Former Team USA and Houston Outlaw player Jake has said that Overwatch 2’s recent Season 9 balance overhaul is generally good and people complaining about projectile sizes are “stupid”.
Overwatch 2’s Season 9 is well and truly underway, and it has been a pretty controversial launch. Blizzard has unleashed one of its biggest gameplay overhauls in years, both upping everyone’s health, while at the same time increasing the projectiles of bullets and abilities.
The projectile changes in particular have been under scrutiny as videos of players shooting stationary characters in the practice range have shown how off you can be and still register a hit. It looks strange on a target standing still, but obviously, this isn’t how the game works from moment to moment.
This has been pointed out by ex-Overwatch League player, analyst, caster, and coach, ‘Jake’ Lyon.
Overwatch 2 is more fun to play now?
In the lengthy post on X/Twitter, Jake argued that the changes are all in service of making the game more fun and that this change hasn’t changed the skill expression in the game. He said, “I think people complaining about how this ‘kills skill expression’ are stupid.”
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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…
— Jake (@jakeow) February 14, 2024
“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.”
He took aim at the practice range videos showing off the hitboxes, saying: “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.)… Overall I think these changes reward highly skilled and consistent aimers because more shots to kill generally favors a stronger player.”
He then went on to say that ultimately he believes that these changes make the game overall more fun too. This debate will rage on for a while yet. Blizzard will likely make some adjustments based on feedback and their internal numbers, but we will have to see how it all evolves in the coming weeks.