What's up everybody this is Master Ian Gamer and today I wanted to do something of a new
hero concept video, but this time rather than focusing wholey on a hero and who or what
they would be, I want to focus solely on one weapon or ability that an upcoming hero might
have, and that's a railgun.
Railguns are incredibly cool pieces of weaponry, and have made appearances in countless video
games already.
However, so far Overwatch doesn't have any heroes who utilize such a weapon, which raises
the question of whether or not a railgun could even work in Overwatch, and if so then what
would that look like?
That's what I'm going to be discussing right here, so without further ado let's
talk about this futuristic weapon and see if it really could be part of a future hero.
To start, I just want to real briefly explain what a railgun is and how they work.
This not only will emphasize why it's unique as a weapon, but also give us a good reference
point for how it might function and be balanced in Overwatch.
Real life railguns utilize electromagnetism rather than a chemical propellant such as
gunpowder to launch projectiles at immense velocities over long distances.
Unlike missiles which use explosive chemicals to both move and cause damage upon impact,
railgun projectiles rely solely on their high velocity impact with their target in order
to deal damage, which given the extreme speed at which they're fired, does a heck of a
lot more than you might expect and is highly effective at penetrating targets.
On top of that, railguns have a relatively low rate of fire, mainly due to the physical
limitations of how they function, and require an immense amount of energy.
While there's a ton more to the mechanics of these awesome weapons, I think this is
enough to note the aspects which we'd likely see represented in game.
These key traits would be high damage, long range, single shot, and possibly target penetrating.
So, what can we make of this?
Well, the closest thing we have in game already to this would be Widowmaker's sniper rifle.
In fact, when we're talking about the functionality of a railgun, it would be incredibly similar
to this, which right off the bat gives us our first problem.
Would a railgun even be functionally unique enough to justify adding?
The answer to that depends.
There was a recent interview where lead hero designer Geoff Goodman discussed that Blizzard
has actually played around with designing a railgun in the past, but that they ran into
some key problems.
Mainly being that in order for a railgun to feel accurate, or at least feel accurate to
the railgun in Quake, which seems to be where most people have experience with them, it
would need to be not just a high damage weapon, but a one shot kill.
Even a full health Wrecking Ball with Brig armor, Lucio's Sound Barrier, and his own
Adaptive Shields would die immediately to this weapon.
Don't worry, I can already hear everyone's outrage, and I agree that something like this
simply wouldn't fly, so let's look at some alterations which could be made.
First off, it's important to retain the high damage potential, but let's just drop
it down a little bit from infinity to, say, 300.
That'll put it in line with the damage dealt by Tracer's Pulse Bomb or a Widow headshot,
which is still more than enough to eliminate a squishy target, but no longer obliteration
levels of OP.
However, if it's no longer dealing infinite damage, it should still have some other unique
aspects to make it stand out.
And the first of these is, you guessed it, target penetration.
Being able to penetrate heroes, and likely also enemy barriers, would make it an incredibly
effective weapon against a composition like GOATs or Deathball.
Just fire where the team is most densely packed and blam, one shot, three kills.
Now, I won't deny that this, too, would cause quite a bit of outrage.
A 300 damage barrier penetrating shot would undoubtedly need to be an activated ability
or even an ultimate, which to be fair is something I think could actually be fitting for the
railgun.
In order to live up to its high impact perception, it'll probably need to be more than just
the hero's primary weapon.
Plus, that'll give us more room to go wild with all the fun things it can do!
Getting back to the penetration aspect, a long range, barrier penetrating hitscan ability
could still be very frustrating to deal with.
Unlike Firestrike or Moira's orbs, it wouldn't have a slow travel time to give you a chance
to avoid it.
Therefore, even as an ultimate ability, it'd still need to have some way of being countered
or dealt with.
The simplest solution would be that the railgun takes a short amount of time to charge up
once the ability is activated before it actually fires.
But unlike the silent charging process on Widow's sniper rifle, during this brief
charging period, the railgun would produce some kind of visual indicator, possibly a
bright light, as well as a sound effect in order to alert the enemy.
This would give the enemy a fair bit of time to avoid or prepare for the immense incoming
damage, much like the loud noise made by Doomfist charging his rocket punch.
Beyond this, the shot could do less damage to each subsequent enemy it hits.
Let's think of the hitscan shot as if it were a projectile.
Say you've got a Reinhardt with his barrier up, and behind him are two squishies.
Whomever gets hit by the shot first, in this case the barrier, takes the full 300 damage.
But, for each enemy it hits, the next target then takes 50 less damage, meaning Reinhardt
himself will then take 250 total damage, McCree 200, and Mercy 150.
McCree is the only one who dies to the shot, but all three other entities still take significant
damage.
The numbers can be adjusted as well to whatever seems balanced.
Maybe the shot loses 100 damage per penetrated target, or loses 50% each time, so that no
matter how many targets it hits it'll still always do at least something.
Looking now at some other fun things the railgun could do, it might also be able to penetrate
obstacles and terrain as well as enemies.
This would make it similar to Hanzo's Dragon Strike, as it could be used to hit enemies
even behind cover.
Overall I'm not the biggest fan of this idea, since without wallhacks it would be
incredibly difficult to actually hit anyone, and even if you did, it would feel even worse
to die to than if you were just killed behind a barrier.
But, speaking of barriers, one other idea would be for railgun shots to shatter any
barrier they come into contact with regardless of health.
Basically it's a sure way to instantly destroy a barrier, which could be a really interesting
mechanic to have when trying to make a push.
Also, I love the mind games it would introduce between the railgun hero and the enemy Reinhardt.
Rein could try and quickly drop his barrier at just the right time to have the shot go
straight through, thus not taking any barrier damage.
But, if the railgun hero knows he's gonna try this, then they could aim at Rein himself
so that when the barrier drops, he'll be the one who gets hit with the full force of
damage.
This kind of standoff would be fantastic!
Unfortunately though, with only a handful of heroes who even use barriers, this kind
of trait would be really feast or famine.
It'd have a ton of value against enemy teams with barriers, but really weak against teams
without any.
Pharah actually ran into this exact same problem back in the Overwatch beta when her Concussive
Blast was designed to deal massive damage to barriers.
This overall made her just feel like a niche, must pick counter to Reinhardt, which ended
up being something the devs didn't want.
In order to circumvent this, the railgun could have both the penetrating and barrier shattering
traits, but once again, maybe that would be a bit OP.
Anyways, let's assume these ideas I've proposed are in fact balanced.
In that case, what kind of hero would get the railgun ability or ultimate?
Given that railguns in real life are massive and require either a large truck or ship just
to move them, the first class which comes to mind would be Tank, and even then still
massively scaled down.
If it was part of a Tank, then maybe it would be balanced in such a way as to function more
as a zoning ability like D.Va's Self Destruct rather than a straight up damage dealing one.
If so, its ranged utility means it'd likely belong to an off-Tank specifically, and they're
entire kit would probably revolve around being effective over longer distances.
Maybe even electromagnetism in general would somehow play into the hero's overarching
theme or kit?
Blizzard has said that they've experimented with magnet abilities in the past, so who's
to say something like that wouldn't end up making an appearance in some hero later
down the line?
However, given the immense, precision damage potential of it, I think it'd more likely
belong to a DPS hero than a Tank.
The long range aspect would suggest they might be some kind of sniper, but at the same time,
lord knows we don't need another one of those.
Therefore it could be part of some kind of specialist DPS, like Sombra or Symmetra.
Maybe that hero would also utilize drones, thus allowing them to operate from the back
lines without needing to be a sniper?
Speaking of which, be sure to check out my video were I talk about drones in Overwatch,
as they're yet another mechanic which is so far absent.
Overall it's really tough to come up with a specific, balanced idea for how a railgun
would work.
Despite their unique mechanics in the real world, their functionality in game wouldn't
be too different from any other sci-fi hitscan weapon.
As much fun as I've had speculating what an Overwatch railgun might look like, in reality
it'd probably come about from Blizzard designing a new hero with a hitscan ability, and then
them deciding to just call the weapon a railgun.
They probably wouldn't put that much effort into making it accurately represent its real
world counterpart, since, again, good luck fitting this thing through a spawn room door.
But, these have been my ideas for it could work, and maybe someday Blizzard will find
a way!
In the meantime though, I'd love to hear what you all think regarding railguns and
their viability as a weapon or ability in Overwatch.
Do you agree with the ideas I thought of, or do you have your own that you like better?
Either way thank you so much for watching, be sure to leave a Like if you enjoyed this
video, and share it with a friend if you really liked it.
Subscribe, follow me on Twitter, and hit the bell to keep up with all my future Overwatch
content.
This is Master Ian Gamer signing off, and until next time, railgun ya later.
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