at this point decrease her dmg output for the return for more utility-based playstyles. OW1 and pre-Season 7 Sombra had moderate damage but could not assassinate. She’s a disruptor, not assassin. The reason why she had permanent stealth, to begin with, was that she was not much of an assassin. Sombra was the kind of get-in-get-out-esque character, not to kill, but again disrupt.
Because both are annoying. There isn’t just one annoying Sombra thing which is why she is the most hated hero. Both perma invis and ability lockout were hated aspects of her kit.
Everything else yes, but I’ll have to pass on the Virus. Let’s make hack a mini EMP shall we? Hack
*Hacking an opponent locks out abilities 1.5 sec (1 sec on tanks)
*Upon hacking, 10% of the enemies health will be reduced. (increased cooldown of course) Virus
removed
Opportunist
Reveals critically wounded enemies through walls, reduced bonus damage to hacked targets from 20% ----> 10%
Well the whole point was to make is so nothing she does feels like a “Blindside” or a “Sucker Punch”.
The Hack into Virus, makes the Squishy player aware that Sombra is there, but the Virus now deals 2/3rds of their health in instant burst damage. Big damage. But it can be dodged with WASD. So it’s a “High Stakes Duel”, not a “Sucker Punch”.
Where as hack on an unsuspecting Tank. The idea there is they have more time to react. Since it’s an uncomfortably narrow amount of time to focus on it. And usually means forfeiting your positioning because you had to drop your guard, while frontlining.
However, your version of the hack combined into a virus would only work with the present translocator. If old translocator was added alongside this hack iteration, many people would complain “why is there a DPS who can assassinate me that has a get out of jail free card?”
Where’s the “Fun” in avoiding “Anti-Fun”?
I mean, if you want documentation for that. Here ya go.
Here’s Robin Walker, explicitly describing how Counterplay Frustration lost them large amounts of players. https://www.giantbomb.com/robin-walker/3040-4508/ https://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2477
And Tom Cadwell explicitly describing “Counterplay Frustration” as “Anti-Fun”. https://www.giantbomb.com/tom-cadwell/3040-75297/ https://www.nerfplz.com/p/zileas-anti-fun-patterns.html
Or Soren Johnson describing the efforts they took to deliberately avoid Un-Fun Counterplay situations. https://www.giantbomb.com/soren-johnson/3040-51090/ https://www.designer-notes.com/game-developer-column-17-water-finds-a-crack/
Which also then led to his other co-founder Sid Meier, saying it’s the game developer’s responsibility to “Avoid Optimizing the Fun out of Games”, by making player vs player interactions that are too boring or frustrating https://www.giantbomb.com/sid-meier/3025-1042/games/ https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=optimizing+the+fun+out+of+games
Cause it’s based on Game Theory, which basically describes how and why humans make almost any and all Choices. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
If the Counterplay isn’t following all 3 of these points, and it’s not compensated for elsewhere in an emotionally fulfilling way for the opponent, then there’s a major design problem. (i.e. Comparable to getting your turn skipped in Chess)
#1 The opponent can technically defeat the opponent with this Choice.
#2 The opponent has the time and awareness to Choose how to counteract the attacker’s play.
#3 The opponent has options to counteract the attacker’s play, that have enjoyable variety to them.
Like if you want, here’s an hour long lecture about it.