Image: Snowstorm
While Blizzard was busy effectively turning Overwatch 2 off and on again last night and accidentally made a third of its heroes temporarily unplayable in an effort to fix issues that had only two consequences, players have taken offense at another part of the game. The Distressed Hero Shooter: Disable aiming aids for console players in crossplay matches with others on PC.
In June 2021, Blizzard announced that Overwatch was getting crossplay, allowing players on PC, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox to play together. While its implementation did some good by letting players push the payload across different platforms together, one Redditor noted that there is a significant downside to the crossplay experience for console players. Yesterday, Redditor KellySweetHeart posted to the r/Overwatch subreddit highlighting how crossplay disables aiming aids for console players during matches with PC players, leading to a “significant dip in their target consistency” and ruining the fun for everyone involved.
Read more: Overwatch 2 is buggier than Blizzard admits [Update: Entire Characters Pulled ATM]
“For some it’s just an obstacle, but others just don’t like being disadvantaged in this way,” KellySweetHeart said in the post. “It’s a total disappointment because PC players already outperform on average, so it hits like a double whammy.”
KellySweatheart told Kotaku that this has been an issue for players since crossplay was implemented in 2021, but that it is now causing renewed frustration as interest in the game has increased after the release of OW2.
“People don’t understand that disabling aiming assistance for some players makes them completely useless in the PC pool and it’s directly reflected in their game stats when they play,” he told Kotaku.
While the rationale behind disabling manual aiming can be dismissed as a means of making competitive play fair between console and PC players, other Redditors chimed in, saying it wouldn’t matter because competitive modes aren’t in. crossplay can be played anyway. This gave credence to many of the Redditors who responded to KellySweetHeart’s post to defend the argument that aiming aids should be enabled during OW2’s quickplay games since the people there are primarily just playing for fun.
“If they’re not going to do that, at least have console players plug an M&K into their consoles and matchmake through the input device. (Other games do this just fine),” one Redditor wrote.
“Imagine playing a random shooter, but instead of a mouse, you get a joystick from the flight simulator to try and aim. That’s what it feels like to play on a controller without any help with aiming,” he said. another.
“I had no idea this was something that made it into PC lobbies and now it explains why the characters I play always feel ‘off’ when I play with my PC friends,” wrote another Redditor.
Image: Snowstorm
Some people on Twitter have also expressed their dismay at the fact that auto-aim has been disabled for console players in crossplay.
“Overwatch 2 with cross play enabled by default but controller players not getting any sort of aiming help is ruined lol,” said one Twitter user.
“I just realized that if you play cross-platform, Overwatch 2 punishes console players by disabling aim assist for them in PC lobbies. Usually it’s the other way around lmao,” wrote another Twitter user.
“The biggest problem I have with #Overwatch2 is the lack of aiming help when playing in PC lobbies. I’m done playing with my friends on PC after today. I really like cross-play in this game, soooo much fun” , said another Twitter user, capping his tweet with this emoji →?♂️.
It would make economic sense, to say the least, to suggest that players dealing with this problem just buy a PC. Nevertheless, KellySweetHeart, seemingly anticipating that some readers might suggest this, nipped the comment in the bud in an edit of his post, saying the reason he and his friends don’t get up to buy PCs is that they don’t mind. can’t afford.
“The hundreds or thousands of dollars they would have to invest in a rig that can run OW2 compared to the PS5 valued at MSRP would be the difference of several months worth of bills,” KellySweetHeart said.
He added that not being able to buy a PC doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to play OW2 with friends, and that players shouldn’t be “segregated based on how expensive their hardware is.”
And for those who might think aim assist would be too much of an advantage for console players if it were implemented in crossplay matches, KellySweetHeart thinks otherwise. “As far as aiming aid goes mechanical, it works very well [in Overwatch 2] and is much more subtle compared to other games with crossplay enabled and I think that gives the game more competitive grit,” he told Kotaku.
Kotaku reached out to Blizzard for comment.