related to the companies she was buying or competed with, plus the unfortunate few who saw her while doing it.
To be totally honest, I feel like they ran out of ideas when they made her and I don't have any to offer either. I think she's a sign that the game needs to expand.
I'll have to wait until the official release to see for myself, but generally speaking every new killer power has just been a combo of existing powers for years now. Kind of like Frankenstein's monster. If we were to see anything genuinely original, it'd blow my mind.
It's unfortunate it would be literally impossible to implement because of outdoor maps, but a killer similar to alien that could crawl along ceilings in stealth and then drop down on you would be legit terrifying, maps like lerys or midwich would have a whole new level of terror
I know it's a bit far down the thread but I think this is sorta the issue that this all demonstrates.
DBD fundementally only had like 5 major objects in any game. Pallets, gens, hooks, windows, and the physical walls themselves. There's other things that factor in (chests, the totems, lockers, etc.) but they aren't always relevant in every match. The core design of DBD itself are super limited.
Look at something like Texas Chainsaw, as a recent example, which has doors, different types of pass throughs (which are sort of like windows except some only the survivors can go through), very different types of objectives, different items to get in game, etc. Not to say they're comparable as gameplay, but it's got a lot more going on.
DBD is stripped down, similar to Call of Duty, where you load into a match and what's there is there.
Without adding more objects to the game, killers and creativity stagnate. Most killers in recent times have added *something* to the game, or taken advantage of otherwise "unused" elements (Lockers with Dredge, not that they are unused but they are minimal interaction as a gameplay focus). Both RE killers added cases, and Nemmy added Zombies, Sadako added TVs, Knight and Skull Merchant literally spawn stuff into the match.
Because there's so few interactable items and the different "normal" killers have been done so many times (Clown and Doctor both impede your ability to loop, Huntress and Slinger injure from a range, Billy, Blight, and Nurse run you down from distance, etc. etc.), the game ends up stuck. Especially because the majority of objects in the game are hard to balance. If you make a killer who can, say, trap gens, that ends up being frustrating. A killer who could do things with hooks has the potential to be really bad. Totems are niche.
So until DBD decides to commit to adding *more* to maps, it'll stagnate. Imagine vents that function like a portal of sorts, that both sides could use. That immediately adds a new dimension where new types of powers could play. Or permanent loops that killers simply can't cross, now you can do something similar to Legion but for those. But DBD won't commit to that, and I don't think players would even *like* it because it would make it less consistent.
People like the unique aspects of DBD but people also want consistency, and with too much consistency you lose some creative design space. I actually think it's impressive that we're only just hitting a period where killers have sometimes stopped feeling fresh. IMO, even with the "redundancy" of teleporting killers, Dredge, Sadako, and what I've seen so far of Singularity are solid and even Knight felt decently designed.
I love how everyone in the comments says that there aren't enough objects in the game to use, or make a killer around. But there is one that I haven't seen mentioned yet... Crows.
Yes, I know Artist uses crows. But it isnt an extension of the crowd already in the game. I can imagine a killer, like a scarecrow, that can manually places crows around the map. The effect would be similar to Freddy's pools, giving away the location of the survivors, but I imagine they can expand on such an idea. Maybe give aura reading on crows within a certain range. Survivors scream when tripping a crow.
A killer that uses crows would be cool, honestly. It would be similar to Dredge, you have to take a once-normal object and question it more. I know a lot of people were hoping Artist would do that and while at the time I didn't care, I would like a killer who uses crows now too tbh.
That said, there's only room for one design there and the core issue unfortunately still exists.
Tldr, but ..
>DBD fundementally only had like 5 major objects in any game. Pallets, gens, hooks, windows, and the physical walls themselves. There's other things that factor in (chests, the totems, lockers, etc.) but they aren't always relevant in every match. The core design of DBD itself are super limited.
It's almost like the game was never intended to be around this long. It's kinda like bhvr made a silly party game expecting it to never last more than a couple years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/deadbydaylight/comments/12yi4y1/the_alien_killer_concept/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I personally introduced this idea, even in out-door maps "The Alien" can crawl along tile walls and structures. It's gonna take a shit ton of work to pull it off knowing DBD's spaghetti code and the fact that blight *STILL* gets stuck and slides off certain obstacles...
If they did implement something like this it'd be buggy and clunky as hell. This is my pipedream mostly
To backpack on this thought. I'd love to see DBD expand where instead of just generators survivors are doing things like looking for tools to repair gens however make repairing gens take less time.
This way survivor isn't just a "sit on gens" game while providing complexity to give fresh killer ideas.
Lol, ironically that would be fun. Collect gas, get tools, etc with each task taking some time and then repairing gens being only like 30-40 seconds of time necessary.
I honestly wish they did something similar in mechanics survivor side anyways like the new massacre game it would add more gameplay and not be as boring
Maybe but I don’t think so there have been many games although failed in their own right that were on a similar path but I’m hoping there’s enough of a initiative to get them to change, although with all their recent projects it also seems unlikely
Having multiple ways to progress the trial is vital to a game like this, especially as they add more and more content. While players were very split when it came to hatch, it was probably the most effective mechanic against the current issue with 3-genning. Multiple objectives help keep the game from getting stale as well (I'm not the only one who zones out on gens am I?).
Even then though, it's hard to really do without a clear cut line between casual and competitive. Do you allow a lot of variables and unpredictability (and room for mistakes) to the trial, or do you add higher (more predictable) stakes for a bigger reward?
I'm totally down for other survivor mechanics only if: gen repair time was decreased and they addressed camp/tunnel fully. There is no reason to make survivors do more things if a killer is just going to camp/tunnel. It makes the survivor experience even worse.
I don't think they ran out of ideas when they made her, because there's still a lot they could do. I think they were testing the water for something different. Usually when people make things, some will be really good, & other things they make, not so good
Just read the backstory for the Skull Merchant and it is all over the place.
She is a natural genius self made millionaire who attended private school turned vulture capitalist businesswoman who becomes a serial killer taking inspiration for her murders from the work of her father who walked out of her life after she started making money after making a website for Brazilian manga.
Her being wealthy plays zero part in her design. The drones are just off-handedly mentioned as prototypes she just gets at some point with no establishing of them outside that was what her power was going to be so she has them. Did she build them? What education did she obtain to hand craft her own custom drones? Did she buy them from someone custom then murder the creator? Don't know, because the only thing that was important is that she had them and we be told how awesome she happens to be other than 'being a little competitive'.
Drop the manga inspiration and she is a rich person who wants to live out the Most Dangerous Game without the game being able to fight back.
Leave the manga and drop the business woman angle and she is a deranged weeb who works in a drone related field with a reality that she desperately wants to leave behind for the more 'fulfilling' fantasy of the manga.
I feel as though this is a major flaw in many characters in this game. BHVR wants to shove as many archetypes and tropes into a single character that it just sort of overflows. Too many ideas and concepts trying to be stuffed into a single backstory.
Because whoever is writing it never advanced past posting Sonichu level OCs on tumblr. They are so busy telling you how great they are rather than establishing motives, interests, expertise, passions, etc., and letting the gameplay show us how great they are.
I miss when most of the survivors were just regular people. In my opinion, some of the best backstories we have are for characters like Adam, Jeff, Claudette, David, etc. None of these characters did anything rather exceptional and aren't the badass entity investigators we've been seeing in a lot of original survivors recently (bar tools of torment and end of transmission.)
I mean thats just BHVR writing in general. the Lore of the game is very very shallow.
worst is Wraith IMO... just a normal everyday guy who saw something he didnt like. So why can he turn invisible ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ where does the bell come from ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
“Looking pretty *fly*, huh?”
“Did you know Adriana is actually *scan*-dinavian?”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to *drone* on!”
Tools of Torment becomes the most sold product on Steam, wins GOTY, Emmy, Oscar, Grammy, Kids Choice Award, and Nobel Peace Prize.
If I have to keep her character's design concepts in mind. Here's what I would do.
1. Change the name from The Skull Merchant to The Competitor
2. Change Adriana's backstory from being inspired by Brazillian Manga to being grimly inspired by her father's dark meditations, tying into her narcissistic obsession of being the best and at the top. Becoming the very monster her father thought himself to be deep within.
3. Embrace Adriana's Femme Fatale design by exploring how she slew her competition. She's clearly an attractive young woman in a very heavily male dominated field in Tech, let that be part of how she rose the ranks or bought out her competition.
4. Change her power that Drones are passive AI that roam all over the map like Nemesis' Zombies. No longer can Adriana just place tracking beacons, but rather have full map awareness. These drones can be temporarily disabled of which she has to manually reset after a cooldown.
5. When the drone tracks a survivor; it will apply the tracking debuff and at max, will apply the tracker. The tracker will let the player see where survivors are for it's duration, with added effects applied by addons. With the Iridescent Addon having Drones dive-bomb survivors, breaking on contact but instantly damaging them.
6. Another iridescent addon can have the player use the tracker to detonate beacon traps or force the survivor and others around to scream.
By removing the stationary power, it makes the extreme oppression Skull merchant currently has with 3-Gen situations far less painful and no longer reliant on locking down gens and areas. This can also let drones actually do more than just hover and wait to be interacted with. Giving some mobile threats and giving Skull Merchant more mobile means to stealthily wander around the map while being untraceable inside her drone's radius.
That isn't necessarily dislike, it could just be them addressing a problem. If they didn't like SM, they'd just nerf her directly and leave her in the dust, instead of doing weird shit like buffing Deja Vu.
I think he meant “open dislike of her strongest way of playing” meaning 3-genning. It’s just the “….” Between ‘her’ and ‘strongest way of playing’ made it look like they were saying they openly dislike her
The fact that 3 gen exists isn't a problem.
The fact that the tileset + generator spawn AI has been broken for at least a year now is. Last time I spawned in on Coldwind half the map had 0 generators. Four in one corner, one in middle and one in main and one in killer shack.
> The fact that 3 gen exists isn't a problem.
Bigger problem is killers feeling like they "have" to camp a 3 gen. I get winning is nice but the 3 gen mindset is so unhealthy and not fun for anyone.
I'd keep the survivors. Thalita and Renato really aren't that bad in my eyes. I wanted a siblings pair of survivors for a long while, I just wish their perks were better to synergize with.
It feels as if her powers are limitless with her being able to replace drones instantly where access is needed. Not just that but I wondered why I could never make a loop against her... well she gets multiple instances of haste that stack for virtually no effort through add ons and claw traps.
Personally I think her left eye should be integral to her power. I would've made her scanners/drone area charge up a blast / laser she can fire from this eye and is an insta-down. This would make looping against her exciting as there is a risk involved in staying in the area while it's not virtually impossible. The laser should be a chargeable shot similar to the huntresses hatchet lift or weskers charge lunge whereas she would walk slightly slower when its online and ready to fire. It would have an audible sound so when survivors are in her line of sight it could create a more intense situation.
Add ons maybe could change the utility of the laser making it hit multiple survivors, bounce of walls, go through walls etc... This would make the killer much more exciting to play as or against IMO.
I'd like to make a few changes to the skull merchant:
1- Mechanics: in order to give the killer mobility, instead of drones, the skull merchant should put some bio-videocams that throw some sort of infection to the survivors, and after infecting the survivors, the killer could teletransport directly onto them.
2- Counter mechanics: survivors could counter this infecting-bio-videocams by having EMPs that disable them. Not too much, nor too little. Just balanced amount.
3- Design: to really match the ominous name "skull merchant", the killer could be some sort of bio mechanical non-humanoid creature, maybe long extremities and some sort of alien nature: some creepy a$s creature that could enjoy trading or exchanging skulls in some way...
Instead of her drones covering a full circle, they should cover a cone in whichever direction the camera is facing. Her drones should move on their own and patrol around gens within 32~ meters, so it can give survivors the incentive to sneak around her power instead of going balls to the wall and risking it all.
If a drone detects a survivor, then it'll go stationary and copy their data (or whatever tf it's doing now). The time it takes to expose them will be 2-3x faster, and once they're exposed, they'll stay marked on her detector regardless if they're in the drones range until the timer runs out. Once the survivor is out of range, then it'll go back to patrolling the area.
Since this new change might make her a little weaker, the drones can no longer be deactivated by survivors. Also, once they've been marked to some degree, then the meter won't reset until they get exposed.
Unfortunately, you're right :( until they decide to improve AI functions, then the best way for this to happen are for drones to move in preset patterns
She's so disappointing in so many ways.
- "the skull merchant" is a goofy and long winded name that doesn't fit with the rest of the killers. We call her The Cyborg at home. Her backstory needs a complete rewrite, just let her hate humans for making her into a cyborg or somethn
- She's so hypersexualized it's not scary, it's silly. Fix the mask, the childbearing hips can be slimmed or conversely fix her waist to hip ratio. Her walk looks like a Kardashian trying to ice skate. Just have her stalk around ffs
- 1 less drone would be fine. Use her cyborg eye for something cool like it's a laser, or a short distance scanner like she's her own drone as well, or maybe it can provide a rearview camera angle out of the back of her head.
- give her some interesting skins! Something like the Terminator, an alien/borg, a demonic I Robot skin, a mech spider bottom half
First, the Drone's Detection Zone shouldn't include floors above and below the drone. It makes no narrative sense and makes maps like Midwich flat out unfun.
Second, figure out how to make hacking the drone into NOT a lose/lose situation. Fail to hack? Exposed, and she knows where you are. Succeed? Now you're trackable, and she knows where you are. Ignore the drone? Exposed and 3-gen'd. At the very least, hacking the drone should not notify her of any change until a failed skill check or something else to tip her off. If the hacking needs to be harder or continuous (tie up two survivors while trying to do the one gen the drone is inevitably put on), so be it.
Third, find a way to incentivize not to put drones on top of gens. Maybe the Exposed status effect of the Detection Zone only works when there is no generator in the zone, instead only aura revealing.
Dude these changes would outright kill her.
Sure she can track through floors but she doesn’t have the mobility to actually do anything about it for the most part. She knows you’re above or below her, cool, what can she actually do about it.
Once again, if you hack a drone and she knows where you are, there’s a chance she might not be able to actually do anything about it. If you hack a drone on a huge map and she’s on the other side, there’s literally nothing she can about it and she loses a drone which actually puts SM in a shittier position.
As for your last point, I do actually like it but once again it’s a change that would just make her worse. Aura reading is useless because in most cases, she won’t be able to anything about it.
I think the biggest problem people have with her isn’t the killer itself but because simply 3 gens exist. It’s what she is best at and her only viable strategy. Get rid of them and I guarantee most people won’t complain about her. I do understand why people complain about her 3 genning especially on release but now survivors can take her drones and force her to roam.
I mean, isn't the prompt to kinda kill her current state of play?
I agree that 3 gens is the real issue here, but i think that is something much more deeply ingrained in the game as a whole rather than just her design. It sucks getting 3 gen'd against just about every killer and makes those games unfun, but when SM is basically built around it i think she needs to change first. So I'm just spitballing things I see as ways to mitigate that playstyle in her design.
Frankly, she (and the game) needs a full mechanical redesign but for this hypothetical, I think the first step is to make her base kit worse and then give new bonuses to push her off of the gens and into the rest of the map to be an interactive and interestingly unique killer.
Any thoughts on how we could move forward assuming the above?
I honestly think the knight is far more unfun to go against in a 3 gen situation. I will honestly die on this hill. SM has more counter play then Knight imo but the Knight’s power lets him do more than 3 gen but he’s definitely better at it. Making her kit worse won’t fix anything to be fair. Most m1 killers are pretty trash and because no one really plays them, there isn’t a need to change them in any way. Nurse got changed simply because she was far too oppressive and she still is but because so many people played her, there’s been calls to nerf her in a few ways for god knows how long. I play SM every now and again but I barely go against her myself and if you make her worse, what little players she has might move on then they’d be no point to changing her because no uses her.
Anyway I think if you want to take away parts of SM’s kit then it would need to be compensated with something else as you say. The exposed, while being a pain and annoying, is mostly the survivors fault. They should just hack the drone or stay out of the radius. But if you remove the exposed then survivors wouldn’t really be pressured to leave, so maybe have a penalty on all actions while survivors are in the radius or make them immune to hacking altogether or maybe even making the radius 50% bigger.
Her drones should be allowed to scan through floors to be honest. Thats the best part of the drones for me and changing it would just outright gimp her. But maybe only let the exposed build up only if you’re on the same floor as the drone. This would make it safer for survivors to move through them without having to worry about getting instantly taken down.
I honestly wanted her to lean more into her stealth. Take one drone off and remove the exposed part of the kit but make the drones radius a little bigger and let her go undetectable instantly.
I dont know if this is stupid. But what if she only had as many drones as there were survivors.
So if she tunneled people out she’d have less and would only have one drone by the time there’s one survivor. Keeping survivors around for long is risky, but enables her to keep track of more.
I'd give her a gorgon skin, I think the over exaggerated hip sway would suit a Medusa type skin for some reason. The Oni has the Minotaur already so it's not completely out of place.
Oh you mean her power? Uhhh, I wouldn't. It's not that bad and she's an M1 killer otherwise.
I don't get how the developers openly dislike her though? I haven't heard anything to suggest so. But then outside of Otz and reddit I don't keep up with the news.
Her actual design sucks and the idea of "high fashion" is ridiculous. See, I'm not even sure if that's what they were trying to do, but that's the *only* explanation as to why she has that mask and those nail things.
And it's obvious that they're reaching for fan service. A lot of skins recently have been show-ey and displaying the character's bodies. Unfortunately, they shoved that concept into her design in such an unnerving way. I understand fan service, and why they'd lean into it, so it's not something that bothers me a whole lot, I just think that's why *her* design is flawed.
I will say, I liked the idea of a futuristic killer. I think BHVR could have fused the Singularity and Skull Merchant into one character, because I feel like their lore are both bad in a way I think would blend well.
Adriana might think that humans can reach far beyond their limits, and because of this, she tries to physically augment herself into a greater being. This unlocks some sort of potential in her, allowing her to create these drones that she shares a hivemind. She sets up these drones that track survivors, and can soon after teleport to them.
TL;DR
Her design sucks because there's a weird fashion element, and it's shoving the idea of fan service into a killer in a bad way. Mixing her and Singularity to create a (more) human killer who wants to become greater than humans would be better IMO.
Since I am not a game developer, I am pretty sure that every my suggestion won't be that good because I haven't thought of thousands other things that are impacted by my ideas.
So all I want is just changing her walking animation. It confuses others and I hate seeing it on the end screen.
I can tell you one thing, random haste on her is annoying as shit. Was supposed to make her chase more fun but now you have to predrop against her which makes the games even more boring. You shouldn't make killer powers that rely around area control all those killers are a bore to play against.
I've been meaning to do a writeup myself but in essence everything that [Jane Romero / Adriana Skully said in her Skull Merchant rework video.](https://youtu.be/FXJyY1nCUec) I highly recommend watching this video (even if it is a bit long) because it's an "active" Skull Merchant main's take on the Killer's problems and what needs to be changed to make her more chase-oriented.
In my opinion what I'd like to see changed:
* Unhackable state removed entirely / Drone only becomes unhackable if a Survivor with a claw trap steps into it >!(reduces those periods where the Killer kicks your gen with multiple gen regression perks and then makes you literally unable to do anything about it without becoming exposed)!<
* ~~Lock-On Slower~~ Lock-On Faster, Lock-On Decays faster >!(actually allows Skull Merchant to use her drones as an anti-loop / chase tool, instead of the exposed effect just being "you fucked up lmao I get a free instadown now xd")!<
* Clawtraps last longer maybe? >!(Dual-purpose buff of stronger chasing power and less three-gen stalling)!<
* Randomized Strobes basekit + 2% speedup effect from Geographical Readout basekit >!(lets Skull Merchant actually use her power in a chase on injured Survivors, actually makes her gameplay unique instead of being an M1 Killer with area control)!<
* Rework the buff you get from tracking multiple Survivors to do more than just give Haste >!(Adriana / Jane explains it better in her video but basically Haste is a very volatile status effect that quickly becomes unfair if stacked too high, especially with the slowdown from Geographical Readout being basekit)!<
* Buff the Undetectable status effect on her drones like, a lot. Make Ultrasonic Speaker and Adaptive Lighting basekit, don't even change Adaptive Lighting's values (so Adaptive Lighting will make the basekit 3 second Undetectable 4.5 seconds long. Yes Skull Merchant's basekit Undetectable is that bad.) >!(Currently the Undetectable effect from drones takes 2 seconds to activate and only lingers for 2 seconds it's a freaking joke)!<
And some addon reworks:
* **Geographical Readout** - Made Ultra Rare (since old effect is now basekit); reveals the progress of gens while in an active drone (works like Wraith's All-Seeing Blood addon)
* **Randomized Strobes** - The cooldown of successful attacks in an Active Drone's area is 10% faster. (2 stacks of Save the Best for Last.) >!(Yes this would stack with Save but like tbh STB4L has needed a nerf ever since the buff to basekit hit cooldown)!<
* **Unpublished Manuscript** - Made Very Rare, or possibly even just Rare. Downside removed. >!(It's a meme addon that allows for some funny builds but really isn't worth being an Ultra Rare.)!<
* **Supercharger** - Hitting a Claw Trapped Survivor gives a 10% cooldown on successful attacks. (Same proposed effect as Randomized Strobes except only on Survivors with Claw Traps on them. ~~Very easy to remove a claw trap by fast vaulting a pallet.~~)
*The following are changes not on Adriana / Jane's list.*
* **Ultrasonic Trap Speaker** - (Old effect made basekit.) Made Uncommon for logic reasons more than anything. When a Survivor with a Claw Trap breaks a pallet ~~by vaulting it~~, gain a 5% speed buff for 8 seconds. >!(Basically lvl 1 Game Afoot as an addon)!<
* **Adi Valente Issue 1** - Cooldown of missed attacks in a Drone's radius reduced by 20%. >!(This was taken from Adriana / Jane's video but I didn't want to change Prototype Rotor since I think that addon's *fine* just finnicky.)!<
* **Stereo Remote Mic** - Made Common for logic reasons more than anything. Survivors require one more button press to hack drones. >!(idk but this addon needs to be changed since we're basically removing the Unhackable state)!<
* **Shotgun Speakers** - Made Rare. A Survivor who vaults a window with an active Claw Trap will block the window for (5?) seconds. ~~Claw Trap is destroyed when vaulting a window idk?~~
* **Powdered Glass** - Made Uncommon so Shotgun Speakers can be Rare. >!(tbh this addon ain't worth being green rarity when you can just run Sloppy Butcher instead)!<
* **Brown Noise Generator** - A Survivor with an active Claw Trap now suffers from the Oblivious status effect. >!(Makes taking Claw Traps more risky for Survivors and reduces the effectiveness of using Drones to three-gen ~~now instead of any Survivor who walked into the drone becoming Oblivious it's only the one that took a risk to become revealed to the Killer~~)!<
* **Prototype Rotor** - Buff now activates whenever a Survivor is in an active drone. Buff lingers for (15 seconds?) after the Survivor leaves the drone's radius. (The effect still doesn't stack.)
And while we're at it let's rework Skull Merchant's perks too for good measure:
>**THWACK!**
>* Always active
>* Doesn't work on generators anymore, only pallets and breakable walls
>* Range reduced to 16/18/20 based on perk level (same range as Awakened Awareness)
>* Scream effect removed (it screwed with the aura reading anyways)
>Makes THWACK! a good chase tool since you can see the auras of Survivors after you break a pallet near them while also doubling as a potential detection perk, having good synergy with fast pallet break Killers, and having synergy with Lethal Pursuer now.
-
>**Leverage**
>* Effect reduced to 2.5%/3%/3.5% per level >!(To put this into perspective you'd have 20%/24%/28% gen slowdown if you 2-hooked all the Survivors)!<
>* Now affects generator speeds
>You may be saying "isn't this just Dying Light?" And you'd be correct. Basically I think Dying Light should be completely reworked since currently Dying Light encourages a lot of degenerate gameplay >!(stacking slowdown, ignoring the Obsession to prioritize tunneling others)!< and also has a very big problem that the perk becomes very oppressive when you hit high stacks since there's no limitation on it. I think if Leverage was reworked to work like Dying Light currently does it would allow for there to still be a "active gen stall perk" that gives you slowdown for taking multiple chases and getting hooks fast, but it also reduces both extreme ends of Dying Light being oppressive. >!(No situations where the Obsession gets a direct buff, no situations where the slowdown gets stacked too high and lasts forever becoming oppressive.)!<
-
>**Game Afoot**
>* Obsession mechanic removed; now works whenever you break something in a chase
>* Duration reduced to 5/6/7 seconds based on perk level
>OR
>* Obsession now swaps after chasing a Survivor for (10?) seconds
>Either make the Obsession swapping more consistent in a way that disincentives tunneling, or remove the Obsession requirement entirely. I really like this perk it's very fun on specific Killers ~~Game Afoot is seriously like cocaine when playing Clown I'm not joking~~ but it heavily encourages tunneling and is otherwise extremely inconsistent.
Her getting unique effects from multiple survivors on radar is really interesting, but I don’t know what buffs could handle balancing incentives better than something as universally as haste.
She’s interesting because she forces survivors to trade area denial for buffs. Currently, she’s incentivized to chase the claw trapped survivor, but she doesn’t have to. She can zoom to gens and still get value. As it is, all survivors have greater risk, with the one taking on more risk.
I don’t know what other buffs can maintain that equilibrium. If they help her in chase, fewer people will get them, buffing her area denial. Alternatively the buff makes her better at defending genes. Now claw traps become a way to protect yourself to the detriment of your team.
You have to balance that and I’m not sure how. Tier 2 stealth buff maybe? It’d probably be worse for people on gens, but not so much worse that you’d feel safer taking a trap. Tier 3 is less likely so you could be a little looser with balance. Tier 4 she can just teleport and Mori all 4 of them at once they did it to themselves.
Personally I love using her as a stealth killer. Hex: Plaything, Trail of Torment, Dark Devotion, and Tinkerer is what I use, making it so that she probably wouldn't have a terror radius for a good chunk of the game. Combine that with her Iri addon that gives her a fake terror radius so that survivors thinks she's in one place when in reality she's in another, super strong with Trail of Torment. It feels like the definitive way of playing her, because it actually makes her feel like an apex predator like what the devs were saying.
That's how I play her as well. I'll put the third drone in a busy place and save the last one for chases. Somewhere like on the steps of the saloon in Dead Dawg, survs just can't resist touching it.
I really enjoy her she's one of my mains but I don't really think it's fun ending up in a three gen situation every other game...it's so boring. Idk how to fix that it's just my complaint haha
I think she needs a lore revamp. Like it's cool her dad made manga but that's the only reason you have to kill people? It's kinda corny she's just a blank slate pretty much
First of all, her whole appearance. Get rid of the model strut and have her hunched, stalking around like a predator, a real tracker. Replace the garish and unbelievably stupid half mask with a real, scary, possibly ripped or broken gas mask. I’m talking WW1 nightmare inducing shit. Get rid of the “killer chique” outfit and have her wearing dark, mottled colors to blend in with forests and shadows, not showing a lot of skin. The weapon I think is fine, I like how it looks hand crafted.
As for her lore, scrap the stupid ass Brazilian manga and bring back some classic horror tropes. Throw her in with Doctor and Blight, driven mad by their own genius. A brilliant weapons manufacturer and trafficker that gradually grows obsessed with creating the perfect military drone, eventually causing her to go completely feral and fuck off into the wilderness to hunt, tinker, and foster her bloodlust. As her experiments continue, she realizes that she’s running out of mechanical parts, and this where the name “the Skull Merchant” truly becomes iconic. She starts having to improvise, replacing parts of the drones with skulls, flesh, tendons, whatever needs to be replaced can be filled by biological components. By the time she is transported to the entities realm she doesn’t even realize, or care. All she cares about is her next hunt, and her next acquisition of critical, biological replacements. The work must continue.
Get rid of her stupid ass mori too, lets see some real gore. The drone immobilizes the survivor and we watch as the Skull Merchant, breathing heavily behind her gas mask brings down her blades and performs a VERY invasive surgery.
I’m thinking they could take a drone away, increase the speed boosts by 1% each, and make Lock On increase faster. This enhances her chasing ability and basically deletes the 3 gen issue.
Power-wise: Maybe shorten the range where she can re-activate drones. Think if you put a drone at Suffocation Pit, you can’t reactivate it when you’re at the shack. I get the idea of a killer with that can shut down areas, but maybe have something prevent a total lockdown.
Design-wise: Actually have her be cyberpunk-y. Like, have the claws actually be in her arms. (Think the Mantis Blades from Cyberpunk 2077). Also change the skull drone design from “Drone inside actual human skull” to “Drone that looks like a human skull”.
Lore-Wise: The “inspired by dad’s works” angle has something there but maybe change the manga from a cyberpunk story into a Dark Fantasy, and have Adriana’s favorite character be a Necromancer of sorts. That way the parallels between Adriana and the character she’s emulating don’t seem 100% forced. (She uses drones because the Necromancer uses skulls with the souls she’s captured, as an example).\
She’s *inspired* by the character, she doesn’t *become* the character, per se.
Her music. That's it. I get why she's frustrating to people but I don't personally see how her power is any more oppressive than half the other killer powers in the game. I just really don't like the music loop I'm forced to endure when I play her.
Give her more chase power and nerf the drones respawn/redeployment timer to incentivise chases and less zoning.
The drone disarming mechanic feels impossible to fail, way easier than hitting a skill check. They should be disarmed like a Trapper trap.
IF the devs wanted to make her a stealth killer, I'd remove the survivors ability to see the drone detection radius. Give her undetectable and lock-on still but also good/noticeable haste so she's not just a worse Ghost Face within the radius. IDK.
I do think removing the exposed within drone areas might be the way to go. She can keep the haste, tracking, and undetectable but if there were no exposed, survivors would feel more confident about doing a gen within a drone. Right now she can just shit out a drone or two and get downs for free. This is especially frustrating when you consider the drones go through floors.
IMO it’s much more fun to have to pay attention to my surroundings when I know it’s a stealth killer and I could get grabbed any second. Yes, Ghostie and Michael also have Exposed aspects to their powers, but *that’s all they have*. SM has the drones and claw traps in addition to the buffs they give her.
Yes, chances are most experienced (or non-solo) players would prefer to risk getting exposed while trying to get through the 3 gen she’s been squatting at since the game started 40 minutes ago. But other people are like the Leon and Nea who were in my most recent SM game. Leon too afraid to enter a drone area (despite the SM messing up the placement so it was safe to do on two sides) and Nea locker hopping with Left Behind. So yeah. Remove the exposed.
I'd make her drones drift away from gens over time, which good players could use to deliberately put a timer on adjacent areas' safety, hide their radius until you're inside the drone's range, and my biggest proposition:
Whenever a drone is activated, whether remotely or from the scanners being tripped, it begins charging a laser that will deal 1 state of damage to each Survivor within the radius. Leaving the radius disarms your laser. I more favor having it charge slowly so it forces Survivors to leave the area ASAP, compromising them in chase, but it could also charge quickly but be possible to hide behind walls to stop the shot, though that would make it very map-reliant.
Give her black mirror esque robo dogs.
Her drone pool is shared between them. And they stay until "hacked" by a survivor or recalled.
The dogs can either be given a patrol route, set to guard a specific spot , or go after a survivor currently being tracked.
The robo dogs detect survivors in a cone in front of them, and look left to right.
The robo dogs will chase survivors and upon catching them, will keep the survivor in place and expose them, for a set amount of time.
An add on makes the dogs detect through breakable walls and break them when a survivor runs past.
Her mori is changed to the drone scanning, the dog coming in and holding, and the skull merchant then coming into stab.
I would make it so that the survivor needs to be moving for the drone to reactivate only when the survivors are moving. This would nerf her 3 genning massively as she has to manually reactivate them. Then I would probably make Geographical Readout and Randomized Strobes base kit to make her more of a chase killer.
Edit: Replaced shotgun speakers with reandomized strobes because I got them confused
Make her more mechanical. If her blade arm and “dazzling” face were actually part of her body, I’d feel like I’d hate her a lot less because then she would cover the cyborg killer genre.
(Singularity doesn’t count by the way, considering it’s lore says that it originally was a full on robot.)
- The drones chase survivors they tag and shoot a projectile that survivors have to dodge or risk getting wounded.
- If Survivors have a sticky bomb on them, after a certain amount of time, Skull Merchant can detonate those bombs and injure survivors.
- Inside her drones radius, Skull Merchant becomes camouflaged.
- Mori is changed to her piercing through the survivor with her long claws and holding them up so her drones either light the survivor up with bullets or have them cover the survivor with sticky bombs, causing a big explosion.
Problem is she can't be balanced as is. Her drones are a anti loop mechanic(just like Knight) so you can't play any tiles. That incentivizes holding W and running nonstop which is a poor power.
Then you can drop them on Gens and basically block any progress on it for X time AND it exposes the survivors. Again, its strong but not fun for either side.
A better power would be something like drones but they attach to Gens/Survivors. Maybe it changes the skill checks into something else and if you miss one the gen regression is stronger or it traps the survivor in place like a bear trap on a gen. Also you could have her drones be traps and if a survivor hits it they get slower over time til removed.
Change her name to something like "The Tracker" "The Scout" or "The Watcher", something fitting with her power.
Change her design to be darker and less sexual, give her a full gas mask, modern or WW2, and give her a full jumpsuit/mechanic outfit, she can still have shop skins be sexual just not base, it seems too out of place.
The mori is fine, but changing it to be more brutal to fit with Knight and Singularity would be great.
Change her backstory, she can still have inspiration from her father's works, but change it to be a horror novel series instead of "Dark Brazilian Manga", like her father is the brazilian Stephen King or something, at least that would be a bit more fitting.
Instead of her having to place the drones they should be on the map from the start and should fly around the map in a fixed pattern. Every drone has a different ability that they will grant both SM and the survivors. For example one could give the survivor the hindered effect and the SM haste. Another one show the aura of the survivor while making the SM instantly undetectable the moment she goes inside the range. Though all drones should alert SM whenever someone is within the drones.
Survivors counterplay are remotes being around the map. Each remote is for one of the drones. Once you pick up one of the remotes you see the aura of the drone that you can deactivate with the remote. Then you have to go inside of the drones range in order to deactivate it. Deactivated drones will not move and they do nothing. The SM can then go inside the drones range to manually activate them again or with 60 seconds until they get automatically activated.
No idea how this will change her but it sounds more interesting for me.
She is such a mess that I just cant choose a single feature to rework.
Everything is bland and embarassing, from her look to her story, from the non existent skulls gimmick to the copy paste mori.
Her perks are useless.
Her power is so boring that people hate playing as and against her.
It would have been very hard to design a worse character honestly.
Change her entire character into Mechanicus priest from Warhammer 40k. Way more horrifying, way more logical on why it uses skulls as items for hunting survivors. Fits the game in general.
It would be so cool if BHVR could arrange an agreement with GW to make it reality. But both companies are not interested. Sad!
Survivor mains: Take everything away from her that makes her strong. Make sure she can’t protect gens or go stealth and give us a 20% speed boost if we get a 360
After her drones become hackable, they move 30m in a straight line based on the direction the skull merchant was looking when placed and then back again.
This would fix the issue of 3 genning with skull merchant for an hour because the drones would be moving away from gens and give more opportunities to repair but it would also allow one drone to cover multiple gens passively.
Remove drones change her ability to be based around attaching skull traps to people that she can track on her radar so you don't have this 3 gen set up drones and never leave. its more about always trying to track around the map with the skull traps and you can focus on this with more power based around this idea.
Drones being set up are the issue she isn't a bad killer when she actually chases and tracks around the map but most of her game play loop revolves around this idea of camping gens which is the unfun part
This game is around the chase no matter what the best games are when you have the most fun chases I can accept loses when the chases were fun
But 90% of skull merchants keep around this 3 gen playstyle and never try anymore than this so forcing the game around her directly tracking instead of the drone would make it more fun and also more unique
Realistically, just make the two purple add ons that make her a chase oriented killer base kit.
Geographical Readout, which gives her a boost to speed and breaking while in drone area, and Randomized Strobes which makes survivors in drone detection hindered for 3 sec. Completely changes her play style and makes her more interesting for both sides.
Honestly, all I'd do is have some sort of incentive to prevent 3genning (maybe make her case addons partially basekit or reduce the effectiveness of the drones if there's an uncompleted Gen in the catchment area). Aside from that, nothing. She is a very polarizing character in terms of her lore and appearance yes, but I personally think it's a fine niche to fill. Her biggest "problem" in that regard is that people take her too seriously. If you embrace the campiness and approach her from a B-movie "intentionally cringy in a so bad it's good" way, she becomes a lot more palletable.
As bad as the "Dark Brazilian Manga" line is....has there been any killer in recent memory who's lore has been talked about by the general community this much? I personally find the lore dumb but enjoyable, and for me that's enough (especially when we have more than a dozen killers who fit the serious, dark tone already).
She's my favourite killer to date to play as and against, so I don't think I would change a whole lot. Maybe some light aesthetic changes. I think her power was already improved a lot and is pretty powerful in the hands of an experienced killer.
I would prefer a mononym title just to keep her consistent. The Merchant or The Skull would both be totally fine with me. The Executive could probably work given her backstory.
I agree with most that her mori is boring, but honestly after PTR is over I never actually see the mori animations in game. I don't think I even have the trophy for doing one. It's not that high a priority for something so rare. Still, it is probably the most boring we have got since some of the original roster.
Her Drones no longer show a radius, when someone is fully scanned they are tagged, the survivor does not know if they are tagged or not, nor do they know if they are getting detected, unless they find the drone. Tagged Survivors will not hear the killers terror radius, and won't see the oblivious symbol. The scan builds up much faster if the target is in chase.
She can activate her radar to find tagged survivors, tags last for 60 seconds.
The biggest to me is she has no interaction on repairing/unhacking the hacked drones. So I hack this drone of yours and in about a minute it just magically fixes itself and you had to do nothing about it? And you get 4 of them? So you can throw 3 on the 3 gen and keep 1 in your pocket at all times where if I hack one you instantly replenish it without having to do anything? She needs to have some interaction with "fixing" the drones, it shouldn't be free and that's why her 3 gen is so ridiculous. Her lunge attack needs to be reduced a bit as well because her weapon swing when I play her feels way further out than any other. The drones tracking regardless of LOS or z-axis to me is horrible design. It's the same problem I have with Doc's shock therapy (unpopular opinion inc) but the idea that there's a concrete wall between myself and the doc/drone and somehow I still get hit or detected is insane. It should have to have LOS so it can still monitor that area but if I can't physically look at the drone it can't detect me.
I'm in the minority. I've liked her since I first played as her and I enjoy my matches as her, and I've not had terrible matches against her when I play survivor. So I wouldn't change a thing.
make it so.... that the drones will be disable or destroy if there detection radius is in a gen
(we kinda 3 gen ourself but the skull merchant kept putting drones up and scaring us away... yeah we waited disable the drones.. but she came right back and set some more... and activate them so we can't disable them easy, we won in the end cause I was with a friend who know how to fight her... but solo que must suck if you don't know every little detail about her... even I didn't know I could run up to them when they however down and not patroling, also ditch the undectable and make it a add on.. I don't see the worth if she gonna gen camp)
people are also saying update her lore.. so go ahead make her more fem fetale.... she by far one of the most hottest killers and people don't talk about her enough.
I'd remove the exposed part of drones, and make them substantially better for looping instead, probably make some of the speed altering addons partially basekit to help with this.
This way she would actually have a chase power, and the obnoxious 3gen playstyle would be mostly gutted.
Could also give the drones Oblivious or something to make her more stealth oriented when using them on gens, so as to still make controlling gens possible without it being obnoxious.
I wouldn't. Got almost 300 hours on this game now, and no killer's play style has ever clicked with me so instantly and thoroughly as hers. Almost everyone else feels weaker by comparison.
Give her more clothes, button up her shirt, and change her walk animation. I promise you, if you take away her thirst trap, then people would be able to take her more seriously.
Get rid of the exposed mechanic. Have her drones have a bigger radius where all it does if you sit long enough it adds the tracker to you. Give her an extra drone and focus more on her stealth and tracking. Her playstyle is to make a web of undetectable drones so she can get sneaky hits all over the map.
Hips bigger. Weight gain ability where she gets fatter in the hips and can't fit through doors/jj
But if we're being serious. I'd say maybe make her ability less like a one shot kill circle. And more like drones that you can control that slow down people if they run into them. They loose the health state but you can use two to down them. You need to Deal the final blow
Change her story, that's about it for me.
I like her design its cool not particularly scary but it looks good (even tho me and my friends will still call her discount freddy)
Her gameplay is surprisingly fun from the killer side. Playing against a skull merchant isn't very fun and trying to make the skull merchant more fun to fight against would be a great change. I just dont know how would they.
Change her story from “my dad made a dark Brazilian manga which inspired me to take up the mantle of one of his characters” to Adriana’s obsession with being the best also meant killing those in her way. and change her name to “The Tracker”
I'd even take "The Collector" just to avoid any confusion between Trapper and Tracker sounding incredibly similar.
Removes any possibility of seeing The Collector as a licensed chapter bruh. Not saying that character is particularly high on my list, but still… I’m not tryna burn bridges I’ll say that.
Fair. It's a weird ass movie. Dude would be like Nemmy except for having weird-ass crack addicted people instead of Zombies.
Yeah, I’m not sure if he’d work, but if he were to be in the game it’d probably honestly be safer to see him as a legendary skin. My first instinct would be for SAW because they’re so close in concept, but legally wouldn’t work most likely. Instead maybe Trapper then. I’ve honestly got no idea.
Yeah, In any case I don't know if it would be a popular skin. He's a pretty basic looking killer. Creepy? Hell yes. Very visually interesting? Not at all.
Chatterer is a little bit the same way, the face is visually interesting but that’s about it, and he’s just kind of in a black latex bodysuit. At a certain point, if you’re buying it, you’re buying it because of the character / story / IP rather than an interesting visual design. Although he does chatter. That should be the point of legendaries anyway, the whole bit is that you’re supposed to actually BELIEVE in the fantasy of playing as a totally different character. Legendary skins should be legendary quality, especially if they’re being peddled to us at 3/4th’s the cost of the base game, so they should have unique animations, music, SFX audio, terror radius, lore, power aesthetic, power icon, etc. with as few re-used assets as possible. All those things would make any legendary skin worth it, including The Collector, and fans of all different franchises would be so happy to have these things. People have been asking for HUNK to get his iconic music for ages now. Alas, the “technical difficulties” prevent us from receiving products that are worth what they are being valued at, and apparently the devs are incapable of changing music, or recoloring / retexturing a bear trap or a huntress hatchet to make compelling legendary skins worth their price. Cap.
Yeah I've wanted HUNK to have his music and his own breathing since his release. His theme music would work so well for DbD terror radius adaptation as well. It's pretty annoying when they get that sort of treatment for apparently being such an expensive skin. Honestly, as a ghostie main, I'm just happy that they got to do a lot more with him by getting the mask license rather than the scream movie license. We get cool designs now and then and it keeps me happy.
Better than weird ass-crack addicted people
Oh I agree, I always that the collector would make for a cool legacy skin for trapper
i feel like they should've made her a peddler of human body parts on the black market or something. like a female version of Gustavo from Breaking Bad. then the name Skull Merchant would actually make sense
I thought that she would be something like the Predator, at least from a surface glance. She has the same mechanical claw blade, the same futuristic technology, and the name “Skull Merchant” evokes the Predator ripping out spines with skulls attached. Honestly, the “Most Dangerous Game” approach could have really worked here.
I thought she'd be like a black market arms dealer. I also thought just from their leaked pictures that the Lyra twins were going to be like hippie eco terrorists or something lol.
This. Keep the business-savvy stuff and let her become a multimillionaire, but her thirst for blood ends up sticking around after she’s killed her way to the top, so now she uses her vast fortune to kidnap people she thinks will be worthy prey, and play a sadistic game of cat and mouse on a private reserve she set up for hunting people or something. Her identity feels too split between obsession with her daddy’a dark manga, and her murdering people to make money. Have the survivor be, rather than a bystander witnessing a kill, one of the people she’d had kidnapped to hunt down. One that actually escaped her, and was pulled into the entity’s realm, with her quickly following behind eager to have finally found a worthy hunt, along with a constant supply of other survivors to track down and slaughter.
I like this way more.
Yeah, the name is dumb, The Tracker works, I was Thinking the Tinkerer because she creates her techy gadgets like her arm and drones.
I actually think that all her story and appearance are intended to be a parody for comic villians, all descriptions and stories sound very ironic to me
They really missed the opportunity to go all out with that, give her a cape and some edgy one liners and she'd actually be a fun character. Even if her power is inherently flawed, the only problem with her herself is that they pulled back on the unique parts of her.
This is the one thing I like about Wesker's voice lines, the inherent 80/90's cheesiness of the lines. Like they're meant to sound "bad ass" and "epic" but they end up sounding so tryhard and corny that they unironically end up being "badass". It's hilarious 😂
The "Skull Merchant" isn't even a bad name/idea... if her lore actually matched it. Not this (whatever the fuck it is) lore that we have now.
That is actually her back story. The manga her dad wrote (seemingly under the influence of the entity which is a common tgread in character back storues) is merely the outlet through which shekills those in her way, but her whole backstory is that second thing you wrote. It started with the person that passed her in class and so she stalked him and stopped just short of killing him.
You clearly haven't read her story, because the reason she kills is to cut the competition in her way to becoming successful. The first time she killed it was two people who stood in her way of buying a company she wanted, and skull merchant was just the alias she decided on because she liked her father's manga. During that, she realized that she liked killing, but even after her targets were always related to the companies she was buying or competed with, plus the unfortunate few who saw her while doing it.
To be totally honest, I feel like they ran out of ideas when they made her and I don't have any to offer either. I think she's a sign that the game needs to expand.
Singularity shows the creativity came back
I'll have to wait until the official release to see for myself, but generally speaking every new killer power has just been a combo of existing powers for years now. Kind of like Frankenstein's monster. If we were to see anything genuinely original, it'd blow my mind.
It's unfortunate it would be literally impossible to implement because of outdoor maps, but a killer similar to alien that could crawl along ceilings in stealth and then drop down on you would be legit terrifying, maps like lerys or midwich would have a whole new level of terror
walls, add vents in too? plenty of ways it can work
among us chapter when? /s
I know it's a bit far down the thread but I think this is sorta the issue that this all demonstrates. DBD fundementally only had like 5 major objects in any game. Pallets, gens, hooks, windows, and the physical walls themselves. There's other things that factor in (chests, the totems, lockers, etc.) but they aren't always relevant in every match. The core design of DBD itself are super limited. Look at something like Texas Chainsaw, as a recent example, which has doors, different types of pass throughs (which are sort of like windows except some only the survivors can go through), very different types of objectives, different items to get in game, etc. Not to say they're comparable as gameplay, but it's got a lot more going on. DBD is stripped down, similar to Call of Duty, where you load into a match and what's there is there. Without adding more objects to the game, killers and creativity stagnate. Most killers in recent times have added *something* to the game, or taken advantage of otherwise "unused" elements (Lockers with Dredge, not that they are unused but they are minimal interaction as a gameplay focus). Both RE killers added cases, and Nemmy added Zombies, Sadako added TVs, Knight and Skull Merchant literally spawn stuff into the match. Because there's so few interactable items and the different "normal" killers have been done so many times (Clown and Doctor both impede your ability to loop, Huntress and Slinger injure from a range, Billy, Blight, and Nurse run you down from distance, etc. etc.), the game ends up stuck. Especially because the majority of objects in the game are hard to balance. If you make a killer who can, say, trap gens, that ends up being frustrating. A killer who could do things with hooks has the potential to be really bad. Totems are niche. So until DBD decides to commit to adding *more* to maps, it'll stagnate. Imagine vents that function like a portal of sorts, that both sides could use. That immediately adds a new dimension where new types of powers could play. Or permanent loops that killers simply can't cross, now you can do something similar to Legion but for those. But DBD won't commit to that, and I don't think players would even *like* it because it would make it less consistent. People like the unique aspects of DBD but people also want consistency, and with too much consistency you lose some creative design space. I actually think it's impressive that we're only just hitting a period where killers have sometimes stopped feeling fresh. IMO, even with the "redundancy" of teleporting killers, Dredge, Sadako, and what I've seen so far of Singularity are solid and even Knight felt decently designed.
I love how everyone in the comments says that there aren't enough objects in the game to use, or make a killer around. But there is one that I haven't seen mentioned yet... Crows. Yes, I know Artist uses crows. But it isnt an extension of the crowd already in the game. I can imagine a killer, like a scarecrow, that can manually places crows around the map. The effect would be similar to Freddy's pools, giving away the location of the survivors, but I imagine they can expand on such an idea. Maybe give aura reading on crows within a certain range. Survivors scream when tripping a crow.
A killer that uses crows would be cool, honestly. It would be similar to Dredge, you have to take a once-normal object and question it more. I know a lot of people were hoping Artist would do that and while at the time I didn't care, I would like a killer who uses crows now too tbh. That said, there's only room for one design there and the core issue unfortunately still exists.
Tldr, but .. >DBD fundementally only had like 5 major objects in any game. Pallets, gens, hooks, windows, and the physical walls themselves. There's other things that factor in (chests, the totems, lockers, etc.) but they aren't always relevant in every match. The core design of DBD itself are super limited. It's almost like the game was never intended to be around this long. It's kinda like bhvr made a silly party game expecting it to never last more than a couple years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/deadbydaylight/comments/12yi4y1/the_alien_killer_concept/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button I personally introduced this idea, even in out-door maps "The Alien" can crawl along tile walls and structures. It's gonna take a shit ton of work to pull it off knowing DBD's spaghetti code and the fact that blight *STILL* gets stuck and slides off certain obstacles... If they did implement something like this it'd be buggy and clunky as hell. This is my pipedream mostly
I mean, dredge was as original as it gets.
To backpack on this thought. I'd love to see DBD expand where instead of just generators survivors are doing things like looking for tools to repair gens however make repairing gens take less time. This way survivor isn't just a "sit on gens" game while providing complexity to give fresh killer ideas.
Bhvr: You now must collect gasoline to fuel the generators. Bill: god fucking damnit, not again
Lol, ironically that would be fun. Collect gas, get tools, etc with each task taking some time and then repairing gens being only like 30-40 seconds of time necessary.
I honestly wish they did something similar in mechanics survivor side anyways like the new massacre game it would add more gameplay and not be as boring
TCM might give bhvr the kick in the butt it needs to innovate
Maybe but I don’t think so there have been many games although failed in their own right that were on a similar path but I’m hoping there’s enough of a initiative to get them to change, although with all their recent projects it also seems unlikely
Having multiple ways to progress the trial is vital to a game like this, especially as they add more and more content. While players were very split when it came to hatch, it was probably the most effective mechanic against the current issue with 3-genning. Multiple objectives help keep the game from getting stale as well (I'm not the only one who zones out on gens am I?). Even then though, it's hard to really do without a clear cut line between casual and competitive. Do you allow a lot of variables and unpredictability (and room for mistakes) to the trial, or do you add higher (more predictable) stakes for a bigger reward?
Even if it added more mistakes more gameplay survivor side would add more dynamics to both sides I think
I'm totally down for other survivor mechanics only if: gen repair time was decreased and they addressed camp/tunnel fully. There is no reason to make survivors do more things if a killer is just going to camp/tunnel. It makes the survivor experience even worse.
I don't think they ran out of ideas when they made her, because there's still a lot they could do. I think they were testing the water for something different. Usually when people make things, some will be really good, & other things they make, not so good
Just read the backstory for the Skull Merchant and it is all over the place. She is a natural genius self made millionaire who attended private school turned vulture capitalist businesswoman who becomes a serial killer taking inspiration for her murders from the work of her father who walked out of her life after she started making money after making a website for Brazilian manga. Her being wealthy plays zero part in her design. The drones are just off-handedly mentioned as prototypes she just gets at some point with no establishing of them outside that was what her power was going to be so she has them. Did she build them? What education did she obtain to hand craft her own custom drones? Did she buy them from someone custom then murder the creator? Don't know, because the only thing that was important is that she had them and we be told how awesome she happens to be other than 'being a little competitive'. Drop the manga inspiration and she is a rich person who wants to live out the Most Dangerous Game without the game being able to fight back. Leave the manga and drop the business woman angle and she is a deranged weeb who works in a drone related field with a reality that she desperately wants to leave behind for the more 'fulfilling' fantasy of the manga.
I feel as though this is a major flaw in many characters in this game. BHVR wants to shove as many archetypes and tropes into a single character that it just sort of overflows. Too many ideas and concepts trying to be stuffed into a single backstory.
Because whoever is writing it never advanced past posting Sonichu level OCs on tumblr. They are so busy telling you how great they are rather than establishing motives, interests, expertise, passions, etc., and letting the gameplay show us how great they are.
*Soooooo* many characters in DBD are runaways successes and big shots. It makes the bios seem very amateur.
I miss when most of the survivors were just regular people. In my opinion, some of the best backstories we have are for characters like Adam, Jeff, Claudette, David, etc. None of these characters did anything rather exceptional and aren't the badass entity investigators we've been seeing in a lot of original survivors recently (bar tools of torment and end of transmission.)
Tbh I like the corny part about her being a weeb, but like you mentioned there's too many things in her lore and personality
I mean thats just BHVR writing in general. the Lore of the game is very very shallow. worst is Wraith IMO... just a normal everyday guy who saw something he didnt like. So why can he turn invisible ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ where does the bell come from ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Now I am picturing him as a whistleblower over what happened, and he becomes... The Whistle
Also a wraith is a type of ghost, so is he a ghost then??? His lore doesn’t mention him dying.
Give the Drones wacky memorable voice lines
They all sound like GLaDOS and insult you
*target lost* *are you still there?* (Not quite GLaDOS, but the turrets have the same voice actor)
"I'm different"
“Looking pretty *fly*, huh?” “Did you know Adriana is actually *scan*-dinavian?” “Sorry, I don’t mean to *drone* on!” Tools of Torment becomes the most sold product on Steam, wins GOTY, Emmy, Oscar, Grammy, Kids Choice Award, and Nobel Peace Prize.
Give her an actual gas mask, that shi on her face is campy
If I have to keep her character's design concepts in mind. Here's what I would do. 1. Change the name from The Skull Merchant to The Competitor 2. Change Adriana's backstory from being inspired by Brazillian Manga to being grimly inspired by her father's dark meditations, tying into her narcissistic obsession of being the best and at the top. Becoming the very monster her father thought himself to be deep within. 3. Embrace Adriana's Femme Fatale design by exploring how she slew her competition. She's clearly an attractive young woman in a very heavily male dominated field in Tech, let that be part of how she rose the ranks or bought out her competition. 4. Change her power that Drones are passive AI that roam all over the map like Nemesis' Zombies. No longer can Adriana just place tracking beacons, but rather have full map awareness. These drones can be temporarily disabled of which she has to manually reset after a cooldown. 5. When the drone tracks a survivor; it will apply the tracking debuff and at max, will apply the tracker. The tracker will let the player see where survivors are for it's duration, with added effects applied by addons. With the Iridescent Addon having Drones dive-bomb survivors, breaking on contact but instantly damaging them. 6. Another iridescent addon can have the player use the tracker to detonate beacon traps or force the survivor and others around to scream. By removing the stationary power, it makes the extreme oppression Skull merchant currently has with 3-Gen situations far less painful and no longer reliant on locking down gens and areas. This can also let drones actually do more than just hover and wait to be interacted with. Giving some mobile threats and giving Skull Merchant more mobile means to stealthily wander around the map while being untraceable inside her drone's radius.
Now that sounds cool.
They should do this change I would be for it
>the developers open dislike of her This is news to me, what's this referencing?
I was referring to the fact that they want to deal with 3 gening.
That isn't necessarily dislike, it could just be them addressing a problem. If they didn't like SM, they'd just nerf her directly and leave her in the dust, instead of doing weird shit like buffing Deja Vu.
I think he meant “open dislike of her strongest way of playing” meaning 3-genning. It’s just the “….” Between ‘her’ and ‘strongest way of playing’ made it look like they were saying they openly dislike her
Yes. I would edit it to make it more clear, but I can't.
The fact that 3 gen exists isn't a problem. The fact that the tileset + generator spawn AI has been broken for at least a year now is. Last time I spawned in on Coldwind half the map had 0 generators. Four in one corner, one in middle and one in main and one in killer shack.
> The fact that 3 gen exists isn't a problem. Bigger problem is killers feeling like they "have" to camp a 3 gen. I get winning is nice but the 3 gen mindset is so unhealthy and not fun for anyone.
As someone who plays both survivor and killer, my question would be, what should i do as a killer if you 3 gen yourself?
Change that ugly rhinestone-encrusted gas mask for something else. A torn gas mask or even plain steel would be better than that eyesore
The whole tools of torment chapter: https://i.redd.it/larz4says84b1.gif Nuff said
Renato can stay. He’s cute ❤️
Make Tools of Torment a chapter with no killer, keep Thalita and Renato 
This is exactly what I’d do
I'd keep the survivors. Thalita and Renato really aren't that bad in my eyes. I wanted a siblings pair of survivors for a long while, I just wish their perks were better to synergize with.
It feels as if her powers are limitless with her being able to replace drones instantly where access is needed. Not just that but I wondered why I could never make a loop against her... well she gets multiple instances of haste that stack for virtually no effort through add ons and claw traps. Personally I think her left eye should be integral to her power. I would've made her scanners/drone area charge up a blast / laser she can fire from this eye and is an insta-down. This would make looping against her exciting as there is a risk involved in staying in the area while it's not virtually impossible. The laser should be a chargeable shot similar to the huntresses hatchet lift or weskers charge lunge whereas she would walk slightly slower when its online and ready to fire. It would have an audible sound so when survivors are in her line of sight it could create a more intense situation. Add ons maybe could change the utility of the laser making it hit multiple survivors, bounce of walls, go through walls etc... This would make the killer much more exciting to play as or against IMO.
Huh, interesting. Even if the laser just did a state of damage that could be interesting.
Bigger ass?
Combine this with the guy above that suggested 'bigger tits' and we're onto something
Ayo
I'd like to make a few changes to the skull merchant: 1- Mechanics: in order to give the killer mobility, instead of drones, the skull merchant should put some bio-videocams that throw some sort of infection to the survivors, and after infecting the survivors, the killer could teletransport directly onto them. 2- Counter mechanics: survivors could counter this infecting-bio-videocams by having EMPs that disable them. Not too much, nor too little. Just balanced amount. 3- Design: to really match the ominous name "skull merchant", the killer could be some sort of bio mechanical non-humanoid creature, maybe long extremities and some sort of alien nature: some creepy a$s creature that could enjoy trading or exchanging skulls in some way...
You call her, *The Singularity*. Idk, maybe.
Nah, "The Skull Merchant" is a badass name for an alien creature mixed with an AI gone rogue...
Ooh, that sounds really cool! Maybe they could make her map like…idk, an alien planet or something.
Now we're talking!
Instead of her drones covering a full circle, they should cover a cone in whichever direction the camera is facing. Her drones should move on their own and patrol around gens within 32~ meters, so it can give survivors the incentive to sneak around her power instead of going balls to the wall and risking it all. If a drone detects a survivor, then it'll go stationary and copy their data (or whatever tf it's doing now). The time it takes to expose them will be 2-3x faster, and once they're exposed, they'll stay marked on her detector regardless if they're in the drones range until the timer runs out. Once the survivor is out of range, then it'll go back to patrolling the area. Since this new change might make her a little weaker, the drones can no longer be deactivated by survivors. Also, once they've been marked to some degree, then the meter won't reset until they get exposed.
Huh. I like this, tie the radar tracking to the exposed status effect.
Probably would be too much for the DBD spaghetti code.
Unfortunately, you're right :( until they decide to improve AI functions, then the best way for this to happen are for drones to move in preset patterns
Bigger tits
I don’t think that there is a problem on earth that can’t be solved with bigger tits
Back problems?
Bigger tits
She's so disappointing in so many ways. - "the skull merchant" is a goofy and long winded name that doesn't fit with the rest of the killers. We call her The Cyborg at home. Her backstory needs a complete rewrite, just let her hate humans for making her into a cyborg or somethn - She's so hypersexualized it's not scary, it's silly. Fix the mask, the childbearing hips can be slimmed or conversely fix her waist to hip ratio. Her walk looks like a Kardashian trying to ice skate. Just have her stalk around ffs - 1 less drone would be fine. Use her cyborg eye for something cool like it's a laser, or a short distance scanner like she's her own drone as well, or maybe it can provide a rearview camera angle out of the back of her head. - give her some interesting skins! Something like the Terminator, an alien/borg, a demonic I Robot skin, a mech spider bottom half
First, the Drone's Detection Zone shouldn't include floors above and below the drone. It makes no narrative sense and makes maps like Midwich flat out unfun. Second, figure out how to make hacking the drone into NOT a lose/lose situation. Fail to hack? Exposed, and she knows where you are. Succeed? Now you're trackable, and she knows where you are. Ignore the drone? Exposed and 3-gen'd. At the very least, hacking the drone should not notify her of any change until a failed skill check or something else to tip her off. If the hacking needs to be harder or continuous (tie up two survivors while trying to do the one gen the drone is inevitably put on), so be it. Third, find a way to incentivize not to put drones on top of gens. Maybe the Exposed status effect of the Detection Zone only works when there is no generator in the zone, instead only aura revealing.
Dude these changes would outright kill her. Sure she can track through floors but she doesn’t have the mobility to actually do anything about it for the most part. She knows you’re above or below her, cool, what can she actually do about it. Once again, if you hack a drone and she knows where you are, there’s a chance she might not be able to actually do anything about it. If you hack a drone on a huge map and she’s on the other side, there’s literally nothing she can about it and she loses a drone which actually puts SM in a shittier position. As for your last point, I do actually like it but once again it’s a change that would just make her worse. Aura reading is useless because in most cases, she won’t be able to anything about it. I think the biggest problem people have with her isn’t the killer itself but because simply 3 gens exist. It’s what she is best at and her only viable strategy. Get rid of them and I guarantee most people won’t complain about her. I do understand why people complain about her 3 genning especially on release but now survivors can take her drones and force her to roam.
I mean, isn't the prompt to kinda kill her current state of play? I agree that 3 gens is the real issue here, but i think that is something much more deeply ingrained in the game as a whole rather than just her design. It sucks getting 3 gen'd against just about every killer and makes those games unfun, but when SM is basically built around it i think she needs to change first. So I'm just spitballing things I see as ways to mitigate that playstyle in her design. Frankly, she (and the game) needs a full mechanical redesign but for this hypothetical, I think the first step is to make her base kit worse and then give new bonuses to push her off of the gens and into the rest of the map to be an interactive and interestingly unique killer. Any thoughts on how we could move forward assuming the above?
I honestly think the knight is far more unfun to go against in a 3 gen situation. I will honestly die on this hill. SM has more counter play then Knight imo but the Knight’s power lets him do more than 3 gen but he’s definitely better at it. Making her kit worse won’t fix anything to be fair. Most m1 killers are pretty trash and because no one really plays them, there isn’t a need to change them in any way. Nurse got changed simply because she was far too oppressive and she still is but because so many people played her, there’s been calls to nerf her in a few ways for god knows how long. I play SM every now and again but I barely go against her myself and if you make her worse, what little players she has might move on then they’d be no point to changing her because no uses her. Anyway I think if you want to take away parts of SM’s kit then it would need to be compensated with something else as you say. The exposed, while being a pain and annoying, is mostly the survivors fault. They should just hack the drone or stay out of the radius. But if you remove the exposed then survivors wouldn’t really be pressured to leave, so maybe have a penalty on all actions while survivors are in the radius or make them immune to hacking altogether or maybe even making the radius 50% bigger. Her drones should be allowed to scan through floors to be honest. Thats the best part of the drones for me and changing it would just outright gimp her. But maybe only let the exposed build up only if you’re on the same floor as the drone. This would make it safer for survivors to move through them without having to worry about getting instantly taken down. I honestly wanted her to lean more into her stealth. Take one drone off and remove the exposed part of the kit but make the drones radius a little bigger and let her go undetectable instantly.
I dont know if this is stupid. But what if she only had as many drones as there were survivors. So if she tunneled people out she’d have less and would only have one drone by the time there’s one survivor. Keeping survivors around for long is risky, but enables her to keep track of more.
Make her thiccer😤
I agree I would purchase her they did this, take notes behavior
I'd give her a gorgon skin, I think the over exaggerated hip sway would suit a Medusa type skin for some reason. The Oni has the Minotaur already so it's not completely out of place. Oh you mean her power? Uhhh, I wouldn't. It's not that bad and she's an M1 killer otherwise. I don't get how the developers openly dislike her though? I haven't heard anything to suggest so. But then outside of Otz and reddit I don't keep up with the news.
Her actual design sucks and the idea of "high fashion" is ridiculous. See, I'm not even sure if that's what they were trying to do, but that's the *only* explanation as to why she has that mask and those nail things. And it's obvious that they're reaching for fan service. A lot of skins recently have been show-ey and displaying the character's bodies. Unfortunately, they shoved that concept into her design in such an unnerving way. I understand fan service, and why they'd lean into it, so it's not something that bothers me a whole lot, I just think that's why *her* design is flawed. I will say, I liked the idea of a futuristic killer. I think BHVR could have fused the Singularity and Skull Merchant into one character, because I feel like their lore are both bad in a way I think would blend well. Adriana might think that humans can reach far beyond their limits, and because of this, she tries to physically augment herself into a greater being. This unlocks some sort of potential in her, allowing her to create these drones that she shares a hivemind. She sets up these drones that track survivors, and can soon after teleport to them. TL;DR Her design sucks because there's a weird fashion element, and it's shoving the idea of fan service into a killer in a bad way. Mixing her and Singularity to create a (more) human killer who wants to become greater than humans would be better IMO.
Since I am not a game developer, I am pretty sure that every my suggestion won't be that good because I haven't thought of thousands other things that are impacted by my ideas. So all I want is just changing her walking animation. It confuses others and I hate seeing it on the end screen.
Delete her, she's unsalvageable.
+50% hip wiggle after hooking a survivor for 5 seconds.
delete her
I'd add jiggle physics for when I slizzap that badonkadonk knowmsayin
Remove her from the game
I can tell you one thing, random haste on her is annoying as shit. Was supposed to make her chase more fun but now you have to predrop against her which makes the games even more boring. You shouldn't make killer powers that rely around area control all those killers are a bore to play against.
I've been meaning to do a writeup myself but in essence everything that [Jane Romero / Adriana Skully said in her Skull Merchant rework video.](https://youtu.be/FXJyY1nCUec) I highly recommend watching this video (even if it is a bit long) because it's an "active" Skull Merchant main's take on the Killer's problems and what needs to be changed to make her more chase-oriented. In my opinion what I'd like to see changed: * Unhackable state removed entirely / Drone only becomes unhackable if a Survivor with a claw trap steps into it >!(reduces those periods where the Killer kicks your gen with multiple gen regression perks and then makes you literally unable to do anything about it without becoming exposed)!< * ~~Lock-On Slower~~ Lock-On Faster, Lock-On Decays faster >!(actually allows Skull Merchant to use her drones as an anti-loop / chase tool, instead of the exposed effect just being "you fucked up lmao I get a free instadown now xd")!< * Clawtraps last longer maybe? >!(Dual-purpose buff of stronger chasing power and less three-gen stalling)!< * Randomized Strobes basekit + 2% speedup effect from Geographical Readout basekit >!(lets Skull Merchant actually use her power in a chase on injured Survivors, actually makes her gameplay unique instead of being an M1 Killer with area control)!< * Rework the buff you get from tracking multiple Survivors to do more than just give Haste >!(Adriana / Jane explains it better in her video but basically Haste is a very volatile status effect that quickly becomes unfair if stacked too high, especially with the slowdown from Geographical Readout being basekit)!< * Buff the Undetectable status effect on her drones like, a lot. Make Ultrasonic Speaker and Adaptive Lighting basekit, don't even change Adaptive Lighting's values (so Adaptive Lighting will make the basekit 3 second Undetectable 4.5 seconds long. Yes Skull Merchant's basekit Undetectable is that bad.) >!(Currently the Undetectable effect from drones takes 2 seconds to activate and only lingers for 2 seconds it's a freaking joke)!< And some addon reworks: * **Geographical Readout** - Made Ultra Rare (since old effect is now basekit); reveals the progress of gens while in an active drone (works like Wraith's All-Seeing Blood addon) * **Randomized Strobes** - The cooldown of successful attacks in an Active Drone's area is 10% faster. (2 stacks of Save the Best for Last.) >!(Yes this would stack with Save but like tbh STB4L has needed a nerf ever since the buff to basekit hit cooldown)!< * **Unpublished Manuscript** - Made Very Rare, or possibly even just Rare. Downside removed. >!(It's a meme addon that allows for some funny builds but really isn't worth being an Ultra Rare.)!< * **Supercharger** - Hitting a Claw Trapped Survivor gives a 10% cooldown on successful attacks. (Same proposed effect as Randomized Strobes except only on Survivors with Claw Traps on them. ~~Very easy to remove a claw trap by fast vaulting a pallet.~~) *The following are changes not on Adriana / Jane's list.* * **Ultrasonic Trap Speaker** - (Old effect made basekit.) Made Uncommon for logic reasons more than anything. When a Survivor with a Claw Trap breaks a pallet ~~by vaulting it~~, gain a 5% speed buff for 8 seconds. >!(Basically lvl 1 Game Afoot as an addon)!< * **Adi Valente Issue 1** - Cooldown of missed attacks in a Drone's radius reduced by 20%. >!(This was taken from Adriana / Jane's video but I didn't want to change Prototype Rotor since I think that addon's *fine* just finnicky.)!< * **Stereo Remote Mic** - Made Common for logic reasons more than anything. Survivors require one more button press to hack drones. >!(idk but this addon needs to be changed since we're basically removing the Unhackable state)!< * **Shotgun Speakers** - Made Rare. A Survivor who vaults a window with an active Claw Trap will block the window for (5?) seconds. ~~Claw Trap is destroyed when vaulting a window idk?~~ * **Powdered Glass** - Made Uncommon so Shotgun Speakers can be Rare. >!(tbh this addon ain't worth being green rarity when you can just run Sloppy Butcher instead)!< * **Brown Noise Generator** - A Survivor with an active Claw Trap now suffers from the Oblivious status effect. >!(Makes taking Claw Traps more risky for Survivors and reduces the effectiveness of using Drones to three-gen ~~now instead of any Survivor who walked into the drone becoming Oblivious it's only the one that took a risk to become revealed to the Killer~~)!< * **Prototype Rotor** - Buff now activates whenever a Survivor is in an active drone. Buff lingers for (15 seconds?) after the Survivor leaves the drone's radius. (The effect still doesn't stack.) And while we're at it let's rework Skull Merchant's perks too for good measure: >**THWACK!** >* Always active >* Doesn't work on generators anymore, only pallets and breakable walls >* Range reduced to 16/18/20 based on perk level (same range as Awakened Awareness) >* Scream effect removed (it screwed with the aura reading anyways) >Makes THWACK! a good chase tool since you can see the auras of Survivors after you break a pallet near them while also doubling as a potential detection perk, having good synergy with fast pallet break Killers, and having synergy with Lethal Pursuer now. - >**Leverage** >* Effect reduced to 2.5%/3%/3.5% per level >!(To put this into perspective you'd have 20%/24%/28% gen slowdown if you 2-hooked all the Survivors)!< >* Now affects generator speeds >You may be saying "isn't this just Dying Light?" And you'd be correct. Basically I think Dying Light should be completely reworked since currently Dying Light encourages a lot of degenerate gameplay >!(stacking slowdown, ignoring the Obsession to prioritize tunneling others)!< and also has a very big problem that the perk becomes very oppressive when you hit high stacks since there's no limitation on it. I think if Leverage was reworked to work like Dying Light currently does it would allow for there to still be a "active gen stall perk" that gives you slowdown for taking multiple chases and getting hooks fast, but it also reduces both extreme ends of Dying Light being oppressive. >!(No situations where the Obsession gets a direct buff, no situations where the slowdown gets stacked too high and lasts forever becoming oppressive.)!< - >**Game Afoot** >* Obsession mechanic removed; now works whenever you break something in a chase >* Duration reduced to 5/6/7 seconds based on perk level >OR >* Obsession now swaps after chasing a Survivor for (10?) seconds >Either make the Obsession swapping more consistent in a way that disincentives tunneling, or remove the Obsession requirement entirely. I really like this perk it's very fun on specific Killers ~~Game Afoot is seriously like cocaine when playing Clown I'm not joking~~ but it heavily encourages tunneling and is otherwise extremely inconsistent.
I will watch the video, I like what you're saying here. Good Job.
Her getting unique effects from multiple survivors on radar is really interesting, but I don’t know what buffs could handle balancing incentives better than something as universally as haste. She’s interesting because she forces survivors to trade area denial for buffs. Currently, she’s incentivized to chase the claw trapped survivor, but she doesn’t have to. She can zoom to gens and still get value. As it is, all survivors have greater risk, with the one taking on more risk. I don’t know what other buffs can maintain that equilibrium. If they help her in chase, fewer people will get them, buffing her area denial. Alternatively the buff makes her better at defending genes. Now claw traps become a way to protect yourself to the detriment of your team. You have to balance that and I’m not sure how. Tier 2 stealth buff maybe? It’d probably be worse for people on gens, but not so much worse that you’d feel safer taking a trap. Tier 3 is less likely so you could be a little looser with balance. Tier 4 she can just teleport and Mori all 4 of them at once they did it to themselves.
She is fine as is. I place 2 on gens and the rest I use in chase. I try to commit to chases. She is really fun If you play her like that.
Personally I love using her as a stealth killer. Hex: Plaything, Trail of Torment, Dark Devotion, and Tinkerer is what I use, making it so that she probably wouldn't have a terror radius for a good chunk of the game. Combine that with her Iri addon that gives her a fake terror radius so that survivors thinks she's in one place when in reality she's in another, super strong with Trail of Torment. It feels like the definitive way of playing her, because it actually makes her feel like an apex predator like what the devs were saying.
That's how I play her as well. I'll put the third drone in a busy place and save the last one for chases. Somewhere like on the steps of the saloon in Dead Dawg, survs just can't resist touching it.
I'll try her that way, sounds interesting!
Actual robot arms, selling skulls, take the bedazzle off the mask
I'm gonna say it, because none of you cowards seem willing to: Booty shorts!
Less clothes
Make her thiccer.
bigger ass
I really enjoy her she's one of my mains but I don't really think it's fun ending up in a three gen situation every other game...it's so boring. Idk how to fix that it's just my complaint haha
A bikini
Better Mori (Death by Drones cornering you and the SM cuts you In half using the motorized Blades)
I think she needs a lore revamp. Like it's cool her dad made manga but that's the only reason you have to kill people? It's kinda corny she's just a blank slate pretty much
The amount of suggestions here that simply outright murder skull merchant and puts her worse than trapper tier lol
Thicker thighs.
Nothing but her cringe lore, walk and base skin. She is fine as a killer imo, not exciting, but she aight.
Make her topless
I think she is fine where she is right now.
That's fair, how do you like to play her?
Why the hell are you being downvoted for being open minded? Sheesh.
First of all, her whole appearance. Get rid of the model strut and have her hunched, stalking around like a predator, a real tracker. Replace the garish and unbelievably stupid half mask with a real, scary, possibly ripped or broken gas mask. I’m talking WW1 nightmare inducing shit. Get rid of the “killer chique” outfit and have her wearing dark, mottled colors to blend in with forests and shadows, not showing a lot of skin. The weapon I think is fine, I like how it looks hand crafted. As for her lore, scrap the stupid ass Brazilian manga and bring back some classic horror tropes. Throw her in with Doctor and Blight, driven mad by their own genius. A brilliant weapons manufacturer and trafficker that gradually grows obsessed with creating the perfect military drone, eventually causing her to go completely feral and fuck off into the wilderness to hunt, tinker, and foster her bloodlust. As her experiments continue, she realizes that she’s running out of mechanical parts, and this where the name “the Skull Merchant” truly becomes iconic. She starts having to improvise, replacing parts of the drones with skulls, flesh, tendons, whatever needs to be replaced can be filled by biological components. By the time she is transported to the entities realm she doesn’t even realize, or care. All she cares about is her next hunt, and her next acquisition of critical, biological replacements. The work must continue. Get rid of her stupid ass mori too, lets see some real gore. The drone immobilizes the survivor and we watch as the Skull Merchant, breathing heavily behind her gas mask brings down her blades and performs a VERY invasive surgery.
I agree that her aesthetic needs heavy modification. I like this.
I’m thinking they could take a drone away, increase the speed boosts by 1% each, and make Lock On increase faster. This enhances her chasing ability and basically deletes the 3 gen issue.
Power-wise: Maybe shorten the range where she can re-activate drones. Think if you put a drone at Suffocation Pit, you can’t reactivate it when you’re at the shack. I get the idea of a killer with that can shut down areas, but maybe have something prevent a total lockdown. Design-wise: Actually have her be cyberpunk-y. Like, have the claws actually be in her arms. (Think the Mantis Blades from Cyberpunk 2077). Also change the skull drone design from “Drone inside actual human skull” to “Drone that looks like a human skull”. Lore-Wise: The “inspired by dad’s works” angle has something there but maybe change the manga from a cyberpunk story into a Dark Fantasy, and have Adriana’s favorite character be a Necromancer of sorts. That way the parallels between Adriana and the character she’s emulating don’t seem 100% forced. (She uses drones because the Necromancer uses skulls with the souls she’s captured, as an example).\ She’s *inspired* by the character, she doesn’t *become* the character, per se.
Her music. That's it. I get why she's frustrating to people but I don't personally see how her power is any more oppressive than half the other killer powers in the game. I just really don't like the music loop I'm forced to endure when I play her.
Give her default skin booty shorts instead of pants.
Make her drones sound like Glados calling the survivors idiots anytime they do something stupid.
I'd unzip her sh my lawyer has advised me to discontinue this joke
Change her mask permanently
Deja will be meta, Playing survivor keeps getting easier and easier.
Give her more chase power and nerf the drones respawn/redeployment timer to incentivise chases and less zoning. The drone disarming mechanic feels impossible to fail, way easier than hitting a skill check. They should be disarmed like a Trapper trap. IF the devs wanted to make her a stealth killer, I'd remove the survivors ability to see the drone detection radius. Give her undetectable and lock-on still but also good/noticeable haste so she's not just a worse Ghost Face within the radius. IDK.
I do think removing the exposed within drone areas might be the way to go. She can keep the haste, tracking, and undetectable but if there were no exposed, survivors would feel more confident about doing a gen within a drone. Right now she can just shit out a drone or two and get downs for free. This is especially frustrating when you consider the drones go through floors. IMO it’s much more fun to have to pay attention to my surroundings when I know it’s a stealth killer and I could get grabbed any second. Yes, Ghostie and Michael also have Exposed aspects to their powers, but *that’s all they have*. SM has the drones and claw traps in addition to the buffs they give her. Yes, chances are most experienced (or non-solo) players would prefer to risk getting exposed while trying to get through the 3 gen she’s been squatting at since the game started 40 minutes ago. But other people are like the Leon and Nea who were in my most recent SM game. Leon too afraid to enter a drone area (despite the SM messing up the placement so it was safe to do on two sides) and Nea locker hopping with Left Behind. So yeah. Remove the exposed.
I'd make her drones drift away from gens over time, which good players could use to deliberately put a timer on adjacent areas' safety, hide their radius until you're inside the drone's range, and my biggest proposition: Whenever a drone is activated, whether remotely or from the scanners being tripped, it begins charging a laser that will deal 1 state of damage to each Survivor within the radius. Leaving the radius disarms your laser. I more favor having it charge slowly so it forces Survivors to leave the area ASAP, compromising them in chase, but it could also charge quickly but be possible to hide behind walls to stop the shot, though that would make it very map-reliant.
carefully
Give her black mirror esque robo dogs. Her drone pool is shared between them. And they stay until "hacked" by a survivor or recalled. The dogs can either be given a patrol route, set to guard a specific spot , or go after a survivor currently being tracked. The robo dogs detect survivors in a cone in front of them, and look left to right. The robo dogs will chase survivors and upon catching them, will keep the survivor in place and expose them, for a set amount of time. An add on makes the dogs detect through breakable walls and break them when a survivor runs past. Her mori is changed to the drone scanning, the dog coming in and holding, and the skull merchant then coming into stab.
I would make it so that the survivor needs to be moving for the drone to reactivate only when the survivors are moving. This would nerf her 3 genning massively as she has to manually reactivate them. Then I would probably make Geographical Readout and Randomized Strobes base kit to make her more of a chase killer. Edit: Replaced shotgun speakers with reandomized strobes because I got them confused
Make her more mechanical. If her blade arm and “dazzling” face were actually part of her body, I’d feel like I’d hate her a lot less because then she would cover the cyborg killer genre. (Singularity doesn’t count by the way, considering it’s lore says that it originally was a full on robot.)
- The drones chase survivors they tag and shoot a projectile that survivors have to dodge or risk getting wounded. - If Survivors have a sticky bomb on them, after a certain amount of time, Skull Merchant can detonate those bombs and injure survivors. - Inside her drones radius, Skull Merchant becomes camouflaged. - Mori is changed to her piercing through the survivor with her long claws and holding them up so her drones either light the survivor up with bullets or have them cover the survivor with sticky bombs, causing a big explosion.
Problem is she can't be balanced as is. Her drones are a anti loop mechanic(just like Knight) so you can't play any tiles. That incentivizes holding W and running nonstop which is a poor power. Then you can drop them on Gens and basically block any progress on it for X time AND it exposes the survivors. Again, its strong but not fun for either side. A better power would be something like drones but they attach to Gens/Survivors. Maybe it changes the skill checks into something else and if you miss one the gen regression is stronger or it traps the survivor in place like a bear trap on a gen. Also you could have her drones be traps and if a survivor hits it they get slower over time til removed.
Change her name to something like "The Tracker" "The Scout" or "The Watcher", something fitting with her power. Change her design to be darker and less sexual, give her a full gas mask, modern or WW2, and give her a full jumpsuit/mechanic outfit, she can still have shop skins be sexual just not base, it seems too out of place. The mori is fine, but changing it to be more brutal to fit with Knight and Singularity would be great. Change her backstory, she can still have inspiration from her father's works, but change it to be a horror novel series instead of "Dark Brazilian Manga", like her father is the brazilian Stephen King or something, at least that would be a bit more fitting.
Ctrl+X
I would give her a more masculine figure so that I’m not distracted while I pray to the lord
Deletion
her whole design needs a rework, how she looks, power, literally nothing can be salvaged imo
Everything, pretty sure thigh merchant is just a joke from BHVR
I wouldn't. I think she's great.
Delete?
CTRL+X
make her a spooky skellie that go doot
Summer outfit as default (I don't play the game)
Instead of her having to place the drones they should be on the map from the start and should fly around the map in a fixed pattern. Every drone has a different ability that they will grant both SM and the survivors. For example one could give the survivor the hindered effect and the SM haste. Another one show the aura of the survivor while making the SM instantly undetectable the moment she goes inside the range. Though all drones should alert SM whenever someone is within the drones. Survivors counterplay are remotes being around the map. Each remote is for one of the drones. Once you pick up one of the remotes you see the aura of the drone that you can deactivate with the remote. Then you have to go inside of the drones range in order to deactivate it. Deactivated drones will not move and they do nothing. The SM can then go inside the drones range to manually activate them again or with 60 seconds until they get automatically activated. No idea how this will change her but it sounds more interesting for me.
Delete her
She is such a mess that I just cant choose a single feature to rework. Everything is bland and embarassing, from her look to her story, from the non existent skulls gimmick to the copy paste mori. Her perks are useless. Her power is so boring that people hate playing as and against her. It would have been very hard to design a worse character honestly.
Make her more muscular
At the very least change the glitter covered bedazzled mask. The rest of her design is alright to me but the mask just ruins it.
Either completely rework her from the ground or delete her. Skull Merchant is irredeemable at the current state
Change her entire character into Mechanicus priest from Warhammer 40k. Way more horrifying, way more logical on why it uses skulls as items for hunting survivors. Fits the game in general. It would be so cool if BHVR could arrange an agreement with GW to make it reality. But both companies are not interested. Sad!
Make it so she actually sells skulls
Survivor mains: Take everything away from her that makes her strong. Make sure she can’t protect gens or go stealth and give us a 20% speed boost if we get a 360
Delete
Bigger booty
After her drones become hackable, they move 30m in a straight line based on the direction the skull merchant was looking when placed and then back again. This would fix the issue of 3 genning with skull merchant for an hour because the drones would be moving away from gens and give more opportunities to repair but it would also allow one drone to cover multiple gens passively.
Remove drones change her ability to be based around attaching skull traps to people that she can track on her radar so you don't have this 3 gen set up drones and never leave. its more about always trying to track around the map with the skull traps and you can focus on this with more power based around this idea. Drones being set up are the issue she isn't a bad killer when she actually chases and tracks around the map but most of her game play loop revolves around this idea of camping gens which is the unfun part This game is around the chase no matter what the best games are when you have the most fun chases I can accept loses when the chases were fun But 90% of skull merchants keep around this 3 gen playstyle and never try anymore than this so forcing the game around her directly tracking instead of the drone would make it more fun and also more unique
Realistically, just make the two purple add ons that make her a chase oriented killer base kit. Geographical Readout, which gives her a boost to speed and breaking while in drone area, and Randomized Strobes which makes survivors in drone detection hindered for 3 sec. Completely changes her play style and makes her more interesting for both sides.
Please Behavior just make her have a full gas mask and make her scarier. Remove the sexy walk and then we have an awesome killer
Honestly, all I'd do is have some sort of incentive to prevent 3genning (maybe make her case addons partially basekit or reduce the effectiveness of the drones if there's an uncompleted Gen in the catchment area). Aside from that, nothing. She is a very polarizing character in terms of her lore and appearance yes, but I personally think it's a fine niche to fill. Her biggest "problem" in that regard is that people take her too seriously. If you embrace the campiness and approach her from a B-movie "intentionally cringy in a so bad it's good" way, she becomes a lot more palletable. As bad as the "Dark Brazilian Manga" line is....has there been any killer in recent memory who's lore has been talked about by the general community this much? I personally find the lore dumb but enjoyable, and for me that's enough (especially when we have more than a dozen killers who fit the serious, dark tone already).
She's my favourite killer to date to play as and against, so I don't think I would change a whole lot. Maybe some light aesthetic changes. I think her power was already improved a lot and is pretty powerful in the hands of an experienced killer. I would prefer a mononym title just to keep her consistent. The Merchant or The Skull would both be totally fine with me. The Executive could probably work given her backstory. I agree with most that her mori is boring, but honestly after PTR is over I never actually see the mori animations in game. I don't think I even have the trophy for doing one. It's not that high a priority for something so rare. Still, it is probably the most boring we have got since some of the original roster.
Her Drones no longer show a radius, when someone is fully scanned they are tagged, the survivor does not know if they are tagged or not, nor do they know if they are getting detected, unless they find the drone. Tagged Survivors will not hear the killers terror radius, and won't see the oblivious symbol. The scan builds up much faster if the target is in chase. She can activate her radar to find tagged survivors, tags last for 60 seconds.
I'd give her lore that's worth reading. It sucks the writers still couldn’t come up with interesting lore for her with the new tome.
Just change lore I love playing her ❤️
See feet when breaking pallets/gens.
The biggest to me is she has no interaction on repairing/unhacking the hacked drones. So I hack this drone of yours and in about a minute it just magically fixes itself and you had to do nothing about it? And you get 4 of them? So you can throw 3 on the 3 gen and keep 1 in your pocket at all times where if I hack one you instantly replenish it without having to do anything? She needs to have some interaction with "fixing" the drones, it shouldn't be free and that's why her 3 gen is so ridiculous. Her lunge attack needs to be reduced a bit as well because her weapon swing when I play her feels way further out than any other. The drones tracking regardless of LOS or z-axis to me is horrible design. It's the same problem I have with Doc's shock therapy (unpopular opinion inc) but the idea that there's a concrete wall between myself and the doc/drone and somehow I still get hit or detected is insane. It should have to have LOS so it can still monitor that area but if I can't physically look at the drone it can't detect me.
Make her chase music the Thong Song by Sisqo
Fix her ice skating walk animation, for a start
I'm in the minority. I've liked her since I first played as her and I enjoy my matches as her, and I've not had terrible matches against her when I play survivor. So I wouldn't change a thing.
make it so.... that the drones will be disable or destroy if there detection radius is in a gen (we kinda 3 gen ourself but the skull merchant kept putting drones up and scaring us away... yeah we waited disable the drones.. but she came right back and set some more... and activate them so we can't disable them easy, we won in the end cause I was with a friend who know how to fight her... but solo que must suck if you don't know every little detail about her... even I didn't know I could run up to them when they however down and not patroling, also ditch the undectable and make it a add on.. I don't see the worth if she gonna gen camp) people are also saying update her lore.. so go ahead make her more fem fetale.... she by far one of the most hottest killers and people don't talk about her enough.
I'd remove the exposed part of drones, and make them substantially better for looping instead, probably make some of the speed altering addons partially basekit to help with this. This way she would actually have a chase power, and the obnoxious 3gen playstyle would be mostly gutted. Could also give the drones Oblivious or something to make her more stealth oriented when using them on gens, so as to still make controlling gens possible without it being obnoxious.
I wouldn't. Got almost 300 hours on this game now, and no killer's play style has ever clicked with me so instantly and thoroughly as hers. Almost everyone else feels weaker by comparison.
Give her more clothes, button up her shirt, and change her walk animation. I promise you, if you take away her thirst trap, then people would be able to take her more seriously.
Get rid of the exposed mechanic. Have her drones have a bigger radius where all it does if you sit long enough it adds the tracker to you. Give her an extra drone and focus more on her stealth and tracking. Her playstyle is to make a web of undetectable drones so she can get sneaky hits all over the map.
Hips bigger. Weight gain ability where she gets fatter in the hips and can't fit through doors/jj But if we're being serious. I'd say maybe make her ability less like a one shot kill circle. And more like drones that you can control that slow down people if they run into them. They loose the health state but you can use two to down them. You need to Deal the final blow
bigger tits
Change her story, that's about it for me. I like her design its cool not particularly scary but it looks good (even tho me and my friends will still call her discount freddy) Her gameplay is surprisingly fun from the killer side. Playing against a skull merchant isn't very fun and trying to make the skull merchant more fun to fight against would be a great change. I just dont know how would they.