To preface, this is not a real patch. This is a personal wishlist in the form of an imaginary patch that specifically addresses elements of in-game clarity, communication, usability, and feel. None of these are intended to significantly affect balance or difficulty.
Feel free to reply with your own ideas or feedback on mine. I might even edit things into the “patch notes” below (with credit) if I really like a suggestion and think it’s realistic.
Patch 1.X.0.1
General
Colorblind Options: Players can now select the UI color used for Group members, in addition to allies and enemies.
Ana
A voice line now informs allies when Ana begins reloading.
This has a 5-second cooldown and can only trigger with less than half ammo remaining, to limit unnecessary callouts.
Baptiste
A voice line now informs allies when Baptiste begins reloading.
This has a 5-second cooldown and can only trigger with less than half grenade ammo remaining, to limit unnecessary callouts.
The beams of light emitting from Immortality Field now point at the affected characters (if any) instead of in random directions.
This helps indicate the drone’s location and LOS for all players, and also clarifies whose drone belongs to whom in FFA matches.
If no one is in the field, the beams dim and scatter in random directions like before.
D.va
After triggering an eject, the mech’s health bar disappears and no longer displays the “critical” alert to allied supports.
Lúcio
Sound Barrier’s voice cue is now split into two, with “Down” (or language equivalent) playing upon impact with the ground.
Reinhardt
Earthshatter’s voice cue is now split into two, with “Down” (or language equivalent) playing upon impact with the ground.
Roadhog
If a hooked target cannot be pulled to Roadhog (e.g. because of an obstruction), the hook now breaks immediately instead of immobilizing both players.
Sombra
Hack now displays an icon above the target’s head that indicates the remaining duration of the hack to all players, similar to hacked health packs.
Where applicable, the enemy ultimate indicator stacks in front of this icon.
Hacked players now see a non-obstructive visual effect around the borders of the screen to make the duration more apparent, similar to effects like Projected Barrier.
When Sombra receives environmental kill credit for hacking a flying character, the Kill Feed now shows the appropriate Hack or EMP ability icon instead of the generic arrow.
Torbjörn
Torbjörn now sees a subtle visual indicator on his turret’s current target when it is firing (not visible through walls).
Tracer
The on-screen chevrons that indicate Blink charges now gradually fill up to show the cooldown of the next charge.
Wrecking Ball
An on-screen indicator now shows the number of enemies who will contribute to Adaptive Shield when available. (like Crossfade, old Resurrect)
Undetected characters (Sombra) are not counted, even if they would generate more shields.
EDIT: It’s come to my attention since writing this that the shield count UI already exists and is just off at the edge of the screen instead of centered.
I could have sworn that Wrecking Ball (at least when he was on the PTR) had an indicator of how many people he’s next to for his shield (but it was like tiny next to the ability icon)
You might be right about that; I very rarely look at that corner of the screen. Nonetheless, I would prefer to see an indicator near the reticle either way.
I would like to add one: Sombra can no longer hack a DVA in the midst of self-destruct or a Zarya that uses her shield. The hack is canceled immediately and not put on cooldown. The amount of times I waste hacks on these two-especially the first one- in these scenarios is way too high.
I thought about including something like that, but I was trying to steer clear of things that are arguably bug fixes. I also know it’s a bit more complicated issue than it appears.
It’s most common with Hack but affects a number of abilities in similar ways. For example, Genji can dash, then have the server resolve a Flashbang where he was before the dash. He gets teleported back to where he started, but it doesn’t refund the dash cooldown. It’s not exactly the same as the Hack problem, since the Hack actually succeeds (kind of), but it’s probably caused by the same interaction with latency.
Baptiste
-If Immortality Field is used while crouching then he places it at his feet instead of throwing it.
-[Console] Aim assist no longer pulls your aim away from the enemy Immortality Field.
It’s very frustrating trying to destroy it but the enemies below pull your reticle away.
Symmetra
-Only a Torb turret placed on top of a teleporter can be teleported at Symmetra’s will. If the Torb turret was there first then it’s up to Torb if he wants it moved or not.
After a Sym did this to me I dropped Torb and I can’t find a patch note saying it was fixed.
Ah yeah, I haven’t played Overwatch on console in a while, but I’ve heard about the aim assist issues with constructs ever since Ashe’s release (pulling aim away from dynamite). Having an option to apply aim assist for those objects definitely sounds like it would be helpful.
The main issue with the Torb turret teleporting is how to control it. The Interact button is already used both to teleport himself and to destroy his turret, so how would he manually teleport his turret?
Huh, that’s an interesting idea; essentially the “Ultimate Status” callout for a normal ability. That could definitely be useful, for that and other abilities, although I could see people spamming it accidentally a lot too.
It reminds me of the ability pings in Heroes of the Storm, which were really useful in the pre-voice-chat days: You’d hold Alt and press any ability button to send a message saying it was either ready now or would be ready in X seconds.
Yeah but not for any old ability, just the really important ones like Rez that have 30 sec c/d and it’s really important to communicate your rez cd status mid fight when you don’t have a mic
Right, someone pointed that out earlier; somehow I had never noticed. Still, I would love for it to be more centered on the screen, like other important ability numbers—Zarya energy, Lucio’s aura, etc.
