Hero stacking is the only issue I find in the game mode that ruins it for me. The other team or my team just happens to get lucky and get stacked tanks and stacked healers and then it’s a landslide victory or defeat. There is no inbetween.
Hero stacking was removed from quickplay for a reason. Many found it unfun and hard to play against. Why should arcade game modes get different treatment if it was removed for being unfun?
Edited title - Forum Mod
Hero stacking is the only reason I like mystery heroes. I never wanted hero stacking to be removed, it was a lot of fun.
I don’t think it’s fun to go against 2 orisas with 2 pocket mercy’s, and a bastion on any map unless we can get a reasonable counter. Too bad Mystery Heroes doesn’t seem to stack the teams equally.
The amount of times my team has had all unique heroes while the enemy team has 3 Moira’s/Bastions/ or vice versa is a bit insane.
This. There’s a division of opinion within the community. I personally love hero stacking and think it’s one of the best parts of the mode - you can have really hard counters and you can get countered really hard. Nothing is more fun (for me) than getting wrecked by 4 winstons and then rolling bastion.
But I realize that a lot of people don’t agree. In the words of Jeff Kaplan himself:
I wish we could have a game where hero stacking wasn’t enabled but we still got somekind of random heroes. I get that it’s “Mystery heroes” and it’s not really a mystery if you can’t pick what is already on the team, but at some point, you gotta sit down and ask yourself when 5 mercys and a bastion or other stacking comps is really fun to go against when the chance of getting something that stacked is less than .000001%.
Can someone PLEASE explain to me why people want Mystery Heroes without hero stacking? The way I see it, you either want RNG chaos, or you want a realistic game. Hero stacking is what MAKES mystery heroes in my opinion, and I’d be devastated to see it removed. MH is my favorite mode, and it’s because I never know when I’m going to have double bastion on my team, or double orisa on the enemy team, or freakin triple Tracer on both teams (I actually saw that once, it was amazing). Hero stacking to me is as much a part of MH as the RNG, and I just cannot understand what people like about MH if they want hero limits applied to it.
I want a game with RNG heroes without hero stacking. The reason we play Mystery heroes is so every time we die we get a new hero to play and thus, get to play every hero and learn them. But we can’t learn them or even have fun playing heroes we don’t normally play when the enemy has stacks of that heroes counter.
We already don’t get to pick who we play (the appeal of the game mode but can be frustrating) but Blizzard likes to mesh two unappealing things together.
Honestly, it shouldn’t be just the option between RNG chaos and realistic game. We can play a realistic game but just have people change heroes every round and not have 2 seemingly seperate game modes together.
We already have no limits, why would we want no limits but random?
I think you’re pointing at the wrong thing for why the mode tends to snowball leading to landslide victories.
Hero stacking can be overwhelming to a team comp that is unprepared to deal with it, but in theory your team can get appropriate counter heroes to turn the tables.
The reason the games snowball so often is due to how changing hero works with respect to ultimate, as ults reset on hero swap, in this mode they will reset on each death. This leads to whoever stays alive gives their team an advantage, if you translate this to when the first team fight occurs, the losing side will come out with no ultimate charge at all, and when they try to fight again, the enemy team may now have ultimates they can use to win the next team fight and so on.
The mode won’t snowball as long as this continues to be overlooked, two possible solutions include the lazy way, simply removing character ultimates from the mode to keep it fair between players, or to take a new look at how ultimates are generated and the cost of changing your current hero, possibly for the main game as well.
Hero stacking can be overwhelming to a team comp that is unprepared to deal with it
But we don’t get to choose our team comps. It’s overwhelming to a team who doesn’t have enough counters but when you have a 2/26 (for example) chance of randomly drawing a counter for that hero, odds are, you won’t.
Its even worse if you accidently fall off the map after taking damage (but you had control when you fell) you keep your hero you fell off with. It’s a blessing and a curse but it’s annoying and goes against everything else in the mode.
in theory your team can get appropriate counter heroes to turn the tables
In theory. The fact is, that doesn’t happen very often. I’ll put it the way a brilliant redditor put it when someone shared Jeffs comment over there.
“I love being on attack when defense has 3 bastions. Good thing I’m Widow again!”
The reason the games snowball so often is due to how changing hero works with respect to ultimate, as ults reset on hero swap, in this mode they will reset on each death.
Yes. But if a team becomes unkillable because of their luck of the draw competition, it’s a little biased. If you have one team that is diverse going against 2 Orisas and 2 Mercys, you’re not going to survive long enough to get your ults if you actually do anything or unless you have specific counters. They, likely, will get their ults and will be much more effective as the game goes further on. It’s snowbally in that regard but the start of the snowball is the issue. The fact the heroes stack as bad as they do.
Don’t look at the end of the trail of a rock and say “we should have stopped it here” when it already had a large amount of energy going down the hill. Look at the top where it started and say “how did this rock start rolling and how can we stop other rocks from doing that”
It sounds like you want more of a choice in how you want to play the game. Luckily there’s already a game mode for that, Quick Play or Competitive.
Please keep in mind that naturally as Blizzard keeps introducing heroes the chances of hero stacking decreases over time so your problem will be solved to an extent.
Regarding going up against insane stacked comps (multiple Mercys and Bastions etc.). Be honest, that only happens 0.1% of the time anyway. Going up against a tough opponent encourages team work to try and overcome that challenge. It sounds like if someone on the other team has your heroes counter you give up and disconnect? Stick with what you have and learn to play around those counters or work with your team. That is what makes Mystery Heroes great, sometimes you will be in uncomfortable situations and it’s up to you and your team to work together.
Please do not ruin a game mode that the majority of players enjoy at its core value.
Quickplay and competitive aren’t what this is at all.
That’s like saying that if you don’t like playing as a team, you can play FFA. They’re 2 seperate things. Competitive isn’t an arcade mode like Mystery heroes. Quick play is closer to an arcade mode but isn’t because it is literally just overwatch.
I want to play arcade without it being frustrating in most matches of Mystery Heroes. You can’t compare Arcade to standard gameplay. It’s not 1-to-1 ratio.
Wow, Jeff was right-this argument has two definite sides - its almost 50 50. They will probably have to release a separate mode for non stacking.
Except that many feel that hero stacking makes mystery heroes unfun.
The point of mystery heroes is to try new heroes you wouldn’t normally and to make unlikely comps work. If one team gets a stack, that’s half the appeal gone. If the stack is large enough, you arguably can’t do either of those things because you can’t try it in a reasonable environment.
It should stay as its own gamemode in No Limits then. Hero stacking is not fun at all for me. It’s downright oppressive in the wrong circumstances, which can occur far too often, and really has no place in Mystery Heroes. You can keep the mystery without including hero stacking.
I do not like hero stacking in MH. And while I can’t speak for everyone, I do want to answer your question about what people like about MH if not the hero stacking. This is obviously my opinion based on my personal preference and experience, but others might agree.
The Mystery to me is not really affected by stacking. In QP you can probably guess with 90% certainty what heroes you’re going to see. There might be a surprise or two but for the most part, people are very predictable and the nature of this game makes that even more true. With MH, I don’t know what’s coming at me because people aren’t in control of their picks. That’s reason #1, there is still mystery/surprise as to what you’re about to face. To me it’s more interesting seeing 6 different heroes than two or three of the same hero. Otherwise it’s just OG quick play like it was before they removed the hero stacking.
Reason #2 that I like MH is that I personally can’t fall back into comfortable roles if whatever I’m using isn’t quite working. I’ve tried new heroes in QP before but I get frustrated easily if I’m dying too often or not getting kills and I’ll just switch to what I’m good with. But with MH, I’m forced to play the hand I was dealt. And yeah I can just run out and die on purpose to try and get a hero I’m comfortable with, but the truth is I’m really only comfortable with two or three heroes, so chances that I’ll rng one of them is slim. Plus, that would be throwing in my eyes since I’m wasting time while my team is trying to win. So the rng hero selection forces me to really try with other unfamiliar heroes. Like really try. It becomes a game within a game for me. Each time I get Ana for example, I’m trying to perform better with her than I did last time I got her. Each time I get widow, the same deal. So now I’m trying my best to win the game with heroes that are awkward and difficult for me to use, while also trying as hard as I can to improve on my personal best score with those heroes. For me, this becomes very difficult to do when there are 3 Moiras on the other team who launch their leech balls at your spawn and suck your soul dry two steps out the door. Or two Symmetras who booby trap an entry way with all 12 sentries in one spot. Or 3 Bastions positioned at every choke point with Orisa and rein shields while your team only has a Lucio, two Hanzos and three Doomfists.
Hopefully that answers your question as to why myself, and maybe some others, really like MH but would like it better without the hero stacking. 
I completely agree with you. Hero stacking in Mystery Heroes can get very annoying especially if the enemy team have multiple tanks.
I couldn’t agree more. There’s nothing more irritating than being a support and your team are 5 tanks wheras the enemy team has a 2-2-2 comp.
I’m going to have to agree with you. It’s not very fun fighting two mercys and three Dvas.
No.
Go make your mode in custom games if you want it so bad. MH is fine as is.
Its called mystery heroes for a reason. Dont like it then dont play it. Same reason that I dont play TDM or CTF cause I dont like thoose. It wouldnt be true mystery if hero stacking was removed.