Hitscan can instantly hit any target at any range

General Discussion
1

No mincing of words, no attempt to make a clever title. It is what it is, and it’s inherently unbalanced.

Hitscan works by casting a ray trace to determine if anything along the line of fire intersects or gets hit by the trace, this is also instantaneous with no travel time. This could be an obstacle, player, or object. But the one thing to keep in mind is that unless programmed to do so, a ray trace will continue on infinitely until it hits something.

Now while this effects all hitscan heroes, only a few really benefit immensely from it, those being high precision heroes. High ROF automatic hitscan are in the best position of balance as a skillful controlled rate of fire (loss of accuracy with sustained fire) often leads to higher yields at range as well as devastating damage output at close range due to a higher target area. In my opinion, heroes like Soldier 76, Tracer, Bastion, and Sombra are all balanced well in this regard as damage falloff is an afterthought compared to the accuracy loss. While many players complain that loss of accuracy is a major hindrance, it’s actually what put these heroes into a state of balance that gives devs another factor to tune for proper balance (if done correctly), and by extension it’s also what allows precision hitscan heroes their favorability. And that’s where the problem lies.

It’s not that high ROF hitscan heroes are bad per se, in fact objectively I think they are incredibly balanced if it weren’t for the inherent imbalance that precision hitscan heroes have. You see, all hitscan (save for Widow and Ana) have drop off, but unlike high ROF heroes, precision hitscan heroes have no true accuracy mitigation. With an exception of Ashe (who partially gets it right) there is no penalty for rapid followup shots. While this isn’t inherently a problem, it becomes one when the ability to hit a target at any range instantly is factored in.

This is an incredibly powerful ability because even with damage falloff, you’re still inflicting damage at a range that other heroes may not be able to do damage or fight back from creating distance. To be clear, this isn’t exclusive to Widowmaker as some players like to claim, but to any hero capable of dealing damage in this manner (McCree, Ana, Ashe, Baptiste, Widow) who also coincidentally are all picked well before a single high ROF hitscan hero is. It only stacks the odds higher when critical hits are factored in.

Put it this way. After playing a lot of Halo Reach, and watching some documentaries on the weapon mechanic comparison, Halo Reach’s DMR is what precision hitscan is in Overwatch, where it should be something akin to that of the BR in Halo 3. The DMR (semi) and BR (3 round burst) share the same role (on paper), a precision mid range weapon than can be used (but outclassed) at both short and long range if skillful. Both weapons require 5 shots to kill a Spartan, but unlike the DMR, the BR requires that a full burst hit the target to count as full damage. At range, the BR can still kill targets, but the balance comes from the fact the damage is divided up among the three shots whereas the DMR can deliver the same damage at range at the cost of one round allowing the DMR to excel at much longer ranges without much drawback creating a lot of space. Halo didn’t have damage falloff but instead relegated its balance mechanics to weapon mechanics, and by ditching this as a creative art choice (of all things), it took a weapon that was balanced and highly overtuned it. This was offset by applying weapon bloom, but it’s something that was added much later on in development due to the imbalance it presented.

TLDR: Halo 3’s combat outcome was decided at much closer ranges while retaining weapon roles and ranges (BR mid range), whereas Halo Reach’s combat outcome was decided at much longer distances negating or hindering weapon roles (DMR mid-long range).

As it stands, high ROF hitscan heroes (and to an extent projectile heroes) won’t get a chance to shine or even show their inherent balance until something is done about precision hitscan’s ability to outclass them at any range, even that of the range high ROF should succeed at. This isn’t a bashing of hitscan heroes by any means, and while I’m not the biggest fan of them in general (being a Pharah main), this is more of an observation and comparison than a call for nerfs.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

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2

Not going to lie, after reading the title and the first sentence, I was like, “what the?”

And then I saw it was you. And all was right with the world once more.

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I hope that’s not a bad thing :grimacing:

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Holy wall of text batman. I play a lot of Pharah too, and being countered by more than half the roster feels bad, but what can you do? Gotta have counters. I don’t think the wheel needs to be reinvented on account of some other game’s gun methodology. Halo doesn’t have 30+ different heroes, just weapon variants.

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I hate to say this Frosty, but I only mentioned my affinity for Pharah in one small line at the end, that wasn’t the point of the post. Counters aren’t what I’m talking about here.

I disagree. Looking at the choices (and mistakes) of other games is an excellent way of seeing what works and what doesn’t. Most games share a lot of the same mechanics, and seeing how they’re balanced between games offers insight to why they are the way they are.

For example do you know what makes Pharah proficient with the rocket launcher? With a splash damage weapon, maximizing FOV and by extension surface area of what you can hit increases probability of successful splash damage. On a linear plane (ground level) rockets are kinda useless, but in the air they become much more effective. This mechanic dates back to early Quake and has since been utilized by anything from Halo to TF2 to even Call of Duty. One of the first things I personally learned when playing Halo was to jump right before you shot a rocket, to maximize splash, and that applies very much to Pharah’s build as well.

insert poorly drawn diagram...
https://imgur.com/Ihoulxh

Just because a game doesn’t have weapon variants doesn’t mean that those weapon variants don’t exist in some capacity. Looking at weapon and mechanic theory from other games doesn’t mean that I’m putting them on an equal plane or saying I want one to play exactly like the other, I’m taking similar mechanics and comparing them in ways that similarities can be drawn.

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6

Tl;dr

How small a footnote Pharah was in your post is irrelevant, you started a discussion about hitscan methodology in OW vs Halo and I piggybacked off your mention of Pharah to add my two cents.

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7

Why exactly is countering necessary from a design perspective?

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8

lol…

Wait, you’re serious?

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But you made this about counters, I didn’t lol.

“Pharah” nuff lol

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Ok…?

/20 characters

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I’d say it’s inherent based on how mechanics interact.

You missed the point entirely by dragging “counters” into this lol. It was never about counters.

Also for future reference, use:

<del>

as many times as you need to hide characters if you don’t make the 20 char mark.

12

Yep. No one seems to be asking this question.
My kit > your kit > another kit, like rock-paper-scissors. A child’s game. Skill does not come into play, yet we call this ‘competitive’. What exactly makes this the best design option?

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I didn’t miss your point, actually. I read your huge, multi-paragraph wall of text and saw, at the very end, a brief mention of how you play Pharah and don’t like these hitscan nuisances…because they counter you. I believe I mentioned that I piggybacked off this to add my two cents? And that was that your “observation” of the nuance surrounding OW hitscan vs Halo hitscan doesn’t inherently mean OW needs to adjust to match it, and really, why else would you write this wall of text otherwise if not due to a desire for change?

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15

For one, it’s actually just a natural consequence of having such a varied roster. Airborne heroes will naturally counter close range heroes, highly mobile heroes will naturally counter aim-based heroes, burst-based heroes will naturally counter healers, healers will naturally counter heroes focusing on damage over time, etc…

You can’t have a game like Overwatch without counters. The only thing you can do is weaken these counters somewhat, but given that this is a team game and many heroes synergize well with each other, this is also a difficult matter as it risks some counters getting completely negated while others empowered.

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You do realize that your tldr is still too long right ?

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Skill can come into play with counters, but unlike just after GOATS when rock/paper/scissors mechanics actually took off, this is more of an unbalanced version of Dive where anything goes, but only a few heroes have any real advantage.

To present an observation :point_down::

My intention is pretty cut and dry. If you want a post targeting heroes for nerfs, I have plenty of those, but this one is not such a topic.

The footnote was included as a disclaimer to clarify:

  1. I am a Pharah main without some rando perusing my profile and calling me out as such distracting from the point of the post
  2. To clarify that I set any bias aside with the writing of this post.

I didn’t realize this would be such a pitiful distraction and avoidance of the point of the post :unamused:

I’d like to see a ruling on that call ref.

18

Instantaneous acceleration and zero momentum.

This is a map design issue. Long sightlines are hilariously extraneous if they aren’t meant to be used.

Projectiles being terrible is not a hitscan problem. Sustain damage being completely unviable is. Neither is a Widow problem.

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19

I think I understand what you mean, but could you clarify?

It plays off the map issue, but if the weapon was dropped into Halo 3 it would suffer the same result, and actually does. This can actually be achieved in El Dewrito (Halo Online) as it relies on Halo 3’s sandbox but includes an expanded arsenal including the DMR. There were some custom game modes that allowed weapon choice, and the base DMR which has the same stats as the BR (5 shot kill) was most often chosen by the players in the match due to its ability to fit the BR role at all ranges.

You are correct in addressing the sightlines as an issue though, but the two played in tandem.

In some cases, projectile heroes suffer the same situation with higher ranged faster projectile heroes (or heroes in which slower projectiles move faster due to shorter distances) are favored to slower moving projectiles.

But I disagree, with precision hitscan heroes acting as as a generalist role rather than specialist, the rest of the roster is disadvantaged.

Agreed, and by identifying exactly why and how precision hitscan heroes have inherent unbalance-able advantages, things can be potentially adjusted for better balance allowing other heroes (inherently balanced heroes) to prosper.

Also, didn’t say it was a Widow problem.

20

Your movement starts, stops, and goes in another direction instantaneously. Biggest example is ADAD spam. In other games you slow down when changing directions before speeding back up again. This doesn’t happen in OW.

This is a design issue, two things should not be filling the exact same niche. Substantial overlap is ok, but total overlap means that one is usually a straight upgrade.

That suggests map issues in both games. In R6S, every single bullet based weapon is hitscan and can one shot kill at any distance on any existing map with a headshot, but due to map design, the overwhelming majority of combat happens at very close ranges. It’s a similar situation in many other games I’ve played.

There’s nothing wrong with generalists, and being reasonably generalist is largely equivalent to viability. I’d argue that we need generalists to glue 6 soloq players together into something remotely playable.

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Title disregards falloff and spread.