OW2 Patch First Thoughts:
I like these changes.
I think needing more shots to kill makes fights much more interactive. More shots to kill also emphasizes movement and teamplay. You can dodge the follow up after tanking a spam headshot, or save your teammate who was caught unaware.
The obviously most controversial changes are the hitbox changes. Generally, I think people complaining about how this ‘kills skill expression’ are stupid.
OW has near instant movement acceleration that allows players with great movement mechanics to evade a large fraction of incoming damage. Almost every hero in the game has some kind of unique movement ability. Many heroes can offensively disrupt your aim with boops or force you to change targets rapidly with defensive skills.
Shooting at bots standing still to show how the hitbox is ‘so enormous’ and how aiming is ‘so easy now’ is actually offensively stupid. It’s not remotely realistic to how aiming actually feels in a real game when the enemies shoot back (and boop you, and get speed amped, and blink behind you, etc. etc.)
In short, aiming in OW is plenty difficult. There is a lot of room to make it easier without ‘removing’ the skill expression inherent to aiming in Overwatch.
Overall I think these changes reward highly skilled and consistent aimers because more shots to kill generally favors a stronger player. One lucky shot is not enough, you have to be consistent and keep landing shots on a player who will dodge and fight back.
Beyond this, though, the game is MORE FUN. I’ve played long time-to-kill FPS games for over a decade now for one simple reason: I love popping off and chaining insane shots one after another. Now Overwatch is making those shots more consistent while also making that kind of back to back combination more crucial to my success in the game.
TL;DR: Hitmarkers give me
dopamine and now I get MORE dopamine yay