[Suggestion] Extra Ultimate Abilities

General Discussion
1

I’ll make this short and sweet folks. Add an optional ultimate for every character.

Reasons why: Shake up the meta, shake up the heroes, add some personalisation, new combos, added freshness, added new encounters.

How it would work: Press F1 (For example) while in the spawn room to change your heroes ultimate from their standard one.

Note: THE BELOW ARE CLEARLY NOT BALANCED. BELOW ONLY TO HIGHLIGHT SUGGESTED SECONDARY ULTIMATES.

Reasons Why - Explained

Shake up the Meta - The Meta is largely revolving around very specific team comps, which people have come up with. It used to be Dive, now it’s GOAT. Adding in extra ultimates would be a way to shake up the GOAT meta, giving competitive players a whole host of new abilities to choose from to perfect their strategies.

Shake up the Heroes - I’ve been playing the game since it came out. It’s a fantastic game. But playing some heroes like Tracer, it feels like the game has got quite stale in how some characters have literally never changed. This would give all heroes a new flair and potentially new reasons to pick them and also new ways to play them.

Personalisation - A lot of games have ‘loadouts’, which I abjectly oppose in Overwatch. OW is a game to open and get straight into a game. But at the same time, being able to personalise a hero a small bit would allow players to further get attached to heroes and create their own way of playing with certain abilities. Much like players enjoy their ‘loadouts’ in games like Destiny, WoW and even decks in Hearthstone.

New Combos - We have a lot of standard combos right now. Graviton Surge and then a D-Va mech being one of them. With a whole host of new ultimates, players can work together and create new, deadly combos. Or even new combos which can save a teams life.

Added Freshness - Explained above, the game hasn’t changed much since it came out. It has definitely got a bit stale. It’s clear when D-Va’s will explode their mech, or when Doomfist uses his Meteor Strike etc. It’s all just a bit predictable. New ultimates has the potential to shake that up and re-ignite a new passion for the game.

New Encounters - Imaging meeting that Winston. For a moment, you think he’ll go crazy and knock you around the place when he berserks. Instead, he gains a personal shield and zaps your team. Or a Doomfist, who pounds the ground and knocks you down. New ultimates has the potential to add a new level of fear into the enemy players; waiting to see what ultimate abilities they have chosen so you can counter them.

Potential Ultimates

Ana: Poison Dart - Neutralises the enemy, preventing them from dealing damage.
Ashe: Protect me, B.O.B! - Calls B.O.B in to grant a temporary shield around his location.
Bastion: Self-Upgrade - Slight healing, allows Bastion to move while in Sentry Form.
Brigitte: Inspire - Increases the speed of those in her nearby vicinity.
D.Va: Repel Matrix - When using D.Va’s Defence Matrix, all attacks are now pushed back.
Doomfist: Ground Pound - Slams his fist into the ground, knocking down those around him.
Genji: Watch Over Me, Dragons! - Genji charges the dragon within his blade, throwing it infront of him while his dragon swirls around the sword.
Hanzo: Scatter Arrows - Hanzo’s basic attack now ricochets off their surfaces:
Junkrat: Scatter Mines - Throws several tiny mines infront of him, allowing him to blow them up with the right mouse click.
Lucio: Here we go! - Releases a shockwave, increasing allies damage.
McCree: Big Flashbang - Throws a blinding dynamite into an area. It requires damage to explode. It has a much bigger radius than his normal flashbang.
Mei: Biting Winds - Throws her robotic sidekick infront of her, creating a heavy gale which pushes all players away from the robot. (Blizzard, except a pushback)
Mercy: (Split her current ultimate into two) Guardian Angel - Standard ultimate, though no increase or changes to her damage output / Battle Angel - Increases her pistol damage, speed and no longer needs to reload.
Moira: Cyclone - Releases both of her powers in an area of effect around her.
Orisa: Arrested! - Throws her device on the floor, which grapples enemies and slowing their movement.
Pharah: Homing Missiles - Pharah’s rockets now home in to the closest target.
Reaper: Hidden in the Shadows - Releases a thick smog around him, which stops enemies from seeing anything while they are inside the smog.
Reinhardt: German Engineering - Reinhardt charges his Rocket Hammer, allowing him to release Fire Strikes every time he attacks.
Roadhog: Hog Smog - He attaches a canister to his mask and breathes out, releasing a light purple smog around his area, damaging enemies who enter it.
Soldier 76: Assault Visor - Allows his Helix Missiles to lock on to enemies, also increases the speed of his Helix Missiles and reduces the cooldown rate.
Sombra: With me - Sombra hacks her allies around her, giving them a brief stealth mode.
Symmetra: Shield Generator - Grants nearby allies small shields while increasing shield regen.
Torbjorn: My Baby! - Torbjorn upgrades his turret to deal more damage and to take more damage.
Tracer: Time Bomb - Tracer throws a bomb that attaches to any surface it lands on; after a few seconds, it will reverse the time of all players hit by it.
Widowmaker: Like a Spider - Reduces the noise she makes, reduces the cooldown on her grapple hook and her attacks poison the enemy for a short time.
Winston: Overload - Creates a personal barrier around Winston which moves with him, granting shields which regen throughout the ultimate and increases his damage.
Wrecking Ball: Overcharge - Winston enters into his Ball, loading the circuits and rolling very fast, knocking enemy players away and damaging them. (Similar to a powered up swing, without the Grappling Claw)
Zarya: Graviton Orb - Releases a Graviton Orb which travels forwards. The orb pulls enemy players with it, but the strength of the Orb’s pull reduces over time.
Zenyatta: Discordance - Zenyatta overcharges his circuits, firing his Orbs at a very rapid pace and increasing his shields.

The Rules on Ultimate Switching

Must be in the Spawn Room - This limits the locations of the Ultimate and prevents Heroes from switching ultimates constantly throughout the battle, similar to Hero swapping.

Sets Ultimate Charge to 0 - Players should not charge an ultimate and then switch, as ultimates generally have different charge rates.

The UI

When pressing Tab, players will be able to see the icon of the ultimate that players have chosen for their characters. But it does not show the charge rate.

2

Short answer : Bad idea, ultimates are already problematic enough as they are from a balance perspective, no way they could balance more of them.

3

Short reply: Does the game have to be balanced? Having counters to heroes and their abilities is what makes the game fun. If everyone was balanced it would be boring. Imbalance forces hero changes.

1 Like
4

Yes it has to be balanced, remember Brigitte? Reaper right now at low ranks? Mercy with the team rez? etc.

The fact is people will most of the time choose the best comp to win, unbalanced game = always same broken characters played, goats right now at higher ranks for instance.

If even a counter to a broken character can’t do anything what are you going to do? Buff the counter so it’s broken too? Nerf the broken character so it’s more balanced?

Making changes while keeping the game balanced, I’m all for it, buffing randomly just for the sake of shaking up randomly the meta, no thanks.

5

The problem I think is that all heroes needs to be equal and perfectly the same. Heroes are supposed to be entirely predictable. I mean in Blizzard’s mind. That’s how it’s done right now. Changing this principle would be quite huge. And I don’t think we’ll ever get huge changes in this game.

6

Obviously a level of balance needs to be maintained; some characters who are clearly shadowing others in their role clearly need to be nerfed.

It’s a situation not too dissimilar to matches with a Pharah; you choose a hitscan. Or a match with a Reinhardt; you may choose a Bastion.

I would argue that creating balance where all characters are equal only serves to make the game a tad monotonous. Imbalance does indeed create certain heroes that are chosen far too much. But heroes having very good strengths is not a weakness of OW. Having extra ultimates would serve to slightly alter those strengths for varying situations, while allowing heroes to potentially counter more heroes than they are previously.

New heroes are brought in to shake the meta and can be a balancing nightmare to begin with. But in time, they are balanced fairly well and continue to do so. A state of ‘perfect balance’ will never, ever be achieved. I believe the same to be true for having extra ultimates.

I am 100% certain that opening up hero abilities, like ultimates, will provide more counters and many new team comps that we currently might not put together.

7

So like, how are you supposed to know what ultimates the enemy has available if they can just switch in the middle of the game?

It’ll take the whole idea of ult tracking which is a big part of the game atm and throw it out. you will still be able to track who has an ultimate, but not which one to prepare for.

Ultimates are usually such powerful abilities, if you are not able to track which ones the enemy has available, how do you plan any counter play?
Many ultimates are already “win buttons”, making them more unpredictable won’t help this.

Right now you may know that the enemy is in an ult advantage, but you will also know which ultimates they have available, which allows you to come up with a plan for how to play around it.
But if you know they have an ult advantage, but don’t know which ones because they all have 2 available. What do you do other than prepare for 1 of the 64 possible combinations and hope you guessed right?

8

Not saying I necessarily agree with the proposal - although it certainly is interesting - but I just wanted to say that there would be ways around the problem you mentioned regarding ult tracking. For example, it could be made that by pressing tab you can see exactly what ultimates the enemy team is using for each character. This could be accompanied by in game rules whereby you have to charge and use an ultimate at least once before changing, and a switch in ultimate resets charge to zero, thus allowing opposition ult tracking.

9

As long as it won’t also show if the ultimates are ready, but just which ones they have equipped, i’d be fine with that way around it :slight_smile:

Still there’s the Rock/Paper/Scissors dilemma.
Seagull talked about his frustrations with it quite a while back:


[He talks about ults around 13:58]

While this is mostly his subjective opinion, I can understand what he means and how it can be an issue.

I don’t mind counter picking being a thing, but at some point I can see it becoming too much.
“They have this therefore i… Oh now they switched to counter my counter, so i… Oh they changed an ult, now i have to…” and so on.

10

Obviously there would need to be rules regarding ultimate switching. For example:
-Can only switch in the spawn room.
-It will reset your ultimate charge.

As for ult tracking, personally I’m not too fussed about this, But I know someone would be. So I would propose this:
-When you press Tab to see the teams, you also see a small icon next to their character with the symbol of which ultimate they have chosen.

11

(quotes doesn’t count for characters required to post ^^)

12

I’ll take the point that it could potentially be too much. But I think with matches being 6v6, with an average 2-2-2 comp, I don’t think it will ever be too much of a problem. It’s just an extra layer of complexity which Overwatch needs to retain interest when you’ve played the game for so long. A bit like how a new player to the Mass Effect games might not use the abilities, but pros who play on the harder difficulties will use them in interesting ways.

I’d agree that he’s right in how OP ultimates can be. Something that OW was really good at when it started was the idea of a big event changing the course of the game. What the game currently lacks, I believe, is area denial and the support (not necessarily healing) play. Which is why some of the extra abilities I’ve listed above, like Mei’s second ultimate, acts as a strong area denial.

What could also be interesting, as highlighted in my proposals for Mercy’s ultimate, is the potential for splitting some of the stronger ultimates in two (so it’s perhaps a choice between pure damage or area denial) or interacting with the heroes base abilities, like with Reinhardt’s proposed second ultimate.

But Seagull is also right that if ultimates get more powerful, so too should the support heroes. I’d argue that a ultimate needs to feel strong enough so that it can change the direction of the game, but only if the players capitalizes on it. So for example, the D-Va bomb should be able to kill enemies with 200-300 or less health, but not anything over. But the D-Va bomb still does a lot of damage to high health targets, which means they could be killed off easily if the team capitalizes on it.

EDIT: Added proposed rules and UI changes to the main post for future replies.

13

Overwatch is already a rather complex game. ^^

They have already been adding a lot of this lately. :slight_smile:
Look at Hammond ult, Torb ult, Ashe Ult, to some extend Baptiste ult and immortality field. All of these can be used to zone enemies and control space.

1 Like
14

What I was more suggesting was abilities which don’t damage enemies, but prevent them from entering an area. Like Mei’s Ice Wall.

While abilities that you mentioned can be area denial, they can also be used more offensively. Which is fine.

15

Abilities like Mei wall removes freedom of movement by straight up not allowing you to move past it, if you add too much of that it will feel horrible to play against. Just look at how much people have complained about CC’s.

Other zoning abilities denies the space by just saying, if you move in here you are at a high risk of dying, but you still have the option to do so. You also have more possibilities to play around these abilities.
I think abilities like this are more healthy for the game.

16

Yes I wasn’t suggesting that enemy ult charge should be available to see, as that would completely destroy ult tracking.

17

And that revolves around the balancing any health pools or impacts accordingly. Like the proposed changes to Mei’s Ice Wall in the PTR notes, the health of her wall is coming down. It doesn’t have to stop people from moving forward; more of an obstacle which can be taken down or traversed by certain classes.

The clear difference here is that Mei’s Ice Wall is a regular ability which can be used at any item. (The health pool of her Ice Wall is being reduced, by the way). By putting these types of Freedom of Movement Area Denials (FoM-AD for short) as ultimates, they therefore require a certain amount of charge time. You won’t see them all the time, especially as some comps might not choose to go for FoM-AD ultimates and might go for the damage output ones.

They don’t necessarily have to be a 100% reduction in movement either, like Mei’s Ice Wall (I’d argue) currently is without a Bastion to nuke them. Like with the proposed Mei’s ultimate, it could be the case that her robot is damageable; which would make it a lot less of a worry than you might think. Or that the gales produced from the machine may not be strong enough to deter a D-Va in her mech.

18

I still fear ultimates like this will just feel horrible to play against, if we have too many available.

19

The reason every hero has the same abilities is so that you know just by looking at them what they’re going to do. If you expand the hero ability list it’s going to be harder to understand what’s going on, which means that games will revolve much less around strategy and more around luck.

20

If they wanted to “shake the meta” they’ll just add hero bans like other respectable Esports titles.