Well, let’s start collecting the notes. Here’s what I got so far:
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Snipers are bad for Player Retention in Overwatch 2
Am I talking about Snipers generally as a gameplay mechanic in FPS games? Kinda. But specifically the counterplay against Snipers in Overwatch is dramatically less Fun than other FPS games, including Tactical Shooters. And this is because Sniper counterplay in Overwatch is excessively Frustrating and Frequent.
For example:
CounterStrike:
90% of the guns ican deal with an AWP 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.
Team Fortress 2:
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.
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.
Halo Infinite:
Snipers have a very obvious “scope glint”, a slow zoom-in, and taking literally any damage de-scopes them.
By comparison,
Overwatch 2
- Hide behind a barrier/wall 90% of the game.
- Not Fun
- Ignore the main fight, and play sniper-whack-a-mole the entire match, and pray they don’t selfpeel or get peels.
- Not Fun
- Snipe Snipers with more Snipers
- More Snipers
- With Snipers being in the top 5 most used heroes in both high ELO and all ELOs.
Now here’s a big list of issues associated with Snipers:
- Tank Diff: Not diving the Sniper frequently enough, or not putting up a barrier constantly to block the sniper.
- Team Comp Toxicity: Oh you didn’t pick an AntiSniper composition, or just have a worse Sniper than theirs? You don’t win though, but you do get a ton of toxicity for it. GG GO NEXT.
“Bad Maps”: Havana, Colosseo, Circuit Royale, New Queen Street, Junker Town, Busan, Hanamura, Volskaya, Temple of Anubis, Horizon Lunar Colony, Paris. And these “larger maps than we’ve ever seen before” in the unannounced new game mode maybe in Season 5 or Season 7.- “Stomp of Be Stomped”: Where so many games regardless of ELO are defined by Sniper Diff, and when it’s strong enough.
- Hacking and XIMing and Smurfing: Pretty obvious how Snipers cause a ton of problems here.
- Immortal Ball: Ball has pretty crazy uptime right now, and these Ana nerfs just let him run around without much to worry about. And sure it’s a high skill floor issue. But I basically look at this as “indirect Sniper nerfs”.
- Nonstop Mercy Patching: Gotta make sure that pocketing and boosting Sniper charge speed by 30% isn’t an issue right?
And on that last point, let’s explain a “cycle” I’ve been seeing:
- Snipers are a problem, but the devs won’t nerf them
- So the Devs buff DiveTanks to deal with the Snipers
- Then Supports mald because they are getting dived so hard
- So they buff the Supports to have good survival and peeling
- Then the buffed Supports peel for the Snipers
- So the Devs buff DiveTanks to deal with the Snipers
- …
- Incidentally, LifeWeaver has a 30m range LifeGrip that Invulns and goes through a Winston Bubble.
- Development Costs. With Snipers the way they are, you have to guard every possible angle within a map against too much Sniper sightlines. Which becomes even more of a problem with something like a Petal Platform can bypass a lot of that. And all the exhorbitant effort they’d need to fix all that, is a ton of time and money the devs aren’t willing to speed. Especially since it’s very unlikely they’ve backfilled their former Senior Level Designer, Trey Spisak.
Then you get into something Seagull was scratching the surface on. The game is generally a lot more fun when Rein, Winston or Genji are dominant, especially at high ELO. Why is that? It rewards aggression with fast plays.
Which can get stagnant with a lot of downtime hiding from snipers, in excessive twitch-poke playstyles. (Oh you peaked for 2 seconds, lol you’re dead).
And the opposite, is all the downtime in excessively defensive comps, just cooldowning each other to a standstill, until you get enough Ult to break the standstill.
Another thing which Overwatch 2 has figured out, is that a major advantage that Overwatch 2 has over other competing games is “reduced downtime” between fights. Battle Royales and CounterStrike type game modes just have a ton of time were players are either looting or spectating their teammates while dead. Overwatch mostly fixed that with Queue Times, but if you’re spending a ton of that time looking at a wall or hiding behind a barrier. That’s really weakening that strength Overwatch 2 should have.
And let’s throw in, 2CP not being a valid game mode anymore, due to not enough Tanks providing cover. Throw in the other maps listed above and that what out of 29 maps, 11 of them are “Sniper maps”? Over a third of the maps are “bad maps” because of Snipers? Push is a “bad game mode” because of Snipers.
Supposedly you have some sort of “large map gamemode” coming up. Which just screams “Sniper problems”.
One of your lead map designers is no longer with the company. What do you bet you haven’t backfilled that role yet, much less gotten them up to speed.
And I really gotta wonder. Who specifically on the development team is doing everything they can not to address these issues directly? Are they aware that these issues even exist? Have they rationally decided that it’s “worth it” in terms of lost profits, lost players, and lost development resources, after totaling everything up.
Because, to be honest, I have some pretty big doubts about that, with the OW2 Alpha coming out a Year ago, and there has been a whole lot of nothing in dealing with Snipers directly.
Perhaps you’ve convinced yourselves that by reducing the only fun counterplay against Snipers to be “More Snipers”, that you must appeal to all these supposed Sniper Mains, which are probably mostly just DPS mains trying to salvage some fun.
The only real hope I have on all that is that they are nerfing Ashe/Cassidy and all the AnchorTanks with a Barrier, because you want these problems to get so severe that the community starts demanding action on it.
And you aren’t going to get another shot at your PVE Launch, and it’s attempts to hold onto that temporary flood of players into the game.
And you know, that’s so galling about all of this? We can see how you’re trying to solve the frustrating aspects of the game with oneshot combos, barrier spam, and stun spam. You’ve reworked nearly half the hero roster in the basis of lowering frequent frustrations. But you can barely lift a finger when it comes to Snipers, and pull all sorts of directly conflicting mental gymnastics with Sojourm?
Really, what gives? Why? When?
Checking the calendar, you got about 31 weeks until the expected date of BlizCon 2023 and potentially the launch of PVE.
You’re running out of time, you’re running out of budget, and you’re running low on community goodwill. How much are you willing to lose over this? Since if you whiff on the PVE Launch, you probably aren’t ever going to get another opportunity for play growth like that ever again.