Hero pools vs Hero bans or OWL vs. Playerbase

What positive games has OWL had on our games? Name them?

I can name plenty of negative things however; It made toxicity only worse because people became slaves to meta.
IT created a huge disconnect between the games we were playing and games pro were playing, resulting in a sleuth of balance changes that had no business on the ladder.
IT caused Overwatch to be neglected in favor of OWL even though they said it wouldn’t!

Your ability to climb is dirrectly dependant on your teammates. As a tank, you cannot deal with certain characters like Mei or Reaper. By banning either, it actually allows you to climb easier because your own skill becomes more relative. Less reliance and “ban” meta in solo Q helps people that deserve to climb - climb. As is, too much “forced” reliance for your teammates to counter X on enemy team or lose is creating a toxic environment in solo Q.

The #1 point, giving agency to players, has been proven to be a bad thing in Overwatch. I’d much rather Jeff deciding what hero’s I can play than some rando’s who’s motivation and selections are possibly driven by toxicity or ignorance. OWL and GM sure. Ranks below that have the group mentality of a child and need to be handheld.

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When has it proven a bad thing?

Are you talking about roleQ?
2-2-2 is not arbitrary, nor does it take away more agency from players than it gives. It gives people the choice of what to queue as because it introduces structure.

Hero pools are arbitrary, Hero bans are not. Hero bans give agency to players.

“tyrannical” if you think it’s so bad, stop playing. Actually, stop participating here if you think Blizzard is so tyrannical, otherwise you’re supporting them.

Don’t you guys have phones?
WoW classic but actually worse than private servers!
Hong Kong.
Warcraft III: Refunded.

sorry; forgot the:
“OWL will definitely not take away resources from OW”

That is EXACTLY what OP did, and what most of others topic in favor of Hero bans do. They do not address the fact that the playerbase is not reliable which is a huuuuuge wrench Hero Ban remotely working.

As for your first point, YOU need to get real. DoTA has 115+ champs, a completely different rythm, and is a completely different game . Just using the same system is not the greatest idea, ya know?

As if I didn’t already know those two games are different. I’m not asking for 12 heroes to be banned, like the number banned in Comp DotA. Only to use the ban system like how they use it. The number of heroes banned should obviously still remain realistic to the amount of heroes we have in this game. Hence why I stated, 2. One per team.

My opinion is that it hasn’t really effected us at all. Not in any unique way that wouldn’t happen regardless, at least. Any change that happened would have come anyways as people were asking for them regardless of what was going on in OWL before, during, or after. For example, I can guarantee you that if OWL was going on right now, people would blame that for Orisa and Sigma getting nerfed, even though we know that’s not the reality of the situation.

There is absolutely no tangible evidence any of this has happened.

  • People were meta slaves long before OWL came into play. Remember, OWL only came up in late 2017 iirc. I remember way back in season 3 when people were saying I was throwing because I wanted to play Mercy instead of Ana because Triple Tank was the meta at the time. The pro scene has always been there, and people have always worshipped it. OWL just normalized it, nothing more.

  • I haven’t seen any “great disconnect” that hasn’t been there already. If anything it’s more the community’s fault. Take both Goats and Dive for example. We all know they were not dominant on the majority of the ladder. Yet we still had people complaining about them nonstop for over a year each. Meanwhile, this community did the exact same thing when Ana and Triple Tank was dominating the pro scene back then, complaining about how OP Ana was and how Soldier was a shield-shredder. It’s easy to argue that the problem was more player perception of pro-play and the devs trying to address the resulting whiners. Nothing happened that was strictly due to OWL specifically.

  • “Overwatch has been neglected for OWL” has been what people have been crying for a long time now. Meanwhile, the just showed us that they were really focusing on OW2. Weird how they can put all of their focus into OWL then still find the time to create a brand new game, right? It’s almost as if your initial assumptions were wrong in the first place!

It’s good to rely on your teammates, but at the end of the day your SR is still your own.

As a tank, yes you should.

If you don’t know how to play against your counters, you shouldn’t be climbing in the first place.

No, it doesn’t. Sure, it makes it easier to climb, but that’s only by dumbing down the requirements to climb.

And as I said, once you climb up, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to ban the same heroes. Especially since, as you said the bans will be limited roughly by tiers, your teammates will just assume that you climbed to their tier by actually knowing what you’re doing and didn’t take the easy road.

Again, you do not deserve to climb if you can’t handle a counter in a lower tier.

Anyways, we’re getting off track.

The question still remains.

How would Pools do this any more significantly than just player selected Bans?

Assuming the numbers of heroes locked are the same for both, what is the actual difference in diversity and viability? Especially if they take OWL’s format and do the same thing on the ladder, where bans will be weighed against most played heroes? People will still just ban the same heroes as if they were auto-locked by the weighted pools anyways, and people will still just play the same heroes that remain over and over again. Pools are not more restricting than Bans.

The real difference is the length those bans are in place. Bans will stick around until the meta shifts dramatically to the point where you’re forced to ban someone new. Pools will change things up constantly.

If you’re interested in diversity and constantly changing what is and isn’t viable, then Hero Pools are the clear option.

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Hate to be pedantic (that’s a lie, I love it.), but you LITERALLY said to “copy what DoTA did”.

But unpleasant pedantry apart, that still doesn’t addresses pretty much all of the issues with the idea.

With only one pick per team, it would be really unsatisfying for at least half of the players, in most games. Unless all players agrees on who should be banned, some people will be disappointed by the choice.

Which brings us to the fact that people would irremediably resort to bullying and pressuring their teammates over who to ban. It also doesn’t addresses the fact that this would still complicate queuing up, which already need to be streamlined as it is.

A ban system of ANY kind would also greatly lead to a lot more leavers when they’re hero of choice get banned, sending everyone back to square one. At least with Hero pools, potential leavers either won’t play, or would go into comp knowing they can’t pick such and such hero.

And that’s just scratching the surface. There is so much more grief, toxicity, and stale meta related issues with the concept of Hero bans.

In your first post, you accused me of putting too much thought in my post. I’d like now to mirror you, and ask you to put a bit more in yours, rather than jus throw out such a lackluster idea.

Yes, copy their system, not necessarily the exact same amount of heroes they ban. Please do continue with your pedantics.

And as I pointed out, apart from the pedantics, the number of heroes is FAR from the only problem “copying their system” would bring. Again, if you’re not willing to elaborate, why did you bother to chime in in the first place? Just saying “do this and it will work” without elaborating is utterly fruitless.

The pros of player based bans is noted in the OP. I figured you read that, so I didn’t bother elaborating the pros of player based bans.

Yes, people abuse things. They’re garbage. That’s just reality. You can’t stop that, but what we can do is use more than one brain cell and try to prevent those systems from being abused.

Hey let’s just push customs with XP. Let’s have an automated report system. Let’s allow walls in spawn. After all, what could go wrong?
This is what happens when a developer has dead zero understanding of human psychology and is completely lacking in foresight. Not one single one of those examples should have been ripe for abuse in the first place.
People are only as good as they’re allowed to be, and they’ve allowed this community to be quite bad.

This is a mistake every single developer in the world makes six billion times. People are trash. Your community is trash. They will abuse everything. Stop misunderestimating them.

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I don’t really understand this thought process of syaing hero pools are bad because it takes away agency from the players?

Dude the community has robbed players have agency so much over the years? the nonstop campaigning to get Tanks/supports nerfed based on overexaggerated reasoning, toxicity and flaming of off meta picks, and fellating the opinions of Streamers/youtubers just so you can see a hero you don’t like effectively removed from the game are all things THE COMMUNITY has done to take away player choice.

All of the issues discussed with hero bans are present in each of those platforms though. Hero bans have also been tested in tournaments and exactly what you’d expect happens. They ban either counters to the meta, or ‘‘op’’ heroes. thats what the term ban meta means, after you got rid of the ‘‘op’’ heroes, you play the next best thing, leading to yet another stale meta.

IDK why yall think giving the ability to players makes the game better, i can immediately think of a 6 stack with a ball and a doom that bans mei, sombra, and zarya, or sniper teams that ban reinhardt and winston.

hero bans were definitely a bad idea, hero pools, at least, i’m willing to try.

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Now try convincing the forum community that they’re not the only community of OW.

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If they don’t know not everyone who plays Overwatch is on the forums, I don’t think I can help them

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How ironic… Same was asked when 2-2-2 was announced.

You’re literally not allowed to have groups on ladder in GM.

Vs minecraft

Winner: Minecraft