Team Fortress 2, is unarguably the spiritual predecessor of Overwatch.
A lot of other games have things like character bans, pick phases and role limits.
However those games almost never involve switching characters mid-game.
(Much less both sides having access to the same characters in a competitive format).
So maybe it would be better to investigate how TF2 deals with the issue.
In TF2, for it’s “Standard Competitive Format” it’s 6v6 with character switching.
However there are limits when you switch between characters, as follows:
2 Scout players or fewer at any given time
2 Soldier players or fewer at any given time
1 or 2 Pyro player(s) or fewer at any given time (varies by league)
1 Demoman player or fewer at any given time
1 or 2 Heavy player(s) or fewer at any given time (varies by league)
1 or 2 Engineer player(s) or fewer at any given time (varies by league)
1 Medic player or fewer at any given time
1 or 2 Sniper player(s) or fewer at any given time (varies by league)
2 Spy player(s) or fewer at any given time
If RoleQueue or 2-2-2 isn’t going to happen for a long time.
Or might be wholly incompatible, due to DPS queue times.
“Dynamic Hero Limits” could be the answer.
In particular, I’d say go ahead and put in these limits for Overwatch:
3 DPS players or fewer at any given time
4 Tank players or fewer at any given time
2 Healer players or fewer at any given time
The reasoning for picking these numbers is that it almost guarantees either 2Tank1Heal, or 1Tank2Heal. Which isn’t perfect, but it’s miles better than 5-6DPS comps, or uncoordinated 4-1-1 comps. And you’d almost always atleast 2 Roles to choose from at any given time.
There are a few exceptions, such as 3DPS-3Tank. But in a deadlock like that, atleast everyone has the opportunity to switch to Healer. So everyone is equally responsible if a lack of a Healer loses the game.
I figure something like this could be implemented very easily, could probably even make a Workshop mode with it in a couple minutes. And if they wanted to put it into OWL/Contenders. Those are already run with custom-game settings.
Unlike 2-2-2, it would allow for a wide variety of Comps. But you would usually end up with
- 2DPS-2Tank-2Heal
- 3DPS-1Tank-2Heal
- 1DPS-3Tank-2Heal
- 4Tank-2Heal
- 3-2-1 / 2-3-1 / 3-3-0 (Primarily for low-tier games, or bigbrain cheese comps)
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Also if people haven’t noticed, those with fast connections/harddrives have to wait for everyone to load before picking their character. So that avoids some of the moral hazard of those with superior hardware getting a guarunteed instalock.
Devs could also make an optional “Role Dibs” Queue, which locks you into a Role in 2-2-2, but only for the first 30 seconds of the game.
Also, if they really really really need to give people something like RoleBasedSR, then just give people 2 extra “Profiles” to switch between, that aren’t necessarily locked to a Role. Practically the same.
The only forseable problem I figure is what happens when you get 3+ AnchorTanks like Orisa/Rein. But they could just arbitrarily limit AnchorTanks at the hero select screen. Since they are already limiting hero selection with role limits.
