Firstly, before someone loses their mind in outrage, I’m not advocating for the removal or complete rework of all the hitscan heroes. I’m merely proposing that the game would be in a better state if all hitscan heroes were modified into projectile heroes instead.
IMO, this brings two important benefits:
Longrange hitscan is impossible to balance if the game wants to move on in the current, less shield-heavy direction. Snipers have to have great burst, there’s no way around that, and yet dying from a shot across the map, just because you’ve shown a few pixels of your head for a fraction of a second just feels terrible. By making the sniper rifles very fast projectiles (to the extent that they feel like hitscan in low to mid-ranges, and projectile travel time only becomes noticeable at long ranges), you make it harder to hit actively dodging targets from afar, and thus decrease the reliance on shields, without making the snipers feel bad or useless. It gives people getting shot at more agency, instead of being entirely at the mercy of whether or not the enemy sniper can land a shot. There’s a reason hitscan heroes have been drastically more effective than projectile heroes for basically the entire history of Overwatch. Changing hitscans into projectiles also makes it easier to buff or nerf long-range heroes, since you can tweak their projectile speeds in addition to their damage and rate of fire.
You create the possibility for new types of abilities. This is what originally gave me the idea to talk about changing hitscans to projectiles. People have often proposed ideas like a tank that works by creating a field that slows down projectiles, but that’s not really possible in a world where hitscan exists. Hitscan works very differently mechanically, so the best you could do would be to perhaps make it so hitscan shots passing through the field would deal less damage instead, but that’s a very inelegant solution. By making every weapon have projectiles, you open up a whole world of possibilities in terms of abilities you can design.
Anyways, that’s the idea, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
I don’t think that changes things in the same way as my suggestion. Sure, it nerfs snipers, but that’s not really the main point, you still have the problem of getting instantly deleted from across the map without much you can really do about it, if you don’t have a shield protecting you. Without a barrier, long-range hitscan is always going to be more effective than projectiles, especially in higher ranks, unless their damage is so low that they’re useless.
Fair enough, but the problem is that as far as metas are concerned, hitscan almost always outperforms projectiles, and with Overwatch moving in a “less shields” direction, that becomes a bigger problem than ever before.
Realistically, making hitscans fast projectiles wouldn’t really change how many of the hitscan heroes feel. Tracer, Reaper and Sombra would feel exactly the same as they do right now, and Bastion and Soldier would only be changed slightly, and perhaps it’d even be possible to make them viable for the first time in forever if they were projectile heroes.
The heroes affected would be Widowmaker, Ashe, and to a lower degree McCree, which are highly problematic in a world with few shields, and I expect Blizzard is just going to address that by nerfing their damage eventually, which really isn’t the best solution imo.
Ima be honest, I hope there are some serious changes when OW2 drops to some of the roles in this game, maybe some of the new heroes being dropped will help with the big difference between Projectile and Hitscan right now, maybe some really unique abilities
I can assure you, from the work that the Overwatch team has been able to produce in the past with the initial drop of Overwatch, Overwatch 2 will have something to help rejuvenate this community
No? Overwatch 2 is going to be applied to all players (as in all the new content without the Story mode stuff) so Multiplayer will also have a hit with the 4ish new heroes being dropped at that time
I’m definitely very optimistic as well, people give the OW devs a ton of flack, but I’m actually of the opinion that their work in general has been awesome, with the caveat that I wish we got new content more frequently.
I’m not sure it would. With how much more reliable hitscan is at long ranges if you take shields out of the equation, even with a lower headshot multiplier hitscans would likely still be better, and if you nerf them enough that that’s no longer the case, they’d probably be useless, since that’s currently their niche. I don’t think there’s really a middle ground you can reach where they’re equally viable.
I’m actually expecting more. Blizzard has long talked about how they want to address the imbalance in the number of tanks and supports compared to DPS, and this is the perfect chance, since they can just release more at the same time, and not make DPS feel left out in the process if they get 0 new heroes for two years (as would be the case if they released 2 supports and 2 tanks between DPS heroes in their regular release schedule).
Or the developers could just bring back the heavier falloff damage reductions.
The only reason they were ever reduced was to help console and low-mid tiers with skyboxing Pharmercys, which Isn’t a thing anymore with Pharah’s jetpack change.
That wall of words, that wall of words, I do not like that wall of words.
I very much like the variation that is projectile for some with strengths and weaknesses, and hitscan for others with different strengths and weaknesses.
Hitscan’s inherent ability to hit any target at any range instantly isn’t lessened by the fact that drop off plateaus and doesn’t “drop off”.
You’re right on the money with the comparison with projectile at range to Hitscan at range.
If you want a fantastic example of how precision Hitscan influences a game, look at the sandbox changes and effective range differences between (projectile) Halo 3 and (hitscan) Halo Reach.
Long story short, skirmishes were much closer in 3, whereas wide open areas in Reach were unused because Hitscan rendered them kill zones.
Personally I want more hitscan heroes. Projectiles aren’t fun to play as.
What even makes you think that. What they show is usually what we get. People just like over hyping things and then are disappointed when nothing happens.
Bold to assume blizzard will do something big when they can’t even handle the properly game that they already have for the past 3 years.
I’m merely proposing that the game would be in a better state if all hitscan heroes were modified into projectile heroes instead.