I mainly just have two concerns about the concept of hero bans for Overwatch.
For one, people aren’t going to use them for their intended purpose. They’re not going to use them to ban meta heroes or heroes that are too strong; they’ll just use them to ban heroes they don’t want to play against, or heroes that counter the comp they’re going for. Don’t like going against Doomfist? Then he’ll get banned. Running a lot of ability based heroes? Then slam that ban hammer on Sombra!
Another thing that I have a problem with is that players that are known for maining, one tricking, or even two tricking heroes - streamers especially - are going to get screwed over with this. If you see that Fitzy is on the other team, what hero are you going to ban? If you see Arrge? Kabaji? Chipsa? Chro? For every one of them, if people see that one of them is on the other team, they are just going to ban the hero that they’re known for because people know that they can be a huge problem with that hero. They’ll be singled out and won’t be able to play their favorite hero because everyone knows how good they are with that hero.
It’s a fair point but neither of them has as much of an overall shield as Rein. Whatever you ban when you have a smaller hero pool and a low number of players for that pool is going to cause problems.
The point of role queue to begin with was to be able to play the heroes you want to play without it affecting the structure of the team composition so much. That was the whole point. With hero bans, you might not get to play what you want to play at all, which is completely the opposite direction.
Solution: simply just hide the names and profiles of all players until ban phase is over. If you can’t see who you’re playing against, then you cannot target ban their mains. Other competitive games use this system and it would be extremely ease to implement.
As for your other argument, I do believe that the point of hero bans is to avoid playing against certain characters that you… don’t want to play against? There is no law that you HAVE to use hero bans to ban meta heroes. If you hate playing against Doomfist, and the rest of the team hates playing against Doomfist, then just ban Doomfist.
I’d be fine if it was a tournament-only kind of rule. Like, if hero bans were for Contenders and OWL matches. You usually don’t see metas in their full form until around Masters and GM anyways. Everywhere else, you could run just about anything and make it work. But Masters, GM, Contenders, and OWL was where you saw most of the mirror matches. So hero bans at the tournament level would make sense. It would prevent mirror match after mirror match, and make it so that Match 1 won’t look the same as Match 2 because they’d ban different heroes depending on the map and the teams and the players, etc.
So I’m fine with it being confined to OWL and Contenders. It keeps things interesting and prevents too many mirror matches. But I don’t think it really belongs on ladder. Not right now, anyways. I still think tanks need more variety before that happens. And even then, most hero-based competitive games that have hero bans usually have around 50-100 heroes. Overwatch, meanwhile, has 31. The game’s really not at that point yet. Not to mention that there are heroes in the game that fill certain niches, and they’re the only ones who fill that niche. So if that hero gets banned, that niche can’t be fulfilled for the team.
Reinhardt is still the deathball tank.
Orisa is the bunker tank.
Mercy is the only one who can undo deaths.
Ana is the only one who can deny healing.
Lucio is the only one who can provide speed boosts to the team.
So if you have a feeling that the other team would be most successful running a bunker, all you need to do is ban Orisa. If you think their team would use heroes that need to go fast, just ban Lucio. If you’re running a team that relies on high amounts of healing, just ban Ana so you don’t have to worry about anti-heal. To me, along with not letting people play what they want to play like Reith said, I feel it also reduces the emphasis on counterplay which is a core feature of Overwatch.
I mean, why bother learning to counterplay when you can just ban the hero you don’t like?
I’ve always seen the point of hero bans is to provide variety outside of meta. That way, in double shield, for instance, it wouldn’t just be Orisa/Sig vs Orisa/Sig. It would keep metas from getting too static. That way, instead of complaining about getting dive for a year, or getting GOATS for a year, or getting X meta for a year, people can just ban one hero that is key to making that meta work, and create the variety themselves.
But I don’t think people are going to use it for that purpose. I doubt people will use it for the variety or to stimulate creativity and divert from what is META. They’ll just nail down a hero that they hate playing against and don’t want to figure out how to counter, and just ban them every single time so they can try to essentially delete that hero from their games.
No. The point of hero bans is to avoid playing against a hero. That is the core essential of what a ban system IS.
What you are describing is your OPINION on how hero bans should be used. Not everyone adheres to your opinion, which is false anyway. Hero bans provide uses in a multitude of situations outside of the singular one you suggested. Some examples might include:
Avoid playing against an excessively powerful hero. Wouldn’t it be nice to just ban Hanzo and not have to deal with him?
Strategic removable of a counter pick. If you want Ball, maybe you ban Mei
Like you said, diversify meta
Get your teammates off of bad heroes. I don’t want anyone playing Sombra on my team. Sorry. She just sucks.
Additionally, hero bans provide another measure for balancing. I’ve said this multiple times before, but balancing decisions made purely on win rates and pick rates leads to the developers thinking that Genji and Soldier are in healthy states.
The ESSENTIAL of a hero ban is to avoid playing WITH or AGAINST a hero. That is the “point” of hero bans. Your “definition” is NOT a definition. It is an EXAMPLE. You have provided an example of how hero bans might be implemented. But that is not some law sent down from above that people have to follow. Hero bans can be used for a variety of strategies.
Hero bans provide options and diversity, something this game needs desperately.
I also don’t understand the argument of “locking down a character every game”. If one character has a high ban rate, then they will receive nerfs. Good! You have provided valuable data to the developers. I’d also like to point out that it is NOT just you deciding on hero bans. If every player had a ban, a third of the roster would be gone. Most likely your team gets AT MOST 2 bans (I would think one each). Good luck convincing your team of your deep-hearted HATRED for Doomfist…
I think it will be more like, out with the old and in with the new. It seems blizzard is heading in the direction of turning overwatch into an actual good competitive game. Hero bans might weed out the players who one trick over powered heroes to climb and players who can only play 2 heroes in their role, but it will also bring back more flexible, intelligent players who understand hero bans are necessary in hero based games. Overwatch is largely low IQ players anyway, so I’m all for it. I’d rather have a small intelligent community than a large dumb one.
A) You are not correct, Metro explicitly says the leak came from someone OTHER than whoever leaked OW2.
B) All he knows is they’ve been ‘working’ on a ban system, which given that they were just ‘working’ on 1-3-2 means it could just as likely never see public release.
C) He assumes that whatever big patch is coming will contain some major competitive feature but he has no actual hard information
Yes that’s how it will work in most ranks, and it’s what happens in league of legends. I don’t understand why you think that’s a problem though? Just look at the forums. It’s 95% “this hero is so broken! nerf this hero!” and then a bunch of comments defending x hero saying that hero is not op. This is because people have different skill levels and what is OP to a silver player is not OP to a diamond player. Hero bans just give players a say in balance, and actually makes balance much better overall, because there will ALWAYS be overpowered heroes and you can’t avoid that. If they don’t want reaper in their games then they should be able to play without reaper in their games. Bans will make the game far less frustrating for most people. The only people this will upset is people who can only climb by abusing over powered heroes like mei and hanzo.
Yeah, such a good addition, just ban a random hero over and over and he will be nerfed just because we ban him all the time. You don’t like Pharah or Widow? Ban Mercy, their greatest pocket; Mercy nerfed in the following patch. You want to play some Dive but Brig counters you? Ban her and enjoy a free game, Brig nerfed in the following patch. Or maybe you don’t want people to throw (as in “just play”) with Symmetra or Torbjorn. That’s fine, just ban them, and they will get nerfed because they are getting banned.
Oh, and isn’t it gonna be great - waiting 10+ minutes just to see your favorite hero getting banned. Great addition, as if we had much freedom with role prison anyway.
He also said none of the other things you asserted. It’s not the same source, he has no guarantees or hard information that it is bans and he is predicting it to be hero bans based on the fact he knows a major patch is incoming.
They’d still be banning the strongest shield in the game. Do you know how big of an advantage that is?!
Like yeah
But you’d have to be intentionally ignorant to say “All the snipers banned the hero with the STRONGEST shield. The same snipers that we ALL call OP just banned the strongest walking source of cover here. That seems fair”.
It’s like 2-2-2 all over, people are downplaying the cons because at the end of the day they would rather err on the side of changing something rather than keep the game as is.
We’ve removed hero stacking, we’ve implemented roleQ, now it looks like hero bans are next. But are we ever gonna be satisfied? Doubtful.
