No, this isn’t a nerf Moira thread. Or a brig, or a D.va thread. I just want to know how the devs decide whether or not a hero should have infinite ammo, since it’s an interesting quirk for some heroes. It’s pretty obvious why melee heroes deserve infinite “ammo”, but what about other characters with ranged weapons? I don’t know if Hanzo counts as infinite because I consider taking the arrow out and drawing it counts as a reload, but D.va and Moira get no reload even though they easily could be given an animation. Why can’t lucio get infinite ammo? He has a gun that launches sound, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to give him infinite ammo. I’m genuinely curious about this so I hope someone can give me an answer.
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I think it depends on the weapon and lore, and balance is the last reason. Rein and Brig have no ammo because both their weapons are melee and it’d be dumb, but Brig does have limited armor packs/health things, which are sort of like Ammo. Rein’s firestrike also has a cooldown, so I think it suggests that attack requires rocket fuel or something, like his charge, and I’d consider that ammo.
I think Moira’s secondary fire doesn’t have ammo because it uses similar technology to Mercy’s beam. But that could just be headcannon. But Moira is sort of the opposite of Mercy, Mercy has infinite healing but uses pistol ammo; Moira has infinite beam damage, but has a healing resource. So I think the devs kept that to keep up the theme of Moira being Mercy’s opposite.
I think Hanzo doesn’t reload because he has a slow firing speed, and in terms of animation and lore it would look really weird. Then we get into Hanzo being a cartoon character like Reaper because he pulls a handful of 2 foot long arrows out of hammer space. It’s easy to hide tiny ammo canisters like soldier, McCree, etc. I think we as the audience assume they pull them out of their belt or something. I don’t think Hanzo has that luxury with 2 foot long arrows.
I honestly don’t know why D.va has infinite ammo. I don’t think she should have to reload, but I’m not sure lorewise why her mech doesn’t use ammo, despite seeming to use regular bullets. With all the bullets D.va goes through, I don’t think she could keep enough ammo for the entire match in her mech, even considering how big the mech is and how many mechs she goes through in a game.
In my head cannon, I don’t think Lucio’s weapons use ammo. I think they use batteries. I may be delusional on that one. Lucio does have a gun that looks like a pistol, and all other characters with pistol-like weapons use ammo. But considering that sound systems that don’t plug in to the wall chew up batteries like Candy, I think it makes sense for him to have batteries as a DJ. I’d have no problems with Lucio getting infinite ammo. Although that might make his damage output a bit weird.
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Also, this is a fun post. Different than the serious balance posts going around.
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D.va has infinite ammo cus the damage per shot is fairly low, and it slows her movement when firing. Hanzo draws arrows individually with a slow attack speed. Moira uses a low damage beam to recharge her resource dependent healing.
Maybe D. Va has infinite ammo due to her mech constantly being destroyed so it’s more like since it’s nuclear powered it has the ability to have seemingly infinite amounts of ammo before it’s ultimately destroyed. Also, I was thinking the exact same thing about Lucio; batteries like in Fallout Laser weapons. (they both give off a little green mist when reloading if I’m not mistaken)
Yeah like, if d.va has infinite ammo in her mech, why does bastion have to reload? ![:thinking:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=5" ":thinking:")
Are there exceptionally low parameters on at least one or more of the weapon’s stats? (D.va has incredibly limited range, Moira has limited range and incredibly limited damage) Then probably give them infinite ammo. Only reason characters like Symm don’t is because of the god-tier auto tracking.
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I actually find it a bit weird in terms of lore that Zarya and Zenyatta use ammo. I think it’s a good design decision, because otherwise a Zarya and Zenny could tear through your team with no breaks. But I feel like Zarya’s reload animation doesn’t add any ammo to the gun. It sort of looks like she just pushed a button and the (turbine?) reset to it’s starting position. Likewise, Zenny is always surrounded by balls. Why does he need to reload to shoot, but if he’s out of Ammo his chakras (or whatever) are ok enough to use transcendence.
I just think it’s one of the funny details D.va has is that she has infinite ammo. It’s no where near as bad (or as funny) as Reaper pulling 2 shotguns out of hammer space. I still laugh sometimes when I see Reaper “reload” because it looks so weird. The first time I saw reaper “reload” I literally thought he was pulling guns out of his butt.