I want to preface this by saying this is not a dig on any particular hero, only a hypothetical.
Being hitscan, these heroes don’t fire projectiles like other heroes. Whether or not you get domed by a hitscan depends on where your head was in relation to the reticle. I know I’m oversimplifying here. Since there is no projectile, no travel to target, size shouldn’t matter.
S9 not only changed bullet sizes for all heroes, it also affected critical hitboxes as well. Some of these have been reverted on many heroes, though not all. Safe to say, not all hitscan bullets are the same size.
The main culprit I have in mind for this hypothetical is mccree. Now maybe I shouldn’t pick on him having never actually played him, but I believe his bullets are rather large.
“I’m not a very good shot but the Samaritan here shoots really big bullets.”
A cookie for anyone who gets the movie reference. Anyway, mccree should excel at his optimal range, but hitting shots should be standard for all hitscan. One size fits all. Obviously different heroes have different ranges, and should (and do) have damage falloff accordingly. Just a hypothetical.
In the hypothetical sense I agree. Not only does it make all of the weapons feel the same but it just would be better for game health. The problem is people can make a strong case for the size of Cassidy’s bullets and Widowmaker and even ash probably shouldn’t have that size.
Also what about sojurne and her rail gun that is very difficult to balance around
I dont think there really needs to be a reason for hitscan to all be the same size “just because.” Giving it a size is just another knob they can use in balancing, so they dont have to rely solely on damage nerfs or buffs to a hitscan player to adjust balance. If a specific hitscan hero is underperforming only at low ranks, it may make sense to just increase the size a bit to make them perform more consistently, which would have less impact at higher ranks where people can already aim well (and not completely break damage and breakpoints).
That said, I also think they should revert the S9 changes. It was a pretty dumb thing to do to begin with.
I think all those hitscans AND beams/projectiles should have no size except for those visually huge bullets like firestrike, and the balance between them should be adjusted by the damage.
Then, hitscans would have even lower damage compared to the projectiles than now and projectile heroes should actually aim rather than spam.
It would lower the incoming damage overall and tanks could manage their HP better.
Healing should be nerfed accordingly, but Idk these devs would do this.
I think this would have the exact opposite effect you intend. High damage projectiles end up being even better to spam, because actually landing them intentionally becomes considerably harder, and the value is obtained just by raw damage. You end up getting way more value just by throwing as much as you can into the corner as suppressing fire, or just in the general direction of the team instead of focusing on aiming. The sheer luck of landing shots outweighs the effort needed to aim them.
I’m of the mind that hitscan bullets should be 2 pixels by 2 pixels. If you get to do instant pinpoint damage from any range, you should have to actually have you reticle fully on the target. Hit boxes already extend off of the visible models anyways.
No, the damage of the projectiles won’t be higher, just hitscans lower.
There can be ofc projectile spammers, but there can be projectile aimers. Thing is, how much value diff can exist between them. Current mars-sized projectiles don’t make enough skill diff between spam and aim imo.
Since critical boxes vary on heroes, it makes sense hitscan size varies.
About the cowboy hero ; there are different things to keep in mind.
First, he’s rather short ranged.
2nd, he has decent fire rate.
That’ll lead to the feeling its “easy” for him to land his shots.
A good way to be sure his hitscan size is too large, is testing on shooting range different hitscan heroes from teh same distance to the target to headshot.
Thats not really relevant. Lower hitscan damage and adjusting healing accordingly has the same effect as if projectiles simply did more damage. It’s the same thing.
It wouldn’t be beneficial to aim because of how much harder they are to hit. Hitscan would still be king, even with reduced damage, for people who want to aim because the consistency would trump the extra damage.
I admit that it feels strange sometimes. I hit much more regularly with Cass than I do with Ashe, despite them having the same bullet size, and I have no idea why. It just “feels” easier on Cass…
That being said, like others, I don’t think increasing the bullet size was a good change. I understand the idea behind it, but I would much rather reward skill. Even if it means I, as a mid silver player, miss a ton more with Cass. It’s on me to learn to aim, not on the game to make it easier. But that’s just my opinion.
Again, it doesn’t matter there are people who prefer spam as you describe. There were even hitscan spammers who always rightclicking with cree.
There are ofc spammers as you describe, but there are also people who prefer to aim. Thing is, how much accuracy diff will be between them. Mars-sized projectiles? Or pin-point projectiles? I think McRightclick prefers the former.
Also, it won’t be too hard as you think because the character model already is big enough, bigger than it looks.
I dont think the math works out how you think. The effective hitbox of a target is directly proportional to the square of the sum of the radius of the hitbox plus the projectile. Even a very small projectile has a considerable advantage in hit rate versus one with no size.
Of course everyone prefers bigger projectiles. The bigger they are, the easier it is to hit. And obviously people who can aim will land more of them. I’m not contesting any such obviousness.
However, that’s not what matters in practice. What matters is whether the difficulty involved in landing the shot is worth the reward. Projectiles, even as they are now, can often be difficult to land, particularly due to the lack of movement acceleration. A zero sized projectile will definitely be too difficult to land for most players, and it’s value will boil down to spam.
This happens in games all the time. People do not gravitate to things that are difficult to use, they gravitate towards what gives the best value. There’s a reason why most very small projectiles move very fast and/or have a very fast rate of fire, such as Rammatra’s primary.
I know how it works and we already had such no-sized projectiles : Ana projectile against enemies. People had no problem hitting enemies with her projectiles at that time.
It’s no question that landing shots almost always more worth than not landing shots. What’s important in PvP is NOT landing shots or not. It’s the value diff between spam and aim. Spam should have the least value as much as possible and aim the most. The bigger the value diff, the better in PvP.
I know movement accel arguemnt. It could make accuracy so random. But mars-sized projectile can’t be an answer. It actually makes things worse, because it simply ignores the existing skill diff without adding another. There was enough, actully more aim skill diff before S9 for example.
No hero in the game has ever had zero sized projectiles.
Yes, and what I’m telling you that what you think will happen and what will actually happen are opposites. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but making something harder to use does not result in people suddenly trying harder. They just resort to the easiest means of getting value. Weakening hitscan means that projectiles would now be considered the high damage weapons and the most effective means of pumping out damage will be spamming chokepoints and groups of people. Hitscan will remain the choice for anyone who actually wants to aim because it will always be more reliable and consistent.
I do not disagree with anything you said here. All I’m stating to you is that changing projectile sizes to be smaller (zero size) and adjusting damage isn’t actually achieving what you think it is.
Developer Comment: Ana’s damage breakpoint change has proven too effective overall given her long range so we are reverting it back to its previous value. We are also increasing the size of unscoped projectiles when firing at enemies (her projectiles have always had a larger size for allies) which should help them land more consistently against close-ranged threats.
Biotic Rifle
Damage and healing per projectile reduced from 75 to 70.
Unscoped projectile size increased from 0 to 0.1.
I know too ez and too hard both end up with the same result : No skill diff. But I’m here saying that aiming with zero-sized projectiles isn’t really too hard considering the enemies are mostly within 30m when the combat starts except for some parts of the maps. Also, I think completely the opposite about hitscans. What I’m worry about them is that they could be too weak when the damage is lowered considerably. Even cree, the most strong hitscan against flankers, will have very hard time against flankers like Genji imo.