ProLikeChro talks about hero pools

General Discussion
1

It is super interesting. As an alternative to hero bans, I think it has a lot going for it, but… it ALSO could be super frustrating.

What do y’all think of it?

It would remove the ability to ALWAYS switch to a hard counter to a target, which could open up playing more of the niche heroes.

It would also generate REALLY interesting stats, like, what if people always picked a hero as a possible one, but DIDN’T tend to field it. Which would imply they were just there because another hero REQUIRED a counter to be present as an option for them to be balanced.

I think there is a lot of goodness which would come out of this, and it is a SUPER interesting take on alternatives to hero bans - which gets a LOT of the goodness they would have brought, WITHOUT many of the problems which would come with them.

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2

I haven’t read it all in detail, but I certainly agree with his line of reasoning (i.e. the initial parts). I myself reached similar conclusions looking at it from a more numerical perspective to start:

heck the very fact that the historically dumpster heroes being sym, sombra, bastion etc. have the underlying commonality of being overdependent and most of them is because of being overly niche kinda is a simple but clear :golf:.

it’s not even scalable to have every hero being very niche anyways considering how much less appealing it’d be for newer players to have to learn who’s good for what when. it’s much better to make all the heroes less niche and more general esp for the casual playerbase. and it’s not like this means copy-pasting heroes in order to make new ones. and if we go full hard on the niche thing then it’d kill OW tbh you can’t reasonably expect every player to have 6-stacks every time they want to play, and not even GM can stack that many anyways. so I disagree with option 1.

option 3 is basically just telling people that play those heroes to abandon the hero or abandon the game.

I don’t think option 4 is all that feasible without doing some of option 2 tbqh.

option 5 is suicide without option 2 being done.

option 6, like the original ban system, doesn’t really address the former issues raised about the map design, asymmetrical capability of switching, inherent imbalance of heroes with narrow niche, etc.

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We already had hero pools remember?

But all in all its a bad idea because it is a temporary fix for the poor balance that takes to long for them to fix.

Look at Echo and Hanzo: how long are they a problem again? Since the first ball nerf a few months ago?

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I disagree with his core concept I’m afraid,

“While they won’t be the most optimal picks they should never be useless or eclipsed so significantly by everyone else that there’s no point in ever playing them.”

For me the purpose of a hero, especially one with a niche or specialist kit, is do they bring something new to the game? If the answer is yes they did their job, no matter how bad what they bring may be or competitively weak they are.

We aren’t going to see a meta where 30 odd options exist, we’d be lucky to see half the heroes competitively viable outside of the most niche of situations. To expect any thing else is to ask for failure.

By his definition Bastion is a failed hero. I don’t agree with that. Yeah he sucks as a comparative choice, but he brings his own unique style that changes up the game in a cool way that only he does, that’s good enough for me even if he’s forever f-tier. He’s a better hero than Ash who sure is way more viable but didn’t bring anything new or that unique to the game, take her out and it’s basically the same. That cannot be said of Bastion, Sombra or Sym.

What we need is heroes to be innovative, fun and not oppressive. Stuff like viable balance and lore while important matter less and with 30 heroes and the possibility for more when OW2 drops in 2077 the idea they all have some niche in the meta drops lower and lower, and it’s already basically impossible.

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5

the thing is, if the “niche” heroes aren’t proportionally stronger for how narrow their niche is, they’re not balanced (i.e. they’re by definition weak). and if leaving like that is acceptable, then it basically means the entire point of the niche design/balancing, and subsequently also the hero, is defeated.

Like from a player perspective: why bother playing nor learning them when you can achieve the same, or better, on another hero that’s more applicable in more situations?

And from the dev perspective: why bother putting in all the time, money and effort into making a hero that you very well know won’t be played much at all due to the design and/or poor balancing and well know that people would rather play the existing heroes instead?

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In this case, it is the PLAYER determining which set they are restricted to.

We haven’t tried this.

But that sucks though, because they are CONTINUALLY weak.

He is a failed hero. They could have spent time making a hero which was played.

Which is what this is trying to fix.

Exactly, not only that but Chro is arguing that they CAN’T be balanced.

Which is likely true.

7

it depends how narrow their niche is. if we’re talking like bastion and sym where their kits have been handled so badly that they’re “play this specific comp in this specific way or don’t play them at all”, then obvs they can’t just tweak a few numbers to balance them.

but if we’re talking about something like lucio who’s got a niche (group up comps) but it’s not at all narrow and can still work fairly reasonably well outside their niche, then it is actually balance-able as we’ve clearly seen. arguably moira’s in this position as well, but what she’s struggling with in competing with other supports is really just the lack of utility rather than being unbalanceable.

8

I would never go the route of locked in, non-switchable characters. The amount of reworks to make that balanced would be massive.

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I’m thinking heroes like Mei, Doomfist, Junk, Reaper, Genji , Tracer, Pharah.

Lets take Doom as a middle of the road example.

Currently you can’t tune him so he is “ok in the cases where Sombra are not played” as a base.

Since, they will switch to Sombra and wreck him.

So they either have to tune him to be really quite good to make up for it (but, that will wreck games where someone won’t Sombra)

Or they have to tune him for average, and his players will be trashed BY Sombra.

He can’t be tuned KNOWING there will be games where he won’t just have the enemy switch to Sombra instantly.

But… With this, there would be a lot of games where you COULD run him. Pharah could be tuned to run sans Mercy, since you won’t ALWAYS have a Mercy etc.

I’d say they are pretty much where they would need to be now, and they could do some tweaking.

You CAN switch, but you will have a smaller set (which you have chosen)

I’m guessing there would be a 3 pick for each role, but I am spitballing there.

Where it falls down is, “so, no one has a hitscan, and they are running pharmacy”, but, people would end up having to pick a wider range of heroes as a base, just so they can deal with that.

It is an interesting idea, and the more I think about it, the more I like it.

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10

Interesting alternative to hero bans, is that idea of limited multiple picks. I.e. Hero rosters.

I.e. You get to pick 3 heroes you can swap between at the beginning of the round.

Effectively self-banning the entire rest of the role.

If an enemy team throws a curveball at you, you might not be able to swap to the counterpick.

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Yeah, I like it because it gives a bunch of the goodness which hero bans give, without having to inflict stuff you do not want to do from the outside.

It could lead to you team having to deal with team members making bad choices, but everything does.

Weirdly enough, it could help a little with the smurfing situation.

12

One catch ya how you deal with it causing a “ban meta”.

I.e. Why wouldn’t almost everybody at high ELO go for the same roster picks.

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Think of it like Pokemon, where there are some picks that are basically omnipresent, while the rest of the gaps are filled with less specific choices depending on what you want.

The difference of course is that instead of one person picking six things, it’s six people picking one thing each and those few wouldn’t want to always play the same thing. For GM though, they should just have to deal with that crud if they want to stay there, so I don’t think the highest ranks should be considered as much when it comes to that.

14

We do really. Look at Sombra. She’s one of the most unique heroes I have seen in any shooter game.

Fun is different for for everyone. Some enjoy point-n-click style heroes while others enjoy something else.

Well then I guess innovative just went out the window then. Lets just make all heroes variant of S76.

But again, this means said hero will almost never be useful. People want to win. If the niche is so small that it’s better to just play a hero like McCree then people will play McCree.

15

The only thing I’m honestly hoping to see from OW2 is Blizzard dropping the rock-paper-scissors mentality. This failed big time and it’s why over half the DPS heroes aren’t viable.

In short, hitscans can counter most anything, so why pick any other hero?

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Reading the blog post I personally think the most realistic and best way forward is to reduce how niche heroes are, by making them more generic. I think that’s the only way we can actually achieve some semblance of balance.

Niche does not work in a game like this. Besides all the factors chro mentioned, people identify with and want to main heroes and Blizzard should have seen that coming with the cosmetics / background / designs of the hero. Playtime lists, golden guns, unlockable skins, achievement sprays… Everything in the game says “pick a favourite”

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It would give a chance to for a counter pick set, which they MAY not be able to switch to stop.

It would open up counter meta’s which couldn’t be just blocked out.

Say for instance, people were running a rush comp, and you COULD switch to dive, since, not all their heroes are in the rush.

But, the moment you do, you would EXPECT a switch to dive counter, but…

If there isn’t a lot of dive, it could have been blocked out by their own team picks.

Which means you can dive, for this map, then the selection starts again, and you have a choice of keeping running dive, (depending on if you think their team will pick up Anti Dive as a set or not).

But it gives you a chance to run off meta comps, which are only off meta BECAUSE they can be counterpicked so easily.

If the hero pick set you have is small enough that you can’t cover all of the counters to different comps, then you are letting those comps be a viable strategy, where they were not before.

That is the genius of this. The moment you HAVE a meta set which people are running, you can counter pick it for a map, and they don’t have a reply right away.

Which opens a lot of options, which would normally be closed.

Meta set picks become dangerous, because a weakness to them, which would normally not be viable, because it would be easy to counterpick is now on the table as playable.

The danger is “win in the spawn room” situations, but, anything which opens up the meta wide open will do this.

For UI, I am guessing that in spawn, you will see in your hero select list, that the ones you team mate has selected is highlighted.

Since, if they are s76 in case you need hitscan, then you may want a different backup hitscan yourself, since, you may BOTH need to run it.

It doesn’t mean you CAN’T select it, but, it means you are warned that you could end up in a situation where you can’t run one of your picks.

18

From a competitive viability standpoint yeah, Bastion is a failed hero and it’d would be hard to say otherwise.

From a unique and innovative gameplay point of view then no he isn’t and other heroes are worse. Bastion provides novel gameplay options that not only are unique to him but unique to OW. Mowing people down with raw dmg can be fun, cracking a Bastion comp and overcoming the dmg can be fun too, though obviously not always. Either way though he brings something unique even if it sucks.

I’d consider that more of a success in design than Ash as I said earlier, who while fun is sort of a generic mash of other heroes kit’s or the Hanzo rework, that made more of a funhouse mirror of McCree than anything else. Their better heroes competitively and doubling up in some areas isn’t inherently bad but I’d rather see new ideas and innovation that I can enjoy even if it won’t win me comp games.

I see that as a problem with the versatile heroes as much as the niche ones.

As an example for upfront, frontline, impact DPS we have Reaper as the generalist and Sym and Junk as the specialists (cases could be made for others but lets stick to 3 for simplicity).

Now Sym has issues with her kit, no denying that but part of the problem the 2 have is Reaper is so much more reliable and consistent than them as is damn close to their power level even in their optimal situations. I see that being (especially with junk) more to do with Reaper being too strong in his generalist position as it is the specialists are too weak. On the flip side 76 is too weak compared to his more specialized hits can counterparts.

The point is balance is hard, and expecting anything remotely resembling even and equal balance is a fools game, it will never happen. Better to embrace what a hero brings outside competitive ability. I mean look at Sym, she’s sucked forever and her mains have being saying so forever, but they still play her. Even with all her weakness people look at her kit and say it’s fun, it’s for me and I want to play it even though it’s weak as I enjoy her, I struggle to call that a failure.

edit: added the second half to avoid double posting

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19

Right, but that isn’t enough. An innovative hero which no one plays is a failure.

Right, but the idea of things LIKE hero pools is to make the heroes like this MORE viable in regular play.

We can turn an innovative but unplayed hero into an innovative, AND played hero, and that is a good thing.

I think Ashe would have been successful if EITHER Widow or McCree didn’t exist. But there wasn’t a big enough of a gap between them for another hero.

That said, I mained her for a long time. But yeah… exciting design for game play? Not so much so you said.

Right, but we can change comp to make them more viable, it will open up a bigger area for more innovation, where they won’t have to worry about them being as viable against EVERYONE.

If we can make the currently ‘really interesting’ heroes also more viable, that is a good thing right?

Because making them generic for the same result would be “bad”

But maybe that was your point to begin with?

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I think that it, like most extreme “solutions” proposed on the internet, is highly impractical and creates more problems than it purports to solve.