Why can I still not switch heroes when Echo copies me? This is so poorly implemented it boggles my mind.
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Simply put, the graphic rendering of the opposing hero is in loaded when Echo has duplicated that hero. Switching to a potentially 13th different hero in the overall gameplay has the risk of crashing the graphic load of the game client for players who barely meet the mimimum system requirements.
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You’re not supposed to be able to switch, so…
Working as intended.
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I don’t remember the technical reason, but I do remember the devs giving one and saying that it was intentional behavior due to the aforementioned technical reason.
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Actually it was confirmed, the “no switch while duplicate is in play” gameplay rule is a consideration to the technical capabilities of the game.
Simply put, the game is restricted to 12 different heroes/skins in the server at any given time. The same reasoning applies to why there is no way to have more than 12 players at all in any given game. I also would point out that this may not stay like this in the long run. Who knows what rendering overhaul Overwatch 2 will provide and whether more heroes can be loaded into a lobby.
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It’s not a potential 13th hero. Echo is removed from the game when she ults. It’s a potential 12th.
Not exactly, when a player switches heroes the game has to take the time to load the resources of that game, this usually is not a big deal because it happens in a spawn room. With Echo’s duplicate it works differently, Echo’s render is on standby per say and has to instantly switch back with minimal delay when the duplicate ends.
Here are some more dev posts for context:
Source: July 2020 Reddit AMA
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Yup, Echo is never unloaded so she is still taking up memory.
The dup is probably pointing to the memory holding the enemy model and animations.
Therefore there is no 13th hero. Only 1 hiding and the other looking at another character’s memory
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Like I said, it’s poorly implemented. Think about the “loading time” when you switch heroes in the middle of the game. It’s negligible. Use the same mechanism to reload Echo when she transforms back, so you only have max 12 heroes in memory at any time.
It’s negligible to your hardware. Slower computers can struggle to load in new characters. When I played on my laptop, it took a few seconds to see my character or others at the beginning of the match. Also mystery heroes was a “what character am I anyway?” game for a few seconds everytime it swapped.
My desktop loads it fine, but the devs want the game to be accessible to most hardware.
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yeah, it takes me a 5 seconds to load in a new hero, if they had that on echo, she’d be dead when switching heroes.
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The loading time is only the graphics though, right? The blue orb still can move and use abilities, and the server sees its hitbox.
Some pc and also nintendo swich can take several minutes to load characters on memory. It’s not poorly implemented it’s just a design choice that today isn’t that optimal. Works fine, just not that optimal. I hope that with OW2 a lot of those choices, dx12/vulkan can be implemented on the game. This game works at dx11 and has 4 years.
If you take the dev time add more at least 2 years, if you consider that this game was remade a lot of times add more 4 years. This game had “early development” and a lot of design choices was made back on the tech who was mainstream and achieaveble
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nope, 2s black screen that can move, 3s blue orb. On hammond, blue orb messes up camera where it’s at the bottom. blue glow blocks part of the screen, looking down isn’t clear at all(even worse if on echo, where she looks downward a lot), and there’s frame loss during the instant the model is rendered/shown.
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While I understand this is a technical limitation of the game engine, it’s still ridiculous.
If they couldn’t work around this issue, they should’ve shelved the idea of Duplicate as an Ultimate until they could. Being prevented from doing something as fundamental as switching heroes should be viewed as an unacceptable trade-off.
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The game can handle more than 6v6, there was a glitch in custom games a while back that allowed for 12v12 matches. But it was removed for unknown reasons.
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That was unstable and crashed servers, on top of having generally low frame rates.
expect this to improve eventually latter down the line, but much latter down the line.
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It’s the same reason we can’t have 7v7. I still advocate for throwing people under the bus to make it happen, but that’s beside the point.
Considering how fine it looks in the video I say they work out the kinks and make it a feature. Heck 7v7 or 8v8 might solve the queue times even.
Also keep in mind that changing player count also changes meta’s drastically.
for a good example of this look at Tf2 which is normally 12 v 12, where you will see all the classes in just about every game
but in their competitive 6 v 6 mode, only like half the classes are used.
Can’t tell you the effect this would have on the game especially if roles are going to become unevenly balanced do their being extra slots in such role.
like if their were an extra dps they might have all their overall damage potential nerfed to compensate for the extra damage.