Am I talking about Snipers generally as a gameplay mechanic in FPS games? Kinda. Snipers in FPS games are perhaps the most controversial design issue in FPS games. With almost every FPS game still struggling to deal with designing them to this day.
As the Team Fortress 2 Developers described, poorly designed Sniper counterplay:
That said, when it comes to Sniper counterplay in Overwatch it is dramatically worse designed than pretty much any other FPS games, including Tactical Shooters. And this is because Sniper counterplay in Overwatch is excessively Frustrating and Frequent.
And before we get started with all this, I would like to point out This is NOT a âBalanceâ issue, or âTournament level PickRate Issueâ. This is a âPlayerbase Retention and Growth issueâ, related to the drastically important concept that âVideogames are Supposed to be Fun for the Players, and Profitable for the Developersâ. And while Balancing may be the method, itâs not the goal here. If the game isnât Fun, then Balance doesnât matter. (And âNoveltyâ should be considered just another component of âFunâ anyways. The idea that Fun is divorced from Balance is just a fundamental misunderstanding about what Game Design is all about.).
Hereâs some examples of Sniper Counterplay in other FPS games, and how they prevent it from being Frustrating and Frequent:
Counter-Strike:
- Nearly all of the guns can deal with an AWP/Scout user in under half a second, aside from AWPs being so expensive that itâd be bizarre to use them on a very frequent basis. And by the time people get AWPs, you can just use a smoke grenade to deal with it.
Valorant
- The game is basically overloaded with smoke/flashbang equivalent abilities. And Sniper Rifles that outperform the killspeeds of other guns typically are very expensive late-game buys.
Team Fortress 2:
- If a Sniper gets rushed at close range, they are are almost 100% certain to be dead. Add in spies that can instant kill. (I.e. Nothing like a grapple). For example, get a Spy with a Enforcer Revolver, Spycicle, and Dead Ringer, and thereâs not much that Sniper can do about it. And if things do get really bad, then AutoBalance will fix it.
Apex Legends:
- The Kraber Rifle mostly canât oneshot in Apex, as of about 10 months ago. And it only shows up in RNG care packages late-game. In addition to pretty severe bullet gravity drop, and and aim punch. Various characters can also do things like deploy Smokes and giant walls.
Halo Infinite:
- Snipers have a very obvious âscope glintâ, and taking literally any damage de-scopes them. Additionally they get only 8 bullets total, and the pickups are usually in dangerous locations. Along with usually medium range map design, and the ability to avoid certain maps entirely.
By comparison,
Overwatch 2
FRUSTRATING COUNTERPLAY
Hide behind a barrier/wall 90% of the game.
- Not Fun.
Ignore the main fight, and play sniper-whack-a-mole the entire match, and pray they donât selfpeel or get peels.
- Not Fun
Snipe Snipers with more Snipers
- Only the Sniper players get to have Fun
FREQUENT COUNTERPLAY
- Snipers are in the top 5 most used heroes in both high ELO and all ELOs.
- Unlike a lot of other games, that severely limit the occurrence of Sniper weapons, you can use an instant kill Snipers throughout the entire match, with unlimited ammo.
Now hereâs a big list of issues associated with Snipers:
- Tank Diff: Not diving the Sniper frequently enough, or not putting up a barrier constantly to block the sniper. Assuming that would even work. Heaven forbid you picked a Brawl Tank that doesnât have a persistent barrier, you must be throwing. Report them.
- DPS Diff: Oh, you picked a hero that doesnât deal well with Snipers, well guess that means your team should yell at you. Report them.
- Support Diff: Oh, you canât outheal instant kills? Well you just must suck at healing then. GG Guys, report the healer.
- Team Comp Toxicity: Oh you didnât pick an AntiSniper composition, or just have a worse Sniper than theirs? Enjoy your free loss, and a boatload of toxicity.
- âStomp of Be Stompedâ Matchmaking: Where so many games regardless of ELO are defined by Sniper Diff. Regardless of how well Role Deltas stack.
- Hacking and XIMing and Smurfing: Pretty obvious how Snipers cause a ton of problems here.
- Immortal Ball:Ball has pretty crazy uptime right now, and these Hog/Ana nerfs. I view this as the developers not learning from Geoff Goodmanâs mistakes on designing LaunchBrig to counter Tracer. Except now itâs Ball vs Snipers.
- Nonstop Mercy Patching: Gotta make sure that pocketing and boosting Sniper charge speed by 30% isnât an issue right? Oh you finally killed the pocketed Sniper? Lol Rez.
And on that last point, letâs explain a âcycleâ Iâve been seeing:
- Snipers are a problem, but the devs wonât nerf them.
- So the Devs buff DiveTanks to deal with the Snipers.
- Then Supports mald because they are getting dived so hard.
- So they buff the Supports to have good survival and peeling.
- Then the buffed Supports peel for the Snipers.
- So the Devs buff DiveTanks to deal with the Snipers.
- âŚ
- Incidentally, LifeWeaver has a 30m range LifeGrip that Invulns and goes through a Winston Bubble.
- âŚ
- Development Costs. With Snipers the way they are, you have to guard every possible angle within a map against too much Sniper sightlines. Which becomes even more of a problem with something like a Petal Platform can bypass a lot of that. And even if they went that route, with exorbitant in time, money, and staff resources. It very likely wouldnât even work. All of these development costs are a drain on other potential game improvements.
- Less Problematic Metas: Seagull was scratching the surface on this. The game is generally a lot more fun when Rein, Winston or Genji are dominant, especially at high ELO. Why is that? Because it rewards aggression with fast plays.
- Which can get stagnant with a lot of downtime hiding from snipers, in excessive twitch-poke playstyles. (Oh you peaked for 2 seconds, lol youâre dead).
- And the opposite, is all the downtime in excessively defensive comps, just cooldowning each other to a standstill, until you get enough Ult to break the standstill.
- Reduced DownTime: Another thing which should be Overwatch 2âs major advantage over other competing games is âreduced downtimeâ between fights. Battle Royales and CounterStrike type game modes just have a ton of time were players are either looting or spectating their teammates while dead. Overwatch fixed a large part of that with improved Queue Times, but if youâre spending a ton of that time looking at a wall or hiding behind a barrier. Thatâs really weakening that strength Overwatch 2 should have.
- Bad Maps: The vast majority of complaints about Push and one of the main reasons 2CP is not a valid game mode anymore, is due to a lack of cover from Snipers. Throw in the other maps listed above and that what out of 29 maps, 11 of them are âSniper mapsâ? (Havana, Colosseo, Circuit Royale, New Queen Street, Junker Town, Busan, Hanamura, Volskaya, Temple of Anubis, Horizon Lunar Colony, Paris.) Over a third of the maps are âbad mapsâ because of Snipers? Push is a âbad game modeâ because of Snipers. Supposedly you have some sort of âlarge map gamemodeâ coming up. Which just screams âSniper problemsâ.
And I really gotta wonder. Why is the development team is doing everything they can not to address these issues directly? Are they aware that these issues even exist? Have they rationally decided that itâs âworth itâ in terms of lost profits, lost players, and lost development resources, after totaling everything up. Has everybody in the executive leadership team really stopped to think about how this dramatically important issue could impact Player Retention, Playerbase Growth, and Profitability?
Because, to be honest, I have some pretty big doubts about that, with the OW2 Alpha coming out a Year ago, and there has been a whole lot of nothing in dealing with Snipers directly.
Perhaps theyâve convinced themselves that by reducing the only fun counterplay against Snipers to be âMore Snipersâ, and scaring off a lot of players who donât want to deal with that, that you must appeal to all these supposed Sniper Mains, which are probably mostly just DPS mains trying to salvage some fun from poorly thought out game design. But would be willing to play a much wider variety of heroes, if they werenât penalized so harshly for it. If so, thatâs just ignoring the concept of Survorship Bias.
And this patch, they basically nerfed Cassidy/Ashe, and every persistent Barrier Tank. So thatâs just going to make the issues more extreme.
And you know, thatâs so galling about all of this? We can see how theyâre trying to solve the frustrating aspects of the game with oneshot combos, barrier spam, and stun spam. Theyâve reworked nearly half the hero roster in the basis of lowering frequent frustrations. But they can barely lift a finger when it comes to Snipers, and pull all sorts of directly conflicting mental gymnastics with Sojourn. And the only reason sheâs not being complained about currently is because Widow is a larger problem.
Really, what gives? Why? When?
Checking the calendar, theyâve got about 30 weeks, and 6 major balance patches, until the expected date of BlizCon 2023 and potentially the launch of PVE, in November. (If not sooner).
Theyâre running out of time, theyâre running out of budget, and theyâre running low on community goodwill. How much are they willing to lose over this? Since if they whiff on the PVE Launch, they probably arenât ever going to get another opportunity for play growth like that ever again. Especially if theyâve killed the momentum before then.
They should be doing everything in their power amp up their playerbase size and playerbase retention before PVE launches. Or the entire point of making OW2 will be a wasted opportunity.
Figured I should post this sooner than later, and work on finishing it up before I post it on Reddit.
Alec Dawson, Widow has been talked about internally
