Hero Pools: My Opinion, Food for Thought

General Discussion
1

I try to look at things with an open mind and tend to make multiple different opinions at times that conflict with one another.

I think the Hero Pool ideas is going to help the game a lot, but I also feel that there are potential issues with the purposed execution of hero pools.

For starters; Being that I do flex but have my favorite heroes as “go to” picks. In the event that I don’t have these “go to” picks I will likely just not play that week and I feel that most people will feel the same way.
If I am forced onto Orisa all week because Rein isn’t an option… I would wish so badly that I could just delete Orisa from the game altogether.
And a week is a long time when you have a lot of time invested in this game.

I don’t know that a week is acceptable with the current idea…
Though if each week several heroes were selected and batched into groups of A, B, C, and the map and matchmaker decided which group to disable for that game, I can see the idea as a creative and fun challenge to take on.
"No Rein this game? OK no problem; I will play Orisa because I know that my next game I will have a 66% chance of still playing Rein.

I feel that a cycling hero pool based on 3 sets of heroes is more than enough to keep people engaged and still shake up the meta.

2

im personally against it because i dont understand the problem its trying to solve,

really, the only reason why you would introduce hero bans / hero pools is because the metas beeing an issue,

but the metas wouldnt be an issue if the balance was faster and better, which the devs said they plan to do already, so it feels redundant

3

I guess the goals are to keep matches from getting stale + give people a breather from the heroes they hate to play as/with/against.

4

I don’t think it is a redundancy thing. I believe the objective is more OWL side and being able to keep the audience engaged and entertained.
Do keep in mind that this is really the season that will make or break the Overwatch League and watching the same hero picks every match isn’t entertaining beyond the first couple days.

5

But faster balance already acomplishes this, it feels redundant.

this feels like a pretty…dumb premise honestly? Everyone has characters they dislike playing against…So? people need to learn with it, As jeff himself said,

why not then just add it in OWL then?

6

Its the “Stylosa Effect.” When you watch your favorite team play you then want to go play and try the same things. You can’t do that if the League was the only place these changes took place. Likewise you can’t really expect the League to play an entirely different game just because they are professional athletes.
Keeping the same ruleset across the board allows for good marketing and engagement.

7

Bring back skill decay!

1 Like
8

In addition to the OWL, the game has to take a massive change in order to successfully promote a sequel.
Even if people leave and all the updates and news aren’t enough to bring them back full-time, massive changes then make a sequel worth looking at because it just sounds exciting. The changes not only support this on a marketing outlook but the decision to make these changes with urgency now merely suggests that rumors of a 2020 OW2 release might actually have some legitimacy

9

Well this throws a bone to Flex players. I say the Devs nailed it when they said we will wait and see. I say let it rock. This also opens the window to see just how much of a difference console vs PC if it’s not too bad maybe One Player pool may be an option.

10

Just like forced 222, that’s a solution for something in OWL (in this case, teams learning the “meta” and matches becoming mirror matches), that was dragged into the ladder.

At least this time they are limiting the new thing to competitive only. I wish role queue was also constrained only within Competitive.

11

I was totally against role queue and enjoyed the triple tank meta. Though it may not seem like it was a drastic change; it only takes a few games in classic QP to remember how much you hated solo support or not having a tank at all…

The idea for Hero Pools can be horrible, but it can also be executed in a way that gives a lot of work-around. I for one am open to adding the 1,3, 2 and triple tank options to role queue… And I think the fact that 2,2,2 is being questioned should be enough to also question how something like Hero Pools should be executed.

12

I understand your side, but I can’t relate.

Mostly, because when LFG arrived, I used it a lot and found a good bunch of people that played around the same time as me, and had a similar flex playstyle. So, eventually I got a large enough friend list that I could easily 2-4 stack anytime I would usually play.

Role queue made it impossible for us to swap roles between ourselves as the match situation demanded a specific hero that one of us was proficient. Which is why everyone (except one) stopped played shortly after role queue came into live.

As I said, I don’t mind the restrictions being in OWL and Contenders, and it makes sense for Competitive to mirror the main tournament rules. I only complain that Quick Play should not had been hit by it, or QP Classic should had achievements enabled.

If I was still playing, I would approach hero pools the same way I approached hero limits and role queue: Try it out for a week or two, then provide feedback.

Hero Limits I honestly didn’t felt that much impact on my day-to-day gaming, there were very few situations where stacking the same hero was actually beneficial, and as we got more heroes in the roster, it was less necessary to even think about stacking in the first place. Eg, when you only had Mercy as a main healer, having two Mercy in the team was a lot more important than after Ana release and Zen got rescued from the trash.

Role queue, as mentioned, made my whole friend list stop playing, and so did I. I currently only play during events to get the new skins specifically because Jeff said they would move with me to OW2 (which I’ll buy because it’s co-op PvE, and I love co-op PvE).

I have no desire to analyze hero pools in practice right now. But until we see it in motion, I’d say it’s too early to scream wolf. Especially with Jeff saying they will use S21 as testing grounds for tuning it for the future polishing or discard.

13

IMO, nothing that I’ve seen in the two years I’ve played the game indicates that Hero Pool will be a good decision.

14

Yes but LFG only worked when it did work; as soon as you lose a match the group generally just disbanded and you were back to looking for more people. It didn’t take long for everyone to completely abandon the idea altogether because it took too long to get into games and you spent more time building a team than you did being a team.

Believe me! I have a lot of concerns and have a lot of conflicting opinions about Role Queue and Hero Pool, but I think on the same hand that these are fixed solutions that can be improved on even if they are implemented and executed poorly initially.
You have to consider that I am not the end all be all of the conversation and many people will debate, challenge, or accept ideas… Though it is the reasonable individuals willing to see things from many angles that can help improve on the ideas if we continue to work on giving everyone a voice.
At some point you have to be rational and accept that something of the sort is going to come; its up to us to voice opinions and ideas so that we minimize the inconvenience these new features pose.

15

We’ll have to see where this goes. Can’t comment on the top tanks, but around where I play things are pretty much the same as before these faster patches started coming through.

Not really. A “learn to deal with it” approach doesn’t work. Despite what people seem to think, the way people feel about a game is the most important thing there is.

If a hero is making someone feel negatively about the game for whatever reason, the promise of eventually having a week where that hero basically doesn’t exist is going to curb those negative thoughts quite a bit.

16

IMO, most players had the wrong expectation on what LFG would provide. They expected to find a bunch of 5 random people that would magically fit their playstyles and let them win a bunch of matches in a row. And for obvious reasons, that would happen exactly as often as if you went solo queuing.

Myself, I used LFG looking specifically for those who do not disbanded after a loss. Those who could see our team being dysfunctional and still work enough to tie things up. Those who were chill enough that we could suggest and listen to suggestions, and regardless of agreeing or not with those suggestions, would respect the other player opinion and keep focusing on the game.

I was looking for people with the same mindset and approach to the game as me, and it took some time and patience, but eventually it arrived. IIRC, at the peak, I had over 10 friends playing at the same time, all willing to party up. I would send and receive whispers often asking for people to group up.

If someone had a more “tryhard” approach to the game, LFG could be used the same way, you look for the competitive people that use heroes that complement your own hero pool, and eventually form a full team, and play enough together that you will know how each other play by heart.

IMO, LFG started to fail once the people who were using it correctly, got enough players in their friends list and saw no reason to keep making groups to look for more friends. At least, that’s what happened to me. It was a weird coincidence that shortly after I stopped creating LFG (because I would invite or get invited as soon as I logged in), people started complaining LFG became a ghost town.

So, when I tell people that they could had used LFG if they wanted more structure to their teams, or better players in their groups, that’s not me dismissing their experience with LFG. It’s just me telling what worked for me. And it worked very, very well. If it was not for LFG, probably I would had quit somewhere around season 12, when my main got deleted from the game.