Flake wrote:This role like needs to survive for a decent amount of time but has no viable way of doing so
Add vests and it becomes Survivor except you can also die by visiting SK/Stalker, you don't win if the game ends before you pull off all 4 merchant sells (which means game length is key to winning, which is bad because game length is largely outside of Merchant's control), and you can win the game before game end by visiting having 4 successful sells and just (seemingly) now exist for no reason
The only part I really like is decision making involved in making successful sales, but Survivor also has decision making through surviving via vests
Like I'm not really seeing why it should exist given Survivor does
If you don't include Bomber, then Survivor by itself basically auto-wins barring someone being dumb enough to attack it.
This role isn't as easy. It needs to do more than just live. It has to avoid targets that both sides want dead, and both sides want to disrupt. It also has to avoid Neutral Killing. If Bomber is in play, then like Survivor, it has to kill the role or lose along with everyone else.
It also isn't afraid to die as much as Survivor, but that is much more deeper into endgame.
There might be instances where a Merchant has to tell the Town to fuck off asking their help to rapid endgame and side with them if they haven't sold enough merchandise, and vice versa for the Mafia. The original design of this role had 5 sellings of merchants, but anyone who even remotely liked this role was too worried that the role never wins under that condition. One misfire would spell death.
TL;DR: the role is designed not to instantwin like Survivor. It has a Benign driven winning condition like the alignment subfaction intends that doesn't involve killing itself, converting itself, or dying. It can lose, but not because it died, and it might not be as open to endgaming as quickly as a winning faction may want.