For sure. People will run with it and say all sorts of wild stuff. Just how it goes with anything. We’re powerless against those people, nothing we can do.
All we can really do is just make sure they don’t distract us from the things we should be discussing, and the implications and such things like Jayne’s experiment expose.
I don’t think a hero ban system for the ladder is something even remotely considering at this stage of the game. However, I do find the data in a sense coming from what Jayne’s doing VERY interesting.
I like the idea behind LFG not as a tool to form a perfect team, but as a tool to meet more socially-inclined players to chat while playing the game. They could be a start to eventually form a team, but anyone that thought they would make a well-oiled machine in 30 minutes to play like a Tier 2 team in Contenders were surely disappointed.
All hero classes games start rolling with a ban system once they have enough hero but they will be a ways down the road for overwatch they need more heroes first before regular play gets bans.
I don’t think anyone expects a semi-pro pug to really reflect what will happen on ladder. If only for the fact that the semi-pro scene is far smaller and targeted bans (i.e. banning Ana against ML7) are far more effective since you know who the one-tricks and specialists are.
Not to say that it can’t work, you can know who a OTP is by playing with them fairly frequently, or even them being in the last game. If someone popped off on Widow, a ban system would let you target that.
However, I personally think it would have a net positive on the ladder.
It’d help solve easily one of the biggest problems on the ladder, where certain heroes dominate at certain levels of play without forcing Blizzard into the decision where a hero either has to be dumpstered for regular players because they’re too good in the higher levels (Tracer or Widowmaker comes to mind here), or where you’ll never see a hero at a professional level because to give them that level of power would make them oppressive at lower levels (Sym, Torb, Bastion, etc).
I think the biggest net positive is that it gives the playerbase a way to quarantine overpowered heroes.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that when heroes are overpowered enough to warp the meta, whether it be Ana, Tracer, Genji, Widowmaker, Mercy, Dva, Doomfist, Brigitte, or whoever ends up being overpowered.
Not to mention that ironically a ban system opens up a huge amount of the roster to be played. Can a Dva-less Dive withstand a Roadhog or Reaper? Can a Brig or Zarya-less GOATS deal with a Junkrat or Pharah raining death upon them?
If you take Widowmaker out of the picture, suddenly Soldier and McCree are far more workable since they don’t have to compete with a Sniper who has better range AND better burst than them.
Even then I don’t think that banning out Doomfist, Moira or Brigitte simply because you don’t like playing against them is completely unfair. When I play League of Legends, I frequently ban Yasuo or Blitzcrank, not because I think either of them are overpowered, but just because they’re super annoying to deal with.
Fair points. I think the game, and the hero pool right now, is just far too young to be pulling a hero ban type system on the majority of the ladder. While I definitely agree it would potentially solve some very popular complaints, I don’t think it’d be worth it to implement at this time. It’d have many complicating factors as well.
I think we need like another 10 heroes or so before we get into the potential for ladder wide hero ban type stuff.
Personally I’m not against it myself, it’s just I’m trying to keep in mind all of those people that share a different opinion than I do.
I think the relatively small hero ban just necessitates a different kind of ban system.
I think putting off such a system until we hit X heroes is unrealistic with the current pace that the game is releasing heroes. Using your example, if we waited until say, Hero 40 to implement a ban system, then if Blizzard maintain their current 4 month hero cycle, then we won’t hit hero 40 until like March or July 2022.
Will Overwatch even be around for that long if they don’t implement systems to solve how deeply unsatisfying the ladder system currently is?
I understand the appeal of releasing more heroes, especially more Tanks and Healers before implementing a ban system, but I don’t think there’s any realistic number you can really wait for that will be in a decent timeline.
Oh boy… I agree with you in a lot of ways. I just don’t want to incur the wrath of all those I know that will have a problem with what you’re saying so…
Yeah it’s good to see that. And you make good arguments, I find myself agreeing with you a lot, and when I don’t I still definitely respect and have to take into consideration your points.
Keep fighting the good fight. I’m trying to be a good boy because I think I might be close to a perma ban so…
Lots of people think they are for everyone. That’s part of the “think about the proposition instead of parroting” thing I mentioned.
But even for pro play only, while the pro players might know why they are banning certain heroes (like Brigitte), some people that like to simply copy whatever the pros are playing will not understand why certain heroes are constantly being banned and may jump into “this hero is clearly OP” wagon. So, I have my reservations on the proposal.
Sorry, but it’s just not OW if you introduce character banning. We should not allow a system to exist where people with huge amounts of time on a couple characters that are hard countered can just vote out opposition, which is about all this will result in. We have this problem already with the pros and streamers, who prefer certain styles and characters, and got away for about 18 months with utterly trashing and nerfing the heck out of every new character before Blizz wised up and realized that they were getting snowed. This is a regressive attitude, if a character is perceived so “bad” then we need modification of the character, not just a digital form of discrimination. OW will die a slow death if it boils down to about 12 characters in actual play.
I would probably quit comp tbh. I’m a Sombra one trick, and everyone in my rank knows it. They would just ban Sombra every game, forcing me to play tracer (yawn)
Perhaps it’ll get people to finally branch out? I don’t agree with OTPs, to be honest. It’s a detrimental way of playing in a team based game. And someone else picking Sombra first from you wouldn’t be much different. So, better to know a few heroes regardless.
Well put, you are in effect creating self-fulfilling prophecy where people who are disposed towards something then go for it, and declaring it must be a good idea. Rest assured, Blizzard does not support character or map banning, it will never happen, and if you really, really want that experience, it is possible now with custom games.
The results from Jayne’s pugs might be biased, but even the smallest amount of information we as a community gather from them is both quantitatively and qualitatively better than the information we get from Blizzard. Blizzard has always been terrible at communicating with the playerbase. Atleast on the WoW forums we had blues and greens taking part in the conversation, but go look at the blue post tracker of these forums… Imo we need a monthly State of the Overwatch post/video from Blizzard where they address the problems they see in the the game and what they are looking into and when. Now all we get is… well, nothing.
My personal opinion is that it would not only greatly increase the experience in ranked games at all levels of play (especially at my rank, anything but the status quo is an improvement) but the viewing experience of OWL aswell.
Banning a one trick on the opposing team is a great way to both win the game and rub it in the face of that dirty one trick. Let the players decide if they wan’t one tricks to exists in this game (we’re in desperate need of unlimited avoid slots aswell).
Your team can’t handle the opponets comp X for reasons other than throwers/one tricks? Ban the crucial hero in their team and let them figure out a secondary comp/strategy. Ban system would only encourage people to play multiple heroes from all role categories.
Tired of certain meta/hero? Just ban it!
Ban system would also stress the importance of communication and hopefully increase it. For it to work on ladder, Blizzard has to remove private profiles from competative play. The bare minimum would be public profile only for the current season.
OWL would also be a much better experience for a viewer. Who the hell wants to watch all the teams playing the same comps over and over again. Name any other (pro level) sport where the opposing team always know’s exactly what they’re up against in the matches to come. Not to mention that the current meta is boring af to watch…
Can’t forget that these players play as a team in organized environment where they probably have the perfect team comps and everything like voice comms.
Just imagine trying a ban system in unorganized soloque play where your team has 4 dps mains one offtank main and one support main. Except now even the offtank’s main char Dva got banned because she’s a popular ban. Or the support’s main got banned and then you guys got no proficient healer either lol. Then people who didn’t hide their profiles would be directly countered via banning and everyone would have to hide their profiles to get even grounding.
This is not moba, you can flex during the actual matches and not hardlock the character at the beginning so counterpicking is not an issue that is pretty important thing in Overwatch and we only have 30 whopping character picks, most of which only have 1-2 hardcounters to their name or 1-2 picks to make a team composition in the first place. Rein is one of a kind, dva is one of a kind, winston is one of a kind… you don’t have an option to use if one char gets banned, unlike moba’s. Nor can you counterpick anymore, if character gets banned. Teams having genji would just ban zen on enemy team, so there would be no counter to dragonblade, no discord on him and he could just swipe through whole teams willy nilly. Imagine playing pro level snipers where winston cannot be picked to counter snipers.
Ban system would never work on ladder, because this is not a moba.
Oh and can’t forget that groups would dictate the ban system. Soloquers could not even have hopes to decide on anything. They would have to operate even more on the whims of the groups. 5 stacks are already super annoying to play with because they ignore the soloquer completely and scapegoat them, imagine if they also got to decide who in the enemy team deserves a banhammer too.
