FACTS & RUMORS - Discussion of Hero Bans (updated)

[Ryzik-21826]

I don’t mean to call you out here Jeff but you did say that you would try making more frequent balance changes 1-2yrs ago now (pretty sure its closer to 2). That never happened, I am skeptical that it will happen this time.

[ThousandFold-11445]

For example, right now, even after queueing and joining a match, you spend (and I might be getting some of these numbers wrong) 30 seconds “selecting a hero,” then another 45 seconds doing nothing on offense or walking across the map on defense before the round starts, and then repeat this process for each subsequent round. That can add up to a lot of extra time not playing Overwatch while you’re in a match.

Oh yes, if they tighten that up then I’m good.

[VoltaireAro-1283]

They spoke about guilds a while ago and how they would implement it. It would have to be connected to the Blizzard app tho. Don’t take my word on this as I don’t remember where I heard this from.

[RobotWizard-116887]

Oh yes, if they tighten that up then I’m good.

They COULD tighten it up depending on player levels, people who have played a long time don’t need as much time to organise maybe?

[Misguided-1468]

I haven’t been around this community long to see how the devs interact with players, but having been around other game communities for decades, I’m really impressed with the thoughtfulness of this post and how clearly this was laid out.

Thank you.

[Caspar-22363]

I was too late to tell you that hero bans are highly unlikely, but, calling it now:
Hero pool incoming
(idea from Jeff, not mine)

[Gazblo-1462]

Bans are a much better option to me than implementing 1-3-2 role queue. They’ll kill the game with that.

[ThousandFold-11445]

They COULD tighten it up depending on player levels, people who have played a long time don’t need as much time to organise maybe?

That would be one way of doing it, but I’ve seen plat borders stew in the theoretical pot over what to pick with certain comps/picks. I think it should just be in general and hope people aren’t afkbeasts.

Plus they would have to start grouping people up over MMR AND levels and make queue times even longer.

[Rocktopus-11683]

I don’t want that either.

I think we’re getting something else

[Misguided-1468]

Just remember, I called “kittens” yesterday

[Bisalissy-2981]

The sting of defeat is much less if the match took less time.

That’s defenetly true! I really enjoyed Heroes of the Storm’s Competitive, but it takes so long to get into the match and once the action starts, it’s almost over.

Right now, I kinda have this problem in Overwatch with the massive DPS Queue Times. Waiting 10 minutes for “Defeat!” is frustrating. But I believe there will be a good solution like 1 Tank - 2 Supports - 3 DPS or just something nobody is expecting yet.

[TobiasAlec-11572]

how about we all just leave this thread and THINK on this for more thna 5 minutes

[assembler-21725]

Jeff is just godly smart. And his team. Making such good changes for the game. It’s insane.

[Rocktopus-11683]

What?

Kittens?

I’m an octopus

[MikeUchiha-11562]

We get it. We agree. Make the meta move faster. Ok.

This is why before 2-2-2 you guys should have released a bunch of new tanks/supports instead of waiting for OW2.

But just implementing hero bans does not mean the meta will move.

I agree 100%. Same with 2-2-2, yet a lot of people seemed to have thought otherwise. Hence all the frustration.

In regards to players wanting to ban for balance reasons, the way we plan to address this is with more frequent balance updates.

This would be very welcome. Thank you.

The other reason I listed was that people do not like playing against certain heroes. To this, I am going to give an answer that is not going to be very popular. Basically, it’s a PvP game. You don’t get to pick what the enemy team does.

THANK YOU.

I hear a lot of people attack hero bans because they only want to play one hero, or “one trick”… To this, I think our stance is pretty clear.

I think you guys should take into factor why people gravitate toward certain heroes. You have heroes that have stories / backgrounds and naturally people will align with one over the other.

We’ve been really pushing for faster match times (there’s a lot going on under the hood on this one).

I think the best way to do this would be making Tanking / Supporting more interesting and giving people more incentive to do so. This would be by adding more heroes with interesting kits - Moira and Hammond are examples of a Support / Tank who don’t play traditionally.

[MrFriendly-1434]

I don’t think they forgot about them rather the conditions about the statements have changed.

For Role Queue maybe the engine couldn’t support it back then and wasn’t the no hero limits statement made around the time of launch before people realized that multiple heroes stacked was seriously broken.

[Six-12688]

Certain heroes are better on certain maps than others. I wonder if Blizz is looking to make the hero pool based on map that you can select from?

[Beep-21505]

Thanks for the update Jeff.
I knew hero bans wouldn’t be a thing at this point at least. Too few heroes.

[Caspar-22363]

That’s an interesting idea and it could make sense in order to keep players who only play a few heroes happy
also, it would make multiple metas viable per season and encourage flexibility

[BlueJeans-11546]

In regards to players wanting to ban for balance reasons, the way we plan to address this is with more frequent balance updates. The upcoming dev update will go in depth into the plan and shed light on how we’re going to accomplish this. So we agree that there are balance issues. We agree balancing needs to happen more frequently. We disagree that hero bans are a good solution to balance problems. To us, removing a hero from play because of balance reasons feels like a sledgehammer.

Bring back Mercy 1.0