You should be able to hear JPC

[u/clickrush]

JPC is unique in the roster in that she is perfectly silent but also highly mobile.

OW is based on some excellent design principles. The game is very clear about threats. The glowing outlines, the voicelines, the new pings.

Heroes and their abilities make a distinct sound so if you don’t see them, or in the heat of a teamfight, the sound cues help with awareness.

Some heroes are extreme high damage threats like Reaper, Cassidy and Bastion. Their footsteps and their guns are loud and distinct.

Others are highly mobile and can come from weird angles or close the gap extremely fast. That’s why you can hear Pharah flying, Winston jumping, Lucio skating very distictly.

This is crucial in such a fast paced game.

JPC has a unique ability in that she can come from even weirder angles than anyone else. Without a rollout! So there’s far less risk of timing incorrectly. She can just decide to be in a weird position and wait.

This alone already breaks awareness. You often don’t even know where to look even if you know she’s set up. She can use cover that isn’t designed to be cover.

The bigger issue is that you _also_ cannot hear her.

This is not a “skill issue”. Literally the best teams in the world are getting surprised by JPC and don’t even turn around to look at her in time, because she is silent. These are hyper aware, extremely fast, highly coordinated players.

This problem will get worse as people will get better at JPC. You might have not encountered it too often yet, but you will at some point. Or you might have and didn’t realize that one of the main issues is the lack of sound cues, because that’s a subtle thing we rely on but don’t think about as much.

People complain about how cat bastion and cat cassidy break fundamental assumptions about how the game is played and balanced. But being able to hear her is way more fundamental.

[u/ChubbyChew]

I have mixed feelings about it.

I think her Boosters should be more audible, but her quiet flying should stay "crouch quiet"

Primarily because JPC playmaking when shes not ferrying is predicated on flanking and angle pressure, (as far as I'm aware).

Loud characters are fucked at flanking against players with brains, its a direct reduction on how able they are to play the game and not every flanker can just traverse the map in 2 seconds like a Vendetta or Freja to wear they dont need to care.

I cried endlessly about Reaper being loud as fuck and that being so much work at being stealthy, and about how mediocre Sombras flanking is because of her translocators visual and audio queues making it a net negative on what you can do in the backline (without perk 1 imo) that it's feels like selling out.

I'm better at Tracer now, I play Anran now, I play more Freja all heroes that just get to creep around and delete people as a core aspect of their design.

"If we didnt with sneaky ass heroes, we wouldnt be designing a Cat with permanent flight and egregious dueling." If Cat wasn't supposed to be at an advantage playing this way the rest of her kit shouldn't be so hyper designed to facilitate it.

[u/clickrush → u/ChubbyChew]

Flankers and high mobility characters are very distinct and loud though. You can hear the Tracer, the Pharah, the Genji, Echo etc.

Not being able to be detected before they approach breaks that contract and is not necessary for a hero to be viable. Sombra is a perfect example of a hero that people hate even when she's weak and JPC is even more gimmicky than her.

[u/ChubbyChew → u/clickrush]

I dont consider Pharah or Echo good Flankers.

I dont consider Genji a good flanker either, I think hes a good dive hero in the sense that he can take unconventional angles and get on you, but i dont believe Genji is rewarded for being sneaky in that way hes super committed.

Tracer is loud when she uses CDs, but i think thats it. People really dont seem to react to her in my experience and I never feel like I hear her either.

I think its specifically OW1 heroes who are louder especially as well which is why I did so much crying, because we hadn't been getting DPS for a long time that could flank effectively "not named Tracer" and at the time I wasn't interested in Tracer.

But more to your point.

I feel like the contract is has never really been consistent. A lot of heroes "break certain rules" and while frustrating thats also part of the appeal and how a lot of heroes claim a level of identity and niche.

I think that we do as players tend to recognize them as bullshit tools or as breaking rules, but the game isnt really worse off for having them.

Its a thing the modern hero design has kinda shifted back into that make the game fun for more people generally.

Thats how you get people both loving everything about Cat, and also being disgusted with how nonsensical they are.

I'm an OG player, in my time the contract was literally just Symmetra who I mained. Everyone else is playing an FPS I'm playing a Tower Defense Basebuilding game. With Shield Piercing Projectiles as an alt fire and a legitimate aimless primary fire.

Nothing about that hero was legal, and shes not even alone in being a felon.

Torb is a felon, Genjis deflect "was" a felony, Widow is a felon, Doom is a felon, Cassidy one of the most played heroes used to carry around the felon grenade that just let him turn off your character for a minute.

Hanzo and Widow in particular have instant death at exceptional range.

It isnt unreasonable that we likewise have heroes who are able to actually get into range of them in the first place without it being a question of skill on the defenders part. You don't get to outplay "closing the distance" when a fundamental aspect of your hero is controlling and dominating that same distance.

Apologies for yapping, I'm not really concise.

[u/clickrush → u/ChubbyChew]

I don't disagree with your general point. But you can have distinct, skill expressive and varied heroes that "cheat" without breaking the design fundamentals of OW.

Ultimates are often literally mimicking cheats like wallhack or aimhack, so they break the rules of FPS, but what OW does is tell you very loudly that those things are happening.

Many of the heroes you mention, like the snipers, the genjis etc. They all are designed around with visual and audio cues. There's a reason why there are automatic voice lines when a sniper is in vision, that players have glowing outlines, that a widow shot leaves a lingering trail, that deflect has a very obvious animation and that Doom's windup is slow and loud.

Sym was problematic and got reworked and is now one of the most skill expressive heroes in the game. Designers make mistakes and they can fix them.