Massive raise of the skill floor for Soldier; a character that was widely seen as an easily accessible dps pick. As a baseline for playing the character, a player must now be able to compensate for recoil.
Horribly different effect on PC and Console players and meta
This does not make the character more fun to play. This is an artificial difficulty barrier that Blizzard created and your players will constantly have to fight against every time they pick the character. Who goes into CS:GO and says “Gee, I cant wait to learn spray control”?
Soldier wouldve done great with a 25->30 ammo change alone. He was already doing fine last patch, why did this feel necessary?
Bro your anecdote has nothing to do with the point I was making. I destroy people before and after the change, that means nothing. Recoil does not affect console and PC the same.
You say its high skill, but all youre really doing is aiming at someone and holding left click. It’s the same exact thing, it isn’t a complicated or interesting tech, it is just a frustrating barrier to playing.
Curious if you played Soldier before or if you’re just bandwagoning now that he has better damage…
Soldier was made for people who are coming from FPS games, and want to learn how Overwatch works. If they’re coming from one of those FPS games, they already know how to deal with recoil. They’ve dealt with it in those games.
This is without a doubt going to make aimbotters more powerful. But this isn’t really a game-altering point. Any aimbot player will likely get banned after a couple games, and will only show up in high tiers. Also, it’s not like aimbot was really fightable to begin with.
This is good in my opinion. There are other dps options who deal decent damage at an easy, accessible level (Torb, Tracer, symmetra) and In the first place, I think it’s a good change that soldier’s rifle is actually going to feel like, well… a rifle. Besides that, it’s not as if it will be overly difficult to control his new recoil. Any standard player will get a decent feel for it after a few minutes of point and shoot.
This will definitely affect console players differently. Considering Players on PC will have to adjust more mechanically to the recoil change, the aim assist on console will let it retain it’s viability without the drawback of newer recoil. But ultimately, this isn’t a good OR bad thing. Console and PC are separate, so what does it really matter if the pick rate for soldier is slightly lower on one than the other? Take a look at echo for example. Console players can hardly control her flight without a paddle controller so she has a lower pick rate. The way I see it, this is a similar situation, just on a much lower level than that. This is not an issue in my opinion.
This is a matter of personal opinion. Some may find it less enjoyable because they cant hit targets. Others will find it more enjoyable because the higher skill cap will give them higher reward, thus more satisfaction when securing kills. As for the CS:GO allusion, you’re right about that. But what you didn’t mention is that CS:GO has so many different weapons and recoil to learn. On the other hand, Soldier only has one weapon. Players will only need to get a feel for the new changes and that one specific weapon, which kind of makes that example pointless.
In the end, the soldier buff is going to raise the pick rate in upper high tiers, but probably lower the rate in the metal tiers due to the skill cap being slightly raised. I think this change is necessary in order to make soldier a more viable hitscan, who can actually put consistent damage on say, a pharmacy, or a slippery lucio. Another option would be to increase his hitscan before RNG by a couple more bullets, because he undeniably needs more consistency like other hitscan such as Ashe and widow. I think if this change goes live (which it probably will) they should nerf his damage by a point, maybe two.
From what I’ve seen it’s a huge buff if you’re accurate. I can’t play rn but I play a lot of soldier and can’t wait to see how it feels like.
I appreciate your response, also the change is already live which is why everyone is complaining.
I agree, but this will be a new level of aimbot. Making Soldier 100% accurate is something we’ve been warning against since day 1. In fact, when they made the first 5 shots accurate, this was the point that many people brought up.
My point is you are going from a simple system that is easy to balance from both and making it unnecessarily complicated. There are other knobs they couldve adjusted that would make much more sense and be applied relatively the same on both platforms.
This is the major part of your post that I have a problem with. This post is about recoil, not game balance. Let’s do a mental exercise. Pretend nothing else changed about Soldier, but they added recoil. Would you still say that it’s more “satisfying” to hit shots? If you can’t say that then your point is moot. The “higher reward” you’re talking about is from the accuracy changes, NOT the recoil change. You would say there is higher reward in his kit for skill if everything went through without the recoil patch. So tell me, why should they have added it?
Also, this is a post about the many shortcomings of a patch decision like this one. Some may be marginally less important than others. That’s natural
I agree with you that there are other changes that would be more appropriate than a direct switch to complete hitscan. Like I said, adding a couple more bullets before rng takes over would be a good buff for his consistency while maintaining the console universality.
you’re right that if they were to just add recoil there would be no greater satisfaction. My point isn’t necessarily that recoil makes the game more fun and satisfying, it’s that the recoil nerf gives you more of a challenge, while the hitscan buff balances that challenge with a greater yield for hitting your shots. What I’m saying is that - at least in my personal opinion - hitting these shots and being rewarded for your accuracy makes soldier a more fun character to play. Again, that’s just my opinion.
Yes, I agree. That’s what experimental is for after all. Bottom line, if it’s really that bad, then blizzard will listen to the community like they tend to do with changes like this.
What I meant is if it makes it out of experimental to the core game
They made him better and harder, that was a genius change, still takes the same amount of skill to get the same amount of reward in mid ranks, but when you get higher up he starts to be better, and that’s where he needed to be better.
soldier is designed for people who wanna try a shooter for the first time.
and other games have mouvement acceleration to balance it, something ow doesnt have.
this is a nerf and a cancer change for those who are used to play 76 or who dont like spread control.
they dont wanna change heroes to alienate their playerbase, but theyre ok with changing the way a gun works to make it worse for no reason.
At the same time, 76 is still straight up outclassed by burst hitscan in those elos, who are better at his job up close and at long range.
This is a good way for him to be a consistent damage source since fewer bullets will miss that weren’t your fault, but it doesn’t make him competitive with Ashe or Widow at all.
This wasn’t intended to combat aimbots? Aimbots will always do things that humans just can’t. There are other systems that are supposed to keep a check on aimbots, such as the anti-cheat, in-game cheat detection, and the report function. You are not supposed to factor aimbots into a balance argument.
Soldier is an FPS veteran’s introduction into Overwatch. He is not exactly the “noob pick” as you describe it. He is the hero that is supposed to feel familiar to people who play regular FPS games. Most of those people know what recoil is, and how to deal with it.
I can’t comment on that one, since I only play PC.
This not only raises the skill floor, but also the skill ceiling. Learning recoil rewards you with the ability to use full auto fire from long range, when you previously couldn’t and was forced to burst.
