I think now is the time we should finally talk about random bullet spread.
What is Bullet Spread?
For those unaware, whenever a gun fires, the bullet, pellets, or what have you can be fired off at a semi-random angle. Shotguns being close range weapons tend to have the largest spread, midrange weapons like Tracer’s pulse pistols tend to have a slightly narrower spread, some longer range automatic weapons like S76’s pulse rifle gradually get wider spread angles the longer you hold down the trigger for, and then long-range weapons like McCree’s revolver or Ashe’s scoped viper will have little to no spread (or be “pinpoint”)
The existence of bullet spread is fine. It’s a necessary balancing mechanic in any FPS that prevents characters from being too effective outside the intended range, but the problem starts to appear when it comes to random bullet spread. A lot of casual players may not notice this so I’ll give a quick rundown of that.
What is Random Bullet Spread?
The easiest way to demonstrate random bullet spread would be to ask you to open up the practice range in the game. Pick a character like Reaper or Roadhog, find a flat, vertical wall, stand a couple of meters away from it and fire once at the wall. You’ll notice the pellets that come out of your gun form a pattern on the wall where they hit. Now fire your gun again. You’ll notice that the pattern it’s produced is different. The bullets have come out of your gun different.
Random bullet spread randomises the angle at which your bullets or pellets get released from a gun. There is no consistent exit pattern meaning that on some heroes, especially shotgun based heroes, a lot of your aim comes down to luck.
Why Is This Such a Big Deal?
Random bullet spread in certain cases can create scenario where a matchup you should have won, you lost because of a roll of the dice. Here’s a scenario: you’re playing a Reaper ditto: you’re both at low health but you know if you can just land on more clean shot you can clutch the victory. You see the enemy Reaper start to reload as your crosshairs float over his head. This is it. You’ve won. He can’t fire back at you because he’s reloading. You’ve aimed the headshot perfectly… You fire and… 3 of the pellets hit his body, 3 off them miss entirely and only one of them actually hits his head. Enemy Reaper finishes reloading and manages to get the killing shot.
Random bullet spread lends itself to creating inconsistencies that not only don’t need to exist, but are actively counterintuitive. If you’ve ever sometimes felt like your shots aren’t doing as much damage at range as you’d normally expect it to, there’s a good chance this can be attributed to random bullet spread. That’s not the only problem that bullet spread has inadvertently caused an issue with either.
The Roadhog Damage Buff
The reason behind the Roadhog damage buff was because he couldn’t consistently kill hooked targets that should have been low enough health to die in a single hit. The devs decided to fix this by buffing his pellet damage which, while fixing the problem, inadvertently made Hog a lot stronger outside of his hook. While I will argue that Hog definitely needed a buff, I can respect the opinion of those who want a revert. The only issue with a revert however, is that it takes Hog back to the root problem, where he can’t consistently kill targets he hooks.
Thanks to the randomness of the bullet spread on his shotgun, even for a lot of 200HP heroes, there was a chance that they’d survive a hook combo they had no business surviving. I know that pre-buff, I could hook an Ana and only manage to kill her 50% of the time. But what if Hog’s pellets came out in a fixed pattern? A damage buff may not be necessary, because you can just balance the damage around a fixed bullet angle, and find a sweet spot where Hog can consistently kill squishies using his hook combo, but can’t terrorise heroes he was never designed to terrorise.
Wouldn’t Consistent Bullet Spread Be Abusable?
This is an argument I see quite commonly against consistent bullet spread, and the short answer is… Not really, no…
At a casual level, a lot of players may not even notice the difference, and at a more skill oriented level, all this will really do is provide a little more consistency. It’s essentially impossible for a human to manipulate their aim on the fly to abuse a consistent spread pattern and it almost certainly wouldn’t be worth the effort to learn even if it was possible.
Do Other Games Use Fixed Bullet Spread?
As a matter of fact, they do! In fact I think Overwatch may be the only competitive shooter that still has an active scene that doesn’t. Fixed spread has been commonplace pretty much since competitive shooters became a thing.
The only game that didn’t use it for the longest time I can think of was TF2, and even then it was an option the community could enable on community servers, and fixed spread became the default when they introduced competitive matchmaking. Overwatch is the only outlier here.
Would This Change Make Some Heroes OP?
It’s hard to say… Maybe? But the biggest benefit to fixed bullet spread is that you can balance a hero more easily around that consistency. If a hero is doing too well, you can scale back their damage a little without worrying about the hero underperforming due to RNG. It essentially makes the work of the balance team all the more easy.
Fixed Bullet Spread is Unrealistic. If You Fire a Gun In Real Life, the Bullets Don’t Fly at the Same Angle
… This game as genetically engineered talking gorillas, a hamster that pilots a mech, a doctor who can raise the dead, floating robotic monks that run a major religion, a robot that can perfectly transform itself into anything it sees, and a DJ who can heal fatal wounds by playing music in your general area, but the way bullets exit guns is where you draw the line?
