Are hero bans a skill issue?
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Nah, people shouldnt have to play around a Widow IMO
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On the devs part (70%)
And the playerbase (30%)
A strong hero can be countered but if you nerf them, their perfect counter or adjust fundamentals, then that’s all on the Devs.
Does wanting to ban a hero mean you aren’t skilled enough to deal with them?
Does me wanting to ban Pharah because I am a support player who doesn’t like playing Mercy pocketing a hitscan mean I have a skill issue? yea i guess
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Absolutely a skill issue. Any player who wants genuine competition would face any and all heroes instead of cherry picking their opponents.
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No. Hero bans work around bad balancing and design, which is not a skill issue. Anyone who thinks so probably just plays a hero who will probably be banned. Real skill would involve players being able to adapt to these conditions.
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That describes adaptability and flexibility. What it does not do is address the best of the best in the player pool for any given character. You will not see top tier characters in hero banned game modes because their lesser peers will prevent them from ever competing.
If you are the best of the best on an individual hero but cannot hold that rank without playing that hero, then you arent the best of the best overall. Someone who can skillfully play two heroes 98% as well as you play one is the better player.
It’s no different than how someone with the world’s best aim isnt going to be rank 1 if they dont also have good game sense and positioning. Even players with hard locking aimbots cannot compete with many high ranked players.
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Part a skill issue.
But just addressing a symptom and not the direct cause being the devs over buffing and over nerfing things to create power creep issues.
The more stuff they add to cover up skill issues (like perks and passives) will make bigger headaches that bans won’t be able to completely sort out.
Ya just find the next broken choices to use after your first choice gets banned.
That describes a generalist as opposed to an actual top ranked performer for any given character. Sure they can use a wider field of characters, but as generalists I would not expect them to be able to land the same shots as a one trick or similar. The latter requires a lot more dedication and practice, so the muscle memory will not be the same. They will be at a disadvantage when trying to mirror against such an opponent.
Hero bans were tested before, and it ended quite badly. I do not know why it is coming back, but I do not expect much support from the top tier specialist players since they cannot operate at their absolute best.
Generalists are almost always more skilled players. The ability to be flexible and adapt when your one trick/specialized hero is not strong means you can perform well more consistently.
If you want to hire someone for your business, and you have the choice of someone who has done only one thing for 50 years or the guy who has extensive knowledge in 5 different fields to nearly the same proficiency but not quite as good in that oen particular thing, you would certainly choose the second guy. He would be universally considered the more skilled person.
Hero bans were never tested. Hero pools were not hero bans.
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Generalist are more flexible. More skilled? I believe that depends on the player and character being used in question. I do agree that having a wider stable of character options does grant better odds of success, but this is also why hero bans reducing competition is bad game design.
This is also a quantity vs. quality example. Brain surgeons and similar specialists command far higher salaries than general practitioner doctors, but the latter’s skill set is more useful to the general populace. So which is the best? It depends on what the team needs.
Of course not, this is something necessary. I believe the reason Overwatch didn’t do this from the start is definitely because of the low number of characters. At least now, they have enough characters to ban 2-3 of them.
Yes but your comparing a high end doctor to a standard practitioner. That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying the worlds third best brain surgeon who can also do heart surgery is a more skilled doctor than the world’s best brain surgeon who cant do anything else.
Also not a great analogy overall because when it comes to someone’s health, they are willing to pay a premium for that specialty. Overwatch does not reward specialty in any way. There’s no special demand for being the world’s best sojourn player. What matters is being the worlds best player – today that could be in sojourn’s favor, and tomorrow it could be in genji’s favor. Being able to play sojourn and genji almost as well as the guy who can only play sojourn means that player will consistentrly be a higher rank across deviations in the game’s balance, and thus would be the better overall player.
All hero bans do is provide a sliding window of metas within the season instead of waiting for balance patches.
Depends.
There are legitimate cases where heroes are busted and I think it’s fair to not want them.
Additionally, banning can be a form of skill in the sense that team building is a skill. Take league of legends as an example: pros strategically build the best comp they can while also attempting to prevent their enemies from doing the same.
That said, I think most players aren’t as good as they believe they are and/or just don’t like playing against certain heroes.
No, the top 0.01% of players literally can’t play around it… dive doesn’t work, and to actually counter widow is widow (sombra never was a counter as there are actual grapple spots where her tp can’t even reach (and these exist on pretty much every map) . Also the widow can just 180 dink sombra.
not for me… i can deal with every hero…
some are just too anoying and frustrating to have in the game
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I guess we can agree to disagree here, because I can also add that the former cannot necessarily perform the same procedures with the same level of skill and accuracy as the latter, especially if the latter is pioneering new techniques that the former is unaware of. But this is anecdotal and does not work well for demonstrating OW2’s nuances.
The problem with players having control over the competition is that avoids facing the best opponents, thereby watering down any true demonstration of the absolute best reflexes, mechanical aim, tactics, etc. It is a skill-diminished field that only caters to challenge avoidance.
Well this largely becomes a circular argument – you say this only because you believe that the best players are the ones playing the heroes being banned, while I’m arguing the opposite. If they were the best players they’d still be at that rank.
There’s nothing wrong with specializing and being the best at a particular specific thing, but I fundamentally hold that that person is absolutely not as skilled as someone who is almost as good but also can do something else extremely well. The combined skill of a player is more important than the max of an individual one.
Maybe as a different analogy, imagine you’re playing a racing game like Mario Kart. The characters and their karts have different stats – some better at acceleration, some better at top speed, etc. A character with 10/10 acceleration and 1/10 in everything else would certainly not be considered as good as a character with 8/10 in every category. They might have the best acceleration in the game, which in certain regions of certain maps would hold a big advantage, but overall they will be worse in every other scenario.
In OW, whether you’re the best at a hero or not means very little, because the hero that is good now might not be the hero that is good next season. It doesnt account for hero power as well. I think we can all agree that launch brig was not balanced. Would you suggest that the rank 1 brig at the time was a better player than the rank 1 ana? I highly doubt it, even though there’s a solid chance that brig was higher on the leaderboards.
I think that part of the problem is that we have different definitions of who qualifies as “the best.”
Your definition sounds like it covers who can play the greatest range of characters with the most effectiveness and impact. My definition just seeks the “best” individual player at a specific character and nothing else. There is no reason why a generalist cannot be the #1 ranked Widow / Cass / Ashe / etc. since this is purely a performance argument.
Either way, I still think limiting hero options to address specific perceived balance issues is a poor format. Regular vs. hero ban queues should exist separately so that everyone can pick and choose the game they want to play. However, I will not join any hero limited queue since I prefer that all options be open.