Happy Lunar New Year everyone.
I would try and come straight to the point on why hero bans could be good for Overwatch.
While hero ban has been discussed in the past there has been two major concerns shown by the devs and the community:
- (Devs):People want to watch their favorite pro players who are the absolute best players at their heroes. Banning a hero, let’s say banning (zenyatta) for jjonak or (widowmaker) for Pine can be a cheap strategy.
- (Anti- ban community) There are not enough heroes in the game (i.e. tanks). or community who do strongly fail to see the benefits of a possibility of change like “ban system” would bring.
However i do think we have additions of Sigma and Wrecking into the game and the conversation of change or simply the dialogue of implementing a ban system and what advantages they may bring.
Currently Overwatch community is going through 2 major issues that are causing issues to them apart from the minor ones which i will discuss and then propose a solution.
- Balance: (Community is outraged for balance of their favorite heroes but there is so much feedback from each “hero main” that devs do not know which feedback they should listen to and which should they filter.
The issue mainly is the disconnect between pro players and the average competitive players which we will come back to address. - Meta: (( Basically What is popular is in disagreeement to Pro players and Casual fanbase and this changes across tiers)) . Community is outraged by meta because they feel that heroes which require less mechanical/linear inputs are giving higher value in game and skill is not rewarded or some team composition is highly rewarded over others.Some heroes with less time to kill like Doom/Widow/Hanzo /And the popular heroes they see on Pro/Ladder are boring heroes, team composition and boring outplay. (Brig vs Tracer) (Genji Vs Moira) (Sigma and Orisa vs Dva)
And then for comparision on how hero shooters or games from similar genre are handling these issues i looked at games like League of Legends/ Paladins/ Dota 2 and mainly Rainbow Six Siege which will be our learning will be.
When I think about the greatest esports moments, it is always a team which conquered, when all hope was lost, when they were the underdogs, or they did something so dominantly and so well and teams could not come close to them. And unlike fighting games ,in team based esports competition one thing is common between greatest esports moments “ADAPTATION”. That Fl0wer picking widowmaker when virtually widowmaker was not seen at pro play at all in the Overwatch world cup match vs team usa, that tracer pick from Profit which got an insane 5k in the pressure. The Chengdu hunters team which refused to play GOATS and kept playing the ball 4dps composition.
For developement analogy, These were situations when teams adapted. They are the business analysts, the project cordinator, the developers,the QA testers team who viewed their job more than just performing their daily responsibilities. They are people who decided to learn where they are in the SDLC life cycle and decided to learn the project from a high-level view and eventually became project managers from their role.
That is exactly what successful esports teams do.
SktT1 in League of legends, NaVi in Paladins, G2 esports in Rainbow six siege, OG (recently in Dota 2). When a player called Faker won against Samsung, Crown was playing “Viktor”, that is equivalent to jjonak playing “zenyatta”. He spoke with his coach and agreed to a different enemy player ban which would make their team composition better and was ready to face the challenge by laning(playing) against then 2nd best mid laner of KR on his most played champion which he was known for. And that potential can only be unlocked through hero bans. When all teams stop learning how to use the same combo better than another team. When they truly want to express themself as a team.
Okay, some backstories aside i think why bans are good are Overwatch
- The major concern for devs is that they think Players want to watch their favorite player on their favorite hero. True.
However, you cannot ban jjonak’s “Zenyatta” and Pine’s “Widowmaker” at the same time. It will be a strategic opportunity cost for each time. Do you consider the zenyatta of the enemy enough threat or the Widowmaker? Which hero are you letting go from the ban system. See there are 12 pro players in the team and what is important to the team composition is highly flexible. Therefore, lets say 1 ban for each team can be a strategic tool and will demand pro players to be good at multiple good heroes. This will also allow a better path to pro system where teams will have to consider players who are good at multiple heroes rather than signing players who are good OTP. However, the nature of bans are still unknown so we cannot assume how bans will be targeted because maybe a Dva ban is more important to pro players who peel for a fragging zenyatta than banning that zen itself who facitilate that style of playing. Therefore, 1 ban per team where both teams cannot use the same hero and banned from the map is a great way to bring diversity. - Meta: Hero bans will absolutely help in the meta like in other games where all teams cannot rely solely on being good at the same thing but promote diversity and adaptation. Let’s say a widowmaker ban will bring Parah mercy into the game on maps with long sightlines like junkertown which brings soldier 76 and mcree back in the game.
Okay Okay, but there is a big elephant in the room. Hero bans ? wait!! What about the casual players. There is clearly a disconnect between pro and casual players and how the game is played at plat vs at pro level.
And i think this is where the bans are actually bringing a big advantage to the game. Let me discuss an example with rainbow six siege and how their ban system changed the game for better by bringing the pro and regular community together with some examples (while some numbers may be exaggerated).
- Lion saw almost 99-100±% ban in pro play when he was released. That was clear to the developers that the “hero/operator” is overpowered. They nerfed him/disabled him and then reworked him.
- Jackal saw 90-100±% ban in ranked matches across all eloes in the competitive ladder. Funny thing ? he was not banned in pro play that much.
Jackal’s abilities (gadget) Jackal would press F for 5 seconds and the position of enemy roamer would be shown to the entire ally team refreshing every 5 seconds until he was pinned (outright killed). (A roamer is flanker equivalent to overwatch where an enemy player playing different part of map from the objective to flank the attackers from behind after attackers push to the site). A red ping would refresh every 5 seconds to give exact location of the flanker. RIP.
So , Jackal did not see much ban in pro play because pro play in based on information and attackers usually drone really well to identify where roamers are playing. Therefore, they do not require Jackal to pin down the player and can use a different attacker who brings more utility.
However, in ranked game in the ladder games are chaos and a roamer will ruin your day every game and having a Jackal on enemy team means it completely shuts down the roam game. Therefore Jackal saw 100±% ban in ranked games across all elo in the ladder. That gave the developers information that the operator needs to be balanced because there is a general consesus of the community against that operator. This was not reddit or forum post complaining about how broken Jackal is and Jackal mains complaining he is balanced. It was raw data showing Jackal is banned in 100±% of ranked games.
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Same thing with Nomad. She saw unanimous ban in Pro play until they reworked her gadget.
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Echo while have decent ban rate in pro play is almost banned 100±of times in ranked competitive which led the devs realize that people are not liking something about his gameplay and implemented a small buff to a hero/operator who could counter him and now make it a fun counter. (Echo has 2 powerful drones, they buffed an operator who can hack enemy cameras/now including Echo drones) to make it a balance of risk/reward.
SO WHAT BAN SYSTEM DID TO OTHER Games??
- Ban system allowed the game to escape some of the power creep problem Overwatch has where the newly released heroes were banned so highly over time because they were indeed broken.
It is understandable that people generally ban new heroes when they are new because they do not know how to play against it. But if the ban lasts forever and for months the data will obviously tell.
Like i am 100% sure Hanzo would have seen a 90%+ ban every game if a ban system was indeed implemented in Overwatch. This would have given dev team clear feedback that even though hanzo may not have been played at pro level he is clearly broken for casual players which then would have helped in balancing Hanzo early, or Baptiste or Sigma.
Therefore i truely believe a system of 1or 1+ ban per team or 1 ban for each role will bring that diversity back but also will provide the dev team sufficient data over where the general consensus of players feel mutual towards.
Lets say Reaper may see a high ban in bronze to diamond.
Pick rate does not always tell you the full information. Ban Rate will complete that picture. But i definitely feel the game needs atleast 6 heroes per year. THE BIGGEST issue to pro play ADAPTATION would be when they have a variety to chose from. And Overwatch really missed it mark. We genuinely could even have evolved to “only each team can pick that unique hero”, if we had more hitscans, more aerial dps more tanks and more supports enabling style clashes. Chengdu hunters vs GOATS was genuinely the best OWL viewing experience we had in the last 1 year or more or i would say ever if you even ask casters WHY?. WE SAW 12 DIFFERENT HEROES PLAY IN A SINGLE GAME OF OVERWATCH. Not 2 teams play the same hero and try to do same thing better. Because that i feel is the true height of Overwatch as a team based shooter. And Paladins has managed to do that even though the dps classes are the same the heroes are only unique to each team because they have heroes to chose from.
Overwatch can still do it if we open our mind a little guys. It’s like Playing Diablo 3 with Necromancer or Monk. It works. The playstyle is different but it works. While not swaying away from the main point of this post for “hero bans” i genuinely would also ask dev team to experiement unique heroes per team.
The team can go back to current pace and slow down after we reach 50 heroes and the current cycle for hero release is just really really slow and not enough. I know we are wanting to increase shareholder’s wealth but sustainable increase is important. I am sure the team has a really good budget to work with.The urgency of the project deadlines need to be increased. I understand Blizzard prefers quality over quantity and that is why they are the best (most respected) developers in gaming history alongside (Sony and its studios). We can live with 2 less skins but we absolutely need those new heroes every 2 months.
Just my 2 thoughts and thank you guys for your hard work.