Quick reminder: Jayne's pugs are biased by default

General Discussion
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I honestly appreciate Jayne doing a public testing of his proposed ban system and putting it out on public so people can judge by themselves if the games are better with it than the default. That is sacrificing a lot of personal time into helping the game, regardless of how the devs will react to that small sample data.

Said that, it’s a good reminder that most people that line up to play in his servers want a ban system in the first place. I’ve seen no people that went into those games with the mindset that they don’t want a ban system in the first place (but then, I didn’t watched every single individual game, so…). It’s no surprise people playing in those game are liking the games more than normal ranked. Because that’s exactly what they want in the first place.

Again, this is good proof of concept, but you shouldn’t take “player satisfaction” as a main datapoint in this test because it will take a few months before the honeymoon period stops and people take off their wishful thinking glasses and start analyzing it with cold thinking.

Eg.: Remember how everyone praised LFG, but now it’s a ghost town where you can sit for 20 minutes before you get 5 teammates? That was also a highly requested feature from players, yet people over time just prefer to queue and get whatever matchmaking throw their way.

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You have to understand that the players who are being introduced to this sort of aspect are also willing to try out the latter decisions of the player base as well.

Even if they are implicitly biased in stating that they want to participate in this sort of comp mode, they have a better rounded opinion on how the gamemode could work and thereby having better arguments for the clause.

I would argue that players who are not in favor of this sort of gamemode have not tried the gamemode, if going by your standards, and therefor are also implicitly biased in a way that even though they stand by their claim to not be supportive of the ban system, they also do not plan on trying out the gamemode itself and making a well informed opinion for themselfs. Therefore, although both actors are biased, the group that has tried out both competitive experiences have a more well formed opinion on the subject than those who have never tried the gamemode.

The opinions of those who have not tried the gamemode out are still valid, but i would suggest they try out the gamemode and form an opinion based on experience.

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Yep, that’s why I stated twice that I think the experiment is valid and Blizzard would be stupid to ignore the data it’s generating.

I’m mostly tired of people saying “Jayne is doing ban-comp and everyone is loving it, so it must be implemented on live”. It’s still too early to tell any unintended problems the format might present when implemented in large scale, and while some people might make predictions, it doesn’t necessarily means the good will outweigh the bad.

Mercy mass rez was removed and that led to Moth Meta. Brigitte was created to keep Tracer in check and that led to GOATS Meta. LFG was implemented by community request and few people use it nowadays. All three were highly praised by the community when they arrived on live, and all three ended up sour after a while.

I just want people to think a bit more on the issue instead of parroting “it look neat, it will be good”.

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I think one thing they noticed from the pug system is that draft picks don’t work.

He also said that they are going to try 1 “protect” per team, and then 1 ban per team.

Also probably disallow more than 1 ban per hero role.

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Your post was extremely thoughtful and interesting.

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Here’s that video I was referencing:

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The problem with LFG is the match maker. A diamond game in a 6 stack is a masters game in solo queue, it’s rediculous and by the time you leave your six stack because you’ve dropped all your SR, you are now a smurf ruining peoples games as you rise back to your actual SR. At least that’s my experience with it. All it does is drain my SR and I have to grind it back in solo queue because they refuse to fix team queue matchmaking.

This isn’t about player satisfaction, this is about seeing what would happen if there was a ban/draft system. Let’s preface this by saying we know for a fact that the overwhelming majority of vocal players are not happy with the state of the game right now. What is the state of the game?

No Role Queue, No bans, no draft, freedom to ruin games without punishment, freedom to report and ban players who didn’t break any rules. Mirror matches every single meta for the past 2 years. Ana Meta fallowed by Mercy Meta followed by the current Brig meta. The playerbase is not happy with GOATS comp, it’s not happy with 5 DPS freelo games, it’s not happy with esports being full of mirror matches, it’s not happy with half of the DPS roster being troll picks.

Right now this is the only guy talking about solutions to those problems. It’s not about “the people who played this games enjoyed them” as you’re insisting. It’s "Are any of the problems players have with the game still present, which problems are still here, and what new problems appear"

You’re literally playing devils advocate for no apparent reason. The reason why I say that is because, first you haven’t recognized any of the problems players have with the game, you haven’t made any case for how this won’t solve those problems and you haven’t made a case that the new problems it creates are worse. You’ve simply stated, this might be a bad idea. Why?

You’re basing your argument on this idea of there could be some magical apocalyptic ending to this. We don’t know what might happen, but it’s gonna be baaaaaaad.

The fact is, something needs to happen. There needs to be a change. Maybe we don’t agree what that change is. I’m also skeptical about a ban system. I’ve seen it work very well for Paladins, but these are two very different games and the PTR is supposed to be a platform for testing things like this, but that’s not what the overwatch team wants to use it for. Not sure why, but nobody’s perfect.

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I meant the OP but thanks anyway.

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Wait, people actually thought LFG was going to work?

When did this happen?

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A lot of people he would have access to are also not regular, casual players. And regardless if anyone likes it or not, they ARE the majority in any video game, especially one of this size.

This is why LFG didn’t work as much as people would hope.

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I dunno why people are fixating so much on the ban system element.

Scratch that. I can see why people are fixating on it.

Anyways, in the context of Jayne’s pugs etc it’s a very interesting element. It’s interesting to see the choices behind the bans, how the game plays out with such things in place, etc, all of which illuminates more nuanced ways of balance, how people perceive balance, and how people play the game.

It’s a controlled experimentation and discussing the results can have a lot of positive benefits potential for this game’s community.

Fixation on any singular element of this game is detrimental to the goals. This game is incredibly complex. Arguing over if there should or should not be a hero ban system is, imho, a lot of wasted effort. Discussing how hero bans would influence the game, and trying to understand why it’d influence the game in those ways, is definitely worth while discussion.

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I use LFG for comp and like it more than the solo Que comp.

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Bias opinion here, but I think that the experiment would work in an environment like what Jayne is doing but wouldn’t work in the ladder.

Pros doing it make sense, but I don’t trust the ladder with anything tbh.

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I wonder what heroes would be banned in plat. Consider console players hate pharah I wonder how often she would be banned. As a plat, I don’t mind pharmacy

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I don’t think so either. I think it’s a lot of missing the forest for the tree. Fixating on the ban system, instead of discussing the results of it. How it effects how games play out, who and why people ban what, etc, as it’s a good experiment in that sense.

Good questions. Tbh it’d be really interesting to see the differences between the ranks, and also the platforms… Could be REALLY illuminating in the differences between them, and give us a better understanding to work with when trying to adjust heroes balance on the ladder.

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According to Scott Mercer, the only effect grouping have in matchmaking is that the system tries to match you with a similar-sized team. You are still playing against a team with around the same MMR as your own team.

A bunch of vocal players, I agree. Being the vast majority of the player base is debatable. Even in this very forums, you can see every thread that talks about the state of the game you have people arguing for multiple sides.

It might be a consensus between pro players and high profile streamers, but they have a perspective on the game that clashes with how the average player see Overwatch. And just like anything worthy discussing, there are people that think the game should cater to the pro players, and people that think they should cater for the majority of the playerbase (ie, silver~plat players).

Please, don’t make statements that bold unless you can back them up.

I believe it’s worthy discussing the ban system. As I said in the OP, I think Jayne is doing a great work coordinating those scrims.

I’m just saying that because something looks like a good idea at first sight it might have unintended consequences that people excited about the idea might miss until they give a longer thought about that.

Jayne himself is refining the system as the days pass. He is considering a “pick” phase that can’t be banned. He expressed that this system might only work in the pro tier, but not in ladder. It’s all there in the video GreyFalcon linked.

I’m just asking for people to consider everything before advocating for something because it looks cool.

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I think those interested should definitely check out the video GreyFalcon linked. It’s very interesting.

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The idea was that they could enforce picks only on certain categories, and a lot of people were forcing 2-2-2 comps with no flex slots. Then eventually people got tired into being forced into always play the same role all the time (most LFG had enforced roles by default), and then the system imploded because people stopped using it.

I understand why people thought LFG would help in the game, and I still think it is a good tool to have in the game. The community broke the tool themselves by discouraging people from joining random teams because 90% of them were either 6 flex anything-goes or rigid 2-2-2 with role lock.

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The issue is that it sets a precedence that OW will not be able to come back from. I never really liked the ban system when other game does it, and having it in OW is not what I like.

Not to mention I feel like it’ll side-step and leave the elephant in the room instead of addressing it. Like if a hero is imba or OP, Blizz should work to fix it. While I agree that in a pro environment, it works, I do not think the system itself should be implemented on the ladder since it will choke out a lot of things.

The results of this is one thing, I just do not like the future implementation and what it’ll bring to the health of the game. I agree that it’ll solve an issue, but that brings other issue. That’s my opinion on it though.

I’m not saying Jayne shouldn’t do it, but rather, I just don’t think that the results should be taken as word of law (Which, I think others will.).

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That and let’s face it, LFG is basically just regular matchmaking with extra steps most of the time.

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