Pick any modern FPS game, and I’ll tell you why it has better Sniper counterplay design than Overwatch.
Here’s some examples:
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 it’d 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.
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 there’s 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 can’t 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 “scope glint”, 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.
But it does basically nothing in terms of making the Sniper die more than typical DPS, or preventing the Sniper from instakilling.
It makes sense in other games when two assault rifle bullets can kill the Sniper. And even then they have a lot more Anti-Sniper mechanics than only glint.
I’m arguing for redesigning overly frustrating and frequent gameplay mechanics, and how that relates to increased overall playerbase growth, retention and profits.
If the gameplay isn’t Fun, then the pickrates don’t matter.
I started caring less and less about Halo some the TU in Reach. That was the golden age for Halo. I don’t play the other games, and whether there’s counterplay or not, it makes no sense to punish snipers for killing you in 1 shot to the head as they should in every PVP game. Every game has counterplay to them:
Flankers
Halo de-scoping and no AA when not zoomed in
Counter snipers
I don’t consider glint as “counterplay” as all it does is promote quick scoping in arena shooters, which snipers aren’t meant to do. The only game that arguably does it right is Battlefield, which snipers can lose accuracy just by having bullets fly near them.
Destiny has insane sniper flinch in PVP and they have practically no bullet magnetism compared to any other weapon on top of scopes that would be better suited for other games like Halo or COD
Gears of War has cover, restrictive movement, and 3rd person peeking by design
Overwatch has flankers, counter snipers, barriers, healers if the sniper missed a head shot, and faster movement compared to a lot of other games (strafing doesn’t slow you down, no movement acceleration)
I fail to see how widow effects any of these factors. It is your belief that she is affecting the games population and profits when there are no signs of this.
Yeah I don’t think charge reset would be particularly fun on the receiving end, as much as I hate snipers I feel like it’d be too easy to just make Widow/Hanzo 100% useless by just continuously peppering them with long-range spam attacks, even a stray Dva pellet.
Would you agree that removing the frustration from stun spam, barrier spam, Mei Freeze combo, and making it much less reliable to do a kill combo with Junkrat, Hog and Cassidy, would have a overall improvement in playerbase retention and growth?
In some cases yes and in some cases no. There is this illusive majority people talk about that no one has any data on besides the devs.
All of OW social media is a tiny fraction of the whole who primarily don’t bother commenting on any website.
These changes mentioned has actually made me play less often then I did during no content OW1. Plus none of my friends bother keeping up with the game after they tried OW2.
Do you think the devs would go to the effort to do all these frustration reducing changes across all the 5v5 format changes, and redesigning half the hero roster still far on the basis of lowering their frustration levels. If they didn’t think it would have anything to do with increased profitability for the game?
Would you agree that PVE launch is going to temporarily flood the game with new and returning players, and that they would be forfeiting a ton of money is they don’t focus on retaining those players, after the hype dies down.
We both know some of their decisions have resulted in losing huge chunks of players. I honestly have no hope for Pve
Changing it to be episodic sounds terrible. More and more I feel it will just an extended archive event where players load a map and a bunch of bots are thrown at them
The devs should takes some inspiration from Deep Rock Galatic. They need to make it worth replaying.
I do agree there will be more people who check it out. Which could end the same as OW2. Surge of players in the beginning then it goes down.
