I’d like to start this off by saying that I have legitimately not seen a SINGLE argument against hero bans that is a real con. Enlighten me, because none of you are making sense.
What is a hero ban?
A hero ban is one or multiple heroes being locked due to team-wide agreement, resulting in that hero being unable to be played BY BOTH TEAMS for that match.
That is an objective definition of hero bans, and that is all that they entail. There is no set strategy or format that hero bans are limited to. You do NOT have to ban a hero because you want to change the meta. You CAN ban Symmetra if you just really hate playing against Symmetra (and you somehow convince your team to hate Symmetra as well).
Some arguments I’ve heard:
Hero bans suck because as a one trick, My main will now be target banned into oblivion.
There is such an EASY solution to this that it is a non-issue. If you hide the opposing player names and profiles until after ban phase, you can no longer target ban. Get on with your one-tricking.
Troll heroes will get banned all the time because people hate playing against trolls.
If people are willing to waste bans on bad heroes, consider it a win. And no, they will not get banned every game, because actually strong heroes will take priority over them.
Strong characters will be banned and no one will ever play them.
Why is this a problem? Also, if a character has a high ban rate, then it is a clear indicator of their power level. They will receive a nerf.
Less heroes = less options = less fun
Uh, no. Just by banning Orisa, you are opening yourself up to playing the entire rest of the tank roster. If Orisa is picked, 90% of the time you have to mirror anyway in order to have a chance of winning. By banning Widow, maybe the entire dps roster is opened up for play as well.
2-2-2 and now this will ruin the game.
I’m waiting for your argument. Where is it?
Game will become boring.
Fun is subjective. Also, if you think mirroring double barrier + Hanzo Mei every game is fun, I honestly question your sanity.
Ban mains -> more dodging
A harsher dodging penalty can be enacted. Additionally, these players will be dropping sr, so they are getting punished.
Longer game times sad
Sorry, I was not aware that you cared so much about the 30 seconds it would take to ban 1 hero after your 10 minute queue time?
Hero bans will further enforce the meta by allowing no counter picks.
Do you know what a META is? The meta is the best tactic/strategy available. In Overwatch, in terms of team comp, the meta comp is mirrored because it has the least counterplay. Banning Reaper against GOATs wouldn’t stop GOATs from being dominant. A meta is powerful because it is the strongest composition. Removing non-meta characters will not suddenly make a meta comp more powerful. This logic chain makes such little sense to me.
I just have a bad feeling.
Come back when you have something meaningful to say.
I’m just straight-up curious. What are some legitimate problems with hero bans that can’t be easily solved?
lets be real with ourselves here though, everyone will ban whats meta because nobody wants to play in it anymore. No one is banning symmetra or torb because people would have to pick them first.
They would ban orisa and/or sigma or maybe even one of the two and hanzo or mei.
One of these possibilities results in unpopular heroes being played again like bastion. But when people find what works, what they ban will be the new meta
At this point, I wish people would understand that hero banning is a subjective solution.
People are just trying to make it sound like it’s objectively good for the game when it isn’t. It’s good for what they want and nothing more. And it’s fine to want that.
Hero X enables super powerful team comp to function. Hero X always gets banned. The next best team comp becomes the new meta comp but because there are fewer heroes left it’s even harder to form a counter comp to this new meta comp. This leads to more mirror matches when we’d prefer at least the possibility of counter comps, preferably a rock-paper-scissors type situation.
I‘m just foreseeing an exacerbation of the leaver issue if hero bans come through. OT‘s don‘t have a lot of options for fall-back if a Tank gets his pick of choice banned. Particularly if it‘s a Hamster or Hog Main.
I imagine some would rather take a loss and 50SR than risk bad stats and potentially worse losses.
Yes, more restrictions, less freedom! It’s so healthy for the game - more people leaving because they can’t play their favorite hero anymore, even after waiting so much in queue.
This game is already at it’s way to the cemetery (remember the last time you’ve had player login queue in an event? Didn’t have it the last three times). Hero bans were needed prior to role lock and instead of it, not with it. This is just a great way to make the game completely unenjoyable and kill the playerbase.
I feel like I would be ok with hero bans for the reasons you stated but these 2 points are where there’s a bright red flag waving. What defines a troll hero? What defines a strong one? This could just as easily be used by the community to bully players out of playing stigmatized heroes. I think that’s really bad for the game and I hope that is something blizzard plans to get ahead of.
This is good for streamers, although this is blizzard so if they don’t do this (which is one of the most important things they should do if they make hero bans) then they messed up and games will probably be less fun
If Orisa is banned, Mei/reaper will be the entire enemy team.
If Mei is banned, Orisa will have no counters (Reaper is easy to counter)
If Moira/Brig is banned, high mobility will be op
If Lucio is banned, mobility becomes unplayable
Say ana is banned - no more anti-heals. Counter picking is a core part of the game and if you can’t counter pick, the game becomes unplayable. Thats why meta is unfun - you can’t counterpick it.
First, I think you have a different understanding of counterpicks than I do. In no way is Moira good against dive comp, for example. Also, Lucio isn’t only good with mobility comps. He is a must-pick in deathball because Rein is too stationary without the Lucio.
As for your counters argument, does every hero in this game need a hard counter? Should it be, this guy switched to Mei, so even though I have 1000 hours on Genji and he has 10 hours on Mei, I still have to switch because there’s no counterplay? Hard counters in a shooter game with 30 characters just sounds kind of dumb. Better player wins, not better rock-paper-scissors player.
As for why meta isn’t fun. You can only have fun by counterpicking? That doesn’t really make sense. Playing against hard counters or hard wins all the time is just boring. Where does your skill level show? It’s a shooter, not a go-to-spawn everytime they switch so I can switch.
I guarantee that you rarely play meta. But if you were playing to win, both teams would be playing meta. And depending on the meta comp, the gameplay is still fun.
I don’t think it’ll help any more than 2-2-2 did. That is, not at all.
Jeff said himself he doesn’t think that there are enough heroes, and I agreed with that, but I don’t think for a second that doesn’t mean it’ll come.
I just foresee a hilarious round-robin of habitually banning Orisa until the community decides Sigma is the problem, then Reinhardt, then Orisa again… As if playing Tank wasn’t a big enough pain in the backside, which one you’re allowed to actually play will be pretty much decided for you. Something which no one will go for and you’ll just end up with no Tanks and even longer queues.
You’re on the flipside of that, though. There are also people, like yourself, who are saying that the benefits are objective.
They’re not - it’s a matter of preference. Some people subjectively want it, other people subjectively don’t want it. It’s subjective in its entirety, and comes with other problems if it were to be implemented.
I’m not saying it couldn’t be good down the road; just not now. Not while balance is up in the air. When you have multiple, problematic heroes in two different rosters, and few tank/support options in comparison to DPS.
And it’s fine to want that.