Lets be real for a sec. Below diamond there never was a meta.
So introducing hero pools to combat stale metas at plat and below where people struggle to just get a somewhat consistent performance on their 1-2 main heroes is pointless.
It would probably only end up being a detriment for people to learn how to play the game.
Since I posted this to a similar post like this I’ll post it here
If you don’t want to rank up , you shouldn’t play comp anyways.
Smurfs should be banned, but that’s my unpopular opinion.
Nope. Bad idea. This would be bad for those players on the grind, climbing to improve only to find out that the game they were playing in the low elo is different from what the big guys are playing.
I don’t see why it should be implemented for plat under (maybe even dia) when meta never really effect 'em. Only masters/GM have to play Meta. Jeff did say that they’ve thought of it, I think.
Low elo is different anyways.
Jeff already mentioned he doesn’t think Plat and below “Play the meta”.
https://clips.twitch.tv/SneakyRelentlessAniseKappaClaus
It’s just that those type of people would be punished for doing so by getting hero pools.
It needs to be at all levels, and it should probably extend to quick play.
The thing is, hero pools can replace some of the toxic “balancing” they’ve been doing to the game. They deliberately make heroes OP, then UP, to force a churn in hero selection in the player base. The devs do not want you sticking to a few core heroes and playing them forever, they want you trying everyone. Maybe it’s to make the game stay interesting, maybe it’s to sell more lootboxes, who knows.
This doesn’t happen if they can’t ban you from your favorites. So it has to affect everyone.
Rankings become kind of meaningless if rank changes the rules of the game. If low Diamond matches are playing a different game from high Platinum, you end up with players who are locked above/below that line just because they’re better/worse at one version of the game than they are at the other. Not to mention people at that borderline have to randomly play one game or the other just based on the average SR of that particular match.
Do you really think a Silver player “Suffers from the strictness of the meta”, the same way that GM does?
Nah it would force them to learn new heros thus becoming a better player in general. Alll the way down to bronze imo
Not at all, although low ranks have their own metas. But the developers really want to create churn in hero selection and I think these are much healthier than simply nerfing heroes into dust, as they do now.
I think hero variety is naturally quite high in lower ranks, so you don’t need a system to create more hero variety.
And it’s not like ranks where 95% of the picks are 6-8 heroes.
They want individuals to play more heroes. It’s not just about making sure they’re played at all.
I just think putting limitations to fix a problem that doesn’t exist in lower ranks, doesn’t make much sense.
It’s not just high rank metas though. They specifically want people to play other things. That’s why heroes are flipped to OP and UP. They don’t want you to keep playing one hero.
I think Gold and below ranks do mix things up regularly already.
And playing fewer heroes is fine for ranks with more casual players, with less time invested in a wide hero roster.
I’ve seen pretty solid meta perceptions in gold and platinum before, I dunno much about bronze or silver.
I wonder if it would be better to have hero pools tailored for each rank… although that could cause issues around rank borders. Climbing from one rank to another could become very annoying when you win/loss/win/loss between different sets of hero bans… but that’s pretty much what would happen at the plat/diamond border if they went with the “no pool below diamond” idea anyway.
But what if you’re low rank and feel left out? It would be so demoralizing I imagine. Like Blizzard saying your rank is so illegitimate that it isn’t even going to have the same rules as the higher ranks
And if you rank up, you’d be playing a whole different game than you just were. Playing in low ranks would actually sabotage you even if you managed to get out of them
Also lets be honest, diamond in year 4 of overwatch is just plat with an animated icon