Why does ultimate charge completely reset on switch?
The game revolves around switching heroes to adapt to the situation, but having a decent percentage of ult charge on a hero, that is clearly a wrong choice and needs to be changed, is a factor that makes players stick with heroes that are useless for that round.
Not implying that the ult charge should carry over to your next hero that a player switches into, but at least it could add like 50% of the amount of the charge that was lost to the new hero that was picked.
EDIT:
A more fleshed out suggestion:
Each hero already has it’s own formula that calculates the amount of ult charge he or she gains based on several criteria (aiming requirements, projectile vs hitscan, etc).
That same formula can be modified in a way so it translates into the ult charge amount that carries over.
This means that a hero that gains ult charge fast and easy ( moira , baptiste etc) would transfer less ult charge compared to heroes that charge their ultimates slowly.
I think this is one of those weird attributes that comes with the territory of Overwatch, a conflict of its own design against itself. I don’t think there’s an easy answer to this dilemma, and it does come up frequently, wanting to stay on a hero that even you know is a bad choice, but your ultimate is right there already built up. I think the best way to look at it is just another challenge that players have to face when considering their composition. Is it worth it to keep your Pharah ult and wait for an opportunity where that might slow down the enemy? Or do you keep rolling Pharah into double hitscan, trying to make her work?
I don’t think an ultimate pass-off system would work very well, even if you made it cut the ult charge in half or anything like that. The problem would still be that someone can play a hero that can easily grind out ult charge points, like Moira, and then swap to a hero with a better ultimate. Even if they still have to build up a majority of this new ultimate, it can still be a pretty mean advantage to suddenly have, and it probably throws communication for a loop. It’s already a skill to track enemy ultimates and prepare for them, throwing this factor in puts in a whole other loop of trying to guess how much ult charge someone got on one hero, and how much of that transferred to this new one. I don’t think it’d be very fun to have to remember, “How much ult charge does Sigma take to get his ult, and how much did Tracer pass off to him when she switched?”
At the end of the day it’s much smoother for the game for players to have to track ults based on what they’re able to observe, and for players to build up ultimates fairly for how that hero is intended to get their ultimate. Like I said earlier, it just wouldn’t be fair if you could toss out a Moira orb, get a couple hundred points of ult charge, and then put that towards a Pulse Bomb that you can ambush the enemy with. If Tracer wants Pulse Bomb, then she needs to shoot people as Tracer to build up towards it.
Even if it’s only a partial refund, it’s very easy to cheese. For example I can charge Baptiste’s ult in maybe 20 seconds. If you can get your team to stand in the lamp you can easily get 40-60 charge near instantly.
Lets say I was playing Eichenwalde attack, built ult in 20 seconds then swapped to another support that would be slower building. It’d be a pretty huge advantage over the defenders who can’t swap as quickly without dying.
In tanks I could play a hyper aggro rein then swap to Zarya or Sigma.
It just makes the ult economy really awkward.
Heroes charge ults easier and faster than others for good reason.
There’s two ultimate charge meters. It basically looks the same it does right now, but rather than filling the full circle from left to right, it starts at the bottom and fills on both sides.
The left side is your “passive ultimate generation”. It ticks up slowly over time, and you get to keep the progress if you switch heroes.
The right side is your “active ultimate generation”. It builds up when you deal damage, heal etc., the same way it does now, and you lose progress if you switch heroes.
Both gauges have to individually reach the “50%” area for you to unlock your ultimate.
This serves a few purposes.
First, it lets you keep some ult charge when switching heroes, without potential for exploitation by playing heroes with faster ultimate charge. In a game that’s supposed to be about switching, punishing people less for actually doing it sounds like a good idea to me.
It makes extremely fast ultimates impossible. We’ve all seen the games where you’re playing Reinhard, you just used your Earthshatter, and then your Zarya ults afterwards, which lets you build another ultimate in like 30 seconds. As funny as that can be, it’s not exactly beneficial for the game.
Well the amount of ultimate that carries over could be adjusted based on how difficult is to gain it with the previous hero.
Every hero has an ultimate gain formula. That same formula could be modified in a way to produce the percentage of the charge that will be carried over to the new hero.
That way, a hero that farms ultimate charge fast like moira or baptiste, would not transfer as much ult charge as a slow charging ult hero.
I have a suggestion, I dont think its perfect but i thought perhaps that
if you have between 75%-100% ult charge upon switching to another hero you get 50% ult charge max
while if you are at 50%-74% ult charge you get a max of 25% ult charge if you switch to another hero
and if your below 50% you get no ult charge carried over to the next hero.
These all stack so if you were a tracer at full ult charge and switch to reaper you will have 50% ult charge. But if you switched again instantly you will get 25% ult charge, and if you switch again you drop to 0%.
its not perfect but soemthing i thought of for a bit.
One of the greatest mysteries of Overwatch that have infuriated players for awhile now. The games core design is about counter picking, but you’re punished for counter picking.
No, I read that as “very few”, and it’s still wrong. Add a penalty for swapping or adjust how much carries over on a hero by hero basis and you won’t be getting any ult charge on hero 2 that you wouldn’t have built had you been playing them instead of hero 1. You can’t honestly believe that this is impossible to balance.
That could potentially result in someone charging up a couple of ults on different heroes, then using them back-to-back and skewing the flow of the game (given how powerful most ults are).
