The following is Sombra’s official description from the website.
Sombra
One of the world’s most notorious hackers, Sombra uses information to manipulate those in power.
But now, she can’t even “hack” anymore. (Hotfix? wow…)
Nothing has changed from when they ran away from 6v6 to 5v5.
It’s the exact same approach: running away from the problem because they can’t figure out how to balance it.
It’s disappointing to see a major game company announce such a directionless approach to patching—and even more disappointing that the company in question is Blizzard, a game company I’ve always liked.
Just as we eventually adapted to 5v5, of course we’ll eventually adapt to Sombra being turned into a healer as well.
But whether we can adapt to it or not isn’t the point.
What I find ridiculous is that they’re so confidently announcing a plan to completely destroy the identity and character of something they themselves created so well.
I feel like every Sombra rework incorporates completely nonsensical design philosophies that only apply to her.
People complained the EMP doesn’t make any sense as a DPS ult because it does no damage, despite the fact one of the most powerful DPS in the game (Widow) has a no damage ult. So now EMP does damage and has to be balanced around it
We’re told it’s wrong she has a get out of jail free card even tho Tracers recall is way better so now both trans & invisible are garbage.
We’re told hack is unfair so now it’s reduced to something worse than Cassidy stun.
I agree. Being able to balance a character while preserving their identity should be part of a game developer’s job, but this feels more like giving up on that challenge because they couldn’t find a way to balance her properly.
They say Sombra is an “annoying” character, but there are countless stealth characters across many different games, and any character designed to disrupt or harass opponents through stealth is naturally going to be frustrating to play against to some degree. What I find hard to understand is the decision to change the character’s identity itself simply because of that frustration.
I think the developers should be able to stick to the core design of the character without being too easily swayed by complaints. It’s surprising to see a studio this large take this kind of direction.
It’s not even a case of saying she’s overpowered and needs to be nerfed. They’re removing a major part of her identity simply because she’s considered “annoying,” and that’s the part I find most disappointing.
I dunno. Maybe she’s hotfixing the deployables via a hack.
As im saying.. the name of her ability doesn’t really matter. Sombra still hacks the computer deployables regardless of what the ability is called. Shes still a computer hacker.
Ability lockout is what you want. Not hack. It can be called anything, Even ability lockout.
‘Hacker is not a hacker’ is what I’m jabbing at. Because hacker still is a hacker, with no more ability lockout.
Ok well that’s not what you said at first but sure.
Do you really want me to list out the many abilities that have nothing to do with computers?
No because it’s completely irrelevant. We all know there are some non tech based abilities she can hack. We know it doesn’t make sense, and we know why it happens anyway.
It’s purely a gameplay story segregation issue, because the Devs cba to go thru every ability and decide if it’s technically based or not. Personally I think that’s fine, but if you don’t then that’s an argument to make her hack more exclusively tech based; it’s not an argument to make it limited to deployables, and it’s certainly not an excuse to pretend that hacking people isn’t tech based
She has no identity now. The title of this thread is perfect. A hacker is malicious. Why would someone with ill intent care to heal anyone but themselves? Hotfix is something a dev at Blizz does, not the world’s most notorious hacker. Sure, she probably knows how to hotfix, but why should she forget how to hack to do that? Why couldn’t she have both?
Since we are redesigning her, lets change her name. Sombra is her old hacker name. Since she’s now a Blizzard Entertainment employee, she should go by Olivia (Or Raj, the clearly Indian tech support that tries to convince you he’s Michael). We can change character names since McCree was changed to Cassidy. Translocator doesn’t fit within company standards at Blizzard Entertainment. Let’s replace that with an office chair with wheels. We know Blizz doesn’t pay their employees enough, so she needs a second job at Geeksquad, but she can’t have stealth for that anyway so we can drop that too.
And since we’re putting her in categories she doesn’t belong in, how about we try Tank out? Maybe she could put a big shield up and call the ability Firewall.
Cause who cares about keeping characters designed around their identity.
And I’d argue that support fits het theme better than damage ever did. When you watch her animated short (the first one) she mainly runs support for that mission (intel, stealth-ops, hacking devices to get to the target). People just are stuck in their ways of “I want to play stealth assassin” mixed with their ego of “support players are inferior so I don’t want to become one”.
I personally dont play her but she is a hacker and yes the disabling is annoying and doesnt make sense. But for some ults / Abilities or characters it would. For example Ram, Echo, Bastion, Zen, Soldier Ult, Mercy Flying & Ult, Pharah flying & Ult, basically where tech is involved
etc…
Now the problem if they would do this is those people would complain about unfairness since she only hacks them but not other characters. So i guess its best if they leave it out fully.
Personally i would like to see it this way though.
