As Overwatch 2 tries to shake things up with bigger bullets, players are struggling to actually tell the difference

Feb. 14, 2024

Adjusted bullet size is one of the headline changes of Season 9

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Overwatch 2’s latest season made changes to the FPS' bullet size, but fans can’t decide if they can actually tell the difference.

On February 13, Blizzard launched Overwatch 2 Season 9 which added a lot of new content and made several gameplay changes. You can read the full patch noteshere, but the main takeaway here is an almost across-the-board change to projectile sizes, which have come in addition to a new co-op event, competitive play updates, a new skill tier, and much more.

As the patch notes reveal, many Heroes' weapons have been affected, including Tracer’s Pulse Pistols, Cassidy’s Peacekeeper, Roadhog’s Scrap Gun, and plenty of others. In ablog post, Blizzard went into detail about why it decided to change the size of Overwatch 2’s projectiles, explaining: “When it comes to aiming as a mechanical skill requirement, even players with excellent aim often mention how it can feel random whether a shot hits or not.” Different weapons have been adjusted in different ways depending on their type (i.e. shotguns vs SMGs vs snipers) or whether they are hit-scan or travel time weapons.

Now that Season 9 is officially here, several players have put the new projectile sizes to the test. Twitter user @confusionkys recently shared a video from streamer and former pro Hydron that sees Junkrat seemingly attempting to deliberately miss Tracer, who’s standing just to the right of where they’re aiming. Their problem seems to be that Tracer takes damage after the shot is fired, despite the fact that the shot has been deliberately aimed away from the character.

Since this clip was posted, however, other Overwatch 2 players have been chiming in to offer potential explanations of what’s seen in the video. Some note that Junkrat’s weapon is a grenade launcher, and that the damage we’re seeing is splash damage, not projectile damage.  One Twitter user haspointed outthat Junkrat has “always been this insane” and shared a video from three months ago that features a similar instance between the Hero and Kiriko.

Others have pointed out that Overwatch’s character hitboxes have never been entirely snug, and that in a game with so much movement - in combination with this particular weapon - this might not be the impact of Blizzard’s new update.

Others still, however, are complaining that this is further evidence of the skill ceiling lowering. With Overwatch 2 having struggled since launch, the pervading wisdom seems to be that Blizzard is looking to appeal to more casual players who might have lapsed from the game, in an attempt to bring them back in. That could be good if you’re planning a return to Overwatch 2 with this new season, but it’s understandable that a substantial shift might not be popular among high level players.

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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I’m also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.

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