OW2 would be better with no hero switching

I know this will be very controversial but hear me out.

I’ll start by saying I actually think peak overwatch was open queue 6v6. But we’re far from that at this point, we have to look at what the game is now and how locking one hero pick into a match could actually improve the game. I’ll also talk about how doing this could actually open doors to help OW2 feel more like a sequel.

After playing a lot of 5v5, I think one of its biggest problems is the game seems to almost entirely revolve around countering the tank. I’m currently playing tank in high diamond and it’s just annoying. I pick a tank, both dps counter me. I use ult, switch tanks and both dps switch to counter me again. A lot of times the opposing tank will jump in on this as well. Playing tank has just become an annoying game of switching all the time to try and dodge counters. I just don’t think swapping is suited for this game anymore.

So my suggestion would be overwatch 2 look like this.

  • Draft pick before every match, each team bans one hero and then does alternating picks so each team has equal opportunity to counter pick. Tanks always pick last to avoid tank counter stacking.

  • Introduce a talent system to make up for the loss of swapping. As you perform better you’re able to level up your hero throughout the match with perks.

This would actually feel like a sequel and it solves problems like the blind start of every match can actually put your team at a significant disadvantage if you get countered and lose the first team fight. It’s always been an RNG portion in overwatch.

A ban system allows the community a say in how they want to balance their matches and if a hero is really problematic it puts a bit of pressure on the balance team to get that hero under control if they’re banned from 95% of matches.

5 Likes

This is like saying a gun would be better without bullets.

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I think one of the things that’s keeping the balance of the matchmaker hostage are the hero switching aspect. A matchmaker forms teams based on the individual player’s MMR. Where does that MMR come from? It comes from their most played heroes in their role.

So as soon as one of the player starts playing a hero that they rarely use in a competitive match, the whole balance aspect goes to waste. This is especially true with roles that has the most heroes like the DPS.

So in theory, if you had to pick which hero you were going to play before the match starts, that should lead to balanced matchmaking as the matchmaker will know what to expect from each players.

But hero swapping is a vital feature of OW2, so I don’t think this change is possible.

1 Like

Hero bans in a game mostly populated by people with mains… That’s gonna work well, surely.

It doesn’t matter how many perks you get, if your team just so happens to get thrown against one that counters yours, it’s game over instantly. OW is not even close to being designed for such a system.

You say that till you have a pharah or echo on the enemy team and no one who can deal with them on your team

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youd have to pick that before you queued for it to match you properly based on that alone.

hero swapping is a big part as to why match balance is so bad. but its not the biggest reason

the biggest reason is game balance due to the balance team being very hard headed and rarely taking things back. no matter how much damage that thing does

best example of this is brig. she gets introduced and slowly but surely creates goats, everyone hated goats and asked them to remove her from competitive until she was properly balanced.

what did blizzard do? kept her in game and slowly nerfed her as if goats wasnt the most boring meta to of existed. they do this every single time: goats? force role queue, double shield? remove a tank (5v5), sojourn+mercy 1 tapping ppl? nerf everything but the 1 tap (we have no idea how far this one goes yet, but id be surprised if mercy makes it out alive)

the point im making is that: ‘you’ have to solve the balance team’s imcompetency/reliance on unimportant statistics before you can solve any other issues with game or match balance

why does game balance influence match balance? because lets pretend you are a top 500 player and your team gets the top 500 sweatiest sojourn player while the enemy team gets a top 500 sombra main…you are going to destroy them bar none. now imagine if people couldnt swap, that sombra would be throwing the moment they picked the hero in the queue up screen.

game balance is so strict at times (atleast in high elo) that its “play the op thing or throw”. very few people are good enough to actually play non meta consistently and climb in high elo.

so even if they made it so that you had to pick a certain hero before you queued up. the matches would still be very imbalanced due to the heroes people picked

As long as one-tricks exist this will never fly.

This… this is called a MOBA. It’s a completely different kind of game and it’s not what we (meaning some of us) came here for.

4 Likes

I’m not so sure about drafting or bans. I’m always open to it as a new mode and seeing if it works well or gets popular, putting some emphasis on it if it does. I know there is the elimination or lock out team death match, so maybe something like that in other game modes would also be interesting to try.

There’s no character changing in Paladins and it works fine. (but also bc they have item shop mid-match you can customize your kit)

I think they should at least try it in OW2

1 Like

There are too many counters for something like this to work. Particularly when you have counters like Pharah countering every non-hitscan hero in the game, Junkrat countering every brawler in the game, Echo countering Pharah and Junkrat, Ana countering every support unless the enemy have a Kiriko, and on it goes.

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No

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its one of those situations where constant counter picking for tanks is not fun, but you would be very unlucky to have a tank that is fully countered by the enemies tank with no chance of switching, better balancing would be ideal but that isnt going to happen

It works because every class can dish damage, and there are hard counters to healing and shields. I don’t think this would work for overwatch unless they changed it completely

you are pitching a MOBA. maybe you mean to create some flexibility, but believe me: it doesn’t make the game easier to balance. on the contrary, it can create multiple difficulties of many types, especially for the development of future new heroes that should create variable rules. MOBAs often have the flaw of having to twist their heroes much more due to the multitude of talents.

And let’s not forget that blizzard made a very specific decision in the past to step away from the MOBA concept for OW when they changed their minds about shadowing a non-healer support when they decided SYmmetra could no longer be a part of it. of supports and when Echo could not get a chance to be considered a support while maintaining the concept of a mime.

and last but not least, Blizzard has already tested its ability to make a talent-based MOBA: Heroes of the Storm. it was great fun in casual gaming, but in e-sports terms it didn’t work and they even abandoned it (shamefully, I might add). I basically think that OW2 can be highly balanced, but that its only flaw right now is too much disparity in class variety. it’s really stupid that we have so much more tank choice in one player slot…and so little support in two player slots needed to start a match. and obviously special rules are still needed to help 5v5 in open queue or arcades, regardless of talents.

actually it works very poorly in paladins.

some characters are so broken in that game that if you pick them you win for free. its basically overwatch but worse since you cant swap to counter it if its on the enemy team.

some champions in paladins are just that good

imagine if overwatch matches were determined by which team got to pick mercy+sojourn and which team didnt: because its basically that in a nutshell.

Please quit the game instead. You Val players tryna change this whole game :skull:

I did remember when I played that it was “who has better Koga” simulator

Games would be over before the doors open lol

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As a Bronze player I really don’t care about what you find ‘annoying’ about high Diamond.

Everyone who says that doesnt actually understand the repercussions of that idea on the game overall and i wish people would stop suggesting bans etc. cus it wont work.

It works in games like mobas not only because of the sheer amount of heroes available, meaning there is lots of overlap between designs so if mercy is banned there are like 2-3 other mercy-esque heroes to play, but also because heroes dont counter other heroes. In what moba do you pick a hero because the enemy picked another hero? None that i am aware of. People just ban the heroes they dont like, that are problematic and pick the hero they want. There are no major repercussions to banning a specific hero. In Overwatch there is

Easiest base example you can give is what do you do when you have heroes like pharah exist

You didnt pick a hitscan, sorry you lose the game. So now what? Are people forced to ban pharah every game just to prevent that from happening. Is one dps forced to lock hitscan just incase they pick pharah. Is pharah forced to be redesigned to stop the hero from being so polarising? Making her more generic?

Then the game has become even more restricted in how you play because you are having to account for these possibilities where there is no undo button to swap.

And that is one example of hundreds of hero interactions that break the game if hero swapping is not a thing. Sorry you picked winston into reaper. Sorry you picked hog into ana. Sorry you picked zen into sombra.