Is there a reason Overwatch 2 would not add bans to competitive? I think it would switch things up and result is making the game/OW league more dynaminc and interesting to watch and play. At least in competitive. Any thoughts?
2 Likes
ânot enough heroesâ
âwe donât want to keep people from playing their favorite heroâ
Thatâs basically their justification.
Cool. I would ban genji every single game just because
1 Like
It worked in Paladins and it would work in Overwatch. Especially now that more heroes are added and hard counters are being toned down anyway due to the unlock mechanics, it would be a much better fit.
Drafting wouldnât just make OWL more interesting to watch but it also has the potential to improve or even fix many gameplay and balance issues. For example one side effect would be that cheese combos like Pharmercy would be much harder to pull off and more risky.
This is the one change that would genuinely get me feeling optimistic about the gameâs future again, but I donât think it has enough âpoliticalâ support yet for the devs to seriously consider it.
5 Likes
Think of all the newer players. Then imagine they already donât have all the heros unlocked. Then one of the few they have gets banned. Yeah, they dug themselves a hole with this mechanic so now it wonât work.
All youâd need to do is require a minimum of #bans + #role slots - 1 heroes before queueing up competitive. Thatâs not much to ask, it should be the bare minimum anyway. E.g. if there is one ban and you queue up for damage, you would need at least 5 damage heroes unlocked. Then if two of your 5 get banned, two more get picked by the enemy and one more gets picked by your teammate, you still have one option left.
Nah, they should just not have hero unlocks. You should have them all.
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I agree, just saying it doesnât mean we canât have a draft. Having only five heroes unlocked for a role would be too little with or without a draft.
Honestly, they have enough heroes now if they limit the number of bans. I know there were multiple tests done by SVB on banning. He even wrote a great essay that the devs completely ignored, didnât seem to bother to read, nor even take into consideration (although I may be overstating the reaction of the devs based on a few comments from SVB in recent podcasts). I think itâs still out there. It might be a bit outdated because it was done in OW1 but considering there are more heroes now, itâs probably STILL valid.
I would say bans could apply only to enemy team. For example lets say each team can ban 3 champtions, if bans would apply to both teams that mean there could be 6 champions banned for each team, but if bans apply only to enemy team then would be only 3 banned champions for each team.
It would work kind of combination like leaguel of legends, where you canât pick same champion that enemy picked, so one team can pick, other canât pick. Thatâs basically same just with bans and you donât need to pick champion that you banned.
And only 1 ban per role for each team.
I strongly think this could go wrong. While yes, this would bring a nice new strategic dimension to the game. My fear is this would only really apply very high up in the ladder and everywhere lower than that, the âannoyingâ heroes get banned. This is what happened in R6S when they introduced bans. The game is very similar in the hero shooter kind of sense where some heroes are better than others and some are more annoying than others. Iâll share some data from their Designer Notes (Y7S2):
For reference the game at this time had 32 attackers and 32 defenders. Both teams ban one operator from both categories.
The chances of having the same 2 attackers banned (Thatcher and Jackal): 37.3%
The chances of having neither of them banned: 4.4%
The chances of having the same 2 defenders banned (Mira and Valkyrie): 18%
The chances of having 2 of the same 3 defenders banned (Mira, Valkyrie, Kaid): 41.3%
The chances of having neither of them banned: 4.7%
Chances that your game has 4 out of the 5 aforementioned operators banned: 15.4%
Keep in mind the game has 64 operators so with OW numbers, this would be even worse.
Wouldnât work as the first team to ban would just pick the best hero in the game and now they have the advantage because of a literal coin flip.
Enemy team can ban same champions. Itâs just that your team bans doesnât count to you. But enemy team can do same as you do to them.
On the other hand it could be only unique bans, that still would be good, for example defending team have first ban. After they change places then they ban again but now other team (defending again) have first ban.
League of legends have unique picks and no one have complains for that.
torb or Sym for me lol
1 Like
That would certainly happen often and thatâs also how it worked out in Paladins. At lower elos, players were much more likely to ban heroes that are generally considered most painful to play against. For me thatâs not a negative but a positive, as it allows players to deal with specific balance issues that are more unique to each skill tier.
If I was to implement a system like that, I would do it like this:
- Each team is automatically assigned a captain (highest rating) who makes the choices to speed things up.
- Team A bans a hero, Team B bans a hero (one should be plenty to start with).
- Team A and B take turns picking their five heroes in ABBAABBAAB order.
Each player needs to select 3/5 heroes per role that they are willing to play before queueing draft mode. Team captains can see those heroes for each player and pick for them. Additionally non-captains can indicate one hero during the draft phase they would prefer to play (which does not have to be one of the preselected ones), but the captain does not have to follow that.
This ensures that the draft is speedy and coherent for each team, even if the team fails to communicate effectively. Some friction is unavoidable, but putting responsibility for team composition into the hands of the highest rated player would keep it to a minimum IMO.
The principle could easily be tested in scrims by doing the draft in chat and then simply committing to it. That could be a great way to test the waters and see how it would play out in practice.
I too see that idea as positive but in my example only 1 out of the 5 operators had a positive win delta so at least in R6S, people donât ban based on balance.
I think thatâs fine too. Ultimately people want to increase their chances to have a good game, especially at lower elos where cheese tactics are prevalent. If banning âannoyingâ heroes makes people enjoy the game more, then that is still a net win in my book. E.g. when we had the Bastion cheese meta in OW1 it may not have been objectively OP, but it was trivial to execute and just super frustrating to lose against. Being able to ban things like that until you get to a skill level where players can generally deal with it, is not a bad thing IMO.
The main thing I got from Paladins really is that bans donât really matter at low elos, since it is so random what players are actually good at that banning the OP meta hero rarely pays off (unless itâs completely broken and a must-ban) and the heroes players find most annoying change all the time. Bans are more important to keep things balanced at the top level and thatâs where players usually do ban based on who is objectively OP.
If thatâs your main then thatâs annoying of course, but it also creates good checks and balances as now it isnât in a one-trickâs interest anylonger for their main to be OP. Soujourn is the perfect example of course, she never would have been the problem she was (and still is) with such a system, and it would have been mainly Soujourn mains asking for quick nerfs so they actually get a chance to play her regularly in comp.
They always found diversity important, locking heroes IMO is not really great as youâre just limiting the playerbase.
Sure, the meta wont apply in every game, so the matches themselves might have some more variation. Not sure if it will be great for the game thoughâŚ
Game isnât mostly centered around gunplay like R6, Val, CS:GO etc, which means they have much more neutral balancing than OW. I believe that having non-neutral balance doesnât really go well with bans.
Right now, if you banned Ana and pick hog, you are almost unstoppable lol.
they did try hero bans in ow1, it was not well received by the community.