In this week's Community Spotlight, we highlight BlameTheController's coverage of the teasers and hints for the new possible champion, Sombra.
Sombra has been the earliest name to be released as a possible hero, but with the release of Ana, we are still left with a lot of questions concerning who Sombra is. Content creator, BlameTheController, took a deeper look into some of the less explored additions to the public test realm to try to pinpoint exactly what to expect.
The most revealing thing about Sombra’s ability set is the voice lines recently added to the game. Blizzard looks to have added several lines of text pertaining to a stealth character. In situations where a character emerges from stealth, we can hear several characters with the additional voiceline “Enemies detected”. In the opposite situation, when a character emerges out of stealth, we hear:
Lucio: “Someone’s hiding here. I know it”
Reaper: “I can’t see you, but I know you are there”
Soldier 76: “I don’t have to see you to know you are there”
Finally, upon hearing a stealth noise, characters will say a variation of “Something’s not right”.
While this news might be exciting because of the release of a new game mechanic, players familiar with other eSports are quite aware of the repercussions and effect of stealth on game play. BlameTheController brings up some of them. Primarily, he mentions the similar role the Spy had in Team Fortress 2. Since TF2 is arguably the “spiritual successor” of Overwatch, there is a large chance Sombra may draw some influence from the character, which is not all entirely positive. BTC critiques the implementation of such a spy character, lamenting that the common “spy check” procedure was too simple, and there existed too much counterplay for the spy character to be effective. The Spy in TF2 was able to assume the visual appearance of any character and relied on a 1-shot backstab for the majority of his damage. Because allies would not take friendly fire damage, a common “spy check” would be to attack your members of your own team to ensure they were not enemy spies. Given Overwatch characters have unlimited ammunition, creating a spy in the same manner does not make sense, because teams would give up very little to completely neutralize a character.
In addition, the stealth mechanic promotes players to avoid participating in team fights and only reveal themselves when it beneficiary to them. BTC uses the examples of Clinkz, Riki, and Bounty Hunter from DotA2 as examples. Especially in casual play, players have the tendency to use these players to secure the last hits on kills and strive for more individual benefit. In a team coordination centric game, like Overwatch, allowing for a character that almost promotes selfish play disrupts the overall dynamic of the game.
However, BTC does offer some possible solutions to this issue. He suggests Sombra have a passive stealth rather than an active, which cloaks the character after fulfilling specific combat conditions. An example would be to increase the amount of time stealthed based on the amount of damage done by the character. This would promote more team fighting by encouraging Sombra to engage in combat to enable her stealth. Of course, there are other methods that could be implemented, including a full team stealth buff, but we will need to wait before hearing more news. Depending on how well Blizzard is able to adapt the game to include newer mechanics, the community might see even crazier advancements in the future. A stealth champion is only the beginning.
Be sure to check out BlameTheController’s Channel for more Overwatch content!
Follow us @GosuOverwatch for all your Overwatch news
