Warcrime issues

Story Discussion
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Ok first of
Ana has a weapon that make it harder to treat wounds
Given that the CCW bans the use of undetectable shrapnel that would prevent treating of wounds i have to assume this would be banned at some point-
(though technically the CCW lacks and enforcement mechanic)

I mean your not even allowed to use hollow point or teargas in war… so yeah forget using offensive biotics.

Secondly both Junkrat and Hammond make use of landmines which violates the Ottawa Treaty (aka the Mine ban treaty)

this is also covered by protocol II of the CCW (Aka the Inhuman weapons convention)… technically they can be allowed but you have to keep track of where they where placed for later removal.

Mei could also be argued to be a clear violator of the geneva convention covering the treatment of captured prisoners of war… since she can clearly capture people yet insist on shooting a spike of ice through their brains…

Regarding torbjörns and symetras turrets… while there are no treaties on this at the moment that cover them, there is clearly some growing concern about autonomous weapons systems and there as been some work on covering this under the CCW

I’d also argue that Pharah uses carpet bombig which may endanger civilians.

and that Moiras orbs clearly are very wild unguided munitions that could also endanger civilian populations. (at this point i am a bit to lazy to look up the relevant treaties and agreements.)

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Ana’s weapon was designed to dispense healing darts. Ana took the rifle and is using it offensively. She is also already an international criminal with a huge bounty comparable to other outlaws like McCree and Junkrat.

Junkrat is a criminal that just loves explosions. He doesn’t care about that. Hammond is a hamster from the moon who spent most of his time on Earth in Junkertown, which in general probably doesn’t care about international laws and regulations.

Gameplay != Lore. She’s only ever used her gun on animals to study them in a catch-and-release type of method.

These types of laws probably become questionable in an era where autonomous machines are people - Omnics.

Yeah, Pharah’s is a weird one to violate these laws. But her squad is rather explicitly by her, a “kill everything team.”

I think Moira has done a lot more to violate human rights and scientific ethical standards than just that. A large part of her character is not caring about the rules.

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The only solid point you really have is with Pharah, who continues to prove herself a more and more baffling “hero” concept in every way with each passing day. Apparently overkill is her idea of justice.

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I love these kinds of posts, they are a lot of fun. It reminds me of the one that the user calculated the hair growth of Widowmaker and Torbjorn’s beard.

Someone also made one of these for the rainbow six characters gadgets.

But it also reminds how some people can’t have fun with a post with this concep.

Except Pharah never used it on areas with civilians and she has that weapon because of gameplay purposes. She is probably trained in all types of weapons because she has served many years in the Egyptian military, so she can easily switch for any situation.

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Assuming the rockets as her go-to weapon is only a gameplay mechanic, yeah. Otherwise, raining down rockets on individuals so that they can’t even be recognized after she’s done with them is cruel. Not that plenty of soldiers haven’t done things like that or worse in the name of war, but calling it justice is ridiculous.

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We have never seen Pharah use her weapon against people that don’t deserve it, only at murderous omnics. She also never put any inocent life in danger, only herself.

Her armor has a radar(she aludes to it in a voice line) and probably has an aiming function for her rockets, so she isn’t “raining down rockets on individuals so that they can’t even be recognized”.

To call her a “baffling “hero” concept” and that “overkill is her idea of justice” is just you assuming stuff to justify your hate for the character.

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I don’t hate Pharah. I’ve said many times that the only heroes I hate are Symmetra and Torbjorn for their gameplay. Personally, I’m indifferent towards her. She fills up the roster.

I just think gameplay-wise, Pharah’s is an inherently unbalanced concept that never should’ve made it into the game (has nothing to do with the character herself). Story-wise, a heroic character that preaches justice should not be pelting tangoes with rockets and calling that justice, no matter what atrocities they’ve committed. Overkill is not justice. You think it’s just her gameplay and I admitted you might be right.

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Could be used on heavily armored vehicles and not on individual targets it’s only overkill because of gameplay

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No, I’m the Pharah hater :upside_down_face:

She is the most classic design of a hero shooter character and, because of that, one of the most balanced. She is strong in certain situations, but has obvious weakness.

She is a decorated honorable sodier like her mother was and wanted to join Overwatch in it’s peacekeeping efforts. That’s in her lore, not that she uses rockets so it’s “obvious overkill” and “not justice”.

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anyway my point with this thread is the some of the kits are kinda inherently war-crimey… its kinda hard to pin this stuff down because its not the same world with the same exact history and though one may argue that things we label as war crimes are inherently evil before its writen into law its technically not a war crime…

I may consider Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other civilian population center’s that famously got bombed to bits to be war crimes but legally speaking they aren’t (because we started prohibiting such bombardment after the war…) and enforcement of war crimes is kinda spotty… its generally something victors do to losers while the powerful tend to disregard their own violations even when they are signatories to agreements that should carry t he same for of law as their own constitution…

But it is odd to say the least that the war crimes have not been leveled against overwatch members and previous overwatch members given how unpopular they got towards the end.

I suppose Ana being wanted could suggest she got into some such trouble… it’s sort of what you would expect…

then again people also tend to think Ana is an assassin or at least Hanzo does…

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Quick reminder that he is behind spree of mayhem and destruction so, um… Him breaking some treaty is… Kinda the smallest problem

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She has debilitating weaknesses and oppressive strengths. As is the nature of a character that flies and spams rockets. She will never be balanced. The only difference between her and Doomfist is that I can at least see how they thought he might be a good idea after saying it out loud. Pharah just sounds like she’d be unbalanced.

[quote=“GreatUniter-1402, post:9, topic:367901, full:true”
She is a decorated honorable sodier like her mother was and wanted to join Overwatch in it’s peacekeeping efforts. That’s in her lore, not that she uses rockets so it’s “obvious overkill” and “not justice”.
[/quote]
Nah my guy. Just because the lore says she’s one way doesn’t mean her actions line up with it. If rockets aren’t her go-to weapon to deal with any threat regardless of size, then fine. But if she’s pelting foot soldiers with rockets, that’s overkill.

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Pharah is a glass cannon, that’s her design. Oppressive if she isn’t contested, falls apart easily under pressure. Obvious weakness and strengths. Balanced.

That’s crazy talk. What I mentioned before comes from her official biography, there is no reading in between the lines, it is what it is.

Her rockets are less overkill then: a rocket powered hammer or mace wilded by people with power armor; or a cyborg ninja with a katana that can cut a car in half like it’s nothing(that he used agains humans multiple times); or pistols that shoot lasers with infinite ammo because of time powers and a bomb that stick into people(that she used agaist humans multiple times); how about a gun that shoots laser and energy balls that gets stronger the more you use; or a gun that shoots molten metal in form of rivets. I could go on and on about how every character, good or bad, uses an overkill gun/kit. You are singling out Pharah just to fit a made up narrative that she serves some kind of draconian justice, which you have no evidence of.

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Then why are her mains always complaining about how “unplayable” she currently is? It’s because she’s so easily shot out of the sky, you might as well not even play her against any decent hitscan. If she were to be buffed in any significant way to reduce the effectiveness of hitscan, she’d be overpowered. That’s not even considering Mercy.

Okay that’s fine, but I’m saying, just because her bio says that doesn’t mean her concept works with it. Mercy for example, she’s described as a pacifist. Mercy seems more than willing to take up arms when necessary and enable others to kill, which is why some people question this description.

Genji, Reinhardt, and Brigitte are using melee weapons. They don’t leave their enemies incinerated. Genji kills, but he’s an assassin type. His kills are decisive and he’s only going to deal necessary damage. Additionally, all of them can choose to kill or spare their enemies. Genji makes use of three different weapons that can deal varying degrees of damage. You can’t do that while you’re flying in the air spamming rockets at people.

Tracer doesn’t throw bomb after bomb at her enemies like Pharah does with her rockets. She uses it sparingly and tactically. I don’t know what kind of damage Zarya’s laser can do, but maybe it is overkill. Torbjorn, yeah, his molten core is ridiculously overkill if he uses it against people.

Well I didn’t say all that, though a narrative with Pharah having a more “pragmatic” sense of justice and dishing it out alongside Helix would certainly be more interesting than whatever generic soldier thing she’s got going on now.

I’m just saying, everyone considers Junkrat to be a crazy pyromaniac and recognizes his excessive use of explosives as overkill. Yes, we know Pharah factually isn’t crazy or villainous like Junkrat, but she doesn’t fight any differently than he does.

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They complain that she became underpowered because of hitscan powercreep with more and more counters to her were added to the game. The problem isn’t her design, it’s the overall game balance.

Overwatch’s writing has always being super inconsistent. They don’t know if they want to be a friendly super hero story, an edgy watchmen type of graphic novel or something in between. Mercy is one of the characters that the characterization is super inconsistent.

Being melee weapons doesn’t make it less overkill, because we’ve seen in the lore what they are capable of doing.

Pharah’s rocket laucher doesn’t incinerate people, they hurt because of impact, it doesn’t have napalm on it. Ashe’s dynamite incinerates.

In storm rising we see Genji slashing a car, causing an accident, then it explodes with Talon soldiers inside of it. That’s not “His kills are decisive and he’s only going to deal necessary damage.”

Again, Pharah does not spam rockets at people, she has a limited ammo, it would be a waste to do it so. She can also choose if she want spare or not an enemy, because, different from the other heroes, she has a non letal option in her concussive blast.

You could say she’s pragmatic, because she does things by the book. But we know her sense of justice comes with the primordial objective of protecting the innocent(that’s basically her character summarized). Helix is an organization that’s reponsible of taking care of the overwatch facilities. Like ow, it’s supervised by the UN, but it doesn’t have the same authority that ow had. So, logically, the Raptora sistems that helix developed must be under their regulations. Pharah even said in her comic that they are deployed in specific situations, so they don’t simply shoot rockets at people in random places.

Junkrat uses landmines and beartraps and those are war crimes. Comparing Pharah with him makes no sense.

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It is worth noting that Overwatch is a post-robot-war era. The same warcrime laws that apply to human vs human combat might not apply to human vs machine combat. Heroes like Pharah or D.Va have only been shown to use their heavy weapons, carpet bombs, and nuclear explosions on machines rather than humans. The warcrimes as they are have probably changed to compensate for a new enemy. Regular bullets aren’t nearly as effective against machines as they are against humans, overkill might have been needed, and some of these standards may have been repealed specifically to deal with the new omnic threat 30 years prior.

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I kinda doubt d.va’s mech actually is nuclear so i would call that conventional explosives…

As for what laws apply it would be interesting to know…

I still think some kind of law would apply to autonomous weapons systems at least something similar to the CCW…

You would probably be required to catalog where you deployed such a weapon and be responsible for their removal after combat has ended and take any steps possible to prevent harm to civilians.

Automated turrets would be very dangerous…

If the system is mobile that would likely be totally illegal unless it was human controlled at some point.

(similar to how drones typically at the very least require human intervention to fire)

Other wise such a weapons system could stray into a civilian population and start killing random people…

Omnics i think would not count as autonomous weapons system when they are not controlled by another will since they are sentient and as such would count as humans for all intents and purposes…

Some regions would not recognize omnics as sentient probably… like Russia maybe…

they likely ban them entirely.

anyway that’s what i would expect the OW universe would be like legally speaking with regards to autonomous weapons systems…

Torb and Symetra and widow maker can all see their weapons on the mini map… technically that is true for junk rat too i think so they may comply with the requirement of registration…

I don’t think Hammond’s mines do though so if he takes military action and uses his ult he would likely fail the registration requirement… then again they do self remove after a short duration… so that may fulfill the spirit of the agreement if not the letter…

I still think the hamster is in trouble…

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Wow, today on stretching and trying too hard.

Just gonna call you Game Theory

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Perhaps, but as this thread’s noted several times, there’s little about what they do that doesn’t fit the context/character. I’ll even make a case for Pharah if you like.

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I would think it is. Her guns are called fusion cannons, and her self-destructs description is about her rigging the “reactor” to blow. Its also called the reactor a few times in the short.