Soldiers covering an area would not be staring down a sight until they actually see a contact. You don’t watch an area by giving yourself tunnel vision.
I believe that’s an icon from one of the RTS warcraft games. Not sure if 1,2, or 3 though.
I wonder, that’s how a quick look to watch out of cover is generating head shot kill in FPS. Nobody will do such kill without a tunnel vision.
EDIT: At least the 360° XCOM overwatch is just UI simplification and gameplay fluidity improvement, it’s weak on realism and on tactical choice.
For me who is lazy to use constantly keyboard with such game, the fluidity break is to have to choose the width, but for the direction it’s fine.
Too late now but I think the width should have been fixed and dependent of weapon type. Pathways lite game shows how good is the approach.
I disagree (but then you knew I would 
)
The granularity of being able to say: “I want my Sniper to concentrate solely on that Scylla/Siren/dangerous corner, and I don’t want to waste my shot on anything else,” is golden and I would hate to lose that.
It’s my (or your) choice whether to tweak the width of the cone, just as it’s our choice whether to focus down to Targeting Mode when firing. You don’t have to bother with it if you don’t want to, but for those who find it useful, it would be a big loss if removed.
So I vote to keep it. If you don’t want to bother, simply ignore it and let the rest of us obsess over the micro-management of our tactics to our hearts’ content 
And as I said earlier in this post, the cone is not about obsessively staring down a sight, it’s about focussing your attention on a particular area with hair-trigger reactions to the exclusion of everywhere else, which is a natural function of the human brain.
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And then you clearly didn’t played Pathway because a more fixed approach is still offer good choice level, with just a bit more constraint.
In PP context it would even allow balance and diversify better weapons by using different width.
Why it still open a lot of choice is because you can exploit a lot obstacles and areas where there will be no enemy, it also involves a deeper more complex analysis.
Moreover, it’s not looking bad that sniper can get some nerf on that compared to other weapons, with a smaller width, and eventually some with a very small width and some a with a width a bit bigger.
So I still think that overall it would be a much better gameplay, thanks to a much better overwatch gameplay fluidity, a solid complexity and amount of choice, and improved weapons variations and balances tuning.
But I also understand it’s a lot too late for such better gameplay change, ok better is an opinion. 
Thousand time alas, it can’t be ignored and it’s heavy gameplay fluidity strongly damaged, and the idea of a custom default is wrong and will never work.
EDIT: JA2 cumulated such design errors, and ends in an awful bad gameplay fluidity, if some players like I doubt it’s much more than a tiny majority.
OK, I simply don’t understand this.
For a long time, I didn’t know that you could adjust the width of OW - like the OP above - and simply made do with the default width, adjusting the length as much or as little as I desired. And it worked - would’ve been nice if I could make that cone narrower, to avoid that 'Fragger which was too far away to be a threat yet, but you could usually work around that. Then I discovered the width adjustment mechanism (which on my laptop is a simple widening or narrowing of my fingers on the mousepad), and Bob was the relative of my choice 
But it’s not like having to make do with the default cone was or is gamebreaking in any way. So I don’t see what is ‘strongly damaged’ about the fluidity. If you want to ignore it, ignore it. If you don’t, don’t. But it’s not like it gets in the way at all, so I don’t get what you’re saying (head scratching emoji guy).
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Why would you have any better or worse ability to scan for a target because you had a rifle in your hand rather than a pistol? This makes no sense.
Again realism is second, gameplay matter more even if there’s an overall balance to target. But some “realist” explanation could be found, for example:
- Weapon maneuverability, it allows faster aiming for a descent aiming. So great for pistol, bad for SR, machine gun and cannon.
- Weapon spreading, it makes sense consider they have a bonus to cover a larger cone. So a width bonus for shotguns and burst weapons.
- High precision doesn’t match well larger cone, it’s a matter of distance, at long distance the same width imply longer distance.
That’s some approximate “realist explanation” examples to justify cones width order from narrowest cone to widest cone: SR and Cannon < Machine Gun < Shotgun and AR < Pistol. But again in such system it could have some exception like a SR with larger cone and less big range than another SR with smaller cone be bigger range.
But when giving more thought to the problem, in my personal case, it’s because the control bores me, constantly go find the Ctrl key is tedious, I think I would be fine with it and a control design change. It’s an advanced design but despite right click is cancel, press right click could switch to cone width change. Still from a larger perspective, I think it not worth the extra burdening of gameplay fluidity.
Hopefully with rebinding keys functionality we can all then control the game how we wish.
And I repeat: you don’t have to use it - I didn’t until I found the control key. But don’t deny the extra choice to those of us who do want to use it.
Do you mean there’s another way to change the cone width? Or that it can be played without changing the width? I bet the second case, but then your example show it, once you knew it you couldn’t resist to use it. Same for me despite the control is total boredom, second example proving it can’t be ignored, and it’s effective gameplay fluidity drop down.
No Zzzz, it’s not that it can’t be ignored, it’s that it gave me exactly what I wished for but didn’t know about until I stumbled upon it in some random post. When the OW cone first came out, I could adjust the length, but (like the OP) I didn’t know I could adjust the width, and I wished there was some way that I could adjust the width. Then someone told me how to adjust the width and I was: “Great! That’s exactly how it should work!” and I’ve been happily using it ever since to make sure my dumbass squaddies don’t waste their precious reaction fire on irrelevant targets.
Frankly, it makes the game more fluid for me, because I don’t have to fart around adjusting the angle and length of a fixed cone to avoid that stupid Mindfragger next to the Scylla, when it’s the Scylla I want to react to. All I have to do is pinch my mousepad and the cone narrows to exclude the Fragger and target the Scylla alone.
Just because you find it tedious doesn’t mean other players do. It’s a choice. Choice is good. So why take it away from us?
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Argue on gameplay fuildity on base of ignoring a meaningful feature doesn’t make sense. It’s not a choice facepalm, it’s an action and a control.
It’s like the awful free pistol owerwatch, very bad design idea, no decision, just boredom repetition, should not be allowed, and that it can be ignored doesn’t justify the gameplay fluidity drop down.
There is no fluidity dropdown if you simply choose to ignore it. It’s there if you want it - which some of us do - but you don’t have to use it.
But we’re just going to go round in circles with this one, so I am leaving it there.
It’s like ignoring crouching/uncrouching/proning/unproning in JA2, no it’s not an option and ignore it makes no sense. But ok you can’t get it fine, but there’s no opinion it’s a fact, or the feature is pointless but it isn’t.
I second this, don’t take away the option here. I like the overwatch as is. Some of my soldiers do wide, some do narrow… Just depends what and where they are watching.
As for pistol overwatch it’s not exactly an overpowered thing. They are only accurate at certain ranges, and given you have to invest skill points to pick it up, it’s not truly free. If that 0 ap overwatch was tied to the weapon that could be.
Clearly !
It’s so great that my over-watches now hit the enemies I wanted them to hit. I don’t ever want to go back to crossing my fingers.
Yeah, I have to say, I really like that you can narrow and widen the overwatch cone too. I wish you could zoom out a bit more when using it cause it’s a bit of a pain when trying to catch the edge of a building at range sometimes, but I think it’s good versatility to be able to have control over how you’re going to overwatch. Overall though I think it’s one of the good ideas in PP.
Some people [quote=“CardboardMike, post:1, topic:8755”]
Why is the most useful version of overwatch hidden behind an undocumented mechanic
[/quote]
When all your soldiers will shoot at the arthron’s shield, and not the target that approaching later , your opinion will change greatly 