Mauga is a Perfect Example Why There Should be Hero Bans

General Discussion
1

They should be player selected every match. Leaving this guy be OP broken for this long is infuriating.

2 Likes
2

Team based bans?

Match wide bans?

Voted or random?

It will not end well. Have fun when you can’t counter the enemy Doom because Cassidy or Ana are banned. Same if it’s a match wide ban. If it’s up to a vote, then everyone will simply ban the heroes they hate playing against for one reason or another or they’ll ban them based on who mains who.

Arrge no longer able to play Hanzo without an alt account.
ZBRA no longer playing Doom.
Kenzo no longer playing Widow.
Seagull no longer playing Cassidy.
Necros no longer playing Genji.

And if it’s up to a vote, it would be easy to argue you’re potentially sabotaging your teammate, who’s probably getting reported for “throwing” as a result of doing poorly on a different character. Banning characters is a surefire way to lose players, increase false bans, and screw with data, which will screw with balance.

They balance based on pick rates, win rates, and I would assume comps and other things not listed. If a character gets banned too much, that means either:

They’re too oppressive
Too strong
Or too weak/ a throw pick

Thus, resulting in otherwise unnecessary buffs, nerfs, or reworks now partially based on ban rates. And you know as well as I do the most banned heroes will be:

Dps
Pharah
Sombra
Hanzo
Widow
S76

Tank
Mauga
Doom
Ball
Orisa
And maybe Dva, Idk who would be the 5th most banned tank

Support
Mercy
Moira
Kiriko
Ana
Baptiste

Again, resulting in otherwise unnecessary changes because all those heroes fall into at least 1 of the 3 aforementioned categories, but now other heroes have a better chance to shine because they have fewer counters or will sink if they’re dependent on these characters, meaning they’re getting otherwise unnecessary changes.

Lastly, you have to deal with players in game. They’ll get suspended if they leave too many games, but they might get so many games in a row where their preferred choices or their friends choices are banned, resulting in them either doing poorly or throwing yet playing just enough so as to not get suspended. Especially if it’s up to a vote, imagine a Mei who saves all her walls for when the enemy launches a Dva ult at them or something.

Buddy, if I want to play Reaper, Idc if you pick him first, but if he is banned, by the enemy, I will do everything in my power to make 1-2 of the miserable (targeting supports or snipers exclusively as Sombra for example), but if he is banned by my own team, expect the aforementioned Mei or a S76 who focuses solely on healing. How about a Bastion who only shoots barriers until the barrier is down? How about a Lifeweaver who specifically pulls all the dive heroes every time they get close to the enemy?

Lastly, what are you going to do if the counters for the most troublesome heroes are banned instead? What if Ana and/ or Zenyatta for example are banned, but not either Mauga, Hog, or Orisa? What if Cassidy, Ashe, and/ or Widow are banned, but not Pharah, Tracer, and/ or Sombra?

5 Likes
3

People who think that a ban system removes broken heroes are insane. It enables them. Sure, it might not be Mauga, it might just be something else, with its counters now banned so no one can gate them.

You think bans means you get to escape metas? No. No, you don’t. And thats why bans are stupid.

10 Likes
4

bro just say you have no idea what you are talking about and save us the read.

paladins just looks at what 2 peoples got authority the longest ago and gives them unilateral ability, bronze self regulates different than masters, so balancing doesn’t destroy other ranks.

dota picks the top picks for a skill bracket (normally what opaf)

it’s for comp only, other games hide names until voting is done so known people dont get targetted.

and you never hear people complaining about having these functions

5

People need to understand that they’ll only hate the game more if hero bans are implemented. I know what to expect both from players and the balance team. If they want hero bans so badly, they can play custom games, I’m sure there’s at least one to accommodate them.

6

I agree OP. Mauga is definitely too strong atm, but even if Blizzard balances him perfectly, he’s still insanely unfun to play both with and against. If hero bans existed today, I’d ban Mauga and Sombra every chance I could.

7

Every character in the game has multiple heroes that counter them, so your fear that heroes will become uncounterable is just not a real concern. If the enemy team has a really good Doom but Ana is banned, you can still go Brig or Cassidy or Junkrat or Roadhog or any number of heroes that work well into Doom. If the enemy has a Pharah that’s destroying your team but Widow is banned, just go Soldier or Ashe or Ana or Bap, etc. There’s enough heroes in the game and enough overlap between kits that banning 1-2 heroes wouldn’t make any one character uncounterable

8

It can also mean they’re simply perceived to be one of those, regardless of whether or not they actually are.

We’ve all seen how threads complaining about Ana skyrocketed only after Blizzard said she was heavily-used. It only takes Blizzard or any high-profile YouTuber or Twitch streamer to mention a character’s name in passing and suddenly they’re all people focus on. Look at Symmetra; she was doing perfectly fine, nobody really seemed to care about her one way or another, but one OWL commentator made a passing comment about how the pros weren’t using her, and overnight the forums filled with threads demanding a rework.

People like Seagull have already influenced how the game is balanced—or rather, unbalanced—by throwing very public hissy fits when someone kills them twice in a row and getting lots of clicks and shares. Enabling players to ban heroes from a match will, I think, mostly be used as an extension of that. More heroes will be banned because someone watched a YouTube video telling them a hero is broken, rather than because the hero is actually broken.

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Character, weapon, map, or any other ban trends in other games only ever follow what ‘influencer’-types dictate, and make games less balanced. The only exception has been in games where there are so many effectively-identical options that banning one is more just like banning a skin rather than an actual mechanic. (League being the prime example of this; OW does not have anywhere near as many characters.)

3 Likes
9

There may be several counters, but what if you’re not good with the counters? What if any of the counters you are good with are banned? And this is also entirely dependent on who mains who as well as how many bans there are. What if all of a characters counters are banned for whatever stupid reason the devs gave that many? There is still plenty of potential for a character to go unopposed either because of the banned characters or the player’s lack of experience with the counters.

1 Like
10

Players wouldn’t have to think that if Blizzard wasn’t obviously going the pay to win route to selll battlepasses.

This is OW2’s future. Get used to it if you’re gonna play.

11

You mentioned one tricks a lot in your post too. If someone is only good at 1 or two heroes, that’s on them. I don’t have much sympathy for OTPs who can’t play their preferred hero because Overwatch has always been about counterswapping and only learning one specific playstyle SHOULD come with downsides. Character flexibility should be rewarded and I think hero bans would accomplish that

12

The point still stands. All it will accomplish is more leavers, throwers, “throwers”, and otherwise unnecessary balance changes. If Widow for example is getting banned too much, either she’s (1) too strong, (2) too weak, (3) too oppressive, (4) or she’s getting banned because she is specifically someone’s main character.

1 means she’s getting nerfed

2 means a buff

3 means a nerf or rework

4 means someone is either not going to have as much fun as they would otherwise, or it means someone is getting sabotaged and probably going to underperform, which knowing how toxic the playerbase is with an easy to abuse report system, will result in more people being flamed/ false reported

If there should be character bans, it shouldn’t be up to the players. It should be 100% random.

13

Character bans aren’t supposed to be a way to balance the game. People would ban characters they don’t want to play with/against, not whoever they feel is most overpowered (although there would probably be a lot of overlap). Don’t want to play rush? Ban Lucio. Don’t want to get hacked all game? Ban Sombra. Its by no means an excuse for Blizzard to stop balancing the game lol and IF ANYTHING should help them get better stats for balancing because they can more easily identify the problem characters who get banned disproportionately.

If someone gets a character they want to play banned and throw, report them and they’ll get banned. The community doesn’t need to conform to toxic one-tricks who sabotage everyone else’s experience if they don’t get their way.

14

Hero bans can work when this game has more heroes, more overlap between said heroes, and heroes that aren’t counter dependent.

Because all it takes is going against one hog player to ban ana, and now they are unkillable.

15

Antinade is the only exception to the rule, because devs don’t know how to balance nade. But for every other hero/ability, I think there’s plenty of overlap.

16

Hide player names/profiles until after the vote is complete. This is an incredibly easy issue to bypass.

I don’t see this as an issue. If characters are getting widely banned because of how miserable they are to play into, that’s a message to the dev team that they need adjusting.

1 Like
17

Here’s my idea, players can “ban” which heroes the encounter online, how this will effect the que, when a player has heroes ban then they will only match up with people with the same ban. Yes this will effect YOUR que and YOUR que only.
Now here’s something more practical, Options for private servers or custom que searches.

1 Like
18

You clearly have more faith in people than I do. Either I’m right and the balancing only becomes worse for the aforementioned reasons, or I’m wrong and still players are getting screwed over as I was saying, which btw, would sabotage their fun/ performance, which is only prevented from being a reportable offense because it was a feature implemented if not for that purpose, then with it in mind.

19

If pharah bans her best 2 hitscan counters? If ana players ban kiriko? If rush haters ban lucio? If poke haters ban sigma? Hell, if a pharah / echo player gets their mercy banned?

There isn’t enough overlap lol. Blizzard devs have basically made sure of that.

20

actually he’s an example why there shouldn’t be. how long from launch on do you think mauga would stay banned every game? you think it’s healthy for a tank to just be banned the whole time instead of adjusting whatever needs adjusting?