Is to remove mid round hero swapping and to introduce a pick and ban. I know, you’re thinking this sounds terribly noobish and breaks one of the key mechanics of the game. And it does, I’m asking to lower the overall skill ceiling on the game.
The issue with the mechanic however is it does not work in most scenarios. In a game of hard counters, it promotes a rock paper scissors mechanic with no guarantee of your teammates being able to pick anything but rock. It just becomes such a point of frustration that ruins the integrity of the matchmaking.
So what I propose is we do away with it, and introduce pick/ban. For those unaware of the mechanics of pick/ban, you will be able to ban x number of characters prior to the round starting, as will your opponent, and you’ll be able to see who your opponents picked with the option of changing y amount of characters (typically 1) on your team immediately before the match begins.
In addition to this, it would be nice to see players ranked on a role basis. I might be a high master Zarya, but I’m probably a plat dps. I can’t even improve as a dps because I’m well aware that I would throw if I pick that role at my elo, which further dives me into that one trick position.
I know this is a team based game, but you have to consider what is optimal and what is expected when designing a ranked system.
I like the idea. Tho I would say slowly go in to it first. I think adding a ban system where each side can ban one hero for the game or even just the round would do well to help the game. Add that in, see how it does and how it effects the game.
With this in Blizzard can see who gets banned the most and then they can look at said heroes and what they can do to fix them. Also leaving the hero swapping in at first would be a good idea. Change to many things at once and it becomes too much for some people. While I like the idea of Sr levels for different roles and such, you would have to decide who you are playing before even getting in a game so the match maker can put you in the right level games. So that’s why I would leave hero swapping in for now. Plus I feel hero swapping is a big part of overwatch and to take it away strips some of the uniqueness away.
I got destroyed on reddit for suggesting this, wanted to see what the reaction would be on the forums. The consensus was that people would never get to play characters like Brig again, but as you say, that would clearly show a need to nerf a character.
Don’t get me wrong I like Hero swapping in theory, I just don’t think it works well in practicality.
For comp I really like that idea. I get it, Blizz wanted to make something different if it comes to mid game hero swap mechanics… but it’s not that great if it comes to comp mode. Persoanlly I think gameplay would feel so much interesting with ur proposition.
That’s how LoL and Rainbow Six work with their ban systems. If one hero/champion/op keeps getting banned, it means they are most likely over tuned and need to be looked at. Now it’s different on a pro level cause usually done to take a strong hero away from someone who is really good on them but that’s more strats and what not. But on ladder, if Brig gets banned over and over, well the devs need to look at them.
Now of course you will get the times were someone is a known one trick and the other team will ban their hero but to me that just promotes the idea of being flexible over one tricking.
The thing is that a player’s flex pool isn’t necessarily aligned with the one you want to have, especially when you’re in a pub game and have no control over who you get. Team five support mains and no tank mains, anyone?
Congrats on that. I wish I had jumped on it earlier instead of waiting so long to get into. It is quite fun tho I know I am terrible at it. I just really gotta learn the maps cause that is my biggest issue. I get lost lol.
But it’s even worse now. What happens now is a player mains something like genji, the other team swaps to Brig/Winston, and then they never switch off. At least with pick/ban you could say okay, we’ve got a guy that only plays Genji. Lets ban the winston, give him a chance to be productive.
I agree and that is something they need to fix in matchmaker. You don’t need a role que if the matchmaker was able to put people together based off of what they have played before. I don’t know if that is possible but if it was able to just put a tank player, a support player, a DPS player, and say three flex players together that be fine or just 2 of each and let them figure out what kinda comp they wanna run. If the team agrees to a goats comp then cool, they want dive cool. It won’t force a comp, just balance out the types of players together.
You mean being able to swap during the game? So basically you have let’s say Rein, Zarya, Ana, Zen, Genji & Tracer and the ennemy team has Pharah/Mercy have fun with that ! Also let’s say you’re on king’s row, Widow is really good to take first point but you’ll often change after that because she’s not as strong. So basically you disable that. I strongly disagree with that because it’s what makes Overwatch unique and also because the maps were kinda designed for that as well and if the ennemy team counters yours, you just need to switch. And also even if you were able to switch only 1 hero, you’d still need someone to be REALLY good at Widow to make sure she can counter Pharah by herself.
Really not a good idea. At the very least it would be 1 ban by team soooo what you’d see would be Rein as first ban, Winston as second ban and there you go, except if you have someone that is REALLY good with Hammond to the point where they can compense Winston’s shield well there you go, you now have a game with no good composition forcing you to either go full dps/off heal to win or trying to go D.Va / Hammond but it’s so hard and easily countered. If you have 2 heroes to ban nobody should ban Brigitte, ban the 2 main tanks useful to attack and you have officially ruined your game.
I kinda disagree mostly because you’d need to do tank/off-tank/hitscan/projectile/tracking/main heal/off heal
You can’t do just tank / dps / heal because you may be a really strong Main-heal but not so much as off-heal. Same goes with everything else. Also if you’re not good at dps just pick “easy” heroes to begin and then you’ll go to harder heroes. Start with Junk, Pharah, Soldier and you’ll learn the basis of dps in high master. Also if you went up only playing Zarya that’s also kinda your fault because if you never played anything else than her or even just anything else than Off-tank, it seems quite logical that you won’t have the level in other roles and you should have seen this sooner. That’s also why many people have a second account to play what they did not play on their main.
If someone wanted to play a character in comp, and that char gets banned, would there be an option for the match to be cancelled? If so, would it then become open to trolling as per the ‘ready button’ idea. (Oops, troll is never ready and just wasted 5 minutes of 11 people’s time)
It falls over immediately in a solo queue environment, where the individual is more important than the team.
Pick ban works in organised environments, scrims etc, solo queue it would drive more people from the game.
Myself, I am a firm believer that comp should be 6 stack only. It is a team game.
Many of the issues playing Overwatch today are a result of the devs caving to a community without a lot of foresight demanding a solo queue option.
Now if comp was 6 stack only, pick ban could be back on the table as it would be more team focused and not individual and team-mates would have hero choices which are conducive to the team’s success and flexing would be less of an issue as it is in solo queue.
Not really. The design is fine. The problem more so is the lack of counters and hero’s. With so few hero’s there’s little room for multiple hero’s that can do the same job differently. So Overwatch becomes a game of counter picking with mirror comps trying to beat the enemy to the big combo first rather than actual counters.
This is more of a community problem, though that could be curbed with a smarter match making system that does the job of role queue without needing role queue. Say if a person generally has more time on supports, they’re not going to be placed into a game with 5 other support mains.
![:slight_smile:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Also let’s say you’re on king’s row, Widow is really good to take first point but you’ll often change after that because she’s not as strong. So basically you disable that. I strongly disagree with that because it’s what makes Overwatch unique and also because the maps were kinda designed for that as well and if the ennemy team counters yours, you just need to switch. And also even if you were able to switch only 1 hero, you’d still need someone to be REALLY good at Widow to make sure she can counter Pharah by herself.