We have indeed been talking over the last few days about whether we should change the name of Twitch's ult back to 'Spray and Pray' as part of the Pre-Season changes to Twitch. For that discussion we've wanted to gather as much context as we could about how people feel about the two names. Surveying Twitch players after they've finished a game is part of that, as are other things like looking at forum sentiment (both when the change was made and now), talking to some Twitch mains direct etc.
As well as looking at how the change has been perceived we also wanted to consider why the name was changed in the first place. Talking with the team who worked on Twitch a couple of years back they had a few goals they were looking to accomplish. Those involved concerns about 'Spray and Pray' having some misleading gameplay implications, some thematic connotations (Twitch used to have a somewhat more militaristic vibe that the update moved away from) and a few other smaller points.
In terms of the survey results they're been closer to neutral than some of us had predicted going in. From what we've seen overall however players who care a lot about the ult's name tend to prefer 'Spray and Pray' noticeably more often though. 'Spray and Pray' is also still really frequently used as a name, sometimes even by players who never played old Twitch. Thematically, while it does have a bit of oddness as a name (wild machine gun firing isn't a perfect fit for how the skill functions) it does still evoke the whole 'rapidly shooting many targets all at once' of Twitch ult pretty well.
Our overall conclusion is that we should change Twitch's ult back to the name 'Spray and Pray'. We do feel there are some valid concerns about it, but overall think it's a better fit with what people want and expect from Twitch than Rat-ta-ta-tat. Apologies to those who prefer the current name, can definitely understand why even if we don't feel that overall it's the right choice. One thing we are looking into (no promises of success yet, but we're trying) is whether or not we can keep the name 'Rat-ta-tat-tat' purely for Gangster Twitch, given the connection with the Tommy Gun Twitch uses on that skin. That's not something we'd normally want to do, since there's a clarity hit to different ability names on different skins. Given the details of this particular case though we figure it's potentially a good place to make an exception though, try and meet the desires of both groups to at least some degree.
's Q to "Taste the Rainbow"?
