Here’s a few problems that a single hero ban for both teams would solve.
Meta slaves: Overwatch metas are mostly built off synergy, so banning the lynchpin of the meta (e.g Brig/Rein in GOATs) makes the entire comp useless. If we had a single ban we never would have had the Mercy meta.
Permanent mirror matches in esports: There’s never going to be an environment where every single team is running GOATs, or every single team is running a Mercy, or every single team is running full dive, if any hero from that comp is banned.
Onetricks: Players should be allowed to hover over the enemy team’s nametag and see their top 5 most played. Then, if you see a onetrick anything on the enemy team, instaban it and that player is gonna drop sr all the way to bronze. It forces players to have a hero pool larger than two or they’re going to tank in ranked.
It’s not that hard to implement. Just have multiple rounds of voting. First, everyone picks a hero to ban. If there is a hero picked more than three times, that hero gets banned. After this, the heroes picked in that round and the number of votes they got are displayed to the team, and they get to pick from that pool. If no hero has more than 50% of the votes, then a random hero which has the most votes is picked (e.g if Brig has 2 votes and D.Va has 2 votes and two other heroes have 1 each, Brig or D.Va will be randomly picked).
Groups would only get one vote for the entire group, to avoid multiple trolls grouping to abuse this system.
Never going to happen. Although this game has “MOBA-like” characteristics, it is not a MOBA. This game, in its simplest form, is a team game of rock-paper-scissors. If you ban rock from the game then scissors is going to run rampant without any counter.
Yeah, the problem is there aren’t enough main supports right now. You ban Moira/Ana and you are left with no main support choice other than Mercy (which you could argue is not a main support).
They need more characters in the roles for a hero ban to work properly.
Somebody is going to get screwed by this type of system if the teams decide “Junkrat/Sym banned. Skill heroes only” that attitude is going to make a lot of people find a different game.
The last thing people want in OW is a control freak deciding how the game is played for everyone whether they like it or not. Its partially why LFG failed, it got a rep for being used by hilariously annoying control freak lobby leaders.
Unless the heroes picked to ban are completely random, picked by blizzard themselves and more than 1 then it’s never going to work.
Maybe let’s say Blizzard decides to disable Rein, Dva, Mercy, Doomfist, reaper and Ana for the whole week for example. Then everybody on both teams in all SR tiers are forced to play without those heroes. Kinda like a weekly challenge then that would be fine.
But to ban heroes just based on bias from teammates and who you don’t like playing with or against is totally unacceptable. I would uninstall immediately
Let’s say I am or I’m on a team with a top tier Tracer. She wants to ban Brig, because it makes her life easier. The enemy team, seeing we have a Tracer main, can choose to ban Tracer therefore making it not really matter that they can’t play Brig. Yes, one team can ban rock so they can always play scissors, but the other team can just ban scissors.
First, there are plenty of comps that are viable even without a main support. Second, if neither team has a main support then both teams are equally disadvantaged. If you can only play Moira/Ana (or hero/other hero), then you’re screwed, but two tricking is only slightly more healthy for this game than one tricking.
If a sizable amount of teams are banning the same heroes over and over again, that points to a balance or kit problem, does it not? Blizzard then gets a more or less objective idea of what the player base thinks of certain heroes. If a hero is so prominent in the meta that s/he gets banned constantly, maybe they ought to be changed in some way.
You don’t ban heroes so that your teammates can’t play them, you ban heroes so that the opposing team can’t play them. If I get a torb onetrick on my team, I’m not gonna be happy about it but I want them on torb. I’m not gonna shoot myself in the foot by trying to get torb banned (also since the other team is probably gonna do it anyway).
It isn’t just a balance problem, it is a fun problem. Say I like playing Ana/Moira, I don’t want to have to play Mercy because those heroes were banned. Not saying that would happen, but it could. They need to expand the roster more for support/tank before adding in bans.
Further, everyone would private profile, so you aren’t going to know about the one-tricks on the other team, so it would just be a guessing game. What will happen instead is the community will ban a hero (right now probably Brig) until they are nerfed into a state in which a ban on them would be wasted.
That is such a childish way of thinking, “i dont like them playing that so they are not allowed to” dont like playing against a character? Too bad thats life. Not good enough to beat a player or character then be an adult and rise to the challenge
If there’s a situation where 2 heroes are constantly unplayable because everyone bans them, that is a huge red flag for the balance team that something is wrong with those two heroes. Therefore, even if your two favorite heroes are always banned, the balance team SHOULD roll out changes which address whatever issue is relevant.
I suggested in my OP that you should be able to see the top 5 most played for players on the enemy team even if they have a private profile. Otherwise onetricks would just hide their profile and the system wouldn’t address that problem.
I mean, no need for the ad hominem, but at least you make some sort of relevant statement. Personally, I don’t feel like any of the heroes I play get hard countered much. Really, a hero ban system should just be a way for players to compensate for poor buffs and nerfs that the devs make. I remember the Mercy meta where people would flame support players for not picking Mercy. I’m not a fan of having must picks and I don’t really want to play Mercy, so I would have voted to ban Mercy.
To be perfectly honest, I’m a diamond player and for me the meta is kinda irrelevant. There’s pretty much nothing that can’t be played around. My main complaint is esports because watching a single team comp or hero pick dominate the pro scene makes it extremely boring to watch.
Who are you to say what someone can and can’t play. Torb or no torb. Your team or the enemy team.
But if torb is to be banned, mine and the enemy team shouldn’t be able to use him.
It’s about keeping things fair. Because if I’m gonna lose or win, it should be fair
It isn’t always just a balance problem. I don’t like playing with/against Sym or Torb, not because I think they are OP, but I think they are annoying, I don’t like turrets as a mechanic. They aren’t going to remove turrets. People don’t like playing against Brig, but even with all the nerfs, her anti-dive role is relatively unchanged, and they aren’t just going to remove her.
If you’ve ever played LoL or know much about it, you know hero banning isn’t for banning “unfun” heroes. It’s for banning heroes that are detrimental to your playstyle. It’s like if you can win the Pharah vs hitscan against everything besides a S76, you ban S76.
That’s… how hero banning works.
Sure, you don’t like turrets as a mechanic, but would you rather ban torb when no one planned to play him or ban Genji so the enemy Genji onetrick is screwed? Hero banning isn’t an “I don’t like X hero’s playstyle”, it’s a strategic move that should hurt your enemy’s ability to synergize.
I think it can work with in the PUGs game format where you ban a map style, pick a map and build teams. Then each ban a hero. I’m not sure how it would work without the map picking side of it.
It opens the door for a real ugly ban meta to take form and then players to lose games being their team did not know you “Always ban hero ______ on map _____” or whatever. Plus it puts even more weight on player levels and that’s a bit unfair too. As a level 1000+ player is going to have 50+ hours on heroes 10+ deep down their hero pool in many cases.
I do think it would be a fun arcade or event mode to test out.
Its kind of shocking to me how many of this community’s “competitive” players think. Have NONE of you ever played a competitive video game in your life? Not just calling you out who I’m quoting, but a bunch of folks in this thread.
Banning has been a thing in competitive gaming since the days of competitive Street Fighter where certain characters were banned for being overpowered. If those characters were all you could play, tough. Learn another or lose.
In current days every single MOBA has ban waves. Blizzard’s own game Heroes of the Storm has a ban phase in the competitive league. DOTA, League, etc all have ban phases. Everyone needs to stop thinking in playful Quick Play and think COMPETITIVE. Thing is, every player in those games HAVE to learn multiple characters in order to get good at the game.
What does banning someone’s favorite hero prove? It proves they really aren’t good at this game, they are good at ONE HERO. Can’t play more than one? Do you really belong in the rank you belong in then? Probably not.
Now all my thoughts being laid out here, this will never work in Overwatch in its current state. Quite simply, there aren’t enough heroes. I’m not saying that in a “Players don’t have a large enough hero pool” way, I"m saying it in a “This will FORCE certain metas because this is the only choice we have” kind of way. Even if players learn to 2 trick this will still force certain metas if some heroes are unpopular. Like say if the current bans are on Doomfist and Brig, well now that forces the dive meta again. If Overwatch is still going strong in 2-3 years and we get 40+ heroes, yeah lets talk about bans again. Until then, isn’t going to work well.
I’d prefer the MOBA system that the enemy is unknown until the match starts. This isn’t to avoid one tricks being punished, but to avoid toxicity in it’s own way. One tricks will suffer the most from this system anyway.
One character banned per side, if both sides ban main healers then neither side gets main healers. It’s still balanced and completely off meta. This is a good thing to create new interesting matches.
I agree that 2 random characters banned per match would probably be the best way to implement at first. They should do this as a game mode in arcade.
Agreed, this should be the biggest indicator that a character is widely viewed as bad in some way.
Yeah, and who are you to instalock their character before and thus stop them playing a character…
The meta concern is why I would prefer it to be trialed as 2 random characters per game, as an arcade mode. That being said, I don’t mind that it will mostly benefit players with more time in the game, who have played more characters. This is already true in mystery heroes and is probably the most fun mode for me when I play (which really needs a competitive mode).
